A Letter in Sicilian Light
There are capitals that impress at first glance, and there are capitals that reveal themselves slowly through scent, sound and atmosphere. Palermo, capital of Sicily, belongs to the second kind.
There are capitals that impress at first glance, and there are capitals that reveal themselves slowly through scent, sound and atmosphere. Palermo, capital of Sicily, belongs to the second kind.
Trees form bonds that connect countries and civilisations, cultures and histories. Their seeds are carried by birds and bees, bats and flies, monkeys and man across continents and seas,they are the visible expressions of a living and vibrant ecosystem, nature in its crowning glory.
During interviews, the one question I always ask politicians who are contesting elections is what his or her position on the topic of ‘Nature’ is. I have noticed that this catches them a little off guard, possibly because unlike education or employment, environment is yet to be considered an issue of top priority as far as would be policy makers are concerned.
In this shared reflection, Sneha Das, Aishmita Manna and Vedanta Dasgupta return to the restless body as the first language of faith, where, as William Blake reminds us, without contraries there is no progression, and movement holds ecstasy and dissent, surrender and subversion, crossing the boundaries between self and other, devotion and defiance, masculine and feminine, suggesting that long before we learned to divide the world, we had already begun to move through it.
A couple of weeks ago, on 18 April, the annual ‘World Heritage Day’ came and went almost unnoticed in Kolkata. It is usually a moment when a city looks at herself, at old buildings, inherited rituals, and spaces that remember more than people do.
In an era defined by electoral intensity and unceasing political spectacle, the quiet moral authority of history often fades into the background.
An election does not lose credibility in a single moment. It erodes gradually ~ through procedural choices, administrative discretion, and the cumulative effect of opacity.
In India’s industrial imagination, small manufacturing clusters are often celebrated as engines of resilience – nimble, labour-intensive, and deeply rooted in local economies.
US President Donald Trump said that he has been briefed on the concept of a potential agreement with Iran, but is awaiting the final wording before making any decision — while cautioning that military action remains on the table if Tehran misbehaves.
The first lesson from economics, appearing at the beginning of Nobel Laureate Paul A Samuelson’s magnum opus “Foundations of Economic Analysis” (1948), is that a country must choose between military spending ~ guns ~ and spending on social goods ~ butter.
