June 20, 2018
If the Royals are here, can the paparazzi be far behind? Stating the obvious perhaps, so ubiquitous have the massed photographers become that they are now an accepted part of the scenery (Sadly, everyone seems to have forgotten the central role they played in the death of Princess Diana). I bring this up now because […]
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June 12, 2018
The story of the last four years is one of missed opportunities and dashed hopes, of waiting for achhe din that never came, of seeing expectations raised to the heights by lofty rhetoric, only to come crashing down in the face of depressing reality. 26 May marks the fourth anniversary of an era of disappointment for believers, […]
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June 12, 2018
The longest running play in the world in not a musical. In fact, it is a murder mystery called The Mousetrap which has been running in London`s St Martin`s Theatre since 1952. That`s 68 years! Based on Agatha Christie`s short-story Three Blind Mice, its original producer thought it would run for 14 months. Christie herself gave it 8 months. That`s […]
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June 12, 2018
A series of bypoll losses has pushed the Modi government into panic mode. Uncharacteristically, it’s letting events dictate its actions. Throwing good money after bad money is an old truism. But throwing good money after bad politics? Every government does it, in its last year. But is Narendra Modi’s also behaving like “any other” government? […]
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June 10, 2018
I have long immodestly considered myself the inventor of the term ‘prepone’. I came up with it at St Stephen’s in 1972, used it extensively in conversation and employed it in an article in JS magazine soon after. Prepone, as a back-construction from postpone, seemed so much simpler, to a teenage collegian, than saying, “could […]
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June 8, 2018
“When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun.” So Paul Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s right hand man and Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda is supposed to have said. As it happens he did reach for his gun, using it to shoot his wife and himself when Germany lost the Second World […]
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June 6, 2018
The sun rarely shines on Hay. I know that’s a poor pun, but the literary festival’s name lends itself to such wordplay, besides which the weather often plays spoilsport. Not that it deters the crowds, which on the festival’s two weekends resemble a Mumbai local. You could divide the big draws of this year’s event […]
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May 28, 2018
From top banker to shit. Sounds like a good tabloid headline, doesn’t it? But Naina Lal Kidwai, former Chairman, HSBC India, won’t mind, because she has taken up the cause of sanitation in right earnest. And on the hallowed stage of NCPA, she used this four-letter world liberally, not as an exclamation, but matter-of-factly when […]
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May 21, 2018
My mother drove me to excellence, writes Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor My mother just bought a new car. It is a gleaming red Nissan Micra, and she proudly drove it to the temple to get it blessed before journeying to the market and bank. Nothing exceptional about any of this—except that she is 82. […]
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May 11, 2018
From top banker to shit. Sounds like a good tabloid headline, doesn’t it? But Naina Lal Kidwai, former Chairman, HSBC India, won’t mind, because she has taken up the cause of sanitation in right earnest. And on the hallowed stage of NCPA, she used this four-letter world liberally, not as an exclamation, but matter-of-factly when […]
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May 1, 2018
As 53 world leaders prepare to gather in London for this year’s edition of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting(CHOGM, 2018), it would be all too easy for some to dismiss the biennial event as a byproduct of an acute colonial hangover. On the contrary, however, I strongly believe that this year’s summit presents a historic opportunity for […]
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