Re-rooting
On the main street in Mugeuk, a mountainous village around 90 minutes from Seoul, there are two markets a few hundred metres apart. The older of the two, which has been around for over 100 years, is a...
View ArticleTaking the Bait
KAYUMBA JOHN USED TO SIT IN HIS OFFICE by the shore of Lake Victoria, in Kasensero, Uganda, and watch boats arriving at dawn. While the crews onboard sold Nile perch—a freshwater fish found in the Nile...
View ArticleStoreyed Past
ON A SUNDAY MORNING LAST OCTOBER, in a cramped office overlooking Kathmandu Durbar Square—an iconic plaza surrounding Nepal’s old royal palace—a small group of volunteers was frantically preparing for...
View ArticleCoalgate 2.0
WHEN THE SUPREME COURT, in a landmark decision in September 2014, cancelled nearly all existing permissions for the captive mining of coal blocks, it was seen as having halted the “Coalgate” scam....
View ArticleHide and Seek
IN AN IMAGE from Soumya Sankar Bose’s photographic series, two bodies are locked in an embrace, with only their silhouettes visible. Despite being in the shadows, their intimacy is palpable—in the tilt...
View ArticleLove The Sinner, Hate The Sin
FOR MAHLUI, IT WAS LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. One day, when he was in the tenth grade, Mahlui’s friend brought along a new acquaintance to visit him in his hostel room. With her pale complexion, long black...
View ArticleHard Labour
In July last year, François Andrelie had her first ultrasound examination at Salud Digna, a clinic in downtown Tijuana, Mexico, that conducts tests at popular prices. A small-built 34-year-old Haitian...
View ArticleAfter the Match
My colleague Pratik Purakayastha and I drove to Haokha Mamang Leikai, a village just off the Indo-Myanmar highway, on a rainy morning in September last year. Every few kilometres we would spot a poster...
View ArticleA Tale of Two Museums
In 2001, a large collection of artefacts from the trans-Himalayan caravan trade in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were discovered in a dilapidated serai in Kargil’s Old Bazaar. It did not...
View ArticleShell Company
Bachura, a small village in Kashmir’s Budgam district, wakes up every day to the sound of shots fired by personnel from the Indian armed forces and military groups who practise at a firing range...
View ArticleChasing the Machine
On a cold February morning in 1959, a 37-year-old American engineer fled Prague aboard an Air India flight. For the two years before that, Morton Nadler was suspected of being a spy by opposing sides...
View ArticleSon of The Sangh
ON 26 JULY 2014, two months after Narendra Modi became the prime minister, the Sunday Guardian broke a story that sophisticated listening devices had been found in the official residence of Nitin...
View ArticleThe New Oil
IT WAS A BLACK-AND-WHITE PHOTOGRAPH of a crowded street, centred on a man glancing backwards into the camera. His face sat in the crosshairs of a computer-generated box populated with a mobile number,...
View ArticleEye of the Tiger
A TIGER STARES BACK into the lens of the camera, his eyes heavy with fear and helplessness. This portrait of the caged animal, captured in Valparai, Tamil Nadu, is a departure from the standard...
View ArticleDeath of a Star
On 15 July 2016, Fouzia Azeem, better known as Qandeel Baloch, was found murdered in her parents’ home in Multan, in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Her brother, Waseem, confessed to drugging and then...
View ArticleExit Talk
It did not take long to start talking about Brexit with the Friday lunchtime crowd at Café Retro in the small town of Newry in Northern Ireland. Alongside the enduring disbelief and disappointment with...
View ArticleBreaking the Code
On a humid April evening at the Symbiosis International University’s girls’ hostel in Pune, most of the students stepped out for a stroll. Arifa Orfan, a 23-year-old computer applications student from...
View ArticleTrial and Error
MEERA DOES NOT KNOW HER AGE. She believes she is between 35 and 40 years old. Her home is in Rajokri, in south-west Delhi, near the financial and technology hub of Gurugram. The area was once a...
View ArticleThinking Fast and Slow
ON A FRIDAY EVENING in November 2016, a 20-year-old medical student sat behind a mound of papers in a crowded college library, cramming for an upcoming examination on pathology and forensic medicine....
View ArticleNot a Drop to Drink
Altaf Masih, a sanitary worker and resident of Joseph Colony, a neighbourhood in Lahore, sat on a mattress in a single room that houses his entire family. It was an afternoon in July. The walls,...
View ArticleOn the Run
During a late-summer road trip last September, Stanzin Saldon and Murtaza Agha unexpectedly showed up at their friend’s house, overlooking Manasbal Lake near Srinagar. They could not contact him...
View ArticleNeed for Speed
Bharat Namdeo Sonawane bought a bicycle four years ago, looking to speed up his commute. Every day he travelled from his village, near Nashik, to a cement plant five kilometres away, where he worked as...
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People of Clay
ONE IS NEVER FAR FROM THE BRAHMAPUTRA when in western Assam. On a subcontinent where rivers are personified as female progeny of the gods, the “son of Brahma” is an exception. The river floods...
View ArticleFast and Furious
On 1 December 2017, the day Nuriye Gulmen was released from prison, she filmed a video from her bed. Amid pillows nearly swallowing her emaciated frame, she thanked her supporters for rallying against...
View ArticleJoint Solution
Osteoarthritis, which results when the cartilage and bone in the body’s joints wears down from stress, often causes swelling, stiffness, chronic pain and difficulty in walking. The condition is...
View ArticleThe Western Front
AS AFTERNOON TURNED to evening on 16 December 1971—shortly after Pakistani forces surrendered to the Indian Army in East Pakistan—Prime Minister Indira Gandhi called a large meeting in the Cabinet...
View ArticleThe Darkest Hour
{ONE} IT WAS COMMON for Jayanta Kumar Das to find bundles of documents on the doorstep of his house in Puri, Odisha. Having spent two decades in the Indian Air Force, Das retired as a sergeant, in...
View ArticleEarly to Wed
FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD SAVITRI WAS UNUSUALLY QUIET on her first visit home after her gauna—a traditional ceremony, common in Uttar Pradesh, marking a bride’s arrival at her in-laws’ house. “Everything is...
View ArticleDogs’ Breakfast
Late one night this June, a worn down Hyundai Santro made its way through the deserted streets near South Extension in Delhi. A large polythene bag was perched rather precariously on its roof. As I...
View ArticleUnflagging Enthusiast
In Hyderabad’s Sanjeeviah Park, on the banks of Hussain Sagar Lake, a flagpole stands 88 metres tall. Atop it flies one of the largest Indian tricolours in the country, measuring 22 metres by 33...
View ArticleWind and Waves
Payola’s real name is Paola Isabel, but the nickname that was given to her in high school is now the name she goes by. It has an additional significance too: she works as a DJ and radio presenter, and...
View ArticleTough Luck
The Hellish Game of Life, a Japanese variation of the American board game Life, starts with a spin of the wheel. The spin assigns players a number from one to ten, which represents how many spaces they...
View ArticleIn Her Element
IN THE DENSE FOREST OF THE PONMUDI HILLS, in the southwestern ghats of Kerala, lives a 75-year-old poet, herbal doctor and poison healer. Lakshmikutty Kani, whom locals fondly call “Amma”—mother—or...
View ArticleSchool of Hard Knocks
ON 21 FEBRUARY, 17-year-old Ayushmaan woke up at 4 am. It was the first day of the higher secondary examinations organised by the Maharashtra state education board for twelfth-standard students like...
View ArticleRace to the Top
IN LATE JUNE, NIKKI HALEY, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, came for a high-optics two-day tour in India. A brief media advisory issued by the United States mission to the UN slated...
View ArticleFalse Idols
HINDU GODS ARE IN A LITIGIOUS MOOD these days. Following the struggle by Ram Lalla—the Hindu deity’s infant form—to lay claim to the 2.77 acres of land where the Babri Masjid once stood, even minor...
View ArticleFahrenheit 2018
Madhosh Balhami was sitting in his courtyard feeding his two cows grass one afternoon in March 2018, when he heard the sound of gunshots at a distance. A short time later, three men came running past...
View ArticleCulture Vulture
In a bright, spacious and strikingly empty building around four years old, Indian art and artefacts stood observed by a few bored guards. The museum’s only guide insisted that that morning in early...
View ArticleSoul Land
ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS the Russian photographer Ksenia Kuleshova heard about Abkhazia when she visited the country was a legend. When god assigned nations their place on earth, the Abkhaz...
View ArticleOn a Wing and a Prayer
{ONE} NARENDRA MODI’S FIRST PRIME MINISTERIAL visit to France, in April 2015, came amid long-drawn negotiations over India’s purchase of Rafale warplanes, manufactured by the French company Dassault...
View Articleमेक इन अंबानी
{एक} 2015 में बतौर प्रधानमंत्री नरेन्द्र मोदी ने अपनी पहली फ्रांस यात्रा की. फ्रांसीसी कंपनी डसॉल्ट एविएशन से राफेल लड़ाकू विमान की खरीद के लिए लंबे समय से चल रही सौदेबाजी के बीच मोदी यह यात्रा कर रहे...
View Articleखामोश, अदालत जारी है
{एक} जयंत कुमार दास के लिए पुरी (ओडिशा) के अपने घर के बाहर दस्तावेजों का ढेर मिलना कोई अनोखी बात नहीं थी. भारतीय वायु सेना में दो दशकों तक बतौर सार्जेंट काम करने के बाद, दास 2001 में रिटायर हुए. उस...
View ArticleArt of Darkness
For half a century, nearly a hundred watercolour paintings by an artist known only as the “Anonymous Indian” sat in the basement of a French psychiatric hospital, forgotten among old files and debris....
View ArticleShifting Sands
At the Barawa labour camp outside the Qatari capital of Doha, a small patch of grass has taken on an outsized significance. When I visited in late July, dozens of labourers were lying on a scrubby...
View ArticlePreaching the Peace
In Thailand’s deep south, a region on the Malaysian border that is infamous for harbouring a decades-long violent separatist insurgency, a Chinese Muslim called Hu Ya Feng was reading Immanuel Kant. It...
View ArticleTo the Barricades
Two weeks before the Group of 20 summit was held in July last year, rail-signalling equipment was set on fire at 12 locations across Germany, including its capital, Berlin, and Hamburg, the summit’s...
View ArticleWhere are the Shudras?
WHEN THE GOVERNMENT IMPLEMENTED the Mandal Commission recommendations, in the early 1990s, it was meant to be a watershed moment for the Shudras. The measure reserved positions in government employment...
View ArticleThe Collision that Formed India
THE FALL OF THE INDUS CIVILISATION In the oldest text of Hinduism, the Rig Veda, the warrior god Indra rides against his “impure enemies,” or dasa, in a horse-drawn chariot, destroys their fortresses,...
View ArticleRoutines of Resistance
{ONE} CHILLAI KALAN, as the period from the last week of December to the end of January is known in Kashmir, is the best of the valley’s winter. Kashmir turns white and frosty, and the sun all but...
View ArticleDay by Day
THE WRITER ALICE GREGORY once called anorexia “the impossible subject.” Writing about the disease was difficult, she suggested, because “unlike other kinds of addictions, anorexia disguises itself as...
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