Soumitra Das-Frontline

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The Great Banyan tree, spread over 1.5 hectares with more than 2,800 prop roots, is one of the biggest attractions of the Indian botanical garden in Howrah, West Bengal.

Paradise in Peril: India’s great banyan garden fights for survival

The Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden, a living heritage site, is in desperate need of funds to sustain itself.

K.G. Subramanyan in Hyderabad in 2014.

K.G. Subramanyan (1924-2016): Artist, activist, provocateur, teacher

An exhibition celebrating Subramanyan’s centenary asks us to critically engage with his legacy to reaffirm his place among India’s greatest artists.

Pawan Dhall shows a few objects from the archive in his south Kolkata flat.

Chronicling the early years of LGBTQIA+ movement in India

How Pawan Dhall, queer rights activist, researcher, and writer, has single-handedly created a remarkable archive of the early years of the movement.

Always nattily turned out, often in custom-made suits, a silk scarf marked Goswamy’s personal style.

Researcher with a keen eye for detail, B.N. Goswamy was a rarity among art writers

He could convey profound ideas in prose that approached poetry in its lyricism and simplicity.

Historian Rosie Llewellyn-Jones

‘East India Company did not anticipate popularity of railways’: Rosie Llewellyn-Jones

The British historian discusses Empire Building, her latest book on the construction of British India till the 20th century.

The artist at work in his Kolkata residence.

‘Art must emerge from life and its tribulations’: Ganesh Haloi

Sharp as ever at 86, Haloi urges artists to draw inspiration from Indian nature painting over Western realism.

The restored garden house in Konnagar, West Bengal. Abanindranath spent many happy days of his childhood in this one-storey house with a sprawling garden overlooking the Hooghly river.

Abanindranath Tagore: Garden house of the homing artist restored

But the sprawling mansion where the Bengali author-artist breathed his last lies in utter neglect.

Barry O’Brien: “I think there is a good balance in the The Anglo-Indians: A Portrait of a Community between what is ‘serious’ and what is ‘fun.’”

Barry O’Brien: A buffet treat on Anglo-Indians

Interview with the quizmaster, educationist, motivational speaker, and author.

Writers’ Buildings

Dalhousie Square in a shambles as its grand old buildings fall apart

Nothing has been done to preserve the legacy of Kolkata’s one-time hub of commerce and industry.

The Mendicant Prince by Aruna Chakravarti, book cover

Old plot, new yarn

The author has chosen to revive the century-old Bhawal case, interweaving facts with fiction.

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