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Sachin Tendulkar - The Unseen Face

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The disappointment and pain that accompanies the collapse of a beautiful image is more often than not, excruciating. And when the image is one that has endured longer than most, inasmuch as to be considered infallible, the fall is harder to digest. And when the image is worshipped by millions, the mere suggestion of fallibility is sacrilegious. In India, the image of Sachin Tendulkar is nothing short of Godly, and yet I am at pains to point out a few chinks in that apparently blemishless image for the sake of the great game that is cricket, and for the sake of its fervent supporters. These days, the newspapers and the electronic media are full of Sachin's achievements and his "greatness", some going even to the extent of raising him to the level of the greatest personalities that India as a country has seen through the ages. Yet, many have seen and felt, albeit without expressing their feelings for fear of blaspheming the painstakingly created, larger-than-life persona th

Akshaya Patra - A Noble Initiative

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It is an undeniable fact that Nobility is an exalted attribute, and that everybody would like to be classified amongst the noble. Yet, the chasm that separates the practitioners and preachers of this enviable virtue is a wide one, and very few can lay claim to have crossed it. Notwithstanding the abundance of apathy that abounds everywhere, there are still a select few that have put service above self and are rendering a Godly service to humanity. Akshaya Patra, an organization for the care of poor and underprivileged children, is indeed an instance of human selflessness and nobility. I have often felt pangs of empathy at the plight of children in dire need of nutrition, education and love, and have often had to turn my eyes, my ears and my mind away from these issues in my helplessness to fight them. So, when I see how organizations such as Akshaya Patra have volunteered to give themselves up for a cause that would help uplift the lives of thousands of impoverished and underprivileged

Diplomacy or Duplicity?

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Any visit by a president of the United States to India is a cause for great expectation and fanfare within the echelons of Indian politics and its polity, and Obama’s upcoming visit is expected to create no less an effect. However, India’s expectations of support and empathy from the US with regard to its perennial conflicts with Pakistan have always fallen flat, insofar that America cannot afford to ingratiate India at the expense of Pakistan, while the reverse may be true to some extent. The ascent of Obama to the highest post in the US has so far not augured very favorably for India, in that Obama’s stance towards the Indo-US nuclear deal and the offshoring of US jobs to Indian shores has not been particularly agreeable. These fears find further confirmation in the diplomatic jugglery resorted to by the US High Commissioner in India, Mr Tim Roemer, when, in a recent interview to Times Now TV channel, he was quizzed by new journalist Arnab Goswami about the prospects of US president

CWG - A Sordid Reality Show

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India has long been struggling to rid itself of the seemingly inextricable images of filth, dirt and corruption that have clung to it like a leeches ever since it embarked upon a journey of reinventing itself on its own post independence. The last two decades have seen the Indian psyche undergoing a pleasant change with governments, corporations and individuals committing themselves to a quality of life hitherto unseen on Indian shores. The endeavors of a vast majority of Indians towards mending the many flaws in the Indian social, political and economic systems have begun to bear some fruit, with the world at large viewing India as a symbol of something other than its clichéd shortcomings, and Brand India beginning to get its due respect on foreign turfs. So, it hurts all the more, when one hears and reads about the embarrassing fiasco that the build-up to the Commonwealth Games 2010 had thrown up, borne of a few unscrupulous and corrupt individuals, inflicting an unkind cut upon the

Reliance - Victim of A Flawed Democracy?

Democracy is a beautiful word. It gives the common man uninhibited freedom to air his or her views on virtually anything without fear of retribution. But the same word takes a repugnant form when used for furtherance of petty personal gains. And when such attempts involve accretion of petty gains at the cost of the life and property of another, they become abhorrent, to say the least. Such was the effect of the fatuous gossip that was circulated by one TV channel in Andhra Pradesh on the night of the 7th of January 2010. The channel in question, TV5, perhaps succumbed to the perverted idea of giving itself a new-year gift of massive TRPs at the expense of the reputation of a large private sector company, which would explain its decision to sensationalize an unsubstantiated, obsolete piece of graffiti from an obscure overseas publication in a manner that ensured a public outcry of gargantuan proportions. Add to that the pugnacious gusto of the ubiquitous party worker (read “goon”), and