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The Whisky King o’Blighty
Read more here: The Whisky King o’BlightyOutlook | March 14, 2011 I went to school in St George’s, Mussoorie. Some years back, I was in London and a chap called Narinder Singh Sawhney rang me up. He turned out to be from my school, a product of the ’60s who had migrated to the UK soon after and settled in Hanwell,…
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Kumarajiva’s Passage
Read more here: Kumarajiva’s PassageOutlook | November 22, 2010 Recently, I spent two days in Shanghai, and felt like doing something different, seeing some unknown part of this vast country. Buddhism was taken long ago to China, by Chinese monks, and it flourished and expanded there, and beyond, with regular sustenance from the monks of Nalanda university and other…
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Chandigarh Diary
Read more here: Chandigarh DiaryOutlook | October 5, 2009 The Chandigarh of Nehru and Corbusier has almost become a curiosity for a stream of visitors from the West who continue to see him as a giant of 20th century architecture. The year 1947 was India’s Annus Horribilis. From March that year, murder and mayhem stalked the Punjab. By autumn,…
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A Story Of Many People
Read more here: A Story Of Many PeopleOutlook | July 26, 2010 While still in college, I read Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s Autobiography of an Unknown Indian. The social history of Bengal portrayed in it left a powerful impression on me. Now, I have come across another memoir by a Bengali intellectual, Ashish Bose. A distinguished scholar, Bose spent a life-time at the Institute…
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Shimla Diary
Read more here: Shimla DiaryOutlook | July 12, 2010 Over The Ridge In mid-19th century, Capt Charles Kennedy rode up to the deodar-covered Shimla Ridge from the hot Ambala cantonment, liked what he saw and put down a Scottish loghouse. Others followed. And soon the High Ridge was dotted with houses named Peter Hoff, Ivanhoe, Dane’s Folly, Barnes Court,…
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Water Crisis in East and West Punjab
Read more here: Water Crisis in East and West PunjabThe Sunday Tribune, Chandigarh | May 23, 2010Republished in The Hindu | May 29, 2010 Let’s tackle it with a steady application of science, says Manohar Singh Gill As the long hot summer sizzles, men’s thoughts in Lahore and in Amritsar turned to water. It is scarce on both sides of the border. When the British…
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Corner Shot From Coorg
Read more here: Corner Shot From CoorgOutlook | May 17, 2010 A people’s initiative for hockey with lessons to learn from This April, I had a chance to visit the Kodagu hills. Fifty minutes by chopper from Bangalore, these forested hills, 2.500- 4.500 feet high and with wide, shallow valleys full of paddy fields, are a southern delight. They are home…
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Honour Killing
Read more here: Honour KillingOutlook | March 22, 2010 I am impressed with what Sujit Saraf, from IIT and Berkeley, has achieved in this book. Sultana Daku lived and died long before I was born. He was hanged on July 7, 1924. Amazingly, as children we’d somehow heard this magical name. How it had filtered from the UP Terai…
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Bangladesh Diary
Read more here: Bangladesh DiaryOutlook | March 1, 2010 Bangladesh’s development story surprised me. The figures given by our embassy were impressive; a growth rate of 6.9 per cent and, what is more, a population replacement of only 1.2… Buzz on the Field After many years, I was in Dhaka again, at the opening ceremony of the South Asian…
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Shivpuri Diary
Read more here: Shivpuri DiaryOutlook | January 25, 2010 When we went to the Shivpuri jungle in 1950, Daaku Maan Singh was the great Robin Hood of India. He was a romantic figure… Winter Canvas I was in Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh, for my Christmas break. When I went there last summer, there had been no rain for many months,…
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Shivpuri Diary
Read more here: Shivpuri DiaryOutlook | September 7, 2009 As the Shatabdi wended its way south, we passed a continuous landscape of dusty fields with dispirited men and cattle, all wandering in search of food and water. I was recently in Gwalior and Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh. As the Shatabdi wended its way south, we passed a continuous landscape of…
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The Five-Day War
Read more here: The Five-Day WarOutlook | August 10, 2009 India-Pakistan cricket fed a chauvinist imperative for decades. The liberal wind in the willows changed all that. A small-time cricketer, but a passionate observer, I have watched Indo-Pak cricket since 1947. I have seen many India-Pakistan matches, from the one in Amritsar under Imran, to the 1996 World Cup Bangalore…
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Floss Silk City
Read more here: Floss Silk CityOutlook | June 1, 2009 The fleeting Indian spring is gone and summer is upon us. But the trees continue to offer surprises every day. There is a Chorisia Speciosa (floss-silk tree) opposite my porch. I hardly noticed it till I saw it produce green banana-like dangling fruits. I wondered what they were. As the…
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Planted On Earth
Read more here: Planted On EarthOutlook | December 1, 2008 These days I once again have the temporary use of a Lutyens bungalow. As we did when we lived on Akbar Road, we immediately planted some trees to leave as a memory for later times. In this house, we planted kadam, gulmohar, magnolias, lime trees, jacaranda and ornamental pines. An…
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The Scattered Ashes of a Legend
Read more here: The Scattered Ashes of a LegendOutlook | November 3, 2008 Empire’s marionette, Duleep Singh could only align his life with an idle absurdity. Maharaja Ranjit Singh ruled the Punjab for forty years, 1799-1839. For six years after his death, his sons, the Sikh sardars, the Dogra rajas of Jammu, and the Brahmin generals of Meerut, all his creations, fought and…
