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Zohran Mamdani & Rama Duwaji: How the wife rewrites rules of public life

India, Jan. 5 -- Rama Duwaji, the artist-wife of a young man who's created history, is making many of us nervous. How dare she not play second fiddle to Zohran Mamdani, the first ever Muslim mayor of ... Read More


New Year's Eve, Hope, and Some Rose Petals

India, Dec. 28 -- The outfit is ready, the tickets are booked, conveyance is mostly sorted, and if all goes well and no hooligans disrupt the festivities, it will be a happy New Year's Eve. In another... Read More


The anxieties of the soft-parenting club

India, Dec. 20 -- "Abhi mummy ki chappal Atlantic ke upar se udti hui aayegi!" (Mummy's flying slipper will reach me across the Atlantic.) The chat history of my cousins' group on WhatsApp, rather ap... Read More


The timeless magic of Umrao Jaan

India, Dec. 14 -- Baaton se kuchh nahi hota hai, sirf ishq se hota hai. When Rekha speaks, everyone listens - even when she speaks to undermine speech. Honoured at the recently concluded Red Sea Inte... Read More


Ambedkar is dead. Long live Ambedkar!

India, Dec. 7 -- Sitting in a friend's dining hall, a silent witness to the history of the subcontinent, in Lucknow, I was reminded of Dr BR Ambedkar in a rather bathetic manner. It was recalled durin... Read More


From qawwali to jazz: When staying silent is disrespectful

India, Nov. 30 -- "You must be seated by 9," instructed our tickets to a dinner performance at Minton's, the legendary jazz lounge in Harlem. It was a stroke of luck that allowed us entry many years a... Read More


Of nationalism and the stories of wars we tell

India, Nov. 16 -- "You were engaged in a deeply intellectual conversation on his reverse ageing," pinged this author's phone with several photos and this text, suitably punctuated by winks and smileys... Read More


India's war films: Of nationalism and the stories we tell

India, Nov. 15 -- "You were engaged in a deeply intellectual conversation on his reverse ageing," pinged this author's phone with several photos and this text, suitably punctuated by winks and smileys... Read More


The true meaning of politeness, and its limits

India, Nov. 10 -- Last month, this author wrote the obituary of politeness only to be forced to write this more qualified sequel, positing politeness to be a one-way street only a select few are entit... Read More


Truth to power, told through cinema

India, Nov. 2 -- "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the society", said Percy Bysshe Shelley in 19th-century England while critiquing the many colonial projects his motherland was going stron... Read More