Johannesburg and Cape Town — a taste of South Africa on December 9, 2019I found myself in South Africa a few years after Apartheid ended. Prior to the visit, I had been combing through news coverage of the country. Carjackings, sometimes in the driveway, were pervasive, as were hold ups and muggings. Houses were routinely broken into. The Hilton Sandton had broken glass on top of the fences […]
Johannesburg and Cape Town — a taste of South Africa on December 8, 2019I found myself in South Africa a few years after Apartheid ended. Prior to the visit, I had been combing through news coverage of the country. Carjackings, sometimes in the driveway, were pervasive, as were hold ups and muggings. Houses were routinely broken into. The Hilton Sandton had broken glass on top of the fences […]
Post 9/11 Saudi Arabia on December 3, 2019Just a year after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, I was headed to Saudi Arabia on business. I was no stranger to the Kingdom, having visited it five times in the 1990s. But this sixth journey felt spooky. The United States had identified 15 of the 19 hijackers as being Saudi citizens. An American colleague […]
A glimpse of Toronto on November 26, 2019I woke up in the morning and looked out at Lake Ontario from the 22nd floor of my hotel. There was a pink glow on the horizon. I thought at some point it would mutate into sunlight but it never did. It was a typical November day in Toronto. The previous night’s drive from the […]
Conventional balance of power between India and Pakistan on November 23, 2019A simple way to measure the conventional balance of power is to compare the size of the armed forces between the warring siblings. Currently, India’s armed force is twice as large as Pakistan’s; yielding a ratio of 2:1. The ratio has hovered at 2:1 for the past two decades. During the 1965 war, it was […]
The gems of St Petersburg, Florida on November 12, 2019There we were, mesmerised by the white sands of Clearwater Beach. The sands could easily have been mistaken for the snow that had fallen in upstate New York. Pelicans and cormorants were roosting on Pier 60, waiting for the fish to present themselves for dinner. Hotels and condominiums (some charging $8,000 a month) lined up […]
A memoir of New Orleans on October 21, 2019Two years ago, I arrived in New Orleans on an evening flight, fully prepared to do some work once I got to my hotel. But it not meant to be. It was the first night of Mardi Gras, that late winter carnival which according to one guidebook is “famed for raucous costumed parades and street […]
That first visit to Saudi Arabia on October 6, 2019Saudi Arabia had decided to open itself for tourists. That made the headlines because the kingdom has been closed to tourists for decades. The tourists will encounter a country like no other. On the surface, it has its share of skyscrapers, ultramodern hotels and luxury cars, but beneath the surface an ancient tradition lurks. You […]
Air Marshal Asghar Khan on Kashmir, nuclear weapons and defence spending on September 18, 2019In 1957, at the age of 36, Asghar Khan became the first native commander-in-chief of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF). He built the superb air force that went to war with India in the war of 1965 and gained complete mastery of the skies. He had retired from PAF just months prior to the initiation […]
A retrospective on the bombing of Hiroshima on September 4, 2019The morning of the 6th of August, 1945 was just like any other morning in Hiroshima. Japan had been engaged in a war with the Allies led by the US since it attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in the early morning hours of the 7th of December, 1941. Most of the people in Hiroshima that […]