Avay Shukla

( Concluding part of the article ) THE WAY FORWARD The pandemic has provided us some important lessons for a sustainable world, the most important being that preservation of the natural environment is not just a matter of landscape aesthetics but an imperative for our own health and survival. This is also a warning for […]

 [ This is the first of a two- part article on this subject. ] Mr Vir Sanghvi has just sealed the fate of Mashobra, a once idyllic Shimla suburb where I live after my retirement. In an article last week he claimed that Mashobra was ” the new Maldives” of India. Now, Mr. Sanghvi must

There has been no bearded specimen in the Shukla family for the last hundred years at least, including my cousin Madho. He occasionally does present an untidy hirsute look  which could be mistaken for a fuzz, but a closer examination reveals that his facial fallicles do not conform to the dictionary definition of a beard

The Supreme Court has disappointed again. While not interfering with the bail granted to the three student activists- Natasha, Kalita and Asif- in the Delhi riots and ” conspiracy ” case, it has, vide its order of 18th June 2021, effectively stayed the Delhi High Court order on UAPA. To my mind, the court had

Baba Ramdev is nobody’s fool, as the IMA ( Indian Medical Association ) seems to think. Anyone who started life by churning his stomach like a washing machine and ended up with a multi billion dollar empire has to be a smart cookie. And just marvel at his latest coup: the acquisition of the Rs.

Mythology forms a large part of the BJP-RSS combine’s world view ( such as it is), and the TINA  (There Is No Alternative ) myth is an important part of it. TINA is, predictably, the last refuge of the government’s supporters who have now run out of money, oxygen, jobs, Remdesiver, vaccines, doctored statistics and

I am essentially a ” dhaba ” man. Give me a choice between a good, clean dhaba on a highway and a fancy restaurant and I shall plump for the former every time, even if you are paying the bill! This is not a reverse snobbishness, or my inability to decipher “Potatoes Dauphinoise” or ”

My review of this book  was published in THE TRIBUNE on April 4, 2021. It is a fascinating account of the attempts made to conquer the ten highest peaks in the Himalaya in the last century. The article/ review is reproduced below.   Avay Shukla “This is a book about the mountains. But it is

If Bal Narendra had spent some more time in school instead of rushing off to sell tea at a railway station which did not even exist at that time, he would have imbibed some wisdom from a couple of old adages: Don’t burn your bridges behind you because you may need them again tomorrow, and, Be courteous to