Navtej Sarna

Distance lends perspective. Without doubt, the Fortunate Four flying on Artemis II must be getting this perspective as, at the time of writing, they travel to the far side of the moon, further than any man has been before. Without doubt too, they must be thanking the countless stars around them, that at least for 10 days, they were able to leave this miserable world as it commits suicide, murder and mindless destruction, all at once. From the Artemis window, they would have c

Some photographs become iconic images. Incontrovertible evidence of crime, sworn witnesses to tragedy. In the early days of the US-Israel onslaught on Iran, one such image has already transfixed itself on the global mind. This photograph shows over a 100 graves being dug in the southern Iranian town of Minab, small graves placed in neat, orderly rows—appropriately so. For the bodies they are waiting to receive are also of small schoolgirls, used to dressing neatly for school

There are good reasons to take a close look at US secretary of state Marco Rubio’s Munich speech, delivered two weeks before the attack on Iran. It provides some explanation for President Trump’s roller coaster approach to international relations. Secondly, it is a window into the mind of Trump’s top diplomat, supposedly a saner MAGA voice, and a hopeful for the next Republican nomination. The speech, which evoked a collective sigh of relief — and a standing ovation — is pack

Even during my time in Tehran nearly three decades ago, a jagged chasm had opened up between the people and the regime. The revolutionary fervour had paled; resentment with an oppressive cleric regime, clothed in religious righteousness, muscled by a ruthless security system and supported by shadowy financial structures was evident. The invasion of private space, the curtailment of personal freedoms, economic hardship and growing estrangement from the world deeply troubled th

The problem, it seems, is that we have no problems of our own. Or we cannot see them because one cannot see beyond six feet in Delhi. Or we keep trying to brush them under the Persian carpet, where, of course, they have their own problems. So in Delhi’s drawing rooms, the focus shifts far afield to a virginal Greenland cowering under Trump’s covetous gaze. At one level, I regard that, too, as my problem. Greenland has been on my bucket list—a list that moves as slowly as an o

It was the magical hour at the Golden Temple. The sun was taking its leave discreetly; the early winter twilight was settling in unobtrusively. The kirtan , sung in classical ragas , was floating over the sarovar , the holy pool. Hundreds of pilgrims waited to enter the sanctum sanctorum or sat by the sarovar savouring a moment of peace. It was a time to withdraw, to reflect, perhaps meditate. This serenity was not always a given. During the persecution of the Sikhs in the 1

My memories of Iran in the nineties tinkle with the sound of water. Of streams running down the slopes of the Alborz mountains above Tehran, fed by the snows of Mount Damavand. Of chinar leaves floating in the water channels that raced along Vali Asr, the long avenue that slopes through the city. Of sipping black tea from thin glasses under the Si-o-se Pol (the bridge of the 33 arches) in Isfahan as the Zayandeh Rud (literally, the life-giving river) flowed past. But today, n

Every once in a while, the archives deliver a nugget. Your columnist came across an essay in The Statesman of August 15, 1947, by a certain H. St. John Bridger Philby, an ICS officer whose son, Kim Philby, born in Punjab on New Year’s Day 1912, would become the iconic Cold War spy. Philby nicknamed his son after the eponymous hero of Rudyard Kipling’s novel; the nickname stuck, as did the spying habit that the two Kims shared. Philby Sr. spent eight years in Punjab and then

Alice, if she had wandered into our wonderland, would have found things getting “curiouser and curiouser”, particularly at the Honourable...