Murali Duggineni

Murali Duggineni

What makes saffron the world’s most expensive spice?

Saffron comes from Crocus sativus, a small purple-flowering plant cultivated primarily in Iran, Kashmir, and Spain. Each flower produces just three slender red stigmas, which are the source of the spice. These must be hand-plucked during a narrow two-to-three-week harvest…

Ellen Church: the nurse who calmed the skies

Aviation started out as a man’s domain, but a quiet shift was about to redefine its future. In 1930, commercial aviation had a trust problem. Aircraft were noisy, turbulent, and widely perceived as dangerous. On May 15, the same year,…

Why are school buses yellow?

That unmistakable shade of yellow you see on a school bus is no accident. It is the result of deliberate science, a visionary conference, and one man’s determination to make the roads safer for children. In 1939, Columbia University professor Frank Cyr convened…

What a “ghazal” really means

Imagine a conversation where every sentence is a world of its own, yet every breath follows the same heartbeat. This is the essence of the Ghazal, a poetic form that not only tells a story, but captures the fragmented, bittersweet…

Poramboku: the fall of a word that once meant shared wealth

The term poramboku is a fascinating example of how a technical administrative word evolved into a social slur. Derived from the Tamil elements puram (“outside”) and pokku (“account” or “record”), it originally referred to land outside or exempt from revenue registers. During the Chola period…

Guns firing from ship

Thunder of honor: the story behind gun salutes

Long before medals and ceremonies defined prestige, the thunderclap of cannon fire spoke volumes. Gun salutes, shots fired to honor a person or occasion, have historically served as one of the most dramatic expressions of rank and respect. The louder…