Following are excerpts from her article in DNA.

… Years later reading Suketu Mehta’s paean to Bombay, I was drawn back to the moment, for Cuttack is a 1000 years old, truly a millennium city.

The great Barbati fort whose ancient stone ramparts encircle the city in a broken embrace was built around 989 AD by the Keshari dynasty. …

Squeezed on a tongue of land between the two great rivers, Mahanadi and Kathjodi, like any city worth its salt Cuttack soon outgrew its location and acquired a unique ethos.

… Cuttack is its Sahis and Gallis, its babulok and its rickshaws, its lingo with the tangy undercurrent of irony, its Durga Puja and Bali Jatra, kite flying on the sands of Kathjodi, and mouthwatering Dahi Vada Alu Dum. Cuttack is where Subhash Bose was born, where Hari Prasad tuned his flute and Mayadhar Mansingh found his romantic muse. Its moonlight on the Mahanadi, packed houses to Annapurna theatre and 20-20 at Barbati stadium.

… A Mumbai chawl might be an equivalent of the Kataki Sahi but unlike its mammoth big sister, Cuttack knows no riots. Cuttack Chandi, the city’s patron goddess coexists with Qadam-e-Rasool, the seat of political authority of the Moslems of Orissa in centuries of harmony.

… They say that whoever has not gorged on Raghu’s Dahi Vada Aloo Dum has not yet sampled Cuttack . For these urad dal fritters in yogurt sauce with spicy gravy potatoes can tempt the taste buds to distraction. Come evening cars from around a fifty kilometer radius line up for his fare. Raghu is now the stuff of business school curricula like Mumbai’s dabbawallahs! …