Reshmi Chakraborty

It was a scenario television presenter and actor Mini Mathur had never imagined. A few years ago, she was facing an audience of almost 5,000 people, narrating a 10-minute unscripted story on stage, at the Spoken Fest in Mumbai. “About 40 seconds in, I completely blanked out. I had no idea what I was going to say next. I lost my train of thought and couldn’t remember the point of my story — nothing.”

Selim Khandakar, 71, has always dreamt of making a museum in his village for the 12,000-plus objects he has collected over 50 years. A small portion of that collection has now reached one of the best museums in the world — the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London — thanks to his artist niece, Ohida Khandakar.

“Who gets to say what art is?” asks entertainment lawyer and art curator Amshula Prakash. “Who decides what belongs on a wall, under lights, what is worthy of being looked at?”
Janapriya, a unique show curated by Prakash, held this February in Mysuru, tried answering that question by gathering objects that matter to people. “Give me something that you own, something dear to you, or something that you think is art,” Prakash asked people.
How a 71-year-old Muslim villager’s “hoarding” of everyd...

“Who gets to say what art is?” asks entertainment lawyer and art curator Amshula Prakash. “Who decides what belongs on a wall, under lights, what is worthy of being looked at?”
Janapriya, a unique show curated by Prakash, held this February in Mysuru, tried answering that question by gathering objects that matter to people. “Give me something that you own, something dear to you, or something that you think is art,” Prakash asked people.

The first time I meet Archana Trasy and her partner Pooja Chaudhri is via a beautiful pride advocacy short film on Instagram. “I always say this to Archu, you really brought colour into my life,” Chaudhri, a media consultant, says in the film, walking into an open windy terrace overlooking the Arabian Sea, perhaps hinting at the openness of their own identities. “We are in a same-sex relationship and we wear this love with a lot of pride,” says Trasy.

Every morning, Sonu, a vegetable seller in Mirzapur’s Mukeri Bazaar, has one important task besides setting up his tiny roadside stall. Along with friends Babua and Shobhit, a shoe-seller in the same market, Sonu, who is in his early 20s, takes turns to open the Mirzapur Community Library for the day. A free library that started last July, this room has become a place of possibilities for Sonu and his friends, all of whom are preparing to sit for state-level competitive exams.
The community l...

ASHA is India's million-strong community of frontline female health workers who connect rural India, especially its women and children, to health services and government schemes
Archana Tamdalge, 38, has lost track of the number of times she had to rush a woman in labour to the government hospital late at night or the early hours of dawn. In rural India, this can mean a journey of 6-8 kilometres or more, with no ambulance service. Often, she has spent money out of pocket on private transport ...

Walhe, Maharashtra, India CNN —
Jyoti Pawar, 40, starts her day early when the sun is still low in Walhe, a village in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.
She’s racing to beat the midday heat and a government-issued deadline to visit 30 to 40 households before noon.
Wearing a standard-issue pink jacket and a homemade cloth mask, she goes door to door, checking for cases of Covid-19.
Pawar is one of more than a million Accredited Social Health Activists – or ASHA workers – Indian women wh...

As primary caregiver to ageing and ailing seniors at home, death is always on my mind these days. I see it inching its way forward, slowly and certainly, as limbs fail and memory fades. How would you like to go, how would you like to be remembered, I want to ask. But like most Indian families, our conversations around death are limited to the medical and pragmatic aspects of it — medication, wills, division of assets... Its emotional aspect remains unaddressed.

India is a death-avoidant society, but a growing awareness of death literacy is helping change mindsets

Updated - May 31, 2024 11:14 am IST
After living in Guwahati and Delhi, Dhritee Bordoloi finds Mumbai to be the safest place in India. But the 24-year-old continues to be cautious when looking for accommodation in the city. As a freelance assistant director, Bordoloi’s hours are erratic and she often returns home late at night. Her priority when house-hunting is a place close to a busy road or highway.

A religious superstition is prohibiting some women in Maharashtra from cutting their matted hair, even if they're lice-infested and weighing them down in ways more than one.

In 1997, a storm sent five million pieces of Lego into the ocean. A U.K. beachcomber helped build a citizen science project that aims to track those pieces and tell a story about plastic pollution.

Reshmi Chakraborty and Nidhi Chawla, founders of Silver Talkies, a social enterprise focused on active ageing, talk about the lessons they have learnt in ageing from the older and bolder generation.

You may wonder about the focus on the need for social connections as one grows older, in this book. After all, isn’t friendship usually associated with youth? Education management expert Ravi Acharya would say no to that.