Chantal Akerman
Every ten years, Sight and Sound, under the British Film Institute carries a poll to identify the greatest movies of all time. In the last edition of 2022, the movie that topped the list was ‘Jeanne...
View ArticleEngland’s debt to the Dutch
In his latest work ‘The Age of Revolutions’, Fareed Zakaria argues that the world’s first revolution that transformed the relations between the state and its citizens and ushered in the modern ideas of...
View ArticleConrad’s Heart of Darkness
In his memoirs, Obama writes about the time when his friends confronted him when they saw him reading Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’. I tossed the book into my backpack. “Actually, he’s right,” I...
View ArticleAmsterdam Notes
I spent a few days in Amsterdam earlier this month. Being my second visit to the city, I wasn’t overawed. (Awe has diminishing returns which is one of the key criticisms of travel). The Netherlands is...
View ArticleBelgium Notes
I took the train from Amsterdam to Brussels and the change in the economies of the two countries is visible as soon as you reach Belgium. The Brussels metro looked run down and the streets had a...
View ArticleParis Notes
My next stop after Brussels was Paris, which I expected to be overrated. But boy, was I wrong. The city lived up to its reputation and for the history and literature buff that I am, it kept throwing up...
View ArticleSwitzerland Notes
My last stop was Switzerland. Traveling through the country, one can’t be faulted for imagining this to be paradise. Panoramic views, lakes that stretch for miles, looming mountains, cows with bells...
View ArticleThe Evolution of the Idea of ‘The West’
How did the idea of the ‘West’ emerge? Naoíse Mac Sweeney, in a sweeping narrative, presents a compelling argument in The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives. The Greek and Roman empires are central...
View ArticleNational Geographic – September 1983
Each time I visit the Sunday Book Market in Daryaganj, I scan through the National Geographics scattered in various stalls to see if something striking catches my eye. This month, I got lucky and...
View ArticleThe SDGs & Best Things First
The SDG Index of India was published last week. If you’re curious about India, the report provides a fascinating peek into the progress that India has made across each goal. The report has an...
View ArticleCorbett’s writings
When King George VI passed away, his daughter and heir Elizabeth was holidaying in Kenya. The manner in which the news of the King’s death was relayed to her in far-away Kenya was captured in an iconic...
View ArticleJakarta Notes
I spent a week in Jakarta last month. The short ride from the airport to the hotel was enough to understand how broken and shambolic India’s urban infrastructure systems are. Not a single Indian city...
View ArticleVivian Gornick on Picasso…
There’s a famous photograph of Robert Capa’s that has been pinned to the bulletin board above my desk for a number of years. It was taken in 1948 on a beach in France, and it shows a smiling young...
View ArticleParametric Insurance for Disasters
One of the professional hazards in my line of work is that I’m at times invited to speak on topics that are complex and in which I have limited expertise. Last week, I had to speak on Parametric...
View ArticleZweig’s ‘World of Yesterday’
Its hard to comprehend the horrors that Europe went through in the early 20th century. The generation that was born in first few years of the century, was the fortunate one. They were too young to...
View ArticleMental Model for Categorizing Intellectuals
An apocryphal story has it that Confucius once became separated from his students in a strange city. They were searching for him when a local informed them that he’d seen a man who appeared...
View ArticleShahnaz Habib’s ‘Airplane Mode’
The only thing I knew about Shahnaz Habib’s ‘Airplane Mode’ was that it was a book on travel that had garnered a decent amount of attention. Within a few pages, to my delight, I discovered that the...
View ArticleRandom List of Contemporaries
Rajendra Chola, the chap who constructed the magnificent Gangaikonda Cholapuram and the son of Rajaraja Chola (immortalized in Ponniyan Selvan) ruled just about seventy years before Mohammed Ghori’s...
View ArticleBharat Sundar at IIC
Bharat Sundar sang at the India International Center a few weeks back; a short, brisk concert without too many fireworks. Karpagame in Malayamarutham Sogasuga Mridunga in Sriranjani (hearing this after...
View ArticleSouth Side Story Music Festival 2024
The South Side Story, is organizing their annual South Indian music festival in Delhi this weekend. I went yesterday and caught Sithara of Project Malabaricus, TM Krishna and Agam performing live....
View Article