Hotshot reporters bring scoops. Till they grow into pompous lazy correspondents or editors when they start penning columns. This is the triply-filtered wisdom at the lower end of mofussil journalism. Hordes of columnists, however, think the daily humdrum of mofussil news is only so much leg work, while they are the dispensers of real wisdom. The truth not only does not lie in between, it does not have anything to do with either shade of opinion. A column is when the daily humdrum triggers a wave of thought which craves to be born in black and white.

But then columns can be born in many other interesting ways. Arnold Bennett, after writing a strong personal letter to the Daily Mail in reply to an attack on him by Lord Birkenhead, learned at the last moment that the Mail had telephoned asking for an article. "So," he wrote in his journal, "I crossed out the 'Sir' and 'Yours truly,' called it a column and charged them £40 for it." The world of journalism rests sometimes on such pillars, 'eh, columns!
 

Happy Independence Day, India
25 August, 2007
By all available accounts, the blood and pain of dismembered Punjabis seems to have been decisively left behind as Indian media searched for its heroes and villains

Pakistan in Sacha Sauda?
21 May, 2007
Within hours of the Dera Sacha Sauda cult head Ram Rahim indulging in an activity nefarious in its very inception, the whispers in the press room in Chandigarh’s Civil Secretariat had started talking of the role of the ISI...

Sikh Modelling Contests – A Body of Argument
2 May 2007
This Vaisakhi, the Sikhs, increasingly aware and worried about the younger generation's attitude towards the religion and much....

Listen to the cries at the gates
30 April, 2007
Malta is thousands of miles away from Punjab, somewhere along the icy Ionian Sea off the Greek coast, but Punjab's youth will give...

A Heritage Gone Bust
April 23, 2007
The row over the auction of a bust of Maharaja Duleep Singh, the initial plans of the SGPC to make efforts to buy the bust, the later opposition...

Chohan wanted own country of the purest, leaves behind merely sneers
April 4, 2007
Chandigarh: Half a century after he first entered the Punjab Assembly after being elected from Tanda, Jagjit Singh Chohan covered a remarkable distance in politics...

Shame-Sham: He was acting as president, is now acting president
March 13, 2007
Nine years earlier, poor old Gurcharan Singh Tohra was so naive as to suggest that the then Chief Minister and Akali Dal president Parkash Singh Badal should appoint...

Panthic Move
Bluestar DC is Badal’s choice replacing man who blocked SYL
8 March, 2007
Political masters have changed, and the babu minions were also expected to be shuffled. Akali Dal president Prakash Singh Badal, whose...

The saffron is spilling!
February 28, 2007
Sometime in August 2004, an over-enthusiastic group calling itself Greene Dragon took out a cycle rally...

Akalis fought Cong, BJP won
February 28, 2007
Last time when Prakash Singh Badal sat in the Chief Minister's office at Punjab Civil Secretariat, a huge...

Assassinating Memory: The centre fell off the fringe
February 14, 2007
Last week, when I wrote about 'The assassination of memory', I was referring to the collective memory of the Sikhs...

Messers Obama, Schumer, Punjab needs you! We polled deception wholesale!
Feb 21, 2007
On January 31, when Punjab was peaking up to witness a dirty vituperative election campaign...

Punjab polity: Straitjacketed in Politically Reversible Jackets
February 16, 2007
It is a very British tradition to link casual conversation with weather, but somehow the real balloting in Punjab on February 13 had a lot of weather talk...

The assassination of memory
February 7, 2007
Punjab is currently in the throes of an election campaign, but listen to the debate carefully...

Post-ballotting,  it is time to take stock
February 14, 2007
Now that the balloting is over, sanity will hopefully return to Punjab which has spent several weeks listening to inanities...

Political revolution in Malwa heartland as Bardhan clasps Daljit Bittu
February 9, 2007
The blazing red banner formed an unmistakable background for a communist stage, and with the hammer and sickle..

Ticket to Ride Sharam hum ko magar nahi aati
Jan 26, 2007
On what issue is the battle to rule Punjab being fought in the great democracy that India is? Here is the elusive..

Like us!
January 2, 2007
Moninder Singh Pandher. A man very much like us.Educated at elite Bishop Cotton of Shimla, St Stephens of Delhi...

Of mega debates spread over 100-acres raillas
December 8, 2006
PUNJAB'S DUSTY MALWA: Mega is a key word these days in Punjab. Mega projects, mega corruption and now mega rallies. With political debate dying a mega death...

Socialist country, capitalist policy, feudal state
November 20, 2006
In a country called India, which is legally a socialist republic but is being run along publicly announced capitalist policies called currently 'globalization' and...

Fear the death of politics
September 29, 2006
Politically dormant seasons are the proverbial silly seasons of politics. One never knows which of the simmering elements will explode into a problem of unforeseen dimensions. Punjab's Congress government led by Captain Amarinder Singh...

A Picture Post Card From Punjab
September 5, 2006
Picture post-cards come in many form, and friends living far away from Punjab often badger me for these. Strange how people become..

Launching F-16s and Cutting Off A Sikh's Hair
August 28, 2006
Tormentors cut off the hair of a Sikh boy in Jaipur after he resisted attempts by the hoodlums to tease girls of his school, the incident sending shock waves throughout...

Gusse Ho Gaya Nand Kishore
August 27, 2006
In his subtle but touching study of a migrant labourer and his world, Punjab's uncrowned poet laureate Surjit Patar penned his poem Aaya Nand Kishore...

Breaking News
August 22, 2006
Little can match the ridiculousness of Indian Television News Channels breaking the news. One of the most ubiquitous logos forever playing across the screen is...

Aisi Azadi Aur Kahan! Bus Yahan and Wahan. Same 2 Same
August 15, 2006
Chandigarh: The Mahatma and the Quaid-i-Azam were as different as chalk and cheese, the divide being as wide as the gulf between ‘Unity-in-Diversity'...

Amarinder govt finds Iraqi oil slush scam slippery
August 8, 2006
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has learnt in a most unlucky fashion how the world has become a global village. Something happening at the United...

Now On At The Akal TakhtMother Of All Discount Sales
July 23, 2006
Punjabis love nothing better than a Discount Sale. In these times of a retail revolution, times when multi-storey malls are increasingly dotting the Punjab countryside, when the country's moneybags are eyeing Punjab's fertile lands...

MUDDLE EAST TALES: The Righteousness of the Powerful Victims
July 25, 2006
I was a sophomore when India's state-controlled TV channel Doordarshan started telecast of Bhisham Sahni's Tamas. There was a widespread national furore. Tamas divided the families along age lines...

Israel’s reaction makes sense but local rockets must not boom regionally
July 18, 2006
The Gaza crisis spills over. Right now the world can hear the steady boom of rockets being fired from Lebanon and watch Israel fending off attacks on its northern

Communal and us? Radhe Shyam Radhe Shyam
July 15, 2006
In its shriller-than-the-next-channel coverage of Mumbai blasts, each TV channel intermittently focused on people whose attire denoted their faith. It seemed de

Marginalised Akal Takht and Marginal Voices
July 5, 2006
When Pope John Paul II got a new vehicle, Craig Kilborn reported that the holy father’s new Fiat can withstand direct machine gun fire and that the...

L'affair Captain and A General A very Dyal Amarinder
May 5, 2006
Shock, an emotion preserved for those rare occasions when human beings were jolted by things they would dread, is currently used as an alternative to Pretense. So thousands were shocked when they watched Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh...

Of Plastic in breasts, and WMDs in subzi-market Raise a voice against lifafe-baazi
December 22, 2005
Sixties, Beatles, flower generation and plastics, they all came together. Almost hand in hand. Barbie had already arrived in 1959, and it was plastic. And everyone said fantastic. And then came...

Polling In Badal Fiefdom: Mirroring A Rear View
November 23, 2005
When it comes to panthic affairs, political sagacity is second nature to Akali Dal president Parkash Singh Badal and Wednesday's events at the SGPC...

Volcker's Sleuthing Damages Amarinder's Leeway Channel Called Brother-In-Law
November, 2005
Probing the slush flow in international oil-for-food kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, a sleuthing Volcker never knew who is Amarinder Singh. For the record...

Cry Freedom, It’s Same-To-Same
August 14, 2005
Mahatma and Quaid-i-Azam were as different as chalk and cheese and the divide was always over the two-nation theory. Enmity and aggression...

Badal Takes Trouvaille Route To Politics, Lessons For Amarinder To Learn
June 25, 2005
Irony is intrinsic to sub-continental politics, from Jinnah talking about a secular Pakistan in the backdrop of a bloody balkanization to Advani hailing...

Pakistan Wants To Trade? Fine, I Have My Half-Brick! When Can We Start?
May 23, 2005
Unbeknown to Islamabad and New Delhi, Punjabis on both sides of the electrified fence are busy in a thriving export-import business...

Aurora, The Man Of War Who Preached Love and Practiced Peace
May 3, 2005
It could not have got any bigger. He had overseen the surrender of over 90,000 Pakistani soldiers, stripped the epaulettes off a Pakistani...

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...

Hail Nepotism: Bhai-Bhatija Zindabad, and We're Serious
2005
Imagine a successful Corleone family without nepotism! Where would it be? Certainly not where Puzo wanted it to be...

My Lord, Happy B'day, But Please Park Your Car Right
2005
As I stood outside the Punjab and Haryana High Court's imposing building in the early summer sun on Friday, playing mind games to decode the obfuscated...

Two Verdicts And A Govt: Amarinder Ignored Advice for Course-Correction
October 15, 2004
Legal niceties have a problem if they are not observed to the last fault: they come back to hit you like a sledgehammer. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s...

Welcome Aboard UT 2003, If You've Said Your Prayer
December 31, 2002
This year-end, take Chandigarh as a cauldron of hopes, toss into it all the ambitious projects announced with unfailing regularity by the UT administration, say...