On a recent trip home to Coorg, once quiet country roads were jammed with traffic, there was a frenzy of ugly construction everywhere, and coffee..

There’s a particular warm, nutty fragrance that I associate with the time of year when the days are noticeably shorter and the nights longer and..

Huge, impassive, its inscrutable, waxy green surface chalky, like a folk artist who has been too free with the face powder, the ash gourd is..

On mornings when a wilderness of tangled, lush greenery grew on my grandmother’s dangerously rickety kitchen table and the fresh, sharp, mingled scents of mint..

The stew that we were served at my boarding school was simply repulsive. It was brown (ish), slippery, and sounded exactly like a description of..

Some time ago, I was at a highly sophisticated biryani tasting session. About halfway through about a dozen different offerings, I ate a spoonful of..

A large glass pitcher with freshly squeezed juice from local oranges or full of clear squashes and cordials, placed on a lace mat, was one..

…we ate a curry of tender, translucent green mangoes. The summer heat raged across the country and our normally enviably cool city quailed under the..

The sweetest tastes of summer come to us under hot, open skies and enclosed corridors of whispering greenery. Aimless rambles turn into intense treasure hunts..

Some afternoons there was an enormous platter of sweet yellow estate grown pineapples on the table at my grandparents’ Madikeri home. Most lunches ended with..

There never seemed to be any great fuss attached to the making of lime pickle, at least in my memory. Piles of wonderfully fresh, sleek..

Not so long ago, at a Coorg wedding, you could be fairly sure of whom you would meet and what you would eat. With a..

Just how two friendly guava trees came to be in my grandparents’ backyard in Coorg, I am not sure –they were a very long way..

This year, I’ve been collecting images of putharis long past from some of my friends, trying to capture the essence of this festival that touches..