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Time of India
an hour ago
- General
- Time of India
Best of enemies
A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, and Second Opinion, which appears on Wednesdays. His blog takes a contrarian view of topical and timeless issues, political, social, economic and speculative. LESS ... MORE It's only within the confines of the subcontinent that Pakistan and India engage in conflict No, no, please! How can I accept money from you? This is my home and you are a guest here. I can't take money from a guest. The speaker was a Washington DC taxi driver, a middle-aged migrant from Lahore who had settled in US years ago. Bunny and I had been to one of the Smithsonian museums, those wonderful repositories of art and culture that are a hallmark of the city. When we emerged, there was a thunderstorm with torrential rain. We were lucky to get a cab that was dropping off a museum visitor. The cab driver asked where we were from, and when we said India, with a beaming smile he switched from English to Urdu. During the 20-minute ride, we talked about each other's families, where we lived, what his grown-up children did. There was no mention of Kashmir, or Partition, or something called a two-nation theory. We were chance-met strangers with common roots encountering each other in a foreign land. It took all my powers of persuasion to get our new-found friend to accept the taxi fare. And from him, we received heartfelt blessings for our well-being. In the picture-postcard Italian town of Polignano, upon hearing that we were Indian, a young Pakistani waiter confided in us his future plans, including finding a bride back home, with the emotional intimacy of a family member. It happens time and again, for many of us who meet Pakistanis abroad. Never have so-called foes been friendlier, going out of their way to be of help, striking some deep chord of fellowship that belies a history of bitter conflict. It is only within the subcontinent that the two countries are entrenched adversaries. The mutual antagonism inflamed by the shrill bellicosity of vicarious warriors who exhort others to do the fighting for them, and for whom the word 'peace' is another word for 'treason'. Taken out of this geographic and political context, mutual animus transforms into a shared amity. That's the enigma that binds together the best of enemies. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Time of India
5 days ago
- Time of India
Talk the talk
A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, and Second Opinion, which appears on Wednesdays. His blog takes a contrarian view of topical and timeless issues, political, social, economic and speculative. LESS ... MORE The globalisation of English has taken a lot of the foreignness out of foreign travel Bunny and I are in Torino, Italy. And Bunny is eager to try out the conversational Italian she has picked up through assiduous practice on the Duolingo app on her cell phone. We go for a morning coffee to Caffe Mulassano, the 118-year-old establishment that looks like what the inside of an antique jewel box should look like, all burnished gleam and gilded glow. Buongiorno, vorremmo due cappuccini, deka per me, normale per lui, Bunny says in her best Duolingo Italian. Okay, two cappuccinos, one decaf, and one regular coming right up, says the barista, sounding like she's been displaced from Queens, NYC. It's like that wherever we go. Bunny asks for directions to a restaurant or wherever else we want to go, in punctilious Italian. The reply is almost invariably in English. It was very different when we first visited Italy in 1973. We didn't have a word of Italian, and no locals spoke anything else. We got by with an extempore hit-and-miss mixture of sign language, guesswork, and strokes of sudden inspiration. It made simple things, like ordering a meal, or asking the way to the train station, into a dramatic adventure, an exciting exploration of an exotic linguistic landscape. It made foreign feel foreign. Now, everyone, everywhere, in Europe, even in France which once shunned les anglais like a socially transmitted disease, will break into Anglo-Saxon at the drop of a chat. A linguistic pandemic, English spans the globe, hurdling geographic borders and cultural boundaries like a vocal virus. And the more you try to speak to the local citizenry in their language, the more you'll prompt a response in English, the speaker seizing this opportunity to demonstrate a grasp of what has become the most cosmopolitan of all languages, thanks to global commerce, Hollywood, and the lyrics of pop music. While this makes for ease of communication, it takes much of the foreignness out of foreign. So we look forward to our next port of call, where no one speaks English at all. It'll make for a nice change when we get to London. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Time of India
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Doing gupshup
A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, and Second Opinion, which appears on Wednesdays. His blog takes a contrarian view of topical and timeless issues, political, social, economic and speculative. LESS ... MORE Why foreign pipples cutting jokes about how we are telling like that only? No doubt one foreigner putting up in Amsterdam itself, having a desi missus who has learnt him about how we are doing gupshup, put it on social media like a bullet to cut jokes about us for timepass. Mind it, we can also cut jokes about foreign pipples. Like Britishers, who are not knowing even to call themselves Britishers, which is their good name, but call themselves British, which everyone knows is only a country that we call Bilayat. What to tell? If we were Britishers our heads would be eating circles and circles. This foreign mister with desi missus has made listi of what we are telling. Starting starting, the listi has 'Do one thing'. Too very true. We are always telling, 'Do one thing'. If we were to tell 'Do two things', reply would come, 'Why I do two things? You do one thing, I do one thing.' Scientists telling it is division of labour. Next to next on listi is, 'There is too less salt in food'. It is right to say there is too less salt in food, because all are knowing that food having not too less salt is bad for BP, which will make you admit to hospital. But why on listi there is item, 'He is my real brother'? Should we tell 'He is not my real brother but fake brother, a fraudster, who by order of higher-ups, and big-big officers should be put under digital arrest today itself'. So what goes it of anyone's father if we tell, he is my real brother? Last to last on listi, it is telling that we are too much telling 'In India, I can get it for 100 rupees'. We are not mad, okay? Which is also on listi. Why for we are to tell, I can get this for 100 rupees in India? Just goes to showing that these foreign pipples even having desi missus are having too less sense. They are not knowing about one thing called inflation. Oof, oh! What we are telling is I can get this in India for two hundred rupees only… Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer This article is intended to bring a smile to your face. Any connection to events and characters in real life is coincidental.
Time of India
20-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Hidden dragon
A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, and Second Opinion, which appears on Wednesdays. His blog takes a contrarian view of topical and timeless issues, political, social, economic and speculative. LESS ... MORE Could India and Pakistan be unwitting pieces in a devious game of Chinese chequers? Two Chinese generals, Mi and Yu, congratulating themselves on the success of their Operation Springing Tiger. Mi: Even if I do say it myself, our secret plan worked out very well. In fact, it worked out even better than I had hoped it would. Yu: It certainly did, didn't it? All thanks to the predictable actions and reactions of the two players who played our game without even knowing it. Mi: First, we encouraged one of them to launch a terrorist attack on the other, which didn't need much encouragement. Yu: Then the player who was attacked inevitably struck back, which made the first player escalate hostilities. Mi: Exactly as we planned. With both players engaged in a shooting match, our objective was achieved. Which is to keep all of them on the boil, or in the wok, as it were. Fireworks are always good for business. That stands to reason, right. After all, it was we who invented gunpowder centuries ago. Yu: So now, more will line up to buy our weaponry, some of it anyway, and apart from exporting cheap phones, and TVs, and laptops, and fireworks, and other gewgaws, we'll also become a big arms exporter. Mi: And the best part is that share prices of our arms company went up briefly. And thanks to our insider trading, we made a killing. Yu: And we can make more of a killing by prompting others to do the killing on our behalf by using our weapons to fight each other. Mi: We've already got some ready-made customers. And we can always drum up more with what might literally be called aggressive marketing. Yu: I like our plan more and more. Or should I say war and war…? Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer This article is intended to bring a smile to your face. Any connection to events and characters in real life is coincidental.
Time of India
14-05-2025
- General
- Time of India
Beggar's banker
A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, and Second Opinion, which appears on Wednesdays. His blog takes a contrarian view of topical and timeless issues, political, social, economic and speculative. LESS ... MORE A cautionary tale about a destructive destitute and his mystifyingly generous benefactor Once upon a present time there was a streetside beggar, but though penniless, he was quite content with his lot because he had a rich banker who would give him whatever he asked for. Such donations were supposed to be loans, but both beggar and banker knew that there was no way that they could ever be repaid. The beggar couldn't even afford to keep up with the interest payments he was meant to make on the so-called loans. What did the beggar do with all the money he got from the banker? Did he spend it on feeding his family, sending his children to school, building a home of his own? No. He spent all the money he got from the banker on buying expensive bricks, stamped 'Made in China', which he would give to ragamuffins to hurl at the home his neighbour had built for himself. The neighbour had once been a pavement dweller like the beggar. But by dint of discipline and hard work had earned and saved enough to put a roof over his head, feed many if not all of his family, and send most if not all of his children to school. When the neighbour complained about the bricks damaging his home, the beggar would deny all knowledge of ragamuffins, of bricks bought with the banker's money, and all the rest of it, and start hurling the bricks himself, until told to stop by a Godfather called Globocop. But everyone knew the beggar would be up to his old tricks again, as he had done time after time. Why did the beggar spend all the banker's money on bricks to throw at his neighbour? Some said it was because of something called K, which was an unmentionable word. Others said it was out of envy of his neighbour's success compared with the beggar's own failure. It was a big puzzle to everyone, even perhaps to the beggar himself. But an even bigger puzzle was why the banker kept giving the beggar money. What was that Incredibly Mystifying Funda, otherwise called IMF? Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
