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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The Dauphin and the Figurehead
Timing is everything, and with a number of state elections soon, leading to the general election next year, cynicism and opportunism are manifest. The Congress-led…
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…
Scrabbling Away From the Abyss
Nitish Kumar’s victory in last month’s Bihar election celebrates the triumph of economics over feudalism, but the climb out of poverty will be steep and…
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,…
Off the Blocks
For the second time in five years, I was struck by how apposite Rud-yard Kipling’s poem ‘If’ is in relation to Narendra Modi. At one…