Stepwell Radio

Every culture has feared colour, controlled colour, or weaponised colour, just differently.

Rome made purple treason. India built caste rules around who could wear what. The West built a whole design philosophy around avoiding it.

Who gets to decide what a colour means everywhere?

War doesn't just cost lives and money…it costs land. Military bases, border walls, testing ranges: built without environmental review, impossible to challenge, and left behind long after the mission ends. Forests cleared, water poisoned, migration routes severed—all filed under "national security," where nobody's allowed to ask questions.

We call it defense. The ecosystems footing the bill don't get a say.

What happens when a conflict stretches beyond the headlines and into the everyday lives of people?

Our latest episode looks at the Manipur conflict, exploring the events, histories, and human experiences that have shaped one of India’s most complex and painful crises. Moving beyond the immediate news cycle, the episode asks difficult questions about identity, displacement, violence, and the possibilities of reconciliation.

“To understand Manipur is to look beyond the headlines - to the people, histories, and fractures that shape the conflict.”

We invite you to listen, reflect, and engage with a story that deserves attention, context, and empathy.

Tune in as we question what lies beneath the headlines, and what it takes to understand a conflict through the lives of those who have lived it.

Story of Earth captured through a Golden record. Images, sounds, music and greetings to something, we don’t even know truly exists.

Floating in space, we don’t know when it will reach it’s destination but it still carries an essence of humanity so far away.

Poaching’s down, but that’s not the threat anymore.
A government is quietly signing away the rhinos’ flood refuge for a hotel pool.

Farmers who’ve worked that land for generations are branded encroachers. This is profit dressed up as progress, and no one’s calling it out.
We break down exactly how it’s happening.

The Stepwell Radio and The Ahmedabad University Library are delighted to present a special World Book Day 2026 edition of Voices from the Bookshelf, featuring distinguished scholars Aparajith Ramnath, Neeraja Sankaran, and Rahul Sarwate.This engaging conversation moves beyond academic obligations to rediscover the joy of reading as a deeply personal and creative act. The panel reflects on how books are not only read for analysis but for conversation, imagination, and intellectual companionship. Drawing from writers such as Mahatma Gandhi, P. G. Wodehouse and J. R. R. Tolkien, the discussion invites listeners to see history not as a sequence of events, but as an experience to be felt and reimagined.

A particularly rich thread explores the world of languages and translation, touching upon works across traditions, including those of Naguib Mahfouzand Haruki Murakami, and raising compelling questions about whether translations can sometimes carry new meanings, even surpassing the originals. The panel celebrates the coexistence of languages such as English, Hindi, Marathi, and Gujarati, emphasising their rhythms, diversity, and shared cultural resonance.

From storytelling and biography to writing practices shaped by beloved authors, the discussion gently reminds us that while histories never truly end, a book must. And in that ending lies its power to leave us thinking, questioning, and returning to the world with renewed curiosity.

This show looks at how everything happening right now—wars, trade tensions, rising inequality—might not be random, but part of a bigger pattern. It explores how global power is shifting, and how democracy today often exists more in form than in reality, with decisions shaped by elites and strategic interests.  Instead of a dramatic collapse, the show suggests we’re living through a transition into a more uncertain, messy world order.

Somewhere between right and wrong, the most honest stories live.

We grew up on perfect heroes—clean choices, clear morals, predictable endings. But the characters that stay with us? They lie. They fail. They cross lines they can’t uncross.

This episode dives into why anti-heroes feel more real than the “good guys”—and why their flaws make us uncomfortable in a way that’s hard to look away from. Because maybe it’s not about who’s right… it’s about who feels human.

And if we’re being honest, we don’t see ourselves in heroes.

We see ourselves in the ones who fall.

Trekking has always been more than just reaching the summit—it’s about the journey, the people, and the stories you collect along the way. But is that changing? In this episode, we dive into a thought provoking question: is trekking culture slowly being westernised?

We explore the contrast between traditional Indian trekking styles—simple, immersive, and deeply connected to local culture—and a more packaged approach where everything is pre planned, from gear to food. While one embraces conversations with locals and the spirit of discovery, the other often prioritises comfort, convenience, and minimal interaction with the surroundings.

Is this evolution making trekking more accessible, or are we losing the essence of what it truly means to explore?

Ever thought about what we call “classical” and whether it’s really as ancient or untouched as it seems?Society often presents traditions like Bharatanatyam as timeless and unchanging, passed down intact from a distant past. Tradition, however, can’t be reduced to simple inheritance; and neither is the question of who shapes it a new one.Join us as we trace Bharatanatyam’s journey from temple rituals and devadasi traditions to the modern stage and ask the uncomfortable but fascinating questions that come with it: who decides what becomes “heritage”? What gets preserved, and what quietly disappears?