Gopal Kaushik, a friend, aptly reacted to Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize with an SMS: “Next year Barack Obama will get Nobel Prize for Chemistry. He’s got just great Chemistry, says Nobel Committee.” — Venkat
Mint Lounge suspended its regular dose of columnists and features today for a special, good-looking, number on Diwali gift items and ideas. But the question that begs the answer: why 104? What is the significance of that number? Possible answers:
1. They didn’t have the 105th idea.
2. Their design guys could fit only 104 items in 24 pages.
3. There are only 104 items on show this Diwali, slowdown you see.
(And I don’t have a 4th answer — venkat)
By BIKRAM VOHRA
I asked a bunch of NRI youngsters if they knew anything about Mahatma Gandhi. I did it over the birthday week as a sort of exercise in curiosity. I was told he was the dude who got shot, right, like John Lennon. I was informed with great panache by another aspiring bank executive that he is the father of the nation cause he told the Brits to get lost. This saga in awareness was further accentuated by the pithy remark that he said, “Hey Ram” when he got shot. continue reading…
By AJAY SINGH
Here’s one image that will haunt the country’s principal opposition party for a long time to come: BJP president Rajnath Singh turning out in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s trademark khaki shorts, sitting demurely in the presence of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. continue reading…
Rahul Gandhi gave the right to ask the first question to JNU students who shouted slogans at the campus last night against the Congress’ role in the 1984 Delhi riots. “Let us first give voice to the opposition,” he said (The Hindu, pg 1). Even if that was tokenism, how many politicians would risk that in India? Well done, Rahul.
The BJP is ready to fight the Haryana elections. Its manifesto is out: The party will ban western music and “indecency in the name of culture”. The next big promise: It will set up a Cow-care Commission, “Gau seva aayog” (The Hindu, pg 5). Cow and Culture. Yessir, that’s what Haryana needs the most. Go, win the elections with that.
By BIKRAM VOHRA
After 40 years in journalism and running 12 newspapers I have to confess to two passions. Aviation and the pursuit of human dignity. In the second category, the judgement by the colour of one’s skin has always burned me up and I see it as the worst form of racism practised with sinister malice in India. continue reading…
By SHRUTI RAO
“Hindi news channels are the worst in the world.”
“Hindi news channels are like the a-hole of the media, dude”.
I’m sure you’ve heard mutations of these statements and if I were to switch on my Realistic, some of you might endorse the view too. At the television news channel boom in my teenage years, I heard channels like Aaj Tak welcomed like there was a new baby in town. Everyone shook their metaphorical hands and said their congratulations. India had 24X7 news. India gave birth to a young ‘un. And here we are in 2009, a few years later, where everything (at least around me and my social circle) seems to be running desperately in a downward spiral.
So what happened between then and now? Why have we, the educated elite, forsaken the child we welcomed only years ago?
By SHRUTI RAO
As an avid, and perhaps guilty reader of HT City and DT- there’s a trend I’ve noticed by the way of gradual percolation in the subconscious [ The guilt, mind you, comes from reading HT City and DT over the national news].
What I noticed at 14-15 in DT, has now blatantly appeared in HT City. Repeated articles. In the same paper. TOI used to run the same articles on the International page in the main paper as the one on it’s last page on DT. I wonder if that still happens now, since I hardly read the main paper anymore.
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