For six months of the year, confined in my NCR flat like a Trappist monk, the only birds I get to see are pigeons, which have now become the ubiquitous symbol of urban avian life. But for the other six months, when I repair to my cottage in Puranikoti village near Shimla, it’s a completely different […]

History has the knack of forgetting women. One way is to not name them at all. More recently, I noticed another… I had just completed writing my book (no, not the one in the picture!) and I had to cross-check all the references. I had cited a good number of academic sources. But I hadn’t

The Deputy Commissioner Shimla announced last Tuesday that 300,000 vehicles had entered Shimla in the last two weeks due to the tourist rush. That is 15000 vehicles per day. Shimla has parking for just about 5000 vehicles, and if we assume that a tourist family/group stays for just two days, the daily parking requirement is

My cousin and I, primary schoolers at the time, were dressed in velveteen clothes—him in a tiny suit, me in a tiny gown. We happily participated in our aunt’s wedding procession. After the ceremony, however, we were bawling, “Aunty is gone.” Though we were young, we could tell that the change—even though a happy one—meant

COULD one lunch in Washington cause so much dyspepsia in Delhi, or indigestion in Islamabad? On June 18, 2025, President Donald Trump invited Field Marshal Asim Munir for a private meal in the White House’s Cabinet Room. He set five places: for himself, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his aide Steve Witkoff. The field

These are perilous times for homo sapiens, regardless of whether you believe in the predictions of Nostradamus or the epiphanies of Baba Venga. Thanks to a trio of psychopathic megalomaniacs, we are being pushed to the edge of extinction, one lie and tweet at a time. Drones and rockets are raining down in Russia and

A RELIABLE enemy is as difficult to find today as a loyal friend. In modern geopolitics, the first is a sine qua non, the second a fickle firefly. In its 250-year-old history, the US army has faced a range of foes. The list is long and open-ended — from Germany, the (former) USSR, Vietnam, Cambodia,

India, we are told, has now entered a “New Normal” after that little “menage a trois” with Pakistan and China in the first week of May in which we still don’t know who came out on top, as it were.  And there is certainly plenty of evidence to back this claim, viz. that we have

One has to be either a fool or in government not to fear a nuclear conflict. Fools need not worry; they live in their own paradise. Governments make provision for their safety in case sirens blow. It is we – the vulnerable citizenry of nuclear states – who are unprotected, when the doomsday button is pushed.