I have squandered away my father’s political legacy…My personal life is in a mess…Can I turn the tables? – Rhea Malviya

The battle of Panipat was fought for more than what is usually imagined. It was fought by a people in the far south of India, on behalf of the Mughal Emperor, for the defence of...

Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi.

Switch off the TV and tune in to yourself

There was a greater truth — that of a glorious struggle, hard-fought and hard-won, in which many fell martyrs and countless others made sacrifices, dreaming of the day India would be free. That day had...

If I find the constitution being misused, I shall be the first to burn it.

So I close this long reflection on what I hope is a not-too-quaveringly semi-Semitic note. When I am at home, I will only enter a synagogue for the bar or bat mitzvah of a friend’s...

I thought about my [Punjabi] family. The only nakshatram we think about is the division of petrol pumps when we have to see the girl.

India will reveal to you the places in your heart that must be purified.

Musharraf is a good man and wants to improve relations with India.

She liked the way a ray of mild autumn sun infiltrating the thick cluster of trees caught a reddish orange leaf swirling in the wind and transformed it golden yellow. She liked that it wasn’t...

Over the years, the British had strategically pitted the Muslims against the Hindus, supporting the All India Muslim League and encouraging the notion that the Muslims were a distinct political community. Throughout British India, separate...

Give up the idea that by ruling over others you can do any good to them. But you can do just as much as you can in the case of the plant: you can supply...

At the meeting you behaves exactly as Marathi novelists of the last century tell is husbands do in sari shops.

Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees....

What hurts me is the fact that in India, a good doctor is one whom you have to take an appointment with even before you fall sick. Else, you will die but not get treated....

Tutto cambiò in un pomeriggio di primavera, in una giornata come tante, in una Nuova Delhi brulicante di anime. Kajal e Kiran avevano deciso di allontanarsi per qualche ora da quelle strade trafficate, dagli odori...

On the Internet, information from Indiana and India is equally cheap and easy to access.

Asif Ali maneuvers the gleaming Mercedes down the labyrinthine lanes of Old Kolkata with consummate skill, but his passengers do not notice how smoothly he avoids potholes, cows and beggars, how skilfully he sails through...

If I would be given a chance to rewrite the dictionary, I would flip through the pages so quick and would replace India with, the land where beauty is redefined in itself, kindness has been...

But he’s an untouchable, Shirin.’ ‘He’s my Untouchable Prince Charming, then. Only I am allowed to touch him.

India has always had a strange way with her conquerors. In defeat, she beckons them in, then slowly seduces, assimilates and transforms them.

The American people spend thousands of dollars to propagate the doctrines of the fall of man, the creation of the world out of nothing in six days by a personal God, vicarious atonement, absolution from...

Burman was traveling in America and I had stayed here in India. He remembered me and felt sad. That’s how he wrote the song.

As a romantic ideal, turbulent, impoverished India could still weave its spell, and the key to it all – the colours, the moods, the scents, the subtle, mysterious light, the poetry, the heightened expectations, the...

In 2011 India’s Test team was crowned as world cricket’s leading side for the first time in its history. The foundations for this global domination can be traced to a decade earlier, when a career-defining...

Fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised, and we can never know which one is which until we’ve...

Quando il mondo dorme nel ventre della nottesolo il viandante conosce la strada,chi si è fatto nulla diviene allora il tuttoe ciò che riempie la sua anima sarà la sua fulgida luce.

What is done cannot be undone,Knowing that, face it but do not run.

I never aspired to be the PM…Why should I quit over a silly issue like corruption? – Devender Singh

We bought a car years later, and they so generously offered us some of their crappy Bar-B-Que sauce,FREE for their buyers. We looked at it and thought, “This is nowhere as good as the giant...

There is nothing quite as unpleasant as wearing a pair of briefs which have been trailed through a Calcutta courtyard. Nothing, that is, except having one’s elbows and knees lacerated by unseen slivers of glass...

Out of the 1.2 billion people in India, one-third of them are between the age of 1-14 and by 2030, India will have a dynamic and youthful workforce of about 700 million with an average...

Bhagat Singh revered Lajpat Rai as a leader. But he would not spare even Lajpat Rai, when, during the last years of his life, Lajpat Rai turned to communal politics. He then launched a political-ideological...

If a writer starts worring about what he or she has left out or forgotten, they might not be able to write even a single line.

This historic general election, which showed that the British are well able to distinguish between patriotism and Toryism, brought Clement Attlee to the prime ministership. In the succeeding five years, Labor inaugurated the National Health...

It’s not arrogance. [Tamilians] are quiet people.

There are three trips you take to India: the one you think you’re going to have – that you plan for; the one you actually have; and the one you live through once you go...

.. becoming attached to a country involves pressing, uncomfortable questions about justice and opportunity for its least powerful citizens.

She was a sleuth and sleuths had to follow rules. ‘Get to the point; don’t allow the subject to digress’ was one of them

When the British left, India was a multireligious, multiregional, multiethnic country, exploited, backward, and poor from colonialism.

We must also remember that in every little village-god and every little superstitious custom is that which we are accustomed to call our religious faith. But local customs are infinite and contradictory. Which are we...

I always had a dream to play for India but I never let it put pressure on me.

The ancient paused for a moment, as if his strength were failing. Yet I sensed that there was more to tell. Looking deep into my eyes, he whispered: ‘The Gond kingdoms have fallen, their people...

I fail to find even one “Netaji” among the several thousand “Netas” of today. India needs our sacrifices once more and my entire life is and will remain dedicated to the service of my country.

The world believes it was built by love but reading Shah Jahan’s own words on the Taj, one could say it was grief that built the Taj Mahal and it was sorrow that saw it...

He can read and write, but he doesn’t get what he’s read. He’s half-baked. The country is full of people like him, I’ll tell you that. And we entrust our glourious parliamentary democracy

A boy, Ranga, is the light in his father’s eye and the love in his mother’s heart.

It feels as though it were just yesterday Grandfather exited my life like a bullet, leaving a bleeding hole behind.

In this city, every deserted street corner conceals a crowd. It appears in a minute when something disrupts the way in which the world is supposed to work. It can disappear almost as instantaneously.