Ma Durga might be the city's most celebrated annual visitor, but Kali is the resident Goddess, notes Sandip Roy.
'I often wondered while watching the film/trilogy, what if Durga had lived. What if Ray made The Durga Trilogy.' Sandip Roy looks back at Pather Panchali's Durga and the woman who brought her alive, Uma Dasgupta.
He was a formidable musician but seemed utterly human, a Peter Pan who wore his genius with deceptive lightness. Sandip Roy remembers Ustad Zakir Hussain.
Indian Americans in inter-faith marriages tell Sandip Roy how they celebrate the festival.
Shuvo Roy did not want to be a doctor. His father was a public health physician and several family members were doctors. "I wanted to be different," says Roy. "So I studied engineering." Now he leads a team that is hoping to create the world's first artificial kidney, writes Sandip Roy.
All that the children at Kolkata's CINI Asha shelter want is a real home, discovers Sandip Roy
'I realise that in some ways the Census is a peephole into a changing India. It's not just about transgenders or the disabled. This time marital status includes separate categories for divorced and separated. Mental illness has been separated from mental retardation. For the first time, the census taker is asking for the date of birth.'
Brought to the United States as the infant son of illegal immigrants, Yves Gomes is fighting to be accepted by the only country he calls home. Sandip Roy reports
Twenty one million Indians access Facebook across the world. So does Aditya Agarwal. But he logs in from inside FB's HQ in Palo Alto, reports Sandip Roy.
Indians, cosseted by stories about their success in America, often think they are the golden immigrants, the good ones, guests who can come for dinner. And stay. Perhaps now the blinders will come off, writes Sandip Roy
Sanjay Patel retraces his journey to Ramayana: Divine Loophole, his illustrated version of the ancient Indian epic, for Sandip Roy.
Sandip Roy tells the story of Shye Ben-Tzur, a Israeli musician who found his calling in Sufi music.
I refused. Sandy, I pointed out is two syllables, like Sandip. If he could say Sandy, he should be able to say Sandip. Over time I've become Sand-ip (as in Sand-hip) but I've stubbornly resisted any creeping Sandy-fication.
'I love India. It is such a peaceful place.'
Sandip Roy visits a flock of wanna-'bees' at an all-Indian spelling bee in Milpitas, California and is transported back to India.
The 'love that dare not speak its name' has found a voice, and legitimacy. Sandip Roy on the sexual revolution, circa 2008.
Urvashi Vaid dreamed of a common movement for social justice that could address them all: Racism, gender oppression and homophobia. Sandip Roy salutes the memory of Urvashi Vaid, one of America's most prominent LGBT activists, who passed into the ages this month.
By some strange and bizarre twist of fate, Omar Mateen did exactly what he did not intend to do. He took the lives of gay people and made them extraordinary. He infused their stories with a poignancy they might not have possessed otherwise. He enabled the rest of the world to see themselves in their stories, to weep at the sheer waste of lives cut short, says Sandip Roy.
On a visit to India in 2013, writer Ved Mehta -- who passed into the ages on Sunday January 10, 2021 - gave Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel a rare glimpse into his state of mind and what he thinks of the changes he encounters in his motherland.
Nilanjana S Roy compiles a list of the most eagerly awaited books next year.
Taking exception to Health Minister Harsh Vardhan not mentioning the death of healthcare workers due to Covid-19 in his statement in Parliament, the Indian Medical Association has published a list of 382 doctors who died due to the viral disease and demanded that they be treated as "martyrs".
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