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October 2013

First blank then incredulous stares are flung my way when I ask a local the way to Taj Mahal. ‘In a city that grew around the Taj, you don’t know the way?’ They seem to ask. Awkward tinged in condescension raises a nodding head when the ‘dummy out of town’ realisation sinks in. Ask a local for the ‘Red Taj’ (‘Lal Taj’ if any better) and you’d still get the same blank, incredulous ‘get outta here’ stare. Not surprising, considering many of my intrepid travel buddies too hadn’t – forget

Bernie Ecclestone is to Formula One what N Srinivasan is to Indian – and by extension international – cricket. At 82, the patriarch of the sport is an angry old man. What cheesed him off were the tough Indian tax laws and of course, the ubiquitous red tape which we the natives have come to understandingly embrace as ‘bureaucratic hurdles’. At the receiving end of his ire is not just the future of F1 in India – which is more or less sealed – but also a foetal demise of

Disclaimer: You are forgiven if you start to strut about, one hand behind your back, head tilted at an imperious angle. No hard feelings if you give the gardens a critical once over, though impeccably maintained your disdain frowns forth. However that glint of pride in your eyes is hard to conceal – can be espied even from the resplendent ramparts above. After all, one fifth of the world is under your dominion. You might stop short of addressing your friend ‘my lady’ but there’s a mammoth five-glass landau clip-clopping

The gory so far. A Swiss tourist was gangraped while cycling with a friend from Orchha in Madhya Pradesh to Agra. The assailants – five of them – then decamped with her mobile phone and cash. A British national had to jump off the second floor of her hotel room in Agra after the property owner tried to force his way in – at 4am – offering her a free oil massage. Michaela Cross, am American student, put up with three months of being stalked and molested, groped and masturbated

  Dogs and Indians were infamously kept away from the clubs and restaurants frequented by Europeans during the colonial days under the British. While we do not know how the dogs took the ‘Dogs and Indians not allowed’ signboards – or how it kept them away, for that matter – it definitely struck a bitter note with the natives. Back then it led to bloody skirmishes, a suicide mission, even: In 1932 the feisty 21-year-old Bengali revolutionary Pritilata Waddedar led an armed attack on a club which displayed the sign

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