November 20—Recommended Sunday Reading

The Telegraph—Habib Tanvir’s letters to Jill

“I see stupidity, ignorance, poverty, dirt, egotism & dirt around me. As yet there seems no one, who thinks alike, with whom one could talk and be happy a little, and whom one could call a friend. I dream about past and I dream about the future, but there is nothing in the present to engage one's attention...” wrote Habib Tanvir in one of his last letters to his partner Jill Macdonald. Read on.

Ashok Lahiri on ‘Demonetisation’, in The Telegraph

“If you ask an average person, he will tar politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats with the same brush. Sab chor hai - everybody is a thief - he will say. It is important that the common man gets the message that corruption nahi chalta hai - corruption doesn't work," he says, pronouncing the Hindi words with a broad Bengali accent (Lahiri calls himself a "Bengali masquerading as a Hindi-speaker in Delhi").”

The Guardian—Trump, Putin are ecumenical nationalists

For someone like Trump or the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, xenophobia is only a means of mobilisation, not an end in itself, like it was for Hitler. They have no qualms about embracing someone they hated just a second ago. Trump and Putin are ecumenical nationalists.

In Dawn: Travelling on a new road in Balochistan

“When we first came, many of the people in this area had no concept of the outside world,” one of them tells me. “They viewed us with suspicion. But now that they have had some exposure, and are able to travel more easily, their outlook is beginning to change.”