Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
Biryani vs Pulao, Deceit and Mughlai Cooking
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1856, the last Nawab of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah invites a prince from Delhi to his durbaar. He serves a dish, which masquerades as a a murabba - a th...
Clove, Transnational Smuggling and Nostalgia
14 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"Peter Piper picked some packs of pickled peppers in each pack of pickled peppers that peter piper picked was 3 pickled peppers. Now peter piper is ha...
Dosa, Apocalypse and Dashavataras of Vishnu
07 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What does a 12th century treatise on the life of a medieval king in Karnataka have in common with 1st century Sangam literature from Tamil Nadu, that ...
Portugese, Banned Languages and Grinding Songs
31 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What connects the assasination attempt of King Jospeh 1 in Portugal, the ban on the Konkani language in Goa and a story about a young Lord Krishna, wh...
Nutmeg: The World's Most Violent Spice
24 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why is the spice Nutmeg being mentioned in India's foremost treatise on military strategy? Why is it mentioned in a tri-fold collection of Sanskrit po...
Indian Jews, Konkan Coast and Kippur-Chi-Puri
17 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
About 2000 years ago, a group of people escaping persecution by the Greeks landed on the shores of Alibaug in Maharashtra, India. They were a small co...
Coconuts, Cold War and Nuclear Fusion
10 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the spring of 1943, US torpedo boat No. 109 gets shattered to pieces by a Japanese destroyer. Some of the crew members make a miraculous escape, an...
West Indies Cricket, Jackals and Mariamman Temples
03 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 2000’s, a concerned government official approached Dave Martins. Dave was an iconic musician from the Caribbean, who was the lead vocal...
Siddis, Limes and Benazir Bhutto
24 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"In October 2021, the Kannada film Salaga, featured a track which was sung by a Hindustani classical singer, the first from her community. Further up ...
Sindhis, Crocodiles And Abida Parveen
17 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"In the 14th season of Coke Studio Pakistan, Abida Parveen and Naseebo Lal gave us a beautiful song steeped in the Sufi tradition - Tu Jhoom. Almost 7...
The Malayalis Of Pakistan
10 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1921, a bloody rebellion in North Kerala led to the death of over 2000 people. In 2018, almost a century later, a song from the film Oru Adaar Love...
Gujaratis, Uganda and The Last King of Scotland
03 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What does a military dictator in a South-East African republic have in common with Ramanand Sagar, the man who made the cult television show Ramayan? ...
Chettiars, Burma and Fiery Dragons
27 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What does a small cluster of less than 100 villages in Tamil Nadu have in common with agrarian flatlands of Burma? And what are both of these doing in...
Money Orders, Dehradun & Transatlantic Slave Trade
20 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1898, the New York Times wrote a glowing review of this particular service in India. Closer home, the Bombay Mill Owners Association wasn’t so pl...
Bhojpur, Sexuality and Migration Songs
13 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"It's all around us, so much so, that probably no state in India has been untouched by it - The labour migration. The state which probably provides th...
Shimla, Rare Books And The American Declaration Of Independence
06 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1947, on the eve of Partition, a young man left Lahore and came to Shimla. What makes his journey unique, amongst the millions who must have undert...
The Caravan Rests
09 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been over 2 years we have travelled together. This month, the Caravan rests to return in 2022. Till then Check out the other episodes of "India...
The Improbable Impact Of Nature On 2000 Languages
02 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Why does the hill district of Shimla, home to a mere 8 lakh people, have at least 10-15 different languages? Why does Indonesia have 250 languages, an...
Breast Tax, Brahmins And The Bizarre Origins Of Modern Malayalam
25 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 19th century, the Maharaja of Travancore levied an absolutely bizzare tax: Any woman who had come of age and had breasts had to pay a bre...
The Hidden Injustice In India's Languages
18 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 2018, a research study by the University of Michigan and World Bank found that women who are native speakers of certain kind of languages have a lo...
Partitions Unknown: Hindi, Urdu and the Umbilical Cord
11 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"In 12th century Delhi, a new language began to emerge, which was initially known as Dehlavi. Parallelly, the political landscape of India changed, wi...
Reclaiming India's Linguistic Heritage: 300 Ramayanas?
04 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"In 2008, a quasi political organisation asked for the removal of an academic paper from the syllabus of Delhi University. They eventually succeeded i...
The Hidden Story Of Sanskrit, And The North - South Divide
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 1420, following a strange series of events, the migration of a community of people started from a border town between Tamil Nadu and ...
Shahtoosh: The Wild Story of the World's Most Expensive and Illegal Fabric
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A customs inspection at the Switzerland Italy Border, murders in the Tibetan highlands and a weaving workshop in Srinagar - Kashmir. What connects the...
Zbayul: The Invisible Village of Ladakh
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"In 1948, as India was fighting Pakistan in Kashmir, the Pakistani army reached this village but bypassed it completely. Simply because hidden behind ...
Sheshnag, Deadly Hikes and A Thousand Year Old Tradition
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the narrative of Kashmir, what often lies forgotten is the origin story. What could a Naga king who ruled thousands of years ago, have in common wi...
The Vanishing Art of Kashmiri Carpet Weaving
30 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What started out 600 years ago in Persia (present day Iran) thrived to become the crown jewel of the Kashmiri arts. However, the art of Kashmiri carpe...
Kashmiris, Hangul and the Manual of Life
23 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
About 100,000 years ago, a mutation in a family of deers gave rise to 3 distinct sub-species which came to be known by the geographical regions they t...
Srinagar, Ancient Carvings and Supernovas
16 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1960, the Indian Archeaologist T N Khazanchi, in a painstaking excavation spanning 11 years, discovered proof of 4 distinct human cultures beginnin...
Kargil, Hundarman and the Museum of Memories
09 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the Indo-Pak War of 1971, as the two countries fought bitterly, the fate of a few people change irrevocably - Overnight, they found themselves to b...
2 Years of PFN and A New Manifesto
02 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
100 Episodes - A reason to celebrate, a reason to reflect. This week, we don’t have a postcard, but a long conversation about travel. Utsav speaks w...
Gujjar-Bakarwals: The Forgotten People of Kashmir
26 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
They form 12% of the population of J & K, and yet their story is missing from the larger discourse of Kashmir. The Gujjar-Bakarwals are the nomadic pa...
The Art of Writing Time: Persian and Sanskrit Chronograms
19 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Two systems of writing time developed independently: One in Kashmir, and the other in Kerala. But they developed in completely different cultural mili...
The Last Rosewater Maker of Srinagar
12 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What could be common between the towns in the Isfahan province of Iran, and the city of Srinagar in Kashmir? And how could they show us two ends of th...
Navajo People, Cosmic Order and Hózhó
05 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In a corner of northwestern United States, live a group of Native American people known as the Navajo, who in their language has no word for religion ...
Petra, Awe and Hymns of Nature
29 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1845, a young student at the University of Oxford wrote a poem that led him to win the Newdigate Prize. His poem was about a place he never visited...
The Bedouins of Jordan, Hospitality and Karam
22 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the arid desert landscapes of Jordan, amongst the Balga tribe of Bedouins, is the famous story of the Ibn Khaltan, a man known all over for his inc...
Amman, Ashok Chakra and Swastik
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What could a statue of an Islamic ruler in the Umayyad dynasty near Jordan have in common with Ashoka Pillar in Sarnath India? How does Jordan, a coun...
Jordan, Civilization and Buri Nazar!
08 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
These structures are found all over the world right from Europe all the way to South Korea. They are seen in India too, 2,200 of them, but I can assur...
Red Sea, Tintin and Sunken Tanks
01 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What could the iconic cartoon character Tintin possibly have in common with a marine biologist which kickstarted the global environmental movement. An...
Lalbagh, Mount Everest and Volcanoes
24 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's been the site of a war, it has a connection to Mount Everest and a very very old connection to the human race. This week, in the seventh episode ...
Malleswaram, Lost Temples and the Nobel Prize
17 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A German Jew fleeing Nazi Germany. A temple buried and lost to the vagaries of time. A steamboat journey on the Mediterranean sea. This week, in the s...
Ulsoor, Yoga and Opium Wars
10 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What connects the Thai Forest Tradition of Buddhism to the neighbourhood of Ulsoor in Bangalore? (No, its not a Buddhist monastery!). It is in fact a ...
How Pandemics Shaped Bangalore
03 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1792, the British departed from Srirangapatna near Mysore to Bangalore for a rather strange reason - To escape the mosquitos. But that wasnt the on...
Cotton Green, American Civil War and Rise of Bombay
27 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Cotton Green, the forgotten, nondescript station on the Harbour line of the Bombay suburban train network. But once, this area was the beating heat o...
Colaba, Mark Twain and Dr. Ambedkar
20 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
You can't have been to Mumbai and not been to Colaba. The ultimate tourist hotspot, with colonial architecture and the bullet riddled walls of Cafe Le...
Dadar, Railways and Outer Space
13 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For the outsider, Mumbai means Marine Drive and South Bombay. For anyone who has lived long enough in the city, they know that Dadar is the heart of t...
Forgotten Pandemics, Jim Corbett and Nationalism
06 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A pandemic which killed an estimated 2 to 6.4% of India's population, and became one of the only decades where our population actually declined. It's ...
The Impossible Tunnels of Vietnam
29 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The American Army fighting the war in Vietnam never took it seriously. They never estimated the extent to which these tunnels existed, for they seemed...
Yugoslavia, Aliens and Colonial Gaze
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
They number in hundreds, if not thousands and they are the best kept secret of the Balkan countries, right from Slovenia to Macedonia. However, the wo...
Love, Olympic Glory and Death in Sarajevo
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A city finds itself at the centre of the world's attention twice in a span of ten years, but for completely opposite reasons. In 1984, it became the f...
One Man, 50,000 Bombs and Hope in Cambodia
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What would you do if you were forced to pick up a gun at a tender age of 10? And fight numerous wars for the next ten years, without ever having any c...
Dark Tourism, Titanic Cruises and Graffiti
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Since 1993, the Kazimierz district in Kraków, Poland has seen a huge influx of tourists, thanks to the film Schindler's List, an uplifting story of h...
Mariana Trench, Mt. Everest and Depths of Travel
25 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On January 23, 1960, at a little after one in the afternoon, two men seated on small stainless steel boxes inside a forged steel-alloy cabin, settled ...
Venice, Finland and Stamps of the Future
18 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What does Venice, a floating city with an algae problem and Finland, a country battling climate change have in common? And what could it possibly have...
Bhutan, Talking Stamps and Elvis Presley in Burkina Faso
11 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Why would the sleepy Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan decide to suddenly issue talking stamps? Or the tiny West African nation of Burkina Faso issue stamps...
Currency as Tragedy: Manipur, WW II and Memory
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when a British civilian administrator in the Indian government, a graduate in math and physics from Cambridge, on a fatal mission to orga...
Stanely Kubrick, Chess and Armenian Dram
25 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What does the Oscar winning iconic director Stanley Kubrick have in common with a Chess grandmaster? And what does it have to do with banknotes of Arm...
Marie Curie, Jane Austen and Banknotes
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What could Marie Curie, a two time Nobel Prize winner and the famous poet Jane Austen possibly have in common? And what does that have to do with bank...
Blood Falls, Antarctica and Moons of Jupiter
11 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Erling Kagge, is no ordinary man. In 1992, skiing and walking 1300 kilometres, over 52 days, he reached the South Pole. Alone. A few hundred miles awa...
Atacama Desert, Mars and Insignificance
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Deep into South America, lies a place which is considered barren and inhospitable. And for good reason - how can life flourish in a place which has le...
Svalbard and Syria: Lonely Together
28 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Extreme temperatures, check. The harsh desert climate, check. One place is an arctic desert in the northernmost part on our planet, the other a hot de...
Danakil Depression, Ethiopia: Secrets of the Cosmos
21 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What do the father of the nuclear age, the Italian American physicist Enrico Fermi and a young European traveller by the name of Mubarak Bin London ha...
Underground Caves of Naica and Deep Time
14 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
58 degree celsius, 100% humidity and pitch dark. This is not Mars, but somewhere on our very own planet. While 2020 killed all our travel plans, I am ...
Superhuman Runners The Rarámuri, Mexico
07 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1928 and 1968 Olympics, Mexico participated in the marathon and failed to get a podium finish. The runners, who came in with a great reputation...
Black Holes and 2020: Reflections on Travel
31 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Black Holes - Those enigmas of the universe we all have conceptually heard of but don't really understand. Taking a break from regular episodes, here ...
Bushmen of the Kalahari: The First People
24 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 2016, deep into the heartland of Ethiopia, a herder by the name of Ali Bereino, chanced upon a bone in the goat pen in his backyard. It took an arc...
Whistled Languages: From Mexico to Vietnam
17 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What if I put a bunch of children from varied countries, from Mexico to Vietnam, in a room. What if I told you that they may eventually develop a comm...
Okinawa, Japan: Living for a Century
10 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What does the 80's blockbuster film - The Karate Kid, a 17th century poem by an English poet have in common with the people who live for over a 100 ye...
Bajau Laut: Last of the Sea Nomads
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In a letter dated 14 May 1728, a Dutch East India company official writes to the Governor-General about a group of people camping out in the ocean off...
Fighting Climate Change: Why we Su*k!
26 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We've all heard the story - Put a frog in boiling water and it will jump out. Put it in cold water, bring it to a boil and the frog will be toasted to...
Beginning of the end: World's most beautiful Migration
19 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For a declining Native American tribe, it's a symbol of future abundance and health. For a whole host of scientists and conservationists, it's a horro...
The Chernobyl you did not see on TV
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What does an Icelandic composer, a Belarusian author and a Nobel Laureate have in common to do with the Chernobyl disaster? And why are we talking abo...
Indonesia to Italy: Art unravels climate change - Part 2
05 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
10th April 1815: On a remote Indonesian island, a volcano, Mt Tambora, erupted. It was no ordinary eruption - largest in recorded human history and th...
Indonesia to Italy: Art unravels climate change
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1993, Dario Camuffo and Giovanni Sturaro started looking at the paintings of two 18th century landscape artists from Italy. However, Camuffo and St...
Paneveggio, Northern Italy: Disapperaring Violins and a Silent City
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In January 2019, the city of Cremona in Italy went silent for 5 weeks, for a rather unique reason. But for that, we need to go back over 300 years, to...
Kiribati, Oceania: Weightlifting, Refugees and a Vanishing Country
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the 2016 Rio Olympics, a wrestler from Kiribati celebrated his performance. But he had not won a medal. In the same year, another man from Kiribati...
Aral Sea, Karakalpakstan: Surviving the Armageddon
08 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when an action from 100 years ago has a profound, unimaginable impact today? How does a sea the size of Himachal Pradesh or the entirety ...
What's in a name - Ask Africa
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1840, a Scottish man, David Livingstone arrived in Africa at the age of 27, and went on to become the greatest explorers of the continent, discover...
North Sikkim - The Trip that Wasn't?
24 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How often have you waited to take a trip, and it does not happen? For the last 5 years, Utsav had been wanting to see Gurudongmar lake in North Sikkim...
Why We Travel feat. Utsav, Ayushi and Rytasha
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
And here we are! After sending 50 Postcards from Nowhere, this week, we take a break from our usual storytelling to have 3 adults (or are we) talk abo...
The China Chilli Love Affair
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Recently, neuropsychologists have uncovered a link between the chili pepper and risk-taking. But what does history tell us? And how does a plant nativ...
Gastronationalism - Romancing Potatoes
03 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What connects the Matt Damon film - The Martian, A restauranter in Beijing and a lady who signs peans to a vegetable? Turns out, its the potato. From ...
The Mistress Dispellers
27 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The enemy of marriage is time,” she said, smiling. By the eighth year, the honeymoon period had long given way to “the salt and vinegar of daily l...
Miànzi and Girlfriend for Rent
20 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine going home over a holiday, but dreading the whole experience. All because your parents will ask about the lack of your love life i.e. your boy...
The Revolution is a Dinner Party
13 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
China came out of the Cultural Revolution and rose to become an economic powerhouse. A starving country in the past today is not only self-sufficient ...
The Evil Cult China Bans
06 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
China has made tremendous progress in lifting the country out of poverty, The Communist Party takes pride in enabling this and boasts of how many choi...
The Ant Tribe
30 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the late ’60s and ‘70s, anticipating the devastation of a Cold War-nuclear fallout, Chairman Mao directed Chinese cities to construct apartment...
The Ghost Cities
23 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Between 2011 - 13, China used up more cement to build cities than the United States used in the entire 20th century. The new cities became so prevalen...
The China Marriage Market
16 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In People's Park in central Shanghai, every Sunday afternoon, a congregation of old people shows up religiously, week after week. These are not people...
The Secret Museum of China
09 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
An absurd, deeply flawed notion left close to 600 million sparrows dead in China in the late 1950's. But it was only amongst the many missteps which c...
Icebergs, Relativity and Revenge
02 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
An iceberg, theoretical physics and an expressionist painting. What could these three unlikely bedfellows have in common, that too spread over two cen...
Amalfi, Cairns and Pilgrimage
25 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1980, Rick Ridgeway, the first American to summit the K2, attempted to climb a high mountain in China. He failed. 19 years later, he returned with ...
Galileo, The Divider and Memory
18 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
From the Indian mathematician Bhāskara II to the Italian inventor Da Vinci, this enigma confounded intellectuals for seven centuries. In a casual mus...
The War that Never Ended
11 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What is a war doing in a travel podcast? And that too a war that has never ended? We don't really know when it began, but we know for sure it has neve...
Naples, Grit and Hemingway
04 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In late 2018, archaeologists working at the Pompeii site discovered Grafitti which recalibrated the events around the explosion of Mount Vesuvis. The ...
Citrus, Science and The Sicilan Mafia
28 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On 20th May 1747, a doctor aboard HMS Salisbury did something that changed the course of Italian history. But all he did was give lemons and oranges t...
Finding our Kollektivschuld
21 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1946, post the defeat of Germany in World War II, the psychoanalyst Carl Jung coined a word which turned into a national emotion. Travelling throug...
Walking: An Act of Resistance
14 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Tiblisi, the capital of Georgia is one of the few places in the world where the Sunni and Shia Muslims pray together in the same mosque. Armenia is a ...
Entire World in a Room
07 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There is a room on the 2nd Floor of the Palazzo Vecchio, the civic palace of Florence. The room, known as Sala delle Carte Geografiche, fits the entir...