Blogs

By Narayani Ganesh Post their military service hiatus, the K-pop boy band, BTS, after ‘disappearing’ from public gaze for three years, are making a comeback with their new album, titled Arirang , to be released on March 20. Fans are waiting with bated breath for their world tour’s kick-off concert, to be held in South…

On March 13, 2026, Isro announced that the atomic clock aboard IRNSS-1F had stopped working, with the satellite completing “its 10-year mission life”. While the phrasing was restrained, the impact is worrying. India’s homegrown satellite navigation system, born in response to the hard lessons of the 1999 Kargil War, is now under severe strain. Since…

Trump’s second term starkly illustrates a rapidly intensifying imbalance, between consent and force in America’s hegemonic strategy. Historically, US favoured waging a patient struggle for hearts and minds, through soft power. Trump’s escalating military campaigns, however, exemplify coercion without restraint. But how far can Trump push such a coercive strategy, and what restraints, if any,…

Being blind to the limits of power, seems to come with the territory of having a lot of it. Look at geopolitics   As it went with tariffs, so it’s going with Iran war: Trump’s ‘my way or the highway’ posture, reduced to a bad joke. On the war front, not only have developments in Iran…

Fifty-five years ago, Pakistan launched “Operation Searchlight”- a brutal crackdown in East Pakistan to suppress political dissent. The targets included students, intellectuals, political activists, and Hindu minorities. Widespread killings, sexual violence, and destruction followed. This created one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 20th Century. Bangladesh’s official figure places 3 million deaths in 1971,…

I celebrated a milestone birthday, recently. Nothing out of the regular as far as special birthday celebrations go, though. I spent the morning reading and replying to love, affection and warmth that poured out like the Niagara Falls via WhatsApp messages and phone calls from parents, loving siblings and good friends.  The feeling of being…

Sometimes the wisest ideas come from children. Two cheerful boys from a village in Tamil Nadu have shown that adults can learn from kids too. Pre-teen brothers Deva and Jiva make very short videos — just 20 to 40 seconds long — for Instagram and YouTube. In their simple reels, they talk about things like…

While many Americans were watching the Oscars, their president, Donald Trump, was angrily posting messages online saying “FIRED.” But he wasn’t firing someone directly. Instead, he was attacking TV channels and newspapers that were reporting critically about him. He even said some journalists should be charged with treason, which in the U.S. is a very…

Having sojourned on the earth for quite many years, my life is scattered with unforgettable incidents, though these days I tend to delete a lot of the unwanted to make space for the new in my 64 GB memory. So, remembering the unforgettable incidents gives me a lot of hope.  Of course, motherhood has given…

…often comes the best of wisdom, as two pre-teen Tamil boys have shown. Adults, pay attention Two, toothy’n grinny, underprivileged kids, “child influencers” on Insta and YouTube, made it to their chief minister’s office – and got 15 minutes of adult-world fame. Their discovery, by the Tamil adult world and beyond, showed what simple joy,…