SOCIETY
CIVILIZATION. CULTURE. COMMUNITY.
Your Marriage Is Not a Content Calendar
The Real Story Behind Public Displays of Affection: If You Have to Post It, Do You Have It?
How the Establishment Is Instigating the Protest
One Law for the Protestors, Another for the Goons...
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Anatomy of a Protester
The youth won't go home. They, the Gen Z, think the government is the one that’s...
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Devotion and Deals
At the Rangapanchami fair in Kareila, the Rai is a prayer, a performance and a l...
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Jeffrey Archer Died Yesterday
India Had Its Own Edison. We Didn't Teach You His Name
Everyone knows Edison. Why don't we know Gopalaswamy Doraiswamy Naidu (1893-1974)? A school dropout, he taught himself engineering and went on to drive over a hundred innovations across transportation, electrical engineering, photography, and agriculture. India built a modern nation on the kind of ingenuity he embodied, then forgot the man himself. Only the Bharat Ratna can do justice to his legacy.
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Deaf Gain
I visited the Noida Deaf Society (NDS), a not-for-profit founded by Ruma Roka and witnessed "Deaf gain" or deafness not as a medical problem to be fixed but as a form of cognitive, cultural, and human diversity that offers strengths to individuals and to society. Spending time with the people who live this, and documenting their resolve, taught me a great deal.
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Two Editors, Two Systems
Tarun Tejpal and M J Akbar: Two of India's most prominent editors, both accused of preying on junior colleagues — and yet almost nothing about the police action, or the outcomes looks the same.
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Parul Sharma: The Space She Kept
Art, objects, furniture — wood, metal — interspersed into a symphony playing her quintessential tune. The contrast of distinct objects, some with bold colours and textures, blends beautifully in the space. Table, chair, a set of armchairs, a candle burning for its aroma on a table in front of a glass window, daylight filtering in through the bamboo chick. Procured from all over the world, these objects, books, seem to be in conversation in her space.
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IS AI SAFE FOR HUMANITY?
I asked an AI whether AI is safe for humanity. It replied, with the emotional warmth yet in a matter-of-fact way, like a legal disclaimer:"As an AI, I do not have personal opinions, fears, or beliefs, but I can give you an objective breakdown of how the scientific and tech communities view this question. The short answer is: we don't know yet. Whether AI is safe for humanity depends entirely on how fast capabilities advance versus how fast we build the safety frameworks to control them."
THE TRAGEDY OF A LEGENDARY ELEPHANT: RAMACHANDRAN
Raman is working for humans for nearly five decades, blind in one eye, with the other failing. He displays neurotic behaviours, repetitive in nature — pacing, head-bobbing, body-swaying — patterns rarely seen in their wild counterparts, indicative of deep mental trauma. This has to end before Raman dies, he deserves sometime of resting and doing things that's natural to him.
RISHABH SINGH SAMBYAL: AN ARMY OFFICER WHO BECAME AN ONLINE ICON WITHOUT UTTERING A WORD
Social media is a strange kind of powerful—it can make you a household name overnight, and there's little logic to it beyond the fact that it tends to happen to good-looking men. In this "Hook Era," governed by the "3-second rule," the human brain processes images roughly 60,000 times faster than text. Bad news for a print journalist like me.
The Immortality Trap
World leaders don't live by ikigai. Power is stressful and demanding; it makes them glow even as it ages them, concealed by top-tier healthcare. Vanity and ambition outlast the person, driving leaders to write histories that cement their legacy. But God doesn't discriminate. Death comes for everyone. It remains the great leveler.