The Asha, sans frills! [Image source]When Dipak Choudhary and his wife, Chandana, first set feet in Liverpool, UK in 1963, all he had with him was a princely sum of seven thousand pounds and that elusive treasure called ‘hope’. No wonder then that the restaurant he opened on April 4, 2004 at the ground floor […]
Swapping workability
[Image source: left, right]As long as he was the CM himself or through his wife by proxy, Lalu Prasad Yadav was hamstrung by a strange inability to do things that go by the adjective ‘good’ in his home state. There was lawlessness in Bihar, which more than anything else drew limelight, so much so […]
Return to Indianism
A 2003 Rediff reminder of UP politics: hope it’s now behind us![Image source] Fortunately, pollsters were proved wrong in UP. Else, had there been fractured verdict, one would have started seeing horse-trading in earnest. In a way, Mayavati’s victory is a sign that factional politics is not liked by people there. Why? The reason is […]
The fight of 2012
Calling on India – dream unfolds! [Image source] When the big bird, the A380 super duper, flew back to Toulouse yesterday from Mumbai, many hands bid it goodbye. Eyes followed as long as it could be seen in the sky before it melted away. Back to mundane, the question lingered on many lips: when are […]
The disease within
Image sourced from here. Plagiarism!Few will disagree plagiarism is an art, which if perfected and executed well, can reward handsomely. I remember in our college days if the topic to write a dissertation on didn’t have previous years’ works to ‘help’ us, we’d immediately press for a change till the professors relented. The trick then […]
Carnage at Virginia Tech U
Yesterday’s carnage at Virginia Tech University in US has shaken the entire world. It’s the deadliest campus shooting in the country’s history that has left at least 32 people dead. Ranked 17th for an engineering school by US News and World Report, that produces well-regarded annual ratings of American universities, Virginia Tech is a favorite […]
Mangoes to US
This summer, mangoes may well be out of reach of most people. The king of fruits, the delicious Himsagar, Langda, Fajli and Golapkhash from Bengal are set to travel all the way to US. The 32nd annual conference of US-India Business Council (USIBC), slated to take place on 27 June, will have Festival of Indian […]
10-year old sextuplets
When the 6 of them were born 10 years back in 1997 in New York’s Stony Brook University Hospital, there was considerable frenzy among people from all walks of life. As The New York Times then reported, the hospital on Long Island was under siege by the news media, television scouts, book publishers and entrepreneurs […]
Dhaka by train
Bus already plies, and now in 3 months time, trains will run to the Bangladesh capital. Initially, the trains will stop 35 km short of Dhaka at Joydebpur since this length doesn’t yet have broad gauge line. Gede this side and Darshana across the border are the stations where respective customs and immigration checks will […]
The fallout
As the Nandigram episode of March 14 gradually unravels, it’s clear that the government is firmly on the backfoot. The refusal to hand over land has now assumed an alarming dimension. Forget industrialization, even land for infrastructure projects already undertaken or planned shortly are hard to come by. NH-35, that links Barasat with Bongaon on […]