A city rooted in colonial legend, Nivedita Dey examines the linguistics of place, names, food, and culture that keep the “Calcutta” in Kolkata.

Nivedita Dey recalls the glory days of Mumbai’s bygone Cafe Samovar, where for decades, friends, family, strangers, students, lawyers, homemakers, thinkers, creative souls, Bollywood icons, Marxists, liberals, and more diverse groups of humans huddled over cups of cutting chai.

Indian urban centres are getting hotter every year due to the heat island effect. With millions of lives at stake, urgent city-planning measures are needed across the country to mitigate the incoming crisis. By Vipin Labroo

India’s high youth unemployment should be a cause for greater alarm. Not only is it a question of under-utilization of the most precious resource of a nation—its young people—but it also raises the spectre of social tension and unrest. By Vipin Labroo

The menace of vanishing snows now haunts the Himalayan region, taking away the very essence of the mountains for Indians and people from around the world. By Vipin Labroo

With a potential scenario of a water Armageddon looming for India, Vipin Labroo argues that the fight to avert a total crisis must be no less than a national crusade.

Extreme climate change and the environmental catastrophe in towns like Joshimath are another reminder for the need of a sustainable, tenable, and all-inclusive model of growth. By Vipin Labroo

Popular historian Sanjeev Sanyal pushed the account of India’s intellectual decline post the Islamic conquests. In his research essay, Joshua Fernandes challenges Sanyal’s stance by presenting a connected history through a survey of Sino-Tibetan literature. 

The advent of the metaverse will present new challenges, and even require a new definition of what it means to be human. Vipin Labroo explores the curious frontiers of the future, and how Eastern and Indian philosophies may have already prepared us for this brave new world.

The Advaita Bodhi Foundation—working in digital literacy and rural enterprise—has set about pushing entrepreneurship among the Lodha community in West Bengal. By Medha Dutta Yadav

With today’s fast-paced digital connectivity and the slew of productivity tools at their disposal, critiques of the office spaces asked if the cost of infrastructure, the inconvenience of the daily commute, and the needless increase in the carbon footprint was worth it. The pandemic proved them emphatically right. By Vipin Labroo

Streaming music giant Spotify’s ad campaign blurs the line between fact and fiction, a meta conversation that offers the listeners less annoyance with more upgrades. Does it work? By Shambhavi Gupta