[First published in The Hindu THread dated January 14, 2017] You aren’t a true ‘Tamizhan’ if you haven’t tamed a raging bull during the annual harvest festival of Pongal in January. Or so it would seem if one were to follow the recent arguments being made in favour of conducting the bull taming sport ofContinue reading “Missing the bull’s eye”
Category Archives: features
Have we lost it?
[First published in The Hindu dated July 29, 2016] The Ballroom of Chennai’s Taj Coromandel hotel, resplendent under the amber glow of 20-something chandeliers, seemed like an unlikely setting for a discussion on climate change. After all, the brightly-lit room was, if anything, a painful reminder of our conspicuous consumption of electricity, and everything elseContinue reading “Have we lost it?”
The ‘good’ elephant and the ‘bad’ elephant
[First published in The Hindu thREAD on Jan. 22, 2016] Here’s the tragic part about being born as an elephant. Sure, you may get to eat a whole lot of food and grow into a 3,000-kilo giant, but if your fate is to be ordered about by a puny human, how are you supposed toContinue reading “The ‘good’ elephant and the ‘bad’ elephant”
Mahasweta Devi is not dead
[First published in The Hindu thREAD on August 3, 2016] Though the writer is no more in the corporeal sense, her words, her thoughts, and the lives of those she touched will ensure she continues to live on in our midst. I can’t recall the exact date anymore. But it was for sure in theContinue reading “Mahasweta Devi is not dead”
The Fast and the Furious – Starring Baba Ramdev
The easiest way to capture the imagination of a nation glued on to its television sets is to don a saffron attire, embrace a cause and sit on a “fast unto death”. The strategy of ‘satyagraha’ that Mahatma Gandhi so effectively deployed to raise the consciousness of a nation during the British rule, has inContinue reading “The Fast and the Furious – Starring Baba Ramdev”
An anthropologist among the journalists 