After we were chased back by the crowds at Kathua, we speed back to Madhopur, a dusty, dirty, muddy water pool area which is the last Punjab outpost. We park along with the lines of trucks on the roadside. After transmitting video footage of the Kathua tension to Noida we go to the Coral River Resort to have a bite and decide what to do next. The resort is a welcome contrast to Madhopur's dullness with open dining next to a winding green canal. We decide we will try and enter Jammu when night falls and people are off the streets. We have heard that the Army has been deployed on the Kathua-Jammu highway and it will be safe to travel. Dusk comes and night falls. We gear up once again. I pick up a walkie talkie from our OB van so we can at least communicate if there is no cell signal, but the walkie talkies are more like toys and the batteries...

Ahead of us is our white coloured outdoor broadcast van with its big satellite dish pointing straight ahead, advertising its presence magnificently. On regular broadcast coverage trips I feel comfortable with our OB van in tow because it makes it that much easier to transfer video from the spot location to our studios in Noida, but today I am feeling jittery. The highway from Pathankot in Punjab to Jammu has mobs of Hindu protesters, gathered in groups at random places along the road, but mainly concentrated where there are towns, villages or hamlets. The youth in the mob are clad like youth anywhere in India, but the handkerchiefs covering the faces of many seem a bit eerie. Our cameraman and me are trailing the OB in our Innova, when suddenly up ahead in Kathua, just a few kilometers into J&K territory we spot a huge mob that has gathered to protest what they say is indifferent media coverage, that is not conveying the...

India needs to wake up! A Field Marshal, a legend, a father figure, a soldier who could never retire passes away into eternity, and the Home and Defence Ministry squabble over the warrant of precedence? What warrant of precedence? Who other than stodgy government types cares what the warrant says? Respect has to be earned, not demanded. The custodians of the warrants are supposed to be the crème de la crème - The Indian Administrative Service, and surely the least that one expects from the IAS, is an ability to think. And is this what the top officials thought? If the legendary Marshal did not straightaway warrant an amazingly respectful state funeral then who really does? And for what credentials? It is amazing that our great nation is coming down to such a level that it does not have the ability to quickly recognize and salute genuine worthiness, genuine talent and bestow genuine honor. And in a nation where divisive forces are...

When I wrote the first blog on letting go of tigers, letting them get wiped out, there were many who took serious offence to it, saying there could be nothing more selfish than what i had written. I pondered over it for a while, stared myself in the mirror and wondered if i was being a barbarian. Think i did and was ever more convinced, that try as we might, the tigers will go. But I guess humans all aspire for the safety and security of the constant and as Alan Greenspan says in his now famous book recalling his trip to Venice with his wife, that we love the unchanging edifices such as of romantic Venice and not the fast paced world of Silicon Valley, especially when considering a honeymoon destination. I too would love to see the tigers around, but whether i want it or not, they and thousands of other species along with them wont stick around for long. And they...