LOS Angeles is burning, singeing the rich and the homeless in its wake. Gaza is in cinders, leaving an unconscionable toll of a perpetually violated people, but not without wounding and unnerving the tormentors. The fire and the slaughter are both man-made tragedies and are linked, though difficult to accept as such...
IS DONALD Trump the Godot the world is waiting for, with apprehension and hope? But Godot, as Samuel Beckett鈥檚 1949 cult play suggests, may not show up at all, ever. In fact, Godot, whoever he be or whatever power he may hold over his characters, could be no more than a figment of a deliberately absurd imagination...
WHILE India and Pakistan can and do unfurl their flags in distant territories 鈥� say, in a cricket stadium in Sharjah or when they secure a medal at the Olympics, as the javelin throwers of the two countries did recently and expressed spontaneous respect for each other to everyone鈥檚 joy 鈥� there is no reason why both can鈥檛 hoist their flags in the other鈥檚...
THE inability to accept defeat with grace comes from an authoritarian streak found in enfeebled democracies. Donald Trump and Narendra Modi, for example, are peas in a pod in this regard. Modi has an added problem 鈥� his compulsive obsessive rivalry with b锚te noir Jawaharlal Nehru鈥檚 back-to-back three-term...
THE change is cosmetic for the Modi government, for at the end of the day, it鈥檚 still a Modi government. For the opposition, the elections have brought a new energy and clarity of purpose. Principally, it is the fight for the idea of India as enshrined in the constitution...