My old teacher Arun Kumar Das Gupta turned ninety last month. I went to see him on the occasion. There were several celebrated teachers of English at Calcutta’s Presidency College in the 1960s. ...

Although I grew up in North India, the newspaper that came into our home was headquartered in a great city then called Calcutta. This was The Statesman, whose main edition was published in the first c...

The so-called ‘Good and Simple Tax’ is at great risk of becoming more complicated even as the Narendra Modi government celebrates the fifth anniversary of the indirect tax reform that aime...

Survival skill Sir — For hundreds of years, the kitchen was demarcated as the exclusive domain of women. The idea of men cooking or helping out in the kitchen — especially those from cer...

In crisis Last week, the Supreme Court of the United States of America decided to overturn Roe vs Wade, a landmark judgment that legalised abortion in the country. Now, the right to legislate on abor...

The centennial year of Satyajit Ray’s birth — it has drawn to a close — was marked by what is elixir to the Bengali mind: nostalgia. Nostalgia need not be unproductive. In fact,...

Working in the media has not been easy for many journalists around the world in recent years. There are many reasons for this — from political polarisation to online trolling, from some media ou...

If ‘India first’ has to become the signature tune of the country’s foreign policy, then the Narendra Modi government has no reason to play easy with either Vladimir Putin’s Rus...

Golden yarn Sir — Storytelling is an art that not everyone can master. Deft storytellers often have a rich pool of life experiences to tap into. Perhaps this is why grandparents make the best s...

Human tragedy occurs in its own time, untouched by gyrations on the political trapeze. The deaths caused by this year’s floods in Assam are tragic enough; added to the loss of homes, crops, live...