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On January 15, my teammate Meha Gandhi and I submitted a video entry into the Marine Sciences category of the Advance to Australia film-making project. Our criterion was to make a three-minute video on the topic ‘Marine Sciences – India’s coastal and marine environments: A future for everyone?’ Instead of basing our video on the […]

Recently, a friend who is a professor of Italian language and culture expressed her frustration that an English-language textbook had translated “ricotta” as “cream cheese”. I remarked that it was like Indian cookbooks wrongly translating “paneer” as “cottage cheese”. She said that this was different because the author was a scholar of Italian cinema, and […]

All words are sounds. And some sounds are words – oink, quack, neigh, pow, bam, biff. A sound-word is called an onomatopoeia (on-uh-mat-uh-pee-uh). Like great yoghurt, olives and moody gods, the term is Greek. A lot of this linguistic phenomenon imitates nature – the call of animals and birds, the cry of babies, and sounds we […]

We sometimes talk about globalization as if it happened because of two decades of economic liberalization in India. In fact, it has been going on for thousands of years. In the 4th century BCE (Before Common Era), some of what is now India was part of an empire ruled by a former pupil of the […]

The most special time of the year is finally here! Yes, it’s the season for ohanami, which means spring is here! It is a joyful event for almost everyone in Japan. Everywhere, people are talking about when to go for ohanami. I got an invitation, too! Above: Cherry blossoms in Washington, DC, last Saturday What […]

We Indians are used to sneaking in the occasional English word when we speak in Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, or some other Indian language. But it wasn’t until I shared a home with an Iranian roommate in the US that I realized how much Farsi I already knew, without ever having learned the language. My […]

Spring means many things to many people: cute little lambs frolicking about, flowers, spring fever, Easter…. For people who suffer from pollen allergies, it may mean staggering about in an anti-histamine stupor. For couch potatoes, it means this: Above: Spring has sprung, and a couch prepares for rebirth Of course, “spring” can also mean a […]

With St. Patrick’s Day coming up on March 17, it’s important to keep in mind that having fun is not necessarily the same thing as being stupid. Our simple tips will help you reach home safely, and not end up in a hospital or police station. Sting’s words float musically through my mind: If “manners […]

In an article on feminist vocabulary, a reader commented that the subject matter had “obviously become too hyperacademicated.” This makes it sound like the words had both tonsillitis and pneumonia, and were in need of research drugs. The other interesting fact to note is this reader was using an imaginary word that he (or she) […]

We would all readily associate the First World War with catastrophe. But, it was also a time of creativity. Trenches, tanks, steel helmets, poisonous gases, blood banks, and mobile x-ray machines were some legacies of the war. As was the emergence of Poland, the Soviet Union, Turkey and other nationalities. However, what emerged from the […]