Kusum Choppra

Hail the highly respected Montek Singh Ahluwalia , aka “former World Bank man” and India’s resident economic genius, whose team reckons that Rs. 32/- per day is enough to keep an Indian above the poverty level. Honestly, doesn’t this smell more of a ‘garib hato’ pogrom, rather than garibi hatao? This is an appeal to home grown social activists/eco-terrorists. Kindly hijack the gentleman and some of his cohorts and dump them in some out of the way slum or village. Let them spend twelve…nay, give them grace for being chronically wealthy; let them survive five days on Rs. 32 a day and show us all how well that goes; prove their point in public interest, if not that of the ivory-towered Planning Commission and the government of India’s creditability. Is it not ironic – while our growth rate rises, our calculations of GDP spiral, salaries of top stars and top honchos, corporate, bureaucrat and political , go through the roof, somehow it is reckoned that the poor need less a

Dust thou art, to dust returnest Was not spoken of the Soul. Naa, toh nahi sahi Par kya karoon main is Soul kaa Ne chain se jeeta Ne marne ki ijazat detaa. Jeete ajo, jeete jao Chain khokar, mann ko maar kar. KYON? Kyon maaron main apne mann ko? Kyon nahi maarun doosre ka mann? Mere mann ke marne se kya hoga Main ne rahoongi Ek dukhi kukurti awaaz Shayad kam hogi. SHAYAD bola... Kyon kiu ek aisi awaz jayengi To dagli doosri ayengi Pata nahi kahan kahan se aa jaati Hainhain karti, apna matlab bataane Aur dusroon ka laksh bhulaane Chain se jeene ne deti.

Bring out the candles and the placards The sit ins at India Gate or the Rani of Jansi's Women of India unite You have nothing to lose but your Patriarchal chains. They wasted decades in the run up to the Bill Leth them not now cut it up into a Reservation Pie. They've stepped up rapes in U P A minister's niece murdered in A P Is it to remind us That men hold up the sky And women are underneath. We talk of Arab women debarred from driving What about the Indian woman's right to Legislate?

Just finished rereading the book that set me off on my Mastani trail..."The Sword of Tipu Sultan" written by Dr. Bhagwandas Gidwani who also wrote another amazing book "The Return of the Aryans." The amount of reseach that Gidwani puts in takes him into territory which stands at odds with the British sponsored history we learnt at school and opens new vistas, which is what encouraged me to look behind the sponsored dancing girls myths created around Mastani. Even if Gidwani is totally enamoured with his characters, the pictures he delineates of the India of the times of Tipu Sultan reveal one inwhich Hindus and Msulims shared much common space; it also throws light on the perfidy of our so-called Rajahs and Rajputs who have a history of letting India down at every invasion since Time Immemorial. In Tipu's time, apart formhis father Hyder Ali, the only ones who stood up to the British were the Marathas, led by Brahmins. Tipu Sultan himself was tutored by a mullah