Selected offerings to celebrate all things Bengali
By Saket Suman New Delhi, May 14 (IANS) Of all the states in India, West Bengal stands apart as a rich and vibrant land of people with shared customs and tastes. If history stands testimony…
Features
Does anyone care? A plethora of diseases near ‘Mount Everest’ of garbage
By Sandeep Manohar New Delhi, May 13 (IANS) A stray dog ilies dead, its eyeballs popping out. Buzzing flies enter its open rib cage and vultures above a mountain of garbage fly away with bites…
Cabbie who could not save sister builds hospital to treat the poor
By Milinda Ghosh Roy Kolkata, May 13 (IANS) With no cutting-edge medical equipment, air-conditioning or critical care unit in place, the under-construction building in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district hardly matches the popular notion…
Danseuse Rekha Mehra spreads societal awareness through Kathak
By Mamta Aggarwal New Delhi, May 13 (IANS) She’s a trained Kathak dancer who has performed around the world, runs an institute that’s training 300 underprivileged children in the arts and passionately believes the dance…
How to cheat your step-counter in creative way and stay healthy
By Nury Vittachi Many folk stupidly spend their lives trying to impress other people, when what they should really be doing, of course, is trying to impress their step-counters. Smartphone health apps and Fitbit-style wristbands…
This CA doesn’t cook books, but tasty Tamil dishes
By Venkatachari Jagannathan Chennai, May 10 (IANS) Forty-four-year-old Sridevi Balasubramanian — popularly known as Shri Bala in the hospitality circuit — juggles effortlessly between the worlds of numbers and commercial kitchens. “Accounting is my profession,…
The future of liberal arts in the digital world
By Saket Suman Book: The Fuzzy and the Techie; Author: Scott Hartley; Publisher: Penguin; Price: Rs 599; Pages: 301 There are two very common terms used at Stanford University — “Fuzzy”, for students of the…
As state steps back, culture gets private sector leg up
By Ashok Vajpeyi More than 25 years ago, the Indian government decided to put together a National Policy of Culture in keeping with more than a hundred countries that had such policies. In fact, there…
Pioneering exhibition on Indian civilisation on display at National Museum
New Delhi, May 7 (IANS) A wide swath of the millennia-old Indian civilization came alive through a cluster of artefacts of astonishing brilliance as the National Museum opened a nearly two-month transcontinental exhibition that takes…
How art found me and the upsurge in opportunities
By Anubhav Nath Since childhood, I have had a keen interest in the arts — coming from a family with a strong tradition in arts and crafts, this was not surprising. Growing up, I visited…
Wearing salwar-suits, Indian mother takes to international WWE ring
By Jaideep Sarin Jalandhar (Punjab), May 6 (IANS) WWE fights may be flashy, hard and violent at times but the first Indian woman to get into that ring at the international level has beaten bigger…
Creating international platforms for Indian arts
By Sanjoy K Roy In 1999, as part of a British Council showcase programme, I travelled to the Edinburgh Festival and that set in motion the idea of creating platforms for Indian contemporary and classical…
Under The Banyan Tree On A Full Moon Night, in the rain
New Delhi, May 5 (IANS) A new monthly series of concerts has opened here aiming to seamlessly blend music and craft in a beautiful setting. The inaugural edition of this new entertainment adda was all…
Why is modern life so incredibly annoying?
By Nury Vittachi A man raised by wolves in a forest says he misses his old life. Living as a wolf cub in a Spanish wilderness was much less stressful than modern life, Marcos Rodriguez…
A culture revolution is sweeping through urban India
By Saket Suman New Delhi, May 3 (IANS) There has been, in recent times, a great churning in what can be called India’s “cultural space”. Public institutions, hitherto custodians of all things “cultural”, have been…
For the corpse burners of Varanasi, untouchability is still a reality
By Somrita Ghosh Varanasi, May 2 (IANS) It was past 10 in the night. Four pyres were aflame at Manikarnika Ghat on the banks of the Ganga here. Gagan Choudhary, a corpse burner, was shifting…
How renewables are powering, empowering Germany’s rural economy
By Vishal Gulati Mainz, April 30 (IANS) Tobias Huster is a young grape cultivator and winemaker in Ingelheim in the countryside of this town who wants to expand his family business beyond 200,000 wine bottles…
Exciting, varied fare in store for foodies in 2018
By Vishnu Makhijani New Delhi, April 30 (IANS) From a surge in community dining experiences to increasing use of seasonal and indigenous produce, Buddha bowls to floral flavours in food and drinks, to an exponential…
Daring to dream: How football changed the life of a poor Dalit girl
By Mudita Girotra Alakhpura (Haryana), April 29 (IANS) About four years ago, 15-year-old Anyabai won Rs 54,000 when she led her school team to victory in a state-level football match. The prize money was more…
Sunday brunch goes artistic and memorable at Paprika
By Venkatachari Jagannathan Chennai, April 27 (IANS) Black buns, bamboo biryani, chocolate bombs and the novelty of popping in a liquid nitrogen-cured pill-sized macaroon that would make one’s mouth literally spew white vapour are some…