Muscular in the middle
Michiel Baas’s book that looks at the social settings and aspirational trajectories of India’s new middle class is an important contribution to the understanding of urban centers in the country…
Flickering lamp to chandelier
It was a measure of Pranab Mukherjee’s longevity and influence in Delhi’s power corridors that the account of his career could also be read as an insider’s view of the…
Toxic culture is universal
The tendency to identify ‘toxic families’ and locate them in a region is rooted in the hostility with which group-identity-obsessed commentariat views the strong glue of family “Baap mar gelan…
Folk songs fuel anti-Rhea storm
The depiction of Bengali women as evil temptresses goes back to colonial times, when migrant workers from what is now Bihar went to work in Calcutta. This is the subtext…
Dealmaker passes on
Amar Singh was a resourceful backroom operator, but it was no substitute for his lack of public base In the last eight months, the setting for his monologues on social…
Working 9 to 5 is also good
Films will have you believe that the ‘free spirits’ are the true heroes. But not everyone has the luxury of indulging in flights of fancy In recent years, the negative…
Victims of Nature’s fury
Why lightning strikes are a bigger fear than Covid in Bihar Under the glow of a mobile phone, a relative gathers paperwork for the dead at the Haspura Referral Hospital…
Bihari turned Kashmiri
Meet Navin Choudhary, the bureaucrat from Bihar who has become J&K’s first non-local domicile After being interviewed by several news outlets and posing for photographs, a pleasant sense of fatigue…
The clock stops
It’s the end of TikTok life in Bihar. What’s next? In December 2006, Time magazine declared “You” as the person of the year. This was supposed to be a recognition of sorts for the…