Essays

The Queen of Khap

Sunaina Kumar

Sudesh Choudhary has broken a tradition spanning more than six centuries. Do men still set the limits of her power?

Maybe some paraffin for a nation stuck

Bennett Voyles

The person you really have to watch out for is a certain energetic public servant from Gujarat, because leaders’ biggest troubles are almost always self-inflicted wounds

Sexual Harassment

Gee Imaan Semmalar

The author underwent female-to-male sex re-assignment surgery, but has been unable to switch his passport gender. The story of his struggle in his own words

A Venetian lesson for the Lion of Hindustan

Sunanda K Datta-Ray

What the world’s longest lasting republic can teach the leader of the world’s largest democracy

The Elephant Whisperer

Mitali Parekh

What started as a photography assignment to capture a festival of pachyderms soon turned into a passion project for Anand Shinde

Aggression of the ascetic

Shiv Visvanathan

Deconstructing Modi’s semiotic war: Is it the end of Nehruvian India?

Nocturnal Mission

Chinki Sinha

Wandering the city at night with photographer Gavin Evans

What Modi can learn from 2009

James Astill

The Political Editor of The Economist returns to the last General Election to make sense of India 2014

Giving up mirrors for 31 days gave Sonali Kokra the time and space to reflect upon and reclaim her life. What began as an experiment in self imagery turned out to be an unexpectedly radical act of self love