My first editor, Rukun Advani, once described himself as ‘a composite hybrid of the Indian and the Anglo-European’, who sought to reconcile ‘within himself those varying cultural influences which chauvinistic nationalists could only see as contradictions.’ This self-characterization I might avow as my own. One mark of the Anglo-European in me is that, unlike members of [...]
When I was invited to visit Kabul, my family were naturally unenthusiastic. I disregarded their advice for two reasons: first, because my host was a brilliant and brave diplomat, whom I was loth to let down; second, because I had recently received a text message from the actor Naseeruddin Shah describing Afghanisthan as ‘[a] gorgeous country [...]
‘For a sixteen-year-old youth who had yet to begin to shave’, writes Kumar Mukherji in his memoir of life as a music lover, ‘the winter of 1942 would best be remembered as the year when he heard Kesarbai [Kerkar], Roshanara Begum and Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan perform’. Were I to recall the year I turned [...]