October 2023
A Godson Remembers: Thammu Achaya and Indian Food History, The Telegraph
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 [...]
July 2023
Einstein: The Scientist as Moralist, The Telegraph
I saw Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer earlier this week. The main character in the film, J. Robert Oppenheimer, was a physicist whose family was Jewish, and who worked for many years at the Institute of Advanced [...]
After Sobers, Who? The Telegraph
In one of the first books I read, the writer had posed the question: ‘Who was the greatest all-rounder in the history of cricket?’, before providing this answer: ‘He was a left-arm bowler and a [...]
May 2023
A Couple and Their Country, The Telegraph
I have had a long-standing interest in South Africa, and in 1995 briefly contemplated moving there to work. The country had just had its first multi-racial election, and the great Nelson Mandela had been elected [...]
April 2023
Appreciating Ambedkar, The Telegraph
In my personal list of books every Indian must read, four stand paramount. These, in order of their year of first publication, are M. K. Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1909), Rabindranath Tagore’s Nationalism (1917), B. R. [...]
March 2023
Chipko@50: A Legacy Scorned, The Telegraph
On the 27th of March 1973, a group of peasants in Mandal, a village in the upper Alakananda Valley, stopped a group of commercial loggers from felling a patch of ash trees by threatening them [...]