Dec 11, 2005
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 11 December BRIAN LARA has made a habit of beating world records. In 1994 he posted the then highest Test innings of 375, quickly following it with the highest ever first class score of 501 not out. Last year, he re-took the Test innings record with a score of 400… Read more
Nov 27, 2005
WHEN Bill Clinton told a group of students in Dubai recently that the Iraq war had been a “big mistake”, champions of the current White House occupant were quick to accuse him of hypocrisy. For once, they had a strong point. To be clear, Clinton’s criticism was confined to the conduct of the war, not… Read more
Nov 13, 2005
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 13 November Last summer’s engrossing Ashes series was a testament to the joyful rigors of Test cricket, a long-awaited boost for the game in its native land – and a windfall for Rupert Murdoch. Prior to the series, cable-satellite network Sky TV (in which Murdoch’s News Corp is the largest… Read more
Oct 30, 2005
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 30 October DURING the heyday of British, French, Belgian or Portuguese colonialism, if you asked the citizens of London, Paris, Brussels or Lisbon whether their countries were the seats of great transcontinental empires, they would have answered “yes”, unhesitatingly, and most would have taken pride in the fact. But stop… Read more
Oct 16, 2005
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 16 October The High Holy Days celebrated during the past fortnight are the premiere events in the Jewish calendar. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, accompanied by exuberant blowing on the ram’s horn, is followed by Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, marked by fasting and prayer. These are the… Read more
Oct 2, 2005
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 2 October TONY BLAIR has dismissed opposition to his Iraq policy as the province of “urban intellectuals”. A strange comment from the Prime Minister of one of the most urbanised societies on earth. But then he also managed to ignore the latest opinion poll showing that 57 per cent of… Read more
Sep 18, 2005
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 18 September “Well, it thundered and lightenin’d and the wind began to blow There’s thousands of people ain’t got no place to go Backwater blues done called me to pack my things and go Cause my house fell down and I can’t live there no more … ” BESSIE SMITH,… Read more
Sep 4, 2005
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 4 September Throughout the 1960s, volunteers who joined the struggle for African-American civil rights in the US southland were denounced as “outside agitators”. The white establishment accused them of stirring up the local blacks, who of course would otherwise have remained content with their lot. Despite its dubious history, the… Read more
Aug 21, 2005
Level Playing Field The Hindu, 21 August The British opening of Aamir Khan’s ‘The Rising’ was a low-key affair. In fact, there were a grand total of seven of us sitting in the darkness at the first-day screening in my local north London cinema. Yes, it’s easily the biggest ever UK opening for a Bollywood… Read more
Aug 7, 2005
Level Playing Field The Hindu, 7 August “The Bombers Are Among Us!” the hoardings across London screamed. It’s the kind of headline that generates heat but not light. And it’s typical of the obstacles Londoners have to negotiate as they struggle to make sense of recent events. The rapid sequence of fearful happenings has bewildered… Read more
