Mayur Mulki

The year 1861 saw the publication of a Bengali epic poem that perplexed readers by going against traditional norms, but soon became one of the greatest works in Indian literature. Meghanadavadha Kavya (The Slaying of Meghnad), written by Michael Madhusudan Dutt, upturned the Hindu hierarchy by making a rakshasa his protagonist and the unfair slaying of Ravan’s son, Meghanad, by Lakshman his central theme.

The Sikh community in Assam is quite different from the Sikhs in Punjab and elsewhere in India. In the town of Dhubri, around 230 km from the state capital of Guwahati, Sikh families welcome you with betel nut or paan in traditional Assamese style, the Sikh women wear sindoor on their foreheads and the traditional Assamese attire, Mekhla-Chador, with a tiny kripan tucked in.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are natural jewels whose strategic location in the Bay of Bengal made them valuable assets to many different colonial powers over the centuries. In more recent times, they were owned by the Danes and then the British, only to go on the chopping block during the partition of India at Independence in 1947.