If you have ever tasted a Vietnamese cà ri, you must have felt a slight tinge of French and Indian flavours wriggling in your mouth. This melting of flavours is not by accident but by design that has a curious back story. A thread. #travellingsOftheIndianCurry 1/n
Phan Xich Long in the Phu Nhuan District is one of Ho Chi Minh City's (formerly Saigon) most bustling streets redolent of street food. The shops lined up on the streets offer up a variety of Vietnamese cuisine, one particularly interesting item being the cà ri. 2/n
The Vietnamese cà ri is, however, not considered on the same plane as other street food like phở, bún bò Huế or hủ tiếu. It’s a dish mostly eaten in the comfort of a home and has strong connections with the sub-continent. 3/n
To understand this, we need to delve into a bit of history of the spice trade and the intertwining fates of the French colonies. 4/n
In the 19th century, the French-controlled portions of South Vietnam which being coastal, was convenient as a trading spot. Here spices from India and the Americas were bought and traded. 5/n
Back then, the port city of Pondicherry in Southern India was also under French control. Now it is believed that the French didn’t quite like the Vietnamese locals, so they used to bring in people from India to man their spice depots. 6/n
More than 6000 people, mostly Tamilians are supposed to have migrated from Pondicherry and settled in parts of Saigon, Cho Lon, and the Mekong Delta. Though there were tensions between these migrants and the local Vietnamese, a culinary amalgamation flourished. 7/n
Later on, the curry spices would move around with the ethnic Cham people, who had dealings with the Indian migrants in the spice trade. 8/n
At the dawn of the 20th-century, curry powder became the rage in Vietnam, from being a French-Tamil culinary expose, these spices become an integral part of the middle-class Vietnamese kitchen. The Indian curry became cà ri and literally, everyone was making it. 9/n
These days it is easy to get a powdered mix like the Ca Ri Ni An Do which is also labeled as the Madras curry powder. Shops will also readily give you a blended mix if you tell them what kind of curry you are cooking. 10/n
The spices are then used in portions that go into the marinade and the sauce which is a combination of coconut milk, potatoes, taro, sweet potatoes, and carrots. The curry can be served either with chicken (cà ri gà) or shrimps (cà ri tôm) and is often eaten with noodles. 11/n
Most of the Indian diaspora left with the French after 1954, but it left behind a beautiful and delicious mix of cultural and culinary legacy. 12/n
Remembering Asrani, the man who made us laugh even in a film drenched in blood and revenge.
But behind his iconic “Angrezon ke zamaane ka jailor” act in Sholay lies an unlikely inspiration - a secret photoshoot in Germany nearly a century ago. Thread 1/17
To understand that connection, we must first talk about a man named Heinrich Hoffmann. He was a photographer, but not an ordinary one. He was Hitler’s personal photographer, propagandist, and one of his closest aides. 2/17
Hoffmann met Hitler in 1919, long before the Nazi leader’s rise. His photographs helped shape the visual mythology of the Third Reich. Every poster, portrait, and newspaper image of Hitler that circulated in Germany bore Hoffmann’s fingerprints. Quite literally. 3/17
As Diwali lights up homes across India, Bengal and the East mark the night with worship of Goddess Kali. But here’s a story few remember. Over a century ago, she was the face of a swadeshi cigarette brand. Long before the Marlboro Man, we had our own Gutsy Goddess. 1/19
This curious chapter of India’s commercial and political history came to light through an exquisite lithograph advertisement we spotted few years back inside the Calcutta Gallery at the Victoria Memorial Hall. 2/19
The Bengali text on the poster proudly presented Kali Cigarettes as a “Swadeshi Product” — a label that, in the early 20th century, carried an unmistakable weight. It was not merely about commerce; it was a political declaration. 3/19
Taj Mahal is back in the news again. This time, not for love, but for all the wrong reasons. But decades ago, it made headlines for something far stranger. Because once, a man almost sold the Taj Mahal. The unbelievable story of Natwarlal — India’s greatest conman. Thread 1/17
Mithilesh Kumar Srivastava — better known as Natwarlal — was born in 1912 in Bangra, a small village in Bihar. His father, a railway station master, introduced him early to the world of documents, seals, and signatures. 2/17
Very little is verified about his childhood. In 1980, journalist Pritish Nandy noted, “Natwarlal has no background worth talking about… Right now, there is hardly any past you can track down. And thank God for that.” 3/17
The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart near Connaught Place in New Delhi is one of the city's oldest Christian establishments which have a strange connection with your favorite coffee drink, the Cappuccino.
Read on. 1/17
Who would have thought while sipping Cappuccino at a café in Connaught Place that their cup of coffee would have a strange bond with a church just a few miles away at the junction of Bhai Vir Singh Marg Road and Bangla Sahib Road. 2/17
Built in the early 1930s in an Italian style, the cathedral of the Sacred Heart was envisioned by Father Luke, a member of the Franciscan first order founded by the followers of the poor man of Assisi, Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone. 3/17
What connects the American Civil War to Durga Puja in Bengal?
It's the nostalgic toy cap guns. The story of the cap gun is stranger than it looks.
Thread. 1/14
If you didn’t grow up in Kolkata, you might have missed it — the streets during Durga Puja once alive with kids firing toy cap guns, little puffs of smoke and crackles everywhere. A vivid pre-social media ritual of childhood, with a fascinating origin story.
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The Civil War (1861–65) was the first truly industrial war. Soldiers of both the Union and the Confederacy moved away from old flintlock muskets and embraced the percussion cap - a tiny copper or brass cup holding a shock-sensitive explosive. 3/14
Four years ago in Kerala, sixteen strangers walked into the Russian House in Thiruvananthapuram. They were from different districts, different walks of life. But they all carried one name that bound them together.
Gagarin. Yes, Gagarin.
So, What brought them together? 1/16
The name needs no introduction, or does it?
On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to journey into space. For the world, it was history. For a section of Kerala’s left-leaning families, it was inspiration strong enough to echo in their children’s names. 2/16
Take P.D. Gagarin from Cherthala.
According to reports in Hindu and New Indian Express, he was born on that very day in 1961, when the Soviet cosmonaut made his historic flight. His father, a communist and space enthusiast, named him Yuri Gagarin. 3/16