Anil Nair has worked at rediff.com, The Indian Post, The Sunday Observer, The Independent and Gentleman magazine. He lives in Kochi and is currently working on his first novel.

•Can a bird sing in a thicket of thorns?
'Enough of the amber liquid would guarantee results but I dreaded an off-the-scale hangover and the attendant regret.'

•The Wasteland
'Lay surveyors of the state of English literature in the place of its origin, the British Isles, may be forgiven if they, like the judge who pontificating on pop music, asked, ''Who are the Beatles?'' '

•Always performing with a net
'Not even the two arguably best talents in India -- Ghosh and Roy -- risk anything when it comes to emotion.'

•India and the Islamic threat
'Militant Islam impinges on India only in the limited context of an insurgency in Kashmir and an unstable neighbour's desire to exploit it. Neither of which warrant a blanket reaction to the phenomenon as such.'

•Sowing not reaping: a Catholic journey
'The Christian mission in India would warrant a softer and more constructive metaphor -- sowing rather than harvesting. Thus instead of aggressively adding to the number of converts the church in India should try and practice value addition.'

•Justice, not Pope and pomp
'Does the Gospel of Thomas have any relevance for present-day Christians, irrespective of whether or not they claim Thomist origins? Certainly yes, if they have any integrity.'

•The dilution of identity
'Even if for no other reason than mundane self-preservation the BJP should wise up to hard realities on the ground. Playing at numbers or cobbling together superficial alliances with sundry 'spokesmen' of various castes or regions may help prolong its tenure at the Centre.'

•The idea of apocalypse
'When it comes to patronising, to taking on the role of 'delivering' people from their real and imagined troubles, Arundhati Roy and her ilk can be worse than those powerful elites she so reviles.'

•Twice born in Tamil Nadu
'The Jayalalitha phenomenon is less an aberration, born out of an individual's caprice or charisma, than the logical outcome of the suspension of disbelief that is endemic to the Tamil masses.'

•Vajpayee at the Potomac
'What Pakistan's entrenched elites seek out of issues like Kashmir is to be transported from perpetual squalor and disgrace of their domestic situation to the heaven of chauffeur-driven Mercedes, luxurious embassies, Swiss bank accounts and photo ops with Clinton and Blair.'

•Personality over performance
•Diehard in Kashmir
•It is time now for Simla II