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All Writings


The land of the five rivers is on the verge of desertification
Arvind Kejriwal was recently interviewed by three anchors on a discussion platform regarding his party’s political aspirations in Punjab....
Dec 26, 20213 min read


Inaccuracies abound in ‘Sardar Udham’
The recent movie Sardar Udham can evoke mixed reactions. On the one hand, Udham Singh’s story needs to be told. In an act of determined...
Nov 28, 20213 min read


Biden's approval ratings are sliding steeply south
It was only this January that Donald Trump’s trapeze act through the White House came to an undignified end, as if someone had snipped...
Oct 31, 20213 min read


Shame China without naming it?
Quadrilaterals are generally irregular; the only regular quadrilateral, a square, has all its sides, and all its angles, equal. As in...
Sep 25, 20213 min read


Taliban’s return is the next act of an unending Afghan tragedy
THE NEW GREAT GAME “Now I shall go far and far into the north, playing the Great Game….” —Rudyard Kipling (Kim, 1901) THE EPITHET OF the...
Sep 6, 20216 min read


The many moods of Krishna Menon
Aldwych Street sits like an old-fashioned geometry D on London’s Strand. Down this crescent, the Indian tricolour flutters from its...
Sep 5, 20213 min read


Destroy space to save the earth?
Boys, it is said, will be boys. Not so long ago, Donald Trump boasted to Kim Jong-un that his nuclear button was bigger and more powerful...
Aug 8, 20213 min read


We have no uniform system of public library administration
Development, as it is sometimes interpreted, took a hit in Patna recently. The planned route of a flyover was changed to avoid...
Jul 3, 20213 min read


Time lost and opportunities missed do not come back
From where I sit, the summer afternoon is worthy of a Wordsworth. The dappled sunshine spells laziness; the buzzing of a bee heightens...
Jun 4, 20213 min read


Vaccine nationalism is shameless
The question at the cold heart of this debate is simple: Should money be made out of human misery? Should the worst health tragedy in a...
May 16, 20213 min read


Navtej Sarna on two men and their legendary bookstores
It was the fall of 1983. On my first visit to Paris, short on money but high on romance, I idled over a coffee in a wayside cafe in the...
Apr 18, 20213 min read


A vaccine for all reasons
The Golan Heights hide their tensions well. The road sweeps languidly through lightly wooded hills past wetlands that attract millions of...
Mar 16, 20213 min read


Guess who’s coming to dinner
Call it a diplomat’s lucky day: in Washington in the spring of 2017, I found myself seated next to Jeff Bezos at the Gridiron dinner. The...
Feb 20, 20213 min read


Spies in the cold
Coincidences matter. As the world raced to the end of 2020 like a parched man to an oasis, two news items caught the eye: in Moscow,...
Jan 23, 20213 min read


The problems of plenty
And when the snow falls, you’re found in St Moritz With the others of the jet set And you sip your Napoleon brandy But you never get your...
Dec 27, 20203 min read


When Lords is Not Cricket
Just when we as a nation were wondering how Indian would Kamala Harris be, an Irishman has come forth boldly to throw light on the...
Nov 23, 20203 min read


A mirror for Dr Kissinger
So Richard Nixon found Indian women unattractive and sexless. We shall not ask what Indian women thought of Richard Nixon: after all he...
Sep 25, 20203 min read


Of borders, walls and barriers
A closely guarded barrier—part concrete wall, part fence—separates the West Bank from Israel. Palestinian residents of the West Bank can...
Aug 28, 20203 min read


In Droll Londongrad
London steals a march over Washington, DC with its drollery, if that is the mot juste that Jeeves would have approved. Nothing is allowed...
Aug 4, 20203 min read


Kiss, tell, earn
But for the occasional, accidental one, we do not get too many revealing books by insiders of high offices. Perhaps because our insiders...
Jul 12, 20203 min read
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