I AND MY WORDS

  It is kind of disconcerting that we have so much brouhaha to the kind of unfounded, selective discourse being written about people and the choice of characters we have taken up, just to put across a point. Be it the whole rigmarole about Savarkar’s petition, or the hilarious outrage about Jawaharlal Nehru verging on muted hagiography, there are several problem points that keep getting parroted without substance. Controlling discourse, the once strong citadel of the select few, and glorification of those who had little to say for themselves, is intellectual dishonesty that we wish were not prevalent in the vox populi media and academia of our times, especially when information lies everywhere. However, each point that causes outrage deserves its own dismissal, which shall be presented in a rather brief manner. The ‘Mercy Petition’ of Savarkar – Different Yardsticks for Different People So much has been written about the petition about Savarkar as if it was some kind of sin. ...

The fall of Kabul in Afghanistan to the Taliban, as the supposedly democratic government of the Islamic Republic concedes defeat to the Islami Emirate, was written on the wall for a bunch of reasons. The US' constant failure at building capable military and governance institutions and constant oversight of unpopular actions to pretend 'all is well' apart, the Afghans knew what was coming, and the ones with no option but staying behind chose to side with the obvious winning force. One could see that the United States has clearly started its slide downwards, behaving much like a second grade world power after showing what could only be considered cowardice, as was seen by its rather hilarious 'warnings' to Afghanistan that veered on the border of being utterly pathetic .  The Global Diplomatic Silence on Pakistan is Frustrating Ronald Reagan meeting the Mujahideen , 1983 What is extremely frustrating however is the utter silence of the world on the issue of Pakistan...

In the midst of a sea of the strangers He stands Alone, unmoved, silent, all alone There is none that recognizes Him, or Knows Who He is Those who do, loathe him more and more And yet, He is Real, the One that marks this land His presence the glimmer of long lost hope The flag above him, flutters silently in the breeze Giving a sense that change will resume once more It was a nightmare that happened many moons back That seems to have no end in sight to it And yet, His presence there, His presence elsewhere Makes one wonder, has the movie ended, or is there more? It was a dark, desperate moment when his dearest fled And yet, He decided to sit this one out yet again For it wasn't the first, but was hopefully the last And his dearest would return to their homes once more Many a harrowing times did He viewed from atop Many a times He had to see bodies float ashore And yet, while they damaged His Body, His Shrine They could not damage that Spirit, That Soul That Soul that resided in eve...

Akali Dal-BSP 'Pankhi' Protest Against Power Cuts in Punjab (courtesy: The Tribune ) It is election season in Punjab, and as usual, the power cuts stretching for hours in a day are becoming a source of much-heated debate among political parties. From claims of most expensive power to faulty agreements signed by previous governments and some innovative methods of protest, everything is up for grabs. However, lost in the din are several peculiarities and problems of the state’s ailing power sector that are not being resolved in the right manner. Peculiar Demand Curve Punjab has an extremely varied demand curve through the year. Power demand of the state in the summers is exactly double the winter’s power demand. As Bhupinder Singh and Malkit Singh pointed out in 2017: One of the reasons for the low utilisation of state plants is the peculiar load curve of Punjab, which varies from 5000-6000 MW in the winter to 10000-11500 MW in the summer. The state plants come into operation on...

  As they walked in, Saurabh felt a strange burst of uncomfortable heaviness all around him. It was as if the air in the unfinished tunnel had become extremely heavy, almost to the point of being suffocated. And yet it was not suffocation; rather it felt that the body was all of a sudden wrapped, somewhat embalmed in something invisible. The light of the mobile phones doubling as torches also seemed to be somewhat bent, or was this a trick being played by the mind? Saurabh could not decipher this eerie feeling all around him. All of a sudden Adhir spoke up. “Why are we standing here? Let’s go back!” The three started to tread backwards, and soon, they were out of the tunnel. It was only now that they could see each other clearly, and there they spotted the same cloud of unease over the faces of the other two that perhaps was also present on their own. “What the hell was that!?” Ranjan was perhaps the most freaked out, having nearly screamed out the question in a fit of anger. “Dare...

Saurabh was standing with his friends at the tunnel of Barog station. The train was yet to come. Having come prepared with every detail on the phone, he had decided for sure that he would walk through the haunted tunnel. The long drawn summer and the brief monsoon in Shimla had given way to the autumn spell, bringing a nip in the air while the afternoon sun’s languid nature had made his small roadside resort residence’s lawns become an ideal spot to lull around.  But lull he would not. It was his mission to explore the history, as he drove around to visit the various places like the Dagshai cantonment that had housed Mahatma Gandhi and had been a theater to the mutiny of the Irish soldiers during the Home Rule movement of 1914 in an encore, albeit a much smaller one, of the Curragh incident. Even more was his interest to check up on the remnants of the Gurkha forts, a testimony to the theatre of war the region had been for nearly fifty years in the 19th century between the various ...

No small matter, this Much noise is being made on the rising petrol and diesel prices in India. Is it worth the shouting matches that are being indulged in? When one looks at the petrol and diesel prices data from the Petroleum Pricing and Analysis Cell under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India, and starts doing some basic analysis, interesting trends start to emerge. As against the petrol price increments that were taking place between April 2007 and April 2014, the price of petrol has been under control, lower than what it could have been if the trends had continued. This can be understood when one sees the trendline based on prices for this period versus the actual prices for the subsequent period till 1 June 2021. It must be noted though that the anomaly could very well be a result of suppression of fuel prices under the UPA for the longest time. Interestingly, the UPA government had removed the market flexibility policy that the previous Vajpayee regime...