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I left India to live. I returned to belong

June 27, 2026 7:07 pm

As Pride Month ends, chef, author, memoirist, and columnist Suvir Saran reflects on growing up gay, finding freedom in New York, and discovering belonging in a changing India.

The Need to Explain Me: What happens when people interpret your pain instead of hearing it

June 14, 2026 7:57 am

The world does not ask what happened so much as it asks what it means, because meaning is what restores everyone else’s sense of control.

Viraha: Understanding the sacred ache of longing through Urdu poetry and the monsoon

May 03, 2026 12:42 pm

Viraha is not simply missing someone; it is the sacred, searing space between presence and absence.

Intisab: In the name of this day, and all our days

March 29, 2026 10:05 pm

Beyond the headlines of war and the silence of empathy, how the verses of Faiz Ahmad Faiz became a survival manual for a fractured world.

Privilege, paradox, and the places we begin

March 01, 2026 9:35 pm

The danger lies not in acknowledging privilege but in absolutizing it.

Kesariya Balam: Finding arrival and belonging at the Jaipur Literature Festival

January 18, 2026 6:23 pm

Kesariya balam, padharo mhare des — the song that welcomed me to Jaipur, carrying centuries of hospitality in a single, unhurried note

From Bihar, an example: A Kanwar Yatra that empowers women, and doesn't threaten

August 12, 2025 5:49 pm

Bihar's 'Bol Bam' isn't all perfect. But it's a place of safety, where women are freer. It is a yatra that confers self-esteem, without aggression

You can’t expect to bring together two musical genres to produce a divine new fusion music if the wobbly centre just will not hold. (File Photo)

The problem with the East-meets-West fusion of ‘Bandish Bandits’

December 25, 2024 6:08 pm

Preserving the great artistic traditions of India, including music, requires deep understanding and engagement. This cannot be done through a superficial acknowledgement of our syncretic culture.

Why today's debates over Aurangzeb, Shivaji, Rana Pratap or Prithviraj Chauhan are not about good or bad history, but tussles over memory

June 03, 2022 9:09 pm

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: It's not about rewriting Marxist or Nehruvian history but putting facts at the service of creating kinship and finding enemies.