The first time Dhruva N Chaudhuri read his father’s book, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, that grandiosely acclaimed and superbly intimidating work that placed him in the short list of people praised by Sir VS Naipaul, he was 17. The first time he fully understood the book was when he was well into his seventies. “I have read the…
Author: sohinichattopadhyay
The Bengali Woman’s Running Diary
I began running, in grief and confusion, five years ago. My grandmother passed away suddenly one morning, a couple of days after my cautious and measured father allowed himself to answer without a sigh that she seemed much better. A little more than a week before, she had been sent home from the critical care unit, and I had interpreted…
Why Can’t HIV-Positive Indians Get Life Insurance?
It is a handsome November afternoon outside, and the mood at the monthly meeting of the Delhi Network of Positive People in Neb Sarai is relaxed, cheerful Saturday. There is giggling and catching up, a wedding invitation has been issued to all present, there are plans for singing and dancing later on. Tea is being made, biscuits have been ordered,…
Sari and I
The sari in the urban office space is a message: see, I can handle this extravagant, ancient garment without zippers and stitches and convenient buttons. I can wrap it round and tuck it in strategic places without looking absurd. I can walk around, climb up stairs, carrying yards and yards of excess fabric on my person, without tripping. I can…
Another Ethnic Cleasing in The Neighbourhood
THE PERSECUTION OF THE ROHINGYA IN MYANMAR On a boggy, fermented scrap of land by the dregs of the diseased Yamuna, a group of men stand in a circle and play. The ball looks like it is made of bamboo, a lamp-shade like thing with shapely cracks. They are playing a version of Sepak Takraw, a sport popular back home in…
The Birth of a Male Contraceptive
It was while purifying water that the thought of contraception came to the mind of Professor Sujoy Kumar Guha. The IIT-Delhi professor, who had already earned the reputation of a maverick, had been commissioned with finding a cheap, effective means to disinfect drinking water by the Government of India. Guha, an admirer of the eel, had written a paper—as part…
The Idea of Poonam Pandey
THANE AND MUMBAI ~ On the afternoon of 16 March 2012, when Sachin Tendulkar hit his hundredth century in international cricket, nearly every radio station in Mumbai lined up the song Chak De! Indiaand a Poonam Pandey joke in tribute. As radio wisecracks go, it wasn’t much of a cracker. “Don’t do a Poonam Pandey,” a chirpy male RJ advised his even-chipper…
Mamata Banerjee: A profile circa 2014
As West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee rides a wave of triumphalism before the general election of 2014, a visit to her state reveals all is not as funny as the Trinamool leader’s limericks. Trinamool Congress chairperson and Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is a painter, and a poet, essayist and writer with 45 books to her authorship. Her preferred…
The Space Idli Mission
K Radhakrishna, the man who cooks up the things Indian astronauts will eat in outer space, also has made-to-order space rasgullas, curries, fruits and vegetables on his menu In January 2010, five months after the unmanned moon probeChandrayaan was abruptly terminated—a year before its completion, since radio contact with the mooncraft was lost—the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) announced a…
Sankar’s Thackeray Mansion
There is a young man, not exactly adrift, but looking to find a footing in the city. Not wide-eyed, nor yet hardened by knowingness, but still sensitive to the shape of experience. Amol Palekar might play him on screen, or Farooq Sheikh. And there is the restless, bad-tempered metropolis, not unkind really, only impatient in her hurry; she could be…