Naina Bajekal

Journalists Reflect on Covering Stories About Their Communities

Longstanding journalistic maxims would have a reporter remain disengaged while gathering the facts. But pursuing the whole truth means considering the humanity of one’s subjects—and of oneself. Lived experience can help a reporter empathize and...

By Jasmine Aguilera May 13, 2021

How India’s COVID-19 Crisis Spiraled Out of Control

The country is now facing the world’s worst COVID-19 outbreak, and a devastating humanitarian crisis

By Naina Bajekal April 28, 2021

Women Are Transforming What Climate Leadership Looks Like

The COVID-19 pandemic, like the climate crisis, is amplifying existing racial and gender injustices in our society. TIME editors Naina Bajekal and Elijah Wolfson moderated a conversation with two women working to create a more...

By Naina Bajekal April 20, 2021

A Reading List to Celebrate Asian Authors

See a curated reading list from members of TIME's Asian community that celebrates Asian authors

By Naina Bajekal March 24, 2021

A Defiant New Take on Contemporary India

“Writers and politicians are natural rivals,” Salman Rushdie wrote in his 1982 essay “Imaginary Homelands.” “Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory. And the novel...

By Naina Bajekal May 20, 2020

'Brits Are Notoriously Prudish.' On Set With the Cast of Netflix's Sex Education

Squeals and laughter ring out across the set of Sex Education. It's Gillian Anderson's last day of filming for Season 2, and Ncuti Gatwa--who plays the show's ebullient teen Eric Effiong--has just discovered Anderson has...

By Naina Bajekal January 16, 2020

Zora Neale Hurston's Short Stories Finally Get Their Due in a New Posthumous Collection

"Folklore," Zora Neale Hurston wrote in an essay, "is the boiled-down juice of human living." It was this deep interest in the lives and stories of the black community that led Hurston, who grew up...

By Naina Bajekal January 16, 2020

She Was Misdiagnosed With Bipolar Disorder. Now She's Probing the Gaps in Our Understanding of Mental Illness

"If sanity and insanity exist, how shall we know them?" So begins a landmark 1973 study by Stanford psychology professor David Rosenhan, who persuaded eight healthy people to feign hallucinations and commit themselves to mental...

By Naina Bajekal November 7, 2019

India Is Starting to Lift Kashmir Restrictions. What Happens Next?

Over two months since the repeal of Kashmir's special status, citizens are bracing themselves for what's next

By Naina Bajekal October 23, 2019

A Newly Translated Novel Charts the Dizzying Transformation of an Independent Oman

"When we are away from home, in new and strange places, we get to know ourselves better," Abdallah, the son of a rich merchant, thinks as he gazes out an airplane window. It's a sentiment...

By Naina Bajekal October 10, 2019

A New Novel Sees Beyond the Abstraction of Today's Refugee Stories

After two summers volunteering in a refugee center in Athens as thousands of families flooded into Greece, Christy Lefteri found herself wondering what it means to see, and be seen. From the question sprang her...

By Naina Bajekal August 22, 2019

India Has Taken Kashmir, But Winning the Hearts and Minds of Kashmiris Will be Harder

On the sunny, cloudless morning when Imaad Tariq was born in Kashmir, most of his family had no idea. "Nobody knows that my wife delivered a baby boy," says Tariq Ahmad Sheikh, at the hospital...

By Naina Bajekal August 8, 2019

An Intimate Portrait of Life in Sierra Leone

Dignity, celebration, respect, joy. These were just some of the feelings photographer Robbie Lawrence wanted to capture in his work from Sierra Leone — a departure from the emotions we might traditionally associate with photography...

By Naina Bajekal June 10, 2019

The Other Americans Asks What It Means to Be an Immigrant in 2019

When Laila Lalami's 2014 novel The Moor's Account was short-listed for a Pulitzer Prize, jurors called its tale of a 16th century Spanish expedition to Florida "compassionately imagined out of the gaps and silences of...

By Naina Bajekal March 14, 2019

How This Ethiopian Photographer Is Giving Storytellers a New Platform

When TIME approached photographer Aida Muluneh to create images for the 2019 Optimists issue, she immediately turned to Ethiopia’s political climate for inspiration. A new Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, had assumed office in April 2018...

By Naina Bajekal February 7, 2019

How Artists of All Ages Keep Their Creative Spirit Alive

How does an artist keep her creative vision alive? It’s a concern not just for painters and poets who have been at work for decades; an artist’s vision can be tested at any point in...

By Naina Bajekal February 7, 2019

Why Women Travel to Denmark for Fertility Treatments

At StorkKlinik in Copenhagen, half the patients are single women and lesbian couples

By Naina Bajekal/Copenhagen January 3, 2019

How Traumatized Children See the World, According to Their Drawings

In May, now-ousted U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the start of the Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance” policy to separate migrant families at the Mexican border. “If you are smuggling a child" into the country,...

By Naina Bajekal November 14, 2018

The Personal Gets Political in the Masterful New Novel All the Lives We Never Lived

Partway through Anuradha Roy's All the Lives We Never Lived, the German artist Walter Spies makes the case for simply enjoying life in India amid the global upheaval of the 1930s. "We are oceans away...

By Naina Bajekal November 8, 2018

Want to Win the War on Drugs? Portugal Might Have the Answer

When Gonçalo Fonseca was a child, he went to school near Casal Ventoso, a Lisbon neighborhood that also served as the biggest open-air drugs market in Europe. “I have the vivid memory of being a...

By Naina Bajekal August 1, 2018

Why Love Island Is the Defining Show of Summer 2018

"Love Island has completely taken over my life and I’m OK with it."

By Naina Bajekal/London July 31, 2018

Meet 4 Crusaders Who Are Keeping the Dream of Democracy Alive

Around the world today, one in three people lives under an authoritarian regime, while many others are experiencing a decline in their democratic freedoms. But the slide towards autocracy has pushed millions to stand up...

By Vivienne Walt July 12, 2018

Andre Agassi Says These Are the Tennis Players to Watch

American tennis players could soon dominate the game like he and Sampras did

By Naina Bajekal/Paris June 12, 2018

Andre Agassi's Next Chapter

Speaking to TIME at the French Open, the tennis legend says his sporting accomplishments don't compare with what he’s done since.

By Naina Bajekal/Paris June 11, 2018

After Paris, Life For Refugees in France Has Gotten Even Harder

It had been one of the warmest Novembers on record, and for a while, the estimated 6,000 migrants and refugees in the French port city of Calais almost counted themselves lucky. That luck didn’t last:...

By Naina Bajekal/Calais December 3, 2015

France's 'Generation Bataclan' Hasn't Lost Its Joie de Vivre

Younger millennials in Paris feel under attack like never before — but their spirit endures

By Naina Bajekal / Paris November 20, 2015

Muslims in Paris Suburbs Fear a Backlash

Residents of the banlieues tell TIME of their frustration, fear and anger

By Naina Bajekal / Paris November 16, 2015

'France Is a Catastrophe': Life in a City Gone Still

A TIME reporter caught near the ISIS terror attacks on how Paris is struggling to cope

By Naina Bajekal / Paris November 14, 2015

Global Foods You Can't Eat In the U.S.

Scotland's rural-affairs secretary Richard Lochhead visited the U.S. this week to lobby the federal government to overturn a decades-long import ban on haggis, a Scottish delicacy made of sheep's innards, oats and suet traditionally cooked...

By Naina Bajekal November 12, 2015

Clowns Turned Politicians

Satirist Jimmy Morales was elected President of Guatemala on Oct. 25 on an anticorruption platform, despite having no experience in politics. He's far from the first joker to actually get ahead in government.

By Naina Bajekal October 29, 2015

What Happens When Drugs Aren't Illegal?

A leaked U.N. report recommending that countries decriminalize narcotics for personal use brought the war on drugs into the global spotlight, even though it was later shelved. Countries that have loosened drug restrictions can boast some successes.

By Naina Bajekal October 22, 2015

Why the E.U. Is Offering Turkey Billions to Deal With Refugees

Overwhelmed by the number of migrants at their door, Angela Merkel and other European leaders are looking to Turkey to control the flow

By Naina Bajekal October 19, 2015

The Perils Pulling Turkey Apart

A deadly summer of political violence in Turkey culminated in the country's worst-ever terrorist attack on Oct. 10 when twin bombings at a peace rally in Ankara killed at least 97 people, mainly Kurdish demonstrators....

By Naina Bajekal October 15, 2015

How the Arab Spring and Civil Wars Led to Europe’s Refugee Crisis

Migrants have been plotting their escape

By Naina Bajekal October 8, 2015

Germans Open Their Homes to Refugees

The country is offering open arms to migrants

By Naina Bajekal/Berlin October 8, 2015

The War on Plastic Bags

The U.K. introduced a controversial 5-pence ($0.08) tax Oct. 5 on every plastic bag, joining other places where lawmakers have tried to curb the use of the nonbiodegradable polyethylene bags: DENMARK Introduced a tax as...

By Naina Bajekal October 8, 2015

What Will the Trans-Pacific Partnership Do?

After five years of grueling negotiations, the U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim countries reached a historic agreement on Oct. 5 on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade accord covering some two-fifths of the world...

By Naina Bajekal October 8, 2015

Can Saudi Arabia Make the Hajj Safer?

More than 1,000 people died during this year's holy rituals in Mecca, putting new pressure on Saudi Arabia to tackle a growing number of challenges. OVERCROWDING In 2008, Saudi authorities began a three-decade, $227 billion...

By Naina Bajekal October 1, 2015

Germany's Refugee Crisis Won't Stop Beer Festival

The biggest beer festival in the world gets underway in Munch—with refugees kept out of the way

By Naina Bajekal / Munich September 28, 2015

Great 20th Century Migrations

With an estimated 1 in every 122 people on earth now displaced according to the U.N., there are currently more people fleeing violence or persecution than at any other time since World War II. Here's how the world dealt with previous mass movements of people.

By Naina Bajekal September 17, 2015

Australia's Game of Thrones

In a leadership ballot on Sept. 14, Malcolm Turnbull toppled Tony Abbott to become leader of the conservative Liberal Party and the country's fourth Prime Minister in two years, cementing Canberra's reputation as the coup...

By Naina Bajekal September 17, 2015

6 Reasons Why Jerusalem's Old City Has Once Again Enflamed the Region

One of the oldest cities in the world is yet again the focal point of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with more bloodshed in Jerusalem on Tuesday when three Israelis and two Palestinian attackers were killed in...

By Naina Bajekal September 16, 2015

Watch Benedict Cumberbatch Plea For Help for Syrian Refugees

The actor tells refugees that help is coming

By Naina Bajekal September 11, 2015

This Graphic Shows the Astonishing Scale of Syria's Refugee Crisis

More than 4 million Syrians have fled their country's ongoing civil war

By Naina Bajekal September 10, 2015

The 5 Big Questions About Europe's Migrant Crisis

In recent weeks, chaos at border crossings and train stations, squalid conditions in makeshift refugee camps and a heartbreaking photograph of a drowned Syrian toddler have all helped bring Europe's refugee crisis into the global...

By Naina Bajekal September 9, 2015

BBC Plans to Broadcast to North Korea

Radios in North Korea are preset to government-set frequencies and only receive official news

By Naina Bajekal September 7, 2015