The Don of Dhanbad

DHANBAD’s dreaded Mafia gangs were riveting topics of conversation last fortnight, and for different reasons. Film actor Shatrughan Sinha, with the blessings of the ruling…

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CALCUTTA IS FOEVER

Thirty years ago, a dishevelled man leaned across and shouted at me in the smoke-filled, raucous Olympia bar on Calcutta’s Park Street: “Calcutta is forever!”…

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The Takeover Man

Most of us are cursed with poor memory. We need episodic markers to help us measure our lives from one significant remembrance to another. Our…

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BUREAUCRACY-THE POWER THAT BE

All private secretaries to Union ministers are equal, but S.R. Bhatia is more equal. Bhatia is the private secretary to Prakash Chand Sethi, the Union…

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NOT SELLING VOLUMES

It was a browser’s dream come true­ kilometres of books that took hold of the bibliophile’s heart-strings and did not stop tugging for hours. For…

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MYSTERIOUS U-TURN

Although it is a blasphemous thought, it has cropped up in many a legal mind during the last few weeks: if bets were placed on…

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Spate Of Senseless Tragedies

Qutab Minar, the 72.5-metre-high monolithic tower that Iltutmish built 750 years ago, witnessed two shocks in its hoary life-span. In 1368, it was struck by…

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STONE AGE SHAKTI

That Trite phrase ‘as old as the hills’ has suddenly taken on startling significance in relation to a thread that runs through Hindu beliefs: the…

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DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARNESS

The Washington post adopted this four-word slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” in February 2017, its first in 140 years. It was used by its owner…

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