Time for a change by Shashi Tharoor Back in 1974, as a teenage collegian, I spent a summer holiday at the tea estate of a classmate’s father near Jorhat in Assam. One of the first things I discovered during that idyllic escape was that I had to reset my watch to “tea time”, an imaginary […]
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June 5, 2017
The shadow of the past by Keki Daruwalla The past is destiny in a way. The past also embodies the concept of determinism, something that cramps elbow room, free will of the present. In politics, the past in many ways sows the present. The future, shall we say, reaps.
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June 2, 2017
As Chairman of Parliament’s External Affairs Committee, I have always proudly articulated our tradition that political differences stop at the water’s edge – there isn’t a Congress foreign policy or a BJP foreign policy, only Indian foreign policy. Yet I can’t help feeling that there are aspects of the Modi Government’s foreign policy in […]
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May 31, 2017
One of the late R K Laxman`s best ‘You Said It’ cartoons featured the city`s favourite subject, its roads. Laxman`s befuddled Common Man, umbrella in hand, glasses in place, is peering into a large pothole. Inside has fallen a Maruti 800. There are people in Mumbai who go around the city taking an annual pre-monsoon […]
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May 29, 2017
School’s out, what should our children do? by Manu Joseph As children spend summer vacations preparing for the serious business of life, are they losing their ability to practise boredom? In the summers, city children are made to undertake so many recreational activities, it is as though they are inmates of Tihar jail. They […]
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May 26, 2017
Aishwaryaa on the apple box… by Shobhaa De A ravishingly beautiful young woman with fresh mehendi drying on her palms, walked upto me at a high profile wedding in Udaipur recently, and whispered, “I am Aishwaryaa…!” It took a while to click. She wanted to take a picture . I assumed she was the bride’s […]
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May 24, 2017
The Last Bastion of a Profitable Press by Shashi Tharoor NEW DELHI – Around the world, newspapers seem to be facing imminent extinction, as a mass exodus to the Internet causes their circulation to slump and their advertising revenue to collapse. But not in India. In the West, young people have largely dispensed with the […]
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May 5, 2017
On Stage. May 2017. by Anil Dharker When is a black actor black? And when is a black actor not black? These questions arose out of my last On Stage column which was about Mozart and Salieri, as depicted in Peter Shaffer`s play Amadeus. A friend who is a real NCPA member (‘real’ as in someone who rarely […]
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May 3, 2017
The City and the Writer: In Mumbai with Chandrahas Choudhury By Nathalie Handal If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains. —Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities Can […]
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May 1, 2017
Britain’s Empire was a matter for pride, not guilt – as we Indians know by Zareer Masani The Queen’s 91st birthday, last Friday, was an opportunity to reflect upon her reign and to replay those famous photos of her returning in 1952 from what was then the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya to ascend the […]
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April 28, 2017
Gabriel García Márquez, The Art of Fiction No. 69 interviewed by Peter H. Stone Gabriel García Márquez was interviewed in his studio/office located just behind his house in San Angel Inn, an old and lovely section, full of the spectacularly colorful flowers of Mexico City. The studio is a short walk from the main house. A […]
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