Kallol Bhattacherjee

Tripura-born Kallol Bhattacherjee grew up in the hills of Northeast India, where he had his first glimpse of India's relentless interaction with the world. In the mid-1990s, on a summer day, he boarded the Kalka Mail from Calcutta (now Kolkata) – a move that eventually led him to the classrooms of the University of Delhi and subsequently to Jawaharlal Nehru University, where he studied political theory, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the history of modern Lebanon. He began his journalistic career writing for Mainstream, Seminar, The Jerusalem Post, The Indian Express and the Iranian News Agency. Over the past two decades, he has worked at The Week and The Hindu, where he is currently a senior assistant editor, reporting and writing on international affairs. Over the years, he has reported from conflict zones around the world, including Libya, Tunisia, Syria and Iraq at the height of the Arab Spring, and from India's neighbourhood. He is the author of The Great Game in Afghanistan: Rajiv Gandhi, General Zia and the Unending War (2017) and A Baloch Militant in Delhi (2018). His social media handle at X/Twitter is @janusmyth, and he can be reached on email at janusmyth@gmail.com.