Life & Style

I imagine Boston will be smart, but smug. Earnest, and a little dull — a history lesson with literature thrown in. Cue the Boston Tea Party, MIT and Harvard, and Longfellow on that heroic midnight ride of Paul Revere.

I do not expect to get teary-eyed at a reenactment on board a gently bobbing boat. Or gasp with delight in front of a Jackson Pollock at the Harvard Art Museums. Or find myself singing Zombie by The Cranberries with a group of very cheerful drunks at an Irish bar.

How much of Boston can you see in 48 hours? I pull on my boots on a cold winter morning and set out in this elegant, alluringly walkable city to find out.

Food at Mooncusser by Chef Carl Dooley
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SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

DAY ONE

8 am: Bagels at the Rowes Wharf Grille

I wake up early to drink in the view, along with a strong espresso shot. The Boston Harbor Hotel (Rowes Wharf) overlooks the harbour’s marina, and the sparkling water is speckled with boats. Breakfast is at the Rowes Wharf Grille, which, serves an average cappuccino but makes up for it with deliciously light bagels topped with curls of salmon and a bowl of cool, tangy cream cheese.

A historic ship docked at Boston Tea Party Museum
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10 am — Throwing chests overboard at Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum

As it turns out, I am a revolutionary at heart, if not a very important one. We are on board the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, and a feisty actor in a sweeping colonial-era gown, complete with a chequered apron and frilly bonnet, rouses visitors, recreating that historic December night in 1773.

In an unexpectedly moving performance, we boo and yell hurrah as an actor playing Samuel Adams shouts, “No taxation without representation.” The rebellion provoked British retaliation and pushed the American colonies onto the path to revolution. And for those of us who snoozed, at this museum we can participate in the act once more, heaving imitation tea chests overboard (while posing for cameras).

Unlike the revolutionaries, who had to melt into the anonymity of the night after this act, we can also sit down for a cup of tea afterwards. At Abigail’s Tea Room, also on board, you can sample the five blends thrown overboard that night.

The Samuel Adams statue in front of the Faneuil Hall building in the Faneuil Hall Plaza. Samuel Adams (1722-1803) was an American Patriot who helped organize the American Revolution, signed the Declaration of Independence, and became Governor of Massachusetts. The Custom House Tower is in the background.
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Try the New England clam chowder and end with a Boston cream pie in this charming, sunlit space. And if you need something stronger than tea, order a Rattle Skull cocktail, made with rum, whiskey and dark beer.

2 pm: Join the Freedom Trail walking tour

It is cold and windy beside the Samuel Adams statue in front of Faneuil Hall, once the meeting space of revolutionaries and now a gift shop bristling with coffee mugs, sweatshirts and soap. As we wait for the rest of the group, our tour guide from Boston By Foot (a non-profit educational organization committed to inspiring locals and visitors to discover the city), explains how the narrow roads, fringed by tall buildings, tend to funnel the wind, resulting in a cold that creeps past coats and mufflers.

Undeterred, we set out. In a bid to make peace with the past — and correct history, which, as always, is written by the victors — our guide explains how in 1625 this was the Shawmut Peninsula, known in the Algonquian language as “Mushauwomuk” (“the boat landing place”), and how its original inhabitants lost it to English settlers. Her stories bring the Revolution alive and explain how, ironically, Boston became known as the cradle of liberty.

Ornate interior steps and entrance of the historic Renaissance style architecture of the Boston public library in the Back Bay District neighbourhood of downtown Boston Massachusetts USA
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5pm: Catch up on your reading at Boston Public Library

Founded in 1848 and widely regarded as the first large free municipal library in the United States, Boston Public Library feels a bit like stepping into a scene from The Great Gatsby: Beaux-Arts drama, grand staircases, arched windows and carved stone lions.

I pull up a chair and catch up on email in Bates Hall, the hushed reading room, beside students sipping Starbucks as they work on their projects. With its soaring barrel-vaulted ceilings, retro green banker lamps set out in military rows, and shelves of leather-wrapped, gold-embossed books, the space encourages reading — something we can all do with in this age of endless distraction.

Bates Hall at the The Boston Public Library, a reading room that encourages you to focus
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7pm: Smoked rainbow trout at Chef Carl Dooley’s Mooncusser

The Michelin Guide finally launched in Boston, though it was surprisingly stingy with stars given how many remarkable restaurants the city is home to. We pick Mooncusser, a favourite with locals who are very proud of Chef Carl Dooley, a Cambridge native who uses local ingredients in surprisingly inventive ways, adding spices and techniques sourced from around the world. His food is precise and disciplined, while the space is fun and relaxed, with a comprehensive wine list.

Food at Mooncusser

I start with silky carrot soup spiced with guajillo chilli, and tuck into smoked rainbow trout, served with celery root, crispy tortilla and salsa verde.

After dinner, we check into XV Beacon on Beacon Hill, which takes us back a couple of centuries with its historic Federal-style row houses and narrow cobblestone streets. But more on that tomorrow.

The pet-friendly XV Beacon Hotel lobby
| Photo Credit:
Michelle Chaplow

DAY TWO

8am: Wake up at XV Beacon, and walk to Boston Common

Sure we geeked it up on day one with libraries, revolutions and history. Day two is when Boston unbuttons its collar and kicks off its shoes. I luxuriate in room service for breakfast: creamy Greek yoghurt topped with fresh berries, goji berries, chia seeds, toasted oats and hemp. I pair it with an unexpectedly delicious Green Monster smoothie, packed with kale, spinach, pineapple, banana, almond milk and flaxseed.

If you are an early riser, walk across to Boston Common, where the colonial militia once mustered for the Revolution. It continues to be a space for free speech and public assembly. Also, ideal for a picnic.

A couple at Boston Common, the public park in Boston, Ma.
| Photo Credit:
Liz Leyden

11am: Get close to a Pollock at Harvard Art Museums

The Harvard Art Museums are relatively compact, so you never feel overwhelmed, and yet some of the biggest names in art hang casually side by side, making every turn a surprise.

Best of all, there are no crowds — the busiest part of the museum seems to be Jenny’s Café, where students gather over cappuccinos. I spot works by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso. As I move from room to room, Modernism unfolds like a relaxed art class, with students setting up easels to sketch directly in front of the paintings.

On the top floor, I pause at large glass windows that look into sunlit conservation studios, where art is being painstakingly restored by students, all bent over centuries-old surfaces with magnifying lenses, cotton swabs and brushes.

Students sketching at the Harvard Art Museums
| Photo Credit:
Shonali Muthalaly

1 pm: Lunch and purple prose at Lovestruck Books

We drop by Lovestruck Books at Harvard Square, a romance bookstore with a wine bar, an unabashedly pink couch and lip-shaped cushions. I browse books with names like Polyamorous Advice by Sam Cat, The Einstein of Sex by Daniel Brook and What to Do When You Get Dumped.

The categories are impressive: Romantasy, Paranormal Romance, Sports Romance and Contemporary Romance. You can also choose a ‘blind date’ and buy a book wrapped in brown paper — which may prove better than your last Tinder date.

Have lunch while you read Baby-Making for Everyone: a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich paired with either their iced Red Eye (iced coffee with a double shot of espresso) or a glass of Bruto & The Beast 2021 by Valli Unite from Piedmont, which Sophie, the bartender, describes as “an existential, Kafka-reading type who’s effortlessly cool.” (I would date him.)

Visitors to the Harvard Yard, the oldest part of the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wait in line to take photos with the John Harvard Statue
| Photo Credit:
hapabapa

4 pm: Behind the scenes with a student at Harvard University

Ashmit Singh, an intimidatingly brilliant student at Harvard University, shows us around the campus. Student-led Cambridge-based Trademark Tours tours are a fun way to peek into everyday life at some of the world’s most prestigious universities, Harvard and MIT. Ashmit takes us through Harvard Yard, Memorial Hall and to the John Harvard statue, where we rub his boot for good luck — which usually reportedly translates to academic success and Ivy-League-adjacent admission miracles. (I am still waiting by my mailbox.)

We pause at Lowell House, where Matt Damon and Natalie Portman once lived, and then Ashmit takes us past the Final Clubs, including Spee, which counts John F Kennedy among its members. (A Final Club is a private, invitation-only social club at Harvard — part dining society, part networking space and, from the sound of it, home to some outstanding parties.)

We walk past an Indian food truck blasting Diljit Dosanjh, reportedly famous for its samosa chaat, and stand in front of the Brutalist Science Center, which came up in the 1970s. Ashmit quotes former Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell: “A well-educated man must know a little bit of everything and one thing well.” He adds, “So there are four areas you have to take classes in: arts, humanities, ethics and civics.” His own subjects include the science of sleep, the art of Armenia and Chinese philosophy.

7pm: Dinner and a performance at Grace by Nia

Grace by Nia is delightfully over the top: chandeliers dripping golden light, velvet curtains in gold and orange, and ornate pillars. The hum of conversation is punctuated by cocktail shakers, and the floor is sticky with fruit juice and beer. A modern-day supper club, the space has an intimate stage for live music. The band is playing Minnie Riperton’s Loving You from the early Seventies.

Our waiter is Colombian, and as the band launches into Chris Brown, we order from a menu focussed on Southern cooking. We eat crab cakes and fried Louisiana catfish with buttermilk batter and Cajun remoulade. The music is the point here, so do not have high expectations of the food or cocktails — both are okay.

9 pm to dawn: We party Boston-style

There is a patient, seemingly never-ending line of trendy hipsters in sparkly tops and miniskirts outside Carrie Nation Cocktail Club, next door to our hotel, XV Beacon. Named after an anti-booze crusader who reportedly walked into bars “with a hatchet in hand and the Lord at her side.” She would hate this flapper-era bar, where people party hard on weekends — not that anyone seems to care.

It is far too cold to wait in line for hours. And I have outgrown nights that begin with lipstick, optimism and tequila shots, then end with paracetamol and regret. We head to the cosy Emmett’s Irish Pub next door instead, where we get carded (much to our delight) by the grouchy doorman.

Inside, we fall in with a loud, raucous group knocking back pints of draft beer and singing together like a spirited — if occasionally off-key — choir.

I scan the menu. The most popular beer is called Sam Adams. Of course it is.

In a city that built its identity on rebellion, it feels only right to raise a glass to freedom.

At a time when regional and local forms of art are being spotlighted, Al Mubarak Koyilandi from Kozhikode, comes into focus for the work the group has done to revive muttippattu, a traditional musical art form. The blend of modernity and tradition ensures the resonance of their music with youngsters and seniors alike. Al Mubarak Koyilandi is a 40-year-old institution, home to a team of 25 boys and men, teens and those in their mid-twenties, where traditional performing arts, such as kolkali, and martial arts, like kalaripayattu, are taught. 

About a year and a half ago, they incorporated muttipaattu, a Mappila folk performance art typically sung at wedding nights, into their repertoire, which has found them many fans and appreciation on social media.

All the members of Al-Mubarak
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SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Founders and cousins, Mufeed VM and Shamil PT, both 25, sculpted this dynamic team with local artists they have known since childhood or through their institution. Mufeed VM has been a stunt choreographer for the past three and a half years, in films such as Aavesham and Bagheera. “As a singer myself, I saw potential in kalari and kolkali artists, and I could not let their talent go unnoticed,” said Shamil. Shamil’s father, VK Hameed Gurukkal, a 2023 Kerala Folklore Award recipient for kalaripayattu, and his brother, VK Abbas Gurukkal, both Kalari masters for the past 40 years, guided them to this success with their understanding of the art form, as firsthand troupers.

Muttipaattu is a traditional folk performance, usually performed at the mylanchi raavu, which is the day before a Muslim wedding. Where male and female relatives of the bride or groom gather around singing mylanji paattu, oppana paattu or mappila songs while creating rhythm by clapping hands or banging objects like wooden benches and tabletops, getting the name muttippattu, ‘mutti’ means to strike or knock and ‘paattu’ means song.

Although this is a culturally significant art form it has been in the shadows unlike the more popular performances like vattappattu or oppana. Realising the importance of preserving and uplifting this art form, Al Mubarak has endeavoured to revive and reconstruct it by incorporating modern instruments, such as the clap box and triple drum into the lineup of instruments. Last year an all-Kerala muttipaattu competition was held in Kasaragod, proof of the love and support this traditional art form is beginning to receive.

How it is performed

On stage, two lead singers open with their signature humming technique, drafted by Salahudheen, a 24-year-old local artist from Koyilandi, where he takes lyrics from the Anupallavi of the song and applies his artistry to develop a soft and soothing therapeutic opening. This is followed by a triple drumming performance by 16-year-old Sayand Santhosh, who has captivated the audience with his charm and polished performance. This will be accompanied by a clap box or cajon, used to replicate the sound of banging on a wooden surface and a timer, a circular instrument generally used to set the song’s timing. All these instruments layer in as the singers clap and sing along. They usually perform mappila and oppana songs and other Malayalam and Hindi classics. 

Their popular songs include Pathimakkathudhithulla malaralle (a Mappila pattu) and Dagabaaz re from Dabangg 2, among other old Malayalam film songs, such as Ezhaam Baharinte, which is exceptionally appreciated by the audience for Salahudheen’s composition.

Al Mubarak performs at wedding ceremonies and college events across Kerala. Occasionally, they do street shows on Kappad and Kozhikode beaches as well as on local trains, where the public gets to enjoy their performances for free. “Their performance was so good that I didn’t want to step off the train at my station,” said Hana Nasreen, a student, who was on a train where they performed. With the assistance of DMA Kalari Dubai, an extension of their own Kalari institution, they performed a live show at the 2025 Mamukkoya Fest in Dubai, hosted by the Dubai Folklore Society.

Practising in their free time, meeting at the Kalari institution, Al Mubrarak Koyilandi has grown from 18 local performers to an energetic and talented team of 25 which has left their signature across Kerala’s 14 districts. Through their dedication and hard work, this age-old tradition still breathes, fascinating audiences of all ages equally.

Published – January 09, 2026 02:24 pm IST

Manuela Runge, a Zurich-based theatre and dance artist, conducting a workshop for amateur actors in Tiruchi.
| Photo Credit: M MOORTHY

Manuela Runge, a Zurich-based theatre and dance artist, conducting a workshop for amateur actors in Tiruchi.
| Photo Credit: M MOORTHY

The origin of the caste system does not lie in religious ideas of purity and pollution, racial differences, tribal or Harappan customs — or even the British census, as recent social media commentary would suggest. It lies in ancient political contingencies and economic circumstances.

The earliest mention of a four-tiered hierarchy occurs in the Purusha Sukta of the Rigveda. But it is commonly accepted that this is a late book, and that the Purusha Sukta is a later insertion. There is no mention of the shudra in the Rigveda outside of the Purusha Sukta. There are only doubtful and rare occurrences of even ‘brahmana’ as a social category. Therefore, one can agree with Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton in their 2014 translation of The Rigveda, that in the earliest religious poetry of India, the caste system is embryonic.

The Rigveda : The Earliest Religious Poetry of India

But how did that embryo come to be? Studies by scholars Michael Witzel (The Realm of the Kuru) and Thennilapuram Mahadevan (The Rsi Index of the Vedic Anukramani System and Pravara Lists: Toward a Prehistory of the Brahmans) provide the keenest insight.

To recount Witzel’s arguments briefly, the tribe of the Kurus became predominant after the Battle of the Ten Kings or Dasrajna mentioned in the Rigveda. After the battle, the “geographical centre of the Vedic civilization” moved eastwards from Punjab to Kurukshetra, the land lying between rivers Sarasvati and Drishadvati, about 175 kilometres northwest of New Delhi. (This region would later come to be subsumed under the term Aryavarta, defined as being the region between the Himalayas and the Vindhyas, and to the east of where river Saraswati disappears and west of the Kalaka forest, which is supposed to have been at the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna.)

As they consolidated their power, the Kurus felt the need for a unified canon, drawing on the sacrificial hymns of their own tribe as well as defeated tribes. The last hymn of the Rigveda is about unity. It says: “Come together, speak together; together let your thoughts agree…”

Rigveda bundles, with illustrations from each of the sections of the Veda. On display at the Saraswati Mahal Library in Tanjore.
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives

Until this happened, around 1000 BCE, writes Witzel, “the Rigvedic hymns were held as ‘personal or clan property’”. When a common canon was made out of these collections, writes Mahadevan, the families that were once in charge of their own hymnal traditions became the backbone of a ‘pan-Vedic agency to sing a pan-Vedic corpus’. There being no writing at this time, they were now an ‘oral agency’ carrying forward a common tradition, now ‘bound into a biological body’ through new rules regulating marriages among them.

The first ‘caste’ takes shape

As Mahadevan tells it, each of those who had a collection of family songs was now called a gotra. The new rules were that marriages must not occur within the same gotra (exogamy), but must occur within the 50-odd gotras (endogamy), thus creating ‘One, Out of Many’, “the ‘caste’ of Brahmans”. The brahmanas are thus the first and perhaps the only real ‘varna/caste’ to be formed at a particular time and place, with enormous implications for the future.

The ‘ksatriya’ or the warrior/ruler caste will be mostly decided de facto: those who manage to get and keep power are regarded as ksatriyas. Historian D.D. Kosambi once wrote: “Don’t be misled by the Indian Ksatriya caste, which was oftener than not a Brahmanical fiction.” Those who do not fall into either of these categories are considered ‘vaisya’ or common folk — the residual category of the Arya community.

In the following centuries, those who were outside the Arya culture, but served the Arya as domestic workers or as farm labourers, were accommodated within the system as low-status ‘shudra’. Those who were outside of all four categories, such as the tribes who lived in the forests, were regarded as ‘outcastes’. But this fully fleshed-out varna-jati system will take time to develop, being dependent on the speed with which agriculture and, therefore, the need to engage non-family labour, took off.

An engraving from 1872 of brahmana men learning
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Many things follow from this. One, the caste system did not arise out of a purity-pollution cline; nowhere in the Rigveda or other samhitas is it suggested that there is a hierarchy of purity among the brahmanas, rajanya and the vis or vaisya. Two, it did not arise out of differences in eating habits; the idea of vegetarianism originated centuries later with the ascetic sramana traditions such as Jainism and Buddhism in Greater Magadha, which lies to the east of Aryavarta.

Three, it had little to do with race or ethnicity to begin with; the three varnas were all considered Arya. Four, the idea of a varna system did not spread from a pre-Aryan or Harappan Civilization. And five, it was not brought to India by the Steppe pastoralists, who called themselves Arya. It was made in India, and ideas such as purity and pollution were justificatory accruals that occurred centuries later.

Varanasi was important for those on both sides of the debate over varna: brahmanas and sramanas
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Getty Images

The trigger for the beginning of the caste system was the need of a victorious kingdom to have a unified religion and a priesthood to administer it. The best model that fits this evidence is that of a universal ‘Homo Opportunisticus’, and not an Indian ‘Homo Hierarchicus’ which, according to sociologist Louis Dumont, represents a cultural predilection for hierarchy. Given the opportunity, political and economic man will create a system of belief and along with it, a social system, to perpetuate his status and power.

What began as an embryonic scheme in the Rigveda bloomed into a full-fledged system in the later brahmana texts when settled agriculture began to take off. These texts elevated the four-fold hierarchy from the world of mortals to the universe itself. Gods, animals, hymns, seasons, were all mapped into the varna system so that, as professor Brian K. Smith wrote in his book Classifying the Universe (1994): “…certain humans could present what was an arbitrary social status or status claim as natural and sacred…”

The Rigveda title sheet in the Saraswathi Mahal Library collections
| Photo Credit:
R. Shivaji Rao

Contest over the meaning of dharma

The next step in the evolution of caste happened in the context of a vigorous resistance to it from the sramanic religions. Buddhism and Jainism refused to acknowledge the authority of the Vedas, condemned animal sacrifices and accepted into their monastic orders people from all classes. Emperor Asoka’s espousal of the cause of ‘dhamma’, without mentioning varna, queered the pitch further. In response, newly composed Dharmasutra and Dharmasastra that lay down the rules of conduct for members of the Brahmanical society restated the varna ideology with vigour and patterned it into every nook and corner of Arya custom, from the cradle to the pyre. Manusmriti (or Manava Dharmasastra) was only one of many similar texts written around the beginning of the Common Era.

Dharmasutras

But when these texts were being written, the varna hierarchy was far from commonly accepted. Buddhism, especially, was experiencing the kind of expansion never before seen, riding a wave of prosperity caused by booming trade. But this would change when, between 235 CE and 284 CE, the Roman Empire was hit by a crisis that almost brought it down, the Kusana empire started disintegrating, and world trade was disrupted.

The next source of prosperity, however, was already evident: the deepening and widening of agriculture across the subcontinent. This could only happen if millions of people were drawn into the agricultural system as labourers, especially as farm settlements moved into the lands of forest-dwelling or semi-nomadic groups. And this was a humongous task, which the dozens of new kingdoms that came into being took on eagerly from around the middle of the first millennium CE.

In this task, they found the social framework based on a hereditary hierarchy useful. To implement the new system — and to lend it legitimacy — many kings, including those professing Buddhist or Jaina faith, invited brahmanas from Aryavarta to come and settle in their kingdoms on lands granted to them. Following this, the varna-jati system, whose two core principles are (a) an alliance between the ruling and priestly powers, and (b) ‘an ascending scale of reverence and a descending scale of contempt’ as Ambedkar put it, spread to the rest of the subcontinent through agro-temple-state formations in the first millennium CE.

This will shape many social attitudes, perhaps leading sociologist Dumont to think up the concept of Homo Hierarchicus in 1966, but without paying attention to the long resistance against it and the way it was shaped by political and economic contingencies. Thirty-five years later, anthropologist Nicholas Dirks would publish another last-mile snapshot of caste in his book Castes of Mind, but without paying attention to the step-by-step evolution and geographical expansion of caste.

What we know now is that caste was historically contingent in its origins and socially contested throughout its history and eventually gave rise, in the 20th century, to Ambedkar’s call to ‘annihilate’ it.

The writer, author of Early Indians, is working on a sequel focusing on India’s cultural formation.

The full text of his guest lecture at the Indian History Congress on December 28, 2025 titled ‘Homo Opportunisticus: The Contingent, Contested Evolution of Caste’ is available here.

NB: This article does not make a hard distinction between varna and jati because in the ancient texts we are dealing with, there is no indication that the two were treated as different systems.

The kite festival in Hyderabad held during the month of January every year is a crowd puller.
| Photo Credit: NAGARA GOPAL