obituary

The Body Couturier

Kaveree Bamzai

Bhanu Athaiya started as an artist trained at JJ School of Art but ended her career at 91 as a pioneering costume designer for Hindi cinema. It was a life of remarkable work and incredible beauty

Ram Vilas Paswan (1946-2020): A Natural Ally

Amita Shah

A tenacious survivor in national politics and a popular Dalit face

SP Balasubrahmanyam (1946-2020): A Versatile Voice

V Shoba

His 40,000 songs became the background score of the lives of millions of listeners

The House of Jaswant Singh

S Prasannarajan

A classicist in politics for whom public life did not mean compromising on his moral inheritance

Jaswant Singh (1938-2020)

MJ Akbar

Time stands still for a Gentleman

A Requiem for My Boss

TCA Raghavan

Jaswant Singh (1938-2020)

The Visionary Culturalist

Nandini Nair

She plumbed the psyche of Indian classical music and dance

Pranab Mukherjee (1935-2020)

MJ Akbar

He understood that democratic politics is algebra, where various parts of the electoral equation are held together by governance, not deposits in vote banks

The Ultimate Pragmatist

Sunanda K Datta-Ray

Juggling with figures remained the first love of the one-time economics teacher in an obscure Bengali college who became India’s youngest finance minister