My Articles 

We are taught that death demands a certain dignity. Whatever our feelings about a person, the conventional response to their passing is restraint: condolences for the family, a moment of silence, perhaps an acknowledgment of the good they did. Yet this convention breaks down spectacularly when a deeply polarising public figure dies. Instead of grief, there may be laughter; instead of Rest in Peace, there may be Good riddance; instead of sympathy, there may be an almost celebr

Long post alert. Blame my whiskey, it was too potent for a weekend! There is an interesting game being played in the booming educational market. Curricula have become brands, schools compete through claims of innovation, and pedagogical frameworks circulate rapidly through conferences, consultancy programmes, professional networks, books and social media. In this environment, adopting something new can itself become a sign of leadership. A new framework, lesson structure or

There are photographs that are taken because something looks beautiful. Then there are photographs that are taken because they preserve a feeling. This was the latter. I clicked this photograph while leaving school for the day, standing on the stairs of the Nalanda Library, looking across at the IB flagship building of Manchester Global School. Above it hung a sky heavy with monsoon clouds, dark enough to promise rain but patient enough to hold back for a little while longer.

Last evening, while gazing upon the Hyderabad skyline from my window, I found myself momentarily arrested by the sight of a crescent moon suspended delicately above the city. It was one of those rare evenings when the heavens briefly forgive urban planning. The moon floated there with old world serenity while beneath it rose the contemporary ambitions of mankind in concrete, glass, and questionable architectural confidence. Cranes stood like mechanical giraffes. Apartment tow

I didn’t expect a pedagogy book to linger in my head the way Teaching and Learning English Literature by Ellie Chambers and Marshall Gregory did, but here we are. It is one of those books you pick up thinking you will borrow a few ideas and quietly move on, only to realise later that it has been rearranging your thinking without asking permission. The reason why I am writing about this is that I stumbled upon it again after I first read it in 2010. This time, as a serious rea

Reflections on John Palmer's 'Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy.' Some books arrive at a moment when one is already prepared to listen. John Palmer’s 'Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy felt like such a book to me. It did not feel like a text I merely read. It felt like a sustained conversation, one that unfolded slowly, sometimes arduously, but always with a quiet insistence that something important was at stake. By the time I finished it, I found myself thinking not

After a year away from it, I have finally started teaching Bob Dylan’s songs in class again, and I cannot express how good it feels....