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Zara Murao

Zara heads the weekend features and special projects teams in Mumbai. She has been a journalist for 15 years, but a grammar Nazi for much longer.

Articles by Zara Murao

Zara Murao picks her favourite reads of 2024

A novel set in the near future and a work of non fiction set in Palestine both read like they are straight out of a dystopian nightmare

Vital disturbances in a carefully calibrated view of the world (One World; Metropolitan Books)
Published on Dec 27, 2024 04:31 PM IST
ByZara Murao

Zara Murao picks her favourite reads of 2023

Of human migrations and a fictional family saga that starts out in a small fishing village in Korea and unfolds across generations

A sweeping look at a species that has always been on the move (Hachette)
Updated on Dec 29, 2023 05:41 PM IST
ByZara Murao

Baffling: Crickets craft tiny megaphones to up their chances of finding a mate

The tiny megaphone is called a baffle, and what’s interesting is that not all members of a species use one. It is usually the quieter and smaller ones that do.

 (Adobe Stock)
Updated on Sep 16, 2023 08:22 PM IST
ByZara Murao

Cute aggression: Why you want to bite the baby

There’s a term for the rush of affection that crosses over into a strange wish to squish, squeeze or bite. The reasons why you feel it are even more intriguing.

 (Shutterstock)
Updated on Jul 24, 2023 03:05 PM IST
ByZara Murao

Van Gogh 360: Should you Gogh?

It’s not often you see sunflowers in Mumbai

Giant screens turn a makeshift shelter at the World Trade Center, Mumbai, into a room full of van Goghs. Here, visitors against a backdrop of The Starry Night (Zara Murao)
Updated on Jul 20, 2023 02:39 PM IST

Zara Murao picks her favourite read of 2022

Looking into the future to see where we and our machines are headed and offering a small and beautiful solution to mankind’s impossible problems

Slaying the siren of infinite growth (HT Team)
Published on Dec 30, 2022 04:37 PM IST
ByZara Murao

‘It’s a proud Hindi moment’, says Indian author on International Booker shortlist

“I am a bit stupefied and very delighted,” says Geetanjali Shree, speaking hours after her novel Ret Samadhi, translated into English as ‘Tomb of Sand’, went from the longlist to the shortlist of the International Booker Prize

HT Image
Published on Apr 08, 2022 12:11 AM IST
ByZara Murao

Zara Murao, Editor, Wknd, picks her favourite read of 2021

British-Canadian comedian Mae Martin’s book addresses questions, concerns and fears of people new to the idea of sexuality as a spectrum in a way that is informative and funny, and moves the conversation forward rather than around in circles

Mae Martin’s book addresses the concerns of people new to the idea of sexuality as a spectrum. (HT Team)
Updated on Dec 25, 2021 03:50 AM IST
ByZara Murao

Lovlina Borgohain: The early years

The 23-year-old boxer who won bronze at the Tokyo Olympics discusses childhood, parents and her take on how winners are made.

’Everyone needs motivation. Needs someone to tell them they’re so good, they could win with a broken arm. That is how winners are made,’ says Borgohain. (Raj K Raj / HT Photo)
Updated on Aug 20, 2021 05:46 PM IST
ByZara Murao

I used to live in a bit of fear:Talking boxing, life,loss with Lovlina Borgohain

When the 23-year-old won bronze in Tokyo, it felt like failure, she says. She tells Wknd how she balances hope and loss, what goes through her mind during a bout, how she overcame fear, and what it’s like to score a win that feels like it comes with a rider.

 (Raj K Raj / HT Photo)
Updated on Aug 20, 2021 05:45 PM IST
ByZara Murao

Permanent markers: How India got its national symbols

What were the first icons we turned to, as we defined our new nation? Take a look at how India’s emblem, flag, national animal and more came about, and what they’ve come to mean.

Jawaharlal Nehru unveils the Tricolour in July 1947. (Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)
Updated on Aug 13, 2021 05:27 PM IST
ByZara Murao & Dhamini Ratnam

Eye for an I: Existential riddles with author Meghan O’Gieblyn

What does it mean to be an “I” in a time of intelligent traffic signals? To what extent are we being mirrored and altered by the newest machines of our making? Excerpts from an interview with Meghan O’Gieblyn, essayist and author of God, Human, Animal, Machine.

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Updated on Jul 31, 2021 01:18 PM IST
ByZara Murao

Just for the record: An overview of some of the biggest and oddest ones set in India

Scores of records are set and broken in India every year, by individuals, communities and the country as a whole. They tend to be a mix of accidental, intentional and outright bizarre. Take a tour of the most remarkable ones from recent years.

India currently holds the record for world’s longest high-altitude tunnel, cheapest successful mission to Mars and largest camera trap wildlife survey, among other things. Indians hold the records for most diamonds on a single ring and smallest deck of playing cards, among many, many others. (IMAGES: HT Archive, Renani Jewels)
Updated on Jan 16, 2021 06:25 PM IST
ByNatasha Rego and Zara Murao

The slippery slope of pandemic fatigue, and how to stay off it

Facing months of restrictions, everyone’s starting to bend the rules a little. It’s a reasonable emotional response, if a dangerous one. Here are tips to help you stay the course.

A still from Animal Crossing. Parties, get-togethers and brunches are moving offline again, while the threat from the pandemic remains the same.(Nintendo)
Updated on Nov 08, 2020 10:22 PM IST
Hindustan Times | By

Do you have apocalypse anxiety?

A tightness in the chest, state of constant low-key worry, the sense that nature, the economy and life as we knew it just aren’t ever going to be the same. The pandemic has sparked doomsday anxiety

(HT Illustration: Malay Karmakar)
Updated on Sep 06, 2020 10:32 AM IST
Hindustan Times | By

Alkazi: A guiding light of theatre in India

Teacher. Director. Idol. Man with a fiery temper. These are the facets we know. Days after his passing, we spoke to former students for a more intimate take on the trailblazing former head of the NSD.

31 January 1994 -EBRAHIM ALKAZI. HT ARCHIVE
Updated on Aug 09, 2020 03:03 PM IST
Hindustan Times | ByZara Murao & Vanessa Viegas

100 days of Covid-19: Learning to parent through a pandemic

As a byproduct of the lockdown, the performative element of parenting in middle- and upper-middle-class urban India has declined. Family time has made a roaring comeback too, but amid anxiety and uncertainty.

As everyone pitches in to take on new chores, children have benefited from seeing gender roles ease in the household(Getty Images)
Updated on Jun 21, 2020 09:35 PM IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By

Jean Paul Gaultier, enfant terrible of fashion, steps off the ramp

There’s more coming; a surprise project, he says. But meanwhile, here’s a look back at the work of an untrained genius, an early champion of diversity, and a 50-year career of firsts.

Born to a clerk and an accountant, Gaultier never received formal training as a designer. Instead, he fell in love with fashion a child. His early inspirations were TV shows and magazines. After crafting clothes for his toys and then his family, in his late teens, he sent sketches to famous couture stylists, asking if they would work with him. Pierre Cardin was so impressed, he hired him as an assistant when JPG was 18.(jeanpaulgaultier.com)
Updated on Feb 01, 2020 09:06 PM IST
Hindustan Times | ByZara Murao & Raul Dias

#Vision 2020: If imagination were everything

Flying cars, androids you can’t tell apart from humans, colonised planets... here are things we should have had by now

AI home assistants such as Alexa and Google Assistant are helping manage our schedules, even chatting with our children. But our humanoids bots can’t really do much yet. While some can walk, and others can talk, none of them can really do either without human intervention.(Shutterstock)
Updated on Dec 27, 2019 08:33 PM IST
Hindustan Times | ByZara Murao, Rachel Lopez, Madhusree Ghosh & Natasha Rego

Newsmaker: A new and improved Sacha Baron Cohen takes on the ‘Silicon Six’

The actor-director is best known for his rather crass film, Borat. But a recent speech that’s gone viral was an elegant takedown of the billionaires behind our social media platforms, for the damage they’re doing to democracies.

Speaking at the American NGO Anti-Defamation League’s Never is Now Summit, Cohen — who was being awarded their International Leadership Award — argued that because platforms like Facebook refuse to distinguish between opinion and micro-targeted lies, “democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which thrives on shared lies, is on the march”.(ADL)
Published on Dec 06, 2019 09:10 PM IST
Hindustan Times | By

Newsmaker: As India fetes David Attenborough, a look at an incredible career

The face (and voice) of wildlife documentaries recently won the Indira Gandhi peace prize. A look at a legacy unmatched, and things he might have done differently.

A still from Life in Colour, coming to Netflix in 2021. Attenborough has been knighted, honoured and awarded around the world for doing more than perhaps any other individual, as one panel put it, to reveal the wonders of the natural world to us. But many naturalists say the pristine habitats depicted in his films have, for decades, failed to reflect reality.
Updated on Nov 29, 2019 06:40 PM IST
Hindustan Times | By

#Newsmaker: As BoJack airs its last season, a look at all we’ll miss

Hollywoo won’t be the same without the horse-man has-been.

Cut loose: They say Netflix has found that the optimal number of seasons for a show is two. After that, it just doesn’t bring in new subscribers. BoJack Horseman lasted six seasons; part two of its finale will air in January. Meanwhile, there’s another theory that it is ending, amid its successful run, because its crew unionised.
Published on Nov 08, 2019 05:38 PM IST
Hindustan Times | By

Hot Tip: Why you should be reading Lie With Me

Set in a small French village, it’s a tale of love and loss and how life moves on, told through 17-year-old boys who fall in love, are separated and almost reunited decades later.

Published on Nov 01, 2019 04:00 PM IST
Hindustan Times | By

Newsmaker: Robert Pattinson has been quietly remaking himself since Twilight

The future Batman was a reluctant star, then a recluse, then an arthouse wonder. A look at his unusual journey.

A still from The Lighthouse, due for release soon, where Pattinson - totally unrecognisable in a funny moustache - retreats from the world and into slowly unravelling madness.
Updated on Nov 01, 2019 03:46 PM IST
Hindustan Times | By

Who is Billie Eilish and why is everyone talking about her?

The 17-year-old singer took over the #1 spot on the Billboard charts for the first time last month, with songs unusual for a pop star — on depression, loneliness, suicide.

Eilish’s lyrics are said to resonate with a post-9/11 generation that has grown up amid uncertainty and insecurity.
Updated on Sep 07, 2019 01:34 PM IST
Hindustan Times | By

#Newsmaker: Greta Thunberg has sailed across the Atlantic. What now?

The 16-year-old climate activist is strident, angry. And justifiably so. But as today’s rockstar of green energy and sustainable living, it’s time for her message to evolve.

Extreme measures make sense to Thunberg because extreme is our reality now. And so she’s voyaged across the Atlantic in a yacht with no toilet and no kitchen. But is there much point in such a statement, if the example one is setting cannot be followed?(Team Malizia / Reuters File Photo)
Published on Aug 30, 2019 05:44 PM IST
Hindustan Times | By

The changing romcom: Romantic hero types through the years

From the rather stern husband-in-a-good-mood of the ’30s and ’40s to Jack and Ennis in Brokeback Mountain, our heroes have come a long way. Take a look...

Jake Gyllenhal and Heath Ledger caused more hearts to flutter than anyone would have thought, in Brokeback Mountain.
Published on Aug 23, 2019 02:20 PM IST
Hindustan Times | By

#Newsmaker: Taylor Swift has a new song out, a new album and a new persona

The pop superstar has rebranded herself, this time as an LGBTQ ally. With hundreds of millions listening, should timing and nuance matter?

At a June 2 concert in LA.
Published on Jun 22, 2019 05:17 PM IST
Hindustan Times | By

‘Transport apps holding customers to ransom’

A first person account of the difficulty train commuters faced on Tuesday because of surge pricing by app-based taxi aggregators

Published on Jun 01, 2016 01:02 AM IST
Hindustan Times | By, Mumbai

Women cannot do it all. And they shouldn’t

Can women, whether rich and powerful like Nooyi or middle-class and anonymous like the rest of us, do it all? If we said it right, we might even arrive at the right answer, writes Zara Murao.

Updated on Jul 08, 2014 11:14 PM IST
Hindustan Times | By
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