This land of ours has an innate quality of mesmerising anyone. "Tell me what was the first thing you noticed about India?" I asked a born-in-the-U.S. Punjabi-origin friend visiting India for the first time. "Oh, perhaps their ability to sit on a seat just on a single buttock," he responded. Now that I reflect upon it, surely it was a national trait I had quite missed noticing even as it happened before me everyday in choked buses and trains. Every thing in This Land Of Ours is a story worth telling, worth reading, worth reflecting upon. Till we start seeing something new in the same nooks and crannies we live in, pass by and still ignore.
 

Discovery Time in Kalpana Chawla town
December 9, 2006
“Mankind's search for the unknown is a never-ending ‘havan’, and many have to contribute the ahuti to it. My daughter gave her life not in vain; it was her ahuti...

Sometimes, A Primary School Teacher's Retirement Is Also News
October 2, 2005
Chandigarh: Sixties was the era of being young. The era of flower children, Che Guevara, hippies and the come alive age for psychedelic folk. Freedom was...

Free-dom – Aisi Azadi Aur Kahan
August 14, 2005
Dateline free-dom: In a Kingdom, you do as the king tells you. And in serfdom, you serve as a loyal serf. In a politician's fiefdom, you do his bidding...

Ponty's Got A Reason: Punjab Culture, Economy, Politics all Awash In Peg Royale
March 28, 2005
If Jim Morrison were a Punjabi, only reason he could have sung 'Take me to the next whiskey bar' would be to remain unnoticed, for that's the kind of thing Punjabis do the maximum in the entire country...

Khalsa Fervour Cauldron Simmers With Faith, Puritanism And Syncretism Traditions
March 25, 2005
War cries of Bole So Nihal, balladeers singing hymns to martial streak of Sikhs, huge hoardings of slain militant leaders lining the roads, erstwhile...

Lords Of The Files: A Real Bread And Omelette Story -- Govt Is Pickin’ Its Teeth
November 18, 2004
For more than one year now, all of us in Punjab have been paying taxes through our nose to fund a government busy picking its teeth. And it ain’t much...

Cops Script Reformed Version Of Police Act, So Be Prepared For Police State
October 10, 2004
Top cops script dreams into draft Bill and, voila! Recipe for a police state is ready: all civilian powers to police, and no check on misuse...

Punjab Not So Shining, You Said So In Assembly
June 18, 2004
Each successive government in Punjab has claimed itself to be biggest friend of the farmers, and has a punch line to sell that stance. Akali Dal-BJP regime...

‘Restore Our Votes, This Time We Will Use Them As Promised
April 25, 2004
His name Ghuggu is not something the 17-year-old will tell you proudly. But this is the only name he has. “marasi han ji main (I am a marasi), his...

Palahi – It Takes A Village And Its Stories To Prove A Point
2004
Try conjuring up the image of a well-to-do village in Punjab. Here is helping you  – Factor-in a 1500-seat capacity auditorium, string of schools built with...

Recalling Two Years In ‘Footpath’ Varsity
November 17, 2003
"It’s just not jobs we will be going back with, there’ll be lots of memories as well," a group of sacked panchayat secretaries muse, standing in front of the...

Please Don’t Call Us Kudimaar, Jeeda Cries In Anguish
October 26, 2003
In the privately-run ramshackle Kamal Model School run by Kulwinder Singh, there are 66 boys and 39 girls. In the nursery, LKG, UKG and Ist, there are a total...

Phenomenon Talhan: Caste Violence Is New,  But Caste Oppression Is Not
June 14, 2003
In the queer way in which issues manage national gaze in India, emerging caste consciousness among Dalits in Punjab moved into limelight only when a village...

Caste Brings Down Human Beings A Few Notches
June 10, 2003
In the virtually divisive atmosphere of Talhan, mark the unanimity between the incumbent Jat sarpanch and the former Dalit sarpanch. When asked what has changed...

Talhan Had A Caste, Now It Is Getting Religion Too
April 8, 2003
Caste and religion often act as twins, particularly when these are used to drive a wedge into an otherwise harmonious commune. So, when Jats of Talhan village...

Govt Tells Punjabi’s Top Writer It Is Too Broke, Can’t Pay Rs 500 It Owes To Him
April 4, 2003
In 1996, well-known Punjabi litterateur Santokh Singh Dhir literally predicted his fate when he wrote, “I am playing a flute before a buffalo,...

Palahi Will Clap For Kharaudi But With A Tear In Eye
March 21, 2003
The thirty minutes which President APJ Kalam will be spending on March 23 at Kharaudi village of Hoshiarpur will be the most heart-breaking half an hour...

His Martyr Father Was Called Kalepani; No Wonder The Museum Isn’t Lit Up
January 9, 2003
Darkness is a word that frequently punctuates Mohinder Singh Dhillon's conversation. Perhaps this was natural. After all, his father had darkness suffixed...

Travelling On Footpath Route, And Reaching Nowhere
September 20, 2002
With the job lost, poverty creeps slowly into your budget, affects your children's psyche, but hits you in the guts the day you pull your children out from that...

Punjab Police’s bloody homage to Shaheed Bhagat Singh: The Kuljit Singh Dhatt case
June 16, 2002
As millions across the country trooped into air conditioned cinema halls in mass appreciation of the martyrdom of Shaheed Bhagat Singh...

Officialdom Has To Move Beyond Surprise And Shock Over The Missing Girls
April 3, 2002
Officialdom seems to be pretty good at being surprised. A relatively small city of Amritsar boasts of nearly 100 clinics engaged in providing sex...

A Poor, Raped, Murdered Girl Is Up Against WTO, Fashion Shows
August 16, 2001
She was 17, going on 18. By any standards, she was an ordinary girl, daughter of a government school teacher. A villager. Then, she went through a...

Guru Ki Masit! A Mosque Of A Sikh Guru! Bridging The Religious Divides,  They Work To Restore Guru Hargobind’s Mosque
August 7, 2000
Across the Beas from Jalandhar, halfway to Amritsar, is a scene straight out of the national integration textbook: Nihangs performing kar sewa, Hindu women preparing 'langar,' Muslim masons repairing walls...

Shahid Bhagat Singh Zindabad! We Want A Water Tap!!
March 21, 2001
Seventy-one years after Bhagat Singh kissed the gallows and fifty-three years after the country attained Independence, villagers in this native village of the...

Shattered Dreams—Community Project Goes Up In Gas
2000
One of the most ambitious projects of the state government – dotting the entire countryside with community biogas plants as an alternative fuel resource...

The Split Born People Punjab’s Myriad Kisan Unions Where Reds Run Farm Debates And Confusion Reigns
September 19
In times of extreme crisis threatening their very survival, any group of people with shared worries would tend to coalesce together. But Punjab's farmers, caught between threats of MSP scrapping, plunging...

Doaba Has A Dream — It Is To Run Away

Sixty-year-old Jaswinder Singh tries his level best to hold back the tears as he narrates at his house the pathetic saga of what his young son Manjit Singh was...

Four Years After Malta, Indian Govt Plays Dumb, Fortress Europe Deaf

A couple of days earlier, Ujjal Dosanj ran through the streets of his village in Doaba heart belt of Punjab. It was his first home coming after becoming premier of...

Punjab Police Boss wants to change the shape of things after 143 years DGP suggests reforms in the 1861 Act,  sends artistes scurrying for cover

Punjab Police's sense of humour is tingled. 143 years after the outdated Punjab Police Act 1861, top police boss in the state has come up with a reformed...