When it comes to knowing about dishes, Indian foodies are increasingly on par with the rest of the world. For home cooks, the wider integration of India into the global food scene has been accompanied by an enormous increase in the kinds of ingredients available.

In Vir Sanghvi’s The Indian Pantry, readers will get to find out some fun facts about everyday food items and dishes:

The sweet-sour flavour tango which is the true test of a good tomato is rarely found in Indian tomatoes.

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You can cook the potato any way you like. You can boil it, roast it, bake it, fry it or cook it in a subzi, and it will still taste as good.

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In European cooking, peas are valued for their taste largely because chefs don’t use the kinds of masalas that our cooks have access to.

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The term corn doesn’t actually mean anything. Europe, it is used as a generic for any kind of cereal grain, one reason why there appear to be so many different kinds of corn.

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The food of the Middle East, and the Mediterranean region as a whole, uses lots of baingan. Melanzane Parmigiana, one of the world’s most famous Italian dishes, for instance, is based on baingan.

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As a general rule, wild mushrooms have more flavour than the cultivated variety; even a morel is much more flavourful than the white button mushroom you get in the shops.

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The Pimiento de Padron—a bright-green chilli from the town of Padron in north-west Spain—has travelled around the world in recent decades as part of the global tapas craze.

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The tamarind is not of Indian, or even Asian, origin. It originated in Africa and was brought to Asia by traders.

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The guava comes from Brazil and was brought to Asia by the Portuguese. In Malaysia, it is called Jambu Portugis.

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The Mango is a purely Indian plant even though it is now cultivated in many other parts of the world. There were mangoes in India over 4000 years ago and it crops up in ancient Sanskrit texts.

As the Indian middle class discovers the world, it finds that it has money to spend, that new prosperity is finding its first expression in its food choices.

The food boom is a symptom of a nation that is now confidently exploring the world, if not with its mind, certainly with its stomach! Get your copy of The Indian Pantry for the very best of (rude) food!

The Battle for Pakistan by Shuja Nawaz showcases a marriage of convenience between unequal partners. The relationship between Pakistan and the United States since the early 1950s has been nothing less than a whiplash-inducing roller-coaster ride. Surrounded today by hostile neighbours and with Afghanistan under increasing Indian influence, Pakistan does not wish to break ties with the US. It also does not want to become a vassal of China and get caught in the vice of a US-China rivalry, or the Arab-Iran conflict.

Based on extensive travel in the region, frequent policy interactions and many on-the-record interviews with key leaders, The Battle for Pakistan untangles the complex US relationship in the past decade. Here’s an excerpt from the preface.

Salvaging a Misalliance

The US–Pakistan relationship has often been compared to a bad marriage. Some have also described the relationship using the Chinese and Japanese sayings about an estranged couple that share the same bed but dream different dreams. It has been a true misalliance that is hurtling towards a bad break-up, but one that needs to be rescued for the sake of both parties and for the region in which Pakistan is located and where it can play a crucial role.

The French word ‘mesalliance’ was borrowed by George Bernard Shaw’s brilliant satirical play on the class battle in British society. It was based on an unequal partnership between the daughter of a businessman who made his money selling underwear, and the son of an upper-crust British proconsul in an Indian province. Indeed, the Shavian commentary from the father of the boy may also apply to the case of Pakistan and even Trumpian America today: ‘Democracy reads well; but it doesn’t act well.’ In many ways, the seventy-year-old US–Pakistan relationship, with its many ups and downs, alternately filled with both tantrums and fulsome praise for each other, has become a tragicomedy on a regional political stage, with numerous bad actors and confused heroes and heroines. Meanwhile, the sorry chorus of their hoi polloi tries to make sense of the ‘tangled web’ that the often-cynical leadership of both countries has woven. Pakistan continues to struggle to craft a democracy, as its successive governments continue to battle for supremacy with the military, even while they pretend to be ‘on the same page’. It also faces a hostile, much larger India to the east that continues to inform its security policy and its regional relationships. The US fails to fully appreciate this aspect of Pakistan’s existential struggle.

The internal Battle for Pakistan forms one side of a triangle of turmoil that reflects the country’s roller-coaster relationship with the US. The other two sides are the US relationships with the civil and the military in Pakistan. Today, as at critical junctures in the past seventy years, the US is trying to shape a new global strategy that involves preparing for economic and even military conflict with potential enemies in distant parts of the world. China is one major target of the administration of President Donald J. Trump, reflected in the Indo-Pacific alliance with India and preceded by the pivot to the Pacific of President Barack H. Obama. The US brushed off all Pakistani concerns about its tilt towards India. Russia may be another US target, though Trump, whatever his reasons, remains silent on that very real and growing conflict. The US persists in stumbling into the darkness of an ill-defined ‘war on terror’, as it struggles to place the Band-Aid of military intervention on numerous wars across the world against irregular forces of extremist Islamic warriors. It is trying to fight ideologies with military weapons. And failing. At the same time, it is preparing to confront poor Central American civilians attempting to breach its southern frontier in search of economic and political freedom. For seventeen years, the US struggled to find a direction in the seemingly endless and losing war inside Afghanistan. How it manages its military exit out of that battlefield will determine its relationship with Pakistan, Afghanistan’s larger neighbour to the east, and the US’s role in greater South Asia.

Grab your copy of The Battle for Pakistan today!

It’s 1998. And Mansoor Visram has lived in Canada for 25 years, ever since dictator Idi Amin expelled South Asians from Uganda. As a refugee with a wife and child, Mansoor has tried his best to recreate the life they once had, but starting over in Canada has been much harder than he expected. He’s worked as a used-car salesman, as a gas-station attendant, and now he runs a small dry cleaner in suburban Calgary. But he’s hatching plans for a father-and-son empire that will bring back the wealth and status the Visrams enjoyed in Uganda. Mansoor’s wife, Layla, has spent the past decade running her own home-cooking business and trying to hold her family together. But Ashif, their son, rarely comes home to visit, and Mansoor’s pride has almost ruined their marriage.

Read on to sense the undercurrents beneath the tremulous world of Mansoor, Ashif, and Layla from Night Of Power:

“Get up, Visram!” he orders himself. “Move!” Instead he falls, curls in the soft snow, and drifts off again.

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“Mark my words, son. We were kings in Uganda, and we will be kings yet again in Canada.”

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The flight was packed with stateless Asian men, men who now belonged nowhere.

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He was exactly where his father had been when he landed on the shores of Zanzibar sixty years ago. A pauper with nothing to his name.   

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Layla yearns to see her son’s face, to hold him, the way she used to when he was a child. This is, she is sure, how all mothers separated from their children must feel, a constant sense of loss and longing.

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When he saw Layla’s bruised face, he dismissed her injuries, cordoned them off to the far recesses of his mind. He had nothing to do with that.

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No, but where are you really from? As if they are border guards and he’s trying to enter the country illegally. It leaves him feeling that he doesn’t belong here.

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He doesn’t feel at home anywhere. He feels untethered, even to his own body. As if he might float away at any second.

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He plants his hands on the snow and struggles to stand, his veins a map of  frozen rivers.

Finalist for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, the Trillium Book Award, and the Danuta Gleed Literary Prize, Anar Ali is a Toronto based screenwriter and a master storyteller. In the Night of Power her words help us envision the Visram family’s exhilarating experiences in Uganda and their life changing journey to Canada.

On 26 May 2014, millions of Indians glued to their television sets and smartphones followed every single moment of the swearing-in ceremony of the Narendra Modi–led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). After Modi became the fifteenth prime minister of India, all eyes turned to the person who was sworn in as the first cabinet minister of the Modi sarkar—Rajnath Singh. As the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rajnath Singh had led the party to its biggest electoral victory until then, but more importantly, he delivered on the biggest gamble of his four-decade-long political career when he put his weight behind Narendra Modi as the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate in the face of stiff opposition both within and outside the alliance.

Gautam Chintamani’s Rajneeti takes us through the journey of the man behind Modi.

Singh’s statesmanship unencumbered Modi to seek the electorate’s mandate and return with an impressive victory.

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Modi’s term as the longest-serving chief minister of Gujarat and the achievements of his government were an affirmation of the path that Singh had envisioned for the BJP.

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The appointment of Amit Shah as in-charge for Uttar Pradesh for 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Singh’s own home turf and one of the most important states in the grand scheme of things, hinted at how Singh was thinking. ……. entrusting Amit Shah with UP showed that Singh meant business.

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Both Singh and Modi are quintessential organization men who put the party before everything else. Both had taken up the responsibility they were given through the course of their public life and focused on doing what was right, which, at times, could come at the cost of what others in the party felt.

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Singh continued to maintain there was no doubt about Modi being a popular leader and had projected a successful model for development in Gujarat but added that it was the BJP’s Parliamentary Board that would take the final call.

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In September 2012, as Modi undertook his month-long Vivekanand Yuva Vikas Yatra, Singh was present to extend his support for his colleague’s journey through 182 assembly constituencies of Gujarat.

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Singh’s last moment announcement appointing Modi as the chief of the party’s election campaign commission for 2014 at the BJP’s Goa National Executive was seen as bringing Narendra Modi one step closer to being made the party’s prime ministerial candidate.

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As swayamsevaks, Singh as well as Modi were proud of the Sangh’s influence on their thought process and their careers but that was where the influence ended.

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For Rajnath Singh, winning the 2014 Lok Sabha election meant delivering on a promise that he had made to himself half a decade ago..The thumping victory would become a part of Rajnath Singh’s political legacy as would his unwavering dedication to push Narendra Modi as his party’s prime ministerial candidate.

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On 26 May 2014, Narendra Modi took oath as the prime minister and Rajnath Singh was sworn in as home minister of the republic of India.

Get your copy of Rajneeti today!

They are first cousins twice over, but have had widely divergent political trajectories. One, an abrasive, fire-breathing demagogue, was seen as his uncle’s political heir whose behavioural traits he cultivated. The other, an introvert, is at his best when plotting strategies on the drawing board rather than the rough-and-tumble of street-corner politics that his party is known for in India’s financial capital. Starting out as brothers-in-arms, they had a bitter falling out over inheriting the party mantle.

The Cousins Thackeray evaluates the political careers of Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray.  Author Dhaval Kulkarni writes, ‘That there was immense curiosity about both Uddhav and Raj Thackeray, even on foreign shores, was evident when I visited Pakistan in 2011 as part of a media delegation. Then, the highest number of questions from members of the local media, civil society and people at large, were about these two estranged cousins and their uncle, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray…’

How It All Began

Uddhav, nicknamed ‘Dinga’ by his uncle Shrikant, was born on 27 July 1960 to Bal Thackeray and Sarla Vaidya (affectionately called ‘Meenatai’ or ‘Ma’ in the household). He was their third child, born after Binda, and Jaidev.

In 1964, Shrikant Thackeray married Meenatai’s younger sister Kunda aka Madhuwanti in an arranged match. Born on 14 June 1968, Raj was named ‘Swararaj’ by his musician father, which later – on Bal Thackeray’s suggestion- was shortened to Raj.

Born to parents who were siblings themselves, Uddhav and Raj are first cousins twice over.

The Early Years

Uddhav was critically ill when he was a year old, with his parents giving up hope of his survival. Shrikant took Uddhav to the hospital and nursed him. Shrikant’s special affection for Uddhav deepened as they shared a passion for photography.

An obedient child who rarely bothered his parents, Uddhav was lovingly called ‘Shravanbal’(an ideal son like Shravan in the Ramayana) by his aunt .He was shy around girls and was observed  to be a quiet child who never shouted or lost his temper. Such was his temperament that he even disliked the sound of crackers being burst. After completing his schooling, Uddhav went on to do his Bachelor’s in Applied Arts from J.J. Institute and later started an advertising agency with two friends called ‘Chaurang’.

As the youngest child in the family, Raj was the apple of everyone’s eye. He was a mischievous boy, given to mimicry and pranks which led his grandfather to lovingly call him ‘Bhampadya’ (buffoon). Known to be streetwise and flamboyant even in his childhood, a young Raj would often be seen trying to impress girls and playing gully cricket.

Raj enjoyed tremendous affection from Bal Thackeray. During his years as a student at Balmohan Vidyamandir, Raj often stayed with his uncle at Matoshree (the Thackeray family residence in Bandra).He gradually imbibed his uncle’s mannerisms and traits which later became apparent when he joined politics. He attributed his skills as a cartoonist to his uncle about whom he said, ‘He would watch me draw, guide me, and if necessary, pull my ears. Balasaheb was an immaculate teacher.’ Unlike his father and elder cousin Uddhav who were photographers, Raj chose to express himself through cartooning.

His evolution to being a crowd-pulling orator and politician came, with effort, later in life.

Stepping into Adulthood

The Thackeray boys stepped into a new phase of their lives  when, in 1988, Uddhav tied the knot with Rashmi Patankar of Dombivli and a few years later, Raj married Sharmila, daughter of Marathi theatre personality, Mohan Wagh.

Raj, then in the fourth year of his Bachelor of Fine Arts (Applied Art) at the reputed Sir J.J. Institute, dropped out of college as the subject that interested him most was not taught in the institute. His guru in cartooning was Balasaheb Thackeray. Raj launched an advertising agency, Chanakya, which he ran for around three years, before his political priorities took precedence.

Their Turn in Politics

Raj, now twenty, had had his first brush with politics when he accompanied his uncle to rallies. It was in Pune, during the varsity polls campaign,that he connected with students as a common worker without airs. As the young Thackeray son, he brought in youthful energy. He was anointed as BVS chief in 1988.

Raj, aggressive and brash, would often overrule party veterans who had seen him since his childhood. In the early 1990s, the quiet and soft-spoken Uddhav   kept a low-profile and was not given to political machinations.

Though it is believed that Uddhav entered politics much later than Raj, he began working behind the scenes at almost the same time as his younger cousin but took a more active role post-1995 when he gradually started helping his father run the party. Raj’s blunt and aggressive approach made the party pitch Uddhav as a counterweight.

Dhaval Kulkarni, a Mumbai-based journalist, has covered the Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) for over a decade. In The Cousins Thackeray, he attempts to go beyond merely recording events by delving deeper into the dynamics of their relationships and politics.

Read the book to find out where the tussle for the seat of power takes the Thackeray Cousins!

by Parag Chitale

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When I was young there lived a happy family. A young family of four—Mom, Dad and their two kids. The sister with her dimple chin was just a wee baby and her brother was still young enough to be not allowed to cross the main road on his own. This curious boy with bright-blue eyes who loved the colour red would spend his free time staring at the road from his window, counting passing cars. Once he counted twenty red cars in just ten minutes and that happy surprise had made his smile a little wider. He loved the pacing stripes of those fast colours that’d run on the road. He didn’t know why and where all those people were rushing to but he wasn’t bothered by that. He loved watching them go. He wished to be one of them one day, just like his father. His father was the best person he knew. He was tall, strong and was allowed to go anywhere he wanted. On Sundays, his dad would take him to the market across the road and they’d buy nice red tomatoes. He thoroughly enjoyed their special trips. On these short shopping adventures he would hold his dad’s hand and he would hold it tight. The colourful streaks he used to see from the window would scare him a little by seeming to turn into real things. This boy always wanted to go shopping on his own but he was told that he was too young and that when he’d grow up to be a big-boy, he could go. That always made him feel a little odd; you see, he was sure that he was ready. He so longed to actually grow up and go buy red tomatoes that he loved the most, on his own.

And then one day, it all changed. He was asked to go and get some veggies! He couldn’t believe his ears. He asked again if they meant from the kitchen but Mom smiled and gave him a fifty-rupee note. The two blue eyes kept looking at the note, mesmerized. This was really happening. He was going shopping. He surely was his happiest. So the whole sequence was going to be like this––he would to go to the shop and tell the uncle to give him 250 grams of tomatoes, some green chillies and some coriander. He would give the fifty-rupee note and get thirty rupees back––simple. And the best part was the fact that he was going there alone, like a big boy. He ran to his room with the note in his hand and a wild wind in his heart. He climbed into the cupboard and found his favourite shirt. It was a gift from his grandma and he loved the red collar on that clean white shirt. He neatly tucked his shirt in while repeating the sequence at least a hundred times to himself: ‘Go there, ask for tomatoes, give him the note, get the tomatoes, get the money and come back.’ He couldn’t stop smiling. This was going to be the best buy of his life, he knew it for sure.

He came out in the living room and got the grocery bag from his dad’s hand. He had a completely different kind of a feeling. Something he had never felt before—he guessed he was proud! He looked up to his dad, beaming. Mom reminded him to not forget the chillies and the coriander. He said, ‘I’ll get it, bye now,’ in a big-boy voice hiding that little shaky nervous shade behind his smile. For a fraction of a second he felt like asking his dad to come with him but then that’d mean that he was not really a big boy. No. He decided to be the brave boy he thought he knew he was and walked out of the door. Coming down the stairs, with each step, he could feel his heart started beating faster. He couldn’t figure out if it was the excitement of adventure or nervousness about going alone; whatever it was, it was all new to him and frankly it did not feel all that great. He came to the main gate and he stopped. He stood there for a long minute. He kept looking at the road. Suddenly, all the fears came darting towards him. The colourful cars on the road felt like giants, the bike riders looked like the evil sorcerers from his storybooks. Out of the blue, the sun went down and everything became gloomy. The shop was just across the road but it felt too far to reach. He tried to remember the sequence but he couldn’t remember anything at all. His tummy started making noises. He thought he had failed himself. He thought he was not the brave boy he thought he was. His nerves took over and, almost ready to cry, he looked towards his window. Every day, from that window, he’d say bye to his dad going to his office. He desperately wanted his dad to be there but the window was empty. He felt sad, alone and helpless. He didn’t know how he was going to get the tomatoes if he couldn’t even cross the road! Could he go back and accept his defeat? He stood silent, shaking, not knowing what to do. He felt something move behind him. The startled little kid turned his head and lost all his control over his tears. A tall man was slowly walking in his direction. The small teary-eyed-white-shirt boy with a red collar quickly turned around and ran and hugged the familiar blue jeans. Dad knelt down, held him in his arms and patted his back. The little big-boy cried a little and it felt good. Still sniffling, he looked at his dad. Dad smiled and, wiping the tears off his warm cheeks, asked the boy in a polite voice, ‘Excuse me, I need to go to the store. Will you please help me cross the road?’ With a shimmer in his eyes, the brave little chap smiled back, straightened his crumpled collar, got up and helped his dad get some tomatoes.

Today, after almost thirty years, I saw a little-yellow-dress cross the road with a bag of potatoes. As she reached the main gate, she ran and hugged my teary-eyed-white-shirt with a red collar. This is the best buy of my life, I know this for sure.

This story was written by our fantastic designer, Parag Chitale. We hosted a Short Story Challenge to celebrate International Literacy Day in office and his is the entry that won!

The Rule of One speaks about the power of social intrapreneurship in the developing world. Colleagues at Intel, Kazi I. Huque and Narayan Sundararajan founded an intrapreneurial venture between Intel and Grameen, called Grameen Intel Social Business, working with Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. Along with Jacen Greene, they have collected and presented their original and transformational ideas in this book that explores crippling challenges like poverty, healthcare and education which plague the developing world and how problems related to these challenges can be solved in a sustainable and comprehensive manner.

These are some of the behaviours that J. Gregory Dees identified in his definitive definition of ‘social entrepreneurs’ as individuals who play the role of change agents in the social sector by:

Adopting a mission to create and sustain social value (not just private value)

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Recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission

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Engaging in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation, and learning

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Acting boldly without being limited by resources currently in hand

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Exhibiting a heightened sense of accountability to the constituencies served and for the outcomes created

The Rule of One provides a comprehensive roadmap for any foundation, development agency and company to engineer solutions to deal with social and economic issues.

For centuries, mankind has marvelled at the intricacies of the human body. Mapping out the advances in medical science, Leeches to Slug Gluegoes back in time to help you and your children understand how we reached where we are today. This journey not only demonstrates the awe-inspiring range of human intelligence but also applauds the spirited quest for improvement and innovation. The great minds that relentlessly broadened the scope of science worked their way through many trials and failures which led to waves of change, often shattering beliefs and altering established theories.

Featuring groundbreaking ideas, trivia, factoids, and more, this book will make you question your notions of what makes a person ‘whole’. And it will fill you with wonder at the innovations, inventions and discoveries that have made-and are continuing to make-the young science of modern medicine.

Here are 6 myths that have been busted in From Leeches to Slug Glue to reveal the facts that helped medical science gain momentum. 

Myth 1: Human beings are defenceless against diseases that evil spirits cast on them.

The holistic approach propounded by Ayurveda offered man a ray of hope to dispel the darkness that shrouded all maladies. Ayurveda – the science of life – empowered man with the ability to sync the human body with its natural rhythms to strengthen its immune system and keep diseases at bay.

Does this ‘Prevention is better than cure’ theory really work, though?

Well, it certainly makes for sound common sense! Roopa Pai writes ‘….there’s no reason why you shouldn’t take the core advice of Ayurveda for good health: eat right, poop regularly, sleep early, wake up at dawn, do some yoga in the early sunlight, pause several times a day to take deep and long breaths, be disciplined about exercise, spend some quiet reflective time with yourself each day and, yes, whenever you have the time, get a massage!’

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Myth 2: The great physician Charaka single-handedly composed the 120-chapter long Charaka Samhita.

The nearly 2000-year-old Charaka Samhita is a seminal work that helped unravel the many mysteries of human physiology – namely the functions performed by various organs and matters related to digestion and reproduction.

Was it all the genius of one man, however? Maybe not.

Here’s what ‘Leeches’ has to say about it. ‘Some experts who have studied the text extensively believe there wasn’t one Charaka, but several (‘charaka’ is Sanskrit for wanderer). These charakas, they say, were scholars who had chosen to make the science of healing their specialty, and went from village to village using their extensive knowledge of pathology (the causes of disease), clinical examination, diagnosis and medicinal herbs and minerals to make sick people better.’

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Myth 3: Hippocrates was the ‘Father of Medicine’, the first to create a formal system of diagnosis.

The Greek physician Hippocrates is believed to have composed the historically and medically significant Hippocratic Corpus. Well before Hippocrates came along in 460 BCE, however, the ancient Egyptians seem to have made inroads into understanding how to treat grievous injuries, even those involving the skull and spine, as demonstrated in an important Egyptian ‘medical papyrus’ translated by famous American Egyptologist James Henry Breasted in 1930.

This was the first clear evidence we had that the healing practices of the Egyptians were more than just chants and incantations, which makes the notion of Hippocrates as the earliest proponent of a formal system of medicine debatable.

‘The Edwin Smith Papyrus,’ writes Roopa Pai, ‘describes forty-eight cases of bodily injury—fractures, wounds, dislocations, tumours—starting from the head and going downwards from there, and includes information, in each case, about how the patient is to be examined, what the likely diagnosis is and a calculated guess as to whether the injury will heal and the patient will survive (this is called prognosis).’

You go, ancient Egyptians!

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Myth 4: The ten numerals, and their symbolic representations – 0, 1, 2… 8, 9 – were the brainwave of the Arabs.

Under the patronage of the Gupta kings, who ruled north and central India between the 3^rd and 6^th centuries, the great INDIAN mathematician Bhaskara first wrote numbers as figures—1 to 9—and created what was then called the Hindu decimal system. Bhaskara was also the first to represent zero as a circle.

Why did the term ‘Hindu numerals’ not gain popularity, then?

‘Although the Arabs themselves always referred to the ten numerals as Hindu numerals (Hindu was a word the Persians used for the people of the land beyond the Indus river),’ explains the book, ‘Europeans, who were introduced to them by the Arabs around the ninth century, wrongly referred to them as Arabic numerals, and the name stuck.’

Now you know.

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Myth 5- Surgeons have always occupied the highest rung of the medical ladder

In the present medical scenario, surgeons are revered as the physical embodiment of the leaps that the science has taken over the centuries. But it wasn’t always the case. In fact, in Europe of the Middle Ages, it was lowly ‘barber surgeons’ – barbers who otherwise shaved people and cut their hair – who conducted all surgeries.

Here are more details. ‘In those days, dissections in medical colleges were done by barber surgeons according to the instructions of the professor, while the students gathered around and watched. Physicians—the ones who went to college and learned to treat disease—considered themselves far too posh for something like dissection or surgery; that was the job of the unlettered barber….’.

Well, thank the Lord they didn’t think to use butcher-surgeons, right?!

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Myth 6: Full moon nights triggered ‘madness’ in people.

In his Treatise on Insanity, Philippe Pinel campaigned for the moral and compassionate treatment of mentally ill people, thereby laying the foundation for the discipline called psychiatry.

Could he rupture the notion of ‘insanity’ being a result of ‘demonic possession’? It was not easy, but in the end, Pinel succeeded through dint of sheer force of will, a strong moral compass, and tons of patience.

‘He closely observed, documented and named a number of different mental disorders, spending hours talking with patients, in keeping with his belief that while the sufferer may seem irrational or delusional in certain ways, they had seldom ‘lost all sense of reason’, and could therefore, often, be ‘talked out’ of their problems. Pinel also insisted that not every kind of mental illness was permanent—some were temporary, result of stressful events in the person’s life, and not the result, as was commonly believed, of cosmic events like, say, the phases of the moon.’

Yes, phases of the moon! Where do you think the ‘luna’ in ‘lunatic’ comes from?

To discover dozens of ‘No way!’ nuggets like these in this fun, info-packed romp through 2500 years of human health and healing, read From Leeches to Slug Glue!

From food columnist and star journalist Vir Sanghvi comes a collection of insightful, witty and myth-busting pieces about the ingredients in our kitchens.

In his distinctive, no-holds-barred style, Sanghvi introduces the reader to not only the Indian pantry but also the culture, history and unique experiences that make Indian food so popular the world over.

Here’s a delectable excerpt for you!

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So what do you do if you want to eat good sausages in India? Well, there is always the Oberoi option. Some food stores will sell imported
sausages. And if you know a good artisanal sausage maker, you will be fortunate enough to be spared the plastic torpedoes of Big Meat.
Alternatively, you can look for the delicious Goan chorise (a descendant of the Portuguese chorizo), which is always made by artisans,
and which more and more chefs seem to be sourcing. Thomas Zacharias gets it for the Bombay Canteen and O Pedro. Manu Chandra serves the
real thing at many of his restaurants (though Manu may well be making his own). So do many others. If you can get your hands on good sausages, what should you do? Well, speaking for myself, I nearly always look for something interesting to do with sausages. This is a lesson I may have learnt from an Indian-style curry made with chunks of pork sausage sourced from a local cold storage in Mumbai.

Of late, I have been experimenting with the use of sausages to flavour rice. Most Goans are familiar with the idea of a chorise pulao (though
they may call it something else) in which the white rice is streaked red from the vinegar as it escapes the sausages in the pan and in which the
fat from the chorise coats each grain of rice even as the masalas flavour the pulao.

The Goan idea comes from southern Europe where sausages have been used to flavour rice for centuries. But there is also an oriental
equivalent. It is not difficult to find slightly sweet Chinese sausages in most metropolitan Indian cities now. These sausages work better as a
condiment than on their own. I chop them into little dices and stir-fry them with rice and chopped black olives, with just a little soya. You get a
perfect fried rice with virtually no effort. If you are fortunate enough to gain access to more unusual sausages, the possibilities are endless. One of the advantages of going to Bangkok so often is that my wife and I are able to buy Thai sausages fairly regularly.

There is one sausage in particular—easily available at branches of the Tops supermarket chain—called a northern Thai sausage that we always
bring back. (This is a fresh sausage, unlike the salami-style Chiang Mai sausage that I also like.)

The northern Thai sausage is not much good on its own—it oozes liquid when you cook it—but it is terrific in a curry because it imbues the
gravy with the flavours of its stuffing: coriander seeds, makroot, lemon grass, etc. And four sausages are enough to make a brimming pot of
curry.

I have no idea whether it was because she heard me babbling about my mother’s sausage curry, but my wife makes a killer Thai curry
with these sausages. As with all improvised dishes, I am sure it is not authentically Thai, but it is truly delicious.

The only special ingredient you need is the sausage. Everything else is easily available in most large Indian cities. And after much persuasion,
I persuaded my wife to part with her recipe for the quick and easy Thai sausage curry. You should try it.

Seema’s Sausage Curry

Ingredients
Oil: 4 tablespoons
Thai sausages: 4
Thai red chillies: 3
Green onions: 1 small cup, chopped small
White onions: 1 small cup, chopped small
Garlic: 1 whole bulb, chopped small
Thai galangal: 3 tablespoons, chopped small
Lemon grass: chopped into big chunks (easy to remove later)
Kaffir lime leaves: 6
Kaffir lime: half
Coconut milk: 1 can
Green curry paste: 1 packet
Krapow paste: 1 packet
Fish sauce to taste
Basil leaves: a handful

Method
Let the oil heat in a large pan. Make a vertical cut in the chillies and fry
in oil. Add kaffir lime leaves and allow them to crisp up. Add ginger and
garlic, and sauté. Then add the green and white onions and cook until
translucent. Chop the sausages into rounds. Add them to the pan and
cook until they are browned. Then add the curry paste and krapow paste
and stir. Once the paste has coated the sausages evenly, add the coconut
milk. Let the curry boil for a couple of minutes and then reduce the heat
so that the curry simmers.
Add fish sauce and lime to taste. Garnish with fresh basil leaves,
roughly torn. Serve with sticky rice.
Vegetarians can substitute shiitake mushrooms and baby corn for
the sausages and use the same recipe, using soya sauce instead of fish
sauce. The recipe works with most artisanal sausages if you can’t get your
hands on the Thai sausage.

Get your hands on more such scrumptious recipes in The Indian Pantry

Written in a beautiful, simple and conversational style, Come Home to Yourself by Sadhviji covers the most pertinent issues affecting all of us-how to discover inner peace, find love, let go of anger, know your purpose, and connect with God, regardless of your religion. Born and educated in the US, Sadhviji has a PhD in psychology. She came to India approximately twenty-five years ago and has since lived at the Parmarth Niketan Ashram in Rishikesh, on the banks of the Ganga.

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“In our relationships, in order for me to give myself fully to you, I have to expect that you’re not going to hurt me. If I’m going to give you my heart and love you with all that I am and all that I have, I have to expect that you’re not going to take a knife and stab it in my heart.I have to expect that you’re going to take my love as the precious gift that it is, and not stomp on it.”

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“If we look carefully at what hurts us, it always has to do with an expectation we had of how someone was going to behave. Sometimes it’s a small thing, such as remembering a birthday; sometimes it’s a big thing, such as not being left alone or betrayed. For love to be a path to spiritual awakening and true peace, we have to recognize that the love we experience is its own reward.”

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“Love comes with no guarantees. Just because I love you, it isn’t guaranteed that you’ll love me back, bring me flowers or make choices in your life that I want you to make. If the focus of my love is making you dance to my tune, today or tomorrow I’m going to get hurt. Or, alternatively, you’ll just become my slave and I’ll squeeze the life out of you. Many of us do that unconsciously— we pressure and nag the people around us in such a way that they just give up.”

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“If all you wanted was someone who will do your bidding, there was no point seeking a relationship in the first place. You don’t want to live with a servile person either. That’s not how you want your love to be. Love has to be alive. And if love is alive, then you have free will.”

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“So your focus needs to be on love as its own reward, and not on how you can manipulate or convince or badger your beloved to do what you want. The love itself is what feeds you.”

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“Unfortunately, we’ve filled up our relationships with a lot of baggage. When we move out of the experience of love into the everyday logistics of life—who is going to wash the dishes, go grocery shopping, change diapers, scrub the toilet—that is where we lose harmony and think we are falling out of love.”

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“The only way to have harmony in relationships is to stop expecting the other to behave in a certain way, speak in a certain way and be a certain way in order to fill our holes, and to be fully aware that the love that we feel is generated within us. The beloved is a divine vehicle, the one who has catalysed it, but if they start acting in a way that we don’t anticipate, it’s not their fault that we are no longer able to access that place of love within ourselves.”

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“It is our commitment, our attachment to being right that keeps us from being happy. We can be right or we can be peaceful. We have to make that decision in our relationships. In every situation,when we run into conflict, we really have to ask ourselves: in this moment, is being right more important to me than maintaining peace? Am I prepared to relinquish my attachment to proving I’m right in exchange for peace?”

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