Sandip Roy's Dispatches from Kolkata

Series produced by KALW

Caption: Sandip at the Grand Hotel in Nainital.
Sandip at the Grand Hotel in Nainital. 

Award winning writer, radio host, NPR contributor and novelist Sandip Roy brings his wit and insight to these personal audio diaries from his new life in his old home, India.

After ten years of hosting New America Now, Sandip Roy brings you a little bit of the story of the new India every week – a letter home from his other home.

"A lot has been written about the changing India," says Roy, "but reporting about a changing India is one thing. Living in it and dealing with a country where newspapers are still being launched instead of folding, internet rumors spark mass exoduses, and cricketers advertise skin-whitening creams called Fair and Handsome, that is another thing altogether."


461 Pieces

Order by: Newest First | Oldest First
Caption: Memorial Shahid Minar in Dhaka, Credit: Photo courtesy of Trip Advisor
Feb 21st is International Mother Language Day. Learn more at http://www.un.org/en/events/motherlanguageday/

  • Added: Feb 18, 2019
  • Length: 06:00
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The Kolkata Book Fair is one of the largest in the world. But it also has space for the smallest of publishers.

  • Added: Feb 11, 2019
  • Length: 06:00
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Sandip Roy experiences a testiment to resiliance.... at the Pavlov Mental Hospital.

  • Added: Feb 04, 2019
  • Length: 06:00
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Sandip Roy remembers his boyhood fascination with Hergé's famous comic, Tintin

  • Added: Jan 22, 2019
  • Length: 06:00
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Sandip investigates the journey of a small town Scottish postmaster to his resting place in Kolkata.

Bought by PRX Remix


  • Added: Jan 14, 2019
  • Length: 06:00
  • Purchases: 1
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India is home to some of the most polluted cities in the world, but also home to some of the first champions of recycling.

  • Added: Jan 07, 2019
  • Length: 06:00
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Sandip reflects on the name game.

  • Added: Dec 17, 2018
  • Length: 06:00
Caption: Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas at thier wedding
Once outrage in distant India would barely ruffle feathers in New York. But no more. As the newsletter Broadsheet pointed out today if media is glo...

  • Added: Dec 11, 2018
  • Length: 06:00
Caption: the Jungle Crows play in a Kolkata park
In Cricket crazy india, an obscure game played with a very strange shaped ball takes hold.

  • Added: Dec 03, 2018
  • Length: 06:00
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It looks just like a little white table tennis ball, but spongy and sweet. The Rosogolla is Bengal’s most famous sweet but Sandip is overwhelmed by...

  • Added: Nov 26, 2018
  • Length: 06:00
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Sandip Roy remembers the veterans of World War 1, the Indian veterens.

  • Added: Nov 13, 2018
  • Length: 06:00
Caption: The Statue of Unity in Gujarat, India, Credit: Sandip Roy
Sometimes when picking our monuments we focus on the wrong aspect.

  • Added: Nov 05, 2018
  • Length: 06:00
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Sandip Roy misses a piece of India that can only be had in in San Francisco.

  • Added: Oct 30, 2018
  • Length: 06:00
Caption: No Kanchenjungha :-(, Credit: Sandip Roy
Sandip Roy finally… finally sees the mysterious Kanchenjungha with his own eyes! Finally!

  • Added: Oct 08, 2018
  • Length: 06:00
Caption: Pottery by Greg Roberts
From the ashes of the Tubbs wildfire, a Sonoma, CA community rebuilds it’s community through one man’s pottery.

  • Added: Oct 02, 2018
  • Length: 06:00
Caption: The God Ganesh at a temple in Kolkata, Credit: Sandip Roy
The Fort Bend county Republican party in Texas tried to appropriate Ganesh and discovered that you can’t lasso an elephant so easily.

  • Added: Sep 24, 2018
  • Length: 06:00
Caption: Author Devdutt Pattanaik, Credit: Sandip Roy
Now that the Indian Supreme Court has decriminalized homosexuality, the real battles begin. The battle over what is and isn’t “Indian."

  • Added: Sep 17, 2018
  • Length: 06:00
Caption: An issue of 'trikone'
After 157 years, the Indian Supreme court ruled rules that gay sex is not a crime.

  • Added: Sep 10, 2018
  • Length: 06:00
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Sandip Roy addresses a major calamity in Kolkata.

  • Added: Sep 04, 2018
  • Length: 06:00
Caption: A typical neem tree, Credit: exoticflora.in
Sandip remembers a bitter part of his childhood.

  • Added: Aug 27, 2018
  • Length: 06:00