Training rural women to become beauticians? It had seemed like a crazy idea when it was first mooted at FERRY some years ago. Who needs a beautician in those areas? Would villagers have time, money or inclination to spend on beauty care? The idea won’t work. FERRY, Foundation for Economic Rehabilitation of Rural Youths, is…
Read more Desire to look good not prerogative of rich urbaners alone
So how is Kolkata Book Fair different from the Jaipur Litfest? I’ve been asked this several times and I have always failed to give a convincing answer. How difficult it is to describe the fair to someone who has never seen it! There are hundreds of stalls to buy books from–the ongoing Kolkata Book Fair…
Kolkata boi mela is the best boi mela in the world. The 38th edition of the Kolkata Book Fair–the largest retail book-fair in the world–kicked off at the Milan Mela grounds on Tuesday evening. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Peruvian author and academician Francesca Denegri inaugurated the 10-day event by sounding a gong at a…
Two days to go for the 38th annual Kolkata Book Fair, Milan Mela grounds smelled of fresh paint, plywood and anticipation. It’s like a city under construction. Frantic preparations are afoot to put in place one of the largest book fairs in the world, an important event in Calcutta’s winter calendar. It must be said…
The legendary actress Suchitra Sen passed away this morning. Thousands gathered to pay respects to her. Well, I guess getting one glimpse of her was also in their minds. After all no one had seen her in the last 30 years. But her body was brought out of the hospital in a coffin and at…
Scandal. Scandal. Scandal. It’s once again happening to Shashi Tharoor–the very elegant Indian minister of human resource development who resigned from the United Nations after he lost the Secretary-General elections to Ban Ki Moon in 2007. He came home to join politics in 2009 and has had a chequered political career since then, besides being…
As a reporter with The Telegraph in Siliguri, tea was one of my “beats”. I still remember my first “tea story”, the annual general meeting of the Terai Indian Planters Association in Matigara, Siliguri, more than 10 years ago. How confused I was! One gentleman, who still continues to be one of my faithful sources,…
Read more Tea garden workers still asking for wage hike, anyone listening?
“Is this Aamir Khan that Aamir Khan?” She asked me. She was seated beside me, a 20-something journalist with a city-based newspaper. “Yes, the same one. There’s only one Aamir Khan in India,” I answered. Thus, we conversed as we waited for Bollywood star to arrive at the Victoria Memorial where the fifth edition of…
Anuradha Sharma 