indiascribe satire

Anna Hazare and his team of underachievers could now retire to wherever they came from and repent at leisure. Repent they must, having fooled themselves and their followers by foisting a make believe revolution that was nothing but an ill conceived invitation to anarchy. How did all this happen? We first got a glimpse of this old man with his Gandhi cap in April last year when he sat on a five-day fast at Jantar Mantar, the same venue where he met his nemesis this time. He sat on a fast when no political or other activities were taking place in the national capital. Most of the leaders were away busy campaigning in state assembly polls. the 24-hour television news channels were starved of anything worthwhile to cover. So for them, Anna's appearance was manna from the heavens and that too at the centre of the city, on a road that had adequate parking space for their OB vans. The TV reporters, mostly youngsters fresh out of journalism institutes, had never seen anything like thi...

Finally, Taslima has had enough of "athithi devo bhava" of the "incredible" Indian government. She has decided to choose the cooler climes of Canada or the US than remain in the hot house in Delhi. She feels her creativity is wilting by the day, in fact, every hour she spends away from her beloved Kolkata. Fair enough. Our Taslima may have her faults. She may not be anywhere close to the best writers in Bengali and pushes her point a bit more forcefully than the "Bhadralog" would have liked. But that doesn't quite explain why the left barons felt that she has to be kept out of the city for good with just one loony protest against her. The question is, why should governments turn weak-kneed the moment a mob hits the streets protesting against this or that? Especially works of art, literature or cinema. Instead of laying down the law to protect fundamental rights of speech and action, why should the ill conceived views of a few hold majority opinion...