Those great Russian Far Eastern Winters

If there's 1 thing I miss the most about Russia, it's the long and beautiful winters. They did get annoying when it didn't stop snowing even in April, but I loved them.

Here is a tribute.

http://indrus.in/articles/2011/12/07/an_ode_to_the_great_russian_far_eastern_winters_13355.html 

A story of Indo-Soviet love!

When the news spread last week about the passing away of Josef Stalin’s last surviving child, Svetlana Alliluyeva, there was a buzz among the members of the generation at the helm of power in India in the 1960s. Alliluyeva, who was called “my little sparrow” by Stalin, was responsible for a set of events that looked like they were right out of a James Bond film.

http://indrus.in/articles/2011/12/06/svetlana_alliluyeva_the_indian_episode_that_nearly_triggered_a_major_13346.html/

Kapil Sibal and Internet-censorship

A few years ago, when I was criticising the Congress Party, my Russian teacher gently reminded me that it was because of the very Congress that I loathe, that I have the freedom to criticize them. We have a vibrant democracy, of which freedom of speech is a pillar.

Yet, despite the existence of freedom of speech and freedom of expression, the government has taken "big brother" initiatives. They banned Stanley Wopert's "Nine Hours to Rama," a fictional account of Nathuram Godse and the assasination of Mahatma Gandhi.  Another government banned Salman Rushdie's 'Satanic Verses.'

Media censorship existed during the Emergency in the 1970s. Films and books are also censored. You can't watch a foreign film on Indian television these days, without the curse words being censored. This goes for French or Italian films with subtitles as well!!

So where is this uproar over Kapil Sibal wanting Facebook and Twitter to screen content coming from? This is nothing new in India. The same people who slam the Congress on Twitter and Facebook will either not vote in the 2014 elections or will vote the Congress back into power.

I am all for Freedom of Speech and I am most certainly against calls for content to be screened on social networking sites. But just paraphrasing Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, why do some members of the twitter brigade protest when Hurriyat supporters slam India on social networking sites? Why don't they let people who have a different opinion have an opinion?  If Sibal is a Fascist, so are many of those people who are abusing him on social networking sites.

Delhi’s T3 in the mornings

For those of you thinking of flying out of Delhi Airport’s Terminal 3 in the morning, I have some advice. For starters, if you’re not flying business class, get to the airport 3 hours before your flight. The queues are ridiculously long and the airlines don’t seem to have the capacity to handle the rush. There’s a realistic chance of getting to the airport and not being able to check in on time. I was fortunate enough to have a credit card that gave me access to business class check-in.


I would avoid T3 in the mornings, whether I have an economy or business class ticket. The airport has been expanded, but runway capacity seems to be the same. It can be painful to sit in the aircraft and wait for half an hour to get a takeoff clearance. What’s the use of a new and glitzy airport if it can’t even handle existing flights?

Whatever happened to the life we once knew in Delhi

When I visited this city in 1996, I loved seeing beautiful single-story cottages everywhere. Such kind of living was impossible in Bombay. My hometown has such a scarcity of land, making living in an independent house a pipe-dream.

In 2000, I noticed that most single-floor villas were converted into 3 floor houses. While that charm of yesteryear was gone, the houses still made a pretty site. Now in 2011, with property prices at ridiculous levels, people are handing over their land to builders and the houses are being converted into ugly appartment buildings. What a pity that a new generation in this grandoise city will never experience the thrill of living in an independent house in a big city! I am sure that Delhites don't want their city to look like Bombay but the lure of money is too much for them to not turn their houses into ugly appartment buildings.

Evil Spirts in East Delhi terrorize unlucky house

The housing colonies near Patpatganj, east of the Yamuna, are newer developments in an area that was a setting for some of the epics of centuries past. Delhi’s djinns and tormented souls have been roaming these eastern parts even before the arrival of the Turks.


Tucked away in a nameless colony, just a stone’s throw away from a metro station is a haunted house. No, this is not your typical ‘bhooth bungla,’ which was abandoned in the 1950s. In those Nehruvian times, the plot of land where this house stands was in all probability, an agricultural field.

Could it be something that happened around the time Arjuna was fighting his cousins in nearby Indraprastha? Or was it the result of a post-independence land-feud? Is it something that may have transpired in those simple socialist days, when Dilhi was far away and disconnected from these parts largely because of the then-clean and wide Yamuna? No one has a clue. The farmers of the 1950s are all gone. The inhabitants of the area only know that there was a murder in the house and that every family that moved in since has witnessed a death.

Cobwebs, decay and spirits jostle for space with the only external sounds being azaans from nearby mosques and bhajans from a neighbouring gurudwara! A group of adventurous girls once decided to walk in to the compound on a cold winter night. The lucky or unlucky 13 moved in quietly hand-in-hand and as the cold breeze swung some branches, an odd strike of lightning and thunder made the girls scream in horror and scram for the gates. Few have dared to venture in since!

Some hear screams and plates being broken, others see lights, yet no one knows who haunts this wretched house! What is the story? Will the truth ever come out?

Delhi : Existing and forgotten traditions of Purani Dilli

This is a wonderful article written about Old Delhi by Chief Election Commissioner Qurayshi in The Hindu.

The Hindu : Cities / Delhi : Existing and forgotten traditions of Purani Dilli