I grew up speaking English because that was the common language between my parents – my father’s Hindi wasn’t even half-way as good as my mother’s English. And most certainly not her Hindi. Her Tamil was no match for his Malayalam. So English it was at home.

But that was sheer accident of birth which got us all talking so many languages – I lived for ten years with a Bengali aunt in Bombay and got my own place in a hurry when I realised I was beginning to dream in Bangla! Read more

Almost at the end of yet another election in Maharashtra, I am both saddened and nostalgic.

Sad, because this election proved to me that, after Sharad Pawar and Bal Thackeray, there are less and less real leaders among the men (and women) in politics. And that brought about a deep nostalgia for the past when covering elections was fun as the leaders kept us on our toes and gave us great copy at the end of the day. Read more

A couple of weeks ago, a colleague who hadn’t been in touch for a while called to ask how he could get in touch with Sharad Pawar.

“I have never interacted with politicians so I don’t know how to go about this. Is it easy to speak to him?” Read more

Sometime in December 2000, Sharad Pawar first announced his interest in cricket with the declaration that he would contest to the office of president of the Mumbai Cricket Association that year. But things were not going quite as he had planned. He had never lost an election before (barring one to the Congress presidency against Sitaram Kesri in 1997 – his defeat at the BCCi in 2004 was yet to come) and he did not want to lose this one now. He would rather he got elected unopposed. Read more

Some years ago, when Sitaram Kesri had pulled support from the Deve Gowda government in New Delhi, I called Sharad Pawar to ascertain what he would do – would he split the Congress to support Gowda, would he go along with Kesri (whom he abhorred) or would he make a bid for the top job himself? Read more

In the heat and dust of this election season, one day last week I found myself within the cool confines of the home of the campaign manager of Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel. Among some rosogollas and several glasses of Cola, we got into some idle chit-chat and I asked him how Sharad Pawar’s plane could have developed a technical snag minutes before he was scheduled to embark for Orissa the week before. Read more

Now that election season is here and it is necessary to hit the roads again that dreadful feeling is beginning to rise in my guts (or should I say sink into my kidneys?) again.

No, I am not afraid of covering punishing campaign schedules — my concerns are more basic and to do with health and hygiene rather than the rough and tumble of politics. Most of our male politicians, I notice, are insensitive to and about women – they don’t think twice about it and I have had to hold my bladder for hours through the day because no one even bothers to ask if you, well, gotta go. Read more