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Crash, Munich: A tale of two stories
• Date published: March 7, 2006
After every Oscar announcement, there are the perfunctory exchanges between those who think the best picture award ought to have gone to this film, and those who reckon it should not to have gone to that. Splitting cinematic hairs makes for good debate. So, that is what we will do this day out. But, we will take only two films into consideration for this blog post – Crash and Munich. Not because one happened to like one and not the other. But, because cinematically the two films throw up a lot of interesting similarities and dissimilarities.
Struggle of the Dongria Kondh people: The media blackout continues
On August 10, a frantic message landed in the mailbox of members of a Facebook group called Save Niyamgiri. Two leaders of the Dongria-Kondh tribe’s resistance to a controversial mine in Orissa’s Lanjigarh were said to have been abducted, and had subsequently gone missing. The two men were reported to have been ambushed at the base of the hill range where they live, bundled into a vehicle at gunpoint, and driven away. They were not being held at local police stations, Lanjigarh or Muniguda. A third person accompanying them was left alone.
HERE'S AN ENCOURAGING UPDATE
Making Cat Calls
Mohammad bin Tughlaq had ruled over vast stretches and tracts of land that today constitute India. He was a great ruler who left behind a legacy. A legacy that is today most identifiable as an adjectival derivative of his name – Tughlaqesque. The word is too complex to have an exact synonym. Tughlaqesque would mean exotic, Quixotic, far-fetched, well-meaning, ill-conceived, arrogant, grandiose, all at the same time. It is also a word that can be routinely associated with India’s later-day rulers. Especially, the ones who have lorded over us since Independence.
There is one Tughlaqesque idea that is doing the rounds these days and the gullible Indian media has fallen flat for it – that of reintroducing the cheetah in India.
Seeing the cheetah in the Indian wild is any Indian wildlifer’s wet dream. It is something that sets our hearts aflutter. But let’s get real and see what this dream is all about.
The minister and his words