ON A MISTY Monday morning while the rest of the New Delhi citizens were digesting the news of President’s Rule which ended the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stalemate, AAP’s Delhi office was vibrantly busy crunching statistics to analyse why the pre-poll opinions—that ...
Justice Leila Seth talks about integrity, education and her life post retirement It was without pronounced style, yet it was the most pleasing thing I have seen. In the garden there are chairs, a table, a wrought iron chaise-longue, a swing, a lily pond and scattered pots and tubs of green. We woul...
Arvind Kejriwal Ends Shiela Dixit’s 3-Term Rule
AAP Wins 28 Seats POLLS// Just after three days of the Assembly Elections results, the formation of a new government in Delhi hung in balance, as both BJP and AAP failed to get adequate numbers and opted for re-election. Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP, which registered an emphatic win by winning 28 seats ...
Supreme Court Ruling States RULING// The Supreme Court on December 11, 2013, said homosexual sex between consenting adults remains a criminal offence, in a major setback for the largely closeted homosexual community in India. The top court said that the Delhi High court's 2009 order decriminalising...
World Mourns the Demise of Nelson Mandela
A light in darkness— Nelson Mandela DEMISE// More than 80,000 are expected to attend the gathering for Nelson Mandela at the stadium in the Soweto township where he made his last public appearance at the closing ceremony of the 2010 football World Cup. The memorial is the latest event in a week o...
Four Decades Later RIOTS// Singapore’s first major riot in four decades forced the wealthy island to confront a stubborn but vexing question: how to treat low-paid foreign workers whose muscle underpins much of the economy but whose presence increasingly riles its citizens. Images of rioters over...
Tushar Kanwar on how to find social media influencers Meet them on the street, and they look no different from you or me. Online, they’re nothing short of pseudo-celebrities, commanding the attention and following of thousands of digital natives. Welcome to the age of the social media influencer,...
Living and dying on Facebook IN MID-DECEMBER OF 2013, logging into my Facebook account at the end of what had been a spirit-exhausting day, I was shocked—there is no word in any of the languages I speak which can appropriately convey what I went through for the first few minutes after the discove...
Is it a catalyst or does it signify lasting institutional presence in politics? IN BECOMING CM of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has accomplished a miracle in Indian politics. With 28 seats in an assembly of 70, AAP finished second behind the BJP. The Congress, which won eight ...
English may not be an Indian language but
let’s face it— not knowing it, doesn’t help— so, there’s MAD The English language—as Amitabh Bachchan told us in Namak Halaal—is a “very funny” language. “I can talk English, I can walk English, I can laugh English, because English is a very funny language. Bhairo becomes Baron,...
Starting at Zero: His Own Story
Rock-Blues-Country-Funky- Freaky Sound I WAS INTRODUCED to Jimmy Hendrix very late. And I couldn’t be gladder I read this book. Starting at Zero, a posthumous compilation of Hendrix’s interviews, letters, diary entries and notes is the closest to an autobiography of this extraordinary man. It t...
The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results THE ONE THING by Garry Keller and Jay Papasan is all about focusing—on that one winning idea—rather than running after a lot of ideas at the same time. Before we get to the book, two-bits about the author. While Keller is a chairman of ...
In the first Hitchhiker of this year, our author takes a tour down memory lane It was 1988 and I was wending my way to Khajuraho in June. I remember that trip with clarity, despite the 26 intervening years. Partly because the muddy dull light of the height of summer crept into every one of my photo...
Simple food which makes one happy, is the best dish served Every good story starts with a great beginning. In case of Michelin Star Chef Vikas Khanna, his culinary saga begins from the time he was a boy living in an extended family. “My first memory of food is of a meal with the whole family sitt...