For a writer whose first book was a travelogue around small-town India, Pankaj Mishra seems strangely unwilling to engage with the complexities, or provincialities, of the United States.
Ankur Rahman, along with his brother Rodin and their friend, Akhup Khom, decided to walk from Tezpur in Assam to Sela Pass in Arunachal Pradesh—a good 340 km away. Asked why, Ankur’s answer is “Why not?”
One day in her teens, a man who she treated like her father tried to rape her. She escaped, but the next day, she looked him in the eye and made him apologise. This suddenly changed the power equation
When she realised she was checking Twitter before brushing her teeth in the morning, Atreyee Majumder figured she had to sober up. Especially if she wanted to finish her PhD thesis in this lifetime
Vodafone has scored a legal victory over India’s tax authorities, but what’s worth asking is this: why do ‘capital gains’ bear a lighter tax burden than your salary?
An Old Delhi neighbourhood full of highly skilled craftspeople struggles to survive, to keep some fragment of its poetry in a city whose priorities are far more prosaic.
It’s a call centre alright. Over 100 youngsters man phones round the clock here. But no American twang, the only condition for employment here is fluency in Marathi. Because the employer happens to be the Shiv Sena. A month ago, the party’s executive president Uddhav Thackeray started the call centre inside Sena Bhavan in Dadar. You can get Uddhav’s number, besides details on candidates—and even complain against the Sena.
‘@arjanelfassed tweetstreet’, in the Palestinian refugee camp of Askar, has become the world’s first street named after a Twitter account. This is what Arjan El Fassed, a Netherlands-based Dutch-Palestinian writer-activist, had to do to get it: donate $146 to a Dutch website which passed it on to the Palestinian Child Care Society to fund ‘cultural and expressive after-school activities’ for 1,000 children in the camp at its youth centre. Another 199 street names are up for grabs.0
Ever since Ris Low won the Miss Singapore title, the 19-year-old’s life has been hitting new lows. Soon after the crowning, it was revealed she had been convicted a year ago for using stolen credit cards. She bought lingerie, mobile phones and jewellery worth 8,000 Singaporean dollars (Rs 2.7 lakh). Low has also been ridiculed for her Singaporean accent and long pauses in answering simple questions. The organisers say her English was perfect in interviews, and that she suffers from bipolar disorder.0
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
The multiple exploits of a journalist who has held up a mirror to the media in several ways
20Game Over • The Missing Couple • Knife Play
19Cynical Congressmen and supine litfest organisers script a dangerous farce
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