Sephari India

Category: Journal

  • Two tags for one sweet: reading the Rasgulla dispute

    By Rafe Calder The ledger first. In November 2017 West Bengal was granted a Geographical Indication for “Banglar Rasogolla”. In July 2019 Odisha was granted one for “Odisha Rasagola”. Two spellings, two registrations, both still standing when our sources were written. The argument about who invented the sweet was never decided by either. What the…

  • Khadi: a cloth that became a law

    By Rafe Calder Khadi is plain cloth. It is also a trademark, a government commission, a political argument and a label you may be required to find on a tag. Few fabrics carry that much paperwork. The cloth Wikipedia defines khadi as a hand-spun and woven natural fibre cloth, mostly cotton but sometimes silk or…

  • Athangudi tiles: the gloss comes from the glass, not a glaze

    By Porter Lang No kiln. No press. No glaze. An Athangudi tile is a cement tile that is poured, set, soaked and sunned, and its shine is borrowed from the surface it was cast on. If you are thinking of a floor, or just wondering why a Chettinad house looks the way it does, that…

  • Pashmina: one word, three meanings, and a lab in Srinagar

    By Ines Keane Ask three shops what pashmina is and you may hear three answers. A fibre. A blend. A shawl from Kashmir. The sources we read support all three, which is the first thing to know before a winter gift or a label gets you into trouble. The word and the fibre Wikipedia says…

  • The Handloom Mark: a label that says how the cloth was woven, and nothing more

    By Rafe Calder A label can only answer the question it was designed for. The Handloom Mark answers one: was this cloth woven by hand. It does not claim to answer whether the cloth is good. That limit is stated by the body that runs a second label, and the history of the two is…

  • No empty space: what Madhubani painters work with

    By Ines Keane The first rule of a Madhubani painting, as the sources describe it, is that nothing is left blank. Fish, peacocks, flowers, geometric borders and figures are packed edge to edge, and the white paper or wall shows only as the line between them. What goes into that fill is more specific than…

  • Basmati on the label: what the words promise and what the lab can tell

    By Porter Lang Pick up a bag of basmati and read the back before the front. The front says long grain and aroma. The back is where the law lives. That is the practical advice, and the sources behind it are a mix: an encyclopaedia, an export agency’s own foundation, a consumer-testing report and a…

  • The Nilgiri line: a rack railway, and a pile of dates that do not match

    By Rafe Calder Count the curves. Wikipedia says 209. The Bharatpedia article, which reads as a near copy, says 108. A third source says 218. All three are describing the same 46-kilometre railway, and none of them says how it counted. The line According to Wikipedia, the Nilgiri Mountain Railway runs from Mettupalayam to Udhagamandalam,…

  • Turn the border over: reading a Kullu shawl

    By Porter Lang Turn the border over. On a shawl woven the way a seller describes, the back of the pattern should look much like the front. That is one seller’s test, and it is worth knowing where the advice comes from before using it. What a Kullu shawl is Wikipedia calls it a shawl…

  • The Aranmula kannadi: a mirror with no glass in it

    By Ines Keane Look into an Aranmula kannadi and the face looking back is reflected from the metal itself. No sheet of glass sits in front of it. That is the idea behind this Kerala mirror, and almost everything after it is told differently. What it is Wikipedia calls the kannadi a handmade metal-alloy mirror…