Dispatches from Kolkata

Kolkata's biggest festival Durga Puja has earned a UNESCO tag for intangible cultural heritage. This has led to a lot of interest among art fans in what is a religious and cultural festival in Kolkata. This year a group of Vassar students and alumni and faculty got a preview of the festival thanks to a tour organized by Vassar Club South Asia. Sandip tagged along to find out what they made of it.

Friends might have been about a group of close-knit white New Yorkers but somehow it resonated in many corners of the world including India. Sandip talks about why many in India are mourning the death of Matthew Perry who played the wisecracking Chandler Bing on the series.

Like all big festivals, Kolkata's biggest festival Durga Puja is big big business. Now a Durga Puja organizer wants the actual art installation to reflect the economy of DUrga Puja so visitors understand it's more than a carnival.

Wes Anderson's new adaptations of Roald Dahl short stories have won a lot of critical praise. Sandip notices that two of them neatly sum up two colonial attitudes towards India - one sugary and one more poisonous.

Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary was celebrated on October 2. While he is revered in India, his charisma drew some Americans to him, Americans who gave up their lives in the West to follow his ideals.

Khalistan - a word that used to be on the front pages of Indian newspapers in the 1980s has resurfaced in headlines thanks to the diplomatic row between India and Canada. As Indian and Canadian relations go into free fall over a killing in Canada, Sandip explains how the two countries find themselves butting heads over the idea of Khalistan, the dream homeland for Sikh separatists.

India’s famous “toilet man,” Dr. Bindeswar Pathak, died last month at the age of 80. But he was far more than just an inventor and business man. Sandip Roy explains.

Joe Biden and other world leaders landed in Delhi to a grand multicolored G-20 welcome. But the beautification of the city left some of its residents seeing red.

This week's 'Teacher's Day' celebration in India was marred by reports of a teacher telling her class to beat a student for not knowing his multiplication tables.

On August 23, 2023 India became the first nation in the world to pull off a soft landing on the moon's south pole.