My career in journalism didn't start with a bang. It started with camels wrestling. After I finished university I moved to Istanbul to become a foreign correspondent. I had no employer, I was freelance. No newspaper was interested in sending a complete novice abroad. But I wasn't going to let that stand in my way. In my mind, I was going to be the fearless foreign correspondent of myth, the sort you see in the movies exposing wrongdoing, giving a voice to the oppressed, and standing up to … [Read more...]
Dead Sri Lankans don’t count
March 25, 2012 by 25 Comments
What is it about Sri Lanka? Footage emerges which appears to show that Sri Lankan soldiers summarily executed a 12-year-old boy then filmed his corpse as a trophy. A cabinet minister threatens to "break the limbs" of journalists and human rights activists, and claims responsibility for the savage beating of a journalist who fled the country in 2009. And yet the tourists keep on flocking to Sri Lanka's beaches. The England cricket team is back in town, ready to play another series. … [Read more...]
The Healthcare Debate…and what we could learn from a Hospital in rural India
March 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Watching the anguish and fury in Britain at changes to the National Health Service this week, I couldnt help but think of a hospital I visited in south India once. When it comes to healthcare, you don't tend to think of India as a model. Government hospitals are notoriously poor. A friend of mine nearly died recently because the doctors failed to diagnose appendicitis -- until it burst. But Aravind Eye Care is different. With just eight hospitals, it performs more than half as many … [Read more...]
The Lions of Gujarat…and how to get scalped by a Leopard in the Moonlight
March 21, 2012 by 2 Comments
"Lions?" I said. "In India? Don't you mean tigers?" "No," my friend said. "They have lions in Gujarat. The last surviving Asiatic lions in the wild. And we can see them on safari." Now, I don't have much luck on safari. I've been to tiger reserves across India, and never seen a tiger. But chance encounters with wild animals, that's another story. Once, near the Syria-Lebanon border, I woke to a wolf howling right outside my window. Driving through north Bengal late at night, I had to stop … [Read more...]
View from a Terrace
March 16, 2012 by 2 Comments
Where do I begin? I'm sitting on the terrace of my apartment in Delhi. It's early evening and the light is already fading, but it's still warm, and the leaves are falling all around me. The leaves fall in spring in Delhi, which seems strange to some one like me who grew up in Europe, and associates the fall with the nights drawing in, huddling around the bonfire for warmth, and the death of the year. But here it is the summer everyone fears, summer is the season of death, and even the trees are … [Read more...]
