The Great Ganesha

The 2007 World Press Photo Awards were announced today [via the BBC]. There are some absolutely brilliant shots in there, including one taken for Reuters by Akintunde Akinleye of Nigeria [link] showing a man rinsing his face after a gas pipeline explosion. Despite it’s depressing precedent, the photograph is? visually stunning in its color and [...]

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Alice Coltrane, wife of John, mother of Ravi and musician extraordinaire passed away on January 12th of respiratory failure. She was 69. A devotee of Sathya Sai Baba, she took the name Swamini Turiyasangitananda but continued to perform as Alice Coltrane. Notwithstanding her religious affiliations, I had the pleasure of seeing her publicly perform live [...]

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Just caught this off Sepia Mutiny. Mid Day photographer Shadab Khan happened to be at the Gateway of India on New Year’s Eve. Read what he witnessed: On New Year?s Eve, I was supposed to click pictures of revellers at the Gateway of India, but what I witnessed instead has left me shaken. A young [...]

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An article on BBC News a couple of days ago told about Indian soldiers’ suicides. Because of the long, drawn-out war in Kashmir, several soldiers are killing themselves or their colleagues. Here’s a shocking statistic: The army has lost 72 soldiers to enemy attacks so far this year. But over 100 soldiers have already taken [...]

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Being of the academic persuasion, a side-effect of essentially having no real-world experience yet (I’m working on it), I find it quite amusing that people are so swayed by the so-called university rankings lists that come out every fall. In fact, many, many years ago, when I was applying for my undergrad here in the [...]

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The title results from having recently seen Munnabhai Part 2. But seriously, I just wanted to send Gandhiji some belated birthday greetings. On October 2nd (yesterday) he celebrated his 137th birth anniversary. Happy belated birthday, Bapuji. My family has some close ties with Gandhi, as I’ve written about in an earlier post. The matriarch of [...]

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It looks like Musharraf is to appear on The Daily Show next Tuesday (September 26th) to promote his new book. Wow. I think this might be the first time that Jon Stewart has had an international dignitary (and I use this word loosely) of this level on his show. Kudos to Jon. Here’s where I [...]

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Notwithstanding my opinion on using ‘Mumbai’, this is serious. A friend forwarded me an email the other day and it has to with the bomb blasts that affected Bombay on July 11th of this year. So many people have complained about the vaccum of governmental support that existed both, in the events leading up to [...]

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Arzan at news views and analysis writes about an India Today article on blogging in Bombay. Featured are Amit Varma, Peter Griffin, Bombay Addict [who stopped by here, not too long ago], Arzan Sam Wadia and Govindraj Ethiraj. Says Arzan, The author, Riddhi Shah, gives a good overview about the whole phenomenom of blogging about [...]

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Although I already posted a tribute to Agassi after his exit from Wimbledon, I hope there won’t be much objection to another posting. Given his performance at the US Open, I think it is well-deserved. Sunday saw the end of Agassi’s run in the US Open and in Grand Slam tennis. At the age of [...]

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