'After it was finished, Shah Jahan visited the Taj only twice.' 'There is a letter from Aurangzeb to him after a visit, reporting that the dome was leaking and needed to be fixed.' 'Shah Jahan wasn't bothered: He had moved on to designing his next project, Shahjahanabad,' reveals Aakar Patel.
At 46, on December 31, 2011, Sangeeta Sindhi Bahl did something extraordinary. She scaled her first peak, Mount Kilimanjaro (19,341 feet), the highest mountain in Africa.
An invitation by Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit to all the Kashmiri separatist leaders "for consultations" in Delhi ahead of Indo-Pak foreign secretary-level talks has touched off a controversy with the Bharatiya Janata Party calling it "most unfortunate" and "old tactics".
Ved Prakash who has been working in the field of recyclable raw materials for 29 years aims to 'create value' every day.
He was the army commander who planned Operation Bluestar. As army chief he planned Operation Brasstacks which rattled the Pakistan army. General K Sundarji was brilliant, ambitious and controversial, remembers Rahul Bedi.
Fourteen photos from events that defined the world in the week gone by.
Dr Kalyani Gomathinayagam, a young Indian doctor who volunteered to spend four weeks in west Africa helping those suffering and dying of Ebola, speaks to Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com why she took on an assignment many would shy away from.
The film is all about how a weak, good for nothing is suddenly transformed into a boxing champion by the power of true love.
Tales By Light is devoted to the kind of nature photography that appears on the pages of Nat Geo, but it exposes viewers to fascinating vistas that have only partly to do with photography, says Vikram Johri.
'While fighter pilots must not be sent into combat in inferior aircraft, an obsessive quest for outright combat superiority will leave an air force short of numbers,' says Ajai Shukla.
Kanika Datta visits the Cu Chi military tunnels -- a testimony to a plucky little country's 30-year war of resistance against, first, French colonisers and, then, the US.
'Let me talk about young Indian startups with their hearts in the right place and how they are proving that innovations that represent 'affordable excellence' -- breaking the myth that 'affordability' and 'excellence' cannot go together -- is indeed possible!' says Dr R A Mashelkar, the eminent scientist, in this fascinating feature.
Rajeev Srinivasan on the disastrous after-effects of a made-up spying incident
'Must every believing Hindu automatically be assumed to subscribe to the Hindutva project?' asks Shashi Tharoor.
'There is no difference morally between politicians scoring points amid the rubble and non-politicians who assume that politics and corruption necessarily had something to do with it,' says Mihir S Sharma. 'Both are twisting a tragedy to their own ends.'
'This can lift us out of confusion, misery, melancholy and failure, and indeed guide us when it is contacted.' 'For us to ignite our spirituality, we need to look inward and transcend our egos. We need to recognize, connect with and integrate the eternal spirit within,' says A P J Abdul Kalam in his latest book, Transcendence.
Four top lawyers secretly worked on resolving sensitive legal issues including sending forces on Pakistani soil without its consent.
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The government wants to generate 100,000 Mw of solar power by 2022.
The 1971 war reaffirmed the importance of inspirational senior leadership in battle and heralded the emergence of a new fighting class amongst officers and men of India's armed forces.
Hopes of NRIs to cast votes in the ongoing general elections through Internet were dashed on Friday with the Supreme Court saying that any interim relief at this stage may open a pandora's box.
Here's looking at 10 of his most action-packed Akshay Kumar moments on screen.
'I feel now we have a leader who is non-corruptible.' 'But he needs time as corruption is deep-rooted in our society, and people have no shame about being corrupt.' 'It will take at least 7 years to make some changes.'
Here's an analysis of the style and strategy of the man who did the magic for Narendra Modi and then Nitish Kumar and whom the Congress has now hired.
Government's financial inclusion mission is well intentioned, but it may be putting a severe strain on the banking sector.
'When I was staying in Teen Batti (in south Mumbai), I had one washroom and we were 10 people. Today I have three washrooms and I am the only one using all of them. Can you see the quantum leap that I have taken in life?' Jackie Shroff gets candid.
'Indrani gave a mirthless laugh on spying The Suitcase, from the accused enclosure and, in sign language, gestured the impossibility of anyone fitting in such a small bag.'
'Only on two occasions has the RSS thrown itself completely on the side of the BJP.' 'In 1977 in the wake of the Emergency. And in 2014 with Modi.' 'Now, I've been told that this is not going to happen in 2019.'
'Since India has to live next to Pakistan, it can't remain under permanent blackmail.' 'A predictable consequence of these fundamental shifts is the fraying of the principle of strategic restraint.' 'It hasn't been junked. But the threshold has been shifted to provide India much greater room for retaliatory action,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Indian business has many legitimate grievances against the political class for not delivering an optimal business environment.
India's cumbersome arms procurement procedures and a plodding Ministry of Defence bureaucracy have long been blamed for shortfalls in combat capability. Now there is another, more worrying, reason - a growing crisis of funds, magnified by the lack of tri-service coordination.
Udta Punjab truly soars when being its own madcap beast, profane and powerful and preening.
GM is already in our food chain for years. The approval for indigenous GM mustard should put fake fear-mongering to rest, says Shekhar Gupta
Even as the United States snuggles closer to India with the thinly veiled objective of containing China, the Indian strategy is to avoid alienating either nation.
Guardians Of The Galaxy takes place in a remarkable world drawn lovingly and beautifully by imaginative folks low on skin-coloured crayons.
'How can the BJP give Muslim candidates tickets if they don't have any good Muslim candidates?'
'India is so poor that political parties will not be able to wipe out poverty from our country in another 100 years. I am of the opinion that development can come only through corporates.' 'Tomorrow, if Tata or Birla or Reliance takes up another 500 panchayats, it will boost the Indian economy also.' Sabu M Jacob, managing director of the Kitex group whose NGO Twenty20 has just won a panchayat election in Kerala, speaks to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
'The Congress, all these decades, worked on a slow Hindi-isation and Indianisation of Arunachal tribes. The RSS wants rapid Hinduisation,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'So what if the enemies take us as prisoners of war? So what of they kill us? I would feel proud that I could sacrifice my life for the country,' say these proud lady officers of the Indian Navy.
India's foremost architect and town planner was renowned as much for his 'breathing' spaces as for his irascible personality
Why does Modi want to speak to the students while his audience should be teachers and parents, not necessarily in that order. And September 5 is not Children's Day but Teachers' Day, says Mahesh Vijapurkar.
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