Just over two weeks ago the world’s nations agreed they have averted cataclysmic global warming. Close on the heels of Chennai’s submersion, we have news that the North Pole is going to be warmer than Southern California, a severe winter storm is battering the north-easter rib United States, and northern England has been hit by…
“When the old mother received the body of her child, which the neighbours had brought back to her, she did not cry, but she stayed there for a long time motionless, watching him. Then, stretching her wrinkled hand over the body, she promised him a vendetta.” So run these chilling words from a 19th-century story…
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is at his best when he is talking. He has been in office for 555 days and I wager that he has made at least three times that number of speeches, give or take the time that he spends travelling on Air India One. Modi’s personal website and that of the…
Eight hundred and forty-five years ago, Henry II of England, chafing under a long and abrading rivalry with Thomas Becket, his former friend and the Archbishop of Canterbury, finally burst out in anger: “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Four of Henry’s courtiers rushed out, accosted the archbishop in his cathedral, and…
About 1,000 authors and teachers marched through the streets of the capital on Tuesday, asserting their right to free speech. Did you miss this event in Delhi? Actually, it happened in Dhaka, where four bloggers and a publisher have been killed so far this year, and civil society believes free speech is being throttled in…
“On an October evening, two young men met at a paan shop.” So, starts ‘Hatyaare’ (Assassins), a disturbing and dystopian Hindi short story by Amarkant. It was published in 1964, and faintly echoed ‘A Clockwork Orange’, that classic 1962 tale by Anthony Burgess of a darkly futuristic England blighted by extremely violent youths. Assassins is…
Over the past week, I have been struck by the helplessness of the men leading the world’s two biggest democracies. There is a major difference, though: President Barack Obama has tried, and failed, to change America’s gun control laws as one mass shooting is followed closely by another. After last week’s massacre at an Oregon…
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” said Yogi Berra, the legendary catcher for the New York Yankees, who died on Tuesday Funny that may be, but not for Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he flies to New York at the start of a week-long visit to both U.S. coasts. Modi…
“The agenda focused on measures to correct the current account deficit, counter rupee depreciation and its impact on trade and industry, improve skill development and focus on developing industrial corridors,” one newspaper said about the prime minister’s brainstorming meeting. “The overall sentiment was to convert decisions to action and take back the country to a…
What can we be sure of as we head into the last four months of this year? Unless you live in one of those havens of do-nothingness, like Jhumri Talaiya in eastern India or Peoria in the middle of the United States, chances are that you are uneasy worried about the future, not sure that…
In a striking exposition of what could be termed the Modi Doctrine, NSA Doval said if you are not able to exercise the power you possess because you don’t have the will, that is as good as not having it It is difficult to discern if Prime Minister Narendra Modi is beginning to lose his…
In his 2011 book ‘Target 3 billion’, APJ Abdul Kalam wrote about returning across the Rajasthan desert after India’s Pokhran nuclear tests in May 1998. The temperature was around 50° C. A fellow scientist suggested they stop at a village called Badariya. There, Kalam was astonished to find a lush and green ashram. The head…
Did Narendra Modi just experience his Sharm el-Sheikh moment? The joint India-Pakistan statement issued in the Russian city of Ufa last Friday, after Modi initiated a meeting with Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif, has been all but repudiated by Sharif’s National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz. Aziz said no talks with India can be held without Kashmir…
At times like this, with the air heavier, hotter and wetter than in a sauna, we Bhadravasis long for the cool breeze of reason to blow in soothing gusts across our stressed landscape. It is a good time to dip our toes in the scriptures. Let me start with the Bhagavad Gita, that treasure trove…
When he won power 13 months ago, Narendra Modi promised he would reel out a governance thriller that was high on quality, aesthetics, story line, dialogues and soothing background music. He would give his jaded audience something to applaud for its sheer integrity, performance and lasting impact. Sadly, over the past ten days the government…
Perhaps it is because every tremor registers as an earthquake on social media, but we seem besieged by one ‘not again’ moment after another. Whether it is suspect instant noodles or larvae-infested baby food or lecherous taxi drivers, is India simply predisposed towards badness, or are we just too much of a glass-half-empty nation? Let’s…
The Indian ryot, or peasant cultivator, has always been a political football. When we think of a farmer most of us think, this man is getting subsidised water, electricity, seeds, fertilizer. The government buys his harvest. The government is keen to gift him a bank account under the Jan Dhan Yojana, even if he has…
One year ago, as voting got underway in our national elections, I titled my first column in this newspaper A Witch’s Brew’. That referred to the choices India’s voters had. Now we know that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has had to quaff quite a potent concoction since he rode to power. In equal parts, he…
The Narendra Modi government has been taking a few hard knocks. It learned that sweet talk in Maharashtra’s sugar belt, or at a gaudy wedding celebration in a dusty town in the Uttar Pradesh bad lands, is just that: in politics, your friends always have one eye cocked at a higher seat of power. Your…
Damyata, datta, dayadhvam. “This very thing the heavenly voice of thunder repeats da, da, da, that is, control yourselves, give, be compassionate.” In the ancient Hindu text Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Prajapati or the creator is asked by his three-fold progeny — gods, men and demons —for advice, and he utters the syllable da three times. Self-control,…
Arvind Kejriwal is the India Rubber Man. A Leo in politics if there is one, charismatic, mercurial, impetuous and likeable despite his foibles, he has re-invented himself time and again and rebounded into a new avatar. IIT trained engineer, IRS tax officer, Right to Information activist, anti-corruption crusader, and sidekick to Anna Hazare, Kejriwal couldn’t…
I felt a deep sadness as I listened to the hysteria over the suspicious donations that went into the Aam Aadmi Party’s coffers ten months ago. The shouting was all about campaign financing. It broke out five days before voting in the Delhi assembly election, and it completely drowned out all talk about what the…
Long, long ago, before they invented news in 140 characters and we could remember our lives only through social media timelines, some of us believed it was possible to have our leaders display lofty politics and selfless diplomacy That is not true, of course. Politics and diplomacy both involve winning people over; in the end,…
Just as I sat down to write this column came news that those Indians who can afford them are going to be paying a lot more this summer for Alphonso mangoes. The European Union has lifted its ban on Indian mango imports, and upwards of 16 million mangoes will flood British supermarkets alone. The Indians…
On New Year’s Eve I attended the ‘The Book of Mormon’ at the Eugene O’Neill Theater on Broadway and as the rollicking, raunchy musical unfolded on stage, marveled again at America’s ability to laugh at itself and its idols. The play has won awards on both sides of the Atlantic since it premiered four years…
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.- Julius Caesar, Act 1 By Wednesday elections had been held for 438 seats, or four-fifths of the 16th Lok Sabha, and it seemed like a good point to draw breath and take stock of the men and women who…
Certainly not the growing number of people who believe that “free speech” means a loose mouth and the abuse of certain classes or communities. Imran Masood, Azam Khan and Mulayam Singh Yadav are not afraid of Narendra Modi. Nor is the swelling saffron sena if you believe Ram Rajya is about to dawn. In its…
“There are two kinds of people Greeks, and everyone else who wish they was Greek.” Gus Portokalos in ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ I couldn’t stop laughing every time the father of the bride in this comedy which I watched (not for the first time) with my family a few days ago, claims every word…
This column will be published exactly ten months after Narendra Modi took office in the South Block. It is as good a time as any to think of Lee Kuan Yew, whose funeral Modi will attend next Sunday, and of Singapore and India and their fates and futures. Lee was a strongman in every sense…
Which party will you vote for? It is a bit like England’s witch trials in the Middle Ages. You were dunked in water as a test; if you did not drown, you were pronounced a sorceress and burnt at the stake. Whichever government you elect, the choice is not clear, clean, or comforting. By…
More than once in the past couple of weeks, before he climbed into his plane to fly off to more island nations, Narendra Modi was at his histrionic, chest-thumping best in Parliament. His voice rose and fell as he spoke, now in a shouted challenge and then dropping to a whisper. MPs, and a larger…
In the late 15th century, an anonymous playwright wrote Everyman, widely billed as the world’s greatest morality play of all time, in which the gentle aam admi, visited by sinister Death, is saved only by his Good Deeds after his Pride, Beauty, Strength, Discretion and Five Wits have all deserted him. What Good Deeds…
For prime minister Narendra Modi, 2015 has been an annus horribilis, bracketed by the Bhartiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) waiting loss in the Delhi elections in February, and now the even more humiliating and momentous loss in Bihar. Bihar has been bruited about, mainly by the BJP, as a referendum on Modi’s popularity. Modi heavily invested…
Modi has one job: Get India’s lazy tiger of an economy to roar Indian finance minister Arun Jaitley will have two tough acts to follow when he stands in a few hours to present India’s budget for 2015-16. The first: On Feb. 26, railway minister Suresh Prabhu did a rousing, clackety-clack rendition of the railway…
Indians have been hiding money from their rulers for centuries. The best way to secrete your wealth away was to turn it into gold, and either wear it or bury it. Little wonder that India was the world’s biggest gold buyer last year. It consumed 842.7 tonnes. Despite the Indian economy not doing too well…
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team have had a lot of time to polish the report card on their year in power. I woke up on Anniversary Day determined, like Norman Vincent Peale, to feel The Power of Positive Thinking. Whatever the opinion polls or the trolls on Twitter said, we had to be…
The guns are yet to fall silent in the North-east but in places where development has made an inroad, peace has prevailed. Only by bringing all stakeholders on board can the government hope to end the region’s alienation. “… we have no social affinities with the Hindus or Mussalmans. We are looked down upon by…