Letter from an 11th grader
ChrestomatherSir, this is to let you know that as a reader and a lover of arts, I am so glad to have read this piece of work by you. 'The…
Bathsheba Demuth’s ‘Floating Coast’
In 2018, I heard Bathsheba Demuth deliver what is possibly the best talk I have ever listened to. It was on whales and the indigenous peoples of Beringia (the region…
Letter from a Reader
Dear Sir,A decade and a half back, my elder brother (a voracious reader) gave me (an occasional reader, at best) The Hungry Tide and told me in an offhand way, "ney, pore dekhte…
Sugata Ray’s ‘Climate Change and the Art of Devotion’
Over the last couple of decades a deepening awareness of human dependence on climatic stability has created a surge of interest among historians in earlier eras of climatic disruption. Much…
Jnanpith Address
For me, as for anyone who has grown up within an Indian literary milieu, the Jnanpith is an award unto itself, possibly because it recognizes something that goes beyond literary…
David Wallace-Wells, ‘The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming’.
David Wallace-Wells’ 2018 article The Uninhabitable Earth became a sensation almost as soon as it appeared, quickly becoming the most-read piece ever to appear in New York magazine. Since then…
Ashok Alexander’s ‘A Stranger Truth’
In 2003 Ashok Alexander left a top job at McKinsey & Co. and took on the task of setting up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s India AIDS…
‘Swerving to Solitude’
Nice to receive a copy of the poet Keki Daruwalla's new novel, 'Swerving to Solitude: letters to Mama.' It's an interesting and idiosyncratic meditation on history with some evocative scenes…
‘What’s happening to the weather?’
Since the publication of 'The Great Derangement' I've received many reports of freakish weather from friends and readers. One such arrived on May 31, from Turin. It was from …
Ravi Agrawal’s ‘India Connected: How the Smartphone is Transforming the World’s Largest Democracy ‘. A Review
Ravi Agrawal (who I’ve known since he was an undergraduate at Harvard) served as CNN’s bureau chief in New Delhi from 2014 to 2017. Before that he was the…