The Pickle Post

by Suhel Seth on 21 Nov 2009

On November 26, 2008, a billion people felt the helplessness and vulnerability of the kind we have never experienced ever. When 10 misguided young men held an entire nation to ransom and there was nothing the nation could do except live in disbelief and post that, in denial.

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by Maya Gupta on 28 Sep 2009

Can a frivolous comment on Twitter be the downfall of one of our finest and most accomplished ministers of state?

Shashi Tharoor’s remark on Congress’s new austerity drive has not only raised an outcry among the layman but also among the so-called distinguished politicians of our country. In response to a question on Twitter, a micro-blogging, social networking site, on whether he would travel in  “cattle class”, Tharoor responded with a rather unexpected quirky response -  “Absolutely, in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!”

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by Mahima Kaul on 28 Sep 2009

At a conference of ‘community video producers’, Yasho and Vivek were invited on stage to share their love story. If you didn’t know that they were from slums, you could be fooled into believing they were high-powered executives who met at a business conference. In a way, they did. Yasho and Vivek are both ‘community video producers’. Yasho is from Maharashtra, and Vivek from Gujarat. They met a few times at community training camps. Vivek was quite bold, he told us, and called Yasho and said “I love you”. She, in turn, lectured him about how they couldn’t get married. But he persisted, and they did!

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by Aashti Bhartia on 13 Sep 2009

The Haryana state elections start in a couple of days. I go to meet  Deepender Hooda, MP from Rohtak and the Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’ son, for an interview a few days before the election. The CM’s house in Delhi is full of white kurta clad Congress men sunk in padded chairs, waiting as they watch the rain, waiting for appointments, nominations, a word from the CM.

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by Pushkar Thakur on 7 Sep 2009

In Bhopal for a weekend visit, I couldn’t resist going over to the old factory with my camera for company. Early Sunday morning, I drove over at 7 am minus the knowledge of what to expect. The guards inside asked for papers required to visit which I obviously didn’t have or know about, however, it is India, and it didn’t take much to get a guided tour of the entire compound which lies untouched 25 years from when the disastrous chemical leak happened.

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by Aashti Bhartia on 5 Sep 2009

The cocktail party circuit is muttering about Obama, “He’s not doing much.”

I had written about Obama before he got elected, when he was the dreamer, the hoper, the most intelligent, stylish, revolutionary, when, in simple party terms, he was “amazing.”

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by Aashti Bhartia on 28 Aug 2009

I met Amar Singh a few days before he left for his operation in Singapore and found him weak but talkative as ever, and contemplative.

Part 1: Amar Singh on the opposition parties, his relationship with the Congress, and the Azam Khan controversy

Part 2: Amar Singh talks candidly about his early life, his father, and his deepest  motivations.

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by Karam Puri on 30 Jul 2009

These pictures capture the Sunday Gay Pride march down Barakhamba Road in Delhi. There was a band, funky outfits, gay rights slogans, and dancing. The marches happened in Delhi, Bangalore, and Bombay, right before section 377 of the constitution came under reconsideration. In a landmark Delhi High Court judgment, in July 2009, the court decriminalized gay sex between consensual adults from the penal code, upholding it as a fundamental right. Next day in the papers, Vikram Seth rejoiced over the courts “literary” judgment, while Baba Ramdev bandied strong words of disapproval.

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by Prerna Kuhad on 29 Jul 2009

Together with the hoopla about UPA’s clear sweep and the BJP’s tail-between-the-legs exit from prime time TV, was the sidelining of Mayawati. I don’t support her, but, then again, she has redeemed herself in the limited way of giving the Dalits of this country a public figure they can identify with.

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by Aashti Bhartia on 4 Apr 2009

A fly-on-the-wall gets a look at Arun Jaitley’s strand of the BJP and his personal politics

In a quiet official bungalow in central Delhi, in a small conference room, Arun Jaitley, the BJP’s Chief Election Strategist, conducts the BJP’s strategy team meetings for the coming elections. A small team, a prominent economic journalist, a business executive who moonlights on policy formation, Party media managers, and a few other trusted advisors surround Jaitley on the conference table.

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