Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?" sang the Beatles when they burst into the international music scene. I was in my late teens when I first heard this beautiful refrain. To me, like for all teenagers, asking your girlfriend whether she would care for you at 64 appeared tantamount to asking her whether she would care for you forever; 64 seemed so impossibly far away. Then, I woke up one day last year and realised that I had just crossed that milepost.I quickly turned to Salman Rushdie for answers to the questions that came to my mind; after all, he had made my age cohort famous worldwide by casting Saleem Sinai, the protagonist of his novel Midnight's Children, as one of us. Saleem Sinai was born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947. His life, like that of the rest of us born in that period, is shaped by the tumultuous events in Indian history. We were entering high school when India went to war with China; entering our teens at the time of the war wit

Ajit balakrishnan: When I'm 64

Business Standard

When I saw that the Murty Classical Library had released its first five titles, it jogged my memory about my MRI-inspired reading project. There are few art materials as beautiful and as disturbing as MRI scans of the human brain.Angela Palmer's art uses engraved details from MRIs to create moving, and haunting, portraits of humans traced in the delicate pulsations of neurons and synapses. Paula Crown uses convex images of her own brain scans to create the eerie impression that her mind is talking to its doppelganger. But it was a friend's home-craft project - her MRI scans converted into a lamp - that made me the most uneasy: the brain, lit up in red, green and blue, is pretty, but also disquieting. We don't want to look too closely at the inside of our skulls, at least not over dinner.Even so, something about looking closely at how the electrical impulses change over time acts as a reminder to be kinder to your poor brain, to give it better fodder than random BuzzFeed stories or yest

Nilanjana S Roy: The Indian classics, reclaimed

Non-tariff barriers spreading from food to electronics

Let consumers choose

Priority for new govt: accountability of enforcement agencies

Stop the harassment

Recent data suggest that the economy isn't out of the woods, and the PM-designate must live up to high expectations

Devangshu Datta: And now, to business

Deep structural constraints can be more effectively dealt with in mission mode

Subir Gokarn: Three national missions

Narendra Modi should take advantage of his party's majority 
to shrink the size of the Cabinet

A K Bhattacharya: Small government, big gains

So intense, so compelling and so all-consuming was the build-up to the recently concluded general election that developments outside India received less-than-usual attention in our public sphere. Yet a lot has been afoot in the world over the last couple of years that we in India have generally ignored - and had the luxury of being able to ignore.As foreign policy analysts return to their usual stations over the next few weeks, we find a world where the Americans and the Iranians are beginning to get along; China's quarrels with its neighbours are more intense; the Russians seem to have a weekly calendar for invading their neighbours; and the Saudis are seriously raising their investment in proxy forces. This is over and above the usual in West Asia, Pakistan, North Korea, Africa and other places.Geoeconomic analysts, for their part, will find the debate over international macroeconomic co-ordination and World Trade Organisation rounds somewhat on the back burner. Fashions have changed

Nitin Pai: Confronting a new world order

Politicians need knowledge as an aid to judgement

Needed: a shadow Cabinet

Congress leadership must be held accountable

Mr Gandhi's failure

Dominant parties such as the BSP and Samajwadi Party were swept aside, while Mayawati's BSP was deserted

Aditi Phadnis: What happened in Uttar Pradesh?

Ms Psaki: Oh, go ahead, Roz.Question: I actually had one on India.Ms Psaki: Oh, okay.Question: I know - yeah, I know we've...Ms Psaki: Let's go to India and then Russia. Go ahead, Roz.Question: Talk about Mr Modi's visa, all about it (Laughter).Ms Psaki: Go ahead, Roz.Question: It looks as if Mr Modi may be able to declare victory as early as Friday. Given that the outgoing ambassador met with him in March before she left New Delhi, is it fair to assume that, in a phrase, "All is forgiven," and that if he is indeed confirmed as the new prime minister, that he will get a visa to come to the US to do official business?Ms Psaki: As you know, we don't talk about visa applications. We're looking forward to working...Question: Unless you want to.Ms Psaki: ...with the new Indian government when they're elected. But I'm not going to speculate on that given, obviously, the results haven't been announced yet.Question: Now, what is the policy of the US government when it comes to all fairly insta

'Looking forward to work with the new Indian government'

Social media's role became more important in this election

The other victor

India has been held back for half a century by the Congress' socialist model of economic development. Mr Modi can remove these blinkers and liberate our dynamic private sector. India will become a leading economic power

T Thomas: An agenda for Mr Modi

Distinguished visiting professor, 
National INstitute of Public Finance and Policy

A seven-point agenda to fix India's public services, and overcome poorly designed systems

Ajay Chhibber: Poor public services, India's Achilles heel

For two-thirds of a century, the Congress has occupied pole position in Indian politics. That has now changed; the party has shrivelled to less than a tenth of the Lok Sabha, and Narendra Modi's triumphant Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is now the truly national party. A constituency-wise map of the country shows a vast field of saffron, and Congress seats like scattered monsoon clouds. This is a change of seismic proportions. The BJP has established dominance in its areas of strength, and a growing presence in areas where it has not existed so far. The Congress on its part is now without a strong base anywhere, having been wiped out in its earlier stronghold of Andhra Pradesh, bested in Karnataka, routed in Maharashtra, sidelined in West Bengal, marginalised in Uttar Pradesh, and drawn a virtual blank in more than half a dozen key states across the heartland - a repeat of its rout in the state elections five months ago.Mr Modi's massive victory, comparable in impact to Indira Gandhi's s

T N Ninan: A paradigm shift

Last week, the doorbell rang in the middle of the day. It was Munni, the lady who cleans my house, with her 19-year-old daughter who looked like she was going to pass out any minute. "We were just going home after finishing work, but suddenly she looked like she may faint," said Munni worriedly, "can you give her some cold water?" We ministered to her until she was slightly better. "How long has she been feeling this way?" I asked. It turned out that the girl had been ill for a week. Why had she come to work then? I asked Munni. "You should have left her at home to rest..." I said. Munni sighed, "I wish I could. But she gets into trouble every time I leave her home. The only way I can keep an eye on her is when I bring her to work with me." I couldn't quite understand what sort of trouble a sick 19-year-old could get up to.Apparently, the day before, when Munni had left her daughter home, she got very bored and decided to pay her married sister a visit. "When her father and brother got

Geetanjali Krishna: Protect her from her protectors...

Hong Kong's Art Basel exposition is a universe unto itself, self-obsessed to the point of being delusional. Hundreds have died in a mine in Turkey, in Shenzhen there is flooding, Asean ministers are upbraiding China for its hegemonistic tendencies, and in India the world's largest elections have brought in a change of government, but the buzz is around a celebrity photographer randomly asking a select few to pose for his book, complimenting them on their "perfect" posture, or "great style". Wrapped in that halo, they peek into galleries with a fortune in Renoir, Modigliani, Chagall and Picasso paintings. That art at least is understandable, but it's the contemporary installations where conversations are measured in coffee spoons. Does anyone actually understand it? I'm not sure, but almost everyone pretends to.You'd imagine the art scene would restrict itself to viewings and encounters with artists, but that's apparently only part of the bargain. In London, earlier in the year, bands w

Kishore Singh: The fine art of Hong Kong's nightlife

This is the youth bulge of North India; those too young to remember 1984, or even 1991 in some cases. India's history has finally caught up to their arrival. They were always going to make their mark on this country

Mihir S Sharma: The Modi generation

No more questions about Uttar Pradesh or what is happening in Hyderabad or whether Mamata Banerjee will ever tie up with the Bharatiya Janata Party

Madhu Khanna: Back to normal conversations

In recent years, a revolution of sorts has taken place at the bottom of the pyramid

Subir Roy: Milk for the working classes

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Ajit Balakrishnan: When I'm 64