Columns

In my 74 years I have not seen, or even heard of, a more tasteless, egotistical or pretentious wedding than the recent, 24X7 televised extravaganza of the Ambanis. It is not just about its cost, which is estimated to be anything between Rupees 1500 crores to 5000 crores, not including the cost to the government […]

This week my thoughts have turned to a subject I’m not very familiar with- outer space. Actually, I’m in the middle of a fascinating book, THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD; it’s about the first explorations of the South pole and Antarctica by Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen. The last quarter of the 19th century and

Ever since I left clinical practice, several people—particularly teenagers and those in their early twenties—have approached me and shared their stories and troubles with me. Something about my experience of being in a profession I did not like because of societal pressures and then deciding to quit to pursue my passion seemed to resonate with

Khushwant Singh would have been delighted. The latest LitFest revived his memory over two days at SOAS in London, the city he loved as much as his birthplace Hadali (in Pakistan). The added piquancy for him was that the sessions began and ended with two Pakistanis.  The Keynote Speaker on 1st June had taken Khushwant’s ashes

[DAWN, 23 May 2024] They are all dead: the feisty Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci and her fourteen interviewees – prominent amongst them Henry Kissinger, King Hussein of Jordan, Yasser Arafat, Mrs. Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Cypriot president Archbishop Makarios, and the Vietnamese freedom fighters General Giap and

From a letter There’s a letter from Dad to our mother dated the 21st of September, 1938. He’s twenty-one, she’s eighteen. He’s impatient, impetuous and very much in love. Impatient: – “Those damned mails are late by 72 hours. It means that I won’t have any news from you till tomorrow evening.” Wondering: – “What do

When two things happen together, we sometimes conclude that one caused the other. I had made such an assumption about time and healing. In something I wrote, I mentioned the idiom, “Time heals all wounds”. That was spotted by Dr. Valson Thampu, who kindly mentors me, and he gave me the example of Miss Havisham,

I sincerely hope the Hon’ble Lordships who dismissed the petitions for mandatory counting of VVPAT slips (with wholly unwarranted aspersions on the petitioner, the Association for Democratic Reforms) are able to sleep soundly these days. I also hope they have by now realised how misplaced their touching faith in the current Election Commissioners was.  For

by  Paul Shears (FROM The Gandhi Way, U.K., no.: 160, Summer2024) In the late 1920s, the flag of the Indian National Congress was seen flying over a small Christian ashram on the outskirts of Poona (Pune). In a country, and at a time, when the established Anglican Church was closely linked to the British control