April 2009
NO GLOATING, SCAPEGOATING, Hindustan Times
Every year, in November, the American magazine Newsweek departs from its focus on current events to publish a special number which examines national and regional trends that cannot be slotted within the weekly cycle of [...]
March 2009
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 [...]
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 [...]
-ITE, -IAN, AND –IST, The Hindu
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 [...]
February 2009
SEARCHING FOR CHARLIE, The Telegraph
It was on on my last trip to Kolkata that I went searching for the grave of Charlie Andrews. A friend had told me that it was in a cemetery on Lower Circular Road. I [...]
THE GOOD INDIAN, The Hindu
One of the forgotten figures of Indian journalism is a man named Syed Abdullah Brelvi. Google ‘SA Brelvi’ (as I just did), and all that comes up is a road carrying that name in south [...]