Tehelka - India's Independent Weekly News Magazine

Hundreds of look-a-likes with lightning cuts in their hair. The man himself everywhere. This is an all-new Aamir Khan. SHOMA CHAUDHURY quizzes the superstar on the eve of Ghajini

Denying Muslims housing is shaping the city of Surat into ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’

The economic crisis is bringing back an old virtue. Thrift

In the midst of a meltdown, the most intense sibling rivalry in corporate India — the Ambanis — is heading for a rapproachment

Literature is the surest way of understanding an incorrigibly plural world

Tishani Doshi(born 1975) is based in the city formerly known as Madras, where she mostly writes poems and occasionally moonlights as a dancer. An avid traveller, she has visited such far-flung places as Antarctica, Ethiopia and the United Kingdom to trek, eat, and document things of ordinary beauty. The highlight of her literary career, contrary to what people might assume, hasn't been to win prizes for her poems, but to be seated at dinner between Seamus Heaney and Christopher Hitchens. She has a novel called The Pleasure Seekers out with Bloomsbury soon, but not soon enough.

Sunetra Gupta (born 1965) wrote her first works of fiction in Bengali. A novelist, essayist and scientist, she has just completed her fifth novel, So Good in Black, which will be published in February 2009. Gupta lives in Oxford with her husband and two daughters. She is Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University’s Department of Zoology. Having graduated in 1987 from Princeton University, she received her PhD from the University of London in 1992. She is an accomplished translator of the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore.

Ambarish Satwik(born 1976) is a surgeon in the Department of Vascular and Endovascular surgery, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi. His debut work of fiction, Perineum: Nether Parts of the Empire, was published in 2007. Perineum is a rogue and deviant sexual history of the British colonial project in India. According to his wife, it is just smutty historical fiction. She thinks that since he doesn't have the gilded academic literary pedigree to write the definitive novel on anything, he tends to make his work pornographic. His chestnut is that pornography clearly has its pecuniary advantages.

Sudeep Chakravarti (born 1963) is the author of the bestselling debut novel Tin Fish, published in 2005. He has since had two more works published, both in 2008. Red Sun — Travels in Naxalite Country, a work of narrative non-fiction, is a critically acclaimed bestseller. Once Upon a Time in Aparanta is a satire set in the churn of present-day Goa. Chakravarti is also a columnist, professional futurist, and consultant to media. He lives in Goa, where he is engaged in writing his third novel, a second work of non-fiction, and setting up a marine conservation initiative. This is his first short story.

Kalpish Ratna is the pseudonym used by surgeons Ishrat Syed (born 1958) and Kalpana Swaminathan (born 1956) when they write together. Writing science is their passion, and they believe science has its true place in the arts. Their newest book, Uncertain Life and Sure Death — Medicine and Mahamaari in Maritime Mumbai, is a medical history of Mumbai. Kalpana Swaminathan writes fiction. Venus Crossing is her next novel. Ishrat Syed is a photographer fascinated with the titanic upheavals of nature. His last exhibition was Elementals, images following the ravages of Hurricane Katrina.

Thousands of Indian boats fish in Pakistani waters everyday. Hundreds have gone missing. AJIT SAHI investigates the Gujarat coastline to expose its disturbing implications for counterterrorism

The flourishing illegal mining business in Meghalaya could soon turn to uranium deposits and explosives

Child labour in India is far from being uprooted due to weak state interventions

Kasav has a right under the Constitution to be defended by a lawyer

A workshop is held in Himachal on the struggle to ensure land and property rights for single women

The Congress Party is going into the assembly polls in five states without tactics, clear leadership or emotive issues. HARINDER BAWEJA explores whether it is in a position to stop the BJP challenge in the 2009 election

Looking for friends after the election

Shabnum Lone’s entry into the poll fray shows that she may have her hand on the people’s pulse, unlike her brothers, reports PEERZADA ARSHAD HAMID

Two brothers in Coimbatore integrate thousands of small farmers into one of the world’s biggest poultry producing firms, reports ALOKE PANDEY

In three decades as the chairman and MD of the Rs 1,778 crore Biocon, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw has steered the biopharmaceutical company to global recognition. Shaw was recently placed on the Forbes list of 100 Most Powerful Women In The World. Taking time out from her hectic schedule, Shaw spoke to SANJANA about risk-managed innovation, growth opportunities and a city she is ‘passionate about’.