Essays

The Gandhi Style Statements

Namrata Zakaria

Namrata Zakaria on the First Family’s enviable wardrobe, and why their sartorial sense matters so much

The Man Who Wore a Sanitary Napkin

Arunachalam Muruganantham

Villagers saw him cleaning his undergarments stained with goat blood and thought he had a sexual disease. But Arunachalam Muruganantham was only trying to make a smart, cheap sanitary pad for his wife

Finding Fact in Fiction

Kalpish Ratna

Real life intrudes on fiction all the time. Kalpish Ratna indulge in some literary detection as they search for clues to the true character of Arthur Conan Doyle in Sherlock Holmes’ life and movements

From Tagore to Thakur

Sumana Roy

Durga puja pandals have clay figurines of Tagore. As do Saraswati puja ceremonies. Parents buy their kids Tagore dolls. In a state where the Left dismissed him as too elitist, Sumana Roy observes the canonisation of the poet-educationist

My Life with Crickets, Frogs and Bees

Vivek Nityananda

The sex life of crickets, the hearing of frogs, the visual capacity of bees. Vivek Nityananda reports on the sleepless nights and surprising pleasures of his arcane pursuits

Joseph, No Last Name

AJ Bryant

His birth certificate read ‘Joseph, no last name given’. An American couple adopted him; 32 years later, AJ Bryant returns to District Three Hospital in Kottayam where the mother he’s never met gave him birth

Mimics and Models

Kalpish Ratna

Whatever Jane Austen might think, PD James’ Death Comes to Pemberley ranks among the finest examples of literary mimicry, a genre that has good reason to exist

Tears of a Bang Bang Man

Greg Marinovich

The legendary Bang Bang Club photographers documented the end of Apartheid and the bloodsoaked birth of democracy in South Africa. One of them was killed by peacekeeping forces. One committed suicide. Greg Marinovich, one of only two still alive, bares what it was like in those brutal days

Flaunting the Write Look

Annie Zaidi

In a world inundated with books, a female writer’s sexiness serves as a handy marketing tool. But, Annie Zaidi warns, this can prove counter-productive to a writer who wants to be taken seriously

The Big Lie of Sport

Mihir Bose

The notion that sport makes gentlemen out of men and promotes fair play is spin doctoring. A Victorian novelist called Thomas Hughes started it with Tom Brown’s Schooldays, says Mihir Bose