Dispatches from Kolkata Sandip Roy

It’s election season in India and time for two months of marching bands and rallies, but not much talk about economic and healthcare rights. In fact, in India economic rights became known as “directive principles of state policy.” Sandip Roy questions what that actually means.

As the Indian heat descends on Kolkata, Sandip considers how our perceptions about the rituals of summer have changed.

Nepal’s constitution protects sexual minorities. Most recently after a long struggle Nepal registered its first same sex marriage, something India next door has refused to do. And now Nepal’s tourism industry is set to cash in.

The very word vacation has its roots in vacare or to be unoccupied. But in reality vacations are anything but unoccupied. Sandip recounts the woes of waking up at the crack of dawn to make your checklist items while on vacation.

Sandip explores a 100-year-old history of Bengali comics and what they gained and lost from their encounter with Laurel and Hardy and Tarzan and Tintin.

A new food fight has erupted in India. And it’s about one of the most famous dishes to come out of India, one that every other Indian restaurant in the west usually must carry.