The Phulkian NarrativeArticle
Patiala on the PalateArticle
Punjab
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To understand Patiala is to recognise it as a city born of tactical necessity and refined through cultural ambition. Unlike the Mughal metropolises of the north or the planned colonial cantonments, it emerged within the ‘Malwa’ region of Punjab, part of the cis-Sutlej tract, in the eighteenth-…
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In popular imagery, Punjab royalty brings to mind the stalwart personality of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh Empire, under whose patronage Punjabi identity and culture saw a renaissance. Forgotten in common culture are other equally important individuals, chief among them Maharaja…
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The gharanas (schools) of Hindustani music often evoke images of established musical lineages, rooted in particular regions or courts for centuries. The association of ‘ghar’ (or house) with the term strengthens the idea that gharanas are families of musicians, found in the cities they are named…
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In colonial India, princely authority operated under the constraints of British paramountcy. While rulers could retain internal autonomy, their sovereignty was limited in formal political terms. In this context, cultural domains — especially sport — emerged as crucial sites for the performance and…
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Patiala, once a princely state of Punjab, was established as an independent riyasat (principality) that managed to maintain positive relations with the East India Company. Patiala’s maharajas were thus able to provide adequate patronage to social, economic, and modern reforms as well as various…
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Art Deco emerged in the early decades of the twentieth-century within a world recalibrating itself after rupture. Across Europe and the United States of America, architects, designers, and craftsmen turned away from the elaborate historicism of the nineteenth-century, seeking instead a visual…
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The political geography of the British Indian Empire was never as stable as imperial cartography implied. Alongside the provinces under direct British rule existed a constellation of princely states, whose rulers governed internally while tethered to the Crown through treaties, protocol, and the…
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A tille wali jutti, a traditional leather shoe embroidered with metallic gold thread, announces itself through its surface. Gold embroidery catches the light immediately, drawing the eye before the form of the shoe is fully registered. Across Punjab, this silhouette is familiar and recognisable,…
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ਨੈਣਾ ਦੀ ਨਮੀ ਦਾ ਵੀ ਕੁਝ ਕ੍ਰਿਸ਼ਮਾ ਸੀ ਰਲੀਆ
ਸਾਡੇ ਰੰਗਲੇ ਸੱਜਣ ਦਾ ਸਤਰੰਗਾਹ ਸਿਵਾ ਬਲਯਾ
ਸੁਰਜੀਤ ਪਾਤਰ
(It was, perhaps, also the miracle of the tears in my eyes,
That lent the colour to our friend’s funeral pyre.)
—Surjit Patar, “Lali Baba,” in Lafzanapul, ed. Sukhwinder (2024).
Bhootwara — a…
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If forts and palaces constitute Patiala’s architectural memory, then its food operates as the city’s aftertaste, carrying forward histories that architecture alone cannot contain. Situated within the Malwa region of Punjab, part of the cis-Sutlej tract, the culinary landscape of the city of Patiala…
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