The Don of Dhanbad

DHANBAD’s dreaded Mafia gangs were riveting topics of conversation last fortnight, and for different reasons. Film actor Shatrughan Sinha, with the blessings of the ruling…

Read more

CALCUTTA IS FOEVER

Thirty years ago, a dishevelled man leaned across and shouted at me in the smoke-filled, raucous Olympia bar on Calcutta’s Park Street: “Calcutta is forever!”…

Read more

Going for Gold

Seven and a half minutes into the movie Paan Singh Tomar a journalist asks the eponymous hero, played by Irrfan Khan, why he became a…

Read more

The Takeover Man

Most of us are cursed with poor memory. We need episodic markers to help us measure our lives from one significant remembrance to another. Our…

Read more

NOT SELLING VOLUMES

It was a browser’s dream come true­ kilometres of books that took hold of the bibliophile’s heart-strings and did not stop tugging for hours. For…

Read more

Spate Of Senseless Tragedies

Qutab Minar, the 72.5-metre-high monolithic tower that Iltutmish built 750 years ago, witnessed two shocks in its hoary life-span. In 1368, it was struck by…

Read more

STONE AGE SHAKTI

That Trite phrase ‘as old as the hills’ has suddenly taken on startling significance in relation to a thread that runs through Hindu beliefs: the…

Read more