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Mixing it up

How Indian bartenders are taking a shot at entrepreneurship ♦ This story was originally published in India Today. Last April, Ajesh Joseph, head mixologist at Jetlag, Bengaluru, posted a video of himself zooming, literally, up and down a hallway, draped over a wheelie bin. It was captioned ‘Quarantine day 10’. He subsequently shared a slapstick …

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Eating Clean

Theatrically sanitised restaurant meals, untouched by human hands and wrapped in meters of plastic are our new food fetish. ♦ This story was originally published in The Indian Quarterly. For as long as humans have recorded images of the world around them, they’ve recorded images of their food and diet. The earliest figurative cave paintings …

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When YouTube Gets Your Goat: E-Commerce, Eid and the Bakrebaaz Life

India’s goat farmers aren’t kidding around when they say they’re having a bad year. The months leading up to Bakr-Eid are typically the most hectic season for the business, and the bulk of sales happen at bakra mandis – special markets that come up weeks in advance of the date – in cities across the country.

Dystopic Living

Author Samit Basu lays out Delhi’s best-case scenario in his sci-fi novel, and it is horrific. ♦ Originally published in India Today. Dystopia is pornographic,” says one character to another in Chosen Spirits. “You see it and shiver but it’s also kind of fun because it’s happening somewhere else, to someone else, you know? It …

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To Educate or Operate: The Big Question of Rural Reproductive Rights

Originally published as part of Khabar Lahariya’s long-form series “Sound Fury & 4G“ ♦ In December 2018, Khabar Lahariya reporter Suneeta Prajapati arrived at the Community Health Centre in Kabrai, Mahoba to cover a sterilization camp, a routine feature of rural healthcare in these parts of Bundelkhand, especially during the winter. She was taken aback to …

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A Mask Crusader, a Virus-Killing Bracelet, and a Medical Motorbike

Originally published as part of Khabar Lahariya’s long-form series “Sound Fury & 4G“ ♦ June 18 was a typically busy day in India. In the morning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his latest scheme, the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan (loosely translated, Poor People’s Welfare Employment Campaign), this time to benefit migrant workers. Before noon, he had …

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Lockdown Life: Inside the Homes and Phones of a Covid-Shuttered Country

Originally published as part of Khabar Lahariya’s long-form series “Sound Fury & 4G“ ♦ On Ram Navami, it rains flowers in Banda, in the hilly Bundelkhand region of southern Uttar Pradesh. A helicopter disburses showers of petals onto the town’s streets, which are packed with a long parade of people floating on a sea of saffron …

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Invisible Man

Aravind Adiga imagines Australia refracted through an immigrant’s eyes ♦ Originally published in India Today. We use the word apocalypse, and these days frequently, to describe the end of the world. But its literal meaning, from ancient Greek, is “uncovering”. No one can say for sure whether Covid-19 is our omega, but there’s no doubt …

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