As anticipated, the political masters of Pakistan have finally directed its national cricket team to lift the boycott and play India on 15 February, 2026, as scheduled in Colombo . The Masters must've thought the money at stake is too lucrative to continue indulging in such kind of grumpy politics. Of course, they had imposed some pre-conditions that included making the 'handshake' a mandatory protocol, but the ICC looked the other way. So, the PCB takes it as protecting the 'spirit of cricket'. The Indian cricket board , the sponsors, the TV channels and millions of fans who do not necessarily mix patriotism with sports, if it's cricket in particular, must be deliriously ecstatic that all the revenues and hype and excitement shall be there for harvest thr oughout the ICC Men's T20 World Cup-2026 , co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka . Most of the Indians fans must also be ecstatic to have their heroes go on vanquishing the enemy neighbor and humiliating t...
While reading the latest book by the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen , Home in the World—A Memoir , I found one incident or rather an experience of this great economist-researcher-scholar-writer-Nobel Prize winner in 1998- Bharat Ratna winner in 1999, concerning a book-stall owner that he frequented in the fifties in the famed college street area of Kolkata , then Calcutta . I was enthralled to find that experience having a strong similarity with my experience of a book-stall owner in the seventies. Well, two mandatory clarifications here: first, I’ve titled my piece not after Sen’s great book which means that this is not going to be a review, but just a story, and I’m still going through the book which, in my view, is of epic proportions, particularly in relation to the history, culture, economics and heritage of Bengal from the pre-partition days; and second, there can absolutely be no imaginable comparison between the living legend and this nonentity, as I said this is just a story of a...