To bring this blog up to speed, links to a few pieces I’ve written over the past couple of months: In Mint Lounge, thoughts on the wonderful Aaranya Kaandam and its neo-noir. In The National, an elegy to the departed — and not terribly missed! — safari suit. On FirstPost.com, trying to figure out why [...]
In Mint today, an article on the twilight of shorthand, once a much-desired skill but now, as the trickle of students into the Stenographers Guild in Chennai attests, almost an anachronism. Even in the Lok Sabha, the aspirational acme for many stenographers, dozens of house reporter positions go unfilled as the work multiplies: This imbalance [...]
In Mint today, a long article on the revolution-in-progress of the humble cookstove. Its inefficiencies contribute to pollution problems, to global warming, and to public-health issues, but it is proving a challenge to design a stove that is both inefficient and expensive. A handful of firms around the world — including one in Pondicherry and [...]
In Mint today, an article on the wave of fake Ravi Varma paintings in the market, a wave that has built over the last decade and a half. The most recent exemplar came, for good measure, with a forged certificate of authentication, bearing the name of the country’s pre-eminent Ravi Varma expert: The “certificate”, it [...]
In Mint Lounge today, a cover story titled Real Brotherly Love, on how the Indian Freemasonry is opening itself up to the public, part of a worldwide trend in the brotherhood. In India, this has been propelled by Capt. Biswakumar, who has been the Grandmaster of the Grand Lodge of India since November 2009. Last [...]
In Mint today, I accompany, on the road, the field agents of Phonographic Performance Ltd., a copyright society whose thankless job is to convince owners of shops and restaurants that they have to pay license fees for the music they merrily stream for their customers: For their troubles, says Pradeep Nigam, a business development manager [...]
In Mint today, a Raagtime column on the music of Edith Piaf — on her oddly melancholy voice, which so often conflicted with the optimism of her lyrics: It is a peculiar quality of Piaf’s voice that even the jauntiest song seems to brim with latent pain. “I don’t regret anything at all,” she sings [...]
In Mint today, I co-write about those annoying SMSes that make your phone vibrate halfway through Inception, force you to dig the phone out to read them, only to discover that they are advertising a Sauna Slim belt: The SMS you got last night—the one that woke you up just as you’d fallen asleep, urging [...]
A couple of pieces on music, published in the last few days in Mint. First, an obituary of Manohari Singh, the man responsible for many of Bollywood’s finest saxophone solos: In 1969, a group of musicians from Mumbai accompanied Kishore Kumar on a three-month tour of performances, visiting the West Indies, the US, and the [...]
In Mint today, I write about the Heritage Conservation Committee, a new body within the Ahmedabad municipal corporation that is trying to evolve guidelines for the preservation of the city’s old buildings — and, in the process, running up against intractable issues of heritage economics: At the core of the problems that HCC faces—and the [...]