ChinmayC Blog

Another humorous episode of the newsroom kind becomes due by now, I suppose! But this time it is not about the eccentric editor who always cause disasters for others, it is about a normal editor caught in normal conditions. In that light this episode runs the risk of not being considered funny, but esteemed readers may always apply their discretion to smile or grin or laugh out or remain discerningly expressionless. The editor on duty that night was waiting for his guest to arrive for the interview scheduled in the late night bulletin. The guest did finally arrive, but the editor was shocked by his pathetic condition! The guest was profusely apologetic. ‘You know the monsoon this time…always unwilling to allow the rains fall…so I decided not to take the umbrella! And, just the little distance from the bus stop to come over here…but all of a sudden a heavy shower caught me really unawares! The moment I was inside it was gone! So sorry!’ He was completely drenched. The editor was conce...

In a normal rainy season in Mumbai there are at least three major disruptions, and a major disruption normally means total breakdown of communication with local railway stations stopping train services due to water logging on tracks and all roads hopelessly clogged; stranded commuters lambasting the inadequacies of the municipal authorities in monsoon preparedness and the television channels terrorizing people with reports of more rains and tidal waves not to venture out of homes. Apart from that there are at least ten moderate or minor disruptions. But this rainy season-2012 there are no major disruptions so far and only 2/3 moderate or minor ones. People in Mumbai are confused and pained, they cannot say the monsoon is being merciful on them as their normal activities are not disturbed; they want more rains to fend off possible water scarcity in coming dry months; they do not want the municipal body to waste loads of money on the proposed artificial rain or rain seeding project. The...

Unmukt Chand! The Indian team under-19 has won the ICC U-19 World Cup-2012 by beating defending champions Australia by 6 wickets with 14 balls to spare today at Townsville in north east coastal Australia . This is the third time that junior India has won the World Cup Under-19 after the triumphs in 2000 and in 2008. India ’s chase becomes the biggest ever at this particular venue. Junior India skipper Unmukt Chand led from the front by making a superlative unbeaten century (111 off 130 balls) with productive contributions from Aparajith (33 off 38) and wicket-keeper Smit Patel (unbeaten 62 off 84). The goings-on during the ICC U-19 World Cup-2012 played in Australia did not particularly interest cricket fans even in cricket-crazy India , because the antics of senior India or Team India only are followed normally with zeal and kill. But when junior India was to face Pakistan in the quarterfinals and when they beat Pakistan in a very close encounter to advance to the semifinals the ...

A tremendous feature about him that always struck me was he looked the same since he made his first silver screen appearance in 1966. The reason could be that he started his acting quite late after attaining the age of fifty. He had always been the amiable, smiling, melancholic, incorrigibly pious and utterly homely uncle, father and grandfather of Bollywood movies for nearly five decades. And, he was always the balding, pale and thin man in mostly traditional costumes and surroundings. He had been like a beloved and respected member of our own family…and today we lost him. Avtar Kishen Hangal popularly known as AK Hangal , a veteran character actor of over 225 Hindi or Bolllywood movies, passed away this morning at a Mumbai hospital. He was 95. For the past week he had been on life support system and was not responding to medical treatment. The grand old actor had a fall in his bathroom on August 14, 2012 and fractured a hip bone. Old age problems combined with longstanding lung and ...

Cheteshwar Pujara in full flow! Team India was in absolute command when rains played a spoilsport putting an end to the third day’s play today in the first cricket Test match between India and New Zealand in Hyderabad. Starting from a disastrous overnight score of 106 for 5 New Zealand lost its bottom half for the addition of only 53 runs and got all out for 159 giving India a lead of 279 runs. Indian skipper Dhoni enforced the follow-on and New Zealand struggled to 41/1 when rains stopped play. Ashwin in action! Despite a cloudy and heavy weather it was not the seamers, namely Zaheer Khan and Umesh Yadav, but the Indian spinners, Ashwin and Ojha, who dominated the proceedings and proved New Zealand’s dubious reputation in tackling spin bowling yet again. Ashwin and Ojha shared nine out of the ten wickets to fall between them with Ashwin capturing 6 and Ojha 3. Umesh Yadav got the other wicket.   It was Ashwin’s third haul of five or more wickets in an innings in his 7 tests. The...

An audit report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India ( CAG ) on coal block allocation that set a presumptive loss of a huge amount of money to the exchequer has put the country in possibly the worst ever national political crisis. The Indian Parliament has been paralyzed for a week now with the opposition political parties not allowing it to work unless their demand is met. And what is the demand? The Prime Minister of India must resign. No yielding of even an inch irrespective of if the Prime Minister wants to give his statement or not and if the ruling coalition wants a healthy debate or not. The biggest loser in this whole ‘coal black’ process is turning out to be the ‘democracy’ and that means us the people—the biggest losers of the world. We people never had a clear choice anyway. We were never offered to choose between corruption and no-corruption. The choice increasingly was between more corrupt and less corrupt. And, we had no clue to who is ‘more’ or who is ‘less’....

South Africa No.1! If you thought star-ego wars were restricted only to Indian teams—be it in cricket or tennis—you were proved wrong by what happened or rather still happening in England. Interestingly, this gives you another chance to strengthen the synthesis that basically we Indians inherit most of our negative mindsets from our past colonial masters—England! Whatever be the legacy of the once ‘masters’ and once ‘slaves’ both of these countries show the ominous tendency to sacrifice national interests or pride in the rampant inability of their respective sports managers to handle their star players judiciously.  South Africa had just become the No.1 Test team in International Cricket Council (ICC) rankings by toppling England with a 2-0 win in the recent Test cricket series played between the two countries in England. The winning margin of greater than 1-0 came for South Africa after long sixty years. Gary Kristen shines as maybe the first ever coach to take two different tea...

The Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, has confirmed that a hardliner group in Pakistan uploaded morphed images and videos on websites and social networking sites to whip up communal tension across India. The images of badly mangled victims in natural disasters like earthquakes and floods from various countries including Tibet and Thailand had been linked to the ethnic violence in Assam, situated in North Eastern region of India, to incite the Muslims and to panic the north easterners living in different parts of India.  The uploading reportedly started around mid-July, 2012 in the aftermath of the Myanmar violence involving the Buddhists and Muslims which was also allegedly termed as ethnic cleansing resorted to by the government of Myanmar. In the meantime the Assam violence erupted between the local population of the Bodo tribe and the immigrant Muslim community from Bangladesh. The violence was largely due to economic pressures leading to land disputes created by ...

He has been fondly called Very Very Special by cricket lovers and experts in India. Indeed, he has given Very Very Special moments to Indian cricket over the sixteen years of his superb innings. He could be called the crisis manager for Team India always rescuing the team from tight situations and with Rahul Dravid virtually forming the disaster management cell—saving hopeless matches and winning matches from hopeless situations. They excelled both in home and away conditions. Vangipurapu Venkata Sai (VVS) Laxman announced his retirement from international cricket this afternoon at a press conference in his home city of Hyderabad. His retirement was expected ever since his listless performance in India’s disastrous tours of Australia-2011-12 and before that the tour of England-2011 . Particularly when Rahul Dravid decided to call it a day Laxman’s retirement seemed imminent. But the legendary player kept on perhaps for the last memorable innings of his life during the packed domestic...

Some fundamentalists are playing a sinister game of communal politics taking advantage of the Assam violence that erupted in July, 2012. These forces are spreading rumors through mobile short text or multimedia messages and are trying to create panic—place by place and community by community. First point to note is that Assam has had no history of communalism ever as we have said earlier too. What happened there was due to increasing economic pressures created by continuing illegal immigration over the decades and the erupting ethnic violence involved poor people of various communities who just want to survive. These threatened people cannot afford to indulge in religious luxuries or wars. The Assam violence had its first case of blatant misuse in Mumbai in the afternoon of August 11, 2012. People of a community of Mumbai had a demonstration to protest against the ‘killings’ of their people in Assam which was untrue conceptually, because the ethnic violence was not a ‘killing’ spree,...

Citizens of India are celebrating the 66 th Independence Day today. The Independence Day ’s features are: hoisting of the Tricolor , respect to the nation, patriotic fervor, the spirit of togetherness and unity, a sense of duty and taking of pledges for noble causes and deeds. Happy Independence Day to All of You !  Freedom in the Mind..... Faith in the Words......... Pride in our Souls......... Let's salute the Nation! 

Vilasrao Deshmukh, Minister for Science and Technology in the Government of India, former Chief Minister of Maharashtra and a stalwart of Maharashtra politics, passed away today at a Chennai hospital. He had been suffering from serious liver ailments for the last fifteen days and was on life support. The end came today due to multiple organ failure, the attending doctors said. He was 67. The whole nation went into mourning at the untimely demise of worthy political leader on the eve of India ’s 66 th Independence Day tomorrow. Hailing from Babhalgaon village in Latur district of Maharashtra Vilasrao Deshmukh rose from an elected Sarpanch or village headman in 1974 to the Chief Minister of Maharashtra in 1999. He fought and won the state Assembly elections in 1980 and his career as a prominent Congress political leader began. He won the elections in 1985 and in 1990 too and occupied prime portfolios of cabinet ministers in the state government. He lost the polls in 1995, but came b...

Article first published as London Olympics-2012: The Best Ever Haul For India! on Technorati. The Six Indian Olympic Heroes! The largest ever contingent from India to the London Olympics-2012 achieved the best ever haul of medals for the country. The quest for an elusive Gold medal remained unfulfilled, but India won 6 medals including 2 silver and 4 bronze which is double to that of 3 medals including 1 gold and 2 bronze achieved in the Beijing Olympics-2008. The Indian wrestlers provided the final boost to take the Indian tally to six.  The desperate wait for a gold medal continued till the last hours of the London Olympics. Hopes were pinned on the Indian wrestler in 66kg freestyle category, Sushil Kumar who was scheduled to play his bouts on the final day of the Olympics that is yesterday, the 12 th of August, 2012. He defeated his Turkish rival—the gold medalist in the 2008 Olympics— after an engaging fight in the first bout and entered the quarterfinals. The most elect...

"Feeling really excited about the ride! Going to be a unique experience! " "But where has the goddamned driver gone?" "Hurry up!...Let's go! Have to be back home before dark!"