Bangalore: No Lessons To Be Learned

10

It was a bright morning in Srinagar- and I was quite cheerful- I was going home to Delhi. We had been covering the breakdown of talks and the end of a ceasefire between the government and the Hizbul Mujahideen for some days. And now we were pulling out. Leaving my cameraman Sanjiv and editor Rajesh to put their equipment into boxes- I decided to go visit an old friend, and then, to buy some walnuts and saffron at residency road. Out of nowhere- a bang. Not a big one- but loud enough for me to know this was no scooter backfiring. And some pesky reporter voice inside me saying "go on- find out more". It turned out to be a grenade blast- and me and a few other similiarly curious journalists reached the spot to see it- no bigger than a pine cone- spent inside a....

Wave of reminisces

8

In the business of 24-hour news a year is an age. So many news flashes, news updates, breaking news situations, sometimes its hard to remember the details of a story we covered a month ago. Not so with the Tsunami. Today marks a year since that killer wave mauled the Indian coastline- and so much of Asia- a story I think no journalist who covered it can forget. The Tsunami struck at about 9.30 in the morning of December 26th- by noon I was at the technical airport in Delhi with my crew- waiting to get on board a plane to Chennai that had been commandeered by two ministers. No clue that the next month would be the most hectic, most tiring, and most draining time of my life. The Tsunami changed the geography of several islands I flew over in the Indian Ocean- mentally it changed....