I cried all the way while driving back home. This was three weeks ago. I was at the Aadhar enrolment centre in New Delhi for an update in my national identity card, my first outing after the lockdown in April. If I didn’t have to leave for the UK in December for my research, I […]
Tag: Culture
Times when journalism was useful for the academia
When I was actively reporting, I overlooked the academic papers that referred to my reports. As a journalist, I wrote on diverse themes – from culture to politics to economy. I remember how my academic sources would direct me to my reports referred to in research papers but I wouldn’t bookmark them. Only recently, I […]
Patna’s Brave New Nights
Pallavi SinghPatna That hot June afternoon in 1992 left an indelible imprint on Shanker Dutt’s memory. “June 5, in fact, let me tell you,” he says matter-of-factly. The professor of English was at Patna University’s Darbhanga House, the heritage precinct where postgraduate classes for literature students are held, attending a farewell function for one of […]
The Week That Was: Favorite Reads
I am always intrigued by developments in China, but this piece felt like the disturbing facts have moved closer home in India, especially in the context of what has happened in Jammu and Kashmir in the last few days (I blogged about this here). Imagine being tracked down by the government down to every step […]
Don’t Let TikTok Play You!
I couldn’t resist my curiosity to find out more about TikTok, the social media app that’s bringing the mass following for scores of people from India’s hinterland. Watching all those TikTok people for a couple of days, I am left with an overpowering sense of fatigue. I know I qualify to be judgemental, elitist and […]
Education Is A Great Leveller And IITs Do It Best
I have always felt that IITs have been the subject of unfair criticism over the years. I think IITs flowed with the liberalization wave of India. Indian economy opened and offered IITians a chance to go all over the world. Brain drain happened and media reportage on big salaries for IITians became the sensational stories […]
Kabir Singh Doesn’t Exist In An Alternate Universe. Fellow Feminists, It’s Time To Accept It
Though it’s a bit late in the day, here are my thoughts on Kabir Singh, the movie, which has been trashed by feminists as utterly vile and sickening for the sheer misogyny of its lead character played by Shahid Kapoor. A few critics have argued that Kabir Singh, the character, is so misogynistic that he […]
In this book of history, you are the hero
Shubhashree Sangameswaran was a software engineer, decoding programming questions with her technical expertise and poise. Then she became a life chronicler. One fine day in Bangalore, where pleasant weather makes up for the congestion on roads, she began to unravel human hearts. Preservation movement: Founder of My Life Chronicles and personal historian Sumit Chowdhury (right) […]
Theatre | Hullabaloo in the hinterland
Fringe groups from small towns are revving up the theatre scene with themes that have mass appeal
