Blogs

Hello and welcome to TOI Bharat Abroad. This week’s edition takes us from Westminster to Arizona and Sydney. In Britain, a Bihar-born MP has been handed one of the country’s most consequential tech portfolios. In Arizona, a doctor with Gujarati roots has won a primary that could help decide control of the US House of…

Most men spend their whole lives hunting for the secret to health while standing directly on top of it. Here’s a clean truth that almost no one acts on: compound interest applies to everything, not just money. The body you have, the mind you carry, the wealth you hold, all of it is the accumulated…

This week, we are tracking: Talking to the Instagram generation: Why PM Modi went selfie-style Houston, we have a rocket: India’s SpaceX moment Hindi-Chini buy-buy: The $100-billion paradox in India’s China policy Asim Munir bets Pakistan’s Iran diplomacy is worth $10 billion to Trump CJP protests: Why PM Modi turned to a selfie video Sonam…

Your eyebrows are rising, I can see, the unspoken reprimand forming: “Surely, at your age…!”, or at worst, “This DOM…!”. But in the early morning of June 20 on NH45, I was actually chasing two young ladies, among others! That definitely demands clarification before your judgement on my character is final and irrevocable.  Young Gautam Sinha (YG) proposed an overnight…

By Jaya Row Are you happy? Most of us would answer, ‘Yes…sometimes.’ Our happiness comes in flashes – moments of joy interrupted by bouts of sorrow. It’s like eating chocolate with the foil. You enjoy the chocolate, but every now and then you have to spit out the wrapper. Why can’t life be all chocolate…

For an organisation that handles exams for millions of students every year, NTA’s permanent staff of only 25 officials is exceptionally small. It relies on another 200 contractual and outsourced personnel to conduct major entrance tests to professional and graduate education. The lean staffing shows NTA is structurally vulnerable. But such design flaws of understaffing…

That Margaret Thatcher slept only four hours a night was a famous pillar of her Iron Lady persona. This “sleep is for wimps” brag is a hoary one. Napoleon made it too. And yet, when Sanae Takaichi X-ted that she’s only been taking 0-3 hours of sleep since becoming Japan’s PM, it didn’t come across…

For the global Indian traveller, a passport has long felt less like a gateway, and more like a stack of pending court documents. Despite India’s rise as the world’s fastest-growing major economy, its citizens face a uniquely punishing gauntlet when attempting to visit Europe. What was once viewed as an aspirational holiday, has morphed into…

Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which emerged as an internet meme barely two months ago, has rapidly evolved into a powerful youth movement, paralysing key areas of New Delhi this week. Caught off guard, govt appears unsure how to respond. It has resorted to a range of measures to contain the protests, with negligible success, while…

A column on an American bat-and-ball game, called pickleball, has stirred up a controversy regarding its origins. According to AI, the game was devised in US in 1965 as a sport in which all members of the family could participate, regardless of age, gender or physical fitness, and soon gained global popularity. However, pickleball has…