Category: Meena Raghunathan

Sandwiches: A World Between Two Slices of Bread

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November 3 is National Sandwich Day, and the story behind the name involves an English aristocrat, a gambling table and a convenient way of eating without putting down one’s cards.

John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, lived in eighteenth-century England. According to the popular story, he was so engrossed in gambling that he asked for meat to be served between two slices of bread. He could eat with one hand and continue playing with the other. His fellow gamblers began asking for what Sandwich was having, and a culinary institution was born.

Or so the story goes. The precise circumstances are uncertain, and people had been eating food wrapped in or placed between bread long before the earl came along. The word sandwich, however, acquired its modern culinary meaning in eighteenth-century England.

The earl could hardly have imagined what his name would come to represent. Today, sandwiches range from the simplest buttered-bread snack to elaborate creations served in fashionable restaurants. And each country seems to have interpreted the idea in its own way.

Of Famous Five picnics and midnight feasts

For many of us, the first sandwiches we encountered in literature were not in a cookbook but in the pages of Enid Blyton. If you remember the Famous Five, you will remember the food almost as vividly as the adventures. Julian, Dick, Anne and George seemed to spend as much time eating as solving mysteries. Their picnics were lavish, their appetites enormous, and their thirst for ginger beer seemingly unquenchable. In Five Go Off to Camp, the children tuck into Spam and lettuce, egg and sardine sandwiches. In Five Go on a Hike Together, there are several varieties, including cheese, pork, ham and cream cheese.

Blyton even wrote A Picnic Party with Enid Blyton, a 1951 book that describes the contents of a picnic basket. Along with egg, sardine, tomato and lettuce, jam, and honey sandwiches, there are fruit cake, Swiss rolls and lemonade. Honey sandwiches, she warns, can be rather sticky and messy!

The sandwiches were wrapped in greaseproof paper, packed with boiled eggs and fruit, and eaten on a hillside, beside a stream or in a caravan. They were not gourmet creations, but food that could be carried along on an adventure. Blyton made an ordinary picnic sound like an essential part of an extraordinary childhood.

A world between two slices of bread

The sandwich has acquired some fascinating national identities.

Consider Denmark’s smørrebrød, an open-faced sandwich made with a slice of dense, dark rye bread called rugbrød. It is topped with ingredients such as pickled herring, smoked salmon, prawns, roast beef or liver pâté, often accompanied by pickles and herbs. Traditional smørrebrød can be assembled with extraordinary attention to colour, texture and flavour. Some are miniature works of art.

The Swedish smörgåsbord, despite its similar-sounding name, is something else altogether. It is a spread of assorted dishes, including herring, salmon, cold meats, cheeses and bread. The word has entered English to describe a buffet offering a wide variety of choices. A feast, rather than a sandwich!

Vietnam’s bánh mì tells another story of culinary adaptation. The French introduced baguette-style bread during the colonial period, but Vietnamese cooks made it their own. A crisp, light loaf might contain pork, pâté, pickled carrot and daikon, cucumber, fresh coriander and chilli.

The French have the croque-monsieur, a hot sandwich of ham and cheese, often enriched with béchamel sauce and browned until bubbling and golden. Add an egg on top and it becomes a croque-madame.

Japan has its katsu sando, a crisp, breaded pork cutlet tucked between slices of soft white bread, and the creamy tamago sando, filled with egg.

In Cuba, the pressed sandwich combines roast pork, ham, Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard. Different ingredients, different techniques, but the same ingenious principle.

What America puts between its slices

America has developed its own sandwich favourites, some of which are almost institutions in their own right.

The grilled cheese is simplicity itself: cheese between buttered slices of bread, toasted until golden outside and wonderfully melted inside. It is often served with tomato soup, making a particularly comforting combination.

Then there is the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or PB&J. One slice is spread with peanut butter, the other with fruit jelly or jam. The combination of salty, nutty and sweet flavours has become a childhood staple in the United States.

The BLT takes its name from its three principal ingredients: bacon, lettuce and tomato, usually with mayonnaise. The club sandwich is more substantial, often layering chicken or turkey, bacon, lettuce and tomato between three slices of bread.

Philadelphia has its famous cheesesteak, with thinly sliced beef and melted cheese in a long roll, while Louisiana offers the po’boy, traditionally filled with fried seafood such as shrimp or oysters.

In a 2024 survey of 2,000 Americans, grilled cheese emerged as the favourite, chosen by 42 per cent of respondents, closely followed by chicken sandwiches at 40 per cent. Turkey, ham, tuna and peanut butter and jelly also featured prominently. Clearly, the sandwich is serious business in America!

And then there is India

India, of course, has made the sandwich very much its own.

Mumbai’s famous vegetable sandwich layers slices of potato, tomato, onion and sometimes beetroot between buttered bread spread with green chutney. A sprinkling of sandwich masala provides the characteristic kick. It may be served cold or grilled, with extra chutney and tomato ketchup on the side.

The masala toast sandwich takes the idea further, often adding spicy potato filling and other vegetables before the bread is toasted on a hot griddle. The humble chutney sandwich, meanwhile, is a fixture in many Indian homes. Butter, green chutney and perhaps a few slices of cucumber can transform ordinary bread into an afternoon snack.

Egg sandwiches have acquired their own Indian personality, too. An omelette seasoned with onion, green chillies and coriander, tucked between slices of bread, makes a quick breakfast or evening meal.

And what about vada pav and dabeli? Strictly speaking, these are not conventional sandwiches made with two slices of bread. Both, however, belong to the larger family of portable bread-based foods. Mumbai’s vada pav combines a potato bonda with a soft bread roll, chutneys and often a fried green chilli. Gujarat’s dabeli packs a sweet-spicy potato filling into a pav, adding peanuts, chutneys and sometimes pomegranate seeds.

Indeed, the Indian sandwich is less a fixed recipe than an invitation to improvise. Leftover potato sabzi, paneer bhurji or yesterday’s vegetables can all find a second life between two slices of bread. A little chutney, some butter and a turn on the tava can work wonders.

What makes a sandwich?

That brings us to the key question, what makes a sandwich? Is it the bread? Must there be two slices? Does a filling in a roll count? And can a single slice with an elaborate topping qualify?

There are no universally satisfying answers. The open-faced Danish smørrebrød challenges the two-slice rule, while vada pav and dabeli invite us to look beyond the conventional sandwich.

Perhaps the sandwich’s greatest strength is precisely this flexibility. It can be breakfast, a school lunch, an office meal or a midnight indulgence. It can be frugal or extravagant, vegetarian or non-vegetarian, cold or toasted. It requires neither fine crockery nor cutlery, and is equally at home in a five-star hotel, a school lunchbox or a roadside stall.

This November 3, you could celebrate with a Bombay vegetable sandwich, a Japanese katsu sando or a Danish smørrebrød. Or you could make a batch of egg sandwiches, pack some cake and lemonade, and set off on a Famous Five-style picnic. I will be celebrating with my favourites–cucumber and tomata, and grilled cheese.

Happy Sandwich Day!

–Meena

Bougainville: From Flowers to Struggles for Self-determination

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Most of us in India knew only the flower–the bougainvillea spilling over compound walls, climbing gates and brightening our roadsides is such a familiar sight that we rarely wonder where its name comes from. But now Bougainville is appearing in our newspapers for an entirely different reason: a people’s struggle for independence.

What connects the two? An explorer. There cannot be many explorers whose names have endured in such different forms: attached to a flowering plant that brightens gardens across the world, and to a Pacific island whose political future remains unresolved. The story takes us from eighteenth-century France to Brazil, across the Pacific, and into a history of colonialism, mineral wealth and a people’s determination to shape their own future.

The explorer and the flower

Louis Antoine de Bougainville was born in Paris in 1729. A mathematician, soldier and French naval officer, he led a French expedition around the world between 1766 and 1769. Among those accompanying him were naturalist Philibert Commerson and Commerson’s assistant, Jeanne Baret.

During a stop in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Commerson documented a striking climbing plant. It was later named Bougainvillea in honour of the expedition’s commander. Native to South America, the plant eventually travelled across the tropics, becoming a favourite in gardens far from its homeland.

There is a remarkable footnote to this voyage. Baret had disguised herself as a man to join the expedition, since women were not permitted aboard French naval ships. She is now recognised as the first woman known to have circumnavigated the globe (and probably documented our flower as well).

And those brilliant pink, purple, orange and red displays we admire? They are principally papery bracts surrounding tiny, inconspicuous flowers.

The island behind the name

The same commander also gave his name to an island. In 1768, Bougainville sailed through the southwestern Pacific, and the island now known as Bougainville was named in his honour. But the island was not waiting to be discovered. Its Indigenous peoples had lived there for thousands of years, with their own languages, cultures and relationships with their ancestral lands. The European name records an explorer’s passage, not the beginning of the island’s history.

Bougainville lies east of Papua New Guinea, north of Australia, amid volcanic mountains, tropical forests and beautiful coastlines. Its people have a strong cultural identity and a long-standing connection to their land. One culturally significant Indigenous term is Me’ekamui, associated with sacred land in the Nasioi language, though it is not a universally used name for the entire island.

It is currently an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea, although its people voted overwhelmingly for independence in 2019.

The island’s natural wealth, however, has brought its own troubles.

The mine and the conflict

Panguna is a town on the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea. It is the location of the famous Panguna copper and gold mine, which played a central role in the conflict that began in 1988. Developed during Australian colonial administration, it became a major mining operation. Yet many local people felt they received too little of the revenue while bearing the environmental and social costs. Grievances over land, compensation and the distribution of wealth deepened.

In 1988, tensions erupted into armed conflict. The conflict was about much more than mining. At its heart lay questions of who controlled the island’s resources, whose interests they served, and whether Bougainvilleans should determine their own political future. Bougainville’s desire for independence stems from a combination of cultural identity, economic grievances and a long history of political frustration. Its people have cultural and historical links with the nearby Solomon Islands, and many have felt distinct from the people of mainland Papua New Guinea. These differences were sharpened by the mine: while the mine generated considerable wealth, many local people felt they received too little of the benefit while bearing the costs of environmental destruction, damage to their land and disruption to their communities.

The mine closed, and fighting between separatists and Papua New Guinea’s security forces devastated communities. The Bougainville Crisis lasted for years, causing thousands of deaths and immense suffering.

A peace agreement in 2001 established a framework for autonomy and a future referendum on independence. Bougainville acquired its own autonomous government in 2005, while remaining part of Papua New Guinea.

An overwhelming vote, and a long wait

In 2019, Bougainvilleans finally voted on their political future. The result was remarkable: 97.7 per cent voted for independence rather than greater autonomy.

Yet the referendum was non-binding, and its result required consideration by Papua New Guinea’s national parliament. A strong popular mandate, in other words, did not automatically create a new country.

The parliamentary process is now central to Bougainville’s future. Its leaders have proposed independence by 2030, but this remains a proposed timeline, not a settled outcome.

Even independence would bring difficult questions. A new country would need functioning institutions, reliable revenues and the capacity to provide healthcare, education and infrastructure. The future of the Panguna mine will be important, but so will environmental repair, land rights and the fair sharing of benefits.

More than a flower

It is remarkable how one name can connect such different worlds. A French explorer lends his name to a South American plant that finds its way into Indian gardens, and to a Pacific island whose people are still negotiating their future.

The next time a bougainvillea spills over a compound wall, perhaps we might look beyond its cheerful colours. Behind its name lies a history of exploration and the movement of plants across continents. Behind the island’s name lies a different, unfinished story of land, identity and self-determination.

We knew only the flower. Now we know the place, its people, and the story that continues to unfold.

–Meena

From Digging Deadly Traps, to Flitting on Gossamer Wings: The Story of the Antlion

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Have you seen a delicate, transparent-winged delicate flier either in the garden or the house? Just 3 cms or so, with an elongated, delicate body, tiny markings in grey or brown, and two pairs of long, translucent, lace-like wings?

And have you seen a plump little prehistoric-looking bug in your garden? It may be in shades of grey or muddy brown. Only about the size of your thumbnail, but with fierce large, hollow, sickle-shaped mandibles protruding from the head.

Well, they are one and the same creature!

The first is the adult antlion, a type of lacewing. And how appropriate that is as a name. Because the wings are as delicate as anything you will ever see—so transparent that you may miss the creature entirely.

The second is the larva of the antlion. It is not easy to sight these sturdy little creatures, because they bury themselves at the very bottom of cone-shaped pitfall traps in dry, loose sand or soil. Usually, only their massive jaws poke out of the sand at the bottom of the funnel.

Antlions belong to family Myrmeleontidae, which consists of about 2,000 species of insects that are named for the predatory nature of the larva, which commonly trap ants and other small insects in pits that they dig into the ground. Antlions are found throughout the world, primarily in dry, sandy regions.

If the common name is based on the more aggressive stage of the creature, the name of the order to which it belongs—Neuroptera—derives from the Latin which means net-wings, due to the lace-like patterns of veins on their wings.

What a hunter!

The life of the antlion larva is not only more exciting and interesting than that of the adult lacewing fly, it is also much longer. The larval stage extends 1 to 3 years spent mainly underground or in sand traps, depending on food and environmental conditions. It then cocoons for 2 to 6 weeks inside a sand-and-silk cocoon. And the lovely flitting adult which emerges lives barely a month, just enough time to mate and lay eggs.

The antlion larva is called ‘doodlebug’ in the US, thanks to the winding, scribbled trails left in the sand by it as it moves backward to build its trap. The doodlebug stage is the only one that eats, so it has to eat enough to support the metamorphosis as well the adult for the one month of its fleeting life.

So in order to do this, it has to eat a lot. And to eat a lot, it has to be a wily hunter. The doodlebug has developed a unique hunting style. The larva moves strictly backwards through dry, sheltered sandy soil leaving winding “doodle” tracks behind. Once it finds a good location, it crawls in backward circles, using its head like a shovel or plough to flick sand outward. It spirals inward until the cone-shaped pit reaches a steep, delicate slope where loose grains easily give way.

Once the trap is dug, the doodlebug buries itself at the very bottom of the pit, leaving only its sickle-shaped jaws exposed or slightly covered. Tiny sensory hairs on its head and mandibles detect vibrations and movement when an ant or any other small prey like small beetles, termites or spiders, walks near the edge. It waits for the prey to fall in, but if it senses that the prey is beginning to slip or trying to climb out, the doodlebug rapidly flicks its head to throw showers of sand upward, causing the walls of the pit to cave in and pull the victim down.

It then grabs the struggling insect with its piercing jaws, injecting paralyzing venom and digestive enzymes that liquefy the prey’s internal tissues. It sucks out the nutrient-rich fluids through its hollow jaws and then flicks the dry, empty carcass out of the pit.

Wow, what a predator!

Antlions in India

India is home to over 110 documented species of antlions, making the subcontinent a major hotspot for these micro-predators. And our antlions have special adaptions. While across the world, these are mainly found in dry, sandy areas, we have some species in humid areas including the Western Ghats. In fact, three giant antlion species (Indopalpares pardus, Palpares contrarius, and Stenares harpyia) have been discovered thriving in the humid, rain-soaked forest ecosystems of Kerala.

And some species here don’t dig traps at all. Larvae from the genus Indophanes (frequently found in southern states like Kerala) live completely hidden beneath loose soil and fallen leaves, relying on pure camouflage to ambush passing ants.

As I learnt about antlions, the thought that came to me was, how much the potential for change is. From a stubby, hungry aggressive hunter to an ephemeral and gossamer-winged flyer. Metamorphosis, and how!

–Meena

Happy Dusshera!

The Ants Go Marching… Except When They’re Spiders!

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Ants have a surprisingly good public image. School textbooks extoll their industry, teamwork and ability to carry loads many times their own weight. They have inspired management lessons, children’s stories and endless moral tales. Aesop gave us the Ant and the Grasshopper, and the ant has been a role model ever since.

Spiders, on the other hand, have a public relations problem. The popular nursery rhyme has Ms. Muffet running away from her tuffet on sighting one. Their eight legs, multiple eyes and sudden appearances tend to inspire shrieks rather than admiration. Even people who know that most spiders are harmless to humans may prefer not to share a room with one.

Our reactions are not universal, of course, but ants’ visible cooperation makes their achievements easy to appreciate, while spiders’ unfamiliar appearance and hunting habits can make them seem threatening. Humans also have a long cultural history of associating spiders with danger and mystery.

Which makes the ant-mimicking spider a particularly intriguing character. Imagine being a spider in a world where humans admire ants but recoil from you. Why not borrow the ant’s wardrobe?

Nature, of course, is not concerned with human opinion. And that is not the reason why some spiders mimic ants. But evolution has produced some extraordinary impersonators, and these tiny spiders are among its most accomplished.

The art of being somebody else

That ant marching purposefully across a leaf may not be an ant at all. It could be a spider dressed up as one.

This is called myrmecomorphy, from the Greek myrmex, meaning ant. Some spiders have evolved narrow, elongated bodies that resemble an ant’s segmented form. But there is one inconvenient problem: spiders have eight legs, whereas insects, including ants, have six.

The solution is wonderfully ingenious. Some ant-mimicking spiders hold up their front pair of legs and wave them like antennae. They move in jerky, stop-start bursts, rather than with the more familiar gait of a spider. Their body shape and movements together create a convincing illusion. A casual observer who has not stopped to count the legs can be thoroughly taken in.

This disguise can offer protection. Many predators avoid ants because they can bite, sting or deploy chemical defences. By resembling an ant, a spider may persuade a potential predator to look elsewhere. This is a form of mimicry. One particularly well-known example is Myrmaplata plataleoides, which resembles the Asian weaver ant (Oecophylla smaragdina), found in India. Weaver ants are formidable for their size: they have powerful jaws, bite readily when threatened, and can spray formic acid, an irritating chemical, at an attacker. They are also aggressive defenders of their colonies. A predator that has learnt to avoid these ants may hesitate before attacking something that looks like one. The spider’s disguise can therefore offer protection—but it is not foolproof, and the degree of protection depends on which predators encounter it.

The disguise can also help some spiders hunt. Ant-mimicking jumping spiders are active predators with excellent vision, and their appearance and behaviour may help them approach prey without immediately revealing their identity. In nature, impersonation can be both a defensive strategy and a hunting advantage.

Fooled in my own garden?

You do not need to travel to an exotic rainforest to look for these remarkable creatures. Ant-mimicking spiders are found in several parts of India. Studies and observations have recorded them in southern India as well as in regions such as Assam and Jharkhand. Interestingly, they do not all impersonate the same ant. The Asian weaver ant (Oecophylla smaragdina) is one model, while other spiders mimic ants belonging to genera such as Camponotus, Tetraponera and Polyrhachis. The particular disguise varies with the spider species and its habitat. This makes ant mimicry a fascinating example of how evolution produces different solutions to the same challenge: surviving in a world full of predators.

Bengaluru’s gardens, parks, hedges and green spaces provide opportunities to observe spiders and ants in close proximity.

So next time you are watering plants or cleaning your windows (that’s where I sighted mine), look carefully at the ants going about their business. Is one unusually elongated? Does it keep waving its front legs? Does its movement seem just a little different? You may have found an eight-legged impostor among six-legged OGs.

Of course, not every ant-shaped creature is an ant-mimicking spider, and a reliable species identification may require a good photograph or expert examination. But that is part of the pleasure of observing nature: the first answer may not always be the right one.

The next time you see an ant, count the legs before deciding.

–Meena

Went for the Botticelli, Stayed for the Harappan Figurine

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There are few relationships as universal as that between a mother and her child. Yet the ways in which we imagine, represent and revere motherhood vary enormously across cultures and centuries. This is the idea at the heart of One Mother, Many Mother Tongues, an exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Bengaluru, curated by Naman P. Ahuja and Andrea Anastasio. Bringing together works from India and Italy, the exhibition spans more than two millennia, inviting us to look beyond familiar images of the mother as nurturer and caregiver. Here, motherhood encompasses protection, fertility, sacrifice, regeneration and even ferocious power. The striking juxtaposition of an Italian Renaissance painting with ancient Indian sculptures makes this more than an exhibition about mothers: it is a conversation between civilisations about what the maternal represents.

The star attraction was billed as Botticelli’s Madonna and Child, but honestly, there were so many works more jaw dropping.

The Italian Attraction

Not to diss the Madonna and Child, painted around 1490 by Sandro Botticelli, one of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance. Seeing a work by Botticelli in Bengaluru is an occasion in itself. The painting depicts the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus, a subject that Botticelli returned to repeatedly during his career. As per historians, this is not simply a tender portrait of a mother and baby. Look closely, and the relationship seems weighed with foreknowledge. Mary’s red robe evokes her earthly presence, while her blue veil suggests the celestial. Her expression is melancholy, and her hands appear to be opening rather than clasping the child to herself. The infant, meanwhile, seems to gaze beyond the immediate moment, towards a future that his mother may already understand.

In Christian tradition, the infant Jesus is destined for sacrifice, and the painting can be read as a meditation on a mother’s love shadowed by the loss she must eventually endure. It is an image of motherhood in which love does not mean possession: the mother must ultimately release the child to a purpose larger than herself.

The Harappan Mother and Child

But the most goose-bumpy moment was a small terracotta Mother and Child figurine from the Indus Valley civilisation, dating back to around 2500 BCE, loaned by the National Museum, New Delhi. It is modest in scale and material. Yet its emotional appeal is immediate. The mother cradles her baby. The simple act of holding a child is enough.

We cannot know precisely what the maker intended, whether the figurine had a domestic, ritual or other purpose, or whether it represented a particular deity. But the image does invite us to reflect on the enduring human experience of motherhood. Across the vast gulf of time, a small piece of baked clay brings us face to face with a familiar gesture: the holding of a baby close.

Baby in a Basket

Perhaps the most charmingly matter-of-fact image of motherhood in the exhibition is the small (less than 6 inches high) ivory/bone figure from the Shunga–Kushan period, around the 1st–2nd century CE. A mother carries a basket on her head, with her baby girl (yes, you can make out the sex of the baby on such a tiny figure!) safely tucked inside it. If the detailing of her clothes and jewels is intricate, what I found more intriguing was, why was she carrying the baby in a basket on her head? Where was she going? Again, we have no clue about the situation or the artist’s intentions.

The Yogini: Motherhood Beyond the Human

The exhibition becomes particularly intriguing when it moves beyond the conventional mother-and-child image to the world of Indian goddess traditions. The Yogini tradition, associated with powerful female divinities and Tantric practices, does not always fit neatly into familiar categories of motherhood. One of the works highlighted in the exhibition is Vrishabhayogini, a reminder that these figures are not merely idealised representations of feminine beauty or domestic care. The Yoginis belong to a complex religious and artistic world in which female power can be mysterious, unsettling and difficult to contain within a single definition. Their forms and attributes invite us to think about the sacred feminine as something more expansive than the familiar image of a mother holding a baby.

Beyond the Familiar Mother

The exhibition’s other highlights include ancient Etruscan representations of Mater Matuta, a goddess associated with the protection of children, fertility, dawn and renewal, offer a compelling parallel with Indian mother-goddess traditions. The Buddhist goddess Hariti has an especially remarkable story: once depicted in Buddhist narratives as a demoness who abducted and ate children, she was transformed into a protector of children after the Buddha confronted her with the loss of one of her own. Also striking are the Indian Matrikas, or mother goddesses, and the fierce Chamunda, whose fearsome appearance stands at the opposite end of the spectrum from Botticelli’s sorrowful Madonna. A sculpture of Skandamata, the mother of Skanda, adds another dimension to the many ways maternal divinity has been imagined.

One Mother, Many Mother Tongues succeeds in showing us that motherhood is not one fixed image. It is a multitude of stories, beliefs and artistic expressions, each shaped by its own culture.

The juxtapositioning of mothers across geographies and time helps us to see how the mother-and-child motif travelled through different societies and acquired different meanings. Civilisations may differ in their beliefs and artistic conventions; the human bond between parent and child is enduring.

All in all, a wonderful experience!

–Meena

Karni Bharni: When a Jain Manuscript Turned Karma into Pictures

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What does karma look like?

It is a difficult question. We can explain karma, discuss it, preach about it and philosophise about it. But how do you actually show it?

Some Jain manuscript makers found an ingenious answer. They turned it into a sequence of pictures: this is what someone did and this is what happened as a consequence. The manuscripts came to be known as Karni Bharni, a phrase meaning “as you do, so you receive”. The Gyan Museum describes them as ‘an illustrated Jain didactic tradition in which actions and their consequences are laid out as a sequence of scenes’. The pictures were important precisely because the argument could be followed even by someone who could not read the accompanying text.

I saw a display of such a book when I visited the Museum of Arts and Photography last week. It is a particularly intriguing subject to encounter around Paryushan, when Jains turn their attention towards self-discipline, reflection, religious study, repentance and forgiveness. At the heart of the festival is the uncomfortable but useful exercise of looking at one’s own actions and their consequences.

Karni Bharni does much the same thing—but instead of asking us to imagine the consequences, it paints them.

These are not quite “picture books” in the modern children’s-book sense. They belong to the long and sophisticated manuscript tradition of Jain communities, particularly in western India. Jain bhandars, or manuscript repositories, preserved texts with remarkable continuity. Their importance goes well beyond religion to contributing to understanding the history of Indian painting, as these are some of the earliest surviving Indian paintings on paper.

And there is something wonderfully practical about the way Karni Bharni works. A page can show an action; another scene shows its result. The sequence does the teaching. The figures are deliberately schematic and punishments quite graphic! Their job is to be recognised and understood.

That makes the manuscripts surprisingly contemporary. We live surrounded by infographics, diagrams, animations and explainer videos because we have discovered that complicated ideas can sometimes be grasped more easily when they are visual. The Jain manuscript maker had much the same insight. Instead of writing several pages explaining the workings of karma, why not show the viewer?

Jain cosmology offered an elaborate universe of different realms, including the human world, celestial worlds and hellish realms. Karni Bharni manuscripts could bring this moral universe alive through images of actions, rewards and punishments. A page might therefore be visually dramatic as well as philosophically serious. Heaven and hell were not distant abstractions; they became places that could be imagined through colour, figures and repeated visual motifs.

The striking thing is that these manuscripts were not produced in isolation. Jain merchants and other patrons supported manuscript production, while scribes and artists developed traditions of copying, illustrating and preserving texts. The result was a remarkable interaction between religion, commerce, scholarship and art. The same Jain communities whose members were active in the world of trade were also among the important custodians of India’s manuscript heritage.

It was particularly appropriate that I saw the manuscript during Paryushan. The festival is not simply about fasting. It is a period of pausing long enough to examine how one has lived. Pratikraman involves reflecting upon transgressions and seeking to repair them; Michchhami Dukkadam, traditionally offered at the end of Paryushan, expresses the wish for forgiveness for harm caused knowingly or unknowingly.

The fundamental question these manuscripts answer is universal. Every parent has told a child that actions have consequences. Every schoolteacher has explained cause and effect. Every society has some version of the idea that what we do eventually comes back to us.

But the Jain manuscript tradition did something more ambitious. It made cause and effect visible.

So, during Paryushan, when the emphasis is on reflection, restraint and forgiveness, there is something rather fitting about looking at these old little books.

They remind us that karma was not always something to be explained in a philosophical lecture. Sometimes it was drawn in ink and colour, one scene after another.

If you would like to see some of this remarkable Jain manuscript tradition for yourself, the Gyan Museum in Jaipur offers a wonderful window into India’s rich heritage of art, manuscripts and material culture. Its collection brings together objects that tell stories not just about religion and art, but about the ways in which knowledge, craftsmanship and cultural traditions have been preserved across generations.

And readers, from us to you: Michchhami Dukkadam!

–Meena

Pic taken at MAP of page from late 19th/early 20th century Kharni Bharni book from Gujarat..

A Month for Pain

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Pain is one of those things we know intimately but understand surprisingly little. We know it when we stub a toe, burn a finger, bite our tongue, pull a muscle or discover that the corner of the coffee table has been lying in wait for our little toe. We know exactly what to say: “Ouch!”

But what exactly is happening when we say it?

September is Pain Awareness Month, an annual campaign dedicated to improving understanding of pain, pain management and the experience of people living with pain. It was established in 2001 and is now marked internationally. This September, the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) is particularly focusing on understanding, advocating, partnering and advancing pain science, with 2026 also being its Global Year on Neuropathic Pain.

Which seems like a good time to ask a rather basic question: why does pain hurt?

The body’s alarm system

The old-fashioned explanation was wonderfully simple. Something goes wrong in the body, nerves send a message to the brain, and the brain says: That hurts.

There is some truth in this, but modern pain science has made the story considerably more interesting.

When we touch something dangerously hot or injure ourselves, specialised nerve endings called nociceptors detect potentially damaging stimuli. They send electrical signals through nerves and the spinal cord towards the brain. But pain itself is not simply the signal travelling along a nerve. It is the brain’s interpretation of those signals, influenced by a whole set of factors including context, memory, mood and expectation. This is why pain is both remarkably useful and remarkably complicated.

People born with rare conditions that prevent them from feeling pain demonstrate just how important that unpleasant sensation is. Without the warning system, burns, fractures and other injuries can go unnoticed, sometimes with devastating consequences.

When the alarm refuses to switch off

Acute pain generally has a useful purpose. You injure yourself, the area hurts, the body repairs itself and, eventually, the pain subsides.

But pain does not always follow this tidy script.

It can persist long after an injury has healed, or occur without an obvious injury. Chronic pain can become a problem in its own right, while neuropathic pain arises from damage or disease affecting the somatosensory nervous system. It can feel burning, shooting, electric or stabbing, and can be extraordinarily difficult to treat.

There is another fascinating category: nociplastic pain, in which altered pain processing is involved without clear evidence of ongoing tissue damage or a lesion of the somatosensory system. In other words, pain is not always a faithful reporter standing at the scene of the crime.

But can pain actually be measured?

This is where things get delightfully strange.

If someone tells you their pain is 7 out of 10, what does that really mean? Is your 7 the same as my 7? And is either of us using the same scale as the person who describes childbirth, a broken bone or a paper cut as “about a five”?

Pain is subjective, which makes it notoriously difficult to measure objectively. As an article in National Geographi article explains, scientists still do not have a reliable physiological instrument that can simply be attached to a human being and announce: “Your pain is 6.73.”

Enter Justin O. Schmidt, the American entomologist who apparently looked at the problem and decided that the obvious solution was to get himself stung by lots of insects– more than 150 species.

Schmidt spent decades studying insects and recording the character and intensity of their stings. His work eventually produced the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, a scale from 0 to 4 that ranks the relative pain of insect stings. The honeybee, familiar to many people, scores 2 and became a reference point for comparison. Schmidt also asked other experts to provide their assessments.

The Pain Olympics

At the bottom end are relatively mild stings. Fire ants and paper wasps score 1. Then comes the upper end of the scale. The tarantula hawk wasp, warrior wasp and bullet ant all reach 4. The bullet ant is particularly notorious, and Schmidt’s description of its sting is so dramatic that it sounds less like entomology and more like a rejected line from an action movie.

Schmidt’s descriptions are one of the most entertaining features of the index. He did not merely write “pain = 3.” He attempted to describe what the pain felt like. His yellowjacket entry compares the sensation to a hot, smoky experience involving a cigar. The warrior wasp, at the top of the scale, provoked the wonderfully candid question: “Why did I start this list?”

One can only admire the commitment to science.

Pain is not the same as damage

Schmidt’s work also illustrates something important about pain: the intensity of pain does not necessarily correspond directly to the amount of physical damage caused.

Venom has multiple effects. Some components can trigger intense pain, while others contribute to toxicity and tissue damage. These are related but not identical phenomena. A sting can hurt spectacularly without producing equivalent lasting tissue damage.

There is an evolutionary reason for this. For many stinging insects, the purpose of venom is not necessarily to kill a predator. A predator that survives a painful encounter can learn a valuable lesson: perhaps don’t eat that particular insect again.

As one of the scientists quoted by National Geographic puts it, a painful experience can be more useful as a defence if it leaves the predator alive to remember it.

Which brings us back to us humans.

We tend to think of pain as the enemy. But pain is actually one of the body’s oldest protective systems. It tells us when to withdraw, when to protect an injured part, when something may be wrong and, sometimes, when we need to seek help.

The trouble begins when the alarm becomes the illness itself.

Pain Awareness Month is therefore not simply about telling people that pain exists. It is about recognising that pain is real even when it cannot be seen, that different people can experience the same stimulus differently, and that persistent pain deserves to be understood rather than casually dismissed. IASP’s 2026 campaign puts this neatly into a broader framework of understanding, advocacy, partnership and better care.

And as for the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, there is a final lesson.

You can measure pain comparatively. You can describe it, investigate it and study the biology behind it. But there is still no universal “pain-o-meter” that tells us exactly what another person is feeling.

Perhaps that is why pain requires not only science, but empathy.

And perhaps, when somebody says, “This really hurts,” we should resist the temptation to reply, “It can’t be that bad.”

Unless, of course, they are volunteering to test the bullet ant!

And perhaps we should occasionally thank pain.

Preferably after it has gone away.

–Meena

The Great Guava Heist: Rose-ringed Parakeets, Coppersmith Barbets and a Guava Tree

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ Leave a comment

There is a certain amount of drama taking place on my guava tree these days.

The Rose-ringed Parakeets arrive in noisy pairs, settle among the branches and get to work. The Coppersmith Barbets are quieter visitors, but no less interested. Between them, they can make a considerable dent in the morning’s guava harvest.

What puzzles me is what happens next.

Guavas fall to the ground, some barely touched, others with chunks missing. A perfectly good-looking fruit may have a hole in it and be abandoned. Another has been pecked open and left hanging precariously from its stalk. And there is a constant barrage of small fruit pieces from the tree as the parakeets feast.

Why, I wonder, do they throw so much of it down?

Perhaps I am looking at it from entirely the wrong end of the telescope.

The parakeets’ breakfast

Rose-ringed Parakeets are wonderfully equipped for attacking fruit. That large, curved red bill is not just for making an impressive entrance. It is a powerful cutting and gripping tool, and the bird can hold food with its foot while working on it with its bill.

A parakeet may bite into a guava, take several mouthfuls and then move on. It may be looking for the softer, riper flesh, avoiding a harder portion or simply deciding that another fruit looks more attractive.

And when you are sitting in a tree full of guavas, there is little reason to persevere with a disappointing one.

The next guava is only a beak-length away.

Enter the Coppersmith

The Coppersmith Barbet is a very different personality. Smaller, stockier and beautifully marked, it is much less conspicuous than the parakeet. Its name comes from its extraordinarily persistent call, which sounds remarkably like a tiny coppersmith hammering away at metal.

Barbets are fruit-eaters, and a guava is clearly an attractive proposition. They can make a small opening in the fruit and work their way into the flesh, leaving behind something that looks as though a miniature woodworker has been at it.

Watching the two species together makes one thing clear: birds don’t necessarily approach a fruit as a human would.

For us, a guava is one object. For a bird, it is skin, flesh, seeds, texture, ripeness and energy—all of which can be assessed in a matter of seconds.

The tree has its own plan

There is another player in this little drama: the guava tree itself.

The tree has invested energy in producing fruit because fruit is one of the ways plants persuade animals to transport their seeds. The flesh attracts the animal; the seeds get a chance to travel.

A seed that simply falls beneath its parent tree has to compete with that parent for light, water and nutrients. A seed carried elsewhere has a chance of finding a little patch of ground of its own.

Birds are excellent seed couriers because they move from tree to tree and garden to garden. Some seeds pass through their digestive systems; others may simply fall or be carried away with pieces of fruit.

Not every seed will become a tree, of course. Nature is not in the business of giving every seed a happy ending. It works through numbers, chance and a great deal of trial and error.

And then there are the leftovers

The story does not end when a guava falls.

Ants may discover it. Fruit flies certainly might. Beetles and other insects can take advantage of the exposed flesh. Squirrels may investigate. Eventually fungi and bacteria will break it down and return its nutrients to the soil.

The guava tree is therefore feeding a much larger community than the two birds that first attracted my attention.

This is something we often forget when we look at nature through human eyes. We tend to see individual transactions: the bird ate the guava; the rest was left behind.

Nature sees a chain.

Birds have always been opportunists

The same principle can be seen all around us.

Bulbuls peck at berries. Mynas investigate fruit and food scraps. Squirrels take enthusiastic bites from mangoes and guavas. Crows carry food away, tear it apart and sometimes abandon pieces.

Other birds have developed completely different strategies. Woodpeckers drill into wood in search of insects. Kingfishers plunge into water for fish. Bee-eaters catch insects in flight. Sunbirds probe flowers for nectar.

Each has evolved a way of getting the nutrients it needs without spending more energy than necessary.

So perhaps the Rose-ringed Parakeets and Coppersmith Barbets are not being careless at all.

They are simply being birds.

A poem about birds and a guava tree

And then I came across a poem that seemed to have wandered straight into my garden.

In “Birds on the Guava Tree,” A. P. Govindankutty describes waking to the sounds of birds feeding on almost-ripe guavas in the backyard of his home. There is a crow on the mango tree, squirrels nearby and the general soundtrack of an Indian morning.

But the poem takes the observation somewhere beyond birds and fruit. The poet watches the birds and thinks about what nature gives us—and about what human beings do with what they have been given.

His conclusion is particularly lovely.

It is but fair that the birds eat,

Year after year, all the fruits,

Leaving none for me to pluck,

For they do not rob, hoard or trade

Nor do they kill each other

For power or pelf.

Indeed it must be for them

The trees grow on earth,

Flower and bear fruit,

For they never cut them down.

— A. P. Govindankutty, Birds on the Guava Tree

I like the poem because it changes the question.

I began by wondering why the birds were leaving so many guavas on the ground. The poet asks us to look at the relationship between birds and trees in a completely different way.

After all, the guava tree is not really my tree.

The parakeets don’t think so. The barbets certainly don’t. And judging by the insects, squirrels and other visitors who turn up for whatever is left behind, they are not the only ones with a claim on it.

I may continue picking up the fallen guavas.

But the next time I see a Rose-ringed Parakeet tearing into one, or hear the Coppersmith Barbet calling from the branches, I think I shall be a little less possessive.

After all, as Govindankutty reminds us, it is for them that the trees flower and bear fruit!

–Meena

Finger Wrestling: The Sport Where One Finger Can Make You a Champion

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ Leave a comment

We use our fingers for all sorts of important things these days: typing, texting, scrolling, swiping and, occasionally, pointing out to someone that they have been on their phone too long.

But in Bavaria, one group of people puts a rather different value on their fingers. They wrestle with them.

Welcome to Fingerhakeln, or finger wrestling—a wonderfully peculiar traditional sport in which two people sit across a table, hook their middle fingers into a leather loop and try to pull each other towards themselves.

And before you dismiss this as something that happens after too many beers at a German village festival, consider this: it has rules, clubs, training, weight and age categories, referees and national championships.

The rules are almost comically simple. Two competitors sit opposite each other at a specially designed table. Their middle fingers are hooked into a short leather strap. At the signal, they pull. The objective is to drag the opponent’s finger across a marked line.

Except that pulling another person’s finger with maximum force is apparently considerably harder—and more painful—than it sounds.

A bout may be over in just a few seconds, although the toughest can last nearly a minute. That may not sound like long enough to constitute a sporting ordeal, until you remember that the entire time is spent exerting enormous force through one finger. Competitors train specifically for the sport, strengthening their hands and fingers and learning how to use leverage, body position and technique.

So if you are now looking at your own hands and thinking, Surely I could do that, please resist the temptation to challenge your spouse, colleague or unsuspecting dinner companion. This is not an after-dinner game. There are good reasons not to underestimate the sport. The finger is subjected to considerable force during a contest, and injuries can occur. Competitors warm up, condition their hands and fingers and develop techniques for pulling and bracing.

               PIC: https://www.euronews.com/

From Alpine tradition to national championship

Fingerhakeln is particularly associated with Bavaria and the Alpine regions of Germany and Austria. Its precise origins are difficult to establish, but the tradition goes back generations. Like many folk sports, it appears to have started as a simple test of strength. Who was stronger? There was no need for a boxing ring or wrestling arena. Just sit down, hook fingers and find out.

Over time, the pastime became organised competition. Today, finger wrestlers compete in different age and weight categories, with regional championships and a German national championship. The sport has managed to remain both fiercely competitive and closely connected to local culture.

In an age when sporting events can involve billion-dollar broadcasting deals and athletes who are global celebrities, Fingerhakeln remains resolutely local. It is rooted in the Alpine region, but the annual German championship gives its strongest competitors a national stage.

The seriousness of the sport becomes obvious when you watch the competitors. There is very little movement and certainly none of the dramatic action associated with conventional wrestling. The struggle is concentrated in the hands and arms, while the two competitors sit almost motionless, each waiting for the other to give way. And then, often within seconds, it is over.

That combination of stillness and sudden force is part of what makes Fingerhakeln so fascinating to watch. It looks almost absurdly simple, until you realise just how much strength and pain tolerance are packed into those few moments.

For all its eccentricity, Fingerhakeln has the trappings of any serious competitive sport: champions, categories, training and even sporting families. At the 2025 Bavarian championships, Franz Foos won the heavyweight title, Andreas Sturm took the lightweight category, while Gerhard Sturm won the senior category for competitors over 60. The Sturms are a nice example of how traditional sports can become family traditions, with skills and enthusiasm passing from one generation to the next.

The Bavarian championship is a regional competition, however, and is distinct from the German national championship. That was held on August 23 in Pflugdorf-Stadl, where around 150 competitors took part. Ferdinand Seitz won the senior title, and afterwards described the experience of competing as “excruciating”—which seems a fairly convincing endorsement of the seriousness of the sport.

For the competitors, the few seconds at the table represented months and years of preparation. And that perhaps brings us to the more interesting question raised by this wonderfully odd sport: what exactly makes something a sport?

We tend to associate sport with speed, spectacular physical feats, enormous stadiums and global audiences. But strip it down and the essentials are rather simpler: physical effort, skill, training, rules, competition and the determination to win. Fingerhakeln has all of them.

It may never become an Olympic sport, but it does not need to. Its appeal lies partly in its connection to place and tradition. In a world where the same sports are watched from New York to New Delhi, Fingerhakeln remains distinctly Bavarian—a competitive tradition tied to its community and passed from one generation to the next.

There is something rather appealing about that. We spend so much time trying to make everything bigger, faster and more spectacular. Finger wrestling goes in the opposite direction. It strips competition down to its essentials: two people, a leather loop, considerable strength and a very determined finger.

For most of us, fingers are increasingly instruments of the digital age, busy with keyboards and screens. In Bavaria, some people still use theirs to settle a much older question: Who is stronger?

The answer, as it turns out, can be decided by a leather loop, a wooden table and a very determined middle finger.

Who knew one finger could carry so much sporting ambition?

–Meena

Pachy Poop

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ Leave a comment

Last week, on the occasion of World Elephant Day, Mamata recounted from memories of Dr. Raman Sukumar, India’s foremost elephant-researcher.

We continue on the pachyderm theme this week, but today we focus on……elephant dung! On World Elephant Day, we usually celebrate the things that make elephants magnificent—their intelligence, memory, extraordinary family bonds and sheer size. We talk about forests, wildlife corridors, poaching and the urgent need to protect these gentle giants. But there is another elephant story worth telling, and it begins, rather unglamorously, on the forest floor: with dung.

Long before humans filled compost bins, saved kitchen scraps and debated the perfect balance of “browns” and “greens”, elephants were already participating in one of nature’s most elegant recycling systems. An elephant eats a phenomenal amount of vegetation every day—grass, leaves, bark, roots, fruit and branches—and because not everything it consumes is completely digested, plenty of partially processed plant material eventually makes its way back into the environment. What we see as a pile of dung is, in ecological terms, a package of nutrients and organic matter ready to be put to work again.

Once elephant dung lands on the forest floor, an entire community of organisms gets involved. Dung beetles, flies, fungi, bacteria and other decomposers begin breaking down the material, while insects use it as a source of food and, in some cases, as a place to lay their eggs. As the dung decomposes, nutrients are gradually returned to the soil, helping to maintain the fertility and health of the ecosystem. What looks like the least glamorous part of an elephant’s daily routine is actually an important link in the larger cycle of life.

This is one of the reasons the idea of “waste” is so different in nature. In a healthy ecosystem, one organism’s leftovers can become another organism’s resource. There is no rubbish truck waiting at the edge of the forest and no landfill quietly filling up somewhere out of sight. Organic matter is continually broken down, transformed and returned to the system. Elephant dung is simply one particularly impressive example of this natural circular economy.

There is another role that makes elephant dung especially important: seed dispersal. Elephants consume huge quantities of fruit and vegetation, and many of the seeds they swallow can survive the journey through their digestive systems. Because elephants travel considerable distances in search of food and water, they can carry those seeds far from the parent plant before depositing them in their dung. In effect, the elephant becomes a very large and very mobile seed-distribution system, helping plants spread across the landscape.

And there is something rather clever about where those seeds arrive. They are not simply dropped onto the ground; they emerge surrounded by organic material that is already beginning to decompose. That dung can provide nutrients and moisture while insects and microorganisms continue breaking it down. In the right conditions, the seed may eventually germinate and become part of the next generation of vegetation. An elephant eats a fruit in one part of the landscape and, sometime later, may help establish a new plant somewhere else.

The forest gets a meal, a seed dispersal service and a dose of fertiliser, all from the same animal. This is why elephants are often described as ecosystem engineers. Their impact extends well beyond their own bodies. Their feeding habits can alter vegetation, their movements can open pathways through habitats, and their dung redistributes nutrients and seeds. When elephant populations decline, the consequences can therefore reach much further than simply having fewer elephants. The animals are part of a web of ecological processes that help keep their habitats functioning.

It is only when we understand this natural process that the idea of turning elephant dung into human-made compost becomes truly interesting. In sanctuaries, conservation centres and other managed settings where elephant dung is collected responsibly, it can be composted and transformed into a useful soil amendment. Through controlled decomposition, the organic material breaks down into a darker, more stable substance that can help improve soil structure and return nutrients to the ground.

Some organisations have taken this a step further by developing elephant-dung compost as a source of income that can support conservation and animal-care programmes. There is something wonderfully circular about the idea: an elephant eats plants, produces dung, that dung is composted, the compost helps plants grow, and those plants can once again become part of the landscape on which elephants and other animals depend.

On a recent visit to Kerala, I visited one such sanctuary (Panamkuzhy Elephant Sanctuary)), and my most treasured buy was a package of Elephant Dung Compost! But perhaps it is important not to let the human version of the story overshadow the original one. Elephant dung does not need us to make it valuable. In the wild, it already has an important ecological purpose. Composting it is simply our way of working with a process that nature has been running very successfully for thousands, perhaps millions, of years.

And maybe that is one of the quieter lessons we can take from elephants this World Elephant Day. We often think about what we can do for nature—what we should conserve, restore, recycle or protect—but elephants can remind us that nature is already remarkably good at managing resources when we allow its systems to function. What leaves one organism can nourish another; what appears to be waste can become food, habitat, nutrients or the beginning of new life.

So elephant dung is part of what the elephant gives back to the landscape: nutrients returned to soil, food for insects and microorganisms, and sometimes the very beginning of another tree. Reinforcing the message that every species has its place in the ecosystem. And nature has its own balance.We just have to let it be.

Happy Elephant Day!

–Meena