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Old age has seeped into my parents’ lives like damp on a monsoon wall, gradually spreading until one day we realised everything smells faintly of fear and pain balm. These days, every unscheduled phone call from my parents feels like a trailer for a horror film I never bought tickets for. That morning, my father,…

On October 2, 1992, I stood before a large gathering of the National Federation of Indian American Associations in Atlanta, Georgia, speaking on behalf of a presidential candidate most of them had never met. Governor Bill Clinton was still months from the White House, the Soviet Union had just dissolved, and India — the world’s…

Vikas Bishnoi & Vipul Anekant On Buddha Purnima, when the full moon illuminates the night sky, we commemorate the birth, enlightenment, and parinirvan of Siddharth Gautam, and the radical liberation of human inquiry from the chains of dogma. Buddhism stands as a singular philosophical tradition that refuses to sacralise belief. Unlike many religious traditions that…

Should general knowledge be renamed general ignorance? According to Global Language Monitor, a new word to describe a new thing, in fields as diverse as science and slang, is coined every 98 minutes, resulting in over 5,400 additions annually. If this were not information overload enough, terms that have long been and continue to be…

Your smart TV is a mole. As TOI reported yesterday, it collects snapshots of everything you watch and hear, and sends them to ‘data brokers’, so that they can refine your profile, and sell it to advertisers. Are we surprised? Yes, although we shouldn’t be, knowing that our phones – and the apps on them – tablets…

RBI’s new discussion paper on “safeguards in digital payments” is a welcome attempt to address Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud – scams where customers, under pressure or deception, authorise payments that rob them. But if these proposals are to mature into workable safeguards, the next draft will need to answer a set of harder questions…

India’s recent World T20 championship, was only the latest reminder of how sport now commands global attention on a scale few other things can. And Fifa World Cup football is an even grander spectacle, whose shots will soon thunder around the world. Behind the spectacle, billions of dollars of footballs, cricket bats, training gear, protective…

Odisha bank branch officials, who demanded proof-of-death of a woman from her brother, found a way around the lack of documents speedily enough, when he carried her skeletal remains to the bank. And that is the single point that needs emphasis. Compliance with rules is one thing, refusal to address the reality of document scarcity,…

A war wages in Iran, yet New Delhi seems to lack a consistent Middle East policy. Days before the United States and Israel attacked Iran, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Israel, which was construed as India’s tilt towards the alliance. Our refusal to condemn the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei strengthened the perception….

Welcome back to another edition of My Take 5. This week we are covering UAE’s exit from Opec, how Ukraine is taking the war to Russia, King Charles’ successful US trip, Syria’s transitional justice, and China’s coercion of three African countries to block overflight of Taiwanese President. So, let’s get to it: UAE to exit…