I am from a post-Partition migrant family, but I have no idea where my roots lie. My grandfather, my last “sarhad paar” connection, passed away and I grew obsessed with the idea. I pined away for a name, but all I had to go on was a “Jhelum kinare” village. How do you feel a longing for a place you’ve never been to?

In the backdrop of the Pulwama attack, whose freedom of expression should we be concerned about? We don’t shut down the folks propagating #TerrorismHasAReligion, or journalists who purportedly declared Aligarh Muslim University, a “university of terrorists”. But we shut down people like Amol Palekar.

Rearview is a column that draws connections between the events of the past week. This week, a government that is committed to optics, with initiatives like Pariksha Pe Charcha 2.0, has to contend with runaway elements like Hindu Mahasabha leader Pooja Shakun Pandey who reenacted the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.

Rearview is a column that draws connections between the events of the past week. This time, two much mythologised Indian women occupied our timelines. The legend of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi was brought to life by Kangana Ranaut’s blustery Manikarnika, while the legend of Priyanka Gandhi came alive in Eastern Uttar Pradesh.

Earlier this week, the participative nature of the internet peaked, when people all over the world gathered to make a stock of an egg, the most-liked post on Instagram. Yup. The same internet that led to the proliferation of the Arab Spring bonded over an inanity.

Is there really much of a difference between the comments made by Bipin Rawat, Rahul Gandhi, Shashi Tharoor, and Hardik Pandya? At this point they just seem like hues on the Pantone shade card of sexism and ingrained patriarchy.

In India, every day presents a new diversion, a new amusement. This week, we discovered the Kauravas were “test-tube babies” in a giant leap backward for science, and Kerala’s “Women’s Wall” protest against the violence at Sabarimala, showed us how to do solidarity.

The rage-fuelled few weeks of India’s #MeToo moment, are the cathartic blowing of the lid of collective pent-up aggression. Now that we’ve examined male behaviour across the spectrum of awfulness, where do we go from here?

The battle over Karunanidhi's burial at Chennai's Marina Beach unfolded in a tense few hours at the Madras High Court. Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi’s final farewells, symphonised by their followers and the state, will now become part of their personal mythology.

Our wars now unfold on a public stage. More than thirty years ago, surgical strikes were business as usual. After the 2016 strike, Colonel Abir Choudhuri recalled a gripping operation in Myanmar.

While trekking in Ladakh, I find myself buried waist-deep in debris. This is it, I tell myself. This is how I’ll go out, amid the oversold beauty of this high-altitude desert, as a slight disappointment to my mother and no book contract. I leave behind a flimsy legacy of FabIndia kurtas and Nicobar dresses.

Greek mythology is full of lusty satyrs and centaurs that sleep with goddesses. Hokusai's “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife” is considered an early progenitor of tentacle porn. And The Shape of Water is a story, lush with adult desires, about outsiders. Why are we so fascinated by beasts and monsters?

Men like Shutu from A Death in the Gunj are all around us, but rarely do we see their internal struggles on screen. Where are the sensitive heroes, who suffer for feeling too much?

Two kinds of spectres slip in and out of Phillauri’s frames. There’s the one played by Anushka Sharma. And then there is the ghost that has plagued women’s writing for centuries.

Diljit Dosanjh is an unlikely hero for Bollywood. As Soorma releases today, I can’t remember the last time someone with such son-of-the-soil appeal made it as a leading man in a mainstream film.

Yogi Adityanath is an extreme, hyperbolic endpoint of the world’s love affair with rabble-rousers and strongmen. What else explains the popularity of Duterte and the Donald?

In 2016, we saw movies like Pink and Dangal that were premised on the struggles of female heroes – and the men who enabled them.

La La Land reminds you of what love used to feel like, before we dived headfirst into the age of irony and started to abide by an uncodified playbook.

There is no one way to remember a war. For Colonel K’maneck, who served in Bangladesh in 1971, memories of the war are linked to rifle muzzles covered with condoms.

We all know Sudarshan Shetty, the artistic director of the Kochi Biennale this year. Ever wonder how his most famous artwork, "Love", where a dinosaur humps a Jaguar, was realised?

Veer had been in a relationship for four years when he embraced his pansexuality. He did not want to hold back such an important part of his life from the person he loved.

Pink should have released with a trigger warning for half this country’s population, where living as a woman is an act of jurrat.

In a nation where only 4 per cent of the population speaks English fluently, the other 96 per cent struggle to get a foothold and join the world’s march to progress.

Nothing endures at -55°C except the commitment to your nation and your men. Sachin Bali, a decorated former officer, recounts a rescue mission at the highest battlefield on earth.

A bullet in his back has not deterred Arun Sawant in his fight for justice. He has taken on the police, the civic body, and is now gunning for the PM.

Valerian Santos raised his boys to never be mute witnesses to a crime, to always intervene – no matter what the consequences.

In the media-dark zones of rural India, life and death issues go unreported. Shubhranshu Choudhary, who bagged the Google digital activism award in 2014, brings light to that dark.

Where do studs get their horsepower from? A visit to an equine-breeding farm reveals insights into the secret world of these majestic steeds, born to run.

An elaborate dossier on JNU has catapulted the university back into headlines. In the resulting cacophony, we've missed out on how these events filter down to the man on the street.

Mumbai’s mountain of waste, the Deonar dumping ground, is a source of livelihood for ragpickers and scrap dealers. Why then, would they start a blaze that scorches their homes?