This year at the Christmas fairs, was it my imagination that made me notice something unusual? Instead of drifting lazily from stall to stall, shoppers were huddled around the cake counters with the seriousness of detectives examining evidence. “Does this cake have enough nuts?” one auntie asked, tapping the box…


Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and writes a daily column, which has graced the pages of over 60 newspapers and magazines, from a daily column in the Khaleej Times, Dubai, the Morning Star, London, and in nearly every state in India, from The Statesman in Kolkata, to the Kashmir Times in Kashmir to the Trinity Mirror in Chennai.