The sun over Dhaneri does not rise; it attacks. In this small village perched on the jagged, arid lip of the Thar Desert in Rajasthan, the dawn is a pale, heat-muffled drumbeat. For decades, the rhythm of life here has been dictated by the “Matka Walk.” Before the first light can even turn the sand to gold, the women of Dhaneri — led by elders like 58-year-old Kamla Devi — begin a four-mile trek toward a brackish well that is more mud than mirage. For Kamla, water has never b

Image created by Google Gemini In the colonnaded heart of Connaught Place, where the whitewashed Georgian arches met the high-tech sheen of the new millennium, the huge sign in burnished bronze said “Oxidize”. Next to that, through the heavy glass door, you enter the boutique. Here, the hum of high voltage instruments created a textured hiss that competed with the distant, rhythmic honking of the traffic in the Inner Circle. Elias, the lead “Plasma Tailor,” moved with the gra

In the fertile plains of Punjab, where the horizon is usually a blurred line between golden wheat and the dusty haze of the Grand Trunk Road, a new kind of silhouette had emerged. Rising above the traditional brick kilns of Ludhiana was a structure that looked less like a factory and more like a captured piece of a spacecraft. This was Agnivarta Energy. Inside the main hangar, Vikram stood on the observation deck, watching the blue-violet glow of the plasma torches through a

Figure created by Google Gemini The year is 2028, and Murugan was a man caught between the dirt of the past and the lightning of the future. On his family’s acreage in the Kavery delta, the old, raised platforms of wooden planks covered with heavy duty tarpaulins to keep moisture seeping into and decomposing the manure had been replaced by something sleeker, stranger, and infinitely more temperamental: a Plasma-Assisted Ammonia Synthesis and Delivery System (PAAS-D). Murugan

My fascination with Dick Francis novels began when I bought Reflex (1980) from an airport bookshop. The protagonist of Reflex, Jockey cum photographer Phillip Nore is a remarkably well-crafted character: multi-faceted, intellectual and reflective. He drifts along in life, taking whatever comes his way without high expectations or high self-esteem. He had a difficult childhood, his mother often dumping him with her friends while on whimsical jaunts. This left him self-dependen

My wife and I started reading “Mother Mary Comes to Me”, simultaneously, I in my kindle and she with the physical book. This is Arundhati Roy’s 2025 memoir exploring her tumultuous relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, framed by Mary’s death at 89 and drawing from Roy’s life in Kerala and beyond. My wife was shocked by the brutal honesty of the book, its depiction of people and the events in her life. Its portrayal of Roy’s relatives, some of whom happen to be known to us p

Abraham Verghese’s book, “The Covenant of Water” has become a best seller. The Story begins in 1900, in the princely state of Travancore. The place is Parambil, a fictional village in Travancore, a princely state renowned for its unique cultural and historical identity. Today this is part of Kerala, the southern-most state of India. St Thomas Christians flourish here. Much of the novel’s events unfold against this backdrop. Mariamma, a 12-year-old girl is being married off to

My way of painting is to spread paint over the entire canvas in patches reflecting the general layout I want to create and then apply the...

It was fascinating to watch Shamika Ravi, Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council member, correlate satellite imagery of construction...

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The unfinished Skywalk in Kottayam Kottayam, a small town in Kerala has done exceptionally well in many metrics of human development....

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“Naalumanikaat” — Place of the 4 o’clock Breeze Life took a full circle when I moved back to Kottayam after sixty years. I was born here...

I, along with my wife, started watching “Laapataa Ladies”, the celluloid saga of lost brides, on Netflix. I was sceptical about the...

Burning of crop residue is prevalent in North India although banned by the National Green Tribunal. Wheat stubble burning is a recent...

Image courtesy of: Robert A Hefner III (Age of Energy Gases, 2007) The earliest discovered wood fire goes back to 75,000 years ago in a...

This is the story of a book, a rare illuminated manuscript known as the Sarajevo Haggadah. The book was born in Northern Spain in the...

“Wanted” is an Australian television series that premiered in 2016 and quickly gained attention for its gripping storyline and dynamic...

International Energy Agency’s projection in the World Energy Outlook 2022 [1] shows that even by 2050, half of the total energy supply...

Innovation has been defined as the successful development of creative ideas. For innovation to happen, creative ideas that have economic...

Master sculptor Kanayi Kunhiraman’s Yakshi at Malampuzha dam My childhood had many influences which stoked my imagination and creativity....