Combating the top 5 online threats to children
Life has changed enormously since the rise of the mobile phone. Perhaps the most important change is the way it's given children direct access to the internet via a device they own themselves. A generation ago, parents' worst nightmares were filled with child abductions, but now they need to worry about the kind of inappropriate content that can be stumbled...
Vikram Hazra’s UK tour 2019: Taking Indian devotional music to the global platform
"See the world through the eyes of the Master" -- HH Sri Sri Ravi Shankar The Indian devotional music tradition is centuries old and one of the most versatile, varied, and broad music formats that has been passed down through generations across all provinces of India. One artist, Vikram Hazra has, for nearly three decades now, experimented and succeeded in threading...
Lockdown Diaries: Arya Taware of FutureBricks shares her hands-on attitude to success
I love to start my day properly by making sure I’m awake at 6am. I’ll either go for a morning walk or run everyday before I sit at my desk. I find that routine is everything right now and can help everyone mentally separate the very thin line between personal and professional life. Remaining positive As an entrepreneur and founder, it’s...
Creativity unlocked: an inspiring story from India in the times of the pandemic
While the pandemic has been challenging for us in different ways, Pulkit Datta shows us how he used the lockdown to unlock his dormant creativity “When an admirer offered to pay for one of my sketches, my 10-year-old daughter, standing beside me, literally jumped in joy. I clenched my fists instead. The moment had arrived,” says Pulkit Datta, a mechanical engineer by trade, and an...
Women of my billion (WOMB): An unequivocal film made while walking the length of India to champion equality and end violence against women
Walking 3,800 kilometers might seem like a vast task in itself, but that was only scratching the surface of what Srishti Bakshi aimed to achieve. Her astounding story is told in a new documentary called Women of My Billion (WOMB). The film is a pragmatic, heart-warming documentary about the movement that Srishti Bakshi started. As the Founder of CrossBow...
Equal rights for LGBT+ communities in India and Hong Kong still remains a far-cry
Leading publications in India and Hong Kong have recently reported on the legal challenges against discrimination of LGBT+ people in these countries. The battle for civil rights is far from over in India, where the Supreme Court de-criminalised same-sex relationships and discrimination against the entire Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community, through Article 377 in September last year...
The Chattri Memorial Service: India’s war sacrifices remembered in Brighton
The Royal Armed Forces, veterans associations, relatives of Indian soldiers, and senior members from civic and political life attended the Chattri Memorial on the Downs just north of Patchman on 9 June to remember the war sacrifices of soldiers during First World War, from undivided India. Hindu and Sikh soldiers were cremated in the site of the memorial, having...
Of poetry and lockdown diaries
As a writer, raconteur and storyteller, I like to find my material, my stories in the real world. I then imbue them with a setting, a context and characters that find a voice to cut across the real and bring to life a message in my work that needs to be repeated constantly. My most recent work which came...
Satyavad – a framework for a new future based on Indian principles
Samajwad (socialism) has had a chequered past in India. Back in the early 1870s, a group in Calcutta contacted Karl Marx with the purpose of organizing an Indian section of the First International! Marxism made quite an impact in Indian media at the time of the Russian Revolution. Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal were amongst the prominent...
The Kapoor Brothers of the Scottish hospitality industry acquire Princes Street Suites
One of the most sought-after tourist destinations in the UK, Edinburgh has a brand new addition to its luxurious hospitality and accommodation sector. The Edinburgh Collection have acquired the luxurious Princes Street Suites on 1 April 2019. An award-winning Aparthotel that won the 2019 Scottish Hotel Awards’ Family Hotel of the Year category in Edinburgh and the Lothians for...