The Badri Seshadri arrest has to be seen in a broader context. Leftists and liberals stand for free speech, the right to criticize. They uphold equality, dignity for all, and so on. They are all for change. Rightwingers venerate what is timeworn and sacred in society. They stand for strong...
Namakkal district in Tamil Nadu is perhaps one of the top egg and poultry producers in the country if not in South East Asia as a whole. It has long been hailed as the "Egg Capital" of the country. Its thriving poultry industry has been a major source of income for the local communities,...
Why did the Indian shipping industry, particularly steam navigation, not flourish during the British reign in the country? This question is worth deeper analysis. That is what J. B. Prasanth More, the Puducherry-born, Paris-based academic, has attempted in his latest book, Indian Steamship...
While The Kerala Story purports to claim that tens of thousands of women were converted to Islam in Kerala to be sent to ISIS territory, the true figure is three. Only three women have been documented to have been duped into converting to Islam for the purpose of serving the ISIS in its holy...
All the eastern coastal states are bracing themselves for the fallout of a weather system, dubbed Cyclone Mocha, which is slowly making its way north in the Bay of Bengal. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Tuesday said a well marked low pressure area already in the South Andaman sea...
Novel and cinema are always strange bedfellows. There have been instances of writers pushing back against filmmakers’ tendency to tweak their stories. For instance, when J D Salinger’s short story Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut was adapted into the film My Foolish Heart (1949), he reportedly flew...
It takes a combination of a director, technicians, actors, theme of the story and the politics it speaks about to attract the audience in droves to the theatres. When Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan 1 was released, the major draw was the curiosity to know how he had visualised Kalki’s iconic...
It was artist C. Kondaiah Raju (1898-1976), who, in his portraits, infused life into several Hindu gods and goddesses and made them part of several temples and households. He was one of the few famous painters such as Raja Ravi Varma. Born to Kuppusamy Raju-Alamelu Mangammal in Chennai in 1898,...
In recognition of Tamil Nadu’s indigenous varieties of brinjal and chillies, the thorny brinjal of Vellore and the rotund chilli of Ramanathapuram have been given the geographical indication or GI tag. ‘Mullu kaththarikaai’ (thorny brinjal) is endemic to Vellore district. It is different from...
The Book Fair in January is an important event in the cultural calendar of Chennai. The 46th edition of the Chennai Book Fair took off at YMCA Grounds, Nandanam on January 6 and will go on till January 22. This time, the first edition of an international book fair is also being hosted in...
