Scent of a woman

DRAG QUEEN IKSHAKU, WHOSE STAGE NAME IS KHUSHBOO, IS A GAY MAN WHO FEELS APPLYING MAKEUP AND WEARING HIGH HEELS IS LIKE STEPPING INTO A WORLD OF DREAMS “I WAS scared. It’s a bit jarring and makes you feel odd also because you’re so used to being a guy,” explains Ikshaku, trying on a dress […]

Dial jail for murder

The killing of Munna Bajrangi inside Baghpat jail by another incarcerated gangster may have been a political settlement of sorts Ever since the Yogi Adityanath government started hunting down gangsters in various parts of Uttar Pradesh (UP), many of the absconding gangsters made a beeline to surrender, fearing they would meet the same fate. For […]

Spiritual dancer

A political scientist by training, Gilles Chuyen settled in Delhi 24 years ago in pursuit of his passion – dance. It soon became the ‘medium’ of his spiritual quest French national Gilles Chuyen has lived for 24 years, exactly half his life, in Delhi. He wears many hats, is a dancer, choreographer, actor, director, writer […]

Hearing the unheard

Spunky and unstoppable, Deshna Jain, India’s contestant at the Deaf International pageant in Taiwan will make her presence felt without being able to speak a word “I want to make my country proud and show the world that it has enormous amount of talented people,” exclaims Deshna Jain, a 20-year-old girl when asked for a […]

Modesty exemplified

Dr Bharat Vaswani, who has won the Magsaysay Award for taking 7,000 mentally ill off the streets and reuniting them with their families, hopes society learns that psychiatry has the ability to put sufferers back on their feet One of the recipients of this year’s prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award is Mumbai based psychiatrist Dr Bharat […]

The battle for an arm

After nearly a decade’s struggle, the Delhi High Court ruled that Mahender and Ramwati Koli were entitled to free prosthetic arms for their son Ritik When you walk through Sadar Bazar, you see hordes of people walking through the small lanes lined with one shop after another, and the honking of autos. But amidst all […]

The food ambassador

Hugo Wang has devoted his life to popularising Taiwanese food in Delhi with the ‘right balance’ For the Indian palette Hugo Wang, 36, a chef who belongs to a reputed family of chefs from Taiwan, has a strange love for Delhi that defies logic. Sometimes, particularly in the case of Hugo, logic has its own […]

‘I live in a music bubble’

Spending a few moments with Bombay Jayashri is not only enlightening but also delightful “Nightingale of the South” Bombay Jayashri with her molten voice is India’s unofficial ambassador of Carnatic vocal music, reaching out to fans of her film songs, Sanskrit shloka recitations and devotional pieces in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Hindi. She also […]