//March

HOW TO RETIRE


The Hindu

It was a fellow writer, Achal Prabala, who called to tell me that Premier Bookshop was closing down. ‘Mr Shanbhag seems quite determined’, said Achal: ‘The landlord is giving trouble again. He has to undergo an eye operation himself. And his daughter is keen that he come visit her in Australia. The nice thing is that [...]

THEIR FIRST FAMILY AND OURS


The Telegraph

Driving down the Mall in Lahore, I saw a large poster mixing familiar faces with those that were less familiar. There was the current Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari, wearing spectacles; next to him, but looming larger in the frame, his late wife Benazir Bhutto, her head covered with a chunni. Two others I recognized were [...]

-ITE


-IAN

A friend recently described his father, who was an esteemed newspaper editor of the 1940s and 1950s, as a ‘Nehru-ite’. Since I was more familiar with the term ‘Nehruvian’, I asked why the ‘-ite’ instead of the ‘-ian’. He answered that this was conventional at that time, when—in nationalist circles—a debate raged between ‘Patel-ites’ and ‘Nehru-ites’. [...]