Bombay

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati and Bombay in collaboration with European universities are working towards building a low-cost technology to check the quality of potable and other water in India. The LOTUS Indo-European project, an initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and the European Commission, is aimed at providing solutions for issues related to the quality of water supplied across Indian households and elsewhere. A core element of the LOTUS project is a novel water quality sensor that…

Coastal Security The attacks exposed many chinks in Mumbai’s security system and counterterrorism mechanism. The biggest question pertained to coastal security, which failed to stop the intruders. Maharashtra has a coastline of 720 kilometres, out of which 114 kilometres surround Mumbai. It was for the second time that death came to the city via the sea. The RDX for the 12 March 1993 serial blasts had also been smuggled in boats. The Ram Pradhan Committee, appointed by the Maharashtra government to probe into lapses in…

Yuri Fonseca of Mahim, raised without family but for his uncle, has grown up lonely. Now, he struggles with making friends when the story begins with his joining senior college; his sense of embarrassment, awkwardness and insecurity sting him. Called padri ka bachcha at school and very culturally different from his peers, he has grown up hurt. In college, he gives in to the enthusiasms and causes of others, which he abandons when following through is needed. When included in a group, he finds himself drifting away. He…

“I’ve read all these. Don’t you have any new ones?” My mother was complaining to the lending library man, in Jamshedpur’s Bistupur market. She was on her weekly trip to replenish her reading, and she’d run through the kiosk’s endless supply of Mills and Boon romances. Thus it was, that scraping the bottom of the barrel that day, library “uncle” dug deeper and offered my mother an unfamiliar yellow jacketed paperback. And that, dear Reader, was my first brush with Rushdie. I was a 12-year-old, and the said yellow jacket…

It is not often that a solitary article spawns two international seminars, and two excellent edited volumes. But Mukul Kesavan is exactly the kind of thinker who can set off big intellectual currents with throwaway remarks. His 1994 article Urdu, Awadh and the Tawaif: the Islamicate roots of Hindi Cinema provided the impetus for Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen’s 2009 collection Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema which studied Bombay cinema through the lens of the “Muslim Social, the Historical, the Courtesan film and the…

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday told the Bombay High Court that its latest amendments to TV broadcast sector tariffs aim to ensure transparency and non-discrimination in channel rates.The TRAI had earlier this month issued new tariff rules by which prices of the Network Capacity Fee (NCF) were lowered to Rs. 130, benefiting consumers. However, the move was opposed by several broadcasters who claimed the new rules were "unreasonable" and petitionedthe high court.The TRAI, which also regulates…

The Bombay High Court on Wednesday asked the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) if it can defer the implementation of its 2020 tariff order as the court is hearing pleas filed by producers, broadcasters and cable operators against the new regulations.A division bench of Justices Amjad Sayyed and Anuja Prabhudessai noted that the 2020 regulations and tariff order are to come into force on March 1. "Even for interim relief, detailed arguments would have to be canvased. Considering the complex issues involved, it…

So it’s happening finally. We are in the process of being presented with English translations of all of Saadat Hasan Manto’s 255 known stories. Published by Aleph, the stories are spread across three volumes, all translated by historian, writer and activist Nasreen Rehman. Of the three, we have in hand the first volume of this mammoth pioneering translation project - a set of 54 stories and two essays pertaining to Manto’s life in Bombay and Poona, a period of roughly a decade between 1937 and 1948. Volumes two and three…

From Kerala to Bihar to Bombay, what was your childhood like? I was born in a nondescript village in Kerala, which didn’t even have electricity earlier. I have seen electricity arrive there. We lived in a joint family. In my fifth standard, my father and our family moved to Bihar. This was the first turning point in my life. Around us were only two or three families from Kerala. I had passed the fifth standard back in Kerala but had to join the same standard in Bihar because I did not follow Hindi at all. Everybody else…

‘They’re dead!’ ‘All of them?’ ‘Yes, all of them. How come you bothered to ask?’ ‘I am their father.’ ‘Please, God, never again should a father like you be born!’ ‘Why are you so angry today? I don’t understand why your moods are always oscillating. I’ve just returned from work. I’m dog tired, and you’ve started your nagging. Might as well have stayed in the office and relaxed under the fan.’ ‘There’s a fan here as well. You always find time to relax elsewhere; you can grace us with your presence and relax here.’…