Dear Prime Minister, please do not laud my spirit.

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Let me admit right away. I'm terrified of the word "resilience". So if someone mentioned the word to define my city after the twin blasts on February 21, I've had to resist an urge to scream. It was a usual Thursday. Until 7 pm. Reports came in of an explosion at Dilshukhnagar area. In situations like these, we are taught to cross check and double cross check. It could be a cylinder blast for it happened near a tiffin centre. It could be some misinformation. It could also be a terror attack. As we (my Video journalists and I) drove at breakneck speed, against the traffic tide, to reach the spot, I reported on what I saw and what I could confirm. From one, it became two explosions. From 7, it became 10 dead.. All this in a span of less than 15 minutes. We reached the spot....

Raped! Again!

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Grope: (verb) to touch or handle (someone) for sexual pleasure. Molest: (v): to assault sexually. Rape: (n): Unlawful compelling of a person through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse. Know the words. Know the exact meanings. Because when you enter a police station, you will be asked again & again if you are sure, which among the above three happened. You will be asked for "clarity". You, and only you will be asked, if you provoked the "accused" in any way. A 20-year-old girl has been stripped, raped and thrown off a bus in New Delhi! She was returning from a film at around 11 pm with a male friend. Her crime: Hitching a ride in a chartered bus? About 10 days ago, a 32-year-old Manipuri girl was slapped by a traffic constable in Bangalore, after a group of men groped and humiliated her!....

Whose democracy is it anyway?

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Political 'tu-tu, main-main' or the blame game is omnipresent in our land of the largest democracy. Political parties seem to almost thrive in it. But if there ever was an award for political conspiracy theories, Andhra Pradesh politicos would win hands down (no offence to the Congress symbol!) While I did cover 2009 Lok Sabha elections in the state which did have its share of poll bickering, 2012 by-polls in 18 assembly seats and one LS seat have raised the bar many notches higher. Speak with any political leader here and he will have a conspiracy theory up his sleeve. Main opposition party, Telugu Desam's chief Chandrababu Naidu will never tire of telling you how Jagan & Congress are teaming up to finish TDP or how pro-Telangana party TRS is joining hands with Jagan, under the pink table of course. And if you have been truly....

Look who's fighting

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So, the opposition decided to show no sense of humour over a late 1940s cartoon of the revered B R Ambedkar in NCERT textbooks. (Regardless of the fact the man himself, alive then, showed no angst and in all probability, laughed it away!) What followed the Parliament chaos was predictable, protests across the country, debates, apologies & resignations. (And it's us journos, who are accused of being thin-skinned!?!) Now, at the outset, let me make it clear, that we, in Andhra Pradesh, especially Hyderabad, have come to become very enthusiastic over national issues (Blame it on the Telangana reins being handled in Delhi!) So of course, there had to be some protests here as well. "Find out," ordered my assignment (sitting in Delhi, where else?!) While I punched numbers of "habitual protestors" (yes, they exist & no they haven't yet made it to my speed dial!), I met....

The Jagan jinx

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What's common between CBI's Andhra Pradesh chief VV Laxminarayana and YSR Congress chief Jagan Mohan Reddy? Both of them get very flustered when women reporters are jostled around in the crowds that surround them. Women reporters, including yours sincerely, appreciate the fact that one strong glare from both these men, helps in restoring the oxygen passage amidst that suffocating group of cops, security guards and fans! (FYI: This CBI director has a facebook fan page!) But that's where that small patch of common ground ends. For then, they are placed on opposite sides of law but fighting what seems to be a political battle. While the CBI director has been granted Y category security (reportedly under threat from the mining mafia), Jagan has found no such favour with the ruling Congress at the state and at the Centre. Jagan stands as accused no 1 in CBI's....

Can CBI connect the Jagan dots?

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With scams in the last few months regularly throwing up numbers of not less than a 100 crores, we as an alert audience have tuned in to the "not-surprised-anymore" mode. Or so I thought! When the Andhra Pradesh High Court decided on 10th of August to give a green signal to the CBI for a detailed investigation into YSR Congress MP, Jagan Mohan Reddy's assets, it did catch the state's attention. While politicians came up with their predictable rhetoric, it was amusing to see the man on the street to be equally interested. In fact, at most informal gatherings these days, Jagan & his money are the toast of the discussion. Dinner table conversations veer around how much will the CBI unearth? Is Jagan a victim of Congress witch-hunt, as he claims to be? And the question that's asked most in hushed tones is, will he be arrested,....

Drug trials, at whose cost?

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Five women hospitalised in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, after "volunteering" for a drug trial. Now that's a story that we know will make headlines over a weekend. But each time a story such as this comes about, it brings to my mind that unending debate of ethics in such clinical trials. No, I'm not going into the technicalities of the greater good, the need of medicine etc. instead this is just to finally confront a few nagging thoughts that come up each time I cover a story on illegal clinical trials. The first time I came across a death due to a clinical trial was in Dec 2008, when a young 24-year-old lad died under suspicious circumstances. Investigations revealed, he had volunteered for several drug studies, all at the same time, thus leading to an untimely death. While the several Pharma companies were quick....

A 'hand'ful of the 'rising sun'

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A huge laminated poster of Andhra Pradesh's favourite megastar Chiranjeevi stares back at me from the corner of a friend's room. The friend, also now a disappointed fan, took it off the wall of his room after Chiranjeevi officially announced his party's merger with the congress. And my friend says he is not a one-off case... with reports of many a staunch supporters of Prajarajyam, from various districts of Andhra Pradesh, feeling a sense of betrayal. And can they really be blamed? For a party that promised a non-Congress, non-TDP (AP's main opposition party, Telugu Desam) alternative to the state's voters in 2008, amidst a gathering that ran into lacs in the temple town of Tirupati; for a party that said it will fight against corrupt forces of Congress & TDP for social justice.. Prajarajyam failed to meet the high standards it set for itself. ....

Live by the sword, and die by it

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A faction leader, prime accused in his arch rival's murder & out on conditional bail pays a visit to his lawyer's office. With his usual trusted driver on leave for the day, he chooses to travel with his close aides M & B. While M takes the wheel, B sits behind the co-driver, in this case, our protagonist "Suri". Minutes later, B steps out of the car and walks away. M looks on, dazed at the increasing pool of blood near the gear lever... blood oozing from the bullet wounds on the body of his "Anna". Dramatic?? Filmy?? But this isn't a 70mm screenplay; it is an incident that happened right on the crowded streets of Hyderabad city. For those who follow politics in India, they'd know Andhra Pradesh as one of the most politically-charged states of the country. And political power coups have been....

Poll-pourri from Telangana

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Elections are always welcome. No, I'm not talking on behalf of the aam janta here, but yes there are some people who are very happy with elections. The belt shop owners, for instance, in the poll regions wear wide grins on all the days running up to the polls with liquor sales hitting an all-time high. It's election time in 12 constituencies of the Telangana region in Andhra Pradesh. More than 2,000 people have been arrested in liquor cases, 4000 belt shops closed and cash worth 2.19 crores seized..& these are just the official figures. For once, it isn't the bulky politician counting his bucks, but the poor farmer/weaver a la voter who is weighed, in some fanatic instances quite literally, in money. After much dramatic political developments in the last few months, including a fast-unto-death by Telangana Rashtra Samiti Chief (TRS) K Chandrashekhar Rao, violent....