A Dark Amsterdam Tour of Female-on-Sale Windows in The Netherlands
A former prostitute took me for a walk around the red-light area. Prostitution in The Netherlands has been legal for almost 200 years and is both taxed and unionised.
A former prostitute took me for a walk around the red-light area. Prostitution in The Netherlands has been legal for almost 200 years and is both taxed and unionised.
Situated at a height of about 6,700 feet, Kasauli is a mere 31 miles uphill from Chandigarh. I start early in the morning so I can stop for breakfast at Giani’s dhaba, a flourishing roadside eatery…
While today’s millennials are rewriting what it means to be young in the 21st century, the silver-haired generation is not taking a backseat either.
Near the LoC at Turtuk in Ladakh, in the rocky wilderness of a narrow, boulder-strewn valley flanked by lofty blue-black tors, lives a populace of some 2,600-odd Balti-speaking Muslims.
Renuka Lake is named after a goddess who is said to have come down from the heavens and ‘entered’ the earth here. Lotuses bloom in Renuka’s hair, ageing turtles crawl out of the water near her feet, and two-feet long mahaseer fish populate her belly. She is truly divine.
The historic Nathu La Pass in Sikkim is a frontier with a violent past that speaks only of an uneasy truce in the present. Out here, Hindi-Cheeni is not so bhai bhai.
Andretta sits on a gentle gradient below the august snow covered peaks of the Dhauladhar. Home to actors, artists and potters, it is now experiencing a cultural renaissance…
An 85-year-old ramp model, centenarian street artist, YouTube star, doctor - these world’s oldest achievers were supposedly past the age to do anything extraordinary…
You can call their locks salt and pepper, silver or steely. Whatever the name, meet these 10 senior celebs who rock their grey hair!
From conforming to rebelling to outright breaking a carved-in-stone marriage tradition, this architect mom made an inner journey that will have a far reaching impact on the lives of her children.
At the Human Library, readers “meet” their books, listen to their stories and ask them questions, leading to interactive sessions that provide much food for thought.
Children moved away leaving you lonely in a big empty house? Find time hanging on your hands post-retirement? Run a homestay from the comfort of your own residence.
These descendants of pioneering Sikh (mostly) Indian immigrants from the early 20th century, who married cotton-picking Mexican women, are a vanishing breed today.
Bangalore may have been selling software, but in Chennai they were outsourcing kidneys to the West. However, the ultimate nation to have profited from the demand for body spare parts was the communist 'enterprise' of China.
This is a story about a martyred soldier, a mother’s grief and the brothers-in-arms who banded together to do something remarkable for their fallen mate’s family.
It was in the early 1980s that actress Parveen Babi created a storm by saying most Indian girls are not virgins. She was speaking of sexual abuse, not consensual sex. Have things really changed today?
In its quest to meet the goal of universal education at the primary level, India has neglected its institutions of higher learning. And we might have to pay a heavy price for that.
I went to see Roland at a correctional facility in Maryland where he was serving a 20-year sentence. No other society in history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens as the US has.
In the US, until less than half a century ago, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder. Families sent their ‘deviant' offspring to asylums to be treated with electric shocks so they would no longer experience sexual desire.
Did Barack Obama's presidency usher in a new age of tolerance in a country that had seen religious discrimination rise after September 11, 2001?
In an era of hyper-connectedness, India’s ageing population is struggling with loneliness and becoming increasingly disconnected from its environment. But, there are ways of coping and help is available.
The second inferno quivered for a brief moment in the blinding sunshine of the late summer day, before collapsing in a mushroom cloud… In an instant, the famous skyline was gone, erased, along with a thousand lives, from the map of the Big Apple forever.
The JOY (Just Older Youth) Community group is for singles aged 50-65 who want to live and grow old together in a community so that they can be of support to each other as they age.
Joggling, a combination of jogging and juggling, can be the smart route to mental health as one ages, says this consultant, teacher, coach and sportsman.
Long before the moral police did its number on 'Fire', Deepa Mehta saw it coming.
Even as celebrity careers crumbled and tabloid stories spilled onto the desks of foreign ministries, the murky underbelly of British society stood uncomfortably exposed.
In 1970 in Trinidad, everyone was humming the lyrics of a hugely popular single – ‘Nana drinkin white rum and Nani drinkin wine,’ a chartbuster that gave birth to a new form of music known as ‘Chutney’.
Forsyth often incorporates the closed door secrets of intelligence agencies such as MI6, CIA and Mossad into his novels, causing headaches and embarrassment to governments around the world. The Afghan remains faithful to this tradition.
Author Suketu Mehta once said of his former friend, film director Vidhu Vinod Chopra, that the latter has an ego so big he needs a truck to carry it. If self-indulgence is indicative of an inflated ego, Chopra may well have proved Mehta right with his film Eklavya.
Single motherhood is a growing phenomenon in middle and upper class India. In Hometruths: Stories of Single Mothers, Deepti Priya Mehrotra examines the ground realities of this phenomenon.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid is a book of clever construct -- what starts as a memoir in monologue catapults into a thriller on the last page.
His 82 years rested lightly on his frame, for he was agile and fleet-footed and his thoughts flew swifter than the words needed to wing them. It was hard to get a man who constantly looks into the future to pause and talk of his past.
Hollywood was in a dark mood that year because of the writers’ strike. But TMC brought some sunshine to our TV sets – it ran a festival of past Academy Award winning and nominated films.
Geet Gaata Chal is a small group of musically inclined South Indian senior citizens who are keeping Bollywood’s old Hindi songs alive in the Tamil heartland of Chennai.
Walk past the open windows of this senior citizen’s home in Bengaluru and you may hear the strains of “We Are the World” or “These Are a Few of My Favourite Things” wafting out from the interiors.
The exposure and encouragement she provided paved the way for my participation in sports, debates and drama – it also gave me the confidence to defy conventional wisdom and choose journalism as a career over medicine and engineering.
In 2001, in Washington DC, a cab driver from Pakistan related to me the amazing story of his friendship with a man from Chandigarh.
A childhood spent playing gulli danda with her brothers, wearing a burkha to school, sleepwalking at night, making her own ice cream, and snacking on dry fruits from Kabul…my mother’s memories of her childhood.
I haven’t encountered the word ‘discipline’ anywhere else in the world as much as I do in newspaper reports in India. The dictionary lists several meanings - most are variations of “to bring to a state of order and obedience by training and control.”
Walk along the lakeside and you’ll find them sitting, evenly spaced, on the lake ledge, the steps, and in the gazebos. Firmly turned backs signal displeasure at intrusion, those holding hands withdraw them gently as a walker passes, and heads lower to muffle conversations from being overheard.
Come 7 p.m. and city gardens teem with walkers, talkers, joggers and strollers as everybody -- but everybody -- comes outdoors “to eat fresh air.” And evening brings with it an energy that desires company and conversation.
Most of us have learnt to shirk taking charge in a situation that we feel is “not my responsibility,” afraid that “if something happens,” it will “all fall on my head.”
My nine-year-old’s view of the war against Afghanistan is simple yet sharp: “Why do they have to kill so many people to look for one bad man?” I can hear the same question being echoed by his contemporaries in America’s classrooms.
I was asked, “Which men and women do you admire most in the world?” I have met many ‘achievers’ and found their meteoric rise to fame interesting – but not worth emulating. So I decided to delve into my immediate environment to create a list.
