Articles from the author

Taslima Nasreen, the controversial Bangladeshi writer who is in exile and lives in Sweden now wants to settle in Kolkata, which she described as her "second home".

Politics for Mamata Banerjee of Trinamool Congress probably has never been such a tightrope walk. Even as the NDA government at the Centre goes to face a trial of strength in parliament tomorrow, Banerjee emphatically anno-unced that Trinamool Congress would vote in favour of the Vajpayee Government.

Even as mystery surrounds the whereabouts of Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden, music audio cassettes, eulogising him have found a ready market in the Muslim majority border districts of West Bengal.

A tribal peasant recently bit a cobra to death in a fit of rage after being struck by the serpent in a remote village of Burdwan district, about 100 km from Kolkata.

After over an year of the humiliating defeat in the polls, the Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee seems to have successfully raked up an issue - the bifurcation of the Indian railways.

For thousands of Ricky Martin fans in Kolkata, it's been a Catch 22 situation. The Latin megastar has been so near, yet so far.

No solution on border standoff

'Taliban' author cannot escape controversy

In many ways, the polls in West Bengal this time has all the promise of a slog over contest. The election tempo as witnessed in Bengal traditionally has been missing till now.

The communist regime in the eastern state of West Bengal is faced with the fiercest challenge to its uninterrupted rule in the last 24 years from the right-wing political combine of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Indian National Congress (INC) party when the state goes to polls on May 10.

The Trinamool Congress party's nominee, Madhabi Mukherjee, who is pitted against the Left Front's chief ministerial candidate Buddhadev Bhattacharya in Jadavpur assembly seat in south Kolkata finds herself in the midst of an unseemly controversy after she made certain remarks about West Bengal's rural womenfolk during a television debate last Sunday.

Rajani Doloi, the Trinamool Congress party's candidate for Keshpur assembly constituency in Midnapore district where violence erupted on Sunday night has written to the party chief Mamata Banerjee asking to be allowed to withdraw from the contest because of the "red terror" let loose by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)'s cadres.