News / Author / Paramita Ghosh

Paramita Ghosh

Paramita Ghosh has been working as a journalist for over 20 years and writes socio-political and culture features. She works in the Weekend section as a senior assistant editor and has reported from Vienna, Jaffna and Singapore.

Articles by Paramita Ghosh

The French lieutenants’ paintings

What were French soldiers doing in India in the 18th century? This exhibition holds a clue

, features French soldier and man of influence, Claude Martin (on a couch wearing a red coat).(Photo courtesy: BNF)

lifestyle

Published on Nov 29, 2019 05:08 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

The fatal dose: Poison in Agatha Christie’s works

Agatha Christie’s first novel is almost 100 years old. Poison played a role in it, and in her later works too

Agatha Christie had worked as a nurse in a Red Cross hospital during World War I. In her autobiography, she writes of her slack periods when all she did was “sit around in a room surrounded by poisons”.(Getty Images)

books

Published on Nov 02, 2019 06:26 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

How Bauhaus built India

Bauhaus, one of the most influential design and architecture movements of the 20th century, came to India via two brilliant young architects

Nehru Science Centre Mumbai: Achyut Kanvinde built this hexagonal building in Bombay in 1980. The central ventilation shafts have been used as structural supports.(Photo courtesy: Sanjay Kanvinde)

india news

Published on Oct 11, 2019 06:09 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

An archival treasure on Gandhi

Bolstered by his experience of ashram life in South Africa, Gandhi first set up an ashram in the Kochrab area of Ahmedabad, which he later shifted to its present site on the banks of the river Sabarmati.

Pratima behn, a communicator at the Sabarmati ashram, explains aspects of Gandhi’s life.(Raj K Raj/HT)

india news

Updated on Sep 30, 2019 01:09 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

Following the footsteps of the Mahatma, en route to Dandi

The metaphor of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s Dandi march is potent. But the facts are no less powerful. A trek of 385.6-km.

The 'National Salt Satyagraha Memorial', Dandi, Gujarat, India is conceived as an experiential journey recreating the spirit and the energy of the 1930 Dandi March led by Mahatma Gandhi and 80 of his fellow Satyagrahis.(Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO)

india news

Updated on Oct 01, 2020 07:50 PM IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | ByParamita Ghosh

‘Media predictions of the death of long-form journalism, the novel, or God, come to nothing in the end’

Granta at 40: Writer Rana Dasgupta will guest-edit a forthcoming issue

Sigrid Rausing, publisher and editor, at the Granta’s London office(Photo: T Rausing)

lifestyle

Updated on Sep 07, 2019 01:22 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

The Indians on the Woodstock stage

On August 15, 1969, the Woodstock festival in the US, brought about half a million people, including 3 Indians, to protest war through music. We talk to Maya Chadda, the only remaining witness of that history

(L-R) Sitar maestro Ravi Shankar with Maya Chadda at Woodstock; the festival took place on Max Yasgur's dairy farm, which he rented to event organizers for $75,000.(Corbis via Getty Images)

lifestyle

Updated on Aug 09, 2019 05:54 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

Cheese alert in Bhutan

The mountain kingdom’s national dish has a secret ingredient — Indian cheese

Fermented cheese and dried mushrooms at a roadside stall in Bhutan.(Photo: Paramita Ghosh)

lifestyle

Published on Jul 26, 2019 03:07 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

Royal misses: lost and found

Women writers have uncovered surprising new details about India’s women who made history, but whom history forgot

‘Nur Jahan is the story of India, the history of India. Once you know Nur, you turn your head and see India differently. A place full of creative, living, dynamic, proactive women,’ says author and professor, Emory University, Ruby Lal.(Photo courtesy: Empress (Penguin Random House India))

books

Updated on Jul 22, 2019 12:10 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

The woman who put man on the moon

Margaret Hamilton, a 28 year-old American programmer, led the team that developed the first software to run on the moon

Margaret Hamilton standing next to the listings of the software she and her MIT team produced for the Apollo project in 1969.(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

world news

Published on Jul 12, 2019 05:32 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

Working long hours? Rest your eyes

How to take care of the dry eye problem

lifestyle

Updated on Jul 06, 2019 12:25 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

What to read as it rains

Monsoon reads - romances, thrillers, sob stories

Various writers have used rain as metaphor to plot a range of human emotions.

lifestyle

Updated on Jun 29, 2019 08:48 AM IST

ByParamita Ghosh, Gargi Gupta

Horror in the shower

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho hit screens on June 16, 1960 and ever since, fear and horror have entered the nondescript washroom.

In the shower scene from the film Psycho, Marion Crane (played by Janet Leigh) screams in terror as Norman Bates tears open her shower curtain.(Getty Images)

lifestyle

Updated on Jun 15, 2019 07:38 AM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

Ruskin Bond aka Bestseller Bond has turned 85 and is out with a new memoir

Bond has been selling well for 30 years - a million copies with one publisher alone!

A youthful Ruskin Bond with his cat.(Photo courtesy: Lone Fox dancing / Speaking Tiger)

books

Updated on Jun 15, 2019 07:44 AM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

A Karachi artist bridges borders with Gully Boy

A community cinema in Karachi is using streaming and the internet to screen Indian films, though desi films are barred there now

Cinema 73 housed in a Karachi garage painted black, seats around 40 and has a movie shown every Sunday at 7.30pm. The first film it showed was Gully Boy.(Photo: Cinema 73)

world news

Updated on Jun 03, 2019 10:15 AM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

Riding a new wave

New beginnings, new adventures, new experiences, new partnerships....Here’s a bunch of plucky men and women who weren’t shy of riding out the stormor navigating uncharted waters

“There were times when people said, ‘You have studied so much and spent so much on your studies and now to give it all up to do something so niche....” I don’t feel like I ‘gave up’ anything,” says lawyer-turned-animal activist Tejshree Savara(Photo courtesy: We Exist)

lifestyle

Published on May 31, 2019 06:30 AM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

From the farm to the chef’s table

The farm-to-table movement seems to have converted city chefs to endorse local produce in a big way. Some of the strongest steps towards sustainability are...

Chef Lokesh Swami holds up a plated dish of Baked Ricotta Gnocchi made from local produce at the restaurant NicoCaara in New Delhi.(Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO)

lifestyle

Updated on May 15, 2019 01:28 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

To be good neighbours in Ayodhya

As a mediation process is under way in the Ayodhya dispute, the city’s residents recall how neighbours helped fill the breach between two communities

(L-R) Tourist guide Kaleshwar Yadav and Iqbal Ansari at Ansari’s residence in Ayodhya.(Amal KS/HT PHOTO)

india news

Updated on Apr 19, 2019 09:01 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

The tribe of Samuel: Joining forces with child-free and anti-natalist evangelists

In Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, there are singles and couples who are trying to build a campaign to promote the idea of a child-free India.

Samuel Raphael with his grandmother Sunanda Karnad in Mumbai. Raphael had hit the headlines when he said he wanted to sue his mother for giving birth to him.(Aalok Soni / HT Photo)

india news

Updated on Mar 18, 2019 04:21 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

Fatima and Fatima

Two remarkable women from the family of Wajid Ali Shah, the last king of Awadh, are reviving his culinary tradition in Calcutta, the city where he famously introduced potatoes into the biryani!

Manzilat Fatima is a descendent of Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Awadh who spent 29 years in exile in Metiayaburj, a Calcutta suburb. She launched a pop-up restaurant of Awadhi cuisine in 2014 and a home dining service, Manzilat’s, in 2018 in Calcutta.(Arijit Sen/HT Photo)

india news

Updated on Feb 26, 2019 04:31 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

How urban middle-class India eats at home

What is urban middle-class India eating now? Everything! What has changed is that people are looking at what works for them, be it health benefits or personal preference

Non-vegetarians are these days opting for grilled and roasted chicken rather than eat thick oily meat curries.(Burhaan Kinu/HT PHOTO)

india news

Updated on Jan 30, 2019 05:17 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

Meet the preserve army of Landour

For 91 years, Prakash & Co has served jams and spreads to the hill station’s schools, hotels and residents, its recipes flavoured with the region’s colonial past.

Anil Prakash at Prakash & Co, which was set up by his grandfather. In addition to their jams and jellies, they have cough drops, lozenges and even brollies. As the author and local resident Ruskin Bond once said, ‘If you want something and Prakash’s doesn’t have it, you probably don’t need it!’(HT Photo: Vinay Santosh Kumar)

lifestyle

Updated on Jan 13, 2019 10:20 AM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

The future of a classic

Literary worth is not enough to determine the greatness of a work of art. A classic speaks to the present, but time alone tells if it can speak for all ages, says writer and editor Henry Eliot

Brad Pitt plays Achilles in the Hollywood film Troy (2004) that dramatises the Trojan War, the crux of Homer’s Iliad.

lifestyle

Published on Nov 30, 2018 06:34 PM IST

ByParamita Ghosh

World War 1: Indians wore cotton khakis in the trenches in winter, many died of cold

An interview with author and journalist Shrabani Basu on the racism faced by Indian soldiers who fought in the First World War

Author and journalist Shrabani Basu has written a book on World War 1 titled ‘For King and Another Country – Indian Soldiers on the Western Front 1914 -18.’

world news

Updated on Nov 11, 2018 10:44 AM IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | ByParamita Ghosh

Darwan Singh Negi, World War 1 Victoria Cross winner from the mountains

Darwan Singh Negi, born in 1883 in Kafarteer village, in the Chamoli district of the United Provinces (present-day Uttarakhand) in British India, joined up as a 19-year-old sepoy in the 1st Battalion of the 39th Garhwal Rifles.

Darwan Singh Negi fought in the trenches in the Battle of Festubert..(Photo courtesy Darwan Singh Negi’s family)

world news

Updated on Nov 11, 2018 08:41 AM IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | ByParamita Ghosh

From Illahabas to Allahabad to Prayagraj - who cares and why

Did Allahabad have a perfect past? Who wants Prayagraj? We map the social history of the change of name of a historical city of India

Kalyan Ghosh is the grandson of Chintamoni Ghosh the founder of The Indian Press. Ghosh was the publisher of all mainstream litterateurs and literary currents in the late 19th century when Allahabad was a boomtown.(Amal KS/HT PHOTO)

india news

Updated on Nov 03, 2018 04:21 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

A good king of Gujarat

World War 2 turned lakhs of Polish children into orphans. Between 1942 and 1946, a thousand of them were given shelter by the Nawanagar maharaja. On the 100th year of Poland’s independence, many of them returned to relive their childhood years in Gujarat.

Maharaja of Nawanagar, Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja, was the patron of Polish children at Balachadi, a village in Jamnagar of the erstwhile princely state of Nawanagar in British india.(PHOTO courtesy: Wieslaw Stypula)

india news

Updated on Oct 17, 2018 05:13 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

In the age of the selfie, the life of the photo studio

Photographer Ketaki Sheth’s work on photo studios transports us to the era when generations of Indians would assemble under the studio lights to get that perfect family portrait

Couples pose for pictures in Babas Studio, Trivandrum, Kerala (2016)(Ketaki Sheth/PHOTOINK)

lifestyle

Updated on Sep 29, 2018 11:22 AM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

What the NRC reveals about the challenges of being Bengali in Assam

The NRC exercise is about identifying illegal immigrants within Assam. So why are the Bengalis saying they are being targeted?

Brothers and retired teachers of Rongpur-1 (near Silchar) Moinuddin Mozumder and Alauddin Mozumder's names are missing from the National Register of Citizens (NRC)’s final draft.(Samir Jana/HT PHOTO)

india news

Updated on Sep 08, 2018 12:39 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

Review: Hicky’s Bengal Gazette; The Untold Story of India’s First Newspaper by Andrew Otis

Andrew Otis’ book on Hicky’s Bengal Gazette, India’s first newspaper, fuses the biography of its remarkable editor with the biography of his time

James Hicky’s campaign against Warren Hastings, the first governor general of India, led to his eventual impeachment when he returned to England.(Courtesy Westland)

books

Updated on Aug 31, 2018 09:04 PM IST

Hindustan Times | ByParamita Ghosh

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Paramita Ghosh

Paramita Ghosh has been working as a journalist for over 20 years and writes socio-political and culture features. She works in the Weekend section as a senior assistant editor and has reported from Vienna, Jaffna and Singapore.

What were French soldiers doing in India in the 18th century? This exhibition holds a clue

Agatha Christie’s first novel is almost 100 years old. Poison played a role in it, and in her later works too

Bauhaus, one of the most influential design and architecture movements of the 20th century, came to India via two brilliant young architects

Bolstered by his experience of ashram life in South Africa, Gandhi first set up an ashram in the Kochrab area of Ahmedabad, which he later shifted to its present site on the banks of the river Sabarmati.

The metaphor of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s Dandi march is potent. But the facts are no less powerful. A trek of 385.6-km.

Granta at 40: Writer Rana Dasgupta will guest-edit a forthcoming issue

On August 15, 1969, the Woodstock festival in the US, brought about half a million people, including 3 Indians, to protest war through music. We talk to Maya Chadda, the only remaining witness of that history

The mountain kingdom’s national dish has a secret ingredient — Indian cheese

Women writers have uncovered surprising new details about India’s women who made history, but whom history forgot

Margaret Hamilton, a 28 year-old American programmer, led the team that developed the first software to run on the moon

How to take care of the dry eye problem

Monsoon reads - romances, thrillers, sob stories

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho hit screens on June 16, 1960 and ever since, fear and horror have entered the nondescript washroom.

Bond has been selling well for 30 years - a million copies with one publisher alone!

A community cinema in Karachi is using streaming and the internet to screen Indian films, though desi films are barred there now

New beginnings, new adventures, new experiences, new partnerships....Here’s a bunch of plucky men and women who weren’t shy of riding out the stormor navigating uncharted waters

The farm-to-table movement seems to have converted city chefs to endorse local produce in a big way. Some of the strongest steps towards sustainability are...

As a mediation process is under way in the Ayodhya dispute, the city’s residents recall how neighbours helped fill the breach between two communities

In Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, there are singles and couples who are trying to build a campaign to promote the idea of a child-free India.

Two remarkable women from the family of Wajid Ali Shah, the last king of Awadh, are reviving his culinary tradition in Calcutta, the city where he famously introduced potatoes into the biryani!

What is urban middle-class India eating now? Everything! What has changed is that people are looking at what works for them, be it health benefits or personal preference

For 91 years, Prakash & Co has served jams and spreads to the hill station’s schools, hotels and residents, its recipes flavoured with the region’s colonial past.

Literary worth is not enough to determine the greatness of a work of art. A classic speaks to the present, but time alone tells if it can speak for all ages, says writer and editor Henry Eliot

An interview with author and journalist Shrabani Basu on the racism faced by Indian soldiers who fought in the First World War

Darwan Singh Negi, born in 1883 in Kafarteer village, in the Chamoli district of the United Provinces (present-day Uttarakhand) in British India, joined up as a 19-year-old sepoy in the 1st Battalion of the 39th Garhwal Rifles.

Did Allahabad have a perfect past? Who wants Prayagraj? We map the social history of the change of name of a historical city of India

World War 2 turned lakhs of Polish children into orphans. Between 1942 and 1946, a thousand of them were given shelter by the Nawanagar maharaja. On the 100th year of Poland’s independence, many of them returned to relive their childhood years in Gujarat.

Photographer Ketaki Sheth’s work on photo studios transports us to the era when generations of Indians would assemble under the studio lights to get that perfect family portrait

The NRC exercise is about identifying illegal immigrants within Assam. So why are the Bengalis saying they are being targeted?

Andrew Otis’ book on Hicky’s Bengal Gazette, India’s first newspaper, fuses the biography of its remarkable editor with the biography of his time

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