Times Of India • 20th January 2024

Decoding the high-stakes arrival of global masterpieces in India | India News - Times of India

India has swung open its doors to the world’s most prized treasures from museums worldwide. But getting fragile, valuable and ancient art from foreign lands to Indian shores is far from just a bubble wrap. It’s a logistical labyrinth where trust is the ultimate currency to secure loans from international museums and galleries while conservators, art handlers, and fine art logistics companies work in tandem to ensure every art piece glides through borders seamlessly.

Times Of India • 14th January 2024

Filmmakers versus critics: How ‘Animal’ brought out the claws

Unkind reviews are not new, even ‘Sholay’ was skewered. But, are critics harsher now or directors more thin-skinned? A look at how film criticism is changing in the digital age

Times Of India • 6th January 2024

Why affluent Indians are turning to the grey market for miracle jabs that make kilos disappear

Affluent Indians are turning to the grey market to get their hands on the so-called miracle jabs that make kilos disappear into thin air

Times Of India • 11th November 2023

Jackfruit murders and 3D chefs: How the restaurant became a stage

Imagine this — you take your seat in a restaurant and a charming French chef pops up on your plate. The thumb-sized chef takes you on a sensory journey while your crockery and cutlery transform into various landscapes, each corresponding to the course about to be served. In the first act, the table blossoms into a summer garden where he plucks fresh vegetables to create a tomato burrata.

Times Of India • 15th October 2023

Meet city's Banksy: Phantom street artist tackling social ills, wall by wall

Tyler, a guerrilla street artist from Mumbai, has been gaining attention for his thought-provoking and socially scathing art. Dubbed as Mumbai's Banksy, Tyler's works fuse graffiti with stenciling and often address issues such as surveillance, corruption, and communal politics.

Times Of India • 12th September 2023

Meet the farmers who are raising India’s craft chocolate game

Artisanal bean-to-bar brands such as Manam, Huraco and Soklet are helping forge a connection between consumers and cultivators

Times Of India • 2nd September 2023

Class act: For city teachers, tiding over hate is a matter of faith

A stark reminder of the influence educators wield was the unsettling incident in Muzaffarnagar, where divisiveness breached classroom walls when school teacher Tripta Tyagi made allegedly and instructed her students to slap a Muslim classmate for struggling with multiplication tables. With Teachers’ Day (September 5) approaching, we turn the spotlight on a cohort of educators in Mumbai who are going beyond academic rigours to create more inclusive and empathetic learning spaces.

Times Of India • 13th August 2023

Dharavi hip-hop school to rear b-boying talent for Olympics

The orderly wooden benches in Shree Ganesh Vidya Mandir's classroom have been nudged aside to make space for a new kind of education. Instead of uniformed kids and the rustle of notebooks, the air is charged with the energy of youngsters in baggy tees and cargos, defying gravity, spinning on their heads and spitting out rhymes to the sound of beatboxers.In that very moment, accompanied by a cracking coconut and the chorus of 'Ganpati Bappa Morya,' a school is born-the 'Hip Hop Paathshala'

Times Of India • 23rd July 2023

Sandwiches go gourmet, and it may be the best thing that happened to sliced bread

Lights, camera, sandwiches ! Move over, avant-garde entrees and main courses, there’s a new star in town and it comes neatly wrapped in two slices of bread. Defying all fads, the humble sandwich — that continues to grace school, college and office cafeterias in all its chutney, cheese and chicken modesty — has stealthily risen from the shadows to claim its place as the latest breakout star on the culinary red carpet.

The Times of India • 18th June 2023

Tote bags, T-shirts & trinkets: Queer-run businesses move beyond rainbow cliches

As June rolls in, so does an influx of rainbow-themed goodies everywhere. While the queer community could do with visible support, it is also the first to remind you that Pride Month isn't just about the all-colour spectrum. A new wave of queer entrepreneurs are trying to redefine rainbow capitalism with ventures that reflect their identities beyond rainbow cliches.Last weekend a two-day showcase at BKC called 'Queer Made' amplified businesses and products owned and created by India's queer community.

The Times of India • 28th May 2023

How Pakistan uses 'honeytraps' to gain sensitive info

The latest DRDO case shows how the game has changed. Instead of seductive temptresses in shady hotel rooms, traps are laid through social media

The Times of India • 14th May 2023

Why Indian screenwriters are watching Hollywood writers strike

While streaming has changed the way we consume content, screenwriters say some things haven’t changed — their compensation, lack of credits or the lopsided contracts. A battle is raging in America’s Tinseltown. For the first time in 15 years, the Writers Guild of America (WGA ) launched an industry-wide strike demanding fair pay and benefits rather than being treated like gig workers. In a spillover effect, writers guilds across the world united to fight back, including India’s Screenwriters Association.

The Times of India • 13th May 2023

Can India’s grandest cultural centre become its finest?

Amid the grey, glassand-steel skyscrapers of Mumbai’s BKC, there is now a jolt of colour. The Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre ( NMACC ), an arts and culture hub that opened last month, is a kaleidoscope of buildings with three overarching gold leaves and a lotus motif running through it. Just as its building has injected colour into the sterile landscape many hope Mumbai’s newest cultural playground will spark a new sense and standard of patronage for the arts.

The Times of India • 24th April 2023

Where some of India's most sexually adventurous people meet

Tired of living with shame and stigma, members of India’s growing kinkster community say they no longer want to live in the shadows

The Times of India • 20th March 2023

Meet the 14-year-old who Bill Gates wants as his bridge partner

A ‘minor’ sensation in the sport, Anshul Bhatt has been playing competitive bridge since he was seven years old. At 14, he has a slew of wins under his belt and has been winning praise and encouragement from the world’s best.

The Times of India • 14th March 2023

How Indian artists are using AI, AR to let creativity soar

Would Impressionists like Monet and Renoir have existed had it not been for the invention of the portable paint tubes that allowed them to escape the studio, take inspiration from the world outdoors and experiment with new lightfast pigments invented by industrial chemists in the 19th century? What would have become of the ‘60s pop art movement had Andy Warhol not discovered silkscreen printing, the process of transferring images from magazines or newspapers to canvas?

The Times of India • 10th March 2023

New gallery at UK museum gives voice to South Asian diaspora

England’s 130-year-old Manchester Museum — built during the height of the British colonial rule in India — reopened this month following an ambitious £15 million transformation with a new South Asia Gallery of objects and personal possessions such as these to “acknowledge, interrogate and address” that complex history.

The Times of India • 5th March 2023

Guitar vs lathi: Indian buskers face the music

You hear them before you see them, and when you do, you’re likely to stop in your tracks and sing or tap along with these nameless street artistes or ‘buskers’, as they’re commonly called, who are increasingly livening up India’s public spaces. From parking lots, mall and metro gates to the likes of Delhi’s Connaught Place , Mumbai’s Carter Road or Bengaluru’s Church Street, buskers have been popping up and turning the street into their stage.

The Times of India • 5th March 2023

When the selfie chase goes too far

That the photograph is the new autograph is old hat now. Celebs, too, have adapted accordingly. But the average selfie hunt — no matter which celebrity is in it — can go much further in this age of ‘Pics or it didn’t happen’.

The Times of India • 19th December 2022

Can ChatGPT replace humans? Experiments reveal — not yet

Is it smart enough to plan your vacations? Can it make small talk on WhatsApp? Here’s what four Indian users found after spending quality time with the AI chatbot...

The Times of India • 19th December 2022

101-year-old silent classic revives legacy of Parsi magnate

The centrepiece of this year's edition of the week-long film preservation and restoration workshop by Film Heritage Foundation was a rare and fascinating gem: a lovingly restored 1921 movie 'Behula' - a silent film adapted from Bengali folklore Mansa Mangal - that saw the light of day last week, 101 years since it was made.

The Times of India • 4th December 2022

Would you stay in a murder house? | India News - Times of India

Would you rent Aftab’s flat or the Burari ‘house of horror’? Sunday Times tracks properties with an unsavoury history to find out if there are takers

Setting up a good quality path lab in Delhi was a dream for Mohan Singh Kashyap. He managed to set up one in 2014 in Sant Nagar but five years on, it was time for him to vacate. Crestfallen at first, he lucked out soon after on a “nice and spacious” three-storey bungalow that came with an empty ground floor to set up his lab again, a five-bedroom

The Times of India • 25th November 2022

Now Indian Art Index, a head-heart confluence, to help price artworks

To bring transparency to the “opaque” art market in India that has hobbled due to a lack of data or pricing models, Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIMA) along with Mumbai-based Aura Art Development , that provides art infrastructure solutions, launched a first-of-itskind ‘Indian Art Index’ on Thursday to help art collectors, new buyers and artists better understand the economic value of an artwork based on data instead of “a gut feeling”.

The Times of India • 13th November 2022

Old villas, ice factory make space for art, architecture & community

In its past avatar, it was a century-old East Indian family home that stood in the meandering lanes of Pali Village concealed behind Bandra ’s highrises.The Crastos’ ancestral bungalow has a similar vintage but is on the other side of town. Built in the 1890s in Khotachiwadi, it housed a printing press and functioned partly as a gym with the family living on the floor above. The third such spot is a 10,000 sq ft space in the dockyards of Ballard Estate, which was Mumbai’s oldest ice factory.