Columns

“There’s a new Sheriff in town,” was what the newly minted TD Vance, Vice President of the USA, informed Europe in his typical hillbilly way on his first visit there. He was, presumably, referring to Trump and not to the federal marshal, Musk, who appears to be riding shotgun for the former as the American

The West and Russia are two cyclops who have never been able to see eye to eye. Over centuries, they have grown into giants with ambitions beyond their borders and power beyond their dreams. For the rest of the world, they are a nightmare. The present conflict in and over Ukraine is more than a

Unlike our Prime Minister or Mr. Narayan Murthy, I do not labour for 18 hours a day; in fact, I don’t labour at all- having toiled for 35 years I have now left it to others to clear out the mess I’ve created during that period. But this doesn’t mean I don’t put in many

Himachal’s beautiful and priceless rivers are facing a new threat in their ongoing battle against “development”. First it was the roads hacked out in their valleys, dumping tens of millions of tonnes of earth and debris into their waters, constricting their flows and devastating aquatic life. Then came the hydel projects, extinguishing whatever little aquatic

Lahore dozes in the summer. In spring, it comes alive with LitFests. The Faiz Festival occupied last weekend; the Lahore LitFest the next. In between, there has been the Horse & Cattle Show in the Fortress Stadium. Once the showcase for Punjab’s agricultural livestock and agro-produce, it has been revived as a showpiece by the

A long, long time ago when people still read books and were not educated exclusively by Whatsapp forwards or Tik-Tok reels, Nirad Choudhry, the last Englishman in India, claimed in his book of the same name that India was a continent of Circe, where humans were turned into beasts. Now, 70 years later, he has

Read the article here. Posted here by kind permission of the copyright holder, Mr Kamal Malhotra.

Read the article here. Posted here by kind permission of the copyright holder, Mr Kamal Malhotra.

To enjoy any LitFest, one needs to be a hyper-active octopus, with eyes and ears at the end of every tentacle. The Lahore LitFest 2025 – the last in a trilogy before the abstinence of Ramzan – offered a banquet of intellect, spread over four halls in cruel competition. To attend one was to forgo