Jaideep Mazumdar

'Kolkata Korner', with yours truly as the writer, draws to a close with this. It has been exciting and very rewarding to note, observe, rant at, condemn, oppose, praise, run down and hold up so many events, trends, personas and traits over the past c

I'm yet to come across a salwar-kameez that can reveal the navel. A saree, to me, is sensuous attire, a salwar-kameez staid and dowdy. Is that why those men in school managing committees would rather that teachers wear sarees?

I knew I was right about my assessment that Kolkatans would panic, over-react and retreat into a shell if any calamity befalls the city. On Tuesday night, an e-mail warning of serial blasts in various parts of the city sent Kolkata into a tizzy...

The CITU needs unruly, anti-social and rogue elements in its ranks to enforce its writ on society. It is all part of the bigger picture of communists encouraging and actively promoting chaos in what they see is a bourgeois order.

Do those who criticise Kolkata and Bengalis harbour a bias against the city and the community? Before trying to look for answers to that charge, it would be worthwhile to conduct a dispassionate analysis

"People who flaunt their refugee status even after so many decades deserve no sympathy; they are responsible for their own sorry plight.... still indulge in self-pity and just don't want to do anything on their own..." Really?

I know there'll be howls of protest to this, but the fact is that most Bengalis love status quo and are a lazy lot... The average Kolkatan is laidback, complacent, work-shirking, 'adda'-loving, largely incompetent and inward-looking..

Beneath that veneer of sophistication, the average Bengali is as communal and parochial as Raj Thackeray and his goons. But, while Raj & Co have the courage to speak their minds, the Bengalis would try and couch their racism in sophisticated language

Part II of the review of 31 years of the Left Front. The focus this week is on its utter inability, born out of sheer incompetence, to achieve any progress on the industry and infrastructure sectors

The panchayat results have rattled the Left. The malaise runs deeper than just the symptoms of Singur and Nandigram. Had the Congress & Trinamool fought together, the Left would have been trounced...

Smoked, baked, steamed, and now scuppered: Bengal's rivers are cleaned out of their hilsas

A sepoy rebelled in 1824. But was it India's first anti-Brit mutiny?

A disastrous poll just over, Bengal's comrades are livid with Karat's gung-ho withdrawal

A centuries-old annual migration must be turned back. On Bengal's Nepal border, man and elephant clash. A conservation effort is on.

Treasures, trifles—Calcutta's auction houses burn with curiosities

A Calcutta pocket is poised to deck up its slice of Awadhi history

Not all their demands are unjust. A studied resolution is a must.

Three Congress bastions in north Bengal show the way. Development, cadre are key factors.

Post Nandigram firing, the Communists are shooting at another movement: the theatre

Nandigram, Singur teach CPI(M) a lesson