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Painting by - Prof. Mitali Kulkarni A long engulfing silence hung between them, shattered intermittently with silent sobs at both ends of the phone line. 25 years have passed since that fateful day, people have picked up the broken threads of their lives and moved on, but memories are stubborn. Incase you are wondering what I am talking about, well the story begins 25 years ago when Latur was struck with a massive earthquake. As residents of Latur went to bed that night, little did they know that for many it would prove to be their final night. Still hungover…

Why Should You Learn a Foreign Language? Learning a language is hard enough, learning a foreign language harder. A language is not simply an assortment of names and sounds, but an ever expanding catalogue of a culture. Learning a new language means experiencing a culture that is not only absent but also fundamentally different from the one in which one has grown. This cultural immersion is one of the most difficult things as the biases of own cultural conditioning continuously exert a pull that resists the foreign influences. The experience can be immensely frustrating. Yet, where there is a will…

 Unveiling Secrecy: RTI and Access to Information The International Day for Universal Access to Information is celebrated each year on 28th September. The term ‘Information’ has important connotations and consequences for the modern world beyond the cursory “acts provided or learned about something or someone” as mandated by the dictionary. The extent, content, and nature of this ‘learned’ information as well as the objective and the audience of this learning, are fundamental to defining the political orders and models of governance that are conceived, and adopted by any state. This is particularly true of states like India that are conceived…