Early morning telephone calls always bring a bad news for me. This morning it brought the sad news of the untimely death of Vishnuvardhan. He was already a big hero, years before I was born. His unforgettable, intense role as Ramachari in Naagara Haavu had made him a household name in Karnataka, decades before I started to go to school! Teenagers like me who grew up during eighties and nineties had a strange liking for Vishnuvardhan. The gigantic Rajkumar was too big and too senior for our generation. The only other film hero who attracted us was Vishnuvardhan. He was young, he was charming, sophisticated, he wore nice clothes, rode motorbike and above all he was very good in fighting scenes. Rajkumar looked like a family headman. Vishnuvardhan looked like a caring, flamboyant elder brother. He was also very decent like Rajkumar. I had met him on many occasions. He was always courteous and warm. His small role in Girish Karnad's...

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, THE SECOND COMING The BJP's 'former future prime minister of India' L K Advani is not a poet like that party's only real prime minister A B Vajpayee. Advani's 'weighty' biography My Country, My Life doesn't talk about poetry or literature. If he had studied poetry, Advani might have recited the above lines after watching the Reddy brothers of Bellary holding his 'national' party to ransom. Soon after B S Yeddyurappa led the BJP to victory in the Karnataka Assembly polls in May 2008, Advani had boasted that the party of the Hindi belt had finally conquered the Deccan. Advani believed that the party's southern...

Mangalore is the flavour of the season. It is now more famous than Madrid! Muthalik is hogging the headlines across India. Is he just a media creation or a real self made ' Hindu ' leader? I am sure not many people (including the majority in media) knew him before his goons in the garb of ' Rama Sainiks ' dragged and mercilessly thrashed girls at a pub in Mangalore, a fortnight ago. This nation wide publicity was totally unexpected for Muthalik and his brigade. Attack on a pub in Mangalore was just a routine matter and they were expecting a photo and three paragraphs in some local newspapers the next day. Even in his wildest dreams, Muthalik didn't expect that all hell would break lose, the next day. Muthalik was not a known name even in his home state Karnataka till his ' monkey ' brigade vandalised and beat up girls in the full glare of TV media. A young, hep girl in...

"Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox, my home a neat four by six inches. I always loved neatness. Now I hold the half-inch Himalayas in my hand. This is home. And this the closest I'll ever be to home. When I return, the colors won't be so brilliant, the Jhelum's waters so clean, so ultramarine. My love so overexposed. And my memory will be a little out of focus, it in a giant negative, black and white, still undeveloped". Lines from Post card from Kashmir by Kashmir's greatest modern poet in English, Agha Shahid Ali (1949 - 2001). These days not many people go to 400 years old Pari Mahal built on a snow-capped mountain overlooking the majestic Dal Lake. Like most monuments, Pari Mahal is also in ruins. Some pervert tourists have inscribed their names on the century old stonewalls, defacing the monument. But last two summers; the wall was defaced with a large graffiti tag. While...