The Mystery of the Meteorite in Bihar’s Opium Fields
ChrestomatherThis correspondence alerted me to a subject that I had no inkling of: the role of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in collecting and studying meteorites. My correspondent,…
The captivity of Burma’s last king and the fall of the Konbaung dynasty: a compelling new account
I met Sudha Shah in Mumbai in 2008, at the launch of Sea of Poppies. We had a brief conversation in the course of which she told me that The…
Hist 214, U Mass Boston: Glimpsing History through the Eyes of …
I met John Mathew in Cambridge, Massachusetts many years ago when he was working at Harvard's natural history museum while also working on his…
Hungarian Scholar Finds Bonanza in Kerala Church Archives
Christianity is of course, in its origins, an Asian and African religion: it first took root and flourished in the regions that link the two continents. As it…
Correspondence with a mathematician/zoologist
Dear Mr Ghosh: Extra-ordinary book - "The Hungry Tide"!It is everything the reviews and the blurbs make it out to be - and much more - it is certainly one…
An Indian POW in Italy: Part 4 of 4
Satyen Basu, a doctor from Calcutta, joined the Indian Medical Service (the army medical corps) early in the Second World War and served with the Allied forces in…
An Indian POW in Italy: Part 3 of 4
Satyen Basu, a doctor from Calcutta, joined the Indian Medical Service (the army medical corps) early in the Second World War and served with the Allied forces in Iraq, Syria…
An Indian POW in Italy: part 2 of 4
Satyen Basu, a doctor from Calcutta, joined the Indian Medical Service (the army medical corps) early in the Second World War and served with the Allied forces in Iraq,…
An Indian POW in Italy: part 1 of 4
As a child of the nineteen-fifties, I came of age at a time when the Second World War was still fresh in public memory. The war was everywhere:…
Two poems for Agha Shahid Ali: his grave in Northampton
A few years ago, I don't know exactly when, my essay on the Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali (which is posted here) was included in a textbook that…