Eighteen-year-old Mayukh unexpectedly bumps into Rakesh Verma, an astronaut who has been missing since his space mission to the moon in 1989. Parth Pandya tells the story of how Mayukh familiarises the man from space on India as it is today.
P R Viswanathan believes that the idea of Indian unity is different from the European conception of the word. And devolution is the key to the Indian idea of unity, he writes.
Dilip D’Souza, veteran journalist, discusses his switch from engineering to writing, and his views on writing about subjects as wide-ranging as mathematics to politics to travel to social issues. Yayaati Joshi asks the questions.
As the nation turns 66, Priya Gopal wonders if our celebrations of the Indian spirit of freedom are becoming perfunctory; a trip to the Andamans convinces her that we have begun to take for granted our lives, that many people sacrificed their lives for.
THE LOUNGE| TURN OF THE PAGE In ‘The Hope Factory’, Lavanya Sankaran tells a poignant tale of modern urban India that juxtaposes modernity and tradition, affluence and poverty, but it lacks the punch that was delivered in her first anthology, says Deepa Padmanaban.
