The other day, a discussion broke out among ten friends on love marriages—a contentious issue in Gujarat following moves in the corridors of power to regulate them by making parental consent mandatory. One of us claimed that, unlike in the past, nearly 70 percent of weddings today are love marriages. Another person, who had eloped to get married years ago, remarked, “Problems exist everywhere, whether it is a love marriage or an arranged one.”

  This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

It is always sad when a journalist colleague passes away — more so when that person has remained firm in his journalistic moorings. Compared to many others, I did not know R.K. Misra, who passed away on February 23 after a long illness, very intimately, but we interacted occasionally over the years.

  By Rajiv Shah  A recent book, " Luminous Footprints: The Christian Impact on India ", authored by two Jesuit scholars,  Dr. Lancy Lobo  and  Dr. Denzil Fernandes , seeks to counter the current dominant narrative on  Indian Christians , which equates  evangelisation  with conversion, and education, health and the social services provided by Christians as meant to lure -- even force -- vulnerable sections into Christianity.

The other day, I was talking with Martin Macwan, a well-known Gujarat Dalit rights leader. He revealed to me an interesting chapter of the Gandhian movement in Gujarat — how Ravishankar Maharaj (1884–1984), a prominent Gandhian social reformer of the state, played a pivotal role in the struggle for temple entry for Dalits (then referred to as Harijans) in the late 1940s.

Decades ago, when I was a student at Delhi University, the Left-wing student organisations, one of which I was a part of, would hold a highly negative view of NGOs. They would go so far as to castigate them as imperialist or CIA agents -- just because they were foreign-funded, by bodies such as Amnesty, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, and Greenpeace.

On the evening of February 14, after banking hours, I received a strange SMS from Bank of India (BOI)—where I maintain a very small, largely inactive account. I had opened it years ago simply because a branch was located near my home. However, finding their services quite poor, I rarely use it anymore.

I am compelled to refer to a blog by communications expert Tushar Panchal titled "The Grip, the Choke, and the Follow-Through." Forwarded to me by a friend, it calls Rahul Gandhi's Parliament intervention on February 11, 2026, the "most strategically constructed speech of his parliamentary career."

  By Rajiv Shah  More than a decade ago, when I was with The Times of India, I used to write a regular weekly column called True Lies. The column—which still continues—was mainly about gossip surrounding Gujarat government bureaucrats, though I occasionally wrote about ministers as well. In that column, I would often refer to what IAS officials described as their informal weekly Monday morning tit-a-tat over tea.