He is 21, has never voted, is frankly more interested in Quentin Tarantino than Narendra Modi and yet was moved to pronounce Narendra Modi's ascension to the Gujarat de Gaddi as "a terrible event and a precursor of a holocaust". I thrilled when he said this. Why you might ask? Am I a closet commie you might ask or have the jehadis' been chatting me up you might ask. Well no! I am a normal namby pamby hindu female and I find all this slaughtering of people, muslims, hindus, sikhs, isaai whether in Gujarat or Iraq extremely offensive. But I am equally appalled by the mumbling Manmohan Singh talking of the poor, the oppressed and the laggard muslim as deserving of a better deal from his minority government while retaining absolute silence and seeming inaction on the terrorists attacking innocent Indians all over the country. Or doing nothing meaningful against perpetrators of violence against hindus, muslims, sikhs and isaais anywhere...

Ram... Hey Ram, please send us by land or sea by air or through simple materialization the following: 1.An inspirational, honest, pan-Indian leader who can become ten times his size or be microscopic just like your mentor Vishnu... 2. 28+7 (one for each state & UT) decent, visionary state leaders who love there state if not there country... 3. 100's of sensitized, hardworking bureaucrats who love their job more than their private bank accounts and Raj Sinhasan. 4. A PM who tells the truth... currently the nuclear and unclear deal have got mixed and mis-matched! 5. A Home Minister who articulates the security plans for his security agencies, a version of the Gabbars, "Kitne aadmi maare" rather than, "Itne Admi mare"... 4. An Agricultural Minister who doesn't play cricket... in any case Subhash Chandra II as the classic 'Quisling' is queering that pitch. 5. A Defense Minister who will protect the country's borders rather than the Gaddars in and out of Government. 6. An Education...

(A lament on Luciano Pavarotti and Pandit Jasraj in the times of 24X7 television) I mean before you will deign to feature him/her on your news channel with 24 hour programming and an incredible appetite for politics / cricket and films...? Luciano Pavarotti alive and kicking on my home CD player till Sunday night died on Thursday, 6th September to rapturous world obits, including one by the impeccable Vidya Shankar Aiyar on CNN-IBN. My point is he had to die to be noticed... this great publicly loved and obviously unwell practitioner of a classical art, had to die before we could spare a few somber seconds. Before he died... 3 mentions in 3 years on CNN-IBN and now this outpouring of love and praise! Too little too late. This brings me to my Question of the day. How many of the Indian great classical singers, bhakti singers, carnatic exponents, Odissi and Chau dancers, Sitar players, etc will have...

66... Life began for this school teacher at 66 but his entire life was a preparation for this beginning. "Teacher Man" by Frank McCourt... Frank McCourt, was born in Brooklyn, US and lived for the first two decades of his life poorer than your average Indian maid and driver, some of it in Limerick in Northern Ireland wracked by starvation and cold. 'Teacher Man' is his third book published in 2006, about his 40 years of a lugubrious, mostly uninspired teaching career in New York. But this is an inspired work and may do for teachers what "Angela's Ashes", his first book did for mothers.... reveal the mind and heart, the brawn and the brain drain of a lifetime of teaching....and deliver the ultimate reward...satisfaction at a job well done. As Frank McCourt says in his introduction, " So what took me so long to write my first book? I was teaching, that's what took me so long. Not...