Stories from Afghanistan and India
A week after a US-led invasion overthrew the Taliban regime in November 2001, a plane carrying a small delegation of Indian diplomats landed in Bagram airbase, north of Kabul, the born-again capital of the newly-liberated country. It marked New Delhi’s […]
WHEN IT WAS ANNOUNCED in late March that Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, was well on his way to recovering from Covid-19, there was some celebration 4,000 miles away in India, a former British colony. But it was not colonial […]
In September 2018, India’s LGBTQ movement secured a major victory. The Indian Supreme Court revoked Section 377, a colonial-era law dating back to 1860 that established homosexuality as an offense punishable with a prison sentence of anywhere from 10 years to life. The […]
espite the sweltering Sunday afternoon heat, 33-year-old Ammo Angom was hard at work in his small apartment kitchen in the western suburbs of Mumbai, putting the final touches on a seven-course meal. On this summer day, Angom opened his house […]
Asha Bhoye has lived her whole life among dense forest in the otherwise metropolitan city of Mumbai. As far as she knows, at least three generations of her family, tracing back over a century, have occupied a small, quickly depleting, […]
Raj Narayan Jha rises before dawn on most days of the year to go to his job as a chowkidar, or watchman, at a gated community in suburban Mumbai. After 12 hours on duty, often under the scorching Indian sun […]
When catwalk model Reshma Qureshi offers makeup tips, her online tutorials end with the message that an eyeliner or lipstick is just as easy to buy in India as a pot of over-the-counter acid. The point, coming from a woman who was […]
“Anyone who takes the side of Pakistan and blames India, please unfriend [me] from Facebook, otherwise I will [say things that] upset you,” Mohammad Iqbal Afzali wrote on social media on Tuesday. A quick scroll through his Facebook feed reveals […]
India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has come under fire after one of its leaders described prominent opposition leader Mayawati as a “blot on womankind” and “worse than a transgender”. Mayawati, who goes by one name, is the head of Bahujan […]
N 1920, Srinivasa Ramanujan, an Indian mathematician, succumbed to what was probably amoebic dysentery at the age of 32. But even though his lifespan was short, Ramanujan’s work continues to influence mathematics today — from number theory and infinite series to continued fractions […]