Known Turf

The perils of north-eastern pronounciation came home to me while I was on assignment, in Chirang District, Lower Assam. For instance, I c...

On the last day, the morning before I was to leave Assam, and move onto Bihar, I was given the option of visiting the Brahmaputra. (I cou...

Bodos, in Assam, have had their way. Well, some part of their way. They had a movement - an armed uprising, guerrilla cadre, guns, the wo...

In Assam, almost every other village that one visits is home to a surrendered 'militant'. Roshon, the guy driving the battered bl...

Meghalaya, they say, is the home of the clouds. It's described as 'wet, overcast, green, hilly'... it's perfect, for me. ...

Some things you see 'on the field' will haunt you a long, long time. And some things you push back to the edges of memory, again ...

Laloo Yadav's attempt to popularize Village on Wheels did break its snub-nose, after landing with an unceremonious thud on its low-budge...

I am often asked why I did not attend Lucknow University, since Lucknow is where the grand-maternal family is based. It sounds better, at an...

There is no simple way of doing a story, it seems. And there is NEVER one single, straightforward story with any given story. Each issue...

There I am. Second day in Delhi, rushing to work in an auto-rickshaw (they refer to them as 'three-wheeler' here) all the way from V...

The Japanese want to help India in these trying times of Tsunami. Their ambassor says they 'respect India's policy of not request...

The glower on most Indians' faces, right now, threatens to be matched only by the darkening of our political horizons, thanks to yet ano...

One thing flummoxes me (yes, I can use the occassional fancy word) - How is it that India is a poor country? Look at us. We manage to mak...

14th Nov, 2004. And so, there's the first brush with political journalism. Though, what isn't political, now I think about it? ...

Yesterday, the papers (Indian Express) told us about the shoe-shine boys who are donating to the Prime Minister's Relief Fund, towards h...

Dec 31, 2003. New Year's Eve. I have been reading in the papers that the cops plan to come down hard on the hard-partying weave-driv...

Patriotism, to me, has always meant music. And not the kind of music that comes from a traditional raga or an uplifting symphony. The concep...