Essays

The Dancing Engineer

Sohini Chattopadhyay

A self-taught dancer, Harihar Dash is the boy you can’t take your eyes off in a jazzy new TV commercial. Open traces the unreal career graph of the engineer from Behrampore

Amma, Superstar

Vamsee Juluri

Children are named after him, fans were sometimes pacified by his darshan, and he worried Kamal Haasan might slay his mother. Vamsee Juluri on growing up as the son of Telugu superstar Jamuna

The Amazon, Ganga and Brahmaputra are not enough for Andy Leeman. Having sailed six rivers across the world, he now has his sights set on the Yangtze in China. Open meets the tireless river campaigner

‘Sedition’ as Tyranny

Rati Rao

Dr Rati Rao, vice-president of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Karnataka, received a police notice on 26 February informing her that a case of sedition (Section 124-A) had been registered against her for publishing a bulletin that the complaint alleged was ‘favouring Naxals and Muslims’ and ‘propagating that the police are killing innocent people in the name of encounters’. She spent the next nine months realising how the State had exacted its punishment, even though no chargesheet was filed against her.

The Man Who Got Malaria 37 Times

Rauf Ali

Doctors diagnosed filaria, typhoid, gastroenteritis, and even advised a shrink. But having had malaria so many times, Rauf Ali, far from dreading the disease, now finds that it is ‘not bad at all’.

The Write Stuff

Aditi Aanand

Deserted by her muse, Aditi Aanand signed up for a writing class in New York. And many a short story and haiku later, discovered that writing is really a contact sport, not a solitary activity

Hiroshima’s Child

Avantika Bhuyan

Growing up, Miyuki Kamimura didn’t hear stories of gnomes and fairies. His was a childhood with tales of people with half-faces and burnt skin. We learn of life in the shadow of Hiroshima

A Reluctant Soldier

Majid Maqbool

The young CRPF trooper the author met has not made his peace with his job. He is an Indian soldier, but he wants you to remember that he is a Kashmiri first

A Convict’s Escape

Anupam Mukerji

A criminal at age 15, gang leader at 16, and state fugitive at 17, this student by day and gangster by night had done it all until he was arrested at 22. But even jail failed to break Vicky. Anupam Mukerji meets the man who turned to dance to kill the demon in him.

A Campus Shooting in Texas

Deepthi Murali

It is something you typically read about in newspapers. Deepthi Murali, an Indian student in the United States, got a first-hand experience of what happens when a gunman runs loose on campus