Figuring Things Out

  I have been trying to figure out the relationship between booze and state revenues for a while now.   States in India seem to have a whole...

Me-so-po-ta-mia. A country that almost sounded like the notes of a song. It had a certain ring to it. As a schoolboy from Hyderabad visit...

Houseboats waiting to go at 11:30AM Last year the monsoons were disastrous for Kerala. For the first time since 1924 the state saw...

"What are electoral constituencies?", asked my daughter today. She had in her hand a copy of the Class IX Social Sciences textb...

This is one obituary that refuses to leave my mindspace. It is not often that we see touching, personal tributes to politician who pa...

How does one view a South Indian monarch who stood up to the British? Is he really worthy of all the negative press he has been gett...

I was not too keen on picking another 500 page tome. Having just finished "The Gene", I was looking for something lighter, so...

Padmanabhapuram Palace A casual visitor driving on NH-47 from Kerala to Kanyakumari (aka Cape Comorin), Tamil Nadu is stuck by two th...

Nostalgia drove me to the erstwhile paddy fields of Thrikodithanam in Kerala. A few decades ago a river of fluroscent green rice saplings...

"I don't give a damn!" Mussoluni's famous Blackshirts charged into Indian living-rooms this week. Images of the Italian...

A recent article in the EPW, titled " GM Crops and Global Trade " points out that - "one company controls two-thirds o...

. As far as experiences go, is  there anything better than a short, sharp trip? After a quick, week-long visit to Kerala, I am convinced t...

My driving license expired in 2010, while I was in Japan. Since I could not renew the Delhi-issue licence from Tsukuba my application for a...

In Thiruvananthapuram, there is a new way of disposing household garbage - it is called "toss and scoot".  Even in the ...

. Is it possible to quantify the economic cost of cultural norms or attitudes? Take, for instance, the attitude towards physical work in ...

. Its a breathtaking sight from the seashore. As far as the eye can see, a massive wall of dark grey clouds silently approaching the Kera...

I never cease to wonder at the amazing diversity of life in the tropics. Even the smallest patches of land seem to be home to so many di...