Please note: Rotary News Annual subscription revised from July 2026: Print Rs 600 and E-Version Rs 360.
What is it about our bureaucrats and their babudom that everyone loves them like they love a pimple on their noses? I can’t think of a single person who hasn’t had an endearing experience with one of them. Even my father who spent his career as a civil servant, and who used to scold me
Have you ever wondered why educated Indians love to talk authoritatively about things they know nothing of? When such an issue comes up, which is quite often, why don’t they just say “sorry, it’s a technical subject about which I know nothing, so I will keep my mouth tightly shut?” Has this tendency become even
Language and dress can be highly interlinked. This came home to me many years ago when I took the short flight from Chennai to Coimbatore. I was wearing a dhoti because my trousers were all unwearable, being dirty because I had been travelling for nearly 10 days. My plan was to get the trousers dry
Once a year my wife and I visit Switzerland where my son and his family live. It’s a very expensive country where a very basic meal for four in a restaurant can cost around ₹25,000 and a train journey of 200km around ₹10,000 per person. Of course, a part of this is because the Indian
These are easy reads that take you on insightful paths through the ways of the world. Jane Austen is hugely
Monisha Rajesh shares the delights and discoveries of travelling by sleeper all over the world. If you like to travel,
This is the story of innocence fatally lured by and enmeshed in an intricate web of duplicity spawned by overweening
Such joy scanning the shelves and buying books from the most amazing bookshop ever… in a city named for Roman
…with the sound of gunfire, the Inter-Continental Kabul is one place that offers a chance of survival… “… there was
We have been taught to equate speed with progress — to move fast, think fast, produce fast. What we are rarely taught is the cost: a mind that rarely rests, a body that never fully exhales, a nervous system that has forgotten what stillness feels like. There is a practice
Suddenly, everyone seems to be talking about protein. Once discussed mainly in gyms among bodybuilders, weightlifters and athletes, it has now become a concern for ordinary people. Growing awareness suggests that an Indian diet dominated by rice or wheat, with only small portions of protein-rich foods, may leave some people
At the table next to mine were seated four people. They ordered a bottle of water and the waiter filled up their glasses. They ate heartily and gently sipped on the water. When they left after paying the bill, all their glasses were lying on the table half full of
Both urban and rural regions need access to clean cooking solutions to bring down air pollution. Since the onset of the Israel-US-Iran war, every neighbourhood has been worrying about or contemplating the shortage of LPG or cooking gas and the slowing down of its delivery to households in the future.
Microclimate zones determine the temperature in your neighbourhood. Have you wondered why the meteorological department’s maximum and minimum temperatures seems to be at variance from one part of the city to another? Some places are noticeably hotter than what the weather reports indicate, while others are much cooler by a
