On a whim, I decided to go to Warsaw from Krakow and spent around six hours in the city (of which one was spent trying to figure out its tram lines). Warsaw is large, spread-out and has the ‘big-city vibes’ when compared to Krakow. The entire city was rebuilt after the Second World War. After … Continue reading Warsaw Notes
Polish Jews were the largest Jewish community in Europe before the war. Out of an estimated population of 3.3 million, close to 3 million were finished off by the Nazis. In Auschwitz, 1.1 million (of which Jews were a million and the rest Poles, Romas, gypsies, homosexuals and Soviet PoWs) were slaughtered between its establishment … Continue reading Auschwitz-Birkenau Notes
Krakow was a 7-hour journey by train from Berlin. The previous day, the Ukrainians had carried out an audacious strike on Russia’s strategic bombers, and there was a lot of online chatter about Putin contemplating a nuclear response. And here I was, chugging along in the direction of Ukraine. Fearing nuclear annihilation twice in four … Continue reading Krakow Notes
When Napoleon entered Berlin, he is believed to have remarked: “Six months of rain, six months of snow—and this is what these fellows call Fatherland?”. I was in Berlin for a few days earlier this month. While I wasn’t in awe of the city, the sheer sense of history surrounding the place was overpowering. The … Continue reading Berlin Notes
When the Russians entered Berlin in 1945, the most feared words for a woman in Berlin were ‘‘Frau, komm’ (Woman, come)! For Antony Beevor, the occupation of Berlin by the Russians resulted in the ‘greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history’. Close to 100,000 women in the city were raped irrespective of their age. Frederick … Continue reading ‘Frau, komm’, the Berlin Airlift and the Himalayan Hump of WWII
Had it not been for the bombing of Hiroshima, Richard Flanagan would never have been born. The bomb led to Japan’s surrender. His father, a POW, who would never have survived another winter in Japan, was released and years later, Flanagan was born. His reckoning with this absurd fact is the kernel for his genre-defining … Continue reading Question 7
In the early years of my career in development, one of the raging debates was about the glory and ethical principle of working in the ‘field’ against joining organizations that paid lip service to development. Looking back, all of it appears so juvenile; as if development was only about working in rural, remote settings and … Continue reading On Simone Weil
Hannah Arendt, one of twentieth century’s most famous political theorist and philosophers was catapulted to global fame with her coverage of the trial of Adolf Eichmann – the key architect of the Holocaust. Eichmann was abducted by the Mossad from Argentina and in a daring operation was spirited back to Israel where he was made … Continue reading On Hannah Arendt
Its hard to comprehend the horrors that Europe went through in the early 20th century. The generation that was born in first few years of the century, was the fortunate one. They were too young to fight in the First World War and too old for the Second. Stefan Zweig’s memoir ‘The World of Yesterday’ … Continue reading Zweig’s ‘World of Yesterday’
I spent a week in Jakarta last month. The short ride from the airport to the hotel was enough to understand how broken and shambolic India’s urban infrastructure systems are. Not a single Indian city can match up to the quality of built infrastructure that was visible in the city. Drivers there, also know the … Continue reading Jakarta Notes
