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The forest killer
BY SHAMSHEER YOUSAF When tragedy falls on the forest, it falls on us. I feel a lot of pain seeing how our beautiful jungle has been destroyed this way. —Achchugegowda, 65, Soliga tribal elder. It takes...
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The bull run
BY C. S. CHELLAPPA The Tamil writer C. S. Chellappa (1912-1998) was a great fan of jallikattu. His novel Vaadi Vaasal is the story of a youth who tames a bull at the Pongal festival. In 1954, he went...
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The kingdom in the hills
BY ALICE S. KANDELL Alice S. Kandell first visited Sikkim in 1965 to attend the coronation ceremony where Hope Cooke, a close friend from Sarah Lawrence College, became the first American-born queen....
View ArticleThe male force
BY ALIA ALLANA “Shall we have fun?” a junior told constable Aradhya as he put his service revolver to her head. She was inside a police vehicle, in the dead of night somewhere near Jhansi in Uttar...
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To be a man
BY NANDINI KRISHNAN PHOTOGRAPHS BY SURESH KANNAN Jovin began to unbutton his shirt, “See, I haven’t yet got my operation done. I tie them up.” “No, no, there’s no need,” I said and turned away hastily,...
View ArticleThe freefall of BSP
BY ARPIT PARASHAR Kewal Kumar, a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) worker from Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh (UP) was in Lucknow when party chief Mayawati addressed the media at her residence after the...
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The chronicler of sleepless nights
BY NANDINI KRISHNAN The shade of the trees, The single hut, A few flowers, And a sky, In the picture That hangs on the wall. As my eyes rest on the flowers, My heart wanders In search of The...
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Shackled by caste
PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUDHAKAR OLWE AND HELENA SCHÄTZLE TEXT BY SHRADDHA GHATGE Enlarge ASHA KAMBLE “Pahila mala chambharin bolvayche, ata maanane taai bolavtat (First they used to call me chambharin, now...
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Lost boys, lost girls
The street children of Delhi. BY SIDDHARTH BEHL (Siddharth Behl is a photographer based in Delhi. He is a National Foundation of India fellow.) (The photo story of the May 2017 edition of Fountain Ink)
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The body’s secret garden
BY AKSHAI JAIN It started with discomfort in the stomach, progressed to severe cramps and finally blood in the stool, often lots of it. Nights were sleepless, a roil of urgent trips to the bathroom and...
View ArticleIn a Snap
BY ALIA ALLANA School’s out but she can’t wait to get to the library. In the corner of the room, past stacks of books on biology, is a safe where 9th and 10th graders deposit their mobiles at the start...
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Aadhaar in the hand of spies
BY GOVIND KRISHNAN V Aadhaar, the 12-digit number linked to the fingerprints and iris patterns of most Indians, the key to unlocking government for the citizen, is a security nightmare in a world where...
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The dying weave
BY TAHA AHMAD MMukaish Badla is a form of embroidery that reached its peak in 18th century Lucknow. The art form travelled to different parts of the world, but is now restricted to a few narrow lanes...
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People of the book
BY SRINATH PERUR It is safe to assume that any book of significance is hard to bring into the world. Even so, Kannada writer Vasudhendra’s collection of short stories Mohanaswamy has had a particularly...
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Of yaks and men
BY RITAYAN MUKHERJEE Tibet’s nomadic mountain people known as Ndrogba or Drokpa occupy the higher reaches of the pleateau, living at heights beyond 14,000 feet. They are found in all three traditional...
View ArticleThe Yogi rules
BY ARPIT PARASHAR Barely days after the Yogi Adityanath-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government took office in Uttar Pradesh (UP) policemen from the local chowki in Noida’s sector-51 visited Anand...
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The girls of Haryana
BY KAREN DIAS The small state of Haryana has the worst sex ratio in India at 879 females per 1,000 males, one of the lowest in the world. Haryana is also known for caste and sexual violence against...
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Master of chic
BY ALIA ALLANA A drone skirted the three chandeliers in the dining room with infinite mirrors. Four models in chikan paired with tulle and braid fringed shirts and a silk opera coat stared at it...
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Universal drone
BY ANKIT AGRAWAL Indian musical instruments are remarkable for their beauty and variety of forms which, as seen in the paintings at Ajanta, have remained largely unchanged in the last 2000 years. Among...
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Yemen: The invisible war
BY ALIA ALLANA On November 4, Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired a rocket aimed at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital. It was an audacious move—the rebels had shown that they were willing to inflict mass...
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