Cinema
Ajachi Chakrabarti

Invasion of the Body (Politic) Snatchers

Buddha in a Traffic Jam Director: Vivek Agnihotri Starring: Arunoday Singh, Anupam Kher, Mahie Gill, Pallavi Joshi, Anchal Dwivedi Rating: 1.5/5   I should have been more pissed. After all, I’d come all the way to Rajarhat and run up

Politics & Society
Binit Priyaranjan

Stemming the Tide

On 30 March, answering a long-standing demand raised by women and social activists—and keeping a campaign promise made by chief minister Nitish Kumar—the Bihar government amended the state’s excise laws to prohibit the sale and purchase of country liquor from

Politics & Society
Majid Maqbool

The City and the Siege

  “It was a dark time and everywhere the soldiers had made sure we were thirsty for their garrisoned water.” —Agha Shahid Ali, Call me Ishmael Tonight   Kashmir is a sad place. There is sadness in the stories people

Politics & Society
Muhammad Tahir

Orchestrators Of Narratives

I heard Prince died. You heard too? I bet you did. Of course everyone did. He was 57, wasn’t he? You see, we even know that he died “suddenly”. This news was conveyed to me by that grumpy old josser

Politics & Society
Koli Mitra

Cities, like dreams, are made of…

Civilisation” is a word that evokes cultural sophistication. It suggests knowledge, enlightenment, arts, sciences, and commerce. It implies intellectual and material progress and a moral consciousness. At its root, though, it literally just means being “citified.”  Similarly, “civil” connotes refined,

Politics & Society
Tishani Doshi

That Renegade Thought

You are either born in the city or move to the city, but eventually the city draws you to her. Things happen in the city—history and robberies, love and violence. Time happens in the city, and upon this time all

Politics & Society
Sandip Roy

The City That India Forgot

A friend is eavesdropping on two young men meeting for what is obviously a date in a coffee shop in South Kolkata. He sends me live updates on Facebook on the topics of discussion as the evening progresses. Cigarettes. The

Politics & Society
Sharanya Manivannan

Changing Chennai

Sometimes, Chennai feels more and more like the Kuala Lumpur I moved here from,” I told a friend recently. I meant this mainly in terms of material comforts—the international franchises, the brands, the dining options, and so on. More personally,

Filter Coffee
Deepa Bhasthi

The Whiff Of A City

I write out a recipe for a nice, traditional dessert we make for festivals in Karnataka. Nandini Milk is what I grew up on after we sold our cattle and couldn’t get fresh milk any more. From the state-owned milk

Politics & Society
Thomas Crowley

Panama Panic

On 3 April, newspapers around the world published their first reports based on their investigation of the Panama Papers, an enormous leak of 11.5 million documents. The leak details the workings of Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that specialises