Get this: Starting on April 7, nearly 815 million Indians will begin casting ballots in this year’s parliamentary elections. Yes, 815 million! That’s almost 100 million more than there were in the last election in 2009. How to accommodate the huge number of estimate voters in the world’s most populous democracy? Polling is staggered over …
Varanasi or Benares, as the British called it, is known for a lot of things. It’s one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, the oldest, certainly, in India. It is the holiest of seven holy cities for Hindus, known as Kashi in olden times. The might Ganges, flows through here and yes, thousands …
I’d never been to Goa until last week. My cousin Rahul and his wife Shraya moved to Goa several years ago but I hadn’t had a chance to visit them on my rapid-fire trips to India before. The western state in India is a haven for tourists who flock to its beaches and revel in …
In my childhood, there weren’t too many Bengali women who had made it big enough to attain celebrity status. But there was Suchitra Sen, goddess of cinema. Her films, usually with Uttam Kumar, were wildly popular in Kolkata. To me, Sen was the ultimate beauty. She had a certain Bengaliness about her. She was feminine …
A headline in my hometown newspaper brought me to tears this morning. B.P. Panesar had died. He was a renowned artist. Water color. Oil. Etchings. He was also made a name as mentor to Shakila, a poor village woman who gained fame for her collages. He gave away his earnings as an artist to charity. …
I just read a CNN-IBN report on the Devyani Khobragade episode that made me squirm. “Devyani’s arrest,” the report said, “has rattled the Indian Diplomatic Corps. “It is forcing the government to hit back at the U.S. According to Indian diplomats serving in the Western countries, paying lesser than what is actually on official papers …
This tragedy has been forgotten by most people. It shouldn’t be. It was 29 years ago on this night that tank 610 exploded at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal. A milky fog that spread silently across the sleeping India city, spreading toxic gas in the densely populated slums nearby. Within minutes, people poured into …
Tarun Tejpal. Tehelka. Maybe my friends here in America have never heard those names. But in India, they stand synonymous with investigative journalism. Tehelka has lived up to its name, which means sensation in Hindi, since it entered the Indian media scene in 2000. Early on, the startup almost brought down the Indian government by …
In my 30 years as a journalist, I’ve written a lot about victims. Many sorts of victims. Of war. Murder. Illness. Natural disasters. And man-made ones. I always try to be sensitive and to highlight the incredible resiliency of human beings. I was lucky enough to have won a Dart-Ochberg Fellowship from the Dart Center …
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