Hello, and thanks for visiting. I’m an essayist, journalist and author living in India, writing mainly about its politics, culture and history. I’ve covered many of its big cities, and reported from its conflict zones. My work occasionally extends into producing or presenting audio, video and non-fiction film. 

Books and reading occupy a large part of my days, and my life. My own book Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War (William Collins, UK & India; W.W. Norton, USA) sprang from my discovering that all the young men in my grandmother’s generation had gone off to the war, and I knew nothing about it. I began writing about it in this essay, “Everybody’s Friend”, which won a prize in the inaugural Financial Times essay competition. 

Writing the book left me with an enduring interest in the actual, un-heroic history of WW2 – and war in general – and some knowledge of its less publicised theatres, where Indians often served. More about the book here, including a glimpse of its better reviews. 

In 2019, I received a Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction at Yale. The citation described Farthest Field as “combining forensic archival research with imaginative fire and unsettling national and colonial histories… creating an epic of un-forgetting that brings the experience of Indian soldiers of the Second World War into our common compass.” 

In 2022-’23, I was a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

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I’ve been an editor at two stages of my life: in my twenties, as the editor of a city magazine, Time Out Delhi, and in my thirties, as part of the founding team of the Wire, India’s leading independent news site. I was the Wire’s Chief of Bureau in 2018-’19, helping to cover that year’s national election. I also conceived and oversaw LiveWire, its platform for young writers. At the time of writing this, the Wire has survived for eleven years, true to what it set out to be: a journalistic operation not compromised by its business model – and not afraid.

To the detriment of everything else, I’m on social media: Instagram / Twitter
I post some of my thoughts there, too.

My reporting on conflict and social movements – from Kashmir, Manipur, Ladakh and central India – appeared in the New Yorker and the Guardian. Other essays and writing are in the London Review Books, Granta, the New York Times, the Indian Express, Slate, n+1 and elsewhere. As a political writer, I’m increasingly keen to have a good grasp of views and ideologies that aren’t my own – harder than it sounds – and to represent people I disagree with in terms they still consider accurate. 

Among other media jobs, I’ve narrated three seasons of an award-winning constitutional law podcast, Friend of the Court. I consulted on the Netflix docu-series Bad Boy Billionaires, which was based in part on my reporting, and spent some weeks in 2021 as the #1 most-watched show in India. I also appeared on the show. 

This site collects most of my writing, with links to work in other media, as well as personal projects, like this one. I hope you enjoy looking around.