Editorial

A Genteel Man from Lucknow

YOU can take a gentleman out of Lucknow, but you cannot take Lucknow out of a gentleman—well we believe it because we have met Muzaffar Ali who seems to be the poster boy for the city of tehzeeb. If Vinod Mehta was our ‘Lucknow boy’, then Muzaffar Ali is our quintessential Lucknow gentleman. O...

Cover Story

The Sufi Soul

Seene Mein Jalan Aankhon Mein Toofan Sa Kyu Hai Is Sheher Mein Har Shaqs Pareshan Sa Kyu Hai... THESE LINES KEEP reverberating in my mind and I can barely hear anything, even the cacophony of the autorickshaw I am in. “It’s all good,” I tell myself. “The noise will keep me distracted.” My...

Up-To-Date

Uproar over Guwahati Molestation

Media Role under Glare MOLESTATION \\  A video clip showing a mob of men molesting a woman led to protests across the nation. The mob was led by a man called Amar Jyoti Kalita, who was arrested recently from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. In the clip, Kalita was spotted trying to rip off the shirt of...

‘The Goddamned Particle Spotted, Finally!’

SCIENCE \\ More than 50 years ago, Peter Higgs and five other theoretical physicists proposed that an invisible field lying across the Universe gives particles their mass, allowing them to clump together to form stars and planets. Fifty years later the muchelusive God Particle (also known as Higgs ...

Violence at Maruti Plant

HR executive burnt to death RIOT \\ A clash between workers and supervisors over disciplinary action resulted in violent clashes and the eventual death of an executive at Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar plant in Haryana. The plant’s human resources manager, Awanish Kumar Dev, was burnt to death during ...

Federer’s Seventh Wimbledon Win

TENNIS \\ Tennis fans were in for a treat when Swiss legend Roger Federer won his seventh Wimbledon title and regained his numero uno spot. The champion came up with a cautious mix of resilience and range to stop fourth-seeded Andy Murray, the first Briton in 74 years to make the Wimbledon final. Wi...

Pranab Mukherjee is the new President

India gets its 13th President as the former Finance Minister wins hands down ELECTED \\ Pranab Mukherjee was elected the thirteenth President of India. Mukherjee who was Congress’ chief trouble-shooter over the past eight years garnered 69.3 per cent votes and defeated his rival P.A. Sangma—w...

foriegn despatches

There is no pure and abstract ‘life’ without the greatly impure diversity of lives”

TABISH KHAIR: I was born in 1966 in Gaya (Bihar) India. I must be the only internationally-published Indian writer who writes in English, who not just grew up in a small Indian town but was even educated there. I went to the Nazareth Academy, a Christian missionary school, and later to the Gaya Co...

Social Agenda

Growing Noise of CYBER PROTESTS

Sociologists are increasingly looking at the web world for collective action and information cascade Tahrir and #Guwahati, #OccupyWall- Street and #Kony2102. Four different continents, one common theme. Of masses rising up against crimes—crimes of governance, gender discrimination, economic and a...

Platform 1

Democracy and Truth

Set up commissions to help unravel the real problems IN A COUNTRY as large and diverse as India, its democratic culture is tested relentlessly. Things are further complicated by the fact that India is in the throes of a structural transition from its post-colonial Licence-Raj culture to its status...

Looking Back

ARTIST UNBOUND

V. Sanjay Kumar on his serendipitous tryst with the art world and on arts impact on the ordinary In my growing up years had someone asked me for my opinion on art or the business of art, I would have guffawed and moved on. Today I am an ‘insider’ in this world. Thus how someone like me, who maj...

Issue

A closer look at anti-avoidance A Troublesome Acronym

This year’s General Budget introduced a strange acronym to the Indian economy—GAAR. For those who are raising their eyebrows, it means ‘General Anti Avoidance Rule’ and is aimed at regulating tax structure and controlling avoidance of tax. Tax avoidance seriously undermines the achievements ...

Platform 2

The Duplicity of State Pride

Why Congress is to be blamed AS THE MONSOONS played hard-to-get all of June and early July, a perverse competitiveness was forced upon those living in the NCR—in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Ghaziabad. Did my area suffer longer hours of power cut today or did my colleague’s? Who had the boasting r...

Good Karma

STORY OF A BUTTERFLY

Ek Titli and its green crusaders are bent on changing the world and making it a healthy place People say that if there are ‘idiots’ crazy enough to think they can change the world, they probably will. Vaibhav Dugar is one such ‘idiot’ who has set out to change the world through his green re...

Reading Room

Revolt Of The Fish Eaters

A mixture that is both good and bad, peppered with a sense of humour LOPA GHOSH’S debut is an Indian khichdi—it takes generous chunks of fact, mixes it with fiction and fantasy, evokes from the past and merges it with the present, take political engagement along with apathy, solid prose with gr...

The Liquid Refuses To Ignite

Need a life-changing book? Pick something else. Read The Liquid for its irreverence, wit, tone and brutal honesty “I REMEMBER having some ‘happy pizza’ in Cambodia once and being stoned for a whole day, but I didn’t relive 10 years of my life in a hallucination. Not even close. I just giggl...

Hitchhikers Guide

The Kingdom of Dreams

Cheap travel, food and oodles of appeal—there is more to Bangkok than meets the eye Tell anyone you are going to Thailand and chances are you would get some lewd and leery looks, with comments to match. That’s a cross that the country bears, nay brandishes, with relish. For Thailand is best know...

Garnish

The Advantages of Being Earnest

He was a self-confessed glutton. Today, Joymalya Banerjee prefers to force others to pig out A long time ago, in a state by the sea lived a boy who loved to eat. One day, when the boy was five, his mother left him at home and went to the market. Right then his cousin called to say she was coming o...