Patriotism need not be puritanical.Collection: Patriotism
I'm not a big fan of government interference in most matters.Collection: Government
Politics was Ahmed Patel's whole life.Collection: Politics
If the airline industry were to evolve a common fitness standard for both male and female employees, that would not just be acceptable, it would be entirely desirable.Collection: Fitness
When Hindustan Motors rolled out the first Ambassador Car in 1957 its sturdy body, rounded contours and Mother Earth simplicity immediately bagged it a place in our collective consciousness.Collection: Car
What people, both while voting or while watching television, seek is the same - to know what you stand for and whether you can tell a story that captures their imagination and holds their attention.Collection: Imagination
The truth is that every news channel is a variant of the other and the difference is one of degree.
The freedom of expression cannot be defined selectively.
A hidden camera can only be a good journalist's last resort. But sometimes, it's the only option.
No matter what you think of him otherwise, there are no two ways about it - Narayana Murthy is inextricably linked to the modern Indian's sense of self. So also is Sachin Tendulkar. Every time he goes out to bat, he carries with him the dreams of a billion people. Like many sporting legends, he is an iconic symbol of our subliminal nationalism.
The Christianity of the St Stephen's College I remember was atmospheric (how we loved the chapel, the choir and the Cross), cultural and entirely subtle.
I am not a pundit or a psephologist and thus not in the business of calling elections.
Flight attendants need to think on their feet and walk on their toes. An emergency landing can't be steered by a pot-bellied cabin crew that crawls or belly-walks.
National security is that old rabbit that's pulled out of the hat every time politicians run out of other tricks to keep you in check.
For the BJP, the conversion of Bengal's cultural Hindu into a political Hindu is a long-standing project.
Most of us will agree that my former medium, television news, has been reduced to tawdry entertainment.
What other, newer democracies find relatively easy - conducting an election, the counting of votes, the peaceful transition of power - seems to have befuddled the United States (U.S.).
In 2020 we saw the poorest Indian citizen suffer as migrant workers, in the hundreds of thousands, fled the cities on foot, sometimes barefoot, to return to the villages.
When Sania Mirza says she feels hurt or fed up at constantly grabbing the headlines for the wrong reasons, it's an understandable reaction. But when she goes ahead to say she doesn't want to play in India anymore, we can't help thinking it's the sort of thing you'd expect a defeatist to say.
In many ways, Ahmed Patel was the mind of Sonia Gandhi. Nearly everything we know about her publicly was constructed or revealed with his enabling.
This Right vs Left fault line has been drawn through all of our nations. In India too, your political choice has come to define all of you. And if you fail the ideological purity test of one or the other side, you are immediately branded a traitor.
The rise of Right-wing populism globally has divided not just countries, but families. It has broken relationships and torn apart friendships. It has created social media discord and abuse, and led to unprecedented name-calling.
I don't care if a flight attendant is fat as long as she doesn't sneak back to the galley for a gossip when she should be pushing down the food trolley. I get annoyed when the food trays are slapped down on my seat by bored and disinterested men and women. I look for warmth and comfort, not cold efficiency.
Textbook journalism everywhere in the world has always frowned upon the sting as a tool of reporting.
If anything, I believe, television anchors have become parodies of themselves, self-caricatures if such a thing is possible. And I'd dismiss it all with a scornful laugh if broadcast news were not so dangerous in fanning misogyny, communalism, fake news and divisiveness.
The BJP brand of Hindutva was originally rooted in middle-class disenchantment with secular hypocrisies; Modi's version is defined simply by hard-edged hatred.
For a man once called the Indian Obama by the historian and public intellectual Ramachandra Guha, the diminishing of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar could not be more dramatic.
The sanctimony that a section of the media wears like a second skin comes undone so fast when the scrutiny is on them.
Our ideas of consent have evolved and changed because feminism has pushed the boundaries.
Nostalgia can be an awful bore, especially for those whose memories are painted in hues different from ours.
As women, many of us have internalised our lives as a prolonged version of boot camp, a sort of Darwinian call to toughen up or perish. As young women, we are terrified that men we consider our mentors can turn out to be monsters.
Women - whether in politics, media or business - can't have it both ways. We can't demand to be judged irrespective of our gender if we also plan to manipulate our sexual identity to our advantage. We can't both play the game and pretend to be sitting it out. We can't deliberately act 'female' and complain about male bias.
We do not have to be trapped in the simple-minded binaries of the western world.
You can't define yourself either in shades of what you are contesting or entirely in antithesis to it. By doing so, what you reveal is that you have nothing to say for yourself. Or that you are unsure of your messaging.
An idea you disagree with has to be fought with a better idea.
A message you abhor has to be trumped with a more powerful one.
You cannot hurl textbook principles of right and wrong in the age of fake news, WhatsApp campaigns and personality-centric cult politics. Elections are not a moral science class.
Politics is Darwinian. Individuals will prioritise their future first.
Most of us in the media are, by and large, sentimental about our national identity, but comfortable enough in our skins as Indians, to be deeply self-critical. The problem arises when loyalty to India gets mixed up with loyalty to the government of the day.
Every time that zealots clash with the zany and Religion and Freedom take opposite positions across the trenches, the issue becomes larger than the individual.
Yes, fear and repression may be permanent citizens in Narendra Modi's Gujarat.
For decades, the Left has occupied a special place in the minds of educated Indians - outside of the two states (Bengal and Kerala) where it has a political presence and is therefore treated like any other political party.
Much has already been said about the indisputable integrity of men such as AB Bardhan and Prakash Karat. So, why is it that while the sleaze and slime of the political underbelly puts us off, we aren't warmed by the relative virtue and scrubbed-clean morality of the Marxists?
For too long now we have watched the Left perch prettily on the periphery of the government, enjoying influence without accountability. In the two states where it has actually had to deal with the everyday reality of governance, look at how the Chief Ministers have struggled to marry textbook diktats with the actualities of a Changing India.
For many Indians, their future as global players is linked to the American dream.
For the Modi government, the calls for a 'Naya Kashmir' has paradoxically led them right back to old established political parties after a failed experiment at propping up an 'alternative' regime in the form of the Apni Party and other such flirtations.
The crests and troughs in Covid-19 cases and the spikes and falls of daily infographics by which we now measure the wellness of our lives have been based mostly on city-driven data.
The real challenge to upholding India's freedoms is how patchy and individual-driven it is when it comes to the judiciary. The system is so arranged that instead of legal precedent and case law setting the template for the court's interventions, the idea of justice is guided by what Judge A or Judge B may think.
In many professional spaces, women are fighting twice as hard as men to get to the same place and get the same opportunities. If you then speak out about your experience of sexual harassment, there is every chance you will not be sent on certain assignments.
Whether it's Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana or Odisha, we have seen similar patterns - hostile local politics transform into conciliation of some kind after the state elections.