The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
Sometimes major events completely disconnected may be data points for the plans of the different powers around the world. The challenge is to discern what purpose they serve? More critically, what are we moving towards?
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
Many years ago when I started writing a blog in its initial version on blogspot and used to read the few sources of Indian news and views, one writer stood out. Varsha Bhosle. Later I came to know that she was also the daughter of Asha Bhosle
Her writing wasn’t for the ordinary, professional”peace-lovers”. She was fiery and strongly and staunchly Hindu. And, she never masked it. She was adept at taking to task the Mullahs and the BJP with amazing clarity. Her research was thorough, evidences clearly laid and arguments sharp as a newly minted Swiss knife. She did not leave any quarters for others. She would go on the attack with all her intellectual might and soul.
In her short stint on Rediff, she probably won many more admirers and fans for her style and thoroughness than other popular writers can take decades to garner. Her columns, which she stopped in 2003, are still read by many. For me, two writers have always stood out on the net – Indian media – Atanu Dey of Deeshaa and Varsha Bhosle. You can find the archives of her articles on this page of Rediff.
It is obvious that she used to receive many death threats and communication of other kinds of violence due to her fiery writings. But that didn’t bother her much, as far as I could gather from the way she would dismiss all that.
Around 2003, Rediff’s management was changing and somehow, the new structure didn’t like the slant that Varsha brought with her. So, she was perhaps dropped.
One would assume that she was an unabashed “Hindutva-vadi”. She wasn’t. She would as easily and ruthlessly tear up the entire VHP and RSS combine as she would tear into Islamists and Pseudo-seculars. Just when you thought, you had her clearly “boxed” into one category, she would come back with another fiery article which would completely dismantle one’s attempt at stereotyping her. And, no article of hers was just “for the heck of it”. Her critique of VHP and RSS was as sharp and intelligent as of the Islamists and the Communists. For example, check out – Ayodhya: a symbol of exploitation or Good God! Thou ate beef? or Shock to the system.
No matter who you were, Varsha Bhosle would surely break all stereotypes you could side with.
After 2003, she suddenly vanished. I still remember searching for just something – even one paragraph written by her somewhere. Quite like an addict. But she never really wrote anything thereafter.
I learnt many years later that she had also sung some songs along with her mother, Asha, and was a good and trained singer.
Some years back she had tried to commit suicide. Actually twice – once in 1998 and once in 2008. She survived both attempts. But this time she shot herself in the head with a Belgian-made pistol.
For the initial generation of web bloggers from India, she was quite a figure. I will always remember her as a fan. Not because she was Asha Bhosle’s daughter, but because she was Varsha Bhosle, the writer who spared none!
The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
This visit of India left me with many questions. Many observations and inputs from different people and sections. Food for thought that I have tried to contemplate on and make sense of. Sharing all that with you.
When you analyze the last 60 years of the economic miracles of Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia versus the continued impoverished Indian economy, you get very interesting lessons. Can Indians have the wherewithal in them to do in one generation so that the coming generations may rise?
Every Sunday AM (US Time)/ PM (India time), we send out a weekly detailed newsletter. We also share other insightful notes during the week. Its free. Do sign up and share with friends!