Archive for February, 2015

Free Speech Should Have a Wild Run

Free Speech Should Have a Wild Run

You don’t’ become an anti-national by shouting a few slogans anymore than you become a patriot by disrupting Gulam Ali’s concerts or digging cricket pitches. Giving tickets to people with criminal backgrounds is anti-national, failing to deliver on election promises is anti- national, evading paying your taxes is anti-national, demanding a bribe is anti-national, sending in the police to an educational institution to arrest students is anti-national.


Paul Theroux. Under  Sir Vidia’s Shadow Still

Paul Theroux. Under  Sir Vidia’s Shadow Still

Naipaul was dealt not only on the chin but had been administered many a searing body blows by Theroux , most of them well below the belt, with Theroux’s intimate account of their friendship in his memoir, Sir Vidia’s Shadow, in which Naipaul came out shining like a bad penny.


Bhimbetka Rock Shelters. India’s Oldest Art Gallery

Bhimbetka Rock Shelters.  India’s Oldest Art Gallery

Our adoption of agriculture and the concomitant ‘civilization’ began barely 10,000 years ago. Therefore historian’s obsession with this tiny sliver of our past, often at the expense of over 7 million years of cave dwelling, is truly astounding.

What is more remarkable is the view now increasingly held by many important biologists is that we were probably more successful as hunters and gatherers.