November 2010
THE AESTHETIC CASE FOR VEGETARIANISM, The Telegraph
The finest meal I have had was in the Admaru Mutt, a home for priests connected to the famous old Krishna temple in Udupi. The year was 1994; and I had come to the neighbouring [...]
REFUGEES AND THE REPUBLIC, The Telegraph
At a meeting in Chennai that I recently attended, an official of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, herself a Swiss national, remarked that ‘the Indian Government has a very humane atttitude towards refugees’. [...]
October 2010
QUESTIONS OF PROPRIETY, Hindustan Times
When, in the year 1974, Mrs Indira Gandhi and Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) became bitter political opponents, there was a peculiar poignancy to their rivalry. For JP and Jawaharlal Nehru had been close friends. So, independently, [...]
September 2010
FAITH CYNICAL AND SUBLIME, The Telegraph
In the spring of 1907, the London publisher John Murray published a book on Persian mystics by one F. Hadland Davis. The book appeared in a series called ‘The Wisdom of the East’, whose editors [...]
THE LIVING LEGACY OF SANJAY GANDHI, The Telegraph
The only time I have been less than sorrowful at a premature death was when Sanjay Gandhi perished in an air crash. He was truly a nasty piece of work. Having dropped out of the [...]
THE SPORTING-AND UNSPORTING-POLITICIAN, Hindustan Times
In the first week of August, a senior woman Congressman with a home in Shimla was elected President of the Indian Hockey Association (or Hockey India as it is now called). Her election was both [...]