Telangana
Andhra Jewels
While the clamour for a posthumous Bharat Ratna for ex-PM P.V. Narasimha Rao continues to grow, a discordant note was struck in Hyderabad. Rao, pointed out Pandurang Reddy, president of Voice of Telangana, had always opposed the formation of Telangana. Reddy says PVN had told him that he’d requested Pranab Mukherjee to recommend a States Reorganisation Commission with no time-limit. Telangana, therefore, should not celebrate Rao’s birth anniversary as a state function, pleaded Reddy and Chiranjeevi Kolluri, co-convenor of Telangana Udaymakarula Samakhya.
Kerala
Where Princi Dares
Not many school principals would be critical of the education minister in his presence. K.K. Urmila Devi of Cotton Hill Girls HS, T’puram, did just that, pulling up Muslim League leader P.K. Abdu Rabb for turning up inordinately late for a school function. The IUML ‘influence’ on the education dept is becoming a public joke of late after district advisories went out that blackboards in state schools should henceforth be green, the League colour, not black.
Nagaland
Italian Footsie
Naga luxury footwear designer Filafi Fithu’s first overseas outlet opens at Densenzano del Garda in Lombardy (Italy). The designer, who did her post-grad from CFTI, Agra, has an outlet in Delhi’s tony Greater Kailash. Fashion, she says, is a passion in the Northeast and she herself gave up a government job to follow her heart. Her high-end women’s footwear is now all made in Italy. But she’s planning a more affordable range.
New Delhi
Curiouser & Curiouser
A deep bite mark on her palm, abrasions on her cheek, a dozen injury marks on her arms, it’s all there in the post-mortem report on the body of Sunanda Pushkar, former Union minister Shashi Tharoor’s third wife, who was found dead in a suite of the Leela Hotel in Delhi in January this year. The report, which hinted at the possibility of both suicide and homicide, has acquired a fresh life with Dr Sudhir Gupta, who headed the AIIMS panel, claiming he was pressurised by the then health minister to report a normal death. Incidentally, the doctor has accusations of plagiarism and misconduct and was about to lose his position as head of the department. Has Pushkar come to his rescue?
Photograph by Vishal Koul
Jharkhand
Supergoats Off To The US
Star Sports has paid for their return air fare while 500 other good samaritans and several sponsors chipped in to facilitate the participation of the team of tribal girls from Ormanjhi (on the outskirts of Ranchi, Bihar) in the USA Cup tournament in Minnesota. But some things don’t change. The girls, all from poor families, continue to face discrimination. As late as last month, some of them who had gone to Calcutta to collect their visas were denied access to the ladies’ toilet at the Howrah station. Their American mentor and some-time coach, who incidentally learnt the finer points of football from the net, has used the beautiful game to change the lives of scores of girls from the tribal villages. Where earlier it was just household chores and underage marriage, now a new life awaits at least some of the girls.
Gujarat
The Walkabout
When Anandiben Patel used a golden broom to clean the path of Lord Jagannath and his siblings for their nagarbhraman (ride through Ahmedabad), she became the first woman to do so (traditionally CMs enjoy the privilege). But she missed the early ‘aarti’ and didn’t pull the chariot. That wasn’t all. There was no rain, though the festival is “always marked by a shower”. And one of the 18 jumbos in the Lord’s caravan stepped on a rupee coin thrown by devotees and injured her right foot! That held up things too.
New Delhi
Shredded History
The ministry of home affairs alone claims to have shredded 1.5 lakh files following PM Modi’s instructions to clean up office. Officials confided that one file revealed that Lord Mountbatten was paid in 1947 the princely sum of Rs 64,000—crores at today’s rates—as TA/DA for returning to England. Yet another file revealed that our first prez Dr Rajendra Prasad refused his pension—so it went to the Calamity Fund.
