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Dr J

Kalpana Narayanan

‘My father has his own language for everything. When I finished my MFA, I was a NINJA: No Income, No Job, No Assets.’

Lagos Must Prosper

Alexis Okeowo

21 million people, $91 billion GDP, an ambitious governor whose term is up: Alexis Okeowo on the megacity of Lagos

Patna Roughcuts

Amitava Kumar

Amitava Kumar returns to his hometown of Patna

Introduction: India – Another Way of Seeing

Ian Jack

Ian Jack's introduction to Granta 130: India.

Love Jihad

Aman Sethi

‘He said Love Jihad, or the practice of Muslims seducing Hindu girls with the aim of converting them to Islam, was an existential threat to India.’

Pyre

Amitava Kumar

‘In more ways than one, the rituals of death had reminded me that I was an outsider.’

Gandhi the Londoner

Sam Miller

‘On 29 September 1888, an Indian teenager with a mild case of ringworm and a fine head of hair sailed into the Thames Estuary.’ Sam Miller on Ghandi's time in London.

The Ghost in the Kimono

Raghu Karnad

Deep in the dense volume of Delhi’s history Raghu Kardad investigates ‘the remarkable, untold story of the Japanese in the Old Fort’.

Breach Candy

Samanth Subramanian

‘There are clubs like the Breach Candy Club all over the Indian subcontinent: relics of the Raj, institutions that were set up as bolt-holes for the British, where they could retreat to row or swim or play cricket or race horses.’

Driving in Greater Noida

Deepti Kapoor

‘Greater Noida is a paranoid, fractured land.’

Ghachar Ghochar

Vivek Shanbhag

‘That single moment’s intensity hasn’t been matched in my life before or since. A woman who I didn’t know has chosen to accept me, in body and mind.’

Anjali Joseph | First Sentence

Anjali Joseph

‘I kept returning to the Beckett stories, a favourite since I came upon them in my late teens.’

The Fixer

Snigdha Poonam

‘In Indian media and advertising, young people are mainly being projected as vessels of breathless aspiration.’

Cairo: September 2014

Wiam El-Tamami

‘Over the past few months, the government has been ad-libbing the time.’