Pls pay attn to the amt your Uber/Ola driver makes per ride. Was charged Rs.60 for 2 km, the driver makes ONLY Rs.28. He requested me to write to Uber asking that the driver's share be increased. It's been an incredibly tough phase with NO earnings so do speak up on their behalf!
Archaeologists have found that iron implements were used in Tamil Nadu as far back as 4200 years ago, potentially making it the oldest Iron Age site in India!
TN archaeology is going through a pretty exciting phase, read more here👇🏾
"My father was a strong believer in communal harmony. He wished to donate the land to the eidgah so that it could accommodate more people for namaz on festivals such as Eid. My sisters honoured his wish."
Kappan has to report every Monday to his local police station in Kerala and four times a month to a court in Lucknow. “Kerala to Lucknow by train is three days. One day there. Three days to get back. So, I am still in jail. In an open jail.”
Every day Tamil Nadu health secretary Dr. Beela Rajesh reiterates: "Nobody wishes this virus upon themselves so please do not stigmatise people who have tested positive. Let's be a little kind. The focus should be on treatment and cure."
“I had locked the door and was sleeping. At 11 pm, someone banged at my door and said that a minister wants to eat. I opened the door and there was a huge crowd outside.”
After China’s move in 2007, Nair had said, “They (China) should not have done that. It’s against international convention…. By blasting one satellite, you create another few hundred (objects). I don’t know why they did that.”
Drivers almost entirely rely on platforms to earn a living due to lockdown regulations & indefinite shutting of schools. I am repeatedly told: "The customer doesn't care how much we make!" Tech make our lives easier but there is a human behind the wheel! Pls do pay attention :)
Good morning, I wrote about a sleepy village named Keeladi and a glorious urban civilization under a 🌴 grove.
'So not only had urban life thrived in the Tamil lands, but people who lived there had developed their own script.'
Do read
@FiftyTwoDotIn
Live now - PK to NDTV on ECI's partiality: "I've never seen an election schedule as it has been made in WB. During Covid time, exposing millions of people to something...This is unpardonable! You've made everyone suffer for 45 days, just bcoz you want to give this adv to BJP."
Some personal news: After living in Delhi on & off since 2012, including 3 superb years at
@IndianExpress
heading home for the time being.
Very excited to be back in Chennai for a quiet (freelancer) life. Do get in touch for pieces from S.India esp on Covid-19 &/or EnviroCC.
Hello! Starting next month, I will report for
@ThePrintIndia
as Tamil Nadu correspondent. Excited to work with
@ShekharGupta
and a team of superb editors.
Write to me with story ideas on everything TN-related (politics, culture, cinema, food etc) on sowmiya.ashok
@theprint
.in
A young woman who I interviewed for a story told me that she has zero tolerance for men on dating apps who boast about the fact that they are apolitical.
"In the current political climate, how can you not be affected by what is happening around you?!"
Obviously I had to do a story on Tamil and Beijing, here I hang out w Zhou Xin (aka Eswari) and her class of 18-year-olds with each having their own Tamil name. They learn the Thirukkural, Sangam literature and about Tamil movie stars. Do read:
"You cannot complete a t-shirt or any other garment without a component from China," - Tirupur garment exporter.
Tirupur employs > 6 lakh workers and exports Rs.25000 crore worth of knitwear to global brands:
In Beijing and more generally China for the rest of 2019 reporting for the
@IndianExpress
, do send story ideas, contacts and Peking duck reccos my way 🦆✌️
For the past year as a China-India Visiting Scholars Fellow
@AshokaUniv
, I have tracked, in some detail, the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on app-based food delivery platforms in China and India.
Some thoughts, findings & similarities (1/n)
Pa Ranjith
@beemji
at the Dalit literary meet as part of the Vaanam Art Festival in Madurai.
Talks about how deeply literature has influenced his work and the need for Dalit writing to be encouraged and spread widely.
Rant: It is NOT OK for men to ask if I am married, and then provide some moronic reason why I should be or ask "What is wrong with me?" Getting married is ENTIRELY MY CHOICE, it doesn't define success in life. I'm damn good at my job, and I will talk to you about that for HOURS!
My essay on the accelerated dismantling of my childhood and coming to terms with it in a pandemic year.
"...humans who were designated by birth to look after me had slowly begun to die out, and now the soundtrack of my growing up years, was no more."
In June 2020, when I was living through a lockdown in India, I started following Wan-ji and Sho-er on Instagram as they modelled in clothes abandoned in their laundry store in Taiwan.
This month I took a train to Houli to meet them. Here is the story:
Very long discussion at a Delhi post office over what is Tajikistan, is it a country, if yes, where is it? Poor guy who wanted to send a package there was sent home since it was not listed on the database!🤷🏾
Work Update:
After 19 months of book work, I've *just* emailed my MS to my publisher. Here to say I'm back on the freelancing circuit so look forward to pitching many pieces.
From July, I'll join the Asian College of Journalism as full-time faculty to teach Feature Writing :)
While in Taiwan, I often heard about 'love motels' from friends who had accidentally stayed at one. I obviously found these wildly intriguing and went in search of them.
Here I write about a Taiwanese photographer and her love motel obsession. Do read :)
On a two-day visit to Madurai and Sivaganga, BJP national president JP Nadda claimed that almost 95% of work on AIIMS Madurai is complete.
A month ago,
@ThePrintIndia
went looking for the campus which is still a vacant plot and found students in a temp campus in Ramanathapuram.
From Madurai and Ramanathapuram, a status check on AIIMS Madurai's first batch of 50 students, majority from other states, studying in a temporary campus.
"...they will have to start interacting with patients, so we have started spoken Tamil classes..."
For IE, my first investigation on how a surge of water was released from upstream dams in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh for the inauguration of the Sardar Sarovar Dam by PM Modi in September 2017 before Gujarat went to polls. Link:
Two months ago, I lost a very dear friend, unfairly and abruptly. Here is my attempt at paying a small tribute in a newspaper he read every single day, my attempt at saying goodbye. For you Harsh and your love for Janakpuri ♥️:
Felt like blogging after a while, here I write a short essay on how I became a "serious" runner again after a gap of 13 years!
The biggest learning in the last year: I can run more when miserable, it is harder when I am happy :)
Do read:
My neighbour and his piano, which has been a source of comfort through multiple Chennai lockdowns, are moving houses. His farewell gift: a live concert with his door open, playing a bunch of tunes, before he goes including Punnagai Mannan theme song 🎹☺️
This is a great story!
Delivery guy picks up order and is surpised to find the delivery location is the Covid isolation ward of a hospital. He gets told off by doctors and sent off with the biryani. Patient who ordered using an app had to eat hospital veg food 😁
Since Friday, I have been on a delightful road trip around Tamil Nadu, something I hoped to do in April 2020! Here are some outtakes from every stop.
Auroville:
Also worth noting that the TN state has changed the way it refers to the Tablighi Jamaat conference, previously referred to as Delhi conference in the daily bulletin and press conferences, now simply "single source event."
On Sunday, her first fumble of the day would come at the press conference after winning the title. “I’m very happy and I’ve waited for this victory and finally I’ve become a National champion,” she said. She then laughed heartily and said: “World champion, sorry, World champion.”
#SundayRead
: My last story from Beijing on a small network of Chinese ayis (aunts) who work the Indian diplomat circuit in the city cooking with masalas that tickle their throat.
A piece which I'd like to call 'Diplomatic Ayis of Beijing.' Do read 👇🏾
Quick (professional) update: Back in East Asia after two years for a semester of intensive language training at National Taiwan University. Anyone passing through Taipei, do get in touch?
For now got sprayed down with sanitiser and on way to strict 14-day quarantine 😌🙏🏾
Do watch this lucid message by cricketer
@ashwinravi99
addressing misinformation around vaccines. This after his entire family has been through an ordeal.
Kudos to the number of times he says GET VACCINATED! It is entirely in Tamil but with subtitles.
An India x Taiwan story I did not think I would ever write.
“Bose’s death in Taiwan is not only an individual’s private event,” he wrote, “but the first important political event between India and Taiwan.”
As my time in China draws to a close, huge thanks to
@IndianExpress
readers who read my work from Beijing.
It's been a fantastic year reporting on stories with my sub-optimal Mandarin skills (update: I passed HSK2) but what a humongous learning curve it has all been! Many 谢谢
For
@IndianExpress
, a deep dive into the lives of aspiring Indian doctors who travel over for a Chinese medical degree with superb photos by
@yancongphoto
"Have you checked out the Burger King in Beijing?” Sunday Read 👇🏾:
"He mostly preyed on young women who lived alone, loved their jobs and were bright and ambitious"
"It’s always a risk to speak your mind to power, because you don’t know how it will be taken."
Very telling quotes in this report on MJ Akbar. Read:
Conversations in Taiwan: To understand Taiwan better, I interviewed four women with unique perspectives about work, life, identity, politics, and the internet.
“If we don’t tell people who we are, people won’t know!" - Pia Lin, 30.
Do read:
Accompanied some students from the Intl Institute of Tamil Studies on a wonderful day long heritage tour around northern Tamil Nadu.
We looked at Tamizhi and Vattezhuthu inscriptions, Jain beds, and stopped off at a 6th Century CE Pallava cave temple.
All this at crazy 40C! 🔥
Horrific! "Jeyaraj was unable to talk, pointing to his clothes, which were seeped with blood, especially below his waist. Bennix’s back was drenched in blood. Jeyaraj managed to convey that the two of them had been beaten up 100, 200 times by policemen.."
"If a language is disfigured, a race will be disfigured. If a race is disfigured, our culture will be disfigured. If our culture is disfigured, our identity will be lost."
Language is the life of a race, says TN CM Stalin
Most of the Indian med students I met in China were prepping for the FMGE, the Indian eligibility test that allows them to practice back home.
A new analysis has found: ‘Less than 12% Indian students with Chinese medical degree clear eligibility exam’
Very important thread 👇🏾
Spent a considerable amount of time last year tracing footnotes in the Niti Aayog report which references 27 media reports, blog posts, Twitter, a self-study website to crack the IAS, and an Israeli magazine. Only 9 of 94 footnotes refer to govt sources.
1/ Any fans of zombie statistics out there? I have a tale for you… There’s a dramatic figure that has circulated for the past year saying that 21 major Indian cities are expected to run out of groundwater by 2020, affecting 100 million people
This month I complete 10 years in journalism after a stint in the NGO sector and some months bird watching while prepping for the UPSC. Thanks to all my editors, colleagues, and readers across TH, Mint, IE, and more.
My first byline edited by
@Meerasrini
IMPORTANT READ on material evidence that was purposely misinterpreted for political reasons:
Archeologist Who Observed Dig Says No Evidence of Temple Under Babri Masjid
Went reporting after months and saw this carrom board going home on a train to Bihar.
This photo is from Chennai Central Station where hundreds of migrants have shown up for weeks and weeks in a desperate attempt to go home. They carry with them everything they can carry!
Eight years after digs began in Keeladi, archaeologist Amarnath Ramakrishna submitted a detailed excavation report for Seasons 1&2. The ASI has dated the site to between the 8th Century BCE to the 3rd Century CE.
Detailed piece by
@sivaetb
So long, Taiwan! It has been great! Hope to be back soon to eat at the 1000 noodle shops I haven't tried yet.
I have three more pieces (of varying lengths) in the pipeline on Taiwan, so will check in very soon. For now, heading back to my 家鄉 :)
Congratulations to Chennai Corporation for super efficient disaster management through this tense week, but also huge shoutout to writers like Krupa Ge for important books like this one which taught us what went so badly wrong last time.
#CycloneNivar
Felt like blogging after a while, here I write a short essay on how I became a "serious" runner again after a gap of 13 years!
The biggest learning in the last year: I can run more when miserable, it is harder when I am happy :)
Do read:
"Authorities handed out bananas and threw bottles of water across the platform. Again, scuffles broke out. I wondered why the authorities were behaving this way. It felt deeply insulting." Every story on Shramik trains shows apathy towards migrants:
Best thing about this morning's BBC podcast is the detailed tutorial on how to prevent glasses from fogging up while wearing a mask.
Wetting lenses, rubbing soap on them, rinsing it in warm water, drying with a soft towel. Leaves soapy film on lenses which 👇🏾 surface tension.
Tonight my Taiwanese flatmate and I went on a walk towards the 通化夜市.
We agreed that I will speak *only* in Chinese, she will speak *only* in English, languages that we both find daunting. If successful, there will be no awkward silences.
We chatted for 1.5 hrs about life!
First excavated by British archeologist M Wheeler in 1945. A whole range of artefacts were dug up from this site with walls that are at least 2000 years old! The path leading to the site had gorgeous, old Mango trees :)
Anyone know where the Arikamedu artefacts are displayed?
After a mildly terrifying flight, spending November as a writer in residence at The Sangam House, Bangalore.
I am excited and fortunate for this much needed change of scene from staring at the walls of my apartment for months. Hope to work on a bunch of writing while here!
Kashmir may not be ‘major topic’ during Modi-Xi meet: Chinese foreign ministry. However, MFA also did not confirm details of the 2nd informal summit likely to be held next month. Read 👇🏾
Work 📣: Many thanks to the editors
@ThePrintIndia
for the brief but productive stint reporting from TN and from Sri Lanka on the economic crisis.
I'm taking a short personal break before launching into full-time book work and freelance writing.
Thanks all for reading my work!
Good morning, more Keezhadi findings👇🏾
"So far, gold ornaments, an iron knife, and 13 types of text on potsherds have been found as part of the seventh phase. The latest potsherd has ‘Sathan Esiri Kathiran Ilabu’ inscribed in Tamil Brahmi script."