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Mahatma Gandhi, the peacemaker – The Hindu

Mahatma Gandhi was attentive of the fact that world peace is not possible without the spiritual growth of humanity. So far, the 22 years of the 21st century have not been peaceful. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine represents the biggest threat to peace in the world since the end of the Cold War. Many believe that humanity will never attain peace. But we all know that peace is the result of a long process of compassionate dialogue and tireless caring across cultural, religious, and political boundaries...

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Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie – Karachi to London – The Guardian

This article first appeared in The Guardian A friendship is charted from girlhood to middle age, in this admirably thorny novel of postcolonial adolescence and contemporary politics. Literary genres age, much as people do. Postcolonial literature – PoCo to friends – was once an angry young outsider leading the charge against empire. Now, much older and having made some money, PoCo seems to have compromised with the world, depicting chic, transnational lives jetting between humid capital cities and the glamorous locales of New York and London. Invariably educated at Oxbridge and the Ivy League, the characters pursue comfortable careers in politics, the media and, almost always, high finance. After a radical youth, it seems, PoCo has put away the placards and started to indulge capitalism. So say many of PoCo’s former admirers. James Wood, glossing the position of those critics, describes the contrast they see between such “smoothly global” literature and “thorny” novels full of “sharp local particularities”, asking why anyone wouldn’t read “Elena Ferrante over Kamila Shamsie”? The Pakistani-born novelist’s new book is an opportunity to examine that contention, since Best of Friends has much the same premise as Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet: a friendship charted from girlhood to middle age, taking in education, puberty, sex, ideological conflicts, personal rivalries, intimate secrets – all transcribed, however, to one of those “global” contexts.

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Keeping Gandhi alive in the classroom: The Indian Express

(The column was first published in The Indian Express on October 1, 2022)

• As the celebration of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s birth anniversary has become almost like any other ritual — routinised and soulless — a politico-philosophic and pedagogic question confronts me: As teachers/students, is it possible to keep Gandhi alive and vibrant in our classrooms?..

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Chess cheating scandal: Why did Carlsen quit the match against Niemann? – Business Standard

(The article first appeared in the Business Standard on September 21, 2022)

• Chess world champion Magnus Carlsen stunned everyone when he quit the game after just one move, turned off his webcam and quit against Hans Niemann, a 19-year-old American player. Carlsen and Niemann were competing in an online match at the Julius Baer Generation Cup...

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Igniting minds the Edtech way: India Today

(The column first appeared in India Today on September 20, 2022)

• Our former President, Dr. Abdul Kalam, wrote his vision of India in his book Ignited Minds: Unleashing the Power within India. Education is the fuel that will propel our country to greater prosperity. Unfortunately, we are still far away from universal education, without which, igniting minds is a distant dream, thereby dampening our national journey towards greater prosperity...

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How this engineer changed the economics of locomotives

This article first appeared in The Times of India on September 28, 2022 In August, Ajith Kumar surpassed legendary American inventor George Westinghouse in the number of patents held. 362 vs Westinghouse's 361. Westinghouwe, who died in 1914, invented the air brake system that made railroads safer and transformed the US rail industry. His Westinghouse Air Brake Company is the origin of today's locomotive giant Wabtec, where Kumar is now vice president of technology-innovation. Earlier this month, the company celebrated Kumar's achievement at its Pittsburgh headquarters. Kumar's innovations mostly came as part of the GE Transportation, which Wabtec acquired three years ago. We had a nearly hour-long virtual conversation with Kumar, who spoke from his home in Washington DC, during which he noted that there are still three others from the GE/Westinghouse pantheon with more patents than him - Thomas Edison, Elihu Thomson (whose companies went on to create today's Alstom), and Clyde Farmer...

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