The long dark tea time of the soul

APJ Abdul Kalam’s tenure as the president of India ends in july next year, and a search has already started to find India’s next head of state. The political temperature is already heating up, with names being propped up from left (Somenath Chatterjee), right (B.S. Shekhawat) and center (Karan Singh). And somebody actually [...]

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Douglas Adams says in one of his books, “nothing travels faster than light with the exception of bad news”. His conjecture is mostly assumed to be true. Bad news always transfers faster than light.
North Korea (DPRK) did its first nuclear test on 9th october and now, depending on who you believe, is either apologetic or [...]

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Despite the (over?)crowding of journalists in Indian blogsophere, and despite recent remarkable collective attempts at fighting censorship by the bloggers of our country, I was slightly disappointed that the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, fearless russian journalist found no mention on prominent Indian blogs. The lack of condemnation of that incident by the Indian government is [...]

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Tabassum guru, wife of Mohammad Afzal Guru, wrote a public appeal for justice which was published on 21st October 2004 in Kashmir Times. Mohammad Afzal guru has beed declared as an accomplice in the attack on the Indian parliament in december 2001, and the death sentence awarded to him by the trial court has been [...]

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When our ‘honourable’ supreme court fixed the date of hanging for Afzal Guru last week, they knew precisely what is going to happen in the coming days. The widespread protests against the judgement in the Kashmir valley, raising Afzal Guru to an iconic stature by the separatists, the fundamentalists grabbing the issue with talks of [...]

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That seems to be the mantra in selecting Rang De Basanti as India’s official entry to the oscars. Of course, we know that it won’t win the nomination for best foreign language film. But we are going there to participate, winning does not matter and its the spirit of participation that needs to be kept [...]

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Dhurli is a nice little village nearly 14 km from my hometown Bacheli. When I was young, a favourite pasttime in the summer holidays used to be to go cycling down from Bacheli to Dhurli, catch up with our friends at Bhansi en-route, go further ahead and rest in the banks of the river Shankani. [...]

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In the beginning, there was darkness. Then after a sustained campaign by activist for around 10 years, the UPA government gave us the right to information (RTI). Right to information is one of the most progressive laws that has been enacted in past 58 years. The aspects of the act was revolutionary, as it attempted [...]

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Peoplesmarch published a email interview they had with CPI(Maoist) Central Committee spokesperson on the events of Nepal and their reaction towards it. In this 13 page interview, Com. Azad puts to rest all expectations of letting up violence in the aftermath of February 2006. He says that Com. Prachanda’s call to them to participate in [...]

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The attack on errabore camp on 17th July has raised quiet a few questions. In our group, chhattisgarh-net, we discussed about it and reached a conclusion that mere condemnation of the incident is not enough. We have decided to petition all the state and national leaders to stop the forced settlements of adivasis in [...]

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