In the 1980s, Indian fans of Pakistani shows eagerly waited for the cassette in their VCR to roll, action, drama. Goa-based Urdu teacher and poetess Seema urf Noor’s father would spend much of his time following Ankahi and Bakra Qiston Pe. While the former was a heartfelt, popular show about a funny and ambitious woman’s life played by Shehnaz Shei...
Kolipaka Srinivas assists a civil contractor. Ahobilam Karunakar is a petty businessman. Nasir is an RMP doctor. Anwar Pasha runs a small canteen and Mahesh Samaleti is a hereditary Ayurvedic practitioner. Still, they talk of palaeolithic cultures, ancient earthen pots, terracotta beads, stone tools and wood fossils with an uncanny ability.
What...
Bina Singh* (45) was living happily in Assam’s Tinsukia five years back when her husband Nobin Singh got home a second wife. Having been married for 20 years, Bina had felt her world was complete with the husband and two children. With a small business that Nobin ran, the family of four managed a decent life. But in 2018, Bina’s little world came i...
Before Mumbai-based para-athlete and graphic designer Disha Pandya got married two years ago, she went through at least 25 rejections from prospective grooms, mainly because of her "short height".
Pandya, 38, was born with achondroplasia, a genetic disorder, which causes disproportionate dwarfism. She stands 4 feet 2 inches tall.
“When it com...
As India overtakes China to become the world’s most populous nation, it stands at the crossroads, seeking to strike a balance between meeting the needs of its burgeoning populace and safeguarding the environment. Grappling with the pressures of urban sprawl and the demands of additional food production, the country must navigate the path of develop...
A couple of weeks ago, archaeologists of the PAMA Research Institute visited the upper Periyar basin in the Idukki district of Kerala, a region which is known for its Iron Age remains dating back to 1000 BC. Historians believe that a major east-west highway once passed through the Idukki zone, connecting Alagankulam at the mouth of river Vaigai on ...
Around 10,000 people were in attendance for Litmus, an event hosted by the free thinker’s collective esSENSE Global, billed as ‘the world's largest atheist meet in god's own country’, last October in Kochi. It was an annual gathering of atheists who describe themselves as ‘freethinkers with a scientific temperament’. Apart from the discussions, wha...
It is 38 degree Celsius this week, slightly lower than the 42 degree heat stroke which Kolkata experienced this year. I stepped out of my apartment with a palpitating uneasiness, the feeling of breathing inside a heat pocket or the concrete urban heat island to a much cooler zone, the East Kolkata Wetlands. A unique ecosystem of water bodies acting...
A car drive of about 50 km from Bhubaneswar in Odisha, towards the southern bank of river Bhargavi takes one amid groves of coconut, mango and jackfruit. Hidden behind and under the shade of the trees are over 120 houses spread over just two streets. The outside walls of the houses are decorated with mural paintings, and inside the houses live the ...
Theithei Luithui was 13 in 1994, the year her grandfather in a cruel turn of fate became a ‘collateral damage’ of a long-drawn war being waged in her homeland.
The old man in his eighties was tending to his cattle near his home in Ukhrul in Manipur when a fierce gunbattle broke out between Naga militants and security forces.
The octogenarian ...
Laurence Wilfred Baker, popularly known as Laurie Baker, was a pioneer in making low-cost eco-centric climate friendly buildings. “See, Laurie Baker,” even a child would say the moment he came across an unplastered red-brick structure, a hallmark of Baker’s style of simplicity. So great was the popularity of this British-born architect in India, pa...
On July 28, 2022, Paisringdao Jorasa was on his bike passing by the Dalmia Cement factory in the industrial town of Umrangso in Assam’s Dima Hasao district, when he realised a stone whizzed past him, missing him by a whisker.
Jorasa, a junior manager at the Assam Electricity Grid Corporation Limited, applied the brakes and looked in the directio...
The push for plant-based diets today is perhaps the largest it has ever been in remembered history. While many ancient cultures espoused the virtues of eschewing meat and vegetarianism was periodically promoted in pockets across the world (Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci is said to have abstained from eating meat or poultry!), it is only since...
West Bengal’s rail and road communications with several western and southern states were paralysed for about a week last month with hundreds of trains cancelled and vehicles stranded. The disruption was due to protests by an Other Backward Class Kurmi community, which is seeking Scheduled Tribe status. The protesters blockaded railway tracks and ad...
Born in 1848 in Kilimanoor Palace, Raja Ravi Varma was a painter well ahead of his times. A master of classical realistic portrayals, many of his works still stand the test of time. But time ran out on Varma when it came to completing his last work. The work came back into reckoning a couple of weeks ago when Kerala Governor Arif Muhammed Khan unve...
Mother’s Day is just around the corner and it is always a tough day in my house. It brings into focus all the fragmented thoughts about mothers — my cousin who lost his mother to covid, how must he feel today; my mother is worried about her ageing mother’s health; my sister and I worry about our mother’s frozen shoulder. I remember the day my mothe...
A Kolkata resident, Subhro Kanti Gupta, took his octogenarian mother on a nostalgic trip to Kalikachha in the Brahmanbaria district of Bangladesh in December of 2019.
It was the village which young Induprova, Subhro’s mother, had fled with her elder brother, sister and mother in the aftermath of the partition of Bengal in 1947.
The village al...
On April 19, the United Nations declared India is poised to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation, with almost 3 million more people than its neighbour by the middle of this year.
The United Nations Population Fund's (UNFPA) ‘State of World Population Report’ said India's population by mid-year is estimated at 1.4286 billion, agains...
In the sprawling fields of Kapran, a postcard hamlet on the foothills of Himalayas in South Kashmir’s Anantnag district, Mehjabeen, member of the Gujjar-Bakarwal tribe, enters a hut, looking from the corners of her eyes if someone is watching her, to hide what she calls “shame”.
As a springtime routine, this young 20-year-old has arrived to help...
Pattanam, a mound on the banks of the Periyar river in Kerala, is considered a part of the ancient port called Muziris or Muciri Pattinam. The port city, according to historians, might have played a significant role in the trade and cultural exchanges between India and the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean regions about 2000 years ago...
Little did Ranganayakulu of Kuderu village in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantapur district know that he was getting sucked into a vicious spiral when he chose to enter pomegranate cultivation two years ago.
The district, which receives the lowest rainfall in India after Rajasthan’s Jaisalmer, is known for groundnut cultivation under rain-fed conditions. ...
On April 18, as a five-member bench of the Supreme Court began hearing the matter of same-sex marriage, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that the latter was passing a “value judgment” in saying that the very notion of a biological man is absolute, or the notion of a biological woman is absolute.
A visibly...
On the evening of October 24, 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Maharashtra was in a celebratory mood. Having won 164 seats, it had registered victory on 105. Its main ally in the state the Shiv Sena had won 56 of the 126 seats that it fielded candidates on.
The BJP’s euphoria stemmed from the fact that the coalition crossed the halfway ...
Just before monsoon was to hit Karnataka, in the scorching heat of the summer of 2021, villagers in Honnasetti Halli village of Mulbagal Taluk in Kolar district knew something had to be done to ensure that when the skies begin to pour, their village tank is prepared to store the water. With rainfall remaining scanty in the region and the tank being...
Lachit Barphukan and Mula Gabharu bravely fought against the Mughals and earned their place in history. But little did they know that one day because of the very same Mughals, they would lose their place in the pages of history.
The bravery, grit and legends of Barphukan and Mula have all become ‘collateral damage’ in the National Council for Ed...
