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.