The Elephanta Caves mystery has four clues, and all of them are hiding in plain sight. A god with five faces shows you only three. A stone that could have named the builder was taken away centuries ago and has … Read More
Author Archives: Madhusudan Narayanan
How a Small Mosque in Pulicat Told Its Town the Time, Using Only the Sun
A town needs to agree on the time before it can pray together, trade together or do anything together. Before wristwatches and wall clocks and phones, the agreement came from the sky. In Pulicat, on the Coromandel coast north of … Read More
The Lighthouse at Pulicat Was Built to Keep Ships Away
Most lighthouses exist to bring ships in. The one at Pulicat, on the Coromandel coast north of Chennai, was raised to do the opposite. It stands over a shallow lagoon and a quiet town of fishing families, and its job … Read More
The Drain of Rome: How India Bled the Greatest Empire in History Dry
In 77 CE, the Roman natural historian Pliny the Elder sat down and calculated how much money India was costing the Roman Empire. He came up with a figure of 50 million sesterces every year. Gold, flowing east. Pepper, ivory, … Read More
Dev Deepawali 2026: Kashi’s Night of a Million Lamps, Experienced Like Royalty
There is a night each year when the oldest living city in the world seems to leave the earth and join the sky. On Kartik Poornima, the full moon of the sacred month of Kartik, Varanasi becomes Dev Deepawali, the … Read More
Himalayan Wellness Festival
Healing in the Land of Gods The Himalayan Wellness Festival, Dehradun, Uttarakhand Duration 3 days, 2 nights Dates 23 to 25 October 2026 Destination Dehradun, Uttarakhand Stay The Punarnava Wellness Resort, Dehradun (residential retreat) Festival hosts PHD Chamber of Commerce … Read More
Wootz Steel: The Indian Metal That Built the Medieval World
The Crusaders called it the most terrifying metal they had ever encountered. When the armies of the First Crusade arrived in the Holy Land in 1099 CE and met the forces of the Islamic world in battle, they discovered that … Read More
The Iron Age Did Not Begin in Turkey. It Began in Adichanallur in Tamil Nadu
The world has a story it tells about iron. Iron, the story goes, was first mastered in Anatolia, in what is now Turkey, around 1200 BCE. From there it spread through the ancient world: to Greece, to Persia, to India, … Read More
Varanasi Enamelling: The Ancient Craft That Connected India to the World
There is a colour that changed the history of art on three continents. It is called the Purple of Cassius, named after the 17th century German alchemist Andreas Cassius who first documented its production, though craftspeople in Persia and India … Read More
The Story of Mysore Silk
What is the story of Mysore silk? The story of Mysore silk begins in the 1780s, when Tipu Sultan brought silkworm rearing to his kingdom, and reaches its royal peak in 1912, when Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV opened a silk … Read More