Re-view and Re-search

This 26 th November marked the sixth anniversary of the ghastly terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Though not the first in the maximum city , these attacks were vastly different from the others in their sheer scale and audacity. The terrifying, bullet - spraying spree of the armed fanatics in the southern end of the city sent tremors to the city. The terrorists not only hijacked the iconic landmarks but managed to siege the entire city all at one time. It took the security forces including the NSG commandos (the elite force created for such hostilities in the country) more than 60 hours to save Mumbai from hell. The world froze with the tremor at the most brazen attack of terrorism post 9/11 in US (for some reason US is the benchmark for everything and now even terrorism). As per the official release, a total of 166 individuals lost their lives, more than 350 were injured and millions traumatized. Ask any Mumbaikar about the incident and the wounds are there to see. And most impor...

Wali Mohammed Khan has two options; either save his family (mother & wife) and let the militants take away his daughter or sacrifice the family including self, yet lose the daughter to militants. He doesn’t want to exercise either of the options. Then what should he do and how should he go about it? Read on to find out about the trauma ridden day in the life of a Kashmiri family, held hostage by the militants. Tears of Jhelum is a story of a close knit Khan family who has managed to hold on to its moral sanctity in spite of the torn and blood stained social fabric and failing human values in the valley. The family members included Wali’s father (Abba Jaan) who was the district educational officer before he retired and both his mother (Ammi Jaan) and wife (Sakina) were housewives. He has two children, Salim (an engineer, married to Veena, a Kashmiri pandit. He lived and worked in New Delhi) and Meher (an MBBS from AIIMS, practices in a government hospital in Pahelgam). They...

Walkers Paradise Well! Well!! Well!!!  Pogaon  (Don’t know what does “PO” means or where the name came from and in which language it is. Spoke to people around to get the meaning or the origination of the name, but was unsuccessful. We Indians are anyways infamous for getting a new name by sheer mispronunciation, be it places or even for human beings) is not any of the World Heritage site and nor is a place of religious or political significance either. It’s a hamlet on the outskirts of Bhiwandi (a suburb of Mumbai) on the old Mumbai-Agra National Highway (NH-3) which passes through the textile town. As can be seen from the Google image (marked in red) Pogaon is located at a distance of 1.3km off NH-3 (Kaka Metals Enterprises in on NH-3). This stretch is famous with the health conscious morning and evening walkers/runners of Bhiwandi. My first brush with this place was courtesy my father, (well before I entered my teens) when he was one of the regular walkers on this qua...