enjoy the journey…
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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…
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Mahabalipuram: temples cut from single boulders
By Isla Quinn Most temples are stacked, stone on stone. Five of these were not. UNESCO says each is carved from one boulder, and the Shore Temple is the exception, built from stone blocks. Where it is Mahabalipuram, also written Mamallapuram, sits on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal in Tamil Nadu. Britannica…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Udaipur: a city that is mostly water and white stone
By Isla Quinn Five lakes. One ridge. A palace that took, by one count, nearly four centuries to finish. Udaipur in southern Rajasthan is a city built around water, and the sources we read give it three different nicknames and two different founding years. Where it sits Wikipedia places Udaipur in the south of Rajasthan,…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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Jaisalmer: a fort that people still live in, and nobody agrees how many
By Isla Quinn Four thousand people. Or three thousand. Or two thousand. Three sources, three numbers, one fort. It is a good place to start with Jaisalmer, because the town sits in the Thar Desert and the question of who is inside its walls is still open. Where and when Wikipedia’s article on the city…
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