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Avantika KrishnaThe Better India |
Picture this: it is barely past dawn in Kattakudi, a village in Madurai district. The summer sun is already warming the air. At the edge of a pristine...
This article has been published in partnership with Aditya Birla Group. Every year on 5 June, World Environment Day prompts a familiar chorus of...
Situated at 1,664 metres in the Agastyamuni block of Rudraprayag district, this small village of Maniguh in Uttarakhand commands sweeping views of...
Mahak Chauhan walked into a trial in 2023 thinking she was there for a race. It turned out to be a rugby trial. Three years later, the 20-year-old...
On the evening of 1 June 2026, a Bengaluru resident sat in the middle of Old Airport Road in protest after traffic police halted all movement for...
There is a small white tablet that millions of people in India and around the world take every day without much thought. Sold under the brand name...
Most people retire from competitive sport long before they retire from work. For N S Dattatreya, a former manager with the State Bank of Mysore, the...
Climate policy in India has long lived at an altitude — dense national documents, state-level action plans, ministerial committees, and...
Imagine you are a tourist visiting the Jagannath temple town of Puri. Your phone goes missing in the crowd. In the past, you would have had to locate...
On a humid weekend evening in Chennai’s Anna Nagar Tower Park, groups of strangers gather around chessboards under the trees. Some are...
There is a number circulating in Indian travel circles that is hard to ignore. According to Skyscanner's Travel Trends 2026 report, searches...
On a late evening in 1994, in the shadow of the Brihadeeswara Temple in Thanjavur, a twenty-something Bharatanatyam dancer stood on an open-air stage...
In a temperature-controlled room inside a manuscript archive, a conservator gently lifts a palm leaf no thicker than cardboard. The manuscript is...
It is in the early 1800s and somewhere in the narrow lanes of old Banaras a woman watches her husband get marched away by the British Army, pulled...
Artificial intelligence has spent the past few years promising to transform healthcare. But inside Indian hospitals, especially those outside major...
Sometime in the early 18th century, in the port town of Nagapattinam on the Tamil coast, someone made a decision born of desperation. The Dutch East...
In the days before polling in Tamil Nadu, more than 4,000 candidates were clamouring for attention across 234 constituencies — on walls, on...
Think about the last time your power went out for a day. The first worry, almost always, is the food. Now imagine an entire community — farmers,...
In Jaisalmer, mornings begin long before the sun settles over the sandstone. By the time the city awakens, 24-year-old Veenu Kawar has already swept...
A forest official taps into the trunk of a seemingly ordinary tree in a dry Indian forest. Water flows out into his cupped hands. He drinks it,...
There is a particular kind of courage required to stand at the crease in a white coat, arm raised, the eyes of twenty-two players on you, knowing that...
In the heartland of Rajasthan, nestled on the slopes of the Aravalli range, lies a village that changed the course of Indian democracy. Devdungri, a...
Every morning, before most of Sambalpur city stirs, Sunita Pradhan is already on her rounds. She moves through the city’s lanes in a waste...
On a quiet lane in Miyapur, a fast-growing northwestern suburb of Hyderabad lined with gated apartment complexes and IT campuses, there is an unusual...
Yuvraj was nine years old and had never once sat inside a classroom. In Ghatotand, a small settlement in the coal-dusted landscape of West Bokaro,...
“The moment I released the shot put for the first time, something within me unlocked,” Krishna Jayasankar Menon (23) says, describing a memory...
Imagine Rajan, a 41-year-old Chennai resident. He goes to the gym three times a week, eats home-cooked meals, and has no family history of diabetes....
There is a kind of loneliness that outlasts death. In India, thousands of people die each year in bus stands, on railway tracks, outside temples and...
In Kerala’s Malappuram district, the village of Kodinhi has learned to live with double takes. Walk through its narrow lanes, and you may spot...
When 71-year-old Ashok Bahar walked out of his NEET UG 2026 examination centre in Lucknow on 3 May, he looked unlike most candidates around him....
For decades, India’s education narrative has been shaped by a persistent gender gap — fewer girls in classrooms, higher dropout rates, and limited...
Somewhere far beneath the surface of the world's seas, in darkness so complete that no sunlight has ever reached it, millions of tiny machines...
In November 2024, a little over a year after retiring from the Delhi High Court, Justice Poonam A Bamba boarded a flight to Nepal with surprisingly...
There are mornings in the Hussain Ganj neighbourhood of Lucknow when 19-year-old Sarah Moin wakes up to a world without sound, without sight, and...
By the time many patients reach Dr Bhavin Patel’s hospital in Surat, their stories have already followed a familiar pattern. A blurred eye was...
Every year, on the second Sunday of May, we celebrate mothers. We thank them for their sacrifices, patience and love. But there is a particular kind...
The next time a Hollywood costume makes you pause, look a little closer. Maybe it is Belle’s yellow gown catching the light in Beauty and the Beast....
In a small village in Tamil Nadu, a man once found himself at the centre of ridicule for doing something most people refused to even speak about. He...
Picture this: you are standing in a village in Leh in February. Snow is everywhere — on the rooftops, packed into the mountain slopes, gleaming off...
The clock read 4 am when a seven-year-old boy slipped into the dark waters off Talaimannar, Sri Lanka. No fanfare, just the sea, stars, and a child...
Picture a typical afternoon in a Delhi neighbourhood. Retired men gathered in parks, talking about their aches and their children's careers,...
At the steps of Varanasi Ghats, where the rhythms of ritual and tourism overlap, a local guide known as Mr Deep has become the centre of an unexpected...
Ask most people what a firefighter does, and the answer comes quickly: they put out fires. The helmet, the hose, the red engine screaming down the...
In a modest community space tucked behind Chennai’s bustling IT corridor in Perungudi, a group of women gather every afternoon, their hands moving...
What if reading didn’t have to be a solitary habit anymore? Imagine this: you walk into a park, a café, or a quiet corner of the city with a book...
Paisley (Kairi/Mango) Region: Kashmir & South IndiaPeriod: 16th–19th century (Mughal era onward)The paisley entered India through Persian...
In a city where glass towers rise on the backs of daily wage labour, one construction worker in Chennai is quietly challenging what strength — and...
It starts with a faint buzz, followed by a slap and then another. Before you know it, your child is up at 2 am, itchy, cranky, and wide awake. In...
On a packed stage in 2026, Samay Raina stood in front of an audience again after months away. His new set, Still Alive, came after a period when his...
Deep in the forests of Nagaland, two elderly healers — aged 85 and 78 — have been treating the sick for over four decades using nothing but plants...