What We Remember (feat. Downloadable Masters Essay)

Around this time last year, as some of you may be aware, I enrolled in a Masters program at Birkbeck College in London. For some years now I had nurtured this plan of going back to college and learning something entirely new — maybe History…

Hero

All my life I have wanted to be a hero. I’ve wanted to be the guy that does the right thing when everyone is else doing the wrong thing. Or not doing anything at all. Rescue babies from fires. Tackle terrorist on the plane. Catch children falling from the balconies of medium-rise buildings. Be the one metallurgist in…

Underrated fiction

COWEN: For fiction, what would be the country or region — now, what’s a country, what’s a region is even up for grabs — that is really underappreciated relative to what it has done? If you say, “Oh, classic Russian fiction,” even if people haven’t read it, people know there’s a lot there. You…

Letter from Milton Keynes

“In between P.V. Sindhu’s and Sakshi Malik’s triumphs, the Olympics helped to generate great levels of national self-indignation. And this, inevitably, led to Indians — you, me, Shobhaa De — indulging in what I think is a particularly Indian form of solutionism.

What do I mean by…

Ugra on Karmakar

In India’s Rio Olympic contingent of 100-plus, Dipa Karmakar’s presence is undeniably the most unexpected. Her joyous arrival has driven her sport out of the shadows, and uncovered her home state Tripura’s four-decade-old romance with gymnastics. It’s a sport that India follows at the Olympics…