The Anna wave: real or imaginary?

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Frustration and anger among voting classes against the ruling party has surely never been more vocalised, more bitter. The cross-section of people coming to Azad Maidan in Mumbai, the focal point of protests, continues to amaze me with their diversity and conviction. People who have never been to jail have gone in and out of a police 'lock-up' (in this case, the parking lot at Azad Maidan police station!) four times in one day, a Rolex-wielding south Mumbaikar attending the gathering saying he's 'desperate' for change, elderly diamond merchants from the Pancharatna diamond hub at Opera House, losing their characteristic geniality when they talk about an arrogant government, senior city doctors walking (albeit awkwardly) closely behind. All of them saying one thing.. We're not here for Anna alone. We're here because we don't know what else do. We'd rather follow an Anna blindly, because he's stirring an ineffectual, Kumbhakarna-like government....

Air India: The Maharaja in a Royal Mess

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Sometimes, perception is everything. And oftentimes, so is reputation. On both counts, our national carrier is taking a beating. Air India, neck-deep in losses, is clutching at its only hope - a Rs 10,000 crore (by ministry estimates) bailout plan. This monumental figure was referred to again by new Civil Aviation Minister Vyalar Ravi in conversations with journalists recently, while adding that he has requested the finance ministry to consider an immediate infusion of Rs 2000 crores into the cash-strapped airline. But '10,000 crore rupees' has been around for the last two years. In 2009, the government refused to oblige even then, demanding the airline implement a turnaround plan instead, through better administrative and operational management. Now, the ministry has changed, but the figure has remained constant, just like the obfuscation on exactly what this amount is made up of. As relations between the management and unions reach an all-time....

Kasab trial: 26/11 survivors wait for justice

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The special court instituted inside Arthur Road Jail to conduct a trial for terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab - captured on camera and by scores of witnesses, wreaking havoc and death on all who came in his way two years ago - had but one task: to prosecute and indict Kasab if found guilty. As the trial has progressed, it's this 'IF' word that's getting harder to swallow for impatient Mumbaikars. For the city, the basic premise awarded to every individual - innocent until proven guilty - seems inapplicable to Kasab. For the survivors of the 166 people who died in the attacks, the trial itself, based on that premise, is causing grave injury. The anger and frustration are, even today, uniformly raw among those who have lost. Eknath Ombale, brother of slain policeman Tukaram Ombale who captured Kasab, runs a vada-pav stall at Tardeo. When we met him....

Lavasa: No takers for big ideas?

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Some four years ago, I had got a call from a rural activist at Mulshi about construction violations at an emerging township called Lavasa, set deep in the heart and valley of the Sahyadri range, not far from Shivaji's Sinhagadh fort. "They're building an entire city there! How are they doing it? Isn't it illegal?" That's a question that has dominated dinner-table discussions in Mumbai and Pune for years now. "How are they doing it?" Was it indeed a new hill station for the region (Lavasa calls it India's first hill station after independence)? Was it a luxury retreat only for the moneyed? Since this was a Sharad Pawar pet project, was it just another cash cow for him and his cronies? The Environment Ministry finally took heed of the growing murmurs and slapped a belated show-cause notice on Lavasa Corporation Limited, objecting to lack of requisite environmental clearances and....

Air Scare: Are we on tenterhooks?

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Drama on board a Go Air BOM-DEL flight on Saturday morning! All 169 passengers and crew had just boarded an Airbus 320 aircraft headed to Delhi, and were still parked in Bay 6 of Mumbai's domestic terminal, when suddenly a young man onboard shouted "bomb, bomb", throwing passengers and crew into a tizzy. Twenty-two-year-old Malik Mohammed Taha, hailing from Jammu and Kashmir, it turned out, was suffering from a mental disorder and was undergoing psychiatric treatment. His father, seated next to him on the flight, also produced the young man's medical papers proving this claim, leading security agencies to believe this was a genuine case of a person with a psychiatric problem raising a false alarm. Still, according to procedure, security agencies detained the Tahas and carried out an anti-sabotage check on the aircraft. It was two hours before they declared it as safe, and another hour before the aircraft....

Thailand Blog: Trouble in the land of smiles

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Here I am in gay Pattaya, two hours by road from Bangkok, blinking at the neon lights as I nurse the effects of a potent sambuka, and the notion that my vacation will remain unaffected by the ongoing political upheaval in Bangkok. However, no stranger to sudden changes in fortune, I wasn't too surprised when Pattaya's Central Mall - where I was watching Russell Crowe's rendering of Robin Hood - echoed with the announcement that the mall is being evacuated. A manager at the cinema advises my husband and myself to remain in our hotel for the rest of the day, assuring us we can resume the movie as soon as the situation in Bangkok returns to normal. Apparently, fires in the capital don't leave too many cities around untouched. Today (Wednesday, May 19) itself, Bangkok has been imposed with curfew from 8 pm till 6 am,....

Persecution all over again

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The Catholic community around the world will celebrate Easter in a grand manner, but surely on every devotee's mind must be the ugly allegations being thrown in the face of the head of the church, the Pope. After a brief hiatus, child abuse has once again reared its ugly head on the Catholic church, this time with Pope Benedict XVI as the target. The Holy Father, though personally not accused of any wrongdoing, is being questioned if he had turned a blind eye to his brother's involvement in slapping German students when he was choir director at the Regensburg Diocese, in Bavaria, Germany, in the '60s. The same diocese had also reported cases of sexual abuse in the late 50s, but those cases predated Georg Ratzinger's tenure as choir director. Ratzinger has said he didn't know of those cases, but German Catholic officials are probing if this was actually....

2000-2009: The Thick Black Line

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To borrow a phrase, 'the thick black line historians will refer to years from now' is sure to be the last decade, 2000-2009, the one that divides decades before this from the decades to come. Starting with 9/11, terror, Islam versus the West, the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, America and the world getting 'Bush-whacked', TWICE, financial doom, Barack Obama, layoffs, multiple terror attacks in India (Gujarat, Delhi, Jaipur, the 7/11 train bombings in Mumbai, the 26/11 seige), besides homosexuality legalized, pink chaddis, the emergence of size zero.. it was too much, one after the other. What a decade! The 2000s was a decade I spent coming of age: my Twenties. Filled with all the drama and madness that accompanies this age, I spent the '00s (pronounced the 'oh-ohs' in new Internet terminology) maturing alongside (and sometimes covering for news) events have changed our world forever - all 'flashbulb'....

Rhetoric in abundance one year after 26/11

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Sipping a fresh lime soda on the night of November 26, 2009, after a never-ending day covering events all around south Mumbai one year after 26/11, I thought of what someone told me in the course of that day. 'We break our own laws with impunity, and insult our police force. There will be another 26/11 in India, because here we all think the nation is someone else's problem.' As often happens when action is missing, rhetoric was in abundance one year after 26/11. Politicians, the public, all spoke out forcefully against terror. The symbolism of the day was everywhere, on the bullet riddled walls of Colaba, flags on the streets, photographs at every turn, and memorials at every corner. But what are words worth? At Nariman House, where I was, the prayer meeting was attended by Jews from the US, Isarel, and Mumbai. The benediction in....

Lest we forget

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I'm looking at some fresh footage from 26/11, taken from a cameraphone by a member of our city's disaster management services. I hurtle back to November 2008 in a flash. The video shows the street outside Nariman House.. it's the middle of the day, and there's a dog standing stationary in the middle of the main Shahid Bhagad Singh road. You can hear a faint hum, like a stacatto whirring, but not quite discernible. Nothing unusual except that besides the dog, there's nothing and no one else on this street outside Colaba market, typically thronging with people, day or night. You could hear a bottle opener pop in the silence between Celejor bakery and Billoo's Bharat Petroleum petrol pump, blasted by the grenades thrown from Nariman House (poor Billoo - though his petrol pump is looking as good as new). The whirring you realise is coming from the helicopter blades....