There is a cricket World Cup now in South Africa, and watching the tournament on TV shall doubtless take me back to the one time I did visit the country. That was back in October 1997. Apartheid had recently been vanquished, and the greatest man the world has known since Mahatma Gandhi was in power. The [...]
I come from what, even by Indian standards, is a very large family. Counting only close relatives—parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, first cousins—they number in the region of fifty. While I was growing up, of this vast brood only one member ever willingly listened to a piece of music. I would have remained a music-illiterate myself, had [...]
In India's halting march to modernity, Bengal and Bengalis were for a very long time in the forefront. Then, in the early decades of the last century, three unconnected events helped deprive the province of its vanguard status. First, in 1911, the raj shifted the capital from Calcutta to Delhi. Later, in 1920, the supporters of [...]