IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD, Mario Vargas Llosa delves deep into a period about which he has told us before—in his 1993 memoirs titled A Fish in the Water, which, besides revealing a lot about his childhood, also talked about his unsuccessful career as a politician. He contested the presidency of Peru, the country of his birth, against Japanese-origin … Continue reading Mario Vargas Llosa’s New Novel Has His Trademark Cliffhangers
ANJU WAS ONLY 14 when she ran away from her employer’s home where she worked as a domestic help. She was disgusted with what a male cook at the ‘kothi’ had done to her. Not once, but multiple times. She stayed for a few days with her elder cousin who worked as a stay-at-home cook in … Continue reading The Likely Exclusion of a Crucial Amendment to India’s Abortion Law Highlights Official Apathy Towards Women’s Reproductive Rights
FORMER FEDERAL RESERVE Chairman Ben Bernanke, known to be economical with praise, speaks of Gita Gopinath as “one of the strongest and most promising students I ever worked with”. Gopinath, who has several firsts to her credit, did her PhD at Princeton under the guidance of Ben Bernanke and Kenneth Rogoff, a former IMF economist … Continue reading Gita Gopinath: The New Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund
Tridip Suhrud, 52, is a multilingual scholar and translator renowned as an authority on Gandhi and his intellectual tradition. While he was director of Sabarmati Ashram, he had helped create the Gandhi Heritage Portal, a free digital archive running into over 1.4 million pages. Armed with knowledge of all three languages in which Gandhi wrote, … Continue reading Tridip Suhrud: ‘Did Gandhi fear a violent death? No. He feared a purposeless death’
SPACE SCIENTIST Nambi Narayanan is waiting for the compensation that the Supreme Court recently ordered that he be paid for having been framed in a false espionage case. He needs the money to service his debts. “I am looking forward to the day the Kerala government hands me over a cheque of Rs 50 lakh … Continue reading Nambi Narayanan: Justice for a Scientist
ONE OF THE most enduring images in public memory of Sanjay Bhattacharyya dates back to 2006, when the artist brandished a print of a fake painting of his guru Bikash Bhattacharjee that was being sold as an original by an auction house. Behind the artist, a poster read, ‘Artists Combined Movement Against Fake & Forged … Continue reading In His First Solo Show in Six Years, Sanjay Bhattacharyya Reimagines the Idea of Shrines
ADIL HUSSAIN IS A happily married man. The inter-religious couple have a son, Kabir, named after the 15th-century poet saint claimed to be their own by both Hindus and Muslims. Before Hussain got hooked, he had a string of affairs and his friends attribute his “success with girlfriends” to his culinary skills. Hussain, the actor … Continue reading Adil Hussain: Actor à la Chef
SHAKTI SINHA IS in office as early as 8.30 in the morning and soon he is snowed in with back-to-back meetings. A seasoned bureaucrat who is remembered mostly for his days as private secretary to the late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he takes the hectic routine in his stride. And when he meets you, … Continue reading The Legacy War at Teen Murti Between Nehru’s Fans and Foes
In Pathanamthitta district of Kerala, one of the worst affected regions in the biggest flood to hit the southern Indian state in almost a century, 72-year-old Chandrasekharan Achari died for want of medical assistance. He couldn’t be taken to the local hospital two kilometres from home because the water had risen so high that no … Continue reading When the Monster Rains Came, Kerala Was Not Prepared
They say Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the right man in the wrong party. He wasn’t. Academics and independent political analysts such as Robin Jeffrey and Vajpayee’s contemporaries in politics remember him in the 1960s as a young, firebrand leader of the Hindutva cause, someone capable of the most offensive of anti-Muslim statements. A man groomed in the … Continue reading How Vajpayee Straddled Two Worlds and Made Hindutva Palatable to the Masses
