Figuring Things Out

"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen"--Vladimir Ilyich Lenin What has been happening...

Once again, Afghanistan has hit the headlines; once again for all the wrong reasons. Unlike my earlier post which was written after the mos...

  A few years ago, an old Afghan friend turned up and Delhi and we decided to meet at Lajpat Nagar. "This is AK", he said introduc...

  Kabul has been on my mind all day today. It started with a trickle, with a photos-app reminding me that exactly one year ago, I had taken ...

A bee or not a bee? For the past two weeks I have been intrigued by this bright yellow coloured 'bee' seen here diving deep...

I was stunned today - by a banana! Just after I had finished my breakfast in Kabul, I went across to the fruit counter and found three...

Asafoetida (Hing) - resin chips and powder If you want to make popadoms you need asafoetida, aka Hing. This bit of trivia caught my ...

Ancient cities have a life of their own. We read stories about them and build a certain picture in our imagination. Ground realitie...

Tomorrow is Election Day in Afghanistan.  This is going to be the culmination of a long process of institution building in one of the ...

Last week I signed up for a UN assignment in Afghanistan. It was the culmination of a long drawn out selection process - online applica...

Each time I read a book by William Dalrymple, I wonder why our country does not produce such engaging scholar-storytellers. The book, ...