Passing the Baton: From Pak to India, with love
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The countdown has begun. With just 100 days to go for what would be India's greatest sporting extravaganza - the XIX Commonwealth Games - to be hosted in Delhi from October 3, 2010, today the Queen's Baton made its way to India from Pakistan through the Wagah-Attari border. And for once the din of enemy gunfire, the clamour of diplomatic rhetoric and the silences of hostility were drowned out by the soulful Sufi and Qawwali numbers performed by the Wadali brothers from India and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan from Pakistan. Borders are meant to divide. Cynical men and women drew them to make 'a people of the same collective consciousness', find reasons to hate, to remain at odds. Today, sport, music and a specially-handcrafted Queen's Baton, which some people find to be a relic of the colonial hangover the Commonwealth Nations seem to harbour, made a huge stride....
First-person account: Terror in Koregaon Park...
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As I sit down to write this article, I vividly remember the visuals of a typical Saturday evening in Koregaon Park and German bakery in Pune - the latest targets of a terrorist attack that breached the uneasy sense of security that prevailed in India, thanks to a fourteen-month terror-free run after the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. Known mainly for the Osho commune located here, Koregaon Park originally housed a hundred odd bungalows, belonging to the rich and famous of Pune and other parts of India including a property owned by Maharaja Hari Singh from Jammu and Kashmir, which are scattered between two parallel roads, namely North Main Road and South Main Road connected to each other by internal lanes. Thanks to rising incomes, the growing number of foreign tourists visiting the Osho commune and students coming to study in Pune from all over the country and abroad,....
More about Shehzad Poonawalla
Shehzad Poonawalla, 23, is currently pursuing LLB from the prestigious Indian Law Society (ILS) in Pune. He is the Vice-President of the NSUI wing in his city and vociferously takes up issues affecting students in particular. He also works with the media cell of the Congress Party in New Delhi. Shehzad is a self confessed news-aholic and also enjoys exercising, watching SRK's films and reading non-fiction books.Recent Posts
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