Daily News & Analysis
  • Home
  • Mumbai
  • India
  • World
  • Money
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Opinion
  • Speak Up
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Sci/Tech
  • Academy
  • Gallery
  • Blogs
  • E-Paper
Sunday, November 22, 2009

Columns

Advanced Search

Venkatesan Vembu
Syndicate
this column

Venkatesan 'Venky' Vembu attained his first Fifteen Minutes of Fame in 1984, on the threshold of his career, when paparazzi pictures of him with Maneka Gandhi were splashed in the world media under the mischievous tag 'International Affairs'. But that's a story he's saving up for his memoirs...

Over 20-plus years, Venky worked in The Indian Express, Frontline newsmagazine, and Outlook Money, before joining DNA ahead of its launch. Additionally, he has been published, at various times, in, among other publications, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Outlook, and Outlook Traveller.

From his current station in Hong Kong, where he is frequently (and quite inexplicably) mistaken for the bumbling movie character Mr Bean, Venky endeavours to convey through his despatches the dramatic changes that are sweeping across the East Asian region and the glacial but steady Asia-ward shift in the geopolitical and economic centre of gravity.

When he is not scrambling to meet manic deadlines for his contributions across the different sections of DNA, Venky overdoses on Zhang Yimou movies - and struggles valiantly with the tonal complexities of the Chinese language.

more...
less...

Saluting India’s farmers

Politics aside, though, I think that we - as a nation and as individuals — stand to benefit immensely from a second Green Revolution.
April 23, 2008

Breathing sweet freedom

What distinguishes Hong Kong from the rest of China is that here you can breathe in lungfuls of freedom with every breath you take.
April 17, 2008

A nervous China slams the door

Evidently unnerved by the uprising in Tibet, and the protests that have marred the relay of the Olympics torch, China has tightened visa procedures.
April 9, 2008

Namaste Japan, Konnichiwa India!

A t Yodobashi-umeda, a seven-floor mall in the heart of Osaka, the public address announcements about shopping deals are made in, among other languages, Hindi.
April 4, 2008

Chinese opinion on India’s policy

Unlike in India, where everyone has an opinion on every nuanced aspect of Indian foreign policy, ordinary Chinese folks don’t often give voice to controversial matters of state.
March 26, 2008

Incredible India? Really?

“It’s all these news reports about rapes that I’ve been reading,” she said. “It’s left me wondering: is it safe for me, a single woman, to travel in India?”
March 12, 2008

Chapati, chutney — and literature!

For several years now, Indian writers in English have enjoyed flavour-of-the-season status at literary festivals around the world.
March 5, 2008

A Bollywood tear-jerker in HK

Li, who is 31-years-old, discovered late last year after a DNA test, that he isn’t the biological child of his ‘parents’.
February 27, 2008

Mumbai behind in Monopoly race

But in the race to get itself listed as a valuable property market on the board game Monopoly, Mumbai is currently at a lowly 46th place, behind many leading world cities.
February 21, 2008

‘Bhumiputra’ policy has polarised Malaysia

At their core, Mayawati’s quota system and the Malaysian muddle have pretty much the same stated social objectives and work to a large extent the same way.
February 13, 2008

HK Indians go on a ‘househunt’ in US

A group of Indian investment bankers in Hong Kong, who have deservedly earned million-dollar bonuses this year, are planning to travel across small-town America.
February 6, 2008

Republic day needs retooling

In India, the Republic Day celebration is high on ceremony, marked by an anachronistic and quite absurd — showcasing of the country’s military might.
January 30, 2008

The cup runneth over

It turns out that women in North America and Europe have over the past 20 years or so grown particularly busty: their average breast size has expanded from 34B to 36D.
January 23, 2008
«
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
»


Interviews »
  • ‘India is not doing enough to protect China border’
  • Salaam Aleikum, China!
  • ‘Don’t make excuses for poor quality Made-in-China’
  • ‘China’s fears about India’s N-sub reveal small heart’
  • ‘China cannot really dump the dollar’
Analysis
  • ‘Disastrous failure of China’s policy in Tibet’
Reports
  • Dear PM, why is India so paranoid?
  • ‘India is misreading Sino-US ties’
  • Obama approval dips on job losses, ineffectual trip to Asia
  • The great Chinese car sales mystery
  • Did Obama stoop too low?

Our columnists
  • Anil Dharker
  • Antara Dev Sen
  • Arati R Jerath
  • Arati R. Jerath
  • Ayaz Memon
  • Cyrus Broacha
  • Dilip Vengsarkar
  • Gaurav Kapur
  • Javed Gaya
  • Madhu Jain
  • Magandeep Singh
  • Malavika Sangghvi
  • Mallika Sarabhai
  • Meghnad Desai
  • N Raghuraman
  • Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr
  • R Jagannathan
  • Ranjona Banerji
  • Robin Sharma
  • Sandeep Shanbhag
  • Sathya Saran
  • Siddharth Bhatia
  • Sidharth Bhatia
  • Suresh Nair
  • Vinay Kamat
Contributors
  • Ankita Pandey
  • Arjun Parthasarathy
  • B Krishnakumar
  • Deblina Chakrabarty
  • Fahad K Samaar
  • Firoz Bakht Ahmed
  • Koel Purie
  • Manjula Pooja Shroff
  • MS Kamath
  • Mukul G Asher
  • Naini Setalvad
  • Pillman
  • Prof R Vaidyanathan
  • R N Bhaskar
  • Rakesh Bhatnagar
  • S Gangadharan
  • Shraddha Jahagirdar Saxena
  • Sumit Chakraberty
  • Vijay L Bhambwani
  • Vivek Kaul
  • Yatin Pandya
  • Zaheer Abbas
Popular Columns »
  • Suresh Nair : 2012: The end?
  • R Jagannathan: Fighting Hindi hegemony
  • Anil Dharker : For Muslims, the enemy lies within
  • Ayaz Memon: Twenty years is a couple of lifetimes in any sport
  • Mallika Sarabhai: Dubai: City of gold
  • Venkatesan Vembu: Before his Asia trip Obama should see 2012
  • Ranjona Banerji : Maharashtra’s issues come home to roost
  • Sandeep Shanbhag : Go for gold — the ETF way
  • R Jagannathan: Pink Panther strikes
  • Sidharth Bhatia : Laurel & Hardy are passé
About us | Contact us | Advertise with us | Subscription | Reprint rights
© 2005-2009 Diligent Media Corporation Ltd. All rights reserved.