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The Rainbow Crossing

Avi sets out to buy figs for his grandfather. Crossing the road is easy enough when the traffic policeman is on duty. But on the way back, the crossing has changed. The policeman is gone. Cars zoom forward, scooters weave around, and even cycles seem...

Anamika by Samanth Subramanian

I’ve been spending many, many days in the company of a man who told me an astonishing story about how he fell in love with books. When he enrolled in a university in western India for a degree in English, he realised he hadn’t actually...

Blood Ties & Pig Genes

In 1980, a young man dies of renal failure when his family hesitates to donate a kidney. In Kagitha Sangaligal, Sujatha Rangarajan, a modernist writer and pioneer of science fiction in Tamil, imagined a tragedy. This simple plot, written in spare, unsentimental prose, asked whether...

Radium Madonna

What does a Polish physicist from the early 20th century have in common with a character played by a Tamil actress from the 1960s? More than you might think. Both navigated love, loss, and the lab—and both challenged what women were allowed to do with...

Kaigari Kleptomaniac

On the Streets of Damascus On this particular morning the younger brother appeared on the balcony and shouted down to the potato peddler: “Are those potatoes firm?” The vendor only turned around quickly and called back up with a bitter smile: “I’m not selling. I’m...

Moonshot for Menstrual Science

By Linda G. Griffith School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Innovation in the Departments of Biological and Mechanical Engineering at MIT THE MORNING of September 11, 2001, I arrived at my MIT office, wondering if I would last to teach my afternoon class. About two...