It is T20 IPL cricket season in India again. Able bodied young, old, superannuated, dropped, playing cricketers from across the world have converged to try and hit the ball like Chris Gayle, the Don Bradman of capsule cricket, with added ability to do the Gangnam dance. T20 cricket has subsumed evening prime time at the…
Author: Siddharth Srivastava
Journalist
MMS Scandal in India
There has been another MMS sex scandal in India to add to numerous others involving usual suspects actors, actresses, models, school kids, god men and politicians, not necessarily in that order. This could be a sociological study of people in this country having some fun, a few on the side. The one’s I can recall…
Pardon Sanjay Dutt
Sanjay Dutt should be pardoned and allowed to do what he does best, act in movies. I don’t know him. I don’t belong to the film fraternity. I am not producing or directing his film. I am not his booze or exercise buddy, though I am a big fan of Munnabhai-I & II and Dutt’s…
Another Coalition Tamasha in India
India is in the midst of another tamasha linked to coalition politics with the DMK withdrawing support to the Congress-led government. The DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi is a first-rate example why no job beats being a politician in this country. He is nearing 90 and harbors hopes to be chief minister of Tamil Nadu again….
Age of Sex in India
What should be the age of consensual sex, 16 or 18? The debate in India is about the right of a 16-year old girl to legally say that she had sex willingly. Otherwise any boy or man can be criminally charged irrespective of what the girl’s views are. This question is a no-brainer in the…
An Air Ticket to Goa
Will air travel in India become cheap again? Will typical Indian middle class families comprising noisy unruly kids and carting food neatly packed in multiple tiffin boxes, be able to afford a plane ticket again? Just a few years back this was possible. The thrifty train traveling population of India that likes to pack homemade…
An interview with Rahul Gandhi
The following is an imagined, though candid and freewheeling, interview of Rahul Gandhi, by yours truly, following the Congress leader’s categorical statement that he neither wants to-become Prime Minister of India nor marry… Sir, why live in such denial? This is an incorrect assessment. The Gandhi dynasty has never denied power to itself. As a…
Indias Budget: One View
The following is a personal interpretation of how India’s budget presented by finance minister P Chidambaram could have read: “The going has been good, honorable speaker madam. The government kitty is flush due to income tax (from the hard working salaried middle class) and indirect taxes (that burden the poor the most) collections. Thus, we…
Of Sunny Leone & Indian Actresses
Recently, two top Bollywood actresses Vidya Balan and Kareena Kapoor got hitched, which is not the most heart rending news for Sunny Leone obsessed Internet savvy sections of young India. Importantly, both Balan and Kapoor declared that they would continue to do movies post-marriage. Would that be unusual? It would be, if one studied precedents…
Terror Strikes India Again
Terrorists have struck again at Hyderabad. The attack, in the wake of the hanging of Parliament attack accused Afzal Guru, underlines that militants can orchestrate and time a strike in India almost at will. Home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde has said there were intelligence inputs that such an attack was being planned. This is supposed…
Siddharth Srivastava 