Bhang has been mentioned in the Vedas; the use of cannabis as a medicinal boon has been mentioned in a lot of Indian scriptures for thousands of years, and it has been used in Ayurveda. During the British era, the colonisers looked down upon cannabis usage among Indians. They were familiar with alcohol but not with ganja and they considered it beneath them. So, it is the recent history of cannabis in India that has made it taboo. But it is still the most used "illicit" narcotic in the country. In India, with even something that's illegal, if it's culturally appropriate, a lot of people will tun a blind eye. This is so especially in the north of the country. India is very complex and its perspectives towards this plant are also very complex and divisive. In places like Uttarakhand and Himachal, the attitude to cannabis is different; in the south, in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, even openly talking about using it is a big no-no"

Karan Madhok, author, 'Ananda; An Exploration of Cannabis in India' talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from Lord Shiva and the availability of bhang in Banaras, Manipur's Satjal and Kawariyas to the immense economic potential of the plant, its medicinal uses, the movement for its decriminalization, and the road ahead for this ancient Indian weed

"I'm a big fan of a very specific genre of crime novels, which is the Golden Age novels, the Agatha Christies and the GK Chestertons, the novels of the 1940s and '50s. I don't get to read those types of books any more, where at the heart of the book is a very classic murder mystery, a whodunnit. You're not really that concerned about realism; it's not very gritty; there's not a lot of murders that are very unpleasant. Someone just drops dead and everyone's concerned about who's done it. I wanted to write a book like that. These days, the kind of crime that's being written — there's a lot of police procedurals; there's a lot of realistic crime. I wanted to veer away from all of that. There's so much going on that's unpleasant that people really like to have a break from all of that. You know, it's nice to worry about something as frothy as a murder mystery that you can curl up with over a cup of coffee!" - Samyukta Bhowmick, author, A Fatal Distraction, talks to Manjula Narayan about her cosy crime novel set in Delhi.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba was seen as the last outpost of communism. China went a different way and is now essentially a capitalist society where the communist party is in power. In Kerala, Cuba was seen by those people who were ideologically committed to communism as something sacred. That kind of ideological affinity might have come down but there is still an attraction to Cuba as a country that has miraculously withstood 64 years of extreme American sanctions"

- Ullekh NP, author, 'Mad About Cuba; A Malayali Revisits the Revolution' talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from the flight of bright young Cubans from the country, the little known visionary side of Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro's introduction of Indian moringa to the Caribbean nation, to the dynamic women who head Cuba's exceptional health initiatives, why a taxi driver now earns more than a doctor there, and how the book might help readers understand both Cubans and Malayalis better!

A lot of our ancestors had tattoos and that's quite surprising. People don't really know what the tattoos on their grandparents mean. A number of archivists have come up in India in the last 10 years who have felt the need to document this, question their grandparents, and also to look into their communities' histories through the tattoos that they no longer have. Here is a tradition that we have lost but it's something that we now consider so trendy."

Naman P Ahuja, editor, 'Indian Tattoos; Only Skin Deep?' talks to Manjula Narayan about traditional Indian tattoos from communities as varied as the Baigas, Pashtuns, Todas and the Nagas, the vanished south Indian tattoos recorded by LK Ananthakrishna Iyer in the 1930s, why people yearn to mark their lover's name on their body, tattoos as talisman, caste markers and adornments in this world and the next, the colonial encounter and the disappearance of traditional tattoos among many groups, and why it's harder to reconstruct a history of Indian men's tattoos

The Indian middle class comprises many groups and they are not able to come together. For any group to become powerful, they have to be united. But the interests of each of these groups within the Indian middle class - upper caste Hindus, Dalits, Muslims, OBCs - clash with each other. Today, caste and religious identity is more important to the individual than national identity. Perhaps this is because everything we do today revolves around money. Money is power and even if a person feels that certain things are wrong, he will not raise his voice because his interests might be compromised. In a consumerist, neo capitalist society, everything comes down to economics" - Manisha Pande, author, 'Middle Class India; Driving Change in the 21st Century' talks to Manjula Narayan about the middle class in ancient and medieval India, the vast changes that have occurred since Liberalization in the early 1990s, the status of middle and upper class Indian women as being more shackled and conformist than their working class peers, the shift in the attitude towards the country's population growth and the demographic dividend that heralds good things for the future of the nation

"I've done three books and a documentary on Guru Dutt and he is always viewed as someone rather morose and internal and a sad man. And yet, there were moments of great joy. You see it in his films. Why did he always include Johnny Walker? Because he had a sense of humour and a sense of fun and his films like Mr and Mrs 55 and Aar Paar are really wonderfully funny. This diary was to emphasize the lighter side of Guru Dutt. So there are various anecdotes from people who remembered that side of him"

- Nasreen Munni Kabir, author, 'The Legacy of Guru Dutt; 2025 Diary' talks to Manjula Narayan about bringing out this diary to mark the film maker's centenary next year, the fantastic Hindi-Urdu writing of the 1950s, Guru Dutt's many extraordinarily productive working relationships with Abrar Alvi, Raj Khosla, Johnny Walker, VK Murthy and others, the self indulgence of Kagaz ke Phool, how his training in dance and choreography at the Uday Shankar Academy showed up in the kinetic movement of the camera in films like Pyaasa, the reproduction of some early letters to Geeta Dutt, and the aptness of Kaifi Azmi's statement that Guru Dutt thought with his eyes.

"The taste and quality of the ingredients that some street vendors use can rival that of Michelin star restaurants. And that they make it all available at this price point is just shocking. Street vendors also have no qualms about feeding the food that they make to their own families. They don't store their food or refrigerate and reuse, all ingredients are fresh every day, there are no secrets, its made out in the open in front of the customer. Those are the big differences with the large chains. After doing this book, we've realised that we are much better off eating from the street than eating packaged food or even from fancy places"

- Priya Bala and Jayanth Narayanan, authors, 'Bazaar Bites; Tales and Tastes of India's Street Foods' talks to Manjula Narayan about the fantastic sweets and savouries on offer on our streets including in tier 2 cities like Indore, Nagpur, Bhopal, Puri, Srinagar and Allahabad, among others, specialities like the hing kachori of Varanasi, the karela chaat of Gwalior, the ghirmit of Hubli Dharwad, the samosas of Bata Mangala in Odisha, the litti chokhas of Patna and the dosa diversity of Karnataka, and how street food needs to be properly recognised as an integral part of India's culinary heritage.

"While I was translating this manuscript from Persian I realised that the food mentioned is very different from what's sold now as Mughal food. They had four masalas only. We have now laced the mutton, chicken and fish with spices so that the real taste has disappeared. In those days, you could taste the meat. The food eaten by Jahangir and Nur Jahan was very different and I wanted people to know that what we are eating in the name of Mughal food is not really Mughal food"

- Salma Yusuf Husain, translator, 'Alwan-e-Nemat; A Journey Through Jahangir's Kitchen' talks to Manjula Narayan about featured recipes that combine unlikely ingredients like the fish and banana curry, Mughal emperor Jahangir's love for Gujarati khichdi and rohu, his queen Nur Jahan's many culinary innovations including the creation of fruit yogurts and vibrantly coloured dishes, how Indian cooks in the imperial kitchen took Iranian and Central Asian recipes and completely transformed them, how they turned pulao into biryani by layering and roasting it, her own surprise on encountering the utterly rice-less biryani Isfahani during a visit to Iran, and why the vegetable biryani cannot be called a biryani at all.

"Those who don't have a university or a high school for their languages are the ones who don't have economic resources. The poorest among the poor are linguistically deprived and also economically deprived. People say, 'What is the harm if many languages go and only some remain?' These are questions raised out of ignorance. Every language is a unique world view. The way every language defines space and time is unique. When languages die, we are denying ourselves the benefit of the diversity of unique world views. Diversity is necessary for the evolutionary process. By denying diversity, we are reducing our ability to go forward and meet new challenges" - GN Devy, author, 'India; A Linguistic Civilization' talks to Manjula Narayan about the emergence of a rich literature in many Adivasi languages in the 21st century, his work with the Linguistic Survey of India, language aphasia, the rise of Sanskrit, why the Harappan script still hasn't been deciphered, the tragedy of gadgets replacing parental interactions with children, and dyslexia and dysgraphia as conditions that indicate a step in the evolutionary process, among other things.

"In the 1970s, Muslim characters in films were very different. In the 1990s, Roja opened the floodgates for films representing Muslims as terrorists. It was the first film which looked at the identity of the enemy. Then, especially after the attacks of 9/11, there was a big change in the representation of Muslims in Hindi films. As for women, in many films, Muslim women are reduced to being victims of oppression always. Now, whatever is happening in the current sociopolitical scene is directly reflected on screen. I have tried to connect the politics of representation in Hindi films with contemporary politics. So my book isn't just film studies, it is also a political text" — Nadira Khatun, author, 'Postcolonial Bollywood and Muslim Identity' talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from Pran in Zanjeer to the saviour syndrome in Gully Boy, the Brahmanical stance of films like Secret Superstar and Lipstick Under my Burqa, the absence of films made by subaltern Muslims, the vanished Muslim Social of the 1970s and 80s, and much more.