Bhery Phunny!

Jo and Woh were two very good friends. And then one day, Jo got scared. And Woh died.

Guess why?

Arey baba, simple...

Jo Dar Gaya Woh Mar Gaya

Hopefully There Is A Method In This Madness

So, The Wall has been breached. Not by a wily opposition, but by five wise men who were once rather eloquently described by Mohinder Amarnath as "a bunch of jokers".

Not that Rahul Dravid, one of only six international cricketers to have scored more than 10,000 one-day runs, would find anything remotely funny in the recent turn of events that finds him out of the Indian cricket side after just one poor series -- that, too, against the world's best cricket team.

For the past couple of seasons, Dravid has increasingly played as the floater in the Indian one-day batting line up. While Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly have both clearly stated their preference to open the innings, Dravid had taken upon himself the tough role of a finisher.

During the last series against Australia, it appeared that the new Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni preferred the hardhitting Robin Uthappa as the side's designated finisher. For the first time in a long and distinguished career, Dravid looked out of sorts in a line up that had the senior pros Tendulkar and Ganguly as openers, the prolific Yuvraj Singh as the new middle-order pivot and Dhoni and Uthappa as finishers.

If such a line up is the blueprint for future, with Ganguly making way for a young tyro somewhere along the future, then there is nothing wrong in axing Dravid. As long as someone in the Indian cricket board had the courtesy to explain in advance to Dravid, the reasons behind his non-selection.

If the dropping, or resting if you may please, of India's most reliable batsman, has anything to do with one bad series against the Australians (and I suspect it being a case of the latter rather than the former) then it is just another sad example of the knee-jerk reaction of a selection comittee that appears even more confused than its predecessor.

The Chairman of selectors, Dilip Vengsarkar not for the first time contradicted himself when he first said that Dravid has been "rested" for the first two one-dayers against Pakistan and then said the senior pro would have to prove his "form and fitness" if he hoped to come back to the Indian team.

Dravid has never been known to be fleet of foot on the field, but he is perhaps India's best slips fielder in both Tests (along with VVS Laxman) and one-dayers. It is difficult to imagine how his agility on the field or his catching in a four-day match for Karnataka is going to help him to return to the Indian one-day side.

If Dravid's ouster from the side raised a few eyebrows, then the decision to bring back Virender Sehwag, not by a long shot in prime form, baffled even more people.

Sehwag was up and down during the Twenty20 World Cup and then again in the recently concluded Challenger series. Every solid performance was followed by a failure, not exactly the sign of a man in form. Having said that, he is just one innings away from his best form is a cricketing adage that fits no one better than Sehwag.

Sehwag's inclusion makes sense only if you are ready to view him as a batting allrounder and utilize the offspin bowling option that he provides. If the Indian team management decide to go in with four specialist bowling options, plus Sehwag, then it does allow the side to play an additional specialist batsman -- either Gautam Gambhir or Rohit Sharma.

Many moons ago, Sourav Ganguly had come up with the inspired decision to ask Dravid to keep wickets. In the bargain, India had got a world class batsman at the number seven slot. In case, Sehwag is groomed as a batting allrounder, it would allow the Indian side to take the field with additional batting firepower.

My ideal eleven for the first one-dayer against Pakistan would be : Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Robin Uthappa, Irfan Pathan, Murali Karthik, Zaheer Khan and S Sreesanth.

Though I daresay the Indian management would play safe and go in with five specialist bowlers. In place of Gautam Gambhir, Harbhajan Singh would come in. Gambhir is in the form of his life (and you can't say the same about Bhajji) and it would be a pity if he was confined to the dressing room. It is difficult to imagine though that the selectors would select Sehwag and not play him in the eleven.

Given the fact that Pakistan is arriving with their first-choice bowling attack -- Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Asif and Umar Gul -- in a long long time, it remains to be seen how the Indian selectors go about their job, not just in the first two matches, but during the rest of the series as well.

As India look for a winning combination that would serve the side well, leading up to the next World Cup, Dhoni and Co could experiment with Irfan Pathan as a new ball bowler. In his heydays Pathan used to be a handful with the new white ball.

Now that Pathan is once again back in the side as a regular, Dhoni could toss the new ball to the erstwhile Sultan of Swing and see whether he can still bring the new white ball back into right handed batsmen with the same devastating effect.

Also in the Indian squad are the young Mumbai middle order bat Rohit Sharma who made such an impressive debut in the Twenty20 World Cup, and rookie all-rounder Praveen Kumar. The tall, well built Kumar is nowhere near express but can be quite nippy on his day and has a happy knack of picking wickets, as he showed during the recently-concluded Challenger Series.

Add to that his ability to wield the long handle, one is not surprised why the selectors, despairing the lack of all-rounders,have so promptly drafted him into the squad. It, however, remains to be seen if Kumar has the ability to deliver the goods at the highest level, or more importantly whether he would even get the opportunity to display his skills.

Some compliment, this!

If India has six better Test batsmen than the Hyderabadi, then my name is Virender.

PETER ROEBUCK on VVS Laxman

Sukumar Ray Didn't Pen This One...

I don't know who wrote this one. Had a laugh reading it. Hope you will have a good time, reading this...

Through the jongole I am went

On shooting Tiger I am bent

Boshtaard Tiger has eaten wife

No doubt I will avenge poor darling's life

Too much quiet, snakes and leeches

But I not fear these sons of beeches

Hearing loud noise I am jumping with start

But noise is coming from damn fool's heart

Taking care not to be fright

I am clutching rifle tight with eye to sight

Should Tiger come I will shoot and fall him down

Then like hero return to native town

Then through trees I am espying one cave

I am telling self - "Bannerjee be brave"

I am now proceeding with too much care

From far I smell this Tiger's lair

My leg shaking, sweat coming, I start to pray

I think I will shoot Tiger some other day

Turning round I am going to flee

But Tiger giving bloody roar spotting this Bengalee

He bounding from cave like football player Pele

I run shouting

"Kali Ma tumi kothay gele"

Through the jongole I am running

With Tiger on my tail closer looming

I am a telling that never in life

I will risk again for my damn fool wife!!!!

Aashchhe Bochhor Abar Hobe

Much as I love blogging, spending Nobomi morning hunched over my laptop wasn't part of the original plan. But things have come to such a pass, with wife and son both down with viral fever, and lovingly returning my favour of tending to them by passing on their infection to me, this is the best on-the-spur-of-the-moment Plan B I could come up with.

Not that Plan A was likely to be any different than other years. Deemer Devil in Kaalibari, Kosha Mangsho in Chittoranjan Park, downing vodkas till late in the night, listening to Mone Podey Ruby Rai blaring as you enter the Rajender Nagar mandap -- that's been pretty much Pujo in Delhi the past few years.

I am more of a Probashi (non-resident) Baangali than a true-blue Delhi Bong. As a bona fide Delhi Bong, one should have ideally been a student of Raisinha Bengali School, one should have spent some, if not considerable, part of one's misspent youth in Chittaranjan Park, and one should be able to speak incorrect Baangla with a certain degree of confidence.

I can't rightfully lay claims to none of the above. And while my command over Baangla is not what it used to be, you still wouldn't catch me introducing myself, a la lot of Delhi Bongs, as : "Ami Baangali hochhi". Years ago, when I first heard that, I couldn't help but retort : "Aato din ki chhili, bhai?"

This Pujo I had made grand plans of spending it with my odd assortment of cousins and uncles in Kolkata. The idea was to indulge in a serious food fest, now that the days of drinking binges are sadly behind me, thanks to those darned clogged arteries. On good days, I romanticize the arteries being filled with vodka and orange juice and butter chicken. On bad days I know better -- it is those bad marriage days that have clogged them arteries.

Anyway, back to my joyous plans for the City of Joy. I would kick off the food fest with Naan and Kosha Mangsho, washed down with a glass (or may be a few bottles?) of beer, on Shoshthi evening at Amber with Partho, more a brother than a brother in law, and Jhili.

Another option was Mutton Biriyani and Kebabs at Zeeshan's, opposite Partho's house in Park Circus. Legend has it there is more oil in Zeeshan's Kosha Mangsho than in entire Saudi Arabia. If he sees me eating there, Sanjay Mittal, my cardiologist, would have a cardiac arrest. On second thoughts Zeeshan is avoidable.

Shoptomi morning, lazing in the bed, may be even catch a movie on HBO or Star Movies. Or may be a shopping expedition to Rashbehari Aveneue to buy a Punjabi (Did I ever tell you about the chaos -- and consternation -- caused aboard Rajdhani Express many moons ago when a train attendant, in an unmistakably Bengali accent that Pronob Babu would have been mighty proud of, announced: "A Punjabi has been found in the bathroom, owner may collect.") One of those Baatik designed kurtas that you would never find at Fab India.

How about Shoptomi evening with Bappa Da, sampling the culinary delights of Park Street?

My favourite Park Street restaurant used to be Skyroom, which shut down years ago. Then it was Waldrof. I used to love the Peking duck at Waldrof. After closing down in 2003, the restaurant relocated on Russell Street, but the food wasn't the same, and worse, the old charm was gone for ever. Today there's no Skyroom, no Waldrof, no Blue Fox. But you can still have that tall glass of Tom Colins in Mocambo. And then try some Chelo Kabab at the slightly rundown Peter Cat.

But don't fret. Nostalgia may take a beating on the newlook Park Street, but Kolkata still offers as many gastronomical choices as Calcutta did. When he heard I was coming down for Pujo, Borokaku had promised a grand Oshtomi dinner at Mainland China, the restaurant that keeps the Chinese flag flying in Kolkata.

Oh, the best laid plans of mice and men! Instead, I had paaurooti (Bengali for bread) dipped in lemon coriander chicken soup from East Patel Nagar's pride, the Baithak restaurant.

BOO-FRIGGIN-HOO.

Twelve hours and a sleepless night later, we are into the aforementioned Nobomi morning, with yours truly hunched over the laptop.

Aashchhe Bochhor Abar Hobe? No way, Baapi!

I am ashamed of being a Bengali, How about You?

I have often asked myself who am I? And while it is easy to say I am an Indian, a bloody proud Indian at that, and every now and then I see myself as a world citizen too. I am not sure if I am a Hindu, not that I am least bit inclined to join any other religion. Truth be told though I am, and have been all my life, an unabashed Bengali.

Everytime I have had the opportunity to do so, I have unequivocally stated "Ami Baangali".

Over the years I have celebrated everything Bengali. I have been rather impressed about the manner we appropriated Jose Barreto from Brazil, Mother Teresa from Albania and Kanchenjungha from Sikkim. "Shala Indira (Gandhi) puro Sikkim niye nilo, aar amra aakta Kanchenjungha nilei joto dosh", a friend of mine had once reasoned. I am not going to translate that, but try arguing with that logic!

Apart from pride, I have felt a certain degree of comfort in being a Bengali. Some of the finest books I have ever read are in Bengali. I dare say there are few better writers in any language than Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay or Sukumar Ray. I simply relish Bangla food -- from luchi aar kosha mangsho to murighonto to shutki maachh to muger daler peethe. I have no doubt at all that Sourav Ganguly has been India's best cricket captain ever.

More than anything else though I have enjoyed being a Bengali because it gives you a certain liberal aura, a secular credential, which is good for your peace of mind. Today I am most miffed, nay deeply upset, because for the first time I find my identity a burden, a shame.

To be sure, when a predominantly Bhadralok crowd lynches a poor pickpocket to death, I feel terrible. When crowds misbehave in Eden Gardens, my blatantly Bengali heart bleeds too. I have cringed when someone tells me that Bengal has the highest number of custodial deaths in the country. First Singur and then Nandigram left me shaken as well as stirred. But I have always believed -- even defended -- such acts as part of deviant behaviour for which you can't hold an entire state responsible.

Last few weeks though, my belief as a Bengali, and my faith in Bengal has taken an unprecedented battering. It is bad enough that the coldblooded killing of Rizwanur, a 3o-year-old graphics teacher who had dared to marry the Hindu daughter of a powerful business tycoon, is being passed off as suicide at a time when there is enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that if even he wasn't physically pushed in front of a train, he was definitely pressurised and pushed to take that drastic step.

More than the government's response, what is far more difficult to stomach is the state of denial people of Bengal choose to live in. Bengalis are known to issue or deny certificates on secularism to the rest of the world, appoint themselves custodians against imperialism, comment on incidents in Vietnam and Venezuela. And now they allow a Rizwanur to sit easy on their collective conscience.

For those who don't know about Rizwanur, these are the bare facts of the case.

Rizwanur Rahman was a 30-year old computer graphics teacher from Kolkata. He was also a Muslim who fell in love with and married a Hindu girl Priyanka Todi, who happened to be the daughter of Ashok Todi, a member of the Todi multimillion dollar Lux hosiery brand. Priyanka eloped and married Rizwanur on August 18, but her family lodged a missing persons report and eventually an abduction complaint against Rizwanur. The Kolkata police started harassing him to return his wife back to her family.

Priyanka did not want to go back to her family, but was told by the cops that her father was seriously ill. On September 8th, Rizwanur and Priyanka relented and she went back to live with her family for a week. The family however did not allow Priyanka to return back to Rizwanur.

On September 16, Rizwanur, realising that his wife would not be returned to him, sought help from the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights, a human rights organisation. In a written complaint to APDR, he stated that he wasn’t getting any help from the cops - in fact he was being harassed and pressurised by them.

Five days later, on September 21, Rizwanur Rahman was found dead, lying on the railway tracks between Dum Dum and Bidhannagar stations. Within literally minutes, the Kolkata police chief Prasun Bannerjee had declared Rizwanur had committed suicide.

This is not the first time in our secular socialist republic, a Hindu-Muslim marriage has resulted in death. Caste panchayats in large chunks of north India have -- regularly and with impunity -- ordered killings of young men and women who have married outside their castes or religion.

Bengal, you thought, was different. Who can forget the face of the man who lost his family in the Gujarat riots and was given a job and shelter in West Bengal? Now that face has been replaced in my mind and memory by that of Rizwanur Rahman.

There have been protests by members of the intelligentsia and odd articles in the media. But there has to be, there should have been, a bigger display of anger, a more sustained agitation against the West Bengal government's stand on the Rizwanur case. Isn't this after all a state where people take to the streets over a soccer match?

When I visited Ahmedabad during the 2002 anti-Muslim riots what bothered me was the promptness with which the Hindus I spoke to, dissociated themselves from the violence around them. "We don't know what was going on", "We didn't kill any Muslims", was always the stock response. As if their lack of knowledge or complicity somehow made the killings more acceptable.

Hungarian-born Gitta Sereny spent ten years in post-Second World War Germany and interviewed over 10,000 Germans, trying to find their guilt in the events leading up to the deaths of six million Jews. "Not a single person was willing to take even moral or emotional responsibility for what had happened," wrote a very perturbed Sereny. According to her, that attitude was as much to blame as Hitler's policies for the genocide.

Bengal can't afford a similar stand on Rizwanur. It can't hide behind the fig leaf of "It was suicide, and not murder". It doesn't matter if a frustrated Rizwanur threw himself before a train. You have to look at -- take a VERY HARD look -- the situation which prompted Rizwanur to take such a step. Not many years ago, another young man, a brother of mine, had chosen to end his life on the railway track. I know first hand the trauma, the turmoil that prompts one to take a step like that.

Earlier today, the West Bengal chief minister, facing flak from the media and under pressure from his own allies, ordered the transfer of the Calcutta police commissioner and four other police officials. For me, it is too less too late. Transfers are merely symbolic, and simply a politically expedient move. Albeit a step in the right direction, much more (read exemplary punishment) needs to be done, before Bengal or the West Bengal government can hold its head high.

About a hundred years ago, Rabindranath Tagore had returned his knighthood in protest, against the then Partition of Bengal. I have no fancy titles or medals to return to anyone. But if the West Bengal chief minister doesn't take prompt remedial action or if my beloved Bengal continues to live in denial on the Rizwanur issue, I might just give up something as dear to me as my life. My identity as a Baangali.

It is time Buddhababu and rest of Bengal realise that the difference between Modi and Todi should be more than just a letter in the English language.

Indian Village of Identical Twins Pose DNA Puzzle

Almost adjacent to the civilian airport in Allahabad, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is the village of Mohammad Pur Umri. As you drive into Umri, it doesn't look any different than scores of other such villages in the area. Once inside though as you look at the faces staring back at you, one may be forgiven for thinking that you have stepped into the sets of a sci-fi film on cloning.

For one in ten births in this village of eight hundred odd people involves twins, most of them identical, thus making it the highest concentration of identical twins anywhere in the world.

For the past few months, scientists from around the world are flocking to Umri to try to find out why an extraordinarily large number of identical twins are being born there. Ever since a local daily carried the story about the unusually high incidence of identical twins in Umri, scientists and members of the international media have descended upon this sleepy hamlet.

Globally, the odds of a woman giving birth to identical twins is one in 300.

Over the last 10-15 years, the number of twin births has gone up significantly," Netaji, a village headman who has lived in Umri for over 70 years, told me. "There would have been many more, but infant mortality has claimed many lives," he added.

Among the visitors has been a team of DNA experts from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad. They have been busy collecting blood samples from the residents of Umri, which is viewed as a "genetic gold mine" in the scientific community.

Identical twins emerge from a single fertilised egg, while non-identical twins are born if a woman carrying two eggs has both fertilised simultaneously. But scientists remain unsure if twinning is entirely a chance phenomenon.

DNA experts hope the blood samples of Umri's residents will provide a clue to whether there is a genetic basis for it, and if DNA rearrangement during the embryonic development is responsible.

One theory put forward has been that the high numbers of twins is due to the high number of marriages between relatives, which, in this predominantly Muslim village, are encouraged.There are not many takers for this theory, though.

While villagers admit that marriages between relatives are not infrequent, they dismiss the theory that inbreeding is the reason for the unusually high number of identical twins. According to them, marriages between relatives take place in other Muslim-dominated villages too - yet these places do not have as many twins as Umri.

"We believe these twins are a gift from God, and nothing else," village leader Netaji said. "The land of this area, between the two great rivers, Ganges and Yamuna, is very fertile. That is why this phenomenon occurs.Whether it's sugar cane or twin children, this land has always been very fertile," Netaji tells me with an unmistakable air of pride.

While scientists may beg to differ with this interesting explanation, many of the other villagers are quick to agree with their village headman.

Netaji introduces me to Abu Saad, a 20-year-old who has two pairs of twin sisters among his eight siblings. As we walk towards his house to meet his siblings, Saad explains to me : "This phenomenon is partly a gift of nature, and partly a gift of the land of this village. There's something in the soil that produces so many identical twins." Experts at CCMB claim that two pairs of identical twins in the same family is "an extremely rare occurrance".

The most celebrated twins in the village are the oldest surviving ones, Guddu and Munnu. Guddu said that even his wife occasionally gets confused between the two - one of a great number of stories of confusion involving the twins throughout the village.

"Once my brother had a quarrel with someone in the neighbourhood," Gudu recalled. "When I saw him being taken away by the police, I followed, trying to find out what had happened.

"As I approached a policeman, he angrily asked me to accompany him to the station. I told them I wasn't the person they'd first held - I was wearing a white suit, my brother was dressed differently. "But they wouldn't listen. I was only let out when the confusion cleared, a few hours later."

The young twins of Umri attract a lot of attention at a nearby madrasa, or Islamic school. A very Indian custom of dressing up identical twins in the same clothes has only made matters worse for the teachers, who find it hard at the best of times to differentiate between the children. The scope for confusion, and the odd mischief, is endless.

Meanwhile, scientists in hi-tech labs thousands of miles away from the dust bowl of Umri will continue to peer down their microscopes and try to match DNA strains, seeking an answer to one of the more baffling genetic puzzles of our times.

Akbar, Tansen, Shashi Kapoor and Me

Dad has this theory. For Tansen to perform the way he did, he needed the patronage of Akbar. As one of the nine jewels in Emperor Akbar's court, Tansen didn't have to worry about earning money and he happily immersed himself in music. In my years of mispent youth (and even during years well past my youth) as I chased my share of improbable dreams, Dad left me in no doubt that I could do so only because he played the benevolent Akbar.

Over the years, though I benefited considerably from Dad's somewhat patronising patronage, it is not the Akbar-Tansen model that has enthused, even inspired, me as much as the Shashi Kapoor school of creativity.

The man with that famous bucktoothed smile made pots of money by acting in the crassest of Bollywood films, and then spent that money in financing and producing cinematic gems like Junoon, 36 Chauranghee Lane and Kalyug.

In an interview to an English daily in London sometime ago, the suavest member of Bollywood's first family said it had not been easy to juggle his priorities between mainstream Bollywood films in which he acted and the films that he produced. And then there was his first love, theatre. Kapoor has admitted more than once while films earned him wealth and success, it was theatre which taught him his craft.

Not that I didn't enjoy Shashi Kapoor's acting in mainstream Hindi movies. I loved him in Kabhi Kabhie. I thought he was very nice in Kala Pathhar, where his offer to the baddies to try daalmooth with Limca still stands out in my memory. He was eminently watchable in Deewar, where he had that unforgettable "Mere paas Maa hai" dialogue.

The man had more than Maa going for him. He had the redoubtable Jennifer Kendall as his wife and oodles of common sense and creative energy with which he not only re-started Prithvi Theatre, but also made some of the finest movies one ever saw.

As a freelance journalist, I have tried -- with varying degrees of success and on a very small scale -- to do the same with my own life. I have done projects which would make me money in the hope that the same money would allow me to do projects that are close to my heart. There have been occasions when such endeavours have met with considerable success and I can also remember moments when my plans came unstuck rather spectacularly.

More than once I have lain sleepless on my bed, wondering where the next pay cheque is going to come from. But there have been moments -- more than one, too -- when I have been deliriously happy and not a little proud of the work I have been able to produce. At the end of the day, and I so hope the end is still some distance away, I would be happy with that on my epitaph.

Right now as I mull over my latest project -- a ghost written book on medical tourism for an American client -- I am glad "Mere paas Shashi Kapoor hai" for inspiration.

Trout curry, Vodka and a Slice of Green Chilly

No Einstein, me. But right now I feel I am in the same league, having discovered an equation which is of no less importance to mankind than the one the old man had figured out.

Mine is considerably simpler than Einstein's E is equal to MC square. It reads :
Heaven = Trout curry, vodka, lime and a slice of green chillies.

And if you figure out the right location, as I have (thanks to a friend, with whom I guess I will have to share the Nobel. The Swedish Academy has decided on the prize, they are just quibbling about the category, I'm told), then this could well be a lifechanging experience for one.

Let me elaborate...

To begin at the beginning, on Thursday a friend of mine called up from Mandi in Himachal Pradesh, inviting me to spend a few days in the hills. I have itchy feet anyways. Besides his logic was impeccable -- this time of the year the weather is so good in the hills, it is silly to waste it on Delhi.

So, yesterday I took the morning flight to Kullu. My friend, Sudripto, a senior official with the Himachal Pradesh government picked me up from the small picturesque Bhuntar airport. I thought we were going to Mandi, but Sudripto had other plans. We crossed the bridge over the Beas river and went into Parvati valley. "Let me take you to a place called Kasol," he said, as he drove on.

We had been driving for an hour on this mountain road, with dense forest on either side of the road. Across the forest there was a mountain river. We couldn't see it, but by God, we could hear it alright. Increasingly it was difficult for us to hear each other above the noise of the river. And, then suddenly, my friend braked, stopped the vehicle in the middle of nowhere. He got down from the vehicle and, without a word of explanation, waded inside the forest to our left. I had no choice but to follow him. I had no clue where we were going, but I knew we were getting closer to the river.

After about five minutes of walking, he said : "Now close your eyes, and hold my hand and walk." And then my eyes closed and holding his hand, we walked for ten, may be fifteen minutes. "Ok, stop," he said, "now open your eyes."

And I saw heaven on earth.

Where we were standing, to my left, about five hundred metres away was that mountain river, in full spate. To the right, was the forest through which we had driven and then walked. We were on this grassy valley. Ahead of me, in the distance was a mountain that looked like a giant Christmas tree, the green leaves and white snow was so evenly distributed. What held my attention was neither the mountain river, nor the Himalayan version of the Christmas tree.

My eyes were locked on a beautiful two-storeyed grey building, sitting in the middle of this picture postcard location. "It is a Swiss chalet," my friend whispered in my ears. "Th-this is heaven", I found myself muttering.

Over the years, I have travelled a lot, and been fortunate to see many wonderful places. But this was something else. The scenery, the serenity of the place, it took your breath away. The air was so fresh, so crisp you could feel it, even hear it softly hitting your cheeks. During my first few moments, I didn't utter a word, moved around quietly, tiptoeing on the soft grass under my feet. One felt like an intruder who had walked in through the gates of heaven. A jarring movement, any loud noise, you feared, would break the spell, and you will once again find yourself in a Rajouri Garden mall.

And then a tall dark man, with a hint of a stoop, came out of the doors of the chalet and walked towards us. He greeted my friend and smiled at me. The spell was broken. But thankfully I had not been transported to the aforementioned mall.

"This is Sanjoy... He owns this place," Sudripto said. Sanjoy smiled again, and made a gesture with his hand, and a minion materialized. Sudripto directed him to bring our bags from the jeep. It was about 11.30 in the morning, and i felt hungry enough to eat a horse.

Sudripto went to the chalet. Sanjoy guided me to the riverside. Up close the river looked rather wide, I sat on the cool grass on the banks of the river. Sanjoy leaned against a boulder, then reached in the crevice between that boulder and the next one, and came up with a bottle of Smirnoff, and two glasses. I sat there, making a mental note to search other boulders later. He dipped the glasses in the river, filled half of the glasses with crystalclear water and then poured a generous measure of vodka. Another minion, as if on cue, showed up with a plate of sliced lime and sliced green chillies, which were duely added to our vodka.

Sanjoy handed me a glass held up his own, using the sliced chilly as a stirrer, and then said, "Cheers, Rajan", his first words after we had reached Kasaul. As I looked around, there was not a human being in sight. "The nearest village is three kilometres up that road you drove down," explained Sanjoy, who said it was the "middle of nowhere" look of the place which first attracted him to build the chalet here.

Sudripto joined us a little later, a drink in hand. A simple but yummy lunch followed a little later on the river bank. Deliciously spiecey trout curry and piping hot rice. "We get the trout from the river here", said Sanjoy. But, of course.

Later in the day, after I had woken up from a lazy afternoon nap, as dusk was slowly descending upon Kasaul, Happy Singh visited us. The tall strapping Sardar was as loud as this place was quiet. He had a trout farm not too far away. He obviously knew his way around, and quickly poured himslf a peg that would have had the Patiala peg squirming in acute inferiority complex, and then made himself comfortable next to me. He smiled at me, then pointed to Sudripto, and said : "Sir's friend, my friend."

A little later, he expertly rolled a perfect joint and handed it to me. I lit it and blew a lazy smoke ring, then after two wholesome puffs offered it to Happy. He politely declined, "I don't smoke. I am a Sikh," he explained, a fact that evidently didn't prevent him from either procuring the stuff or rolling it with such expertise. A few, nay a lot, more drinks into the night, Happy Singh departed but promised a la Doug MacArthur that he would return.

That was yesterday.

This morning I woke up to the noise of children playing. I looked out of the window of my first floor room. Sanjoy and Sudripto, half a dozen young children, presumably from a nearby village, and three white men were playing an enthusiastic, if raucous, game of soccer. The time on my watch showed eight. Another picture postcard moment, I said to myself.

The white men were staying at the chalet. I met two of them at breakfast. One was an Italian writer who had booked an apartment for three months. He had come to finish his book here and was going to be in Kasaul till December end. Another was an English musician, who was most excited about the cookies he planned to bake later. This was his second trip to the chalet. He had come here in 2005 and fell in love with the place.

Breakfast was followed by a tour of the chalet. The two floors are divided in four two-room apartments. You can rent an apartment for a minimum of fifteen days. And though there is no official policy, Sanjoy did admit that writers, artists or musicians were preferred as boarders. The rooms are fitted with large screen TV and Bose audio system. There is internet connectivity but no telephones. Sanjoy said: "I never advertise this chalet. I get my customers through word of mouth publicity." Considering that he is booked till early 2009, I guess he isn't doing too badly.

In the basement, one half houses a bakery, where from bread to cookies to pastries, everything is baked to order. "I encourage the guests to bake," Sanjoy said. He added, there is no fixed menu card. Trout and jungle fowl, both found in plenty nearabouts, are the main attractions, fresh vegetables are purchased from the nearest village. And now and then, somone like Happy Singh would show up wth a wild boar, and there would be a bonfire and a feast.

It was the second half of the basement which caught my eye. It was loaded with books. English, fiction and non fiction, French, German, Spanish even Bengali books. What impressed me was the breadth of the collection --from travelogues to thrillers to biographies. There was enough to house a library and more. And then there were the DVDs. Hollywood classics, European cinema, Iranian films, and of course plenty from Bollywood and a surprising number of documentaries. "Everytime I go to Delhi or Calcutta, I pick up books and DVDs," said Sanjoy, who, Sudripto said, was an M Phil in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University in Calcutta.

I write this blog post on my laptop, sitting on the boulder which doubles up as Sanjoy's outdoor bar. It is past three in the afternoon. Riverwater smashes on the rocks and splashes on my feet, and the sun feels lovely on my back.

There is murder on my mind. Ever since I came here yesterday, a thought has crossed my mind more than once -- to bump off Sanjoy, take over this property and the rest of his life and never return to Delhi.

A Little Bit of Insanity Wouldn't be Out of Place ...

Khairlanji disturbs me, bothers me, at many levels.

Perhaps more than the killings in Khairlanji, it is the response to the violence, or the lack of it, that bothers me more. More than 24 hours after the incident no FIR was registered. Despite eyewitness accounts that the women were raped till they died and even after their death they were raped, the government dropped rape charges against the accused because of "lack of evidence".

There is no need to use words like "sensational" or "brutal" to describe what happened in Khairlanji. You can see all those adjectives and more in the eyes of Bhaiyalal Bhotmange.

Bhaiyalal's eyes still haunt me. As he talks to you, you can see his eyes replaying the events leading up to the killings. Everytime he rcounts the incident in a court or in front of the media, his wife and daughter get raped again, his sons get killed again.

I can't forget the look of terror on the face of the Dalit eyewitness who has to stand in an open court and testify against some of the most powerful men in his village -- a village where his entire family lives. More than once, he and his family have been threatened. After all the threats, the act of standing in that courtroom requires courage that you and me might find difficult to even imagine.

It is not just those eleven incarcerated men whose presence in the court scares the eyewitness. It is the entire village of uppercaste families, which has just three Dalit Buddhist families. Heavy police presence in the area has prevented any untoward incidents so far. But the police wouldn't be there indefinitely. Once the police leave, fear NGO activists in Bhandara and Nagpur, all those who have dared to depose before the court will have to bear the brunt of uppercaste wrath.

Today, entire Khairlanji suffers from collective amnesia. None of the residents can throw any light on how the entire Bhotmange family perished. No one in the village heard the screams of the Bhotmange boys when their legs were broken, or the cries of Surekha Bhotmange and her daughter Priyanka when they were raped.

It is difficult to calmly report from a place like Khairlanji, it is difficult to maintain objectivity. Having said that, it would be criminal to report calmly from Khairlanji. Your blood should boil by what you see. I think for far too long far too many of us have remained calm. We have calmly reported Khairlanjis, we have calmly debated over Khairlanjis and then we have calmly gone to sleep, to wake up next morning and calmly move on to perhaps other Khairlanjis.

Khairlanji sorely tempts you to take recourse to other means, means that go against the laws of the land. It provokes the latent arsonist in me. I want to jolt some people out of their calmness. I want to ask some people how calmly they would react to agricultural implements being shoved up the private parts of women in their families. I want to torch a few courthouses which go slow on such cases.

The sorriest, most sordid thing about Khairlanji is what happened there is NOT out of the ordinary as far as crimes against Dalit go. Over the past twenty years I have worked with, and known, some of the finest men and women who have produced top quality journalism in the most trying circumstances. I am a very proud member of this much-reviled Fourth Estate. But Indian mainstream journalism will have to collectively bear the cross of not reporting either the frequency or the savagery of anti Dalit violence.

As a journalist, I wouldn't describe myself of being either scoop-hungry or click-happy. But when I look back upon the past couple of decades, I have to confess there were times when I had been a silent spectator to acts of barbarism. While largely it is my fault, it is partly because of our training as a journalist to faithfully recount, to report what has happened and then de-involve oneself. That training is meant to ensure that one retains one's sanity even as one reports on the madness all around.

But Khairlanji, and other such incidents, do raise an important issue -- after seeing all this, what kind of a human being would, or even should, remain sane?

Of Dadu, Thakuma and B-52 bombers

One winter afternoon sometime in the early 90's, my then boss and only guru in journalism, John Dayal asked me to accompany him to a funeral. An uncle of his had passed away. As the congregation broke up after the funeral and we headed back to our car, John had his hand on my shoulder and said : "Rajan, when you are in your thirties and forties one of the worst things you have to come to terms with is the deaths of people you have grown up with."

I was all of twenty six then, full of life, and didn't quite grasp the full import of what the man was saying. Over the past decade and a half, many things that John ever told me have come true. At funerals, at cremation grounds, at mortuaries, as people whose presence in my life I had always taken for granted left, there have been many occasions -- far too many for my liking, if you ask me -- when John's words echoed in my ears.

As a journalist I have learnt to report deaths with a detachment I am not terribly proud of. Yet there have been moments in my personal life when I have been glad that I have had that training (that is, if you can ever be trained for such a thing), for it has helped me to cope.

Today, sitting in my writing den, as I randomly flipped through my diary of memories, a date looked back at me. September 29th. No, no one close to me died on this day. In fact, it happens to be my grandfather's (my dad's dad) birthday. One of the first losses in life I had to cope with was that of my grandfather's.

Had been around today, he would have been 107 years old. He was born in 1900, my grandmother used to tell me. She said it in a manner as if it somehow made him special. Born a century later, he could have been a millenium baby, and Barkha Dut would have possibly interviewed my great grandparents on NDTV.

A bit special he was though, say those who knew him. He was a towering figure not just physically -- he was close to six foot tall (every generation we have been losing four inches). He was a poet, he was a writer, he was a playwright, he was a journalist and from what I have heard from my Dad and my uncles he was a great cook (I am told, he cooked a mean mutton).

He spent more than five years in jail in three different stints during India's freedom struggle. He was a senior functionary of the Congress party when Bengal was still undivided and even included Assam in its fold. The Britishers charged just two journalists under the Sedition Act. One was Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who published Swaraj. And the other was my grandfather, Binod Bihari Chakraborty, who edited Janashakti. Oldtimers still talk about the tough line that Janashakti took against the British.

My first ten years of life coincided with his last ten. By then Partition, penury and Parkinson's Disease -- in that order -- had shrunk the once tall frame. His voice trembled when he spoke, his hands shook when he tried to hold something, he spoke slowly as if weighing his words carefully. But as I listened to him, even as an eight year old I realised I was on to a special thing.

He was the first, and until now one of the finest, storytellers I ever met. He told me stories of our native place, Sylhet. Of his childhood there, of the fresh air and plentiful fish in Surma river. He told me about books and food and politics. He told me about the time Gandhi and Nehru visited Sylhet. There was a twinkle in his eyes as he described Subhash Chandra Bose's visit to our native home in Sylhet. On other occasions, he would tell me stories of my father and my uncles, how precocious they were.

He rarely spoke about his life in Calcutta. But I remember, quite distinctly, 'Ami Boro Hobo' and 'Dakinir Chawr', two books that he mentioned and even bought for me. Speaking haltingly he told me how he had written the scripts for both the novels, but they were eventually published under the names of more famous authors. He never told me how that came about.

But even now I can sense the injustice he must have felt. He had written the scripts at a time when he was financially down. The books would have helped him and his family financially, but more than all that he had the look of a man who had been swindled. After all those years, the hurt was still there. And after all these years, it still bothers me.

One of these days, I would dearly love to sort out all his work and publish an anthalogy.

Great though my grandfather was-- as a storyteller and as a human being, he wasn't my first hero. That was my grandmother, my thakuma. As short as he was tall, she was every bit as tough as him and more. As a teenage sister to two brothers who were armed revolutionaries, my thakuma proved her toughness (and her loyalty to their cause) by spending a night alone in the local cremation ground.

"My brothers and their friends often hid their weapons at the cremation ground and me and a few other friends of mine were asked to look after the cache", she would tell me nonchalantly. I sat there, all of nine years old and wide-eyed, picturing my thakuma in the dead of the night , in a cremation ground, holding a revolver in her hand. I felt so excited as if I was the one who was holding the pistol.

After her marraige to my grandfather, she converted to the cause of Gandhi and non-violence. She took part in the non-co-operation movement against the British and was jailed for over six months. First in Sylhet, when my grandfather was incarcerated and then in post-partition Calcutta, she showed a lot of guts and held her nerve in very tough times to keep her flock of young children together.

If you ask me what is the most remarkably romantic thing I have ever seen in my life, it has to be my thakuma learning English in her later years so that she could read out loud the newspaper to my grandfather, whose failing eyesight deprived him of his biggest pleasure, reading. I remember going to school in the early seventies, as my grandparents sat on the verandah in the morning sun, my grandmother reading out stories of American B-52 bombers bombing Vietnam.

Those days there were fewer newspapers around, but somehow their worldview appeared far broader than what it is today. The front page of Hindustan Times often had the Vietnam War as the lead story. Happily, those were days when the importance of the story prevailed over its geographical location.

Those were some of the best years of my childhood, when my grandfather told me ghost stories and my grandmother made the yummiest most lipsmacking chholar daal with a dash of coconut. During those days had I been a journalist, I would not have had to be defensive, explaining to someone why the killing of a South Delhi couple was necessarily front page news, and the story of 15 people hacked to death by Ranbir Sena near Gaya deserved just three paragraphs on page 13.

I guess the world, and not just newspapers, was a lot less insular. And I was a nine year old without care in the world. I had not met John Dayal yet, and the loss that tormented me most was Jai's death in Sholaay.

Some fairytales Just Continue...

If the one-day cricket World Cup was a sponsors' nightmare, then the inuagural Twenty20 World Cup was surely dreamt up in the heaven for cricket fans. A fortnight of exciting matches later, an India Pakistan summit clash. Cricket's version of Brazil versus Germany or Federer versus Nadal.

Does it get any better? Can it possibly get any better?

But it does. The fairytale continues. Brazil, oops, India wins. In the final over the tournament. With just three balls to go. And one scoring stroke separating the winner from the loser. On second thoughts, this one was possibly dreamt up in a bookies' heaven.

And what a fairytale it has been for India, twice on the brink of elimination. Done in by the weather against Scotland, then a tie against Pakistan. And then after a narrow loss against New Zealand, once again faced with early exit. Then four wins, including back to back ones against South Africa and Australia, ending in the title triumph against Pakistan. Add to that mix Dhoni's captaincy and his coolness, Yuvraj's six hitting, Pathan's comeback, RP Singh's bowling, Rohit Sharma's debut, and you are tempted to look for a stronger word than fairytale.

Purists, eat your heart out. Twenty20 is not just here to stay, but for ICC bosses, worried over dwinding revenues from the game save for the Indian sub-continent, it is a blessing from the Gods. And as the packed stadia in South Africa showed, the viwers simply love the newest and zanniest form of the game.

From the first ball, which the irrepressible Chris Gayle smashed to the fence, to the last which went up into the sky, and then was willed by a billion prayers into the hands of a gleeful Sreesanth, this tournament has had success written all over it.

The ads have kept coming and ESPN is laughing all the way to the bank. At Durban, at Johannesburg and Cape Town, the crowds kept coming in, music blared, cheer girls danced, beer flowed and sixes rained. Even after the home team crashed out, you couldn't wipe the smiles off the faces of the South African cricket officials -- they knew they were on to a good thing here.

Thirty years after what one day cricket did to Test cricket, the game's shorterst format is all set to do the same to cricket's shorter version. Contrary to the fears of many purists then, one-day cricket has, over the years, given the viewers a more exciting brand of the game. It has not killed Test cricket, in fact it has had a salutory effect on the most traditional form of cricket. Fielding has inmproved out of sight, as have scoring rates, in Test matches, and dreary draws have gone out of the window, reviving spectator interest.

And now Twenty20 is likely to do a similar favour to one-day cricket and even Test matches. Over the past two weeks, we have seen some great fielding, canny bowling in a format that so obviously favours batsmen, and of course clean and spectacular hitting.

Throughout the tournament, India has been electrifying in the field -- plucking catches out of thin air, effecting run outs with direct hits. It bears little resemblance to the side that less than a month ago appeared to be writing a coaching manual on how to grass sitters.

Look at Pakistan. The game's most temperamental side has been oh-so-cool. Shoaib Malik's young side has added considerable purpose to their innate panache. The result has been spectacular. Though Pakistan may mourn that they were just one scoring stroke away from the World Cup, they have already done enough to exorcise the demons that have haunted Pakistan cricket for almost a year now.

Some, if not a lot, of these skills that have been on display in South Africa are bound to be carried over to the other formats of the game as well.

The inaugural Twenty20 World Cup has already added to the game's lexicon a new cricketing term, the Ashraful, the scoop behind the wicket that the Bangladesh skipper, Mohammad Ashraful seems to have perfected. In fact, the Ashraful turned out to the tournament's last -- and possibly the most decisive -- shot, as Pakistan's Misbah-ul-Haq, who had done little wrong until then, attempted to play it but failed to clear fine leg, posted within the 30 yard circle.

Haq, Pakistan's find for the tournament, might rue the moment he chose to play that shot. But you can bet that in the days and months to come, in the galis and bylanes of Rawalpindi and Baroda, in cricket academies in Perth and Colombo, young men will try hard to perfect the Ashraful.

Simply because that is the way of this game. And there in lies the beauty of cricket.

Once India's Grain Basket, now a Basket Case

"You stand on the highway here... and stop the next fifty young men who are travelling on that road. Ask them what do they want to do in life, and they'll all tell you : 'Hamara visa lagwa do' (please get us a visa)," says the village headman in Chhauni, on the outskirts of Hoshiarpur.

Punjab is losing its young men at an alarming rate. After one generation was wiped out by violence, another generation has packed its bags and is queuing up outside the visa offices. Canada is the preferred destination. The US and UK will do too. Thousands have applied to go to Australia and New Zealand as well.

The joke goes, when Neil Armstrong took his first tentative steps on Moon, he was a happy man. He was after all the first human being to reach Moon. And then he met Banta Singh. A surprised Armstrong asked : "When did you come here, Banta?" Banta, who was a cabbie, calmly replied : "Mai to partition de baad hi aa gaya si (I came here right after Partition)"

Point is, the Sikhs have been always known as enterprising travellers. But now they have been afflicted by a serious travel bug. As you go from cities to towns to mofussils to villages, one can witness this desire to move, to get out of India.

In the Doaba region, in Ludhiana, in Jalandhar, in Hoshiarpur, in town after town after town in Punjab, people are spending small fortunes to get out India. They want to leave India any which way they can. Travel agencies have mushroomed like a cottage industry in these towns, and there are numerous instances of gullible immigrants taken for a ride by fly-by-night operators.

In Punjab villages, most afternoons you see the strange sight of young men and women practising singing and dancing in open fields. They are members of the local bhangra (popular dance form) club, whose sole objective of existence is to garner an invite to perform in a foreign land.

There have been several instances of Bhangra clubs travelling to some cultural festival in Canada and England, and then some members of the troupe never come back. As the Punjab police investigate what is believed to be a rather elaborate network which is involved in human trafficking, many such Bhangra clubs are being investigated too.

Then few years ago there was the case of Jassi, a rather enterprising Sikh lady based in England, who would come to Punjab every few months and get married to a Sikh boy who was keen to settle outside. By the time she was caught, she had duped fourteen such men. A journalist friend who was covering the story later told me, most of the fourteen husbands were more concerned about their missed opportunity to live in England, than having their hearts broken by their much married spouse.

Ten years after the Malta boat tragedy, when a boat carrying hundreds of South Asian immigrants (almost half of them young men from Punjab) sank off the coast of Malta, peeple are still willing to risk life and limb to get out of the state. What worries you are the reasons why these people are so desperate to leave.

No big industry is coming up in the state. Unemployment rate is alarmingly high. School dropouts have gone up over the years. And what is not good news for the society at large is that a large number of the youth is on drugs.

From drugs sold across the counter to the more serious stuff perocured illegally, drug consumption is rather high in Punjab. "For some, availability of easy money (through foreign remittances from family members) is diriving them to drugs. Others are battling with stagnation and reaching out for drugs," explains a health worker in a de-addiction centre in Chandigarh.

The drug problem in Punjab is so serious that a few years ago the state juidiciary ordered that all heroin and other drugs confiscated by the Punjab police and kept in police warehouses as evidence should, in fact, be burnt. It is believed that the court feared some of the drugs stored in police warehouses were being sold in the open market.

"No one wants to stay here and farm and till his land," laments my farmer-turned-journalist friend. The brutal truth in the home of Green Revolution is that agriculture is not the most sought-after means of earning livelihood. Though many farmers benefitted financially from the Green Revolution, the prosperity affected the next generation in a different way.

The rich children of the hardworking farmers who ushered in a revolution in agriculture don't want to break their back, tilling the land. You can see the Green Revolution's Gen Next, dressed in Levi's and Reeboks and driving SUVs. It is evident they find agriculture unsexy. So, hired labour has moved into the state in lakhs over the past couple of decades to work in the fields.

The disease profile in this state has changed. Punjab now has diseases which were not there in the state even thirty years ago, says a senior doctor in Chandigarh. The exodus from the state has been matched by the influx of agricultural labour into the state from Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa. These people have brought with them diseases that were not heard of in Punjab earlier.

"Quality of life here (in Punjab) has declined over the years," explains my friend Khushwant, over drinks in the evening. "Though less than what it should be, money is still coming from agriculture, and the high volume of remittances from the state's large NRI population presents a picture of affluence. Truth is, the situation is rather dismal," he adds.

I ask him to elaborate. "Punjab has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country," he goes on. Over the past couple of decades, industrial development in the state never kept pace with agriculture. And now with agriculture in the decline, and the industry in doldrums, things are not looking good.

As successive state governments, both Congress and Akali, have played footsie with the masses, you can see why the state once known as India's grain basket has slowly and sadly been transformed into a basket case.

Dravid quits as Indian captain

Rahul Dravid has resigned as the Indian cricket captain. He has communicated to the Indian cricket board that he would like to be relieved, with immediate effect, from his responsibilities as the captain of both the Indian Test and one-day side. If he has cited any reasons for his resignation, neither him nor the cricket board has so far shared that information with the media.

For the past months without a cricket coach, the Indian team is now without a captain too. Thus Indian cricket is a bit, to borrow the recent controversial phrase of Ronen Sen, the Indian ambassador to the United States, like "a headless chicken".

For a man known for his impeccable timing, the timing of Dravid's latest decision has raised more than a few eyebrows. Less than three weeks from now, the world's best cricket team arrives in India for a seven-match one-day tour, which kicks off one of India's busiest cricketing seasons. Over the next few months , India host traditional rivals Pakistan for a Test series and a series of one-day matches, then leave for Australia for a full tour.

There were rumours after the early exit from the World Cup, and after Greg Chappell resigned, that Dravid may quit. But he stuck it out at a time when cricketer-bashing, with active encouragement from a frenzied Indian television media, had turned into a national pastime. He gutsed it out and led India to a rare Test series victory in England.

Dravid is percieved in certain quarters as "too soft". It is percieved that he allowed Greg Chappell to run roughshod over his team members. That he failed to carry the rest of his team with him, or even back them against Chappell. It is a perception that is bound to grow, given his sudden decision to quit.

Mind you though, the man has shown in the past he is unafraid of taking tough decisions. He calmly decided to declare the innings in Pakistan when Sachin Tendulkar was just six short of a memorable double hundred-- not an act you would associate with faint-hearted mortals. Luckily Indians went on to win the match, and not much was heard of the matter.

He also stuck by the beleagured Virender Sehwag through a troubled tour of South Africa. A lot of ex-players, a few selectors and even the chairman of the Indian selection committee Dilip Vengsarkar openly favoured Sehwag should be dropped from the Indian side. Dravid insisted oherwise, and persisted with the out-of-form Sehwag in all the matches.

Those who know Dravid say he is no softie. You don't get a nickname like "The Wall" by being soft, either as player or as a man.

But now The Wall says he has had enough and wants to concentrate on what he does best -- his batting. By his own lofty standards he has had two poor Test series, first against South Africa and now against England. Many say after three eminently successful seasons, this lean trot is how the law of averages catches up with you. Others insist, Dravid's captaincy worries are taking a toll on his batting.

As Dravid remains quiet about his reasons for quitting, speculation is rife. Those in the know of things claim that the methodical Dravid has been disillusioned by the lack of method in India cricket. In coach Greg Chappell, a man who believed as much in putting processes in place as Dravid, the latter had found an ally who shared his vision. But by the time India made an early exit from the World Cup and that much talked about vision for the future of Indian cricket lay in tatters, amidst allegations and counter- allegations between coach Chappell and a section of the Indian cricket team, Dravid is understood to have confided in the BCCI president Sharad Pawar that he wanted to quit.

He was persuaded otherwise by a very public endorsement of his captaincy. Clearly not for long, as his latest decision indicates.

More than the busy season ahead, what would worry the Indian cricket establishment is that there is no apparent sucessor to Dravid. No one you can immediately think of who can take up the high pressure job. For that reason alone, Sanjay Manjrekar, former Indian cricketer and now a commentator, has urged the chairman of selectors Dilip Vengsarkar to have a word with Dravid and ask him to reconsider his decision.

Though Dravid's letter hasn't yet been officially accepted by the Board, sources in the Indian cricket establishment indicated that Dravid is unlikely to change his mind. And the best option lay in looking for a new person or persons (in case of a split captaincy for Test and one-dayers) for the job.

There are the usual suspects, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly.

Elevated to vice-captaincy before the World Cup amidst speculations that he was once again eyeing the top job in Indian cricket, Tendulkar might be the person the Indian cricket board turns to, to at least lead the Indian Test side. Tendulkar has been captain twice before, but neither times he appeared entirely comfortable in his role as skipper. Who knows, a more mature Tendulkar, in the autumn of his career, might surprise us pleasantly if given a chance.

One doubts though if he would be interested in captaining the one-day side. In an intervew to The Times, London, Tendulkar recently said that one-dayers were taking a toll on his body. An interview that quickly sparked off rumours that the great man might be contemplating retuirement from one-day cricket to prolong his Test career. Though in close to his best form in the one-day series against England, Tendulkar, now 34, appears unlikely to be around when the next World Cup takes place in 2011.

Ditto for his long time one-day opening partner Sourav Ganguly. Though in fine form in Tests as well as one-dayers, Ganguly, also 34, appears unlikely to be around when India play the next World Cup. Having said that, few would argue his credentials as captain. He is after all India's most successful Test captain ever. recent poll by a leading Indian television channel found 57 percent of the respondents voting for Ganguly as the next Indian skipper.

Despite a rather controversial end to his tenure as skipper, Ganguly in his early days showed both flair and spirit to extricate Indian cricket out of the matchfixing quagmire it had found itself in. He beat Australia at home in 2001 in one of the most memorable Test series in modern times, then for the first time led India to victory against Pakistan in Pakistan. He backed a bunch of young players, like Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh and turned them into match-winners. His bold gambits paid off as he turned Sehwag, until then a middle order batsman, into one of the most destructive opening batsmen in international cricket. Persuading Dravid to don the wicket keeping gloves in one dayers was another inspirational move. Suddenly India had a world class batsman at the crucial number seven slot.

But as his own batting form dipped, Ganguly struggled with his captaincy too. An ugly, very public spat with coach Greg Chappell led to his ouster from the side.

Since he fashioned a most memorable comeback last year against South Africa, he has been in fine form in both Tests as well as one-dayers. Now that Indian cricket again finds itself at crossroads, the Indian cricket board might turn to its most successful captain. But at 34, like Tendulkar, his best cricketing days are behind Ganguly.Many feel it will be a retrograde step to turn back to him for captaincy.

Two other players, touted as potential skippers in recent times, find themselves currently out of favour. Yuvraj Singh has found it difficult to command a place in the Indian middle order in Tests. And Virender Sehwag, on a comeback trail in the ongoing Twenty20 World Cup, is presently out of both the Indian Test and one-day sides.

Which leaves -- or, should we say, leads us to -- Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He has already been trusted with the captaincy of the Indian Twenty20 side. And could very well be the selectors' choice as the new captain for the Indian one-day squad. A dashing batsman, and one of the hardest hitters of the cricket ball, the wicket keeper from Jharkhand is known to have a mature head on his young shoulders. He can, and has tempered his explosive batting skills as per the demands of the situation.

Dhoni's selection as skipper of the Indian one-day side in the home series against Australia allows the selectors a breather before they have to decide on the Indian Test captain.

If Dhoni does well against the Australians, the selectors might hand him over the Test captaincy too. In case he doesn't, they would then have the option of choosing either Tendulkar or Ganguly. Or they might dip into their selectors' hat and come up with an entirely new name.

Which would be completely par for course, given the goings-on in Indian cricket.

Jarawas on a Road that Might Spell their Doom

A Beach in an Uninhabited Island in Andamans

A Slice of Paradise -- Where I Grew Up

Radhanagar Beach in Havelock Island

Sunrise in Katchal Island in Nicobar

Chak De India

On field, we have the Indian cricket team back to its winning ways. And on screen, we have an Indian women's hockey team making waves. These are good times indeed. When two of my major passions, cricket and Bollywood, are in such fine form, what else can you say but Chak De India?

After the overseas one-day win against the powerful South Africans, India was rather impressive in notching up a Test series victory against England. And please let's not quible over the margin of victory or the inexperience in English bowling ranks. You can only play against the side that is fielded against you, and not those who would have made the squad if they were not recuperating from injuries.

We must learn to celebrate our successes, and not find reasons to dilute our achievements. I can't ever remember reading a post-mortem of an Australian victory in which it was said that the Australian success was any less because it was achieved against a side that was perhaps not as strong as the Australians.

In an ideal world, Indian armchair cricket analysts would prefer we prepare greentops at home, and then beat the visitors, who, on account of either lack of form or owing to injury, should not be missing anyone of their star players. Later on we should visit other countries who would prepare pitches to suit the home side, and again under those circumstances, Indians would win. And then, and only then, we would celebrate our victory.

It is simple. A win is a win, just as a loss is a loss. Just as the hammering we took in the 2003 World Cup finals doesn't become any less palatable if you concede that a young Zaheer Khan was feeling nervous in the biggest match of his life, similarly you can't take away the success of an Indian side which made it to the finals after notching up eight successive wins.

Ok, enough about cricket. Now on to hockey, our sadly neglected national game, that is now the flavour of the month in Bollywood, thanks to the eminently watchable Chak De India.

I am not a great fan of Shahrukh Khan, yet I must confess his performance in Chak De was very, very good -- almost as good as he was in Swades. Very restrained, not at all over the top, and very effective.

I watched the movie with my 73-year-old Dad and 3-year old son for company. It was a first of sorts -- three generations of Chakravartys at the movies. Dad thought it was a bit too long and my son liked it the most. On 15th August, when my mother was explaning to Ritwik the three colours of the Indian flag, he gave her a wide grin and said "Chak De India". Pop patriotism is clearly here to stay and explains, to a great extent, why the movie has caught the public imagination.

I am sure everyone in the YashRaj camp would heave a huge sigh of relief with the production house's first big hit of the year, and even as Shahrukh Khan's performance earns him rave reviews, I think not enough credit for the film's success is being given to its young director Shamit Amin. He impressed everyone earlier with Ab Tak Chhappan. And Chak De just confirms we have another young, very talented director in our midst.

And while we are in the Chak De spirit, I think it's high time Prime Minister Manmohan Singh just chucks out the Left. Congress may find itself short of majority in the Parliament if the nuclear deal issue came to a vote and may even lose power. But it is as good a time as any to call the Left bluff and seek the voters' mandate from a moral high ground. Methinks Congress would come back with a thumping majority and would not have do deal with the daily dose of Left blackmail.

For that to happen though Manmohan Singh would have to bite the bullet and go where no Congress leader has gone before. That is, give up on power that his party is only tenuously holding on to, and seek greater glory through the ballot box.

In 2004, still regarded by many as an "outsider", Sonia Gandhi took the smart decision of opting out of the prime ministerial race and immediately earned the nation's sympathy and approbation. The Indian prime minister, who enjoys serious goodwill as a man of integrity, can take a leaf out of that book, and call for fresh elections. I dare say he will find more supporters than he thinks he has.

For all his posturing, we all know Comrade Carat loathes elections almost as much as General Musharraf. The Left's expertise lies in post-poll manoeuvering and during elections the central leadership is overly dependent on Bengal to provide the numbers in the Parliament. This time the Bengal Left leadership, may not be as willing to toe the party line -- a difference of opinion that could cost the party at the hustings.

In any case, if we do have elections anytime soon, Messrs. Yechury and Karat can mull over the combine it would choose to support -- either the rightwing Hindutva forces led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, or the motley group which calls itself the Third Front, the only grouping which is perhaps even more opportunistic and politically irresponsible than the Left.

More I think of these mouthwatering combinations, more I see myself as a prospective Congress voter.

C'mmon Manmohan, Chuck De Left nu.

A Disturbing, Disconcerting Journey

Finally I am back from a rather long, gruelling, educating, and in the end, humbling shoot.

Three weeks of criscrossing India, three weeks of Delhi belly, three weeks of conning yourself to believe today is going to be less hot and humid than yesterday. Three weeks of asking myself there must be another, even easier, way of making a living. Three weeks of bonding between three people that will hopefully last a lifetime or at least another such shoot.

Three weeks of watching and chronicling, from rather close quarters, the inequities of Indian caste system, an evil that is so difficult to uproot simply because it is so widespread.

They were also three most memorable weeks of meeting some awesome people working in the most awful conditions. Paul, Arun, Wilson, Manjula, Satish, Indira, Durgam and many, many others. Meeting any one of them is a very special experience. Meeting all of them in a span of three weeks was rather overwhelming.

At the end of such an experience, it is difficult to measure -- or even choose -- what are you taking home with you. For me, and I suspect with my two friends as well, it will be a pair of eyes that belong to a seven-year-old boy we met in Patna.

A boy who has my father's name and reminded me of my son the moment I set my eyes upon him. A boy who was locked up in a dark, stinking toilet for a whole day by his own school teacher because he, son of a musahar (rat eater), had dared to use the school toilet!

His innocent, haunting, traumatised eyes have followed me the past few weeks. Until someone somewhere finds an answer to the unasked questions those eyes haven't yet quite articulated, I would be ashamed to use words like "great" or "modern" to describe a nation that still condemns, simply by virtue of their birth, 160 million of its citizens to a life of untouchability.

Beedih Jalai Le....

Bloggers' Bloc? Naahh....

Though i wish it was. Or something sexy like Blogger Fatigue.

Truth is, between playing Florence Nightingale at home, with half my family -- and critically, the maid -- down with viral fever, and trying to set up a complicated shoot about an even more complicated, but nonetheless, very interesting subject (changing face of Dalits in India), I am often finding myself sleep deprived, and worse alcohol deprived. The latter seriously messes me up. I mean the lack of it, just in case you get the wrong idea.

I meant to keep this short and sweet. But just before I go, will leave any unsuspecting visitors to this blog and the usual suspects with these cheerful scraps of info I have been working with.

Every four hours a crime is committed against a Dalit in this country. Of every four gangrape victims, three are Dalits. The school dropout rate among Dalits is as high as 70 per cent. And simply because they happen to be at the lowest rung of the social and economic ladder, even those crimes which specifically don't target Dalits, end up hurting them the most.

This is not something a Dalit with a raging Ambedkar complex dreamt up. These are government of India statistics. I have never felt great about, or given any importance to, me being a Brahmin. Right now, though, I feel downright ashamed that I was born one.

On that cheery note, my dearest private yet so puiblic diary, I am off and will see you when I see you.

What's so hot about Lutyens Delhi

From Comrade Somnath Chatterjee to the messiah of the Muslims, Mulayam Singh Yadav. From our videshi icon, Sonia Gandhi to his swadeshi bete noire LK Advani. From the technocrat Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the rustic Laloo Yadav.They all reside in this cosy comfort zone of colonial bungalows with lush green manicured lawns and servant quarters bigger than the average Delhi apartment. I am talking about that oasis of tranquility, surrounded on all sides by a city bursting at the seams, which answers to the name of Lutyens Delhi.

Nowhere in the world, from Comrade Carat's beloved communist China to the imperialist United States of America, from the impoverished nations of sub-Saharan Africa to the prosperous Western Europe, is there such an exclusive residential district for the country's politicians and bureaucrats. The upkeep and maintenance of which is paid for by you and me.

As Delhi grows vertically (simply because there is no empty space any more to expand horizontally), any building activity remains prohibited in Lutyen's Delhi. Ostensibly to maintain the aesthetic nature of that area.

Dearly departed Rajiv Gandhi, another man with exemplary asthetic taste, actually got a law passed that decreed the sanctity of the Lutyens bungalow zone must be maintained. The poor fellow was cut down in his prime. Methinks if he had been around longer, he would have surely built a multiplex on Shahjahan Road. So much more convenient for Rahul baba to get his Hollywood fix. Even Vajpayeeji could have seen his favourite Hindi movies there, without stepping out of his comfort, oops I mean bungalow zone.

Hey, but what about us? The Chakravartys and Chaddhas who spent a small fortune to buy flats and houses in different parts of a Delhi in the 1970s and 1980s, a Delhi that was until then unspoilt by the mindless building boom that has overtaken it since? What about maintaining the asthetic sense of the place I live in? What about my private slice of sunlight whose entry into my bedroom window has been blocked by the monstrosity that has come up next door, simply because I happened to live in a house that wasn't located in Lutyen's Delhi?

Have you ever heard a squeak from any member of the Indian Left, the self appointed champion of India's toiling masses, about this den of inequity? You would think an anti-imperialist party like the CPI(M) would have nothing to do with something as steeped in colonial history as the Lutyens Bungalow Zone. The left parties protest about the docking of USS Nimitz in Chennai, they cry hoarse about atrocities in Nicaragua, and they shed tears for the hungry in Sudan. But nary a word about the prime piece of real estate on which the India's ruling elite reside.

And, honestly, why pick on just the Left? The Manmohan Singh government makes all the right noises about ushering in a market economy and doing away with subsidies. Most members of that government live off water and electricity supplied at highly subsidized rates in Lutyen's Delhi. Most importantly, the supply of both is uninterrupted , 24 x 7. Phone lines are never down in this land of plenty.

Despite that subsidy, unrealised water and electricity bills from India's political elite run into crores of rupees. The dubious list of defaulters reads like the Who's Who of Indian politics. And such is the love for life in this beautiful part of India's capital city, that several occupants of these colonial mansions simply refuse to vacate the premises even when they have lost in the elections and thereby lost the right to live there.

And now as if free water, electricity and telephones were not enough, to ease the miserable life of our country's first citizens, the New Delhi Municipal Council has decided to subsidize internet connectivity in the area. An NDMC team is visiting Bangalore to meet up with Infosys honchos and discuss ways to make Lutyens Delhi a wifi zone. I checked with a friend in the Delhi government if entire Delhi could be converted into a wifi zone. He gave me a look which suggested he was deeply concerned about my mental well being.

Lutyens Delhi is not by the far the only or even the worst den of inequity. But it is more in-your-face than others, you pass by it, you read about its residents in newspapers and watch them on TV preach and pontificate us ad nauseum about the life we should lead, and then lead the life they lead. You drive through Lutyens Delhi, look at those bungalows and idly wonder: "Tumhara ghar mere ghar se zyada safed kyon hai?" To me it is a bit like what Bastille was to the average Frenchman during the times of Luis XVIth, a constant reminder of a life beyond his reach.

I invite the socialist, secular democratic rulers of India to step out of that cocoon of comfort and see how the lesser mortals live. May be live in a flat in Rajouri Garden or a house in Lajpat Nagar. Face electricity shortages in South Delhi and deal with water shortages in west and north Delhi and have a nodding acquaintance with the unfortunate neighbour whose son or daughter became the latest victim of Blueline rage.

Many many years ago, an Indian prince stepped out of his royal palace and witnessed firsthand the lives of the common people. The experience proved to be life altering for him. May be modern India's rulers need to borrow a leaf out of that book.

And who knows, come election time next time round, when they don their starched khadis, fold their hands and oh-so-humbly tell us how they are one of us, I just might buy that story without choking on my food!