Herbs such as coriander, basil and mint can make any dish more flavourful. They are fun to grow and it is great to have our own garden we can pluck fresh herbs from. We can make a kitchen herb garden or plant herbs in pots on the terrace. Herbs are easy to grow and require little patience as some herbs start to sprout in as little as two days!...

Every monsoon the incidences of caving in increases. Nature or human activities–who is to blame?

It is said that when the British Governer General Warren Hastings brought the water hyacinth to India in the 18th century, thinking it was a flower, he couldn't have imagined that was actually a deadly weed. 

Why has it become increasingly diffiicult to run even during early mornings? Suddu was anxious. He tightly grabbed Papa’s hand to avoid getting lost in the crowd. This was the third medical store they had visited since morning to buy a mask. The first two in their locality had already run out. “Papa, when will we go home? I am hungry,” said a visibly irritable Suddu. More than hunger it was the urge to get out of the crowded medical store. “As soon as we buy the mask, beta,” his father assured him. “But why is there such a long queue?”...

In the guise of development, what allows us to be callous with earth's resources? A study conducted by Indian Institute of Soil Science shows that majority of the soil in India is deficient in secondary nutrients, such as sulphur, and micronutrients, such as zinc, boron, iron, copper and manganese. The question then is how nutritious can our food be if it is grown on malnourished land? Many other villages are suffering, like Jaduguda and Kolaghat, because the polluter does not take the responsibility of the waste, burdening locals with unseen consequences...

Why is the Indian monsoon so slippery? The monsoon of the Indian subcontinent is also shaped by the heating of the Tibetan plateau, the shape of continents and mountains, Eurasian snow cover, temperature difference between eastern and western flanks of the Indian ocean, and, arguably the most important, El Niño (“little boy” in Spanish as this event occurs around Christmas), a weather event triggered by a greater heating of the eastern Pacific near Ecuador than its western counterpart. A strong El Niño, more often than not, implies a weak monsoon. In the last 100 years, 19 out of 43 deficient monsoon years were …