Articles from the author

A thespian understands the difference between theatre and theatrics. The amateur is so called precisely because he keeps stepping on the thin line between the two.

For some reason an old Talat Mahmood song has been humming in my mind: Tasweer banata hoon, tasweer nahin banti, tasweer nahin banti…(I paint, but the picture never forms).

Here is the speech we may not quite hear on Thursday, August 15, when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee climbs up the ramparts of the Red Fort to start yet another birthday party for India:

The Congress is three percentage points ahead of the BJP, 32 to 29, across the nation among voters asked which of the two parties could solve their problems better.

Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi has a great deal of hair for a man of his age; it is long, even luxurious and slickly combed. Within those hirsute waves lies hidden, at the centre of the skull, a special tuft: the classical mark of a believing Brahmin.

Stand on the edge of every decade and go berserk. Make the wildest predictions you can imagine, and check them out with facts as they unfold through the years.

Why is a swearing-in ceremony called a swearing-in ceremony? Because everyone present at the ceremony is swearing for some reason or the other.

There is one opinion poll which is totally accurate, without any margin of error, devoid of any imponderable variable, and above criticism. It is called an election. There can be no two opinions, as it were, about the results of an election.

Most political leaders consider themselves utterly fortunate if they can become indispensable to one political party. Sonia Gandhi has achieved the impossible. She has become indispensable to two political parties. The Congress as well as the BJP.

The prime minister is ashamed, but not ashamed enough to remove a man who shamed him, shamed Gujarat, and shamed India. Would the prime minister like the illusory comfort of precedence? I am not going to discuss communal riots, wretch-ed and inhuman as they are.

In India, the governments seem to prefer the death of a thousand cuts. Perhaps this is because, being small, the cuts have the illusory feel of a minor problem. But the profusion can add up to a paralysing weakness, inflicting its daily quota of damage and disfiguration.

Which of the two is funnier: a government flying off the handle, or an Opposition soaring away on a flight of fancy?