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Sunday, November 23, 2025
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Book Excerpts

‘I opened a closed door’ — Fathima Beevi, India’s 1st woman judge in SC who remains an enigma

In 'Rising: 30 Women Who Changed India', Kiran Manral talks about how important Fathima Beevi was in India's feminist struggle.

Nangeli — the forgotten Dalit woman who stood up against Travancore’s ‘breast tax’

In 'Her Stories: Indian Women Down the Ages’, Deepti Priya Mehrotra recounts women from Indian history whose contributions have been all but forgotten.

For Yogi Adityanath’s views on secularism, read his essay on Nepal

In ‘Yogi Adityanath’, Sharat Pradhan and Atul Chandra write about the UP chief minister’s essay where he called 18 May 2006 — the day Nepal became a secular state — a ‘Black Day’.

We know very little of the Kushans— middlemen of silk road & empire that gave India Kanishka

In ‘The Stone Tower’, Riaz Dean blends aims to solve a 2,000-year-old riddle: Where was the Stone Tower, the lost landmark that represented the midpoint and thumping heart of the Silk Road?

How Krishnan Nair gave world ‘Made in India’ with ‘Bleeding Madras’ cotton, a US sensation

In 'Capture the Dream', Karkaria talks about Krishnan Nair—Leela hotels founder who became a sensation with his 'Bleeding Madras' fabric.

The Covid pallbearers — How Indians across religion and caste worked to give the dead dignity

In ‘To Hell and Back’, Barkha Dutt writes about how Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian pallbearers were the handymen tasked to repair the broken bits of our humanity.

’In films, I have mostly sung for the bad girls’ —Why Usha Uthup is more than Bollywood songs

In an authorised biography, Vikas Kumar Jha writes about Usha Uthup’s journey from jazz bands in Chennai’s glitzy nightclubs to a pan-India musical sensation.

Mamata Banerjee’s unwavering faith in divine interventions and supernatural forces

In 'Mamata: Beyond 2021', Jayanta Ghosal details how the TMC leader was successfully able to portray herself as the 'daughter of Bengal'.

How Ladakh and Doklam played into US’ great tech game

In ‘The Great Tech Game’, Anirudh Suri writes in that in the ‘cold war’ between US and China, digital battlegrounds will decide the winner. And all eyes are on India.

Businesses can’t ignore stakeholder community. It’s how Tatas have sustained till now

In 'Outlast', the authors talk about how the Tatas incorporated a crucial element of 'good' business—social impact and better governance.

On Camera

In Tejas Dubai crash, the harm goes beyond the loss of an aircraft and pilot

Airshows are thrilling spectacles of aviation skill and engineering marvels. But they carry inherent risks as the crew is pushing the aircraft, and themselves, to perform at the edges of the envelope.

At Charcha 2025: Local entrepreneurship, not just big IT, will drive next wave of distributed AI work

While global corporations setting up GCCs in India continue to express confidence in availability of skilled AI engineers, the panel argued that India’s real challenge lies elsewhere.

From a small Kangra village to Tejas cockpit: IAF fighter pilot Namansh Syal’s journey cut short

Wing Commander Namansh Syal is survived by his wife, their 6-year-old daughter and his mother. Back in his native village, relatives and neighbours wait for his remains for last rites.

A tribute to Tejas. India’s delay culture is the real enemy in the skies

It is a brilliant, reasonably priced, and mostly homemade aircraft with a stellar safety record; only two crashes in 24 years since its first flight. But its crash is a moment of introspection.