The whole society is to blame for the gang rape in Bombay

Bombay is one of the few major international cities that has large slums in the city centre. These slums are useful not just for politicians who want votes, but even for the middle class and upper middle class of the city eager to benefit from cheap labour. The mother of one of the accused lived in a shanty and worked as a maid in many houses in the locality.

No one seems to mind these slums, which are basically illegal encroachments of public land. They are a hotbed of criminal activity and will continue to produce a large number of petty thieves and criminals. All 5 of the accused of the gang rape had criminal records and were still walking free in the city, just like the murderer of Keenan Santos, who had 2 pending murder cases against him.

The whole system in India is rotten and we can expect almost no change.

My take on Sushil Kumar's allegations against Russia

At a time when Russian athletes are the toast of the international sporting community for their excellent performance at the recently-concluded IAAF World Athletics Championships in Moscow, readers in India received a rude shock on Friday morning thanks to Indian wrestling champion Sushil Kumar. The former world champion and London Olympics silver medalist told the Times of India that he was offered a “good few crores” to throw his final against Alan Gogaev in 2010.

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Kamchatka: The land of fire and ice

The name Kamchatka conjures up images of bubbling hot springs, a myriad of snow-clad volcanoes and pristine rivers blessed with salmon in the summer and buried in layers of ice and snow in the winter. One of the largest stretches of wilderness in the world, the Kamchatka peninsula borders the international time line and its capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (Petropavlovsk) is closer to Tokyo and Seattle than it is to Moscow. So wild are most parts of the 1000-kilometre long peninsula that locals fondly say that Kamchatka has no roads, just directions.

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Where have the Indians gone?

This is a question that I don't hear very often when I travel. In many places, Indians are model immigrants and in many others, they tend to lack cultural sensitivity.

As I got into a motor boat, a friendly pensioner in Kuching picked up a conversation with me when he understood that I was a tourist and not a Malaysian Indian.

We left behind the skyscrapers and the modernity of Kuching to cross over to a simple Malay kampung. Farid invited me for a cup of tea tarik and spoke of his wonderful experiences travelling in Uttar Pradesh! He was a senior engineer that was involved in some construction joint venture in India.

"I'm sad that the Indians have left Kuching," he said. Me: "what Indians?" He talked about those who were in Sarawak during the colonial era and then left when they became old. These men came and worked here for 40 years and even longer, Farid said. Their wish was to die in their motherland.

Kuching has a Gurudwara and a small but noisy Sikh community, which celebrated the 50th birthday of a local businessman in the hotel I was staying in. The Bollywood and Bhangra music went on late into the night, making me wonder if I was in Borneo or Karol Bagh!

For Farid, who lives on the other side of the river, the Indians he misses are the colleagues and friends he shared a long bond with.