Reporter's diary

Book Review: 'The Snow People' by Marie Herbert

2011-12-10T05:55:00.005+05:30

I suppose we will all promise anything in the first flush of romance. So it was with British Polar explorer Wally Herbert, who offered to take his newly wedded wife, Marie Herbert and their 10-month old daughter to live 800 miles within the Arctic Circle with one of the most isolated people on Earth – the Inughuit or ‘real people’. The young family came to live on Herbert Island, just off the

Jill by Philip Larkin

2011-08-30T04:19:00.003+05:30

'Jill' by Philip Larkin is an insight into the stratified world of 1940s Oxford University. A young man, John Kemp from the north of England ends up sharing a room at the University with a brash, uber-confident Londoner, Christopher Warner. Kemp's desperation in trying to get with the in crowd even as they mock and denigrate him at every turn reveals some incredible class differences. The reader

'Gujarat Beyond Gandhi'

2011-08-21T01:16:00.002+05:30

At the height of the Ayodhya movement, with tension spreading in large ripples across north India, political and social psychologist Ashis Nandy interviewed an RSS pracharak (worker). Despite being very familiar with the Hindu fundamentalist ideology that was leading to those dramatic shifts in Indian political and social life, Nandy emerged from that interview completely shaken. He wrote about

States love their secrets but we want the facts

2011-07-14T04:26:00.000+05:30

All governments say they want to stop the flow of illicit arms, but listening to many of them at the UN today, it became clear that not many are willing to do anything about it. This is because it will involve much greater transparency on how they report on arms transfers and this immediately makes governments uncomfortable. Amnesty International’s findings show that the biggest source of

Urban houses for an ancient tribe destroys a way of life in Nicobar

2011-07-04T22:20:00.002+05:30

One of the new houses built by the government for the Nicobari tribals. Courtesy: Prince Rasheed. The force of the 2004 undersea Indian Ocean earthquake was so intense that the island of Trinket split in three. Trinket is part of the Nicobar archipelago of 22 islands that belong to India. The government moved all the local Nicobari tribals to a neighbouring island but Gopinath Jeem and a few

How I got my water bottle afterall

2011-06-22T23:42:00.000+05:30