Tharoor and sundry “baba log”
It was clear as daylight that Shashi Tharoor, Junior Minister in the Ministry of External Affairs, would not last on the lofty perch provided for him by the ruling Congress Party.
Slopes are meant to ascend, of course, but also to descend. However, gliding from the higher echelons of the United Nations to public life in India, a mind of insufficient suppleness may be forgiven for being a little confused between ascent and descent, status enhancement or status reversal. Tharoor was never certain whether Indian politics was a good enough fallback position once he had lost the top job at the UN. This uncertainty was at the bottom of his casual attitude towards politics.
Postmortem: Incredible case the media never covered
The frightful figure that followed Pakistan cricketer Shoaib Malik for eight long years and nearly wrecked his marriage with tennis star Sania Mirza, is neither fable nor fiction but something in between. A fraud!
Yes, that is the truth about Ayesha Siddiqui. Interchangeably, “Maha Aapa” and Ayesha. Jekyll and Hyde.
The story has been put together after speaking to scores of people who know the Siddiqui family in Jeddah and Hyderabad.
Women’s Bill: Liberal measure, illiberal politics
I was surprised by the sympathy for the opposition among educated Muslims in my UP village on the Womens’ Reservation Bill.
The drift of their argument was that most of the 182 seats being reserved for women in Lok Sabha of 545, will be cornered by women attached to the “political class”.
When art exposes evil
M.F. Hussain’s exile itself could yield a thought provoking script.
My last meeting with Hussain was at the Nehru Centre London some years ago. I was therefore quite thrilled to find an exhibition of Hussain’s early masterpieces from 1950s – 70s at the Brown University. The exhibition is part of the year of India at Brown. The list is almost interminable. In fact it is the private collection of Brown alumna, Amrita Jhaveri.
Preparing for the endgame. But which one?
The season is on for excessive analyses of the Endgame in Afghanistan which to me is nowhere in sight. If the war in Afghanistan were nearing some sort of a conclusion, surely Washington would be in grasp of a script. This is not the impression I have after a recent visit to that capital.
Indeed, the “18 month deadline” for scaling down in Afghanistan is not true. That “may be” a notional date when an appraisal will be made of the situation on the ground to explore possible exit strategies.
