“Undo it, take it back, make every day the previous one until I am returned to the day before the one that made you go. Or set me on an airplane traveling west, crossing the date line again and again, losing this day, then that, until the day of loss still lies ahead, and you are here instead of sorrow.”
Nessa Rapoport

If I could’ve helped, I’d rather not have had 2012 in my life. Read more

Much is happening in Pakistan. Self-exiled Pervez Musharraf is threatening to join politics back home, Asif Zardari says he isn’t under the army’s pressure to quit, Nawaz Sharif’s struggling to hold his own and Imran Khan going great guns in his quest for power. Read more

The media is agog about a larger role for Rahul Gandhi in the Congress organisation. Why now; towards what objective? I’ve no ready answers. If the speculation isn’t without basis, I’d be surprised by the timing of the move. Read more

Anna Hazare’s campaign against corruption isn’t significant as much for the fact that he made the government bend. Read more

Dev Kant Baruah was a scholar of considerable repute. But he’s remembered the most for his mawkish “Indira is India and India is Indira” quote as president of the Indian National Congress during the period of Emergency. Read more

My friends in Pakistan tell me that careers of two key figures are at stake in their country:  President Asif Ali Zardari and Army Chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani. The latter’s future will be determined by the outcome of the South Waziristan operation and the former’s on the view Parliament and the judiciary take on the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO). Read more

Is  Baitullah Mehsud’s a case of a dead man telling no tales? Could well be if  he’s  really  no more. The haze around what happened at Zangarha, where the  Tehrik-e-Taliban  Pakistan chief was reportedly blown up in a US drone attack,  only  shows that getting at the truth is always a big challenge in Pakistan where intelligence organizations are a law unto themselves. Read more

So, it was the Political class that was divided, unsure and circumspect. The people of India were one in what they wanted out of Elections 2009. Little surprise then that even the Congress’s poll managers, from Sonia Gandhi downwards, received the outcome with disbelief. Read more

Let’s talk this week about India and its awesome festival of democracy. For nearly  a  month  now, airwaves on the Attari side of  Indo-Pak border have been  clogged with averments, claims and individual assertions by a Party A or a Coalition B of being fairer than its rivals. The UPA told us as to why it  must  be  re-elected, the NDA dwelt on the imperative of change and the Left-inspired  Third  Front  drove  home  its  importance in a sudden death play-off.   Certain  pre-conditions  and  demands  on  which  some  bit—and better— players predicated their post-poll loyalties seemed outlandish. I read  between  the  lines  and squeezed some political meaning out of them. Here it goes… Read more