AN UNNECESSARY TRIAL

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Rahul Mahajan, son of the late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan - murdered,unfortunately so, by his brother - is battling for life. Less than a month to the date that he lit his father's funeral pyre at Shivaji Park in Bombay. Mahajan Sr.'s former personal secretary and confidant, Bibek Moitra is dead. No one really knows how this came to pass. Fact, fiction and the misplaced sense of importance that journalists bestow upon themselves ... and by that grain, the license to speculate and pontificate ... have all contributed to the carnival of conjecture that unfolds by the minute, every minute. Maybe they snorted an ounce too much (we still do not know but have been gently informed so in every update so far). An OD of cocaine is not really as exceptional as finding life on Pluto. It happens everyday, somewhere. Not expected of a grieving son of a made-by-media-....

Shades of Grey

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'Development' satiates the need to argue of idealists and cynics alike. It is also the perfect excuse to get together at various world capitals every so often and brainstorm on everything from the presence of chemical traces in the breast milk of women in the arctic to that conference constant - extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa - with the usual mix of health, energy, poverty, food security and AIDS issues thrown in for good measure (and good press). Don't get me wrong. I don't intend to make light of these concerns. Far from that. The present Delhi Summit for Sustainable Development is case in point. Some of the world's finest brains and businessmen have converged in our capital, to deliberate on the UN's Millennium Development Goals. Debate is essential. Dissent more so. If anything, it indicates that we are still thinking. Really? From the era of modernisation, the....

A Troubadour's Tale

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At home everywhere. And nowhere. The lived reality of a troubadour. What is 'home' anyway? Is it a hearth, with all the attendant trappings that makes one believe one 'belongs'? Is it a place where streets mean more than names? Is it a place at all? You might well say this is mildly obtuse. Bang on! A hack's thoughts and actions usually are. But you see, beyond the headlines and by-lines, exists a realm ... in which we cease to be journalists. As a correspondent, one is supposed to be in sync with the terrain on which one operates. I profess inadequacy on that count. Delhi is my latest 'home.' The fifth, in less than a decade. I am still negotiating its many eccentricities. My previous stint was in Bombay (I refuse to call it Mumbai) ... aah! that ubiquitous face-off. Much along the....