Sachin of Shivaji Park By PRANAY GUPTE I’ve lived away from my birthplace of Mumbai since I was 17 years old, but whenever I’m back I always make it a point to visit Shivaji Park. Each visit is always nourishing because each visit always r einforces in my mind how much Mumbai’s Maharashtrian culture shapes its cricket. It’s a culture that, above all, emphasizes the work ethic, and
NIRVIKALPA NATARAJAN AND THE NEXT BIG THING By PRANAY GUPTE Nirvikalpa Natarajan of Chennai has notched up so many formidable accomplishments that her peers in medicine find it hard to believe that she is only 30 years old. Those accomplishments include performing hundreds of surgeries, and treating even more hundreds of patients in India, Ireland and Britain. Dr. Nirvikalpa is a practitioner of oral and maxillofacial surger
Louis Silverstein: The Man Who Changed Newspapers By Pranay Gupte (Published in The Hindu, India, December 4, 2011) There will never be another Lou Silverstein again. Yes, there will be other geniuses in the media world that fuse design with words and create magic on paper (or on the cyber screen); yes, there will be young people sprouting new ideas of dealing with visuals in the media in order to attract more readers (visitors?). And yes,
I am please to report that my new book, "Dubai: The Making of a Megapolis," has just been published by Penguin-Viking (India). It's available on Amazon.Com, and will be hitting the bookstores soon. The book marks the 40th anniversary of the found of the United Arab Emirates, and is a broad sweeping history of the Gulf region, and Dubai's rise from a small fishing village to one of the world's great cities.
The Ghost Who Writes But Doesn’t Speak By Pranay Gupte If you walk into most bookstores in India and elsewhere, the chances are that you’d see books written by me. One or two titles, or perhaps all 14 that I’ve penned so far in the last three decades, would have my name on the cover. Many more would not carry my name on the jacket at all. Perhaps some of those books might mention me in the acknowledgements, but that’s all.
When I came to Dubai nearly four years ago to write a book, the great financial crisis that was to afflict much of the world had just begun to take shape. In the event, one of its most notable victims was this tiny Emirate, a city-state that had risen out of the Arabian littoral’s unforgiving desert and become a global metropolis in barely two decades. Its economy was hit hard, and it is still recovering. Now another crisis is in full bloom – the popular rev
When a Hundred is a Fifty By Pranay Gupte Sachin Tendulkar of India cracked his 50 th Test century in South Africa on Sunday evening, a record that’s unlikely to be broken any time soon. His nearest rivals – Ricky Ponting of Australia, with 39 centuries – and Jacques Kallis of South Africa, with 38 centuries – simply do not have Tendulkar’s stamina and steadiness. Moreover, the 36-year-old Indian batsman isn
A Farewell To Dubai By Pranay Gupte (Published in The Hindu, India’s national newspaper, November 26, 2010) Perhaps it was the good feeling generated by the visit this week to the United Arab Emirates by the septuagenarian President Pratibha Patil of India, or perhaps it’s the fact that the octogenarian Queen Elizabeth II – whose country, Britain, formerly governed the Gulf region – arrived as a sup
By Pranay Gupte (Published in Khaleej Times, November 10, 2010) President Barack Obama of the United States spoke fulsomely about shared values between his country and India of tolerance and cultural understanding, and of sustainable economic development during his three-day visit to this week. But he could just as well have been talking about the United Arab Emirates. Of course, the demographic scales are different. The ethnicities are di
The Most Brilliant Minds I Have Ever Met / By Pranay Gupte During the course of a long journalistic and writing career, I have had the privilege to meet some of the smartest men and women of my time. They have had an impact on me because their staggering intellects, their ability to synthesize ideas, their modesty, and their natural inclination to find solutions to societal problems. I learned a lot from each one of them – most of all the humbling reality that I c
Gone: The lions and the lionesses By Pranay Gupte (Published in The Hindu, India, November 2, 2010) In life, as in parables, there are lions and lionesses, and there are snakes. There are the good, and there are the greedy. There are those who smile, and there are those who stab. There are friends who limn one’s life with the joy of learning and laughter – but, like lions and lionesses, they are few and far between. Rarer still
By Pranay Gupte (Published in The Hindu, India, November 1, 2010) I’ve met several American presidents during my long journalistic career, but I never met John Fitzgerald Kennedy, one of my political heroes. I was a schoolboy in Bombay – now Mumbai – when he was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. I was younger still when Kennedy was elected in 1960 as the 35th president of the United States. He was 46 years old, the first Roman Cathol
The Forum in Mauritius, a new entity aimed at finding workable solutions to issues of global immediacy from the perspective of developing countries, will be launched on Friday, October 22. Deputy Prime Minister Dr. Ahmed Rashid Beebeejaun of Mauritius will formally open the annual inaugural summit at the Labourdonnais Hotel, Port Louis. The theme of this year’s conference will be “THE INFLUENCE OF THE MEDIA IN THE WORLD”. The one-day
The Forum in Mauritius, a new platform to enable voices from the Global South to suggest implementable solutions to problems of international immediacy -- particularly relating to developing countries -- will be inaugurated on October 22 in Port Louis. Please contact: adeela@marcom.com
Will Indians face a backlash in the United States? By Pranay Gupte (Published in The Hindu, India, July 2, 2010) There’s been increasing angst and teeth-gnashing among Indians in the United States this week over a tongue-in-cheek essay by columnist Joel Stein in the international newsweekly, TIME. Mr. Stein ruefully talks about how his native Edison, a New Jersey community just across the Hudson River from New York City, has been tra
MIGRATION IN PROGRESS: FROM PRINT TO THE WEB By Pranay Gupte (Published in The Hindu, India, June 30, 2010) I was dining with John Seeley in the Grill Room of The Four Seasons Restaurant, the one place in New York where the city’s elite habitually congregate for their “power lunch” five days a week. Mr. Seeley, like others in the wood-paneled, Philip Johnson-designed room, is a player – which is to say that, as foun
Dubai leads the way in “soft infrastructure” By Pranay Gupte (Published in Khaleej Times, June 28, 2010) By now it’s become a cliché that the United Arab Emirates – and Dubai, in particular – enjoy one of the best infrastructures anywhere in the world. As with many clichés, this one has the added value of being true. “Infrastructure” typically includes roads, po
THE PAST IS NOT PROLOGUE By Pranay Gupte (Published in The Hindu, India, June 18, 2010) I traveled to Boston a few days ago to attend the 40 th reunion of my college class, my first such get-together with former classmates since I graduated from Brandeis University in 1970. I went because I hadn’t stayed much in touch with them, I went because I was curious how their lives had played out over these long years, and I went, p
REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: WILL NAVIN RAMGOOLAM COME INTO HIS OWN? (Published in The Hindu, India, May 9, 2010) By Pranay Gupte For an island-nation of barely 1.3 million people who live on a speck of verdant but craggy territory in the Indian Ocean, Mauritius is more riven by the politics of communalism than one might expect in a tiny democracy. Last week’s parliamentary election showed that the enthusiasm of voters for the ballot b
Mauritius wants more Indian participation in economic development (Published in The Hindu, India, May 8, 2010) By Pranay Gupte Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Rashid Beebeejaun says that Mauritius wants greater participation by Indian companies in developing the infrastructure of this island-nation. “Our bilateral relations have always been excellent, but we feel that there’s much more room for collaboration,
ELECTIONS IN MAURITIUS OFFER PROMISING PROSPECTS FOR INDIA (Published in The Hindu, India, May 7, 2010) By Pranay Gupte Now that the three-party alliance of Navin Ramgoolam has won 41 of the 60 seats in the Mauritius national parliament – more than double the number of Paul Berenger’s leftist Mouvement Militant Mauricien – there is general agreement that the 63-year-old former physician and lawyer has obtained a powerful
THE POSSIBILITIES FOR MAURITIUS AND INDIA By Pranay Gupte (Published in The Hindu, India, May 5, 2010) Today (May 5) is Election Day here in Mauritius, and there being no electronic tallying of votes the winners and losers for the island-nation’s 62-member national parliament won’t be known for several hours after the polls close at 6 o’clock in the evening because each ballot cast by 880,000 eligible voters – out o
THE FLURRIES OF VOTING DAY IN MAURITIUS (Published in The Hindu, India, May 6, 2010) By Pranay Gupte When I covered politics for The New York Times a very long ago in the United States and in other countries that allowed for adult franchise, a wise old editor would often caution against making projections, particularly on Election Day. Of course, those times were before smart pollsters brought their sophisticated techniques to gauge exit p
PORT LOUIS, Mauritius -- Navin Ramgoolam of Mauritius, who’s leading a three-party coalition in the national parliamentary election that is scheduled for May 5, is determined to win a second consecutive term as this island-nation’s prime minister. Anecdotal observation suggests that he’s likely to win and that, in his next five-year term, the 1.3 million people of Mauritius expect him to lead a government that will heal the growing rifts between the co
By Pranay Gupte (Published in Khaleej Times, April 12, 2010) Take away the stunning greenery and jagged mountains from Mauritius, take away the rolling pastures, take away the vast sugarcane plantations, and take away the bustling hamlets with their narrow twisting roads – and one could be forgiven for feeling that this is
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