Weekend reads

  1. Vishnu Varma in the Indian Express introduces readers to a yoga centre in Kerala where women are “brought back” from their non-Hindu partners.
  2. North India’s air is going to take a lot of work to even begin cleaning up, writes Chaitanya Mallapur in India Spend.
  3. “As surprising as it may sound, colloquial expressions such as ‘giving a cold shoulder’ or an ‘icy stare’ imply physical coldness. In other words, social rejection or exclusion literally feels cold,” writes Shilpa Madan in Mint.
  4. Ananya Revanna gives readers a glimpse of what caste identities mean in a village near Una in Gujarat, in Blink.
  5. “Madness is something I suffer, but sanity is something I crave. It is only the intervention of my support system that makes me nostalgic for days when I was functional and taken more seriously. ‘Is he mad?’ is a bit of an obvious question. I am saved by the fact that my parents, friends and doctors now ask, ‘What was he like when he was sane?’” writes Shreevatsa Nevatia in the Hindu.
  6. Natasha Badhwar in Mint tells us that sisters are the perfect best friends, survive and flourishing despite competition and comparisons.
  7. Is India becoming a Hindu Pakistan? Sadanand Dhume attempts to answer the question in the Times of India.
  8. In the New York Times, Brian M Rosenthal, Emma G Fitzsimmons, and Michael LaForgia explain how politics and bad decisions starved New York’s subways.