• About

    I write a fortnightly "Letter from India" column for the International Herald Tribune, and occasionally for The New York Times

    I'm working on a non-fiction book about India, to be published by Riverhead in 2010

    I've written for The Atlantic, The Economist, Granta, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and several other publications

  • Highlights

    Two articles on the five-year anniversary of the tsunami (1, 2), from The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. These follow-up from my two original reports on the tsunami, published in The New Yorker (1, 2).

    See also a related article from Granta on coastal erosion in South India.

    Two articles on the social impact of rapid development, from The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times (1, 2).

    I've also written on development for The Atlantic (an essay review on Amartya Sen ) and The Economist (on the digital divide).

    I've written several literary essays and reviews over the years. See this one on VS Naipaul, from Transition, and this one on Indian literature, from The New Statesman.

writing

Between Father and Son

Tuesday, January 18th, 2000
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Review of Between Father and Son, by V.S. Naipaul, published in Salon.com

Humane Development

Wednesday, December 15th, 1999
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Interview with Amartya Sen at his Cambridge residence, published in Atlantic Unbound

A Third Way for the Third World

Tuesday, December 14th, 1999
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A review of Development as Freedom, by Amartya Sen, published in The Atlantic Monthly.
Ultimately, this is the significance of Sen’s synthesis: in pairing the orthodoxy with its critique, in using the language of the establishment to challenge the establishment, Sen has stretched the boundaries of development far wider than development’s critics have themselves managed to do.

The Street

Friday, July 16th, 1999
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An report on street children in Bucharest, published in Transition
The first time I saw them, they were begging outside Gara de Nord, Bucharest’s central train station. I barely noticed: it was my first day in Romania, and the children melded almost indistinguishably into the gloom. Bucharest is an urban nightmare, and the physical horror flattens into a kind of psychological numbness.

A Million Neuroses

Wednesday, July 14th, 1999
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Is the generous author of A Million Mutinies Now the same acerbic author of Beyond Belief? An essay on V.S. Naipaul, Taliban Afghanistan, Hindu India, and the new South Asian politics. Originally published in Transition, reprinted in The Humour and the Pity, edited by Amitava Kumar

The Seth Variations

Wednesday, June 23rd, 1999
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Interview with Vikram Seth, published in Atlantic Unbound

An Equal Music

Thursday, May 13th, 1999
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Review of An Equal Music, by Vikram Seth, published in Salon.com

Hotel Alf

Wednesday, May 12th, 1999
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A lonely night in Hotel Alf, Krakow, Poland, published in Atlantic Unbound

Onion Logic

Wednesday, March 31st, 1999
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The waiter refused to give me my onions; it took a while before I realized this was evidence of a national crisis. A report from Kuilapalayam, published in Atlantic Unbound

The Tiger Queen

Wednesday, February 3rd, 1999
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She claimed she was a princess, but she seemed more like a defanged tiger, in Rajasthan. Published in Atlantic Unbound