"You remember how he used to tip his hat?" Isn't that how people remember other people? When I wrote about people, it was always the little things they did that mattered to me. Small strokes are organic to the way big canvass spreads out. The pieces about anyone in this category, be it the peon who became a writer, the mason and pickpocket who became a scholar or the loafer who became a folk heritage collector, would vouch for the fact as to how important it is to know how much the hat tipped.
 

Chohan wanted own country of the purest, leaves behind merely sneers
April 4, 2007
Chandigarh: Half a century after he first entered the Punjab Assembly after being elected from Tanda, Jagjit Singh Chohan covered a remarkable distance in politics...

Play The Shehnai, a Bharat Ratna has died!
August 23, 2006
It was the first time I heard Shehnai being played as the death of someone was being announced. And it didn't seem jarring...

Great Soldiers Never Die. General Aurora Faded Away. A Gentleman Even In Death
May 3, 2005
"We were waiting at Ramna Park Racecourse Road venue. When General Niazi arrived in a jeep, he and I saluted each other, military fashion. Many...

Malwa's Garg who charmed the world as Gargi
April 21 2003
Decades ago they rechristened it as Kasturba Gandhi Marg, but for millions of Balwant Gargi fans, it will always be 27, Curzon Road that they will remember...

Footloose darwesh Satyarthi is dead, Lak Tunnu Tunnu will ring in heavens
February 14, 2003
For decades, that incomparable collector of folk songs and folk lore, polyglot Devendra Satyarthi's black pen scribbled relentlessly, recording for posterity...

Myth is the Man Mason, pick pocket, story teller, painter, folk lore expert, and then, 'Professor Kazak'
January 11, 2003
"You are crying because no one tells the whole truth about his own life. Autobiographies often are about the kind of life people would have loved to...

First-ever book on Naksalbari phenomena in Punjab creates waves
Commemorative functions to recall the martyrdom of Shahid Bhagat Singh never mention a man called Bant Rajayana, the Naksalbari movement activist in...

He was once judge’s errand boy, and then wrote about it. Now the peon-turned-author is at the centre of a literary row, and touring Canada, U.S.
In the mid-nineties, he was a ‘temporary peon’, urging men of letters to get his job regularized. Currently, he is at the centre of a literary controversy in Punjab...