Category: Uncategorized

It could be idle, idol or even ideal, depending on what one wants to worship. An idol is something that is fired by human imagination and fashioned by human hands.  Humans create their own idols – what they want to look up to.  The idol is determined by the idolater or adulator.  This may sound…

For the BJP, the Third and Fourth Fronts, it is indeed egg on their faces, while the Congress has been egged on by the voters. Why EGG? Not because they chickened out, but because, perhaps for the first time, the Indian voter has voted for the EGG. It stands for Economics & Good Governance. In…

Alistair Browne (AB) was a white man – British. Chirag Din (CD) was his Muslim peon. Jailor Jaimie (JJ) was a robust Anglo-Indian, and Ummed Kumar (UK), though not from that country, preferred to be called a Hindustani. The time – July 1947, the town Kanpur; then known as Cawnpore, the Manchester of the East,…

Is there something wrong in the title of this piece? Shouldn’t love be an art and not a science that is so cold and irrational? Maybe, maybe not! I am now 58 years old, happily married, with one wife and two children. When I was young (I think I still am) I was always getting…

Traffic Inspector Prakash Maliekal D’souza was on pollution control duty in Chanakyapuri, the diplomatic enclave in New Delhi.  He noticed a battered Maruti 800 with a wisp of smoke emitting from the exhaust.  He promptly flagged it down for a pollution check.  It proved negative, as the emission was just moisture condensation on a cold…

When we became a Republic 60 years ago, India was described as a “sone ki chiriya”  (golden bird). As we enter its diamond jubilee the chiriya seems to have caught the highly contagious bird flu, which warrants immediate culling. Indian society has become cantankerous – irritable and intolerant. Simultaneously the body politic has become cancerous,…

Gnashing teeth.  Rattling sabres.  Gattling guns.  Anger, followed by revenge.  The mood of the nation.  “Bravehearts” in Mumbai and across the country, post 26/11, are baying for the blood of the enemy – Pakistan.  Capt Bharat Verma, Editor of the “Indian Defence Review” says that we should “Take the war to the enemy” – meaning…

On the night of 26th November the earth quaked as Mumbai rocked to the sounds of terrorist gunfire.  Some years ago, when Indira Gandhi was assassinated on 31st October 1984, the ensuing anti-Sikh riots were likened to the earth shaking when a giant tree fell.  This naiveté came from none other than Indira’s son, and…

(A corollary to “Peace is a Grave Matter”) My previous article “Peace is a Grave Matter” about Peace TV and Dr Zakir Naik has evoked responses from all over the world. There have been some subsequent developments and broadcasts that merit attention. A Jesuit priest in Rome has expressed disagreement with my presentation, saying that…

The world is seeking an elusive peace.  Many would believe that peace is the absence of war, strife, tension, problems, etc.  That is utopian, for there is no night without a day, no rose without a thorn, and no peak without a valley.  Others would have us believe in the peace of the graveyard, where…