Calcutta -The City That Refuses to DieÂ
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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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…
Hello, Tomorrow
I had my epiphany on a Seoul subway in 2004. All around me, young men and women rode to work silently, mesmerised by television programmes…
Not Selling Volumes
It was a browser’s dream come true kilometres of books that took hold of the bibliophile’s heart-strings and did not stop tugging for hours. For…
ITC – Haksar’s last Hurrah
Sentimentality rarely intrudes in to shareholders’ meetings, but this one was different. Over 3,000 had gathered in the incongruous setting of a Calcutta cathedral compound…
Friend in Need
The Rashtriya Swyamsewak Sangh (RSS) is everybody’s favourite bugbear. So perhaps it was inevitable that it would be accused of having a hand in the…
From Flood To Trickle
Large advertisements in Delhi newspapers-last fortnight announced that Mother Dairy was being forced to dilute the fat content of milk supplied to the capital’s citizens…
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…
Vulture Culture
Social media –and mass media– fuel a horrific cycle of evil Psychopathy. Voyeurism. Sadism. Schadenfreude. Vicarious pleasure. Blood lust. You will find several terms to…