It is late and I am working on a project for a friend while googling for stats for an article for another company – but I can’t help listening with half an ear to the spouse’s weekly desi news catch-up. Sify.com’s “news” is going on at the mo and the girl wielding the microphone is getting on my nerves big time. The fake accent, the way she keeps saying “McDonnals” and the language! Maybe I have been living in England for way too long so I don’t know when it …

Do you remember when I said I rued the day I decided to go down the Overseas Citizen of India route? Truer words have never been spoken. For the past two weeks, my life has been one long drawn out misery. From 9.00 AM, I dial and re-dial the number for the person who can tell me what happened to my renunciation of Indian citizenship process. Between 9.00 AM and 9.30 AM, the line will go through and the phone will ring out. After 9.30 AM, I will be greeted …

19 years, 400 hearings, 40 adjournments and at the end of it, Ruchika Girhotra‘s family had no justice for the injustice meted out to them in 1990. It was in 1990 that 14-year-old Ruchika was molested by DGP Shambhu Pratap Singh Rathore and within the span of three years, drove the child to take her own life rather than face a day more of torture and harassment at the hands of Rathore and his goons.
And the punishment? Six months imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1000. That is what the …

..is a totally alien concept to most Indians, I know. How the hell can one just stay away when there’s a tempting morsel of gossip just out of reach? Normally one just takes this to be a regular feature of life and moves on. But when some pious individuals go out of their way to spew their venom about someone recently dead, someone who has no way of defending herself, I cannot help but be incensed.
When I first read about the Rinku Sachdeva case, I was shocked. How this …

 
A few weeks back, a top television presenter was caught on camera doing 70 mph on a busy motorway – chatting on his mobile phone. Jeremy Clarkson is well known to Britons and to see him chatting away whilst driving his Merc was too much for the public to bear. A vigilant passerby took a picture of him gabbing away and passed it on to the Daily Mirror. The papers took him to task royally and furious members of the public wrote on public forums everywhere, asking for a serious …

 Fresh out of college, I used to work for a local, city-based portal as a content writer and then later, Web Content Manager. In that guise, I met many interesting characters, attended many functions and generally led an interesting life. But of all the people I met, none affected me more than Vandana and Vaishnavi, founders of women’s charity organisation, Banyan.
I wasn’t a trained journalist so had none of the grit or the backbone needed to tough it out in search of assignments. All I had was a head …

What a busy life it must be, to lead the life of the Indian Moral Police? Never a dull moment in their life, putting out moral fires in every corner of the town, saving the innocent public from the amohttp://im.sify.com/entertainment/movies/images/jan2008/sriyafunction200.jpgral denizens that are out to besmirch the Indian Culture and the rest of it. They have barely sat down after the Shilpa Shetty kissy kissy fiasco, only to bounce up over Shriya’s dress (or lack of) sense.
Actress Shriya, who played Rajini’s love interest in his hit film Sivaji, has …

As you can see from the above vid, there were cars, autos and other vehicles patiently waiting for the road to clear. The decibel level is pretty high too. This was taken at around 9 am in the morning. The same event occurred at 3.00 am that morning (or night – whichever way you look at it!). Understandably, I shot out of bed wondering what the racket was about.

Through bleary eyes, I noticed the devoted mass dancing in the streets. Whilst I do give it to them that they …

Some time back, I volunteered for a couple of hours at P’s school. Being a typical under-funded organization, the school normally asks the parents for any sort of help they can give to assist in the smooth running of it. Parents are regularly urged to devote some of their free time in counting vouchers or peeling carrots or do any one of its zillion jobs. Feeling quite self-righteous, I rolled up the driveway earlier that morning and presented myself for an hour and half worth of odd jobs. I was …

8:00 AM – lazy shuffle to the kitchen, grab a cup of coffee. Sip.
8.05 AM – snatch the morning papers from whoever’s got it. Open eyes.
“Blasts rock Hyderabad” – good morning India.
Why? Wha..? How? To what purpose?
All useless questions.
One humble request to the police and the stellar press photographers, like The Hindu’s Gopal: next time you click your front-page pix of these blast scenes, please think of the term ‘dignity in death’ and cover the dead before you start popping your flash bulbs. I am sure the hearts of the …

Regular readers of my blog know of my desperate attempts to learn to swim. After two terms of learning how to the Brit way and shelling out a whopping £ 95, I still did not feel confident enough to let go of my woggle and the flat floats. Deciding that the Indian brute force approach is the key to jolt me out of my safety zone, I signed up for some swimming lessons locally. (This also had the advantage of providing me with an easy excuse …