Pankaj Mishra

For boys like me, in north Indian railway towns in the '70s and '80s, where nothing much happened apart from the arrival and departure of trains from big cities, the Soviet Union alone appeared to promise an escape from our limited, dusty world.

In 1853, American warships bullied Japan out of centuries of virtual isolation and into the modern world. The threat of force compelled Japan, like India and China before it, to accept trade agreements that were economically ruinous and eroded national sovereignty.

Just as China achieved much more than India in the realm of public health and education under an austere Communist regime, so its economic growth under a capitalist-friendly government strikes a visitor from India as nothing less than spectacular.

I used to be really fat, but now I'm not. I used to have hair, but now I don't. I used to be able to see without corrective lenses, but now I can't. One of these this is exacerbated by the fact that I'm an editor. One of these things is true despite the fact that I'm an editor. One of them has nothing to do with me being an editor.

Whenever somebody folds, say, 'Good laydown.' It encourages them to fold on a later hand because it makes them feel like you had the best hand even if you were bluffing. It's an odd form of flattery that seems to work at the poker table.

Over the past decade... while many businesses have pursued what I call 'business as usual,' I have been part of a different, smaller business movement, one that tried to put idealism back on the agenda.