Chaddi pehen ke phool khila hai (Green shoots in undies?)

For people of my age, the pink chaddi campaign seemed no less than a revolution. Girls coming out to hit back at the cultural vigilantes in the most profane of ways. It was, it seemed, a new beginning for this country's youth- even though few among them seem to support it, coming up with such a novel and ingenious method up of protests. Until I read Githa Hariharan's article in the morning today, this was how I felt about this sacrilegous campaign. But it seems women in this country have always been far ahead of their menfolk insofaras modernity is concerned. Women learnt pulling down chaddis (read the article) to protest against reactionary culturalists long back. In India, revolutions have always been flowering in chaddis!

The Great Leap Backward

Could he or couldn't he? The Telegraph tells us that people in the Left Front are busy with historical what-if analyses. I was too small to know this Great Helmsman's name, forget his politics, when I was in Calcutta. And by the time I was old enough to understand and be interested in these things I left for Pilani. And for the next six years knew nothing about the developments in the political landscape of Bengal. When I came back in 2006 to study at Presidency, I did hear my friends in SFI talking about him with great respect and admiration that Mamata could never have pulled off a moral victory, of sorts in Singur had he been alive. That he was also responsible for the rot that Bengal is today was news to me.
And India is an amazing country: where else do you think Amartya Sen's advice in policy affairs would be rejected so casually, even if he hadn't won a Nobel then? Today he gives lectures in seminars organised by the very same state government.