There’s a line in Kafan where the two grieving, indifferent men—father and son—sit outside a liquor shop, having spent the shroud money on drink. But Premchand leaves us with this question: Who decides what grief should look like, when the system itself is so cruel that the living envy the dead?

Structured in the qissa format, the author's debut novel blends fact and fiction to paint a picture of the current political climate

While there are high octane action scenes, the author successfully shows the slow-natured process of investigations

The Indian Express visits Kolhapur's Chappal Galli and to factories and homes where entire families, from parents to children, work together on the chappals, where caste, fashion and history come home

No little animal ever seems to just roll over and give up. All the while, it continues to fight valiantly in its corner

Where every human suffering comes with a label

Sonal Holland, India’s first Master of Wine, shows how wine and life are both allegories. We are all products of our terroir, of the climate and culture that shape us

The insect world is replete with invisible wonders – from the praying mantis and big cats to octopuses and cuttlefish. They shape-shift to ambush and escape from predators

Bharatanatyam exponent Malavika Sarrukai, 'India's greatest living dancer’ according to noted art historian BN Goswami, on her dance journey, questioning tradition and how pay parity between a dancer and a musician continues to be overlooked in the Carnatic world’s debate on caste and gender

We lost Aruna in the space of a month. One month. No warning, no gentle slide into frailty, no graceful exit that we could have seen coming. She was fine — more than fine — and then she was gone.

In the concluding part of this series, conjuring up social media profiles for animals

There is something sacred about the first meeting. The spark before speech. The hush before history. The first time your eyes collide, not in confusion, but in quiet confirmation

Howarth traces the cross-cultural journey of ingredients to uncover forgotten stories

Neog argues that collectives can have both intentionality and agency and, therefore, have a sort of personal identity

Informative and well-written, it explores the ideological moorings and philosophy of India's neighbour

The bedrock of the AI industry at the moment — tonnes and tonnes of data, from books to articles to almost everything on the Internet — is also a way of claiming people’s labour as fair use, Hao argues.

There’s a strange crisis unfolding. Young minds aren’t broken by poverty or war or hunger. They’re broken by option paralysis, by endless comparisons, by trend-chasing that never leads to truth

The ocean is a completely different beast at this time: it's ranting and raving, sending spume and spray high in the air – nothing well-mannered about it

'If my elder sister does something wrong, it’s my duty to write against that', says Sahgal, 98, at her home in Dehradun

Pride Month is more than floats and hashtags. It is memory. It is mourning. It is magic. It is the pulse of those who dared to love before love was allowed

Gender is not destiny. Emotion is not weakness. Strength is not shape-shifting into masculine myth. We must let go of these tropes.

In her new book 'Mitahara', the celebrity nutritionist advocates keeping a simple kitchen with only a few pots, pans and spices

A tiger and a stray dog fell into an abandoned well in Kerala’s Idukki district. Just what did they say to each other?

From deep blue night skies to flowering yellows that attract bees, from the fiery reds of blood to the orange of roaring fires – colours signal the fullness of life and love