Reviews

Across India, temple lamps are associated with devotion, protection and continuity. In some shrines, visitors report that a diya burns for unusually long…

Snakebite envenoming is a medical emergency, not a condition that can be reliably cured by prayer, herbal mixtures, charms, incisions, or secret antidotes. In…

Long before modern space telescopes, astronomers learned about stars by studying the light reaching Earth. A spectrum could reveal a star’s temperature,…

Water divining, also called dowsing or water witching, is often presented as a mysterious ability to locate underground water. A dowser may walk across a field…

The phrase “Vedic Mathematics” suggests that modern calculation techniques were recovered from India’s ancient scriptures. This claim is attractive because it…

In parts of southwestern Punjab, farmers face a quiet threat beneath their fields. Water evaporates from the soil surface, leaving behind salts that restrict…

Stories of ghosts, spirits, and haunted places appear in nearly every culture. In India, ideas about bhoots, prets, chudails, yakshinis, jinn, and restless…

Circular marks and flattened designs in Indian fields can look astonishing from above. When crops bend into large rings, arcs, or apparently precise patterns,…

Salim Ali transformed the study of birds in India from a largely museum-based pursuit into a rigorous, field-oriented science. Through patient observation,…

A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun and briefly blocks some or all of the sunlight reaching a region of our planet. It is a…