There was a time when every middle class household--at least a Bengali middle class household--kept the bound volumes of Rabindranath Tagore's work, says scholar, author and agent provocateur Ashis Nandy. "All that has stopped now. The middle class has ceased to lead," says Nandy, identifying it as one of the country's biggest problems.
One of the many themes in his new collection of brilliant essays, Breakfast with Evil and Other Risky Ventures (OUP), Nandy speaks of the despair around us in a special edition of Tiffin Talks with Kaveree Bamzai. But he sees hope in the farmers on Tigri border, the women of Shaheen Bagh and the students of JNU.
All this and more with the venerable Prof Nandy or Ashis da as generations of his students and fans call him.
