Life
Mofussil India Sizzles
Are these films really the new cinema, worthy of the hype and celebration and the new directors really the new stars and trail-blazers offering pulsating, exciting, no-holds-barred, creative chutzpah that separates the real from the fluff?
Kushti
Traditional Indian wrestling isn’t just a sport — it’s an ancient subculture where wrestlers live and train together and follow a strict regimen on everything from what they can eat to what they can do in their spare time. Drinking, smoking and even sex are off limits.
Restaurant Sites Target Scale
“Indians are a lazy bunch,” laughs Goyal. “So we wanted to create something very close to their physical world. While menupages.com has menus in [a] standardized format, we scanned the actual menu cards and then put them up.”
How About a National Dumb Day?
We live in a cool, informal and let-it-all-hang-out-environment. Nothing is sacrosanct and irreverence towards buttoned-down conventions and established norms is the new popular mantra.
Booming Fake Art
Fake works of masters have often been known to put international auction houses on the backfoot.
Ghost Walls Speak
How did archaeologists trace the ghost walls, which curiously is an archaeological term?
Feasting All Night Long
Come dusk and the winding lanes of the Jama Masjid area come alive with the sights and sounds — and smells — of celebrations. Of chicken tikkas sizzling, mutton kebabs roasting over blazing fires, giant woks of puris and massive cauldrons of curries, biryanis, steaming milk, etc.
Bewitching Allure of Home
Returning NRIs are quickly realizing that the nostalgia of the past seldom withstands the harsh realities of an extended stay.
Return of India's Prodigal Daughters
What of the prodigal daughters? Why must I hum and dawdle when my mother urges me to come home? Why does the promise of better jobs and being closer to my family not have me packing my bags now?
Far Away Home
Gurmale Singh Grewal's third generation family-owned Singh Developments has become one of the largest Indian real estate empires in the United States.
Moving to a Digital Future
“When we launched Smartclass in 2004 as the first-ever digital classroom program, it was an uphill task convincing schools to adopt it. These schools had not witnessed any change in a century.... It is a completely different scenario now. Private schools across India today see (technology) as an imperative. A digital classroom is set to become the bare-minimum teaching accessory in schools, just like a blackboard is today.”
The Higgs Boson Manifesto
At a deeper level, the real issue at stake in the debate over the “God Particle” is a choice between two different worldviews.
Let's Talk About Dating
“Firstly, I shall ask him to think over the matter very seriously before taking a final decision, talk to him about the possible consequences of such a marriage, giving examples of cases which we both (parents) know about. If I see that he is still convinced about it, I’ll support him.”
Dubai’s Grand Gurdwara
Gurunanak Darbar is a heady mix of spirituality, tradition, modernity, opulence and the determination of a man.
Hold the Shloka
World’s only Sanskrit daily holds out against the odds.
Globalizing the Indian Diet
The 21st century Indian professional is a global citizen. Well read, well travelled and yes, well fed! She knows her blue cheese from a feta, pita bread from a naan, dim sum from a momo. These up-worldly mobile Indians do not shy away from asking for New World Wines with specific harvesting years nor are they insensitive to subtle flavors like truffle oil, asparagus foam or recognizing the robust overtones of a genuine Thai bird eye chilli and galangal.
Gurdwaras Go Hi Tech
From translation screens to air conditioning,gurdwaras are embracing technology.
No Place to Die
“The problem is reaching an alarming level. Unless the government intervenes and provides land for new burial grounds the issue can’t be solved.”
Serial Blasts Rock Oxford of the East
Of the 40,000 international students pursuing education in India, nearly half are studying in colleges in Pune.
Indian Designer Baby Factory
“Earlier it was a form of colonization, but now studies show the numbers are divided equally — 50 percent of surrogate babies are born to rich Indian parents and 50 percent to foreigners by Indian surrogates.”
The Last Indian Village
Chitkul enjoys the distinction of being the last inhabited Indian village along the border.
Branding a Homemade Indian Staple
Global Yogurt Franchises Attempt to Brand a Homemade Indian Staple
Lone Gray Wolf: Black & White’s Last Stand
The scene is a sidewalk just beyond the rather overdone Hawa Mahal in Jaipur, and the camera in question is less instrument, more living fossil — built by the Carl Zeiss company in 1860, it is nearly three times as old as independent India.
Are Writers Performers
In a world awash with new tools for communication and engagement, the symbolism, mystique and magic of anonymity, however seductive, is losing ground to new anthems celebrating the spirit of contact, connection and interaction.
Is the Sheen Rubbing Off The National Film Awards
“The National Awards, sadly, are no longer what they used to be, with the favoritism, regionalism,politics and quid-pro-quo rampant. However, compared to the scores of others they are still streets ahead.
Shahtoosh: Reviving a Dying Art
Can the shahtoosh industry, banned in India, be revived again by rearing the delicate Chiru antelopes in farms and obtaining their prized fur without killing the animals?
Seeking Silence
In this interview Iyer spoke on an unusual topic — the value of silence and stillness amid the rush of business.
B-School for Rural Indian Women
The women who have been educated at MDBS have little in common with the well-heeled students in MBA programs around the world. They are an eclectic mix of ages ranging from 19 to 50. They include a potter, a spice and noodle maker, a seamstress, a goat and sheep herder, a farmer, a homemaker and a bangle vendor.
India Dances to Latino Beat
Dancers say the popularity of Latino dances lies in the inherent joyousness, the friendships it generates on the floor across cultural divides — and the free-flowing body language, open to improvisations.
The Dirty Video
As a bemused India watches the alleged shenanigans of a ruling-party lawyer-turned-politician who has finally quit public office, a fellow lawyer finds that Abhishek Manu Singhvi’s resignation statement hides more than it reveals, and that it has unwittingly triggered a timely debate on privacy issues in the era of YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter.
Free Speech’s Unlikely Champion
Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga, the accidental champion of freedom of speech, has a history of suppressing the speech, sometimes violently, of people with whom he disagrees.
Bringing Ganesh Down to Size
Dahibhavkar said that setting the height limit was a unanimous decision of representatives of all Ganeshotsav committees, social and public figures, artists and idol-makers.
IPL v Bollywood Clash of the Titans
The Indian Premier League is no longer perceived as a great threat for film releases.
The Foreign Face of IPL Cheerleaders
The companies that bring these women to India chose them because they are hardworking professionals.
A Day in the Life
Photographer Adeel Halim captures life on the streets of Delhi, Rishikesh, Haridwar, Pathankot, Amritsar, Dharamshala, Delhi and Varanasi in North India.
Keeping Marathi Alive in Jerusalem
The job of preserving the Marathi language and culture is left to the old.
India’s Indigenous Horses Trot Into Sunset
India’s ‘native steeds’ are staring at an uncertain, if not calamitous future, just two years ahead of a century since World War I that will commemorate the greatest contribution of horses towards a human enterprise
