India's great economic boom, the arrival of the Internet and outsourcing, have broken the wall between provincial India and the world.

In my family, as in most middle-class Indian families I knew when I was growing up, science and mathematics were held in awe.

Mangalore, the coastal Indian town where I lived until I was almost 16, is now a booming city of malls and call-centres. But, in the 1980s, it was a provincial town in a socialist country.

Iqbal, that great poet, was so right. The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave. To hell with the Naxals and their guns shipped from China. If you taught every poor boy how to paint, that would be the end of the rich in India.

Do we loathe our masters behind a facade of love - or do we love them behind a facade of loathing?

Any good society survives on a circulation of favours.

Strange thoughts brew in your heart when you spend too much time with old books