A Passage to India
AMBASSADORS, CONTRARY TO general opinion, can often lead fraught lives. Behind the curtain of glamour and ceremony, they are constantly...
top of page
All Writings
- Sep 1, 2022
- 6 min
Cauldron of Conflicts | West Asia at War
The Middle East – or West Asia, depending on where one sits – is the cradle of civilisations, the birthplace of three major religions,...
- May 3, 2020
- 3 min
The Mirror and the Light | The Week
Beheadings at the Tower of London seem to have been the bread and butter of medieval England. Thomas Cromwell is thinking of his...
- Mar 22, 2020
- 3 min
Dreams and a carnival
The Jaipur Literary Festival is often called a mela, usually by people who haven’t been able to attend it that year. There’s something to...
- Jan 5, 2020
- 3 min
Grey is the Colour of Ash
November 1984 will remain one of the darkest chapters in the history of free India. More than 3,000 innocent Sikhs were murdered on the...
- Jan 2, 2020
- 2 min
Trumped – Emerging Powers in a Post-American World | USIofIndia
President Trump’s recent visit to India has been described as “a visit like no other.” The metaphor could be extended to say that Trump...
- Dec 12, 2019
- 3 min
Sikh heritage brought to life in 229 great photos | Asian Age
Heritage, as this beautifully produced book defines, is “the entire collection of quantifiable symbols handed on by the past to each...
- Aug 10, 2019
- 4 min
A moving target | The Patient Assassin
Book: The Patient Assassin Author: Anita Anand Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pages: 384 pages Price: 599 On July 31, 1940, Udham Singh, the...
- Jun 15, 2019
- 3 min
The Camel Merchant of Philadelphia
An upscale bed and breakfast place in fashionable Saint Tropez, France, was once the estate of Jean Francois Allard and his wife, the...
- May 27, 2019
- 1 min
Sing The Wrath Of Punjab
A great narrative poem of a Jallianwala Bagh massacre survivor, and lost for long, is finally translated. It retains the cadences of this...
- May 25, 2019
- 4 min
Abandoned at Sea | Voices of Komagata Maru
In September 1914, the German cruiser Emden, with remarkable stealth, appeared at the mouth of the Hooghly and destroyed five English...
- May 17, 2019
- 4 min
Inexcusable disgrace
Some events – the massacre at Wounded Knee, the Soweto shootings, the suppression of the Mau Mau – die slowly in the memory of nations,...
- Aug 31, 2018
- 6 min
What did the British achieve in a century in India? | Financial Times
Seventy-one years on since the union flag came down on the Indian sub-continent, the debate about whether the Raj only pillaged and...
- Sep 1, 2017
- 3 min
A Life of Adventure and Delight | Financial Times
Akhil Sharma only recently accepted, on purely political grounds, the mantle of an immigrant writer. His reluctance to get boxed in,...
- Sep 26, 2016
- 1 min
Speak, Yesterday’s People
Alexievich’s visceral first-person accounts from the last days of the USSR are saturated with anger, longing and hope. Read full review...
- Jan 25, 2015
- 4 min
Sophia a Biography | India Today
The story of Maharaja Duleep Singh, a victim of his strange destiny and Machiavellian imperial manipulations, is among the most poignant...
- Nov 22, 2014
- 4 min
99 Khushwant Singh | All that remains | Indian Express
Khushwant Singh did not believe that much remains of man after death, favouring Omar Khayyam’s attitude: Some talk awhile of Thee and Me/...
- Aug 5, 2010
- 2 min
No Way Home | Outlook India
The tumultuous events of 1984 can, and certainly will, provide an emotionally-charged setting for many a novel. But the traumatic...
- Mar 8, 2009
- 2 min
Book of Songs
Four decades ago,Khushwant Singh did a signal service to Sikhism by writing his classic two-volume History of the Sikhs, a work that has...
- Sep 14, 2007
- 5 min
The Reluctant Fundamentalist | Biblio
The Ancient Mariner of Coleridge’s classic poem fixes his gaze on an innocent wedding guest and does not relent until he has told him his...
bottom of page