Avay Shukla

Preservation and protection of the natural environment has never been a priority in our annual Budgets; ALL Finance Ministers have taken it for granted and have treated it as an infinite resource rather than a living entity to be nurtured and carefully harvested on a sustainable basis. In July 2014 I had written a blog […]

ONE has always had the highest admiration and respect for Merryll Streep’ s acting qualities, graceful beauty and composure. To these qualities I should now add her strong moral conviction and the courage to speak out: her take down of Trump at the recent Golden Globe awards function was something to watch, and won her

The Vande Bharat stable of trains is the pride of the Indian railways, and deservedly so. Their coaches are state of the art, comprising the best in the world in technology and comfort, rivalling the airlines at a fraction of the cost. Each set of 16 coaches costs about Rs. 130 crores, ten times the

I’ve been away from my village in Himachal for the last three months and am beginning to feel homesick; the remedy, Neerja tells me, is to write about the latest news from the state. I can ignore her advice only at my peril, so here goes. But since there is both good news and bad

The year 2025, vandalised by the likes of Trump, Netanyahu and Putin, is now thankfully history and I earnestly hope we see the backs of these war criminals in the year ahead. But that should not distract us from making our own New Year resolutions. Mine is inspired by that athenian, observant avian of the

There are two ways to legally get a loan from a bank. One, apply for a loan with your credentials, balance sheet, profit and loss statement, statement of assets, etc. If these are not good enough, then one can take the second route- buy off the bank and award yourself a loan. The Indian govt.

Being a dyed in the wool (now a ‘dead in the water’) bureaucrat, I have never been the life and soul of any party. But strangely enough, hostesses kept inviting me frequently to dinners, I suspect because of my village idiot qualities, because I could keep a conversation flowing in the silences when everyone else

The Vande Bharat stable of trains is the pride of the Indian railways, and deservedly so. Their coaches are state of the art, comprising the best in the world in technology and comfort, rivalling the airlines at a fraction of the cost. Each set of 16 coaches costs about Rs. 130 crores, ten times the

At nearly 75 years, I have for long endorsed Bob Hope’s dictum: I’m not afraid of dying but I don’t want to be around when it happens. But of late I am more inclined to go with “Death, where is thy sting?” by the Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians of the New Testament. The simple reason is that I