Showing results by narrator "Vijayan Menon" in All Categories

She was born to a nautch girl from the dingy alleys of Old Delhi, raised in a tiny hamlet in Haryana, abused as a kid, orphaned before she was ten, and bought to be a concubine before entering her teens. And yet, she beat every odd Providence threw her way and went on to become a queen who would...

In the context of Christianity in India, few conversations ever invoke Agra; even fewer invoke the Mughals. Yet, one of the oldest churches on the subcontinent not only belongs to this city but only came about with enthusiastic Mughal patronage. Patronage that was neither political, nor...

After two heartbreaks, Adrika, a fiercely independent career girl, changes her hashtag on Instagram to #HappyGoLucky, and dreams become her priority. Arjun, workaholic and socially inept, struggles with his weakness for Dimpy Aunty’s daughter Anushka and his hesitation in sharing heartaches and emotional baggage. Into this mess steps Dimpy Aunty, an unlikely saviour, with all her quirks and jauntiness, steering them through rough patches in unlikely ways as only she can.

From his plush hideaway in Bangkok, underworld don Shakti Pillai is wreaking havoc amongst India’s wealthy. He wields modern technology to extract information and extort money from billionaires while continuing to take on contract killings for anyone who can afford his price. Fed up with the police force’s inability to stop the don, some of India’s biggest business magnates pool in their crores and hire a mercenary to get rid of him. They recruit the best in the game, an assassin known only as Venus.

Chanakya, who lived in India in the 4th Century BC, was a leadership guru par excellence. The treasure of his teachings can be found in his book, The Arthashastra, which deals with good governance based on ideal leadership. The concept of the ideal nation in The Arthashastra, called Saptanga...

'Bold, incandescent, and as much an appraisal of human psychology as a dystopian tale' -Manu S. Pillai 'This is a book for today's India and one of the best works of fiction in the Malayalam language.' -S. Hareesh 'Varma tells a frightening tale about fascist subjugation and the ruthless course...

A young photographer goes to the Sunderbans. But that one encounter became memorable in the jungle for the years to come. Was it only the tiger? Or something else haunts the jungle?...

Mahatma Gandhi's assassination was a culmination of many events and many actors that never enjoyed the centerstage in the broader discourse. Yes, Nathuram Godse pulled that trigger, but a lot more went into the project than just that. There was a disgraced barrister, a former Air Force officer...

The 1911 Delhi Durbar was the third and the last, and a very special one. It was an event of many historical firsts—the first time Delhi took over from Calcutta as India's capital, the first time a reigning British monarch visited India in person, and the first time an Indian king openly...

The Golden Temple of Amritsar has always been more than just a holy site. Throughout its chequered history, the complex has served as the undeniable seat of Sikh power, both theological as well as political. So when it was desecrated in 1984, it's only natural the entirety of North India burst...

Two years after the Nazi and Soviet occupation of Poland, the exiled Polish army put 700 Polish women and children on a ship to virtually nowhere. "If we live, we'll meet again," is the last thing they heard from their families. After being denied by every country it touched, the ship finally...

What happens when a wait at a bar turns into a blissful union with a stranger. Maya takes a lot of effort to get ready for a blind date on a weekend, but instead gets stood up. Just when she's fretting, a stranger named Dev drops in and gets talking with her. Moments pass by in their easy banter...

"Open It" is a story about a traumatic father desperately looking for his missing daughter. He describes her features to a group of boys and they find the girl. But the old man only sees his daughter many days later, on a hospital stretcher, having been retrieved from a railway track. What...

Set in the pre-Independence Banaras, where the Viceroy of India is supposed to come, the magistrate is at a loss as to how to make the city clean for the visit. At the same time, the people of Banaras are calling for a strike in protest of the viceroy's arrival. The magistrate gets hold of the...

Mahatma Gandhi sought India's independence, as did B.R. Ambedkar. Gandhi sought the emancipation of the oppressed, Ambedkar wanted that too. And yet, the two keystones of the monument called India couldn't be more antithetical to each other's principles. They held immense respect for each other...

The 17th-century Jagat Seths are often referred to as India's Medicis for their wealth. Rich enough to sponsor the British win at Plassey, they were India's largest moneylenders of their time. The bull run came to an end with the execution of its patriarchs in 1763. With the single largest...

If the stories of Britain's affluence and American independence were boiled down to one single commodity, it has to be the humble ubiquitous tea. Although all of it first came from China, India is where the money to buy it came from. Sometime in the 18th century, this cash cow came down with a...

Aksai Chin is a barren wasteland that's disputed between India and China. Having caused at least one full-fledged war between the two nations already, the region continues to claim lives and resources like no other on the planet. This story charts the background to this problem tracing a line...

लगातार होती बर्फ़बारी में आठ दिनों से मोबाइल का सिग्नल गुमशुदा है. और बीएसएनएल द्वारा इस तेरह हज़ार फुट की...

History recorded him as the Butcher of Amritsar. On April 13, 1919, General Reginald Dyer ordered his men to open indiscriminate fire at a crowd of peaceful protesters in Jallianwala Bagh killing over a thousand right away. While this happened in Amritsar, a young Urdu poet in Aligarh dreamed of...