Explore how the search for black pepper and cinnamon shaped global trade routes and redefined culinary traditions across the world
Author: Kanhaiya Suthar
New Delhi [India], February 14: Valentine’s Day, with its connotations of roses, chocolate, and well-crafted messages that we owe to our modern world, didn’t start as a celebration of love. Its roots are to be found in a maelstrom of ancient rituals, Christian martyrdom, medieval poetry, and, in due course, modern commerce. Like most traditions that people refer to as “timeless,” it is, in fact, the product of centuries of improvisation. No sole origin, no neat story – just a bunch of layers of belief, convenience, and marketing. The story typically begins in the Roman Empire, because the story has…
New Delhi [India], February 14: When China declared that it would eliminate tariffs on imports from the majority of Africa from May 1, 2026, the policy was couched in terms of being development-friendly. But when looked at in terms of strategic trade, it is a measured step that reconfigures supply chains, diplomatic correlations, and competitive constructs – particularly for India. The decision increases an earlier zero duty arrangement that applied strictly to 33 African Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Now, the policy includes all 53 African countries that have diplomatic relations with Beijing. This is a critical distinction: the new list…
New Delhi [India], February 09: The phrase “lunar ring” sounds like something a marketing department would invent after a late lunch, but the geometry is embarrassingly straightforward. The Moon is tidally locked, its equator running in a patient circle of dust and rock that hasn’t felt wind in four billion years. Put solar panels along that belt and, because of the Moon’s slow, stately rotation, some part of that belt will almost always be in sunlight. Not all of it. Not cleanly. But enough. The idea is to turn that accident of celestial mechanics into a power plant. Japan calls…
New Delhi [India], January 26: Everyone keeps pretending this is complicated. It isn’t. The number has been stable for decades, and the arguments around it are mostly coping strategies dressed up as productivity theory. Adult humans need roughly eight hours of sleep. Not “six to seven.” Not “whatever works for you.” Eight. Nightly. Repeatedly. Forever. The variability people cite exists at the margins, and almost no one lives there. You can survive on less. You can function. You can even perform. That’s the trap. Sleep deprivation is generous that way. It gives you just enough rope to believe you’re the…
London [United Kingdom], January 26: Robbie Williams now holds the record. Sixteen UK number-one albums. The Beatles are at fifteen. That’s it. That’s the fact. Everything else is people negotiating their feelings about it. Different eras. Different rules. Different consumption habits. All true. Also, besides the point. Charts are not philosophy seminars. They’re ledgers. Numbers go up. Records fall over. Nobody asks whether the fall was tasteful. What makes people itchy isn’t that Robbie Williams beat The Beatles. It’s how he did it. Slowly. Publicly. Without ever becoming sacred. He didn’t vanish into legend. He didn’t die young. He didn’t…
New Delhi [India], January 26: Tea is still a booming business in India because it never needed permission to exist. That’s the part most entrepreneurs miss. Tea doesn’t care about branding decks, pitch days, or lifestyle adjectives. It’s there at 6 a.m. in chipped cups, at railway platforms smelling like burnt milk, in offices where nothing else works but deadlines and caffeine. It’s infrastructure. People confuse that with opportunity and then wonder why they get chewed up. India didn’t “discover” tea as a market. It inherited it, absorbed it, ritualised it. Tea isn’t consumed here; it’s leaned on. Emotionally. Economically.…
London [United Kingdom], January 24: Emily Dickinson still feels modern because she never tried to be legible. That’s the part people keep circling without saying out loud. She didn’t smooth the edges. She didn’t explain herself. She didn’t care if you “got it,” and she definitely didn’t care if you liked her. “Tell all the truth but tell it slant—” wasn’t a clever line. It was an operating principle. That alone puts her closer to the present than most writers embalmed by syllabi. She wrote like someone who understood the mind is not a neat place. Thoughts interrupt each other.…
New Delhi [India], January 24: Jaun Elia did not arrive in India quietly. He arrived amplified. Through a microphone that was not his. For most Indian readers under thirty-five, Jaun Elia did not come from libraries, serious Urdu study, or the long lineage of Progressive Writers. He came through Kumar Vishwas. That is not an insult. That is a logistical fact. Cultural transmission rarely cares about purity. Vishwas didn’t reinterpret Jaun. He recited him. He named him. He repeated him on stages that reached places where Urdu poetry had not travelled in decades. Small towns. College auditoriums. Televised mushairas. You…
In ordinary, civilian life, society has made a fairly clear judgment without ever holding a formal meeting about it. Guns are treated as dangerous, uncomfortable, and in need of constant control. Bows, arrows, and swords, meanwhile, live comfortably in museums, sports, hobbies, stories, and backyard conversations about “cool historical stuff.” This isn’t because people are inconsistent. It’s because these tools interact very differently with normal life. Bows and swords existed alongside daily routines. People farmed, traded, raised families, and argued with their neighbors while these weapons were present. Most of the time, nothing happened. That mattered. Their presence didn’t turn…