Get all your news in one place.

100's of premium titles.
One app.

Get all your news in one place.

100's of premium titles. One news app.

DARK SECRETS: Times life | Rare Historical Photos

India's Smooth-Coated Otter Is a Living Indicator of River and Freshwater Health

The animal that only shows up when the river deserves itThe smooth-coated otter (Lutrogale perspicillata) does not adapt to a broken river. It leaves. This is what makes a sighting, a mother with pups, a family group working a pool in coordinated formation, ecologically significant in a way that most…

Times Life · 19h ago

Why Clay Idols Dissolve at Different Rates: The Sediment and Oxygen Evidence From Immersion Sites

Clay is not one materialThe word "clay" covers a family of minerals with very different structures. Idol makers across India work primarily with two: natural river clay, which is largely kaolinite, and processed clay bodies that contain montmorillonite (the dominant mineral in what potters call "black cotton soil"). Kaolinite has…

Times Life · 20h ago

What Every Woman Wears to a Hospital Waiting Room and What That Outfit Is Really Doing

You Open the Wardrobe KnowingYou already know what the day holds before you reach for anything. The hospital appointment is at ten. Someone you love is in a bed somewhere in that building, or you are the one going in, or you are the one waiting for news that will…

Times Life · 20h ago

From analysis to the latest developments in health,
read the most diverse news in one place.

Two Grandmothers, Two Rules: What Indian Women Inherit About Beauty, Shame, and the Body

The one who made you smallerShe had a specific look. You know the one. It came when your dupatta slipped, or when you reached for something on a high shelf and your kurta rode up, or when you wore something sleeveless to a cousin's wedding because it was forty degrees…

Times Life · 20h ago

When Your Family Called You 'Kaali': How Indian Nicknames Made Colorism a Beauty Verdict

The First Mirror You Were Ever HandedYou didn't ask for the name. It arrived the way most things do in Indian families, casually, at a meal, from a grandmother or a bua who thought she was being affectionate. Kaali. Sawli. Kali Billi. The dark one. Sometimes it came with a…

Times Life · 20h ago

Surf Schools in Mangaluru and Varkala: What Beginners Need to Know Before the Season Starts

Two Coasts, Two Very Different WavesMangaluru and Varkala sit on the same Arabian Sea coastline but produce entirely different surfing conditions. Mangaluru, specifically the stretch around Sasihithlu and Tannirbhavi beaches, gets beach breaks: waves that form over a sandy bottom, break with some unpredictability, and are generally forgiving enough for…

Times Life · 20h ago

Paragliding at Bir Billing: What a Tandem Flight Really Costs and How Long You Will Wait

The Queue Nobody PhotographsThe Billing launch site sits at roughly 2,400 metres above sea level, about 14 kilometres uphill from Bir town by road. On a clear morning during peak season, October and November, or March and April, there can be 80 to 120 tandem passengers queued ahead of you.…

Times Life · 20h ago

Read news from The Economist, FT, and more,
with one subscription

Pune's Ganesh Visarjan Procession: Where to Stand, When to Leave, and What to Carry All Night

How the Night Actually RunsThe procession doesn't move like a parade. It pulses. The Kasba Ganpati, Pune's manacha (first-ranked) idol, leaves its mandal in Kasba Peth in the early evening and takes several hours to reach the Mula-Mutha river confluence at Sangam Ghat. Behind it come the other four manacha…

Times Life · 20h ago

7 Plantar Fasciitis Fixes for Real Heel Pain Relief That Work Better Than Rest Alone

Why Painkillers and Rest Keep Failing YouPlantar fasciitis is not an inflammation problem in the way most people picture it. A 2009 study published in the journal Foot and Ankle International found that biopsies of the plantar fascia in chronic sufferers showed degenerative collagen tissue, not the acute inflammatory cells…

Times Life · 20h ago

Frozen Shoulder in Diabetics: 8 Facts Every Indian Patient Should Know Before It Worsens

The diabetes-frozen shoulder link is biochemical, not coincidentalPersistently high blood glucose causes glucose molecules to bind to collagen fibres in a process called glycation. The shoulder joint capsule is dense with collagen, and once that tissue thickens and contracts, the result is adhesive capsulitis, the clinical name for frozen shoulder.…

Times Life · 20h ago

Why Immersion Water Causes Skin and Eye Infections, and Who Faces the Highest Risk

What Is Actually in That WaterA well-maintained swimming pool still carries microbial load. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tested public pools across multiple states and found that 58% of filter samples tested positive for E. coli, a marker of fecal contamination, even in facilities that met…

Times Life · 20h ago

India's Freshwater Turtles Are Natural River Cleanup Crew, and They're Disappearing Fast

The biology behind the cleanupIndia has 29 species of freshwater turtles, and several of them are obligate scavengers, meaning their digestive systems are specifically adapted to break down decomposing flesh and organic matter that other animals avoid. The Indian softshell turtle (Nilssonia gangetica) and the Indian flapshell turtle (Lissemys punctata)…

Times Life · Sep 23

India's Purple Frog: 46 Weeks Underground, 130 Million Years of Survival, and Two Weeks to Breed

A Species Science Almost MissedThe Purple Frog, Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis, was formally described by scientists S.D. Biju and Franky Bossuyt in a 2003 paper published in Nature, making it one of the most significant amphibian discoveries of the century. It had been living in the forests of the Western Ghats for…

Times Life · Sep 23

What Idol Immersion Puts Into a River: Plaster, Lead Paint, and the Fish Downstream

The chemistry of a submerged idolPlaster of Paris is calcium sulphate hemihydrate. When it enters water, it does not dissolve the way salt does. It absorbs water, hardens briefly, then breaks into fine particulate matter that suspends in the water column and settles into the riverbed. A study published in…

Times Life · Sep 23

Get all your
news in one place.

100's of premium titles.
One news app.

Times Life · Sep 23

How Introverts Can Network at Indian Conferences and Office Events Without Burning Out

Stop Trying to Work the RoomThe worst advice given to introverts at professional events is also the most common: "Just put yourself out there." At a packed Mumbai tech summit or a Delhi industry mixer, "the room" is forty conversations happening at once, most of them surface-level and forgettable. Chanakya…

Times Life · Sep 23

What Nani Palkhivala's Speaking Style Teaches About Clarity, Simplicity, and Persuasion

Start with the one thing your audience will rememberPalkhivala's annual Budget speeches at Bombay's Brabourne Stadium drew crowds that cricket matches would envy. People stood for hours to hear a lawyer dissect finance bills. He never opened with definitions or disclaimers. He opened with the single consequence that mattered most…

Times Life · Sep 23

5 Rules to Keep Your Children Safe in Pandal Crowds and Visarjan Procession Season

Write Your Number on Their Wrist Before You EnterA temporary tattoo pen or a simple waterproof marker. Write your mobile number on your child's inner wrist before the family steps into any pandal crowd. Do this even if your child is old enough to memorise the number, noise, panic, and…

Times Life · Sep 23

What Your Aunt Was Really Saying When She Fixed Your Dupatta in Every Photograph

The gesture happened before you could stop itYou are standing in the wedding courtyard, the light is good, someone has raised a phone, and before the count of three your aunt's hands are already at your shoulder, pulling the dupatta forward, centering it across your chest. She does not ask.…

Get all your
news in one place.

100's of premium titles.
One news app.

Times Life · Sep 23

Why Indian Women Wear Their Oldest Clothes on Visarjan Day: The Ritual Nobody Talks About

The Drawer You Never OpenYou know the one. It sits at the bottom of the wardrobe, underneath the good saris and the wedding dupattas wrapped in muslin. Inside it: the kurta that faded after one too many washes, the salwar whose elastic gave up, the cotton top you wore through…

Times Life · Sep 23

Why Office Friendships Feel So Real, And Vanish the Moment Someone Resigns

The person who knew everything about your dayShe knew which meeting would drain you before it started. She knew your coffee order, your eye-roll vocabulary, the specific way your voice changed when you were about to cry in a bathroom stall. You told her things you hadn't told your oldest…

Times Life · Sep 23

The Kangra Tea Belt in Himachal: The Forgotten Gardens That Once Competed With Darjeeling

The morning the London market chose somewhere elseIn 1905, a single earthquake did what decades of competition could not. The Kangra valley had been producing tea since the 1850s, its gardens running along the lower Dhauladhar slopes from Palampur westward, and by the 1880s its orthodox leaf was fetching prices…

Times Life · Sep 23

Coonoor's Tea Factories Open Their Doors, The Nilgiri Auction Nobody Sees

The town that runs on tea but doesn't advertise itCoonoor smells different from Ooty. Ooty smells of eucalyptus and diesel. Coonoor, especially on the Hubbathalai and Havukal roads that curl above the town, smells of green leaf drying, a grassy, faintly fermented smell that sits at the back of your…

Times Life · Sep 23

Visarjan at Girgaum Chowpatty: Best Viewing Points, Peak Hours and the Crowd Reality

The Beach Is Not One PlaceGirgaum Chowpatty stretches roughly 1.2 kilometres from the Taraporevala Aquarium end near Marine Lines to the Wilson College end near Charni Road. Most first-time visitors treat it as a single destination and walk into the centre of the crowd without a plan. The beach is…

Times Life · Sep 23

7 Signs Your Dieting Is Burning Muscle Instead of Fat and How to Stop Catabolism

Your Strength Drops Faster Than Your WeightThe most reliable early signal is not on the scale, it is on the barbell. If your bench press or squat numbers fall by 10 to 15 percent within two to three weeks of cutting calories hard, your body is almost certainly cannibalising muscle…

Times Life · Sep 23

7 Injuries and Heat Emergencies Hospitals See Most During Visarjan Processions

Crush Injuries and Crowd CompressionThe most serious cases arriving at casualty wards during visarjan are not the dramatic ones, they are people who were simply standing in the wrong part of a crowd. Crowd crush, clinically called compressive asphyxia, occurs when bodies are pressed together with enough force to restrict…

1 2 3 4 5

People

Chanakya

161 stories

From analysis to the latest developments in health,
read the most diverse news in one place.

Organisations

UK Health Security Agency

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

the Wildlife Institute of India

45 stories

Western Railway

45 stories

the Central Pollution Control Board

44 stories

Mandal

14 stories

Read news from The Economist, FT, and more,
with one subscription

Topics

Places

Fourteen days free

Download the app

One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.