Partial Recall

, by Soma Wadhwa 
Haridwar’s holy men do everything, politics, factionalism and violence.... The temple city has little time for prayer. The main sadhu groups are uppercaste brahmins, called the ‘Dandi’ sadhus. Pitted against them are the lower-caste ‘Nagas’, who are accused of smoking marijuana and of having very little in their heads. The sadhus are divided into many akharas, or wrestling schools... 

by Sandipan Deb

A decade and half out of IIT, I wonder how many of usIITians achieved our potential? How many went to seed in remote, dusty, townships, tending massive pipelines and drinking in the township club? How many wilfully walked away from their natural talents in favour of safeMNC jobs selling diapers and hire-purchase schemes? How many, trained to think rationally and without bias, never managed to figure out the nuances of Indian office politics and were relegated to obscure corridors in huge buildings? How many, obsessed with The American Dream, settled for second-rate US universities, hung in for a green card, and today work at unfulfilling jobs in Idaho...? A few dropped out—I met one of them years later in Shillong, a stridently devout convert to catholicism, and a lowly government clerk, but he seemed happy, a few killed themselves.... 

, by Rajesh Joshi 
Animals are gifted with this uncanny ability of sensing an impending calamity. In Kargil, you realise they can anticipate man-made disasters as well. The moment they hear the chilling whistle of a shell as it streaks in, they run helter-skelter for their lives. One journo ran into a nearby bunker in Dras on hearing that by-now-familiar sound. He found a robust looking dog already sitting inside." 

, by Krishna Prasad

Your reporter popped his first Viagra around 11 on the night of July 15, 1997.... The onlyhighlight for an hour—if you leave out the chemist who said, ‘Ek do khaane sekya fayda. Tees lena hai!’—has been three trips to the bathroom to pee. Viagraat work? Heck, no. I have downed two bottles of water after I get a feeling that theThrill Pill is still stuck in my throat. I still haven’t felt a thing. Everythingseems normal. There’s no welling up of you-know-what, you-know-where.... After sometime, I feel an incredible urge to simply drift off to sleep. That would mean wasting 800bucks. So we carry on gamely. "It was longer," says the wife. The duration orwhat? Viagra works partly because of what its makers claim it does below the waist, butmostly because of what its users feel above. 

by Sunil Mehra:

Would you buy a sari blouse for Rs 30,000? Youwouldn’t? Well, here’s the surprise. A lot of people do. Manipulated into theirvapid vainglorious purchase by a media-hype machine that allocates Rs 200 crore worth offree TV time, newspaper fash/trash magazine space to the 20-odd mostly self-styled, seldombonafide ‘fashion designers’ of India....

Sanjay Suri

I ’ve been rejected more often than I care to remember, but never before by500 women in one evening.I went to two marriage melas in London in December 1996.Theywere crowded to the fullest. A woman behind the desk asked: "You’re Hindu Punjabi? What’s your specifications?" She pointed me to a board that read ’50 to ’59. "We’ve one HP girl here, but she’s too young for you." I walked up to a lady in pink: "Can you help me find a wife here? I am a Punjabi." Doesn’t matter, she said: "Tell me who you like and I’llintroduce you." That lady in the black sari? "Oh, she has three children and sheis just helping. Anyone else?" I pointed to a lady in a darker shade of pink, passingby. "Oh don’t be silly, she’s my maasi." You’ll hear from someone, I was told. I still haven’t. I must be destined to go to weddings as a guest.

by Saira Menezes
Nothing sticks like a sex scandal, more soif it involves the political class. Take Gopinath Munde. The Maharashtra deputy CM’salleged involvement with ‘tamasha’ dancer Barkha Patel would have passed off asstrictly personal. But Bal Thackeray chipped in, much to the embarrassment of theBJP."I told Munde, ‘pyar kiya to darna kya?’

, March 5, 1997, byAniruddha Bahal

I guess not many people can boast that they have kept wickets in a cricket matchwhile Sunny Gavaskar stood at first slip. I can. The occasion was a friendly tie betweenthe Indian and South African media at Centurion Park on February 8, 1997. Of course, I hadmy goof-ups behind the stumps, letting the ball through my legs a couple of times offManinder Singh’s bowling and getting shouted at by him and Yashpal Sharma—AaiAniruda ki kar reya si. Nak katwaiga. But this is where Sunny’s stabilising influencecame in. "That’s the typical Punjabi way of playing cricket," he said."Instead of making you comfortable, they’ve flustered you. That’s how thePakistanis play cricket." Later I confess to Sunny: "This was the first time Ikept wickets in my life. Actually, I did it just to be able to stand next to you."(PS: Despite Aniruddha’s best efforts to "fix" this match, theProteas’ pressmen lost. India 218 in 35 overs, SA 149 all out.)

Soutik Biswas
Something’s amiss on this cloudymorning in Shantanu, a tropical rainforest village in the heart of Middle Andaman....Confounding anthropologists, the Jarawas are suddenly descending in hordes on populatedvillages after swimming the tidal creeks that criss-cross their habitats. They’redesperately seeking food, fuelling speculation about a food shortage in theforest...

by Ishan Joshi
The staple diet in India’s poorest village from September to January is a plateful ofragi gruel for breakfast. There’s no lunch, just a plateful of jonna (millet) gruelfor dinner. From February to April and in August, breakfast is again ragi or jonna; nolunch or dinner. And in summers, no breakfast, no lunch or dinner. The pith of the shalpatree, wild mango seeds and local brews are eaten and drunk when available. 

by Nitin A.Gokhale

A pillion ride on a 100cc Yamaha on a narrow dirt track, made doubly dangerous bypelting rain, is an adventure by itself.But we had more on our hands.Myphotographer-colleague Swapan Nayak and I were on our way to meet members of thebltf—an underground outfit fighting for a separate Bodoland within the IndianUnion—deep inside tropical forests somewhere in lower Assam’s Kokrajhardistrict. Every 10 minutes, the bikes skid and every time we fall off. A rivulet inspate forces us to take a break because water has entered the exhaust pipes. After thebikes are dry, we ride on for 10 minutes. We stumble onto a cluster. An old woman pointstowards a backyard where the bikes are to be hidden. Then, as we trek through thickundergrowth, a shrill whistle pierces the stillness. We have reached the makeshift camp.The tent is strewn with assorted weapons. "Hello, I am Mainao Daimary...." 

by Geeti Thadani

Landlords and cultures that deny space—that’s the lesbian story inIndia.... This lesbophobia manifests itself everywhere. It’s on the streets, in theparks, in the trains. Travelling with my lover once I was asked by a co-passenger in thecompartment not to sleep with our heads on the same side. It all ended with the ticketchecker throwing us out. Often it gets worse—this butch-looking woman was beaten upand thrown out by women in a ladies’ compartment because a female passenger’sson complained saying she should be in a male compartment.... Yes, it’s hard. I workon issues of Indian lesbian culture. No largesse or liberal space for me to do my work.What I do get as lesbian, literally, are death threats, car-scratches, obscene calls. Itisn’t easy being Indian and lesbian.