We all know the invasive 'mile-a-minute' weed that smothers forests and plantations across India. For decades, the accepted story placed its arrival in India in the 1940s, often linked to wartime introductions in the Northeast. But what if the true history of this botanical interloper is far more complex? The evidence, hidden in dusty colonial records and early botanical literature, reveals a series of covert arrivals that predate the established date by years, if not decades

Have you ever wondered how history is often selective in celebrating someone and pushing another to oblivion? This blog is to bring one Mongol princess into the light from the darkness of time, whose name was linked and overshadowed by more powerful names like Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, but could easily be a central character of any period if history had not forgotten her.

The 2nd episode of this series is on the return of the pandemic in China, which not only destroyed my homecoming plan but also forced me to test for COVID-19 for 36 consecutive days. The Swab’s tale will give you a tour inside the testing facilities that came up overnight throughout the city, and why it became a daily practice for millions to visit these facilities once a day. Welcome to China’s famous localized lockdown policy.