yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Jashn E Deccan, festive indeed Mumi asked if this December too the music festival we had been to, during the previous year, at the outskirts of town was being organized. Some days later we came across the flier for the 2 nd edition of the Jashn E Deccan and, as they say, blocked the dates.   During the previous edition Pandit Biswajit Roy Choudhury, one of the artists, had beautifully described event as, ‘ Everything here is so beautifully unconventional ’. Ustad Abdul Rashid Khan’s performance at the event unfortunately turned out to be his final performance; that evening at the age of 108 he had stunned all present and for me redefined few terms.   This year’s edition, held at the same venue, Sreenidhi International School , had performances by 6 artists spread across 2 evenings. Pandit Uday Bhawalkar began the proceedings with Raag Yaman and moved on to Raag Shivranjani. Seeing him perform I recalled Piyush Mishra state that an artist had to enjoy his perfo...

After my first experience at the Jaipur Literature Festival ( 2017 edition ) a friend called and asked if it was about fun ( read food ), glamour ( read wardrobe ) or books ( read buying, reading, knowing, listening to and interacting with authors ). It is about all of this and more, you need to savour the experience once, get a feel of the scale and fervour, and develop your own understanding of the festival. A friend says we are a nation of melas, and this is a wonderful one! Not very easy to choose favourites in such scenario but if I had to pick two threads it would be the books on history and one liners. It was story-telling at its finest and changed the way I understood history could be discussed. Suzannah Lipscomb talked of ‘The lovers who changed history’ and Giles Milton of ‘The spice trader who changed history’. The later, to quote William Dalrymple, “a master class in history”. What I share (and discuss) below are one-liners that I came across and that stayed...

The Toll of Ambiguity in the Government’s Culling Orders This piece finds place on The Wire Please find the edited version on The Wire here The unedited version in text below Thanks are due to Kartik Shanker, Abi Tamim Vanak, Arpan Sharma, Vasudevan Mukunth, The Wire and Dharmendra Khandal. The scenario. Media extensively covered the debate around culling during May and June 2016. A spat between two cabinet ministers underscored the sound and fury. The Supreme Court has since refused to ‘Stay’ the Central Government notifications allowing for Nilgai, Rhesus Macaque and Wild Boar to be declared vermin under section 62 of the Wildlife Protection Act (WLPA); Bihar, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh were the states affected. We have very little understanding on how the situation has shaped in these states post the culling decisions. This also stands true for Maharashtra and Telangana where the state governments (under section 11(b) of WLPA) have permitted cull...