I’m Not a Ho

In other households, when the phone rings in the middle of the night it usually bodes no good. In my house, it means some dizzy friend has once again forgotten about the concept of time difference. “But it’s morning in India,” one such recent caller said.
“Yes,” I replied. “Too bad I’m in New York.”
Then [...]

The Great Desi Marriage

I know plenty of married people, of course. It’s just that they tend to be people I have only a slight acquaintance with or relatives or random young people my mother points out at gatherings and temples with the expressed wish that one day she would see her own offspring in such a state. In [...]

Review: Engaging India

According to its blurb, former US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott’s book ‘Engaging India: Democracy, Diplomacy and the Bomb’ is a “racy read, the James Hadley Chase of diplomacy”. It is certainly a welcome departure from the dreariness and self-importance of the average political memoir.
‘Engaging India’ is primarily a serious examination of the role [...]

Jayalalithaa - Machiavelli’s Amma

Chances are you’ve recently heard of that very tepid storm in a coffee mug – the arrest of the Kanchi Seer. The woman behind it all, “The Enlightened Leader” of the southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu, Jayaraman Jayalalithaa, is one of those rare specimens – an interesting politician. Much like a car crash, she [...]

Crime and India

No doubt in the very first elections held in newly independent India, the fact that you had been to jail lent a certain cachet to your candidature. Everyone worthwhile had been to prison after all – Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabbhai Patel, Maulana Azad etc. These days, however, most Indians would prefer it if their [...]

A Pox on Indian TV

Mine is probably the last generation that remembers a time when the most popular show on Indian TV was Chitrahar on Friday evenings. Sundays were special because that was when Doordarshan screened American and German shows and much later, the Ramayana and Mahabharata. It was astrologically possible for soaps to begin with any letter of [...]

Get Up and Go!

Such a pain! Moving house is always a terrific ache in the backside. Not to mention your noggin, your wallet and everything else. But when envy drives you, everything becomes so much easier.
I was real serious about Reading India when it started and I continue to like a lot about it. But that whole drippy [...]