Victoria and Albert Museum, London

by Priyal Sanghavi

Opulence and the magnificence of Indian royalty has been the subject of fascination for many a film and book. Anyone who has shrugged off the Victoria and Albert Museum’s exhibition ‘Maharaja: the Splendour of India’s Royal Courts’ - as an Orientalist fancy, including many Indians themselves, ought to take a look.

By Taapsi Ramchandani

I went to my hometown a few weeks back for a surprise visit to my mother. Three days later, while President Pratibha Patil was probably doing an extra kilometer on the treadmill preparing for her historic flight in the Sukhoi, I was slowly losing my health to my first ever major illness - dengue. Not that I was complaining. It was after all the gravest thing happening to me since common cold four years back.

By Halina Ward

This is a post about terrorism, sustainable development, and the power of diaspora. And it’s a post that asks whether we might find ourselves in a different place now had Osama Bin Laden been poor.

by Spriha Srivastava

Just a couple of days back I was reading about an incident where a village girl was burnt alive by her neighbours because she had a relationship with a boy from a different caste. In another case, a boy’s hands and legs were chopped off by the residents for marrying a girl from their village. These are just two examples from a bagful of many more cases that occur every day.

On the first anniversary of the Mumbai attacks, Priyal Sanghavi looks at the trial of the sole surviving terrorist and its impact on India-Pakistan relations.

Western governments paint a picture of a violent, terrorism-crazed Pakistan its people will not recognise, says Qalandar Bux Memon