manedge

It was March 1980. After having done with my matriculation exams, I was looking for magazines to brush up on my general knowledge. The latest issue of Competition Success Review had Robert Mugabe on its cover while Prakash Padukone held aloft the All-England Badminton Championship trophy on the cover of Sportsworld. Mugabe was indeed the poster boy of liberation and democracy. Padukone was a matter of pride for Indian sports in an era when there were hardly any sports heroes to write home about. I remember having read with a lot of interest articles detailing Mugabe's guerrilla war and how he was the hope of the predominantly black nation, on the doorstep of an apartheid-ridden South Africa. Winds of change in South Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, would sweep across the borders and rid South Africans of their misery. Interestingly, South Africa found its own formula of inclusive growth and development a little more than a decade later. So it is quite surprising that Zimbabwe were to fal...

As I set about to write this time piece on Swachh Bharat - the flavour of the season - it is 2nd October 2017, now linked to the PM's Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. In a small way I have in my personal and official capacity done a little bit for the most pressing need of our times. My morning walk in a well-laid out colony is peppered with two distinct smells. One is doggy potty, that is littered along the edges of the pucca roads and the other is parched cow dung. Why my colony alone, you find the two on all roads in cities and towns. Cows left to roam and ruminate all night leave the residues of their attendance in the form of an evaporating stench of urine and cow dung residue left stuck to the road after it has been wiped off by poor women living in nearby slums. As someone born in a Hindu family, cow has been more than sacred. We have always been told of the purifying nature of cow dung and urine. I do not doubt the scientific or religious basis of that philosophy. In fact, when ...

Seven years ago, on 24th July 2010, I was taking a small nostalgic trip of my own. Having spent 20 years in different sections of the Power System Department of Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP), SAIL, I thought it would be pertinent to re-visit those places where I had worked. Post-lunch I had to join the Education Department as Senior Principal of BSP Senior Secondary School, Sector-10 (SSS-10) - which later turned out to be the most remarkable phase of not only my career but also my personal life. I started the day by finally handing over the last technical assignment to my boss in the morning. I decided to go over to Sub-Station-4 (Pump House-2) which was one of my first areas along with Blast Furnaces when I joined the then Distribution Networks Department in August 1990. A trip to MSDS-I Control Room where I had spent six years as Shift In-Charge and 11 months as Shift Manager ( a newly created post in 2007) was like a pilgrimage. In fact when I was on night shift duty in the Plant Con...

The recent India-Australia Test Cricket Series was literally a great clash. The Australians, and that included Suderland and the top journos chose to target Kohli. Their game plan was simple. Attack the top player and skipper and you will floor the Indians. And they successfully did. On a doctored pitch that suited O'Keefe more than a tired Ashwin-Jadeja combine, they beat India in three days at Pune. Except for Rahul, no one showed any temperament to 'wall' the Aussie attack. The win emboldened the Aussies, even leading to Steve Smith's famous 'brain-fade' at Bengaluru. But when Kohli questioned the cheats - Smith and Handscomb, it was a return to the 1976-77 Bedi's expose of Lever using his vaseline-soaked handkerchief used as a headband to polish the ball. The Aussie media including the ACB supremo were aghast. How dare a brown man question the post-truth that Smith wanted, if not the world, but the Indians to believe? That triggered the ugly Aussie wa...