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All Writings


Dec 22, 20243 min read
Good fences make good neighbours
When fences erode, or nobody is at home, neighbours tend to take advantage. A nibble at a patch of land, a fence post pushed a yard away,...


Nov 17, 20244 min read
How to do business with Donald Trump in his second term
The world is still coming to terms with Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Many had no doubt predicted, even feared, this outcome,...


Oct 27, 20243 min read
Hemingway’s four-decade-long love affair with Spain
There are no other countries like Spain,” says Robert Jordan in Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bells Toll . The same belief propelled...


Oct 6, 20243 min read
When widows howl and orphans cry
Each new morn New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows Strike heaven on the face….” Shakespeare’s lines, which once described...


Sep 8, 20243 min read
Soviet Union of yore had a straightforward way of naming places
The Soviet Union of yore had a straightforward way of naming places. Moscow’s railway stations, for instance, are named after...


Jul 7, 20243 min read
Fact-checkers and US presidential elections
The recent presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump was a sorry spectacle that ended with two old men being childish about...


Jun 16, 20243 min read
World is losing it; we are fundamentally broken
A tour d’horizon—a global survey of hotspots—is standard ambassadorial practice. Conducted usually over lunch with a counterpart in some...


Mar 24, 20243 min read
Biden-Trump rematch lacks punch
In March 1971, I spent several hours in a dentist’s waiting room, dreading the impending torture of the drill. The only compensation were...


Feb 20, 20243 min read
Mirza Ghalib’s dilapidated haveli offers only heartbreak
Ballimaran, contrary to a minor urban legend, is not the quarter of cat-killers. It is where once lived the makers of ballis, or the long...


Dec 31, 20233 min read
Too clever by half in Dubai
School athletics taught us that anyone can be good at high jump; the trick is to keep the bar low enough. The same, it appears, is true...


Dec 3, 20233 min read
The curious case of Rwanda
In 2016, just before the Brexit referendum, a South Asian immigrant in the British Midlands was asked for his views. He was fervently in...


Nov 5, 20233 min read
Day of Judgement is already here, and verdict is—guilty
It is early morning in the hills beyond Shimla around Mashobra. The world is fortunately not yet awake; the sun just about is. Its first...


Oct 1, 20233 min read
Kim Jong Un's love for train
There’s something about Kim—the Jong-un, not the Kardashian. For one, his smiling visage. I do not recall a single picture of him where...


Sep 3, 20233 min read
Some knights are forever
The most dramatic and immediate denunciation of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre came from Rabindranath Tagore. He wrote to the viceroy,...


Aug 13, 20233 min read
Why west wants to de-risk China ties, not de-couple from it
Coupling is a word usually associated with intimate relations or railway wagons and not with international relations: countries don’t...


Jul 16, 20233 min read
Need a direct flight between Male and Delhi
A short-story collection by Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald titled Bits of Paradise came to mind as I took a sea plane from Male to the island...


Jun 18, 20231 min read
Why British refused to return the remains of Prince Alemayehu of Ethiopia
It is not just looted diamonds and valuable artefacts that former colonial powers want to hold on to; they can also be possessive about...


May 8, 20235 min read
King Charles's coronation: The crown comes with challenges
On May 6, as King Charles III and Queen Camilla are crowned in all their finery at Westminster Abbey, over a thousand people, dressed in...

Apr 23, 20233 min read
How Punjab is becoming an old age home
Mr Bains, a kindly 90-year-old retired customs officer, hosted us last month at his home amidst mango orchards outside Gurdaspur. Alone,...


Mar 26, 20233 min read
What are the implications of Sunak’s effusive overture to Macron
French President Emmanuel Macron receiving UK premier Rishi Sunak at the Elysée Palace last week certainly made for good television. Two...
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