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• Date: Nov 26, 2011
Shortly after it dawned on all and sundry that what was initially thought of as only a gang war, was in fact a concerted attack by terrorists on the night of November 26, 2008, all eyes of the nation, and the world, were trained on Mumbai. The coverage of the attacks was to become a watershed in India’s television history. But hardly had the first night wore on, signs of criticism of the coverage began surfacing. Over Facebook status messages, through SMSs, and subsequently through blogs and other outlets. Even as National Security Guard (NSG) commandos fought a pitched battle...
• Date: Nov 4, 2011
[This is an excerpt from the thesis submitted by Ritwik Ghatak (1925-1976) to the Communist Party of India in 1954. The thesis remained buried for many years, and was accidentally discovered among old files in the Party office in 1993. This is the preamble to the thesis.]
We are witnessing a curious phenomenon today.
We are witnessing an unprecedented expansion of progressive influence in the cultural sphere. Through their art, many common artists, from professional and other fields, are indicating that they are drawing closer to the people.
Artists are taking up the cause of the...
• Date: Sep 5, 2011
The Supreme Court, in 2006, had passed a landmark judgment directing all state governments and the Union government to reform the way police forces function all over the country. One of the directives was that police complaints authorities (PCAs) should be set up in all states. The intention was to make the police accountable for their actions.
The court directed the setting up of both state level and district level police complaints authorities so that they would be easily accessible for all. This was to ensure that complaints against officers of the rank of Superintendent of...
• Date: Aug 16, 2011
It happens with all journalists. You work on a story, watch it slowly build up, wait for an opportune moment, and finally the story never sees the light of day, for whatever reason. I have never cursed myself for stories that have ended up dead, for that was always a frustrating part of the game; but this time I will never be able to excuse myself. For I had wanted to write on the work of a young woman who now lies dead, brutally shot dead this morning.
...
• Date: Jun 2, 2011
The Playing for Change movement has launched a new video, global rendition of the classic Rolling Stones track, “Gimme Shelter.” Playing for Change is a multimedia music project created by the American producer and sound engineer Mark Johnson with his Timeless Media Group, that seeks to bring together musicians from around the world. Playing For Change also created a non-profit organisation called the Playing For Change Foundation which builds music schools for children around the world.
The Playing for Change website says:
...
• Date: May 24, 2011
I was idling away a lazy winter afternoon at office, most probably nine years ago, when I got a frantic call from a friend. Her youngest sister’s husband had been diagnosed with dengue. There was reason to be worried.
They needed blood, latest by nightfall. There was only this one sureshot place in Delhi where you could get the blood you wanted, even if it wasn’t available elsewhere in town. We had to act, fast.
I rushed out of my Kasturba Gandhi Road office and picked up my friend. We made for this locality in North Delhi, a part of the city neither of us had any clue about....
• Date: May 18, 2011
I was a tad surprised when he told me that he wouldn’t be able to meet me late evening since it was late, and he would have to return home. You don’t always expect guys to rush homewards just because it is a trifle late. We had initially planned to meet early evening, but another appointment had held me up. So we caught up on phone, and fixed 8:30 the morrow morn for a tête-à-tête.
Since you don’t expect things to move at the same pace in Kashmir as it does in Delhi, I took it easy. I was late from word go; he wasn’t. The young man was there in the hotel lobby on time....
• Date: Feb 11, 2011
Verses. Poems. Limericks. Whatever they were, I never liked reading them, studying them at school. But sometime in the 1980s I had this friend called Amit. He wrote his self-indulgent poems and implored me to write too; the contagious habit rubbed on to me for a while. Those were frivolous, pretentious verses. Streams of the subconsciousness. Words flowed as they came out, we did not damn them. They created, ostentatiously, meanings as they crystallised on paper. The papers made their way to the waste bins just as fast. Poems were never meant to be retained.
Then came that mistake...
