Music, dance, rangoli & crafts
Festival food, thalis & temple meals
Made less often, still worth keeping
Traditional food for everyday wellbeing
Culture Chronicles explores the India behind the food. Here you will find the Indian culture and traditions we celebrate, the festivals, the offerings made in temples and homes, and the recipes our elders remember. Some stories begin in the kitchen. Others take you to the art, music, rituals and celebrations that still shape everyday life across India.
Living Traditions
From the morning rangoli at the doorstep to the music and dance of every festival, Indian culture and traditions are part of everyday life, not just museum pieces.
Music: India has two great classical music systems. Carnatic music, rooted in the South, grew around compositions by saint-composers such as Tyagaraja. Hindustani music of the North, on the other hand, grew through gharanas, schools passed from teacher to student. Both rest on raga (melody) and tala (rhythm). Even today, students learn them the traditional way, at the feet of a guru.
Dance: India’s classical dances tell stories from the epics through gesture and expression. The eight classical dance forms are Bharatanatyam from Tamil Nadu, Kathakali and Mohiniyattam from Kerala, Kathak from the North, Odissi from Odisha, Kuchipudi from Andhra Pradesh, Manipuri and Sattriya from Assam. Kathakali, for example, is famous for its painted faces and towering headdresses.
Rangoli: Every morning, families across India draw a pattern at the doorstep to welcome the day. Tamil Nadu calls it kolam, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana muggulu, Bengal alpana and Rajasthan mandana. Traditional kolam uses rice flour, which also feeds ants and birds. During Pongal, Onam and Diwali, the designs grow larger and more colourful.
Crafts: Each region has its own. Look for Madhubani painting from Bihar, Pattachitra from Odisha, Warli art from Maharashtra and Kalamkari from Andhra Pradesh. Similarly, there are Paithani and Banarasi silks, phulkari embroidery from Punjab, Jaipur’s blue pottery, Channapatna wooden toys from Karnataka and the bamboo and cane work of the North-East. Many families still practise these crafts after generations.
Feasts & Offerings
Some food is cooked only for an occasion or for God. This section covers the dishes of Indian festivals, temple offerings, community kitchens and the great thalis of every region.
Temple kitchens: The Jagannath Temple in Puri runs one of the largest temple kitchens in the world. Cooks prepare food in stacked earthen pots over wood fires, without onion or garlic. They first offer it to the deity, and then devotees share it as Mahaprasad. Many other temples have their own famous prasadam, from the laddu of Tirupati to the panchamrit given after a puja.
Langar: At the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the community kitchen serves free meals to tens of thousands of people every day, whatever their faith. Volunteers roll rotis and stir dal in huge cauldrons. Then everyone sits together on the floor to eat, a tradition that goes back to Guru Nanak.
Festival offerings: Before a festival meal, families first offer the food to God at home. For example, there is modak for Ganesh Chaturthi, sakkarai pongal for Pongal, and panakam and kosambari for Rama Navami. Ugadi pachadi marks the Telugu and Kannada new year, while kheer and mithai appear on countless other occasions.
The thali, across India: The idea of a complete meal served together runs from one end of the country to the other. Kerala’s sadya, for instance, brings more than twenty dishes on a banana leaf for Onam. In Himachal, traditional cooks called botis prepare the dham, served on leaf plates. Assam’s thali brings rice, dal, khar and pitika. Meanwhile, Gujarat and Rajasthan serve sweet, sour and spicy bowls side by side, and a festive Maharashtrian thali comes with varan bhaat and puran poli.
Old Family Recipes
These are family recipes that people make less often today, or only in some homes and regions, many of them tied to festivals and the seasons. We record them with the memories behind them, so that they keep being cooked.
Pickles and preserves: Before refrigerators, families spent the summer preserving. Raw mangoes became avakaya in Andhra, chunda and methia keri in Gujarat and aam ka achar in the North. In the same way, cooks salted lemons, gooseberries and green chillies and cured them in the sun in ceramic jars. In Rajasthan, they dried ker and sangri to last through the year.
Sun-dried staples: In the hot months, families made vadams in Tamil Nadu, vadiyalu in Andhra Pradesh, sandige in Karnataka, bori in Bengal and wadi in Punjab. They dried them on rooftops and stored them for the monsoon, along with hand-rolled papads.
Festival dishes: Many sweets and savouries appear only once a year, and shop-bought versions are slowly replacing them. Examples include athirasam and murukku for Deepavali in the South, anarse for Diwali in Maharashtra, and pitha for Bihu in Assam and Sankranti in Bengal and Odisha. Thekua for Chhath in Bihar is another.
Old ways of cooking: Cooks ground masalas on a stone (ammikal or sil-batta) and slow-cooked dishes in clay, brass or iron pots. Many families say this gave the food a taste modern kitchens cannot match. Likewise, millets such as ragi, jowar and foxtail millet were once everyday food, and they are only now returning to city kitchens.
Healthy Living
Long before wellness became a trend, Indian homes practised yoga and meditation, ate with the seasons and kept fasting foods for festivals. Today, modern research is catching up with many of these habits.
Yoga and meditation: Yoga brings together postures (asanas), breathing (pranayama) and meditation, and India has practised it for thousands of years. Today people follow it worldwide, and 21 June is the International Day of Yoga. Studies suggest regular practice can lower stress and improve flexibility, balance and sleep.
Eating with the seasons: Ayurveda calls this ritucharya, adjusting food to the time of year. Summer brings cooling buttermilk, curd rice, kokum, sattu and aam panna. The monsoon, in contrast, calls for light, freshly cooked food with ginger, pepper and a warming rasam. Winter is for sesame, jaggery, ghee, bajra and greens like sarson. Finally, spring Indian festivals such as Ugadi bring bitter neem flowers to the plate.
When to eat: Traditional advice says to eat a good breakfast, make lunch the main meal and keep dinner light and early. Research on the body clock now supports this. Studies suggest the body handles food better earlier in the day, and they link late, heavy dinners to poorer sleep and higher blood sugar.
Everyday habits: Fermented foods like idli, dosa, curd and kanji support gut health. In addition, spices such as turmeric, ginger and cumin are part of daily cooking. Eating seated, by hand and without hurry also encourages slower, more mindful meals.
These are traditional practices shared for interest, not medical advice. Our first stories for this section are on the way.
