Arts & Letters

A Feminist Till I Die

Arshia Sattar

The wild hair may have taken on strands of silver and seats may be offered to her on the bus. But Arshia Sattar keeps her sword polished and shining because there’s many a battle to be fought still

Poet of Two Nations

Mahmood Farooqui

Faiz Ahmed Faiz passed on 25 years ago. A chronicle of the life of the Scotch-drinking, globe-trotting, communist, Don Juanesque poster boy of modern Urdu poetry.

The Abbey Road to Rishikesh

Bill Harry

India had a tremendous influence on the Beatles and their music. Many a song came about just hanging around the Maharishi’s ashram at Rishikesh. So the Beatles’ double album is really a hymn to India

Happy Birthday, Asterix!

Shovon Chowdhury

At the banquet to celebrate their 50th anniversary, his tummy bursting with boar and ears straining to drown out Cacofonix, a fan tries to remember exactly why he loves these Gallic warriors.

What Do You Call Picture Books for Adults?

Sumant Srivathsan

The ‘graphic novel’ is a great marketing gimmick. So grown-ups can buy comics about men in flashy briefs, unabashedly.

Why is it that since 1992, despite umpteen changes of government in India and several different Prime Ministers of every ilk—left, right and centre—it feels as if we have had the same government in power for 17 years?

A la Carré

Shashi Warrier

It’s not always that a spy thriller is the inspiration for a piece of literary fiction

The Final Frontier

Open

If 30 years of foreign policy could be rewound, Pakistan’s ‘jihad factory’ would not exist, says Alice Albinia

Silence, Please

Elizabeth Kuruvilla

The story of an artist who has lived most of his life in deafness but still can’t afford to listen.

Rhyme and Treason

Vivek Narayanan

In these times when success is determined by numbers, poetry is a marginal mode of communication. Perhaps what the poet should look for is the intensity of his readership, not its size