Birds on my terrace..
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On Assignment
Arrival at Hotel Courtyard Marriot, by Media Bus at Hua Hin,famous beach resort, 200km from Bangkok(23/10/09) View from hotel room...overlooking the ocean Morning sky..view from hotel speeding across-Hua Hin Night Bazar..Hua Hin Night Bazar..Hua Hin PM's interaction with media at Hilton Hote, Hua Hin (25/10/09) Media Centre(Marriot) Photo exhibition. Dusit Thani hotel, venue for 15th ASEAN Summit, Hua Hin Me and Nirmal Pathak..waiting for Godot..Hua Hin Media Marquee, Dusit Thani Venue-15th ASEAN Summit, Hua Hin, Thailand
My Brother PINTU
"Mar shathe ghumai (I sleep with Ma)...." was Pintu's reply, when I asked, where do you sleep these days. At first I didn’t get it. I asked again : "No I mean, where do you sleep these days ?" "Mar shaathe (with Ma)," he replied again. "What do you mean-I asked Pintu, my younger brother. "Everynight, Ma comes and sleeps beside me. I can feel her presence. Morning I just open the window and she leaves. I am telling you the truth," he was trying to convince me. Our mother died on November 24, 2008. My brother is --"mentally retarded," so we say. Since childhood, his life had revolved around Ma. When he was a kid, I had named him--- Ma boleche (Ma said so). Whenever he wanted something, he would make Ma agree to his terms and then mount pressure on me and Baba. He would then say --- "Ma boleche." Ma died and life moved on. I moved on. Three days after Ma expired, I was back in Delhi following the Mumbai terror attack....
Ten days I spent with them. The dreaded soldiers in the green. For the security forces, they are trained to kill. The merciless assassins, who stalk the jungles of Chhattisgarh. Their ideology, if you ask me, is somewhat warped. The call for annihilation of the "class enemies" has actually lost its meaning. Yet they carry the guns to bring about a revolution, which, even they know would remain a distant dream. While spending days and nights... I discovered the other side of these killing machines..They laugh, they want to live and they are often shy and of course they were the women, who carried our luggages, when we failed to carry them....and the jungle calls...which haunt us...even today
Me and Hemendra Sharma of CNN-IBN crossing a stream with the help of the PLGA soldiers inside the Chhatisgarh jungle (Pix by Ranjan Basu, photo editor, The Sunday Indian) Maoist rebels begin urban push By Sanjay Basak New Delhi June 10: Maoist rebels, who are now observing "Jan Pituri Saptah (revolutionary week)" in Chhattisgarh, have blown up power lines and disrupted communication links, targeting industries and power stations in the Abhujmar and Bastar regions and plunging much of the state into darkness. A senior state police officer, in a telephonic conversation with this newspaper, said that the Maoists, who had declared a "parallel government" some time back, were now trying to move from the jungles to urban areas. The blast at Durg on June 8, in which three CRPF jawans were killed, and the attack on the Bishrampur police station "are clear signals that they are pushing towards urban areas," he said. Comrade Sonu, a top Maoist central committee memb...