Why nobody talks about India’s ‘brain drain’ anymore

Rhyming words have promoted many dubious ideas. Like ‘brain drain.’ Not long ago, everyone was talking about it, as though those of us who stayed behind in India had no brain at all. Yet, we enthusiastically debated the issue. The debate wasn’t over whether brain drain existed, but whether the government should stop it. Now, […]

Migrating to the US has always been a rite of humiliation

Long before Donald Trump, from the time I remember, migration to the United States was a rite of humiliation. Yet, it was exactly what the finest of my generation prepared for. Even the most dignified part of the process, which was the first step, where the bright applied for a student visa to go study […]

Longevity is usually a reward for being unspectacular

For a man who was said to be incapable of subterfuge or even office politics, a skill in which Indians excel, Manmohan Singh thrived in public office. He had been governor of the Reserve Bank of India,  India’s most famous finance minister and one of the country’s longest-serving prime ministers. And he could achieve all […]

Black Warrant: India, According to Tihar

(This first appeared in The Mint, in November 2019) One summer day in 1981, Sunil Gupta went to Tihar Jail to start work as assistant superintendent. He had an offer letter, but the superintendent told him there was no vacancy anymore. He had quit a secure job with the Indian Railways for this. Dazed, he […]

Escaping India Within India is Getting Expensive

A good thing about the winter smog in Gurgaon is that you do not see most of Gurgaon. It is an ugly, dismal city and home to some of the richest Indians. Now and then, in the winter, I see its most famous residential building standing in the smog. People tell me that some flats […]

Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the time of Netflix

IT IS inevitable that a tribute to Gabriel García Márquez would come under pressure to achieve a beautiful opening line, and having thus sidestepped the expectation, it would immediately mention one of the most famous opening lines in the history of literature: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendia was […]

A right that women don’t have is the right to mediocrity

In a few weeks, when Donald Trump takes over as the US President once again, people will wonder if things might have been different had his opponent been someone other than Kamala Harris. By which, they also mean someone with a game, who was not so ordinary. There is an implication in this view that […]

The Hotel Room Need not be So Dumb

According to Indian five-star hotels, a guest likes to walk into the room and see the TV come alive on its own, blaring cheap copyright-free music and displaying promotions for the same hotel, as though this is the sort of entertainment that brought him to town. Later, when he decides to sleep, he apparently loves […]

Why national pride can’t clean India’s air

When India saves a life, it’s a great spectacle. An image I can never shake off is how once India moved a beating heart in an icebox from Chennai to Bangalore within two hours. First, a part of Chennai was brought to a halt as an ambulance sped to the airport; then Bangalore halted as […]

The good thing about ambitious old men

The world is tired of old men but the feeling is not mutual. Many countries are run by old men, many gigantic corporations too, and all housing societies too it would seem on some days. In response, the world has contempt for old men. For not receding into irrelevance quietly. This is odd, because being […]

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