Over the past two weeks there has been a lot of brandishing of swords but also a war of words. The swords were on display during Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti processions that led to communal clashes at many places in the country. The verbal exchanges followed with political parties…

The past one year has been, arguably, the most difficult year for Narendra Modi since he took over as Prime Minister in 2014. Critics never cut him any slack. But they had ratcheted up the attacks several notches in the last twelve months. While Covid 2.0 pandemic raged, BJP suffered…

So, are you one of us who looked forward to the New Year starting on a better note only to find little has changed if they haven’t actually become worse? All resolutions made appear quite meaningless — at least for now. I suspect this is the situation with many. For…

When Narendra Modi watchers woke up on the morning of Guru Nanak Jayanti, they were expecting to see images of the Prime Minister visiting some Gurdwara. In other years, he has been to the Rakabganj Gurdwara in Delhi. With Punjab elections in a few months people did not rule out…

A couple of years back a friend committed suicide. He was from my school in Kolkata. I did not know him then as he was a few of batches senior. We came from a similar Bengali middle-class background. He went on to become an engineer, while I turned out to…

MONDAY MUSINGS The cheat sheet for creativity Teaming up: As many of us probably did not realise or pay attention then — the sight of colleagues at work itself is a de-stressing factor — Getty Images/iStockphoto Taking a break on Mondays may not only drive away the blues but cultivate creativity * We often mistake ‘creativity’ to be a faculty that only artists, writers and composers need to possess

There could be several factors contributing to this development. First, is the realisation that a rag-tag coalition cannot take on the…

* In the absence of economic development, the dream of a rising proletariat turned out to be a nightmare of lumpen raj * Why or how did Bengalis allow the systematic degeneration of academia and intellectual ecosystem is not explained * It also very poignantly captures the frustration of new…

Rasheed Kidwai’s book on the Gwalior royal family is as much a palace chronicle as it is a companion volume to modern Indian political history — * Prima-facie the book can be read as a collection of biographical sketches of the last three generations of the Scindias * With a state the size of Greece, the Scindias were probably the only royalty who had an equal presence in Bombay (Mumbai) and Delhi