CALCUTTA -THE CITY THAT REFUSES TO DIE
Nowhere else in India do people engulf you as they do in Calcutta. From the moment you step off your train or plane, and begin…
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TOURISM – A NEW LOOK AT OLD PLACES
Been away from India for some years? Planning to go back this year, family in tow, for a long vacation? If the answer is ‘Yes’…
Book Review: My Years in an Indian Prison
So much is being written about political prisoners in India these days, that the layman might succumb to the temptation of focusing more on the…
READING THE BAR CODES
“UPON MY WORD: India’s prisons are stuck in a time warp” STRANGE HOW time’s machine travels back and forth at warp speed. Two hundred and…
CALCUTTA IS FOEVER
Thirty years ago, a dishevelled man leaned across and shouted at me in the smoke-filled, raucous Olympia bar on Calcutta’s Park Street: “Calcutta is forever!”…
The Big Squeeze
Turkmenistan’s “President for Life” Saparmurat Niyazov erected a 50-ft gold-plated statue of himself in the centre of the capital Ashgabat, eight years before he gave…
The Takeover Man
Most of us are cursed with poor memory. We need episodic markers to help us measure our lives from one significant remembrance to another. Our…
Spate Of Senseless Tragedies
Qutab Minar, the 72.5-metre-high monolithic tower that Iltutmish built 750 years ago, witnessed two shocks in its hoary life-span. In 1368, it was struck by…
Stone Age Shakti
That Trite phrase ‘as old as the hills’ has suddenly taken on startling significance in relation to a thread that runs through Hindu beliefs: the…
Jaat Kahan Ho
It is Useful to remind ourselves about how infinitesimal we are in the cosmic order. As we methodically destroy our planet, it is unlikely we…