Fake news is nothing new

The ultimate was surely Yudhishthira's immortal "Aswathama hatha...", followed by a whispered "iti narova kunjarova..."

Fake news, now so much in the news thanks to Donald Trump, once threatened to place me in dire peril. Ironically, it also saved me. This is how it happened.

It was a surprise when P A Sangma, a former Lok Sabha Speaker, invited me home to tea in his sprawling New Delhi bungalow. We had met once before in General Jake Jacob’s house in Calcutta but hardly hit it off. Since Sangma was then chief minister of Meghalaya, I mentioned my old friend, Nari Rustomji, who spent almost his entire ICS career in the north-east which he loved dearly and