BY DRISHTI RAKHRA On telling someone that Bangalore’s theatre scene is rife with possibilities, I am always met with a look of polite surprise. Where is this theatre world, they seem to be asking me. The answers to this question are many in number, but perhaps the first one is Rangashankara. Rangashankara is one of the city’s most popular theatres set up by actor Arundathi … Continue reading Revisiting Rangashankara
BY SUPRIYA NEWAR She commanded a most incomparable run. She ruled charts and hearts. She shattered all barriers of every imaginable kind. She was bestowed with the tallest accolades. She was 92. She was ailing, suffering. She had already fought one round of Covid. She was well past her prime. And yet, on Sunday morning, as I drove my car and the news alert started beeping … Continue reading Lata Mangeshkar- A Tribute
BY VIBHA MITRA The Lit Fest has become an important winter activity in Kolkata. The schedules are perused. Shortlists are made according to author choices and venues. Packing a bag with food, water, books to read, and knitting it is a daily outing soaking in the sunshine and erudition. Dalrymple, Shashi Tharoor, Ruskin Bond, Devdutt Patnaik are festival regulars and must attend talks, but often … Continue reading The Literati Affair
BY DRISHTI RAKHRA I made a new friend recently. We met through a mutual friend from Delhi and realised that we had much in common, with both of us being students of literature and big fans of poetry. We decided to meet for the first time in late December, in Bangalore’s latest popular watering hole, Bob’s Bar. We sat for hours and spoke to each … Continue reading The Pandemic Struck World
BY VIBHA MITRA I was inching forward at the crossing of Lansdowne Road and Lansdowne Terrace, opposite Ramakrishna Mission Hospital, when boom a bus coming down at breakneck speed crashed into my left side and zoomed ahead regardless. The police on duty and bystanders rushed ahead and stopped the bus to reprimand him. Concerned that it could have been worse and I looked rattled. No … Continue reading Bus Bas
BY RUCHIRA GHOSH I was born twenty years after India, my motherland, attained independence from British Colonial rule. Nevertheless the impact of approximately two hundred plus years’ regime and socio-cultural interaction was so deep rooted that it took many more years to gradually lessen the impact. In a personal vein, I was born during this period of transition and turmoil; and now more than fifty years later what remains … Continue reading An Anglophile’s Nostalgia
BY ALEX STORY The bell tolled for western civilisation on the 1st of July 2007. Some people will point to financiers. After all, they sold competence and instead delivered the Great Financial Disaster of 2008. The last was followed by a never ending tidal wave of Governmental incontinence, destroying trust and value in the process. Others will finger politicians across the decades for mistaking personal for national … Continue reading The Key to Everything
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Brit-bashing in India is on the rise. Well, let’s say we deserve it. For years us Brits hammered you Indians. As Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in The Discovery of India, the ransacking of India the British would come to call trade was in fact “plunder”. Nehru describes how the “Pagoda Tree”—or the tree of money—”was shaken again and again until the most terrible famines … Continue reading Better the Devil You Know
BY DR KAUSTAV BHATTACHARYYA Searching for answers about the dysfunctional Western child welfare system, which is unjustly confiscating thousands of children from their families every year, I found a possible answer in Plato, whose profound influence on Western thought is well-known. A lot of my understanding of Plato comes from the legendary thinker Karl Popper and his work The Open Society and its Enemies, which provided a … Continue reading Plato’s Influence on Western Child Protection
BY EFFIE DEANS How does civilization begin? It begins with agriculture. Prior to the development of agriculture all we have is hunter gatherers in small bands living from moment to moment intent only on the bare necessities of life such as obtaining food and shelter. What enabled the transition to agriculture? It was the division of labour. In order for people to settle down and … Continue reading Casting Hume into the Flames
COUNTRY SQUIRE INDIA 