Back in the 1970s, Chennai was called Madras. And in the Hindi-belt, everyone from southern India was classified as Madrassi. Never mind what the ‘Madrassis’ spoke at home - Malayalam, Kannada, Coorgi, Tulu, Telugu or even Badaga; most North Indians (including the educated ones) believed that anyone from ‘down-below’ spoke an exotic language called ‘Madrasi’ (that is Madrassi with one ‘s’ removed)! It did not matter where they actually came from: Kanyakumari, Kakinada or Kozhikode. Bollywood took the stereotype to a whole new level and the idea of a Madrassi was here to stay.

At a time when most of us think that the current corona epidemic is the worst ever, let’s not forget that smallpox in the 1950s was probably much worse. Few remember though, because a whole generation (and their parents) have grown up in an environment that has been largely free of scourges. During the 1960s and 70s India conducted massive campaigns to defeat seemingly incurable diseases – smallpox, polio, tuberculosis, measles, malaria and others. Hopefully, corona too will one day be a notch on the belt!

In 2015, on the banks of the river Vaigai, near Madurai in Tamil Nadu, archaeologists unearthed, among several other artefacts, a potsherd with the name ‘Kuviran' scratched on it in Tamil Brahmi script. And that offered many clues to the archaeologists about that civilisation: it told them about the language and literacy levels, the social hierarchy, and the age of a civilisation. What is now known as the ‘Keeladi excavations’ point to the existence of a literate society in parts of South India nearly 2,500 years ago! But how can broken pottery fragments give archaeologists such great insights into our past?

Most of us know who built the Qutb Minar. The Delhi Sultan Qutb-ud-din Aibak commissioned it in 1199 as a tower to commemorate the victory of his master and mentor, Mohammed Ghori. He died before he could complete it; therefore, his successor, Iltutmish completed it 20 years later. Iltutmish named it after his own master and predecessor, Qutb-ud-din Aibak. Did he, really? Some historians think that Iltutmish had a different Qutb-ud-din in mind when he christened the tower: Qutb-ud-din Bakhtiyar Kaki! [Detour: While this story is about the ‘Other Qutb’,  we have another story about the ‘Other Minar’ at the […]