by Nirupama | May 8, 2018 | Editorial
Rain lashed on the windshield as my mother navigated our white Fiat car through the flooded streets of Chennai, the erstwhile Madras. I sat in the front seat craning my neck trying to watch out for any danger as she drove back home late in the night. Her simple...
by Priya Satia | Apr 10, 2018 | Cover Story, Opinion
When the academy was the exclusive playground of white men, it produced the theories of race, gender, and Western cultural superiority that underwrote imperialism abroad and inequality at home. In recent decades, women and people of color have been critical to...
by Jaya Padmanabhan | Mar 6, 2018 | Now & Then
In an op-ed provocatively titled “Is Majoring in Liberal Arts a Mistake for Students?” and published on Medium, the tech billionaire Vinod Khosla insists, in paragraph after unremitting paragraph, that a college degree has value if the degree holder is...
by Kalpana M. | Feb 28, 2018 | Desi Lens
In the late seventies, as my waist lost inches and my hips stretched a little more, I could have competed with Scarlett O’Hara. I believe I owned a 17-inch waist. Such observations, however, were wasted on Daddykins, my late father, who measured beauty by a formula....
by Jaya Padmanabhan | Jan 6, 2018 | Now & Then
A relevant piece from our archives, on a topic that is still a hot-button issue. First published on March 14, 2017. What is this notion of the best and brightest? For one, it is the most conflicted banality of the moment. The term is generously used by liberal...
by Kalpana M. | Dec 11, 2017 | Desi Lens
On the morning of my birthday this past October, I began reading the first few pages of the book, Oranges, by John McPhee. In the world of nonfiction, it’s a classic. A couple of lines jumped out at me as my eyes hopped over these words: “Citrus does not come true...
