The failing of the Mahatma

Why is Mohandas Karam Chand Gandhi  a taboo subject to write on , especially if you are not supporting whatever he did. Critically evaluating his actions have never been a favourite subjects of commentators alike.

For me he has always been a leader, maybe a leader who was above his contemporaries but still a leader never the less. And he was no god, but a human being.

The more and more I read about him the more my feeling that he has been given a status of  demigod gets strengthened. Whether it was bestowed on him or he actually demanded is something that I cannot comment on. But I am forced to believed that we have ignored his fallings whenever we have thought about our Father of Nation.

As I have aged, my image of Mahatma Gandhi has also changed. First he was the Father of nation, someone who is immune to any wrong doings and as I write now I look at him as someone who was a mortal man who was swayed by his desires and carried his share of bias. He too like us was prone to love and hate and to success and failure.

I feel that his actions during the time period of 1915 when he jumped into the Indian National Movement and to his subsequent death should be studied with an open mind. Not with a preconceived notion that we are looking into someone who was always a god or as it turned out eventually, the father of the Nation. 


To bestow on him the title of Father of the nation is asking something too much from him. It’s best if he was not bracketed but left in the history for the coming generations to judge his actions and his success. Perhaps if he was alive he would never have agreed to his such a supreme position. More so when he would have been confronted with his repeated failings which he continued to ignore.

Kalmadi and Raja reunited

New Delhi : Suresh Kalmadi and Andimuthu Raja are long lost brothers who got separated at childhood when they were running away from a BSNL linesman after they had stolen copper wires from him and if it was not for their respective embezzlement in 2G and Common wealth they would not have been reunited again, a ‘We-leak’ cable has revealed .

A cable no 01010101 dated 20.01.2010 from Joginder Clinton, Field Director, India CIA ( Corruption India Accentuated ) to Shri.Lalu Yadav ( State Head, CIA, Bihar) has revealed that  Kalmadi and Raja were brothers who got separated while trying to hide reel of telephone cables that they had taken from a BSNL linesman when he had come in their locality to repair a minor fault.

The linesman, whose name is Sardar Mohan Singh, after discovering the embezzlement, gave the brothers a chase as a result of which Raja took a train to South and Kalmadi landed in Pune, all at the tender age of seven years. Surprisingly though the CIA was aware of this fact for the last few years yet it chose to remain a mute spectator to this meteoric rise and fall of the brothers rather than acting as a guardian.

According to sources if it was not for a loose mouthed ED officer who was a part of the team that conducted raid on Kalmadi’s house, both the brothers would have never met.

of Shaadma and her tale

It was 1.30 AM in the night and the craving for tea forced me to ask the driver to stop at a Dhaba on NH3 about 65 kms before Jalgaon in Maharastra.  I had a train to catch the next morning from Jalgaon and had more than ample time to do some badly needed stretching and catch up on some food and some tea and fag.

We, me and my driver had been driving for a couple of hours and had left Nashik long back. The dhaba was built in midst of a picturesque landscape. It was on NH 3 surrounded by tall mountains of black rocks and tree. 

I didn’t ask for the menu and simply told the waiter to bring Dal Tadka and Roti. And the driver too gave his silent assent to the choice of menu with a discreet smile. If you are at a Indian dhaba and you prefer vegetarian than rest assured the best  meal that you can have is Dal Tadka and Tandoori Roti.  With time  I have developed a strong reason to believe that The taste of Dal Tadka is virtually the same at every Dhaba, be it in Bastar, Koderma,Nangloi,Meerut, Vindhyachal or Solapur. It’s the best bet you can play without caring for how it will taste. The hardness and the elasticity of the Tandoori may differ but the Tadka in dal will always remain the same.

And Like many of us, I too have a kind of liking to sit on the charpai when having dinner at a Dhaba. And this Dhaba had nothing but charpai strewn all over, where one could sit with your legs folded or lie down and gaze at the stars which were shining like small moons on a clear March night.

I, Aruna Shanbaug

I was a nurse at a hospital in Mumbai, full of life just like a 24 year old girl. I had many dreams, countless aspirations just like all. I was about to get married to a handsome doctor. And then everything fell apart.

On the night of 23 November, 1973 I was sexually assaulted by a boy who was working in the same hospital where I was. And I lost my power to speak , I was paralysed and slowly I slipped into a vegetative state. That was 37 years ago. With time everyone left me, my family, my fiancé, my friends and my death too.

A vegetative state is a condition which arises after a patient suffers from severe brain damage. It’s a state of coma. In the vegetative state patients can open their eyelids occasionally and demonstrate sleep-wake cycles, but completely lack cognitive function. I have been in this state for the past 37 years. This was before India won the world cup in 1983, or before the calendar turned 2000. I don’t know who is Sachin Tendulkar or who is Shahrukh Khan.