Navtej Sarna

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...

These are times when the mind struggles to make sense of things. The old measures are discarded, and the new ones unacceptable. Humanity...

Sharks famously circle their prey, waiting for the right moment to move in for the kill. Landsharks do the same, circling the piece of...

It’s as if 17 years have not passed: I recall clearly the day when I first drove up Israel’s Route 1 from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem past...

When posted to Moscow as young diplomats in the early 1980s, we were warned, by gruff men in dark glasses, against the famed KGB...