Vikram Chandra
As seen in:
Editorji,
Medium,
Nature,
WIRED Magazine,
NDTV,
Outlook (India),
Science Magazine,
Business Standard,
KQED-TV (San Francisco,CA),
Vulture,
BioRxiv
and
Journalist, tech enthusiast, investor. Presenter of The India Story. Founded @editorji (acquired by RPSG in 2020). TV news anchor in an earlier avatar!
Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Vikram Chandra
Ancient feeding-related neuropeptides regulate alloparenting in ants
Abstract Alloparental care and division of labour are hallmarks of insect societies1. Social insect workers typically care for brood within the nest when they are young and transition to foraging outside the nest as they age2,3,4,5. This provides a powerful paradigm to study the neural basis of parenting and age-related behavioural change. Although previous work has interrogated aspects of these dynamics6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14, the underlying neural and molecular mechanisms remain poorly understood.
Developmental, regenerative, and behavioral dynamics in acoel reproduction
eLife Assessment Xenacoelomorpha is an enigmatic phylum, displaying various presumably simple or ancestral bilaterian features. This valuable study characterises the reproductive life history of Hofstenia miamia, a member of class Acoela in this phylum. The authors describe the morphology and development of the reproductive system, its changes upon degrowth and regeneration, and the animals' egg-laying behaviour.
Reproductive life history of an acoel worm
Abstract Acoel worms belong to an enigmatic and understudied animal lineage (Phylum Xenacoelomorpha). Sparse taxonomic and histological work suggests that these worms exhibit a diversity of reproductive anatomies and likely also a corresponding diversity in reproductive behavior. However, few acoels have been studied in detail.
A caste differentiation mutant elucidates the evolution of socially parasitic ants
7 Wilson E.O. Tropical social parasites in the ant genus Pheidole, with an analysis of the anatomical parasitic syndrome (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Ins. Soc. 31: 316-334 The QLMs arose from WTs just a few generations before we discovered them in our laboratory colonies. We did not observe any intermediate phenotypes in the source colony, further supporting the conclusion that the QLM phenotype was not gradually assembled across multiple successive generations of clonal evolution.
‘A king could have commanded the worst atrocities on enemies and yet built awe-inspiring temples’
A blood and guts retelling of the Chalukyas, Aniruddh Kanisetti’s Lords of the Deccan vividly recreates an era from medieval South India. Kanisetti, who also runs the military history podcast Yuddha, answered novelist and writer Vikram Chandra’s questions over email about his new book, the insistence on setting up kings as flawless figures, the historical use of violence, and more. Thanks for this brilliant book. It’s erudite and knowledgeable but has the pace and suspense of a novel.
Colony expansions underlie the evolution of army ant mass raiding
Abstract Collective behavior emerges from local interactions between group members, and natural selection can fine-tune these interactions to achieve different collective outcomes. However, at least in principle, collective behavior can also evolve via changes in group-level parameters.
Shelter
Aug 23, 2019 Image: TED Becky grew up in the provinces of the blackest, richest delta silt this side of cut & run. When the wind rampaged in from the east she could taste the soil, & naturally it was biblical. The boy came one June morning to work on her daddy’s egg farm. Both were fourteen—he three days older than she.
Vikram Chandra on the exhilarating yet excruciating journey that leads a novelist to their book
An hour ago Vikram Chandra Share Tweet Email Reddit Print Share Tweet Email Reddit Print The first inklings of a book are always vague – a glimpse of a character, perhaps a landscape. You then must discover the narrative through writing, rather than plan it. This is (of course) a personal reflection, relating to my own experience in writing within the genres of literary fiction and literary non-fiction.
My Coders Will Beat Up Your Coders
In 1892, a British colonial official named Sir Lepel Griffin wrote: 'The characteristics of women which disqualify them for public life and its responsibilities are inherent in their sex and are worthy of honour, for to be womanly is the highest praise for a woman, as to be masculine is her worst reproach.
The Writer's Journey
The first inklings of a book are always vague—a glimpse of a character, perhaps a landscape. You then must discover the narrative through writing, rather than plan it. This is (of course) a personal reflection, relating to my own experience in writing within the genres of literary fiction and literary non-fiction. But I think the following stages are fairly common among writers I’ve spoken to and have heard talking about their own work. As you begin, you know very little about what the book is.
Catching the Ocean in a Cow's Hoofprint
One such altar, excavated in the Uttarakhand district of the central Himalayas, is thought to date to some time between the 1 stcentury BCE and the 2 ndcentury CE; it measures 78.7 by 59 feet (Figure 2). Figure 2: Śyena citi, Purola, Uttarakhand (Archeological Survey of India). But a Vedic sacrifice is not just an occasion to offer gifts to the divine, because in the Vedic universe, "all elements of the universe, human and divine, are interconnected and interdependent.
Hello, World!
The surprising overlap between coding and writing By Vikram Chandra Even if you’re the kind of person who tells new acquaintances at dinner parties that you hate e-mail and e-books, you probably recognize the words above as being some kind of computer code.
Pāṇini: Catching the Ocean in a Cow’s Hoofprint
A PDF version of this overly long post is available here . I should begin with a disclaimer: I am not a Sanskritist. I took a couple of years of compulsory Sanskrit in middle school, was bored witless by the rote memorization of verb conjugations and by the anodyne assigned texts, and so ran away from the language as soon as I was afforded an opportunity.
Bay Area South Asian Film Festival Showcases Talent on Both Sides of the Pacific
To that end, this festival is a showcase for politically relevant topics like racially motivated violence and LGBTQ rights. The one documentary on the schedule, Sangeeta Datta's Bird of Dusk , profiles a prolific Bengali filmmaker who was also one of the few openly gay figures in Indian cinema.
Social regulation of insulin signaling and the evolution of eusociality in ants
The benefits of being well fedIn eusocial insects, the vast majority of individuals sacrifice their reproductive potential to support the reproductive queen. Although this system has evolved repeatedly, there is still much debate surrounding its origin. Working with seven different species of ants, Chandra et al. used a transcriptomic approach to show that a single gene is consistently up-regulated in queens. This gene seems to confer reproductive status through integration with increased nutrition.
Radhika Apte on why she finds the cursing in Sacred Games liberating
Image: Ashish Shah “I’d like to be David Brent.” Radhika Apte answers when asked which existing television character she’d like to have played. The laugh accompanying her response isn’t to suggest that she couldn’t play Brent—the iconic loudmouth created and enacted by Ricky Gervais for BBC sensation The Office—but that she shouldn’t be counted out of what would usually be a race between middle-aged male comedians. Age, gender, obnoxiousness… these are all fluid states on the way to a performance.
Singing The Song Of Gaitonde
Vikram Chandra, born in 1961, announced his arrival in 1995 with the publication of a tender, exuberant, unruly novel, Red Earth and Pouring Rain. The book was 500-plus pages and extraordinarily ambitious in its two-fisted, its excessive bravado. His new novel is almost double that size, but it seems trimmer in a way: it tells one big story.
10 Books to Help You Understand the Indescribable
Some works of nonfiction are about subjects that are easy to quantify: a biography of a major political figure, for example, or a history of a nation during a particular set of years. But what happens when an author has something more complex on their minds? What about those books that set out to document concepts and ideas that can’t be easily documented? In some cases, these books can survey a host of head-spinning concepts.
‘Sacred Games’ excerpt: When Sartaj Singh met Ganesh Gaitonde for the first and last time
Vikram Chandra’s 2006 novel Sacred Games is being adapted into a Netflix series. Directed by Vikramaditya Motwane and Anurag Kashyap, the series will explore, as does the novel, the events that follow after the death of Mumbai gangster Ganesh Gaitonde. He has holed himself up in his hideout, and when police officer Sartaj Singh and his men manage to break in, they find Gaitonde dead from a self-inflicted wound.
Blog: 5 Lessons For India From Doklam In Handling The China Threat
The Doklam crisis may be over, but not the harsh words from the Chinese side - with senior PLA colonel Wu Qian asking India to "draw lessons from the standoff".Well, Mr Wu, India would be well advised to do that, but not for the reasons you may imagine. That's because this isn't the Game of Thrones, and China is not a dragon that India fears. If anything, Doklam has shown the world that Chinese coercion can be defied with a mixture of firmness and dignity.
All you need to know about the first Indian Netflix Originals series
(From left to right): Kelly Luegenbiehl, Vikram Chandra, Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane, Radhika Apte, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Saif Ali Khan Nawazuddin SiddiquiNawazuddin Siddiqui, Radhika Apte and Saif Ali Khan Radhika ApteNawazuddin Siddiqui Sacred Games, writer Vikram Chandra’s 2006 thriller, is finally being adapted for the screen. The first Indian show in the Netflix Originals category, Sacred Games will be made into an eight-part series.
Manifesto
Mar 14, 2017 Image: Emily Bell Make a mountain out of every molehill. Roll up dirt the way a kid gathers snow around itself to make a man, but skip the coal, coal in mountains a major reason molehills must make do, Make a mountain out of every molehill. Roll up dirt the way a kid gathers snow around itself to make a man, but skip the coal, coal in mountains a major reason molehills must make do, or if you’re the mittened kid, don’t make your man look fixedly at what happens to our summits.
Geek Sublime by Vikram Chandra
Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty By Vikram Chandra 272 pages; Graywolf Press Literature and computer programming, Sanskrit and Microsoft's C#—things that shouldn't go together somehow do in this enlightening meditation on the beauty of language, be it a line of poetry or code. — Natalie Beach
I Interviewed Tim Cook. Here's What Apple Will Need To 'Get' India.
New Delhi: Apple's ambitious plans to launch branded Apple Stores in India seem to have hit a road block, with reports that the Finance Ministry will not relax the 30 per cent sourcing requirements for those stores.
Govt receptive to pre-owned phone issue: Tim Cook
Apple CEO Tim Cook, who is on his first official visit to India, tells NDTV's Vikram Chandra that the company's business plans for India can't be pitted against those for China, which is a very different market and where Apple did a "pretty big" business of $59 billion last year. Cook says his company is going into India "very humbly". Edited excerpts:Is the Apple Store a done deal now? Will you be able to get more Apple Stores into the country? It's not a done deal yet.
Sania Mirza Signaled to Priyanka Chopra Through the Padma Awards
This year, Priyanka Chopra has filmed, been cast in, presented an Oscar, starred inAND received a Padma Shri - and it's only April. Despite having been all but claimed by Hollywood, the 33-year-old hasn't entirely abandoned her home country - she was in New Delhi to collect her Padma Shri and told NDTV's Vikram Chandra that she really needs to buy a plane of her own, not a house."I do live on a plane. Completely.
Why #IAmAntiNational Is The Wrong Response
Why #IAmAntiNational Is The Wrong Response I believe in my country. I believe in India as a land where 1.3 billion people of all faiths, communities and regions have somehow found a way to live together in one of greatest displays of peaceful co-existence that the world has seen. I believe in the fundamental tenets of the Constitution - a charter that guarantees protection from discrimination, equality for all, the right to practice different religions, and protection from discrimination.
Help India Clean Up: Join The Cleanathon
Help India Clean Up: Join The Cleanathon All my life I have wondered why our country is so filthy. Piles of plastic bags at every second corner, murky brown rivers weighed down by sewage and the stench of stale urine on most public walls. On further research, I became aware of other statistics. More than half the population defecates in the open. Millions of girls drop out of school because they don't have separate toilets. And the filth costs us billions because of the ill health it causes.
Support My School: The Journey So Far
Support My School: The Journey So Far When we began the NDTV Coca-Cola Support My School campaign back in 2011, the real motivating factor was one very simple realization - a realization that a large number of girls in our country are actually dropping out of schools because of one single factor, something as basic as not having separate toilets for girls.
The God of Small Things
Southern India 1969. Here, armed only with the invincible innocence of children, Rahel and Esthappen fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family: their lonely, lovely mother, who loves by night the same man her children adore by day... their blind grandmother, who plays Handel on her violin... their beloved uncle, A Rhodes Scholar pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher... their enemy, an ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt...
The Beauty of Code
Dependency diagram (Image via TheDailyWTF) This is what ugly code looks like. This is a dependency diagram—a graphic representation of interdependence or coupling (the black lines) between software components (the gray dots) within a program. A high degree of interdependence means that changing one component inside the program could lead to cascading changes in all the other connected components, and in turn to changes in their dependencies, and so on.
What India Can Teach Silicon Valley About Its Gender Problem
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Photochrom Collection, LC-DIG-PPMSCA-17855 Matt Dorfman Silicon Valley has been wracked with controversies about sexism lately. Only 17 percent of Google's technical employees are women. Tech conference organizers routinely post speaker lists that skew male. The female cofounder of Tinder was allegedly harassed and erased from corporate history last year. Yet some people still minimize the problem.
57 Books to Read This Fall
Hopefully, you’ve had a few minutes to play around with our Fall Entertainment Generator. But if you’re looking for straight and simple lists of things to look out for by medium, we’ll be breaking them out separately. Here’s a look at this season’s books.
The Cult of Authenticity
Image: Bhelpuri India’s cultural commissars worship "Indianness" instead of art. Two years ago, Sunil Khilnani, Ardeshir Vakil, and I did a reading at the British Council in New Delhi. As we trooped up onto the stage, I scanned the hall, trying to get a sense of the chemistry of the room, a feeling for what sort of beast this audience was going to be.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Vikram
Contact Vikram, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack