For the first time since film star Sanjay Dutt was in trouble with the law, I did not feel sorry for the man as reports filtered in that he had been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment by the Supreme Court for the possession of illegal arms in a notified area during the 1993 Bombay blasts. Read more

As Bal Thackeray’s birth anniversary approaches (January 23), I wonder where the Shiv Sena supremo’s legacy has disappeared barely two months after his passing (on Nov 17, 2012). Read more

Sometimes, I despair for the Shiv Sena after Bal Thackeray. Many of the party’s leaders have learnt well from the Sena supremo but I believe it is high time those who have inherited Bal Thackeray’s party unlearn all that the Sena tiger taught them and chart thir own course, for that is the only road to survival. Read more

The Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena like to believe that the Mangeshkar sisters belong to them. In fact, not just belong to them – the Thackerays believe that they own these national assets. Read more

It has to be a significant moment in Indian history that, for the first time in the nearly five decades of the Shiv Sena’s existence, Bal Thackeray has been so publicly endorsed by the Congress as one of its own. Read more

In the eyes of most people, it is opportunity that makes the thief – you leave your diamonds lying on your dining table every morning and one day your otherwise honest maid might be tempted to pinch just that teeniest-weeniest bit of trinket she thinks you might not miss. Read more

Bal Thackeray’s maverick ways have always led both his friends and rivals to underestimate him politically. Read more

For all those people who might think Narendra Modi is made of the stuff of great things, actually he is proving to be so much of a very small man. Read more

In the 1980s, Chhagan Bhujbal, the then Shiv Sena’s lone MLA in Maharashtra, coined a famous term that has stuck in the minds of many people of that time: ‘bhukhandache Shirkhand’. In other words, he was accusing then chief minister Sharad Pawar of licking up a lot of land (more than 200 plots in Bombay, in fact) that had been de-reserved by him for unknown reasons. Read more

Years ago, I gave up traveling by train on the Calcutta-Bombay route during the first ten days of December. With the winter session of the Maharashtra Assembly generally held in the first few weeks of the last month of each year, I discovered there was no safety on any train on the route headed towards Bombay from December 1 to 6 and in the reverse direction until up to about December 10 or 11. Read more