Showing results by narrator "Vijayan Menon" in All Categories

Set in the pre-Independence Banaras, where the Viceroy of India is supposed to come, the magistrate is at a loss as to how to make the city clean for the visit. At the same time, the people of Banaras are calling for a strike in protest of the viceroy's arrival. The magistrate gets hold of the...

Aksai Chin is a barren wasteland that's disputed between India and China. Having caused at least one full-fledged war between the two nations already, the region continues to claim lives and resources like no other on the planet. This story charts the background to this problem tracing a line...

When it's getting late & Mumbai rains have you stranded, you have no option but to make the most of it! Diya & Amar precisely do that by hanging out at their workplace lobby. Diya hates Mumbai rains while Delhiite Amar loves only the rains of Mumbai. Soon a tussle ensues making the two embark on...

Mahatma Gandhi's assassination was a culmination of many events and many actors that never enjoyed the centerstage in the broader discourse. Yes, Nathuram Godse pulled that trigger, but a lot more went into the project than just that. There was a disgraced barrister, a former Air Force officer...

The Golden Temple of Amritsar has always been more than just a holy site. Throughout its chequered history, the complex has served as the undeniable seat of Sikh power, both theological as well as political. So when it was desecrated in 1984, it's only natural the entirety of North India burst...

Today, the American dollar is legal tender in as many as seven sovereign nations besides the United States of America. But there was a time, not too long ago, when another currency enjoyed a similar influence far from home. It was legal tender in half a dozen countries besides its own, all of...

"Open It" is a story about a traumatic father desperately looking for his missing daughter. He describes her features to a group of boys and they find the girl. But the old man only sees his daughter many days later, on a hospital stretcher, having been retrieved from a railway track. What...

On February 22, 1937, the Time magazine featured him on its cover as the wealthiest individual on the planet, a position he's believed to have held his entire life. At his peak, his net worth was the equivalent of $77 billion in today's money. He used a 184-carat diamond worth over $70 million...

More than two hundred years ago, a Muslim boy from Bihar lost his father, enlisted with the East India Company and set off on a voyage that took him to remote corners of India. By the late 1700s, he arrived in England and floated two business ventures — an Indian restaurant and a bathhouse...

History recorded him as the Butcher of Amritsar. On April 13, 1919, General Reginald Dyer ordered his men to open indiscriminate fire at a crowd of peaceful protesters in Jallianwala Bagh killing over a thousand right away. While this happened in Amritsar, a young Urdu poet in Aligarh dreamed of...

Veer Savarkar was one of the many fascinating characters in the Indian freedom movement. Listen to his story in a fictionalised interview format. This is a work of fiction. This feature doesn't support or oppose any political party. Its purpose is only to entertain...

लगातार होती बर्फ़बारी में आठ दिनों से मोबाइल का सिग्नल गुमशुदा है. और बीएसएनएल द्वारा इस तेरह हज़ार फुट की...

If the stories of Britain's affluence and American independence were boiled down to one single commodity, it has to be the humble ubiquitous tea. Although all of it first came from China, India is where the money to buy it came from. Sometime in the 18th century, this cash cow came down with a...

Mahatma Gandhi sought India's independence, as did B.R. Ambedkar. Gandhi sought the emancipation of the oppressed, Ambedkar wanted that too. And yet, the two keystones of the monument called India couldn't be more antithetical to each other's principles. They held immense respect for each other...

The 17th-century Jagat Seths are often referred to as India's Medicis for their wealth. Rich enough to sponsor the British win at Plassey, they were India's largest moneylenders of their time. The bull run came to an end with the execution of its patriarchs in 1763. With the single largest...

What happens when a wait at a bar turns into a blissful union with a stranger. Maya takes a lot of effort to get ready for a blind date on a weekend, but instead gets stood up. Just when she's fretting, a stranger named Dev drops in and gets talking with her. Moments pass by in their easy banter...

The 1911 Delhi Durbar was the third and the last, and a very special one. It was an event of many historical firsts—the first time Delhi took over from Calcutta as India's capital, the first time a reigning British monarch visited India in person, and the first time an Indian king openly...

After two heartbreaks, Adrika, a fiercely independent career girl, changes her hashtag on Instagram to #HappyGoLucky, and dreams become her priority. Arjun, workaholic and socially inept, struggles with his weakness for Dimpy Aunty’s daughter Anushka and his hesitation in sharing heartaches and emotional baggage. Into this mess steps Dimpy Aunty, an unlikely saviour, with all her quirks and jauntiness, steering them through rough patches in unlikely ways as only she can.

That’s one lesson Rishabh Shah learnt after he founded I.I.M.U.N. (India’s International Movement to Unite Nations) in 2011. Now, as the world’s largest youth-run organisation, they work with thousands of young people across 220 cities in India and more than 35 countries to put together concourses for school children. The aim is to sensitise leaders of tomorrow about the world, from the Indian lens.

A young photographer goes to the Sunderbans. But that one encounter became memorable in the jungle for the years to come. Was it only the tiger? Or something else haunts the jungle?...