Passionate About India

S uch propagation of blind faith, illiteracy and fundamentalism without questioning logic is what takes humanity down.   When I was really young, and though even then I never believed in God, we used to celebrate   Saraswati Puja   as a part of our local club’s annual ritual! My father had told me that we must not use the entire surplus from the   Puja   to buy cricket kits etc for our club. He insisted that we must also do some good work, like donating to Mother Teresa. And like an obedient son, to get over the guilt of buying a cricket bat, half of the said surplus was donated to Missionaries of Charity. I still have that letter of thanks from Nirmal Hriday (earlier called Mother Teresa’s Kalighat Home for the Dying Destitutes). As I look back, I find probably that’s the only purpose Mother ever served.   For all the Western capitalists and countries full of guilt of exploiting the rest of the world and doing precious nothing for them, she was a Wester...

SRK's interrogation is not the issue. The issue is that Americans need to learn humility. The week’s big story was Shahrukh Khan's interrogation in the USA. True, as people would say, why give so much importance to SRK being detained in the airport for two hours, when there are so many more important socio-economic issues bogging the country – from poverty to illiteracy! But truth also is that while socio-economic issues should be picked up constantly – and we at The Sunday Indian do attempt the same most religiously – yet, there are the SRKs who will make news from time to time because they too impact the country in many ways. And this time around, SRK’s detention has brought to light the plight of thousands of others who go through a similar kind of a treatment on a most regular basis. Personally speaking, I haven’t ever been subjected to a detailed profiling; but yes, the kind of questions and the way I have been asked were good enough for me to decide years back that I woul...