A man walks into a ‘five-star hospital’ in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, with chest pain. After a battery of tests, he is told he has a blockage. It is ‘critical’. Surgery is ‘immediate’. The estimate – Rs 12 lakh. His fixed deposits tremble. EMIs march past his eyes. SIPs look suddenly suicidal. But life, he decides,…
Charity may begin at home. Apparently, billionaires now begin at Rs 22,000. They were around a few months ago, gently nudging us about a ‘last chance’ to become potential millionaires. They are back again. Clearly, I have missed the bus – again. This time, the familiar trio doing the algorithmic rounds are Defence Minister Rajnath…
There he was – Mohsin Naqvi, chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board – seated in the VIP enclosure in Colombo, wearing the serene smile of a man who has already won something. Not a match, certainly. But a cup. The same Asia Cup he had once spirited away in the UAE with the efficiency of…
The idea that a candidate who scored one mark out of 800 can secure a postgraduate medical seat should not merely raise eyebrows, it should raise blood pressure. We are told this is an administrative adjustment – a pragmatic solution to fill vacant seats. But there are some vacancies that are better left vacant. An…
However much I restrain myself from calling Rahul Gandhi by his epithet, the Leader of Opposition proves himself, with unfailing consistency, to be a Pappu. Earlier he waved a coat-pocket-sized red book, calling it our Indian Constitution, with the flourish of ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’, crying samvidhan khatre mein hai (democracy is in danger)….
Every time a supercar meets a divider, a footpath or a pedestrian in India, a familiar miracle occurs. The steering wheel, moments ago gripped by a young man with inherited wealth, is suddenly discovered to have been operated by someone else. Usually a driver. A report in The Times of India on a Lamborghini crash…
Some books change history, books that gather dust, and then some books do not exist but still manage to enter the Lok Sabha. One also wonders, in passing, whether Rahul Gandhi has the habit of reading any books at all – published or unpublished. The safer assumption is that he relies on briefing notes supplied…
Bollywood has done it again. And by ‘done it again’, one means that familiar, well-rehearsed trick of creative courage that only ever seems to kick in when Hindu symbols are involved. This time the provocation comes neatly packaged as Ghooskhor Pandit -helpfully subtitled Corrupt Priest, lest anyone miss the point. The teaser has barely finished…
There is an old proverb about glass houses and stones. Parliament this week decided to test its structural integrity by adding another folk wisdom to the rule book – if you point one finger at the government, be prepared for the other side to point all five fingers and 150 books back at you. The…
Parliament has many traditions. Addressing the Chair as if he were a college roommate is not one of them. So when the Chair had to interrupt proceedings to ask an honourable member to withdraw the word ‘yaar’, it was not linguistic policing, but a necessary reminder of where familiarity is meant to stop and institutional…
