Jaipur
BY Hartosh Singh Bal
The Rushdie Affair and the Hand of the Congress

Cynical Congressmen and supine litfest organisers script a dangerous farce

+
Shame
BY Manu Joseph
For a Moment of Statesmanship

With Rushdie, the government has again chosen the cowardice of practicality over the courage of morality

+
Biography
A Lot Like Rajiv

In his aptitude for flying, his ease in reaching out to people, and his desire to be ‘the regular guy’, Rahul Gandhi is quite like his father.

+
BONUS
BY Madhavankutty Pillai
So You Were Afraid of Global Warming

The interesting theory that India might actually end up as a better-fed nation because of climate change

+
REPLACEMENT
BY Jay Mazoomdaar
Laxman’s Future, Dhoni’s Past

The old guard has the record but not the time to stage a comeback; the skipper’s case is different

+
Humiliation
A Leftover Caste Problem

Karnataka finds it hard to ban a tradition that makes Dalits roll on leftover food of Brahmins

+
Take Two
How’s Youth a Virtue?

If you must, sack Laxman for his lousy batting performance, not because he is 37 years old

+
Ignorance
Inverted Approach

An anti-HIV drug recommended by WHO to be phased out in 2009 catches the National AIDS Control Organisation unaware.

+
More
Cinema
2
Chaalis Chaurasi

The film’s plot is completely corny. Surprisingly, though, it works
BY Ajit Duara
+
Cinema
The Re-making of Agneepath

An argument with Hrithik Roshan, the monsoon cycle that set up the perfect backdrop for the climax, and other adventures on director Karan Malhotra’s sets
BY Sohini Chattopadhyay
+
Arts
Study of an Archive Photographer

Pablo Bartholomew seeks to recover a forgotten way of seeing by revisiting his work on Bombay done 25 years ago
BY Janice Pariat
+

More

Gadkari is Not in the Race for the PM’s post, Just for the Record

The BJP president’s support for Narendra Modi shows that the race for the party’s PM-probable is still far from closed

BY Jatin Gandhi
+
Hypocrisy Over Housing

Houses for former mill workers on mill land is a popular election issue. Why do politicians keep raising it even though the workers themselves have moved on?

BY Haima Deshpande
+
Sri Ram Sene Hoists Pakistan Flag

The odd use of a strange ruse to stir up communal trouble

BY Anil Budur Lulla
+
My Son, Not the Terrorist

An ageing rubber farmer, Gopinath Pillai, remembers the life of his son Javed Shaikh, who was killed in a ‘fake encounter’ and was known as Pranesh Kumar before he fell in love with a Muslim and converted to Islam

BY Shahina KK
+
Sax and the City

Bombay in the Jazz age

BY Akshay Sawai
+
Is Cricket Going the Hockey Way?

Will the shortsightedness of India’s cricket administrators end up destroying India’s national passion the same way Indian hockey was compromised in the 1960s and 1970s?

BY Boria Majumdar
+
Wedding Knells

How and why marriage bureaus survive in the age of online matrimony

BY Aastha Atray Banan
+

from the open archives

Literature
Why Read Llosa over Marquez

Writing about Peru, the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, also writes about our reality

BYHartosh Singh Bal
fashion
Now Men Flaunt the Ankle

Trousers are getting shorter. Will the next battle of the sexes be fought on hemlines?

BYKabeer Sharma
Malnourishment
The Underfed and the Unscrupulous

Raichur district of Karnataka has some of India’s worst statistics on malnourished children. It is hard to tell which is the worse scandal: the lack of nutrition here or the money being made off it

BYShahina KK
Hobby
Conversations in the Nude

How to make friends and get them to pose nude for you

BYMihir Srivastava
Icon
Eugen Sandow: Fakir of Physical Culture

An account of the strongman’s visit to India in 1904, excerpted from David Waller’s forthcoming book The Perfect Man

BYDavid Waller
Value
The Guilty Pleasures of Rereading

Come on now, it’s never about the new meanings you grasp each time revisit a book. It’s the comfort of the same old story and the same old characters and the same old ending, every single time

BYArunava Sinha
entrepreneurship
The Hatch

Between a great business idea and a successful business lies yawning uncertainty. Enter the incubators.

BYAnil B. Lulla,Kabeer Sharma,Manju Sara Rajan,Manjunath Kiran,Sarang Sena
the fallen
Memories of a Stud

Anand Jon, sentenced by a US court to at least 59 years in prison, was once the heartthrob of girls

BYManu Joseph