Ten years ago, not knowing what to do with myself after retirement, I took the advice of a former colleague who is very good at dispensing advice. Write a novel, she had been saying. So I started writing one and finished it in four years, five years ago. It took some

More than half a century ago, in 1971 Gulzar directed a film called Mere Apne. It was a commentary on the social conditions facing the young in the late 1960s, namely, unemployment and hopelessness. I was one of those millions. With an MA degree halfway done and with no clear idea

Snobbery comes in many forms. It can be because someone feels superior because he or she comes from a particular social background or a branded school, college, university and profession. Or it can be because you feel superior to those who can’t speak English or, even if they can, their accent

It was a wonderful spring in North India this year. The temperature stayed between 15 and 30 degrees Celsius throughout March. Usually, it goes up to 33–35. There was periodic rain as well. And there were occasional strong winds. Together they blew away the pollution. The birds sensed the good times

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) pulled off a major feat last month. It successfully organised the first edition of Women’s IPL in which five teams took part, namely, ­Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Lucknow and Gujarat. The women played perfectly acceptable cricket and I must say I enjoyed the

Winter in North India, where I have been living since 1958, is becoming shorter by the year. It’s gone from being for 90 days to just half that. Until the mid-90s, it used to start just after Diwali in mid-November and stretch till the first week of March when the minimum

Last month I had written about my short, three-month sojourn at the University of Cambridge in 1983. I had gone there to write a paper on the Latin ­American debt crisis. Six years later I applied to, and was invited by, Queen Elizabeth House (QEH) in Oxford. I was to spend a

Four decades ago, I won a journalism fellowship at the ­Cambridge University in the UK. It was for just three months, for what they call the Michaelmas Term there. The college was ­Wolfson and it had a couple of Pakistani civil servants too. They were from the ­Pakistani equivalent of our

All houses everywhere need to be repainted from time to time. But in India the problem is more acute because of our climatic conditions. Northern and central India have an excess of dust that turns the walls brown. Regions in southern, western and eastern India have an excess of humidity that