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A mouthful of bitter melon
Among my many wonderful childhood memories of food lurks one bitter foe. A mouthful of bitter melon, to be precise. Aka the bitter gourd or karela or uchche. It turned up regularly on our lunch platter, being considered a superfood, though of course, the term itself had not been invented then! It all came back…
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The Disappearing Donkey
This is a tale of the disappearing donkey – those overworked and undervalued creatures that are disappearing from our own backyards. Some may sneer at my choice of subject, still others may see this diminution as a progressive step! But do not be hasty, dear reader. For the dons who study donkeys have detected a…
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A full head of hair
The long journey of evolution from ape to man was marked by conspicuous shedding of body hair. Why then did we retain a full head of hair? Was it just chance/ a mere roll of dice/ an evolutionary trade-off which endowed us with our crowning glory? Not so. It so happens that Africa, where we…