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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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…
Faith, Hope And No Charity
The International Year of Disabled Persons (IYDP) began with a bang: the National Federation of the Blind led its members in a vociferous agitation in…
The Enemy Within
Iran’s much-vaunted Islamic revolution appears to have finally spilled over into India. Chanting Allah-o–Akbar and wielding primitive weapons like lathis bristling with nails, bicycle chains,…
Sri Lanka – The Aftermath
Ganesha’s temple had never seen so many supplicants, all with unanswerable prayers Colombo’s Tamils call it Pillaiyar Kovil, and its ornamented gateway on Galle Road…
Toilet – Training India
On September 25, the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi received the Gates Foundation’s Global Goalkeepers Award in New York for his leadership of the Swachh…
Killing me Softly
Death is inevitable, but not in a gas chamber He took a deep breath of air. Once again he caught a strangeness on the wind,…
APOCALYPSE NOW
Forget global warming and focus on local warnings Kanpur, Faridabad, Varanasi, Gaya, Patna, Delhi, Lucknow, Agra, Muzaffarpur. Nine of the world’s ten most polluted cities…
Suffer The Children
Mere laws do not guarantee our youngest citizens a safe and healthy life The other day, I watched this video of four-year-old Jackson Drew reciting…
THE AIR IS THICK
The Good news is that both the Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress seem to have finally woken up to the looming catastrophe of air pollution…
VULTURE CULTURE
PSYCHOPATHY. VOYEURISM. SADISM. Schadenfreude. Vicarious pleasure. Blood lust. You will find several terms to describe the human tendency to find a strange satisfaction, indeed fulfilment,…