Three stories for Mother’s Day

I was 9 years old when my mother took me to the Sea Lounge at Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Hotel. It was my first visit to a five-star hotel and I was duly gobsmacked. A dessert trolley! A Coke float! Waiters in white gloves!

Today I’m remembering …

… watching over Mum’s shoulder as she painstakingly crafted Easter eggs for each of us kids. That particular year they were black minstrels (in a time when such images were not yet seen as racist). Each minstrel’s body was a large chocolate egg on which rested his head with its hat, all meticulously shaped out of chocolate. Piped in royal icing onto the head was his smiling face, and he held a banjo made from a Bourbon biscuit piped with banjo strings. A process that took hours  of patiently tempering chocolate, cooling it to a malleable temperature, and modelling each minute detail till you had three perfect chocolate minstrels, each one of a kind. Getting them just so entailed working into the night, after a long day in office and church ceremonies, but necessary, apparently, so that each kid could wake up to a special Easter morning surprise.

Despair is a luxury.

That is my most significant realisation of 2024.

This is not India’s 9/11

I wrote this the day after the horrific terrorist attacks on Mumbai while we were subjected to a media feeding frenzy even as sieges were still ongoing in multiple locations. 16 years on it still feels disappointingly relevant.

Embracing tomorrow’s gift.

As we count down the final few hours to knowing the contours of India’s next Parliament, it’s hard not to feel anxiety, even trepidation, at the likely outcome. What will the next five years hold for freedom, democracy, social harmony and the rule of law in India? Do the trajectories of the past decade foretell ever worsening conditions for minorities and other marginalised groups? And ever narrower space for civil society? What of independent media, online freedoms, and privacy? Will we see an acceleration in the erosion of the institutions that protect us from untrammelled executive authority? Can we hope that the individuals and institutions who have courageously resisted these trends will survive and live to fight another day?

Book review: Knife - by Salman Rushdie.

"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die,” is the opening line of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. It foreshadows the events narrated in his latest book, Knife, which vividly details the murderous attack upon him in 2022 and the testing, arduous, precarious journey back from near death.

Chronicling the times in which we live: My Year in Writing.

Among the highlights of my year in 2023 were these books and reports to each of which I was privileged to contribute a chapter.

2024: Here be dragons*. And unicorns.

We woke each day in 2023, it seemed, to ever bleaker news. In India, we witnessed deadly ethnic conflict in addition to the relentless assaults on children, women, Dalits, Muslims, Christians, queer folk and other vulnerable groups, and to increasingly frequent disasters – ‘natural’ and more obviously human-made. All exacerbated by the inexorable erosion of our democratic rights and freedoms and the institutions designed to protect them.

Jimmy Carter - Second favourite?

In a few months (is the year’s end already in sight?) we’ll mark the 75th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I was fortunate to participate in the commemoration of the 60th anniversary and to meet individuals who had been involved in drafting, protecting and promoting this master work of humanity from its inception through its existence. 

Periodic Tables and the Elements of Education

“India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks — experts are baffled.” The news caused consternation among teachers, citizens and well-wishers of India around the world. The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) — the public body that develops the Indian school curriculum and textbooks — defended the deletions as rationalising student workload by postponing learning about these fundamental topics to later years.

Butch : 15 years on

15 years ago, I spoke the words that follow at my brother’s funeral. Now, more than ever, words are all we have.

No Rest Until We Redeem Our Pledge

Presenting a new e-book from the ISDM Centre for Philanthropy for Inclusive Development for which Biraj Patnaik and I co-authored a chapter challenging current norms and practices of Indian philanthropy and seeking to re-orient it towards the founding vision and values of our country.

Sticky Floors and Glass Ceilings

A while ago I met a young woman from Satara district, Maharashtra in India. Let’s call her Lakshmi. A secondary school graduate, wife and mother of two children, she described her efforts to improve her family’s economic status. She had started by selling products door-to-door for a multi-level-marketing brand. She then discovered bee-keeping via a YouTube video and was soon selling her own brand of honey on Facebook. Her enterprise not only gave her children small ‘luxuries’ they could not previously afford, but gave Lakshmi pride in her accomplishments and in the contribution she was making to her family. I was impressed with her dynamism and told her so. She responded, “But, you know, my whole family wants me to fail.” She went on to describe how she had to ensure her children never fell ill or did poorly at school and that her in-laws’ every need was well taken care of. Any lapse on these fronts was attributed to her not devoting her full attention to the family. Her persistence and resilience despite the utter lack of family support was simultaneously inspiring and heartbreaking. A few days later, still overwhelmed by Lakshmi’s experience, I shared her story with two colleagues at Ashoka University. These women, both highly qualified and extremely successful, heard me out, then said, “But, you know, it’s the same for us.” Their words, like Lakshmi’s, felt like a body blow. They challenged every notion of ‘women’s empowerment’ we practice in the social sector. They dramatised for me just how seriously the sticky floor of grossly unequal gender role expectations hampers the aspirations of women of all socio-economic categories everywhere.

Approaching 2023

Boundless Gratitude

Since August 2016, I have had the rare privilege of helping to create India’s, and South Asia’s, first and only academic centre to focus on social impact and philanthropy. Looking back, as I hand over charge of CSIP to Pankaj Ballabh, I am overwhelmed by the utter generosity we have been showered with by a very, very wide range of individuals and organisations.

Pandemic Panacea

A Testament to Gandhi’s Legacy

Going Beyond ‘Philanthropy Ping-Pong’

The global ‘debate’ around philanthropy often resembles a ping-pong game. A noted critic lobs a grenade making broad allegations of widespread self-serving, hypocritical, ineffective, tax-avoiding billionaire philanthropists. A practitioner in the field responds with well-intentioned counter examples of the considerable good work of other philanthropists. Repeat ad nauseam.

Women at Work - India 2022

Z is a manicurist who lives in the far Northern suburbs of Mumbai. She commutes to work each day to a tony salon in Bandra. Just before Ramzan Eid, I asked Z how she planned to celebrate and whether recent attacks on mosques and Muslim communities around the country had caused celebrations to be curtailed.