Columns

After working with thousands of abusive men, Lundy Bancroft wrote a book titled Why Does He Do That? In it, he documents his insights into the way abusers think. He explains that most abusive people are not psychologically abnormal. And most of them do feel emotions such as remorse and guilt. So, how do they […]

Some of us may recall that revolutionary doctrine enunciated by one of India’s leading economists, Mr. Amit Shah, a couple of years ago, viz. that selling “pakodas” on the road constitutes gainful employment. Or that other one on this subject by our second most eminent economist, Mr. Piush Goyal, that unemployment rates in India are

The Jiva Nal is the least known of the four streams of the GHNP. It drains the extreme north-west corner of the Park, emanating from the mountains and glaciers that guard its northern frontiers, and after covering about 65 kms, meets the Sainj at Siund. The trek to its source and back takes seven days.

I really don’t have much to do in my Himachal village these days, other than watch things sliding down the slopes- roads, houses, trees, mountain sides, cars and the occasional unwary tourist from Kotkapura. It’s all getting a bit monotonous, but the upside is that it gives me plenty of time to reflect on our

It has not been a particularly good fortnight for people of my vintage, brought up to regard the moon- that “silver deity of secret night”, as the poetess Lady Mary Montagu put it- as an object of mystery and romance cloaked in an impenetrable celestial halo. It has been the staple of Hindi films of

The sun was setting over neatly combed, green tea estates that covered the mountain slopes. Tall, interspersed silver oak trees stood guard. Clouds hung at eye level, every so often gliding onto the roads we traversed. When it did, our driver slowed the vehicle and turned on the fog lights. They lit the moisture. Everything

Now that the rains have mercifully abated in Himachal, the various Whatsapp groups have offered their anodyne prayers for the state, donations have been made to the CM’s Relief Fund to assuage consciences, and bureaucrats have made the right noises to cover up their silence when  the environment was being raped over the years, it

These are challenging times for government pensioners, of which horde I am one. One suspects that the government resents the fact that we now live much longer, notwithstanding the tender care dished out by the CGHS. Pensions, or at least parts of them, are denied to us on the grounds that we have not submitted

The run up to the 2024 elections has begun. Motivated pre-poll surveys are popping up everywhere and confuse us on a daily basis, the Opposition has formed the I.N.D.I.A alliance whose future looks as precarious as that of the country it is named after, the BJP’s own 38 party alliance (not including the ED, CBI