On my trips abroad, I have rarely found an Indian restaurant that would satisfy my native taste buds. In the West, there has been a “curry” revolution and its impact has been the most in Britain. However, there is a growing realization that Indian cooking is not just meant to set your tongue on fire or titillate the palate, it actually mixes common sense with the ancient science of Ayurveda, gaining popularity as alternative medicine. “Ever since the first British curry house...

The media will continue to speculate about the outcome of President Barack Obama’s visit to China. However, small gestures matter. The Times of London observes that Obama carrying his own umbrella while alighting from the Air Force One “may be just the right stick for China”. “Perhaps that simple umbrella moment really mattered. It showed China’s people that the arrogant America of their perceptions can also show humility, and that their own leaders risk becoming just...

Claude Lévi-Strauss, who died on October 30th (aged 100), made the study of anthropology as fashionable as philosophy and poetry. The Economist pays a tribute: “Before Claude Lévi-Strauss revolutionised the discipline, anthropology in France, and generally elsewhere, was a matter of ill-attended lectures in small, cold halls, and the collection of feathers and fish-hooks as evidence of the quaint divergences of the ‘primitive’ tribes of mankind… “As he faded, he mourned...

Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd batted spiritedly during his recent India visit and delivered a googly to bypass ticklish issues and move on to substantive bilateral economic and strategic issues that would help strengthen ties between India and Australia. Rudd squarely faced the contentious issues of racial violence against Indian students in Australia, as also the continuing ban on the supply of uranium because India has not signed the non-proliferation treaty. “Kevin Rudd says he...

Pakistan, rightly or wrongly, is generally described as an “exporter” of terrorism. Now it is trying to export something different – its famous Murree beer produced at the nearly 150-year-old Murree brewery, Pakistan’s sole producer of beer. “Understandably, making beer and whiskey in a Muslim country, where 97 per cent of the population is officially banned from enjoying your products, has never been an easy business,” reports The Independent. “And amid...

The production of a Hollywood film on the romance between Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, and Lady Edwina Mountbatten, wife of the last British viceroy of India, has been temporarily halted. The Indian government wants an assurance that the movie, Indian Summer, starring Cate Blanchett and Hugh Grant, would not contain physically intimate scenes. (Nehru’s name was also romantically linked with famous artist Amrita Sher-Gil and Padmaja Naidu, Sarojini Naidu’s daughter). Film...

It came as no surprise to me when I read a recent article “Saudi jailed for ‘bragging’ about sex”. You see, like an average man (or MCP) I, too, never lose an opportunity to brag…well, about everything!!! So, when I landed in Jeddah in the late-1970s to take up my journalistic assignment, my friends warned me to be very, very careful about two subjects — drinks and women — especially when bragging about these in public. Early this month, Caryle Murphy wrote...

In many parts of India you can see people enjoying bhang/hashish (or cannabis/marijuana) by the roadside without attracting a look of surprise or disapproval. It is only when the Western world began to raise hue and cry that people in the urban areas began to smoke/drink it discreetly at the occasional activation of the dormant laws. In nearly 80 per cent of India it is still openly consumed (generally in moderation); some places even have legal shops. India does not suffer from the Western world’s...

What is common between Saudi and Chinese officials/leaders? Whenever they speak be prepared to leave a lot of room for interpretations. So let’s see what it means when Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal (the long-time director general of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service, the Al Mukhabarat Al Aamah, and the Saudi ambassador to the US) finds similarities between Osama bin-Laden and Robin Hood, a hero in English folklore. In an article in the Oped page of the Christian Science Monitor, Prince...

As a journalism teacher I am often asked: Should media cater to what interests the public or PUBLIC INTEREST? In recent times the media, with honorable exceptions, has brazenly catered to the lowest common denominator (generally pandering to the basest instincts) under the cloak of infotainment. Arianna Huffington, the moving spirit behind Huffington Post, has started HuffPost Impact to talk about issues that concern ME and YOU. The real BREAKING NEWS is harsh realities of life — homelessness,...

How much danger terrorists pose in Britain? “The campaign I am talking about is not being planned by Jihadis or fringe Irish nationalists but by white ‘neo-Nazis’ who want to murder Asians, black people, Jews and gays in the bizarre belief it will trigger a ‘race war’, says Johann Hari in The Independent. “The police are warning ever-more urgently that similar attacks seem to be coming today. The West Yorkshire Police recently launched a huge series of raids...

When we were growing up, teenagers, especially girls in our extended family, were mostly Archie fans. These comic books, to be found scattered around in many teenage bedrooms, invited my occasional curiosity. Interestingly, the nearly 70-year-old Archie is still evergreen and his romantic pursuits still invite media spotlight. “That perennially teenage redhead from Riverdale made headlines around the world when word leaked, back in May, that he would propose to his longtime love interest,...

The New Yorker has an intersting poem “Thought Problem” by Vijay Seshadri, and here it is… How strange would it be if you met yourself on the street? How strange if you liked yourself, took yourself in your arms, married your own self, propagated by techniques known only to you, and then populated the world? Replicas of you are everywhere. Some are Arabs. Some are Jews. Some live in yurts. It is an abomination, but better that your sweet and scrupulously neat self emerges at many...

Osama bin Laden has all but vanished from the radar of the American media/public. Even president Barack Obama seems no longer interested in bin Laden, while the world had thought that the “war against terror” was all about capturing bin Laden! The present chase to capture al Qaeda looks like fighting with the severed tail of a lizard. Meanwhile Osama, dead or alive, manages to come back into spotlight. Whether one hates him or not, one can’t but admire his wife Najwa bin Laden....

Granny’s tales, and their actions/thinking, have remarkable similarities be they Christians, Jews, Muslims or Hindus. Perhaps it’s because of them the world survives despite the harshness and cruelty that we see around us. Vlasta Molak, a friend, has kindly sent me a moving story of one such grandmother, who at times appears as if she was mine. Here is an excerpt in the NYT from a book to be published in November. “My grandmother never set a place for herself at family dinners....

Van Gujjars are India’s legendary & colorful nomads, mostly Muslims, tending to their buffaloes in the green pasture land in the Himalayas or its foothills. Their entry into forests, their abode for centuries, is now being increasingly blocked in the name of environmental protection. The New York Times brings this poignant story alive in a beautiful photo-essay Showcase: Traveling With the Van Gujjar Tribe. “The Van Gujjar have been living and migrating with the buffalo for more...

US president Barack Obama’s predicament (on hearing about Nobel Peace Prize) seems similar to that of a dashing man who comes face-to-face with a fawning socialite in public who gushes: “Darling I love you from the bottom of my heart.” The media is having a field day revelling in this hot/sexy topic that has landed in their lap. This element of surprise (after the award’s announcement) has happened before…when the media/public was not sure whether to congratulate the...

Gore Vidal, 83, described as America’s greatest essayist and one of its best-selling novelists, says he has in his life “crashed many barriers.” Vidal’s brutal manner of criticism hasn’t waned. The United States of America, he says, is a “madhouse” and its President is “overwhelmed” and “incompetent”. Last year he famously switched allegiance from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama during the Democratic nomination process for president. Now,...

On my way back from a trip abroad, I generally try to pick up the best honey for my close relations. During the past decade I have been hearing that the supply of honey may become scarce with the bees vanishing at an alarming rate. It’s a question that has baffled the worlds of agriculture and science – what is it that has caused the mysterious deaths of honey bees all over the world in the last five years? A new film may have the answer, says The Independent. Vanishing of the Bees, which...

Today – October 2 – is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s (or Mahatma Gandhi’s) birth anniversary . Gandhi once said that if we are not careful then seven “deadly sins” will destroy us. They are: a) “Wealth Without Work”; b) “Pleasure Without Conscience”; c) “Knowledge Without Character; d) Commerce (Business) Without Morality (Ethics); e) Science Without Humanity; f) Religion Without Sacrifice; g) Politics Without Principle. We can see...

I always admired Prof John K. Galbraith, the US ambassador to India, for his remarkable insight, professionalism and warmth. His son, Peter W. Galbraith, until recently the top American in the UN mission in Afghanistan, appears to have inherited the same wonderful qualities of his no-nonsense dad. Peter Galbraith was fired yesterday after refusing to take part in what he called “a cover-up” of fraud in the Afghan election, reports The Times of London. His dismissal has caused a split...

My last post took note of American arms sellers camping in New Delhi (see here). This post is about the increasing number of expats/professionals (including Americans) who are making India their home, and feel more than welcome here. Dave Prager and Jenny Steeves (photo above), who arrived in New Delhi from Brooklyn in 2007, say: “Unlike most countries in the world, Indians love Americans.” Their delightful blog – Our Delhi Struggle – is fast gaining in popularity. I must...

Australian town of Bundanoon has become the first in the world to ban commercially-bottled water. The ban, which is supported by local shopkeepers, means water in plastic bottles can no longer be bought in the town in the Southern Highlands, two hours from Sydney. Instead, reusable bottles have gone on sale, which can be refilled for free at new drinking fountains (photo above), reports The Independent. “Bottled water is widely viewed as an environmental menace, because of the energy consumed...

As the cartoon above says, War is Big Business. This major issue is discussed, if at all, in passing by the mainstream media. Newspapers in India’s capital city had to borrow a news story from The Washington Post that “major US arms suppliers are wooing Indian defence agents and officials.” Emily Wax of The Washington Post continues: Almost every weekend, there are cocktails and closed-door presentations in the suites of New Delhi’s five-star hotels, hosted by retired admirals...

We are told that Tandoori murga (or chicken), India’s contribution to the world of cuisine, was born in Peshawar in 1929. After India’s bloody Partition, the shop (later known as “Moti Mahal”) moved to Daryaganj in New Delhi, very close to the ancestral house of Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf. Tandoori chicken gained in popularity when India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, began ordering this dish for official banquets. Visiting dignitaries that enjoyed...