A list of good reads
- Anthony Bourdain fans will want to read this long New York Times (splainer gift link) piece on a new book that casts fresh light on his life and last days—and has made his family furious.
- Also in the New York Times: how your phone became a privacy battleground. Subscriber Udaya Nath says it has everything you need to know about how data is collected on your phone.
- To mark Bapu-ji’s birthday, The Wire carried this thought-provoking excerpt from ‘Reading Gandhi in the Twenty-First Century’ by Niranjan Ramakrishnan.
- The Web 2.0 model is all about doing whatever it takes to rack up big traffic numbers on platforms. According to Bloomberg News, podcasters have discovered their own scam—and it involves “buying” listeners via players of mobile games.
- The India Forum has an excellent essay on how and why India transformed the English spoken by the pucca colonial sahibs.
- The Quint profiles Charanjeet Kaur—the only non-Muslim woman who has filed a Supreme Court petition challenging the hijab ban in Karnataka schools.
- Wired has an interesting read on how taking a second job could be a cure for burnout—though don’t share it with Indian employers furious at moonlighting employees.
- This book excerpt in Mint Lounge revisits the time Kishore Kumar took on the government over Emergency at the peak of his popularity.
- Al Jazeera has a lovely weekend feature on the ‘teeth makers of Kandahar’—who have been hand-crafting dentures for decades.
- This first-person essay in The Cut challenges the popular idea of making a fresh start by casting away your old life. Sometimes, changing everything still won’t get you where you want to be.
