Civic polls in Maharashtra: Mumbai leads the disgusting tamasha!

Raju Korti
If politics were an Olympic sport, the scramble for municipal tickets would qualify as synchronized swimming, except that everyone is drowning, flailing and dragging others down with them. The civic polls, once meant to be about drains, roads and local accountability, have degenerated into a dirty rat race where ideology is negotiable, loyalty is seasonal and principles are strictly optional.

Every party claims to be shocked by rebellion within its ranks. Every party also engineers it. Chest beating loyalists suddenly discover that loyalty is an overrated virtue when the ticket goes to a recent entrant who until last week was abusing the same party on television panels. Grassroots workers who spent years pasting posters and organising ward meetings are politely told to wait their turn, preferably for another lifetime. The defector, meanwhile, is welcomed as a visionary mass leader with deep local connect.

Guess who is the lead culprit here? The BJP, which prides itself on discipline and an iron organisation, Its candidate selection in several civic wards has raised eyebrows even among its own faithful. Old faces are dropped without explanation; new ones are parachuted in without logic and the party then acts surprised when rebels file nominations as independents or quietly cross over. The Congress complains of betrayal while quietly accommodating turncoats where it suits arithmetic. The various Shiv Sena factions accuse each other of ideological treachery while distributing tickets with the same ruthless pragmatism. The NCP factions do not even pretend anymore. Loyalty is measured not by years of work but by immediate utility.

Mumbai offers the most grotesque theatre. The same corporator who swore undying allegiance to one party yesterday appears on posters of a rival today, complete with a fresh smile and recycled promises. Old wine is poured into a new bottle and sold as a bold alternative. Voters are expected to forget the label they read last week. They are also expected to clap.

Who exactly is at fault here. The easy answer is that everyone is. Parties are unable to handle dissent because they have trained their cadres to believe that power is the only reward for loyalty. Once tickets become the sole currency of recognition, rebellion is not an aberration. It is a logical outcome. Leaderships centralize decisions, ignore local feedback and then express outrage when the ignored locals revolt. This cycle repeats every election with remarkable consistency.

It will queer the pitch, fragment votes and turn civic elections into personality contests rather than party battles. Rebels will cut into official candidates’ margins. Independents will mushroom. Alliances will suffer silent sabotage from within. Governance, if it comes at all, will be an afterthought negotiated post results.

And what about the people? The ordinary voter watches this spectacle with a mix of disgust and helpless amusement. Everyone knows that becoming a corporator is widely seen as a sure path to amassing money, influence and leverage. That unspoken truth fuels the mad rush more than any burning desire to serve. Parties shout lofty principles from rooftops while quietly auctioning relevance at street level. Credibility evaporates, cynicism deepens and voter apathy grows.

The greatest tragedy is the absence of rationale. Why this candidate and not that one? What does he or she stand for beyond personal ambition? Is expediency the only criterion? Is one-upmanship the sole ideology? When the same individual oscillates between parties within days, the voter is not choosing between ideas. He is merely asked to endorse a familiar face wearing a different scarf.

Municipal elections are supposed to be the bedrock of democracy. Instead, they have become its most embarrassing mirror. Until parties learn that loyalty cannot be demanded while being constantly betrayed, and that voters are not fools with short memories, this farce will continue. January 15 will come and go. Chairs will be occupied. Money will change hands. And the people will once again be told that this time, truly, it is different.

First Tharoor, now Digvijay: Between admiration and ambiguity!

Raju Korti
I have watched the Congress long enough to know that its deepest anxieties are rarely triggered by open defection. They are provoked by ambiguity. That is precisely why Digvijay Singh’s praise of the RSS’s organisational discipline and his sharing of an old photograph with Narendra Modi caused more discomfort within the party than many overt acts of dissent. The unease is not about ideology alone. It is about the suggestion that there may be lessons to learn from the very adversary the Congress defines itself against.

In that sense, Digvijay's moment has an unmistakable echo from the past. I remember meeting Digvijay Singh in 1985 in Raipur and Bhopal during election coverage, long before he became a two-time chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. Then known affectionately as Diggy Raja, the Raja of Raghogarh operated in a Congress ecosystem crowded with heavyweights like Arjun Singh, Kamal Nath and Ajit Jogi. Even at that stage, what stood out was not confrontation but navigation. Digvijay Singh always seemed adept at surviving within undercurrents, maintaining relationships that were neither fully cordial nor openly hostile, but calibrated to political necessity.

Comrades in arms! 

Those undercurrents never really disappeared. Over decades, Digvijay Singh remained a figure who could unsettle his own party without formally stepping out of line. His recent praise of the organisational strength of the RSS, accompanied by an old photograph of Narendra Modi, must be read in that context. It was less an ideological endorsement and more a statement about structure, discipline and political mobility. Yet in today’s hyper-polarised environment, nuance rarely survives first contact with social media.

Shashi Tharoor’s response to this episode is revealing. By supporting Digvijay Singh on the need for organisational discipline while carefully distancing himself from the content of the praise, Tharoor mirrored a path he himself has been walking. Technically within the Congress, intellectually restless, and increasingly vocal about what the party lacks rather than what it opposes. Like Digvijay Singh, Tharoor seems less interested in rebellion and more invested in signalling that the Congress cannot afford institutional complacency.

The Congress leadership’s reaction also fits an old pattern. Public levity combined with private discomfort. Rahul Gandhi’s joking remark to Digvijay Singh at the party headquarters, delivered in Sonia Gandhi’s presence, was telling. It defused tension without resolving it. Humour, in such moments, is often a holding operation rather than a closure.

The larger question, then, is not whether Digvijay Singh or Shashi Tharoor are inching towards the BJP. That would be a simplistic reading. The more pertinent issue is where leaders like them eventually find themselves in a party that struggles to accommodate internal critique without reading it as ideological drift. Digvijay Singh has long been described by critics as a spent force, while allies continue to see him as a strategist with residual influence. Both assessments can coexist. Political relevance today is not only about electoral clout but also about the ability to shape conversations.

Tharoor and Digvijay Singh share a common predicament. They articulate what many in the Congress privately concede but publicly resist acknowledging, that organisation matters, discipline matters, and narratives of ideological purity do not substitute for political machinery. By saying this aloud, they unsettle a party still unsure whether introspection is a strength or a liability.

My sense is that neither is in a hurry to cross over. Their trajectories suggest something subtler. They are testing the elasticity of the Congress, probing how much dissent framed as analysis it can absorb. If the party responds by closing ranks and narrowing space, it risks pushing such leaders further to the margins. If it listens, even grudgingly, it might rediscover a capacity for self-correction.

For now, both men remain inside the tent, but closer to its edges than its centre. And in Indian politics, that is often the most precarious place to stand.

Tolerating an endless headache called Bol Bachchans!

Raju Korti
If there is one species I admire and remain wary of in equal measure, it is the compulsive talker. The dictionary, in its polite moments, calls them garrulous, loquacious or voluble. In real life, they are walking, talking pressure cookers who must release steam daily, preferably on the nearest available ear.

I do not know whether it is my fate or karmic mischief, but I seem to encounter them with alarming regularity. These are people who can talk regardless of time, place, mood or meteorological conditions. Funerals, traffic jams, hospital corridors, lift rides between the third and fifth floor, other people’s lives; nothing is too sacred or too trivial. All other engagements politely step aside because nothing, absolutely nothing, is more important than what they currently find fascinating.

In my limited wisdom as a counsellor and an unwilling audience, I find such people deeply self-centred (not selfish, though that happens too), convinced that the universe is best understood through their anecdotes. Their speech is an endless drag, a never-ending director’s cut of their life story. Friends, relatives, enemies, neighbours’ neighbours, long-forgotten schoolmates, triumphs, traumas and minor inconveniences are all laid out with forensic detail. After a point, the only thought that crosses one’s mind is to flee, preferably to the nearest restroom, to recover from the verbal assault and the resulting headache.

What makes matters worse is that most of this talk has zero bearing on the listener’s life. None. Yet the listener clings on, fuelled by misplaced hope that this monologue will eventually reach a full stop. It never does. Once they begin, they have no idea where to stop, or why they should.

I have had my share of such people. They talk without drawing breath and without leaving the faintest crack for a response. And if you dare to interrupt, even with a polite “hmm” or a hesitant “actually…”, you are waved off, talked over or simply erased from the conversation. Your sentence overlaps with theirs, making you look like a first-class idiot attempting a duet with a train engine.

They talk non-stop, often boasting about their power, influence and achievements, real or imagined. If that runs dry, they shift seamlessly to gossip. The tongue, in their case, is a lethal weapon. “Bol Bachchan” is not an insult here; it is a job description.

I am deeply uncomfortable in the presence of such people, not because I am their target, but because they are spectacularly poor listeners. In their company, I feel introverted, reticent and unfairly mute. The only time I have spoken at length to a passive audience was in a classroom, and that too under compulsion. Even then, I hated the sight of deadpan faces staring back at me as if speech itself were a punishment. If that was justified speech, imagine the torture of listening to hours of unjustified, irrelevant, meandering gibberish.

Of course, one can avoid such people if they exist on the fringes of one’s life. A fake phone call here, a sudden appointment there. The real test of character arrives when they are your own. Family. Close friends. The inner circle. They stretch your tolerance to the point where you feel like yanking your own hair out, strand by strand. They remain blissfully unaware. And you, the cursed one, must grin, nod and take it in stride.

I often wonder if these people ever get tired of talking, and where they draw their boundless energy from. Too much talking, I am told, is taxing on the heart and mind. Take it from me, someone with a bypass history. I have come to value measured speech, if not dignified silence. I was never much of a talker anyway.

Can such people be corrected or moderated? I doubt it. The truly loquacious do not believe they have a problem. For them, silence is awkward, listening is anything but optional, and conversation is a solo performance. The rest of us can only practise survival skills, cherish quiet souls, and remind ourselves that sometimes, the most intelligent thing one can say is nothing at all.

Jeffrey Epstein: Made for thriller flicks and text books!

Raju Korti
In the past week, an impression has rapidly gained ground in India that once the (in)famous Jeffrey Epstein Files are placed before the United States House of Representatives, there will be an institutional collapse of global proportions. The narrative here suggests that governments, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s, will be blown away. Apocalypse, earthquake, tsunami. The rhetoric writes itself.

The irony of such hyperventilation is that a significant slice of the files is already in the public domain. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released nineteen photographs last week and followed that with sixty-eight more. From a much larger cache of nearly ninety-five thousand photographs voluntarily handed over by Epstein’s estate.

And those names. Bill Gates. Noam Chomsky. Steve Bannon. Donald Trump. Add Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton from earlier reporting. Each accompanied by the predictable disclaimers that range from selective memory loss to convenient ignorance. The kind of excuse making that has been perfected over centuries. Several photographs even include redacted identification cards of women across continents. Russia, Morocco, Italy, the Czech Republic, South Africa, Ukraine and Lithuania. One batch reportedly features excerpts of sentences from “Lolita” scrawled across a woman’s body. A screenshot of a text exchange references girls being “sent” for someone identified only as j, with a price tag of one thousand dollars mentioned. The fact that committee Democrats describe the material as both graphic and mundane captures the bizarre duality of Epstein’s world. Mundane wealth. Graphic depravity.

What fascinates me is not the moral theatre but the man at the centre of it. Jeffrey Epstein’s journey reads like a fictional protagonist conceived by an ambitious potboiler writer. (I believe, it would have been right up James Hadley Chase's alley to write and portray his character.) A high school teacher of Physics and Mathematics who abandoned chalkboards for Wall Street, building a billionaire’s empire in properties. His Virgin Islands estate in the Caribbean remains the most visually (and infamously) documented, replete with hidden cameras, juvenile girls and a calendar of clandestine, amoral and lecherous activities involving some of the world’s most powerful guests.

His suspicious death only heightened curiosity. Democrats suspected foul play. His associates hoped his silence might bury their own associations. The public trawled through conspiracy theories with the devotion of amateur detectives. I am not here to judge. If anything, I marvel at how many fronts the man handled simultaneously. Networking with presidents and princes. Flying private jets. Managing finances. Ordering girls. Documenting everything. His ability to multitask would have made him a case study in versatility had his pursuits not been criminal and exploitative.

The Files qualify as perfect cinematic material. India has turned the word files into a cultural brand. The Kashmir Files. The Kerala Files. The Bengal Files. It feels inevitable that someone attempts The Epstein Files. In my mind, Akshaye Khanna, the current rage, could play Epstein, just to introduce the Indian flavour. The ensemble cast portraying the who’s who named in the files would make this a multi star project. A Pan American Indian crossover if you will. If Hollywood grabs it first, expect awards. If Bollywood does, expect embellishments. I volunteer to write the script for the Indian flick. A four-hour epic or better, a binge worthy serial with viewership rising episode after episode, for obvious and predictable reasons.

My curiosity also extends to his academic past. As a Physics and Mathematics student myself even beyond my engineering days, I find it amusing to imagine him teaching Newton’s Laws before breaking all social ones. Or juggling calculus and clandestine rendezvous. If nothing else, Epstein deserves a full-fledged chapter in text books on documentation for the painstaking way he archived photos, messages and communication. A man who collected details with methodical obsession and likely shared only with confidantes like Ghislaine Maxwell. Blackmail or insurance. One will never know.

And now, a question for our Indian doomsayers. No Indian name has surfaced. Anyway, not until the time of writing this blog. Are we witnessing evidentiary anticipation or political kite flying? If the latter, the winds are not exactly supportive. 

Yet even if half of what appears in the Files or on Wikipedia is accurate, Epstein secures his place under the sun. Not for greatness. Not for morality. But for the chilling combination of power, manipulation, exploitation and networking that allowed him to straddle elite circles and criminality with breathtaking ease. Posthumously though.

Even devils deserve credit where due.

The curious case of Lifetime Everything!

Raju Korti
I have always been fascinated by humanity’s incurable obsession with the word “lifetime”. Lifetime achievement, lifetime immunity, lifetime appointment, lifetime access, lifetime this and lifetime that. Say it slowly and it sounds less like a concept and more like a lucky charm sold at a traffic signal. Wear it, wave it, and hope mortality looks the other way.

The latest reminder comes from Pakistan’s 27th Constitutional Amendment of 2025. In one masterstroke, power is centralised, the Supreme Court is brusquely nudged aside, and the Army Chief is elevated to a position that comes with lifetime status, immunity and sweeping control over all armed services. It is as if the nation collectively decided that if something must be permanent, it should be authority. Democracy, accountability and judicial independence can manage with a renewable plan.

It is amusing how eagerly we distribute permanence in a world that refuses to guarantee tomorrow morning. Life itself has a shelf life, strictly non-negotiable, yet we behave as if a constitutional clause or a citation can outwit biology.

Centurion for a lifetime: Yours Truly!

The value of these lifetime honours is worth examining. A lifetime achievement award, for instance, often arrives at a stage when the recipient’s knees creak louder than their accomplishments are remembered. It is less a celebration and more a ceremonial closing time announcement. Thank you for your services, please collect your plaque, and kindly vacate the stage before memory does it for you.

Lifetime immunity is even more entertaining. It assumes that power, once granted, will be exercised with monk like restraint forever. History suggests otherwise. Immunity does not improve character; it merely removes consequences. It emboldens the worst instincts while politely informing accountability to wait outside.

Then there are lifetime appointments. These rest on the touching belief that wisdom, integrity and relevance age like fine wine. In reality, some age like milk left out in the sun. Institutions stagnate, fresh thinking is locked out, and loyalty to the chair replaces loyalty to the Constitution or the organisation.

What fascinates me most is the psychological comfort these lifetime labels provide. They are talismans against insecurity. When leaders fear the uncertainty of public approval or legal scrutiny, they reach for permanence. Lifetime is not about honour; it is about insulation. It is a padded cell for power.

In Pakistan’s case, the lifetime elevation of the Army Chief into a supreme military role is less about efficiency and more about entrenchment. It sends out a clear message. Power is not to be questioned, rotated or reviewed. It is to be preserved, preferably forever, or at least until nature intervenes.

The irony is brutal. No amendment, award or immunity clause has ever stopped time. Empires crumble, statues are pulled down, and lifetime honours end up as footnotes, sometimes embarrassing ones, in history books. What survives is not the duration of power but the quality of its use.

Perhaps we should retire the word “lifetime” altogether. Replace it with something more honest, like “for as long as it works” or “until reality kicks in”. Life, after all, is the only entity that truly understands the concept of lifetime. And it has never offered immunity to anyone.

Anna Hazare and the diminishing returns of moral protest

Raju Korti
At his ripe age, Anna Hazare must be wondering what more he needs to do to see his life’s mission reach fruition. For all his benign intent and unimpeachable personal integrity, his most potent weapon, the fast unto death, has begun to lose its sting. What once shook governments now elicits assurances, committees and carefully worded promises. The moral pressure remains, but the political response has grown anaemic.

The Lokayukta Act, which is at the centre of his latest agitation, captures this malaise perfectly. On paper, it promises an independent anti-corruption ombudsman empowered to inquire into complaints against public servants, ministers and even the chief minister. In practice, it remains a law without teeth. Enforcement mechanisms are vague, appointments are delayed and operational clarity is missing. Between presidential assent, legislative amendments and executive intent lies an inordinate gap that has reduced the Act to a well-meaning document waiting for life.

Hazare’s frustration is understandable. Announcements are made with ceremony; timelines are offered with confidence and yet implementation slips quietly into the future. One hopes, not without irony, that he gets to see the law function meaningfully in his lifetime.

His isolation today contrasts sharply with the mass movement he once led. The 2011 anti-corruption stir was anything but a solo act. Students, professionals, celebrities and ordinary citizens rallied behind him, united by a shared anger against systemic corruption. Politicians were kept at arm’s length during the fasts, preserving the movement’s moral high ground. Yet that unity proved fragile.

The fallout with key associates was inevitable once politics entered the frame. Arvind Kejriwal chose the electoral route, arguing that power was essential to cleanse the system from within. Hazare strongly disagreed, insisting that his movement remain apolitical. Others like Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav too drifted away as ideological and strategic differences sharpened. What began as a collective moral uprising gradually splintered into competing interpretations of change.

In hindsight, some supporters felt disillusioned, even used, as the movement was politically co-opted and redirected. Hazare stayed put, steadfast but increasingly alone, holding on to an idea of activism rooted in personal sacrifice rather than political negotiation.

This raises an uncomfortable question. Has Anna Hazare been isolated on the very issue he brought to national consciousness? Corruption remains pervasive, but public outrage now competes with fatigue, cynicism and more immediate anxieties. The fast, once a rallying cry, now risks being seen as ritual rather than rupture.

Hazare’s hold over the anti-corruption discourse has weakened, not because the issue has lost relevance, but because the methods have. Moral authority still commands respect, but it no longer guarantees outcomes. In today’s India, intent must be matched by institutional pressure and sustained public engagement. Without that, even the most austere protest risks becoming a footnote to its own history.

A visitor from space with mood swings!

Raju Korti
For months now, this mysterious interstellar object has behaved like that one relative who changes personality depending on who is watching. First it was described as a hostile outsider armed with nuclear ambitions. Some theories even suggested it was spying on planets, making gravity defying turns and pointing its tail in the wrong direction. The object seemed determined to play the villain straight out of a sci fi potboiler.

31/Atlas: Pic representational

Cut to the latest twist. The same object is suddenly being repackaged as friendly. Harvard professor, Loeb, has floated the idea that it may be sprinkling life giving chemicals across planets it has flown close to. In Indian terms, it is as if the guest who arrived with threatening body language is now offering homemade sweets.

So, what is really going on? A couple of scientific clues have come from what the object is believed to be releasing into space. If that’s true, two substances stand out. Methanol and hydrogen cyanide. The names sound intimidating, but their behaviour is surprisingly down to earth.

Methanol is basically a simple alcohol. In space, it is found near new stars. On Earth, tiny organisms like bacteria happily treat it as food. Plants manufacture it as part of their daily life. Methanol in space can transform into sugars and amino acids, which are the basic bricks from which life is built.

Hydrogen cyanide on the other hand is the classic villain of detective novels. Deadly in high doses. Extremely useful in tiny amounts. Plants and bacteria actually produce it to defend themselves or to help seeds germinate. In chemistry, hydrogen cyanide can join other molecules to form the bases of DNA and amino acids. These are the tools that make life tick.

Now here is the curious part. Observations show that this interstellar object is releasing more than a hundred times more methanol than hydrogen cyanide. That is the highest ratio seen since only one other oddball comet in our own solar system. If chemicals had personalities, this one would be leaning heavily towards the life friendly side. The cyanide is present, but in a defensive whisper, not an attacking shout.All this naturally leads to the buzzword ‘panspermia’. The idea is simple. Comets or space rocks can carry these basic life building chemicals to planets. When they crash or even graze a planet’s atmosphere, some of these chemicals settle down and kickstart life. Think of it as cosmic courier service. Long before e commerce deliveries, the universe was perhaps sending parcels of methanol and hydrogen cyanide to young planets.

Does this make a material difference to what we know?. Not yet. Scientists still know very little about this object’s origin and purpose. Its tail pointing in the wrong direction, its colour changing to blue near the sun and its gravity defying lane-swerving behaviour remain unsolved mysteries. Some argue it is a normal comet formed under unusual conditions in a faraway system. Others wonder if it is something artificial. But until there is proof, everything remains speculation.

What does it mean for Earth? Practically nothing at the moment. The object will not come anywhere close to us. It might casually gift wrap some life friendly chemicals for planets like Mars or moons like Europa, but nothing more. If these chemicals do find their way onto such worlds, they may help us understand how life begins elsewhere. For now, Earth is safe, and all theories about danger seem to have taken a coffee break.

So we are left with a cosmic visitor that entered the solar system with a dramatic reputation. It has danced around planets, confused astronomers, and sprinkled chemicals associated with life. It has also given rise to wild theories that range from apocalypse to universal gardening. As of now, the object is not the interstellar villain it was feared to be. If anything, it behaves like a confused tourist on a long space yatra. Friendly, unpredictable and utterly mysterious.

Grounded by greed! Why India’s low-cost dream Is now flying on fumes

Raju Korti
I have watched the arc of Indian aviation from the swagger of early privatisation to today’s turbulence and it is impossible to escape one conclusion: the low-cost dream that took off with fanfare in the late nineties is now sputtering on its last fumes. Kingfisher, Jet Airways, East West, Damania and Go First all went bust and each collapse was wrapped in a different excuse but the underlying reason was the same, irrational economics dressed up as innovation. Air India, retaken from the Tatas, is still reeling and remains trapped between legacy fatigue and the trauma of that recent London-bound crash. IndiGo holds sway not because it is exceptional but because everything around it has collapsed. Once a competitive field, the sector is now a duopoly masquerading as choice and that is the real story.

The recent disruption where IndiGo virtually threw the government, passengers and the entire aviation ecosystem under the bus was not an operational blip but calibrated muscle flexing. When flights were cancelled en masse, when delays piled up and when thousands of travellers were stranded, it looked suspiciously like orchestration to force the government to dilute roster guidelines, and the tactic worked.

(Pic representational)

This government does not normally take blackmail lightly but this time it blinked. The rollback of the new crew duty and rest norms was a concession that signalled something far more troubling than administrative weakness. It told every dominant player in a vital sector that scale can be weaponised against the state. It also amplified the larger anxiety that IndiGo’s control of over sixty percent of the domestic market and dominance across major terminals has given it a chokehold over regulators and passengers alike.

The truth is unpleasant but unavoidable. DGCA has been slow, reactive and too ready to adjust its stance when pushed. The so-called transition period was not an act of prudence. It was capitulation dressed as pragmatism. Pilot bodies had warned that IndiGo had frozen hiring and relied on non-poaching pacts instead of preparing for the rule change. The predictable chaos that followed was then deployed as leverage. In the end the regulator backed off and passengers paid the price.

But the rotten core of the sector is not regulation alone. Everything comes back to ticket pricing and surge pricing practices that have turned flying into an extortion racket. A seat that costs four thousand can jump to forty thousand within minutes. Refunds vanish behind invisible deductions. Cancellations read like they were drafted by Nigerian scam artistes. And while corporate travellers now count pennies, the rural and small-town flier who has entered the market in large numbers is willing to pay for reliability. That reliability simply does not exist and the airlines know they can behave with impunity because demand will keep coming.

IndiGo’s recent internal revolt only sharpens the edges of this story. Pilots writing a blistering open letter accusing the management of greed, claiming the airline believes it is too big to fail, exposing ground staff making eighteen thousand rupees while doing the work of three people and even mocking a seventy-year-old leader who refuses to retire is not mere dissent. It is a rebellion from the cockpit and proof that the operational chaos outside is mirrored by structural decay within. A company cracking from inside is the last entity that should be running most of India’s skies.

The government’s instinct now should not be to merely crack the whip but to redesign the rules of the game. Pricing bands must be clearly defined. Arbitrary spikes must stop. The base price may rise but predictability will return and that is far healthier than randomness masquerading as free market logic. DGCA must grow a spine because soft regulation in a market dominated by one player is not neutral, it is dangerous. And the government must engage Indigo without fear or favour because the airline’s temporary victories will cost it heavily if the state finally decides it has had enough.

What remains constant is this: in every round of confrontation between airlines, regulators and governments, the flyer loses. The low-cost revolution promised democratisation of travel but delivered instability, opacity and the unchecked arrogance of dominant players. Unless the system is rebuilt around transparency and accountability, the dream that once lifted millions into the air will remain permanently grounded.

Oh those moments with Trevor Bailey & Peter Roebuck!

Raju Korti
It was the autumn of 1987. The Reliance World Cup was in full swing, and I was fortunate to meet a man whose voice had echoed through countless living rooms. Trevor Bailey, England’s Test all-rounder, writer, and the sardonic soul of BBC’s Test Match Special. Bailey wasn’t in India in his usual avatar as a commentator but as a cricket writer, detached from the boisterous box that included legends like Brian Johnston, Christopher Martin-Jenkins, Henry Blofeld and Don Moseley. Having grown up addicted to the BBC’s understated, wry, and supremely literate commentary, I approached the hotel reception with a touch of trepidation. To my astonishment, Bailey agreed to meet me, then working with The Hindu and its sister publications, Frontline & Sportstar, almost immediately in the lobby. No fuss, no pretense.

Me, Moiz Haq with Trevor Bailey and Peter Roebuck.   

By a wonderful coincidence, I was also occasioned to meet Harold “Dicky” Bird during the same time. During the 1987 Reliance World Cup match between India and New Zealand, a game forever stamped in memory as the only one where Sunil Gavaskar struck his lone ODI hundred, I also had the unusual privilege of securing a one-on-one with the legendary umpire. Bird was never easy to approach. He was famously blunt and, true to form, initially refused outright, saying he had little interest in journalists. It was only through the good offices of BBC Test Match Special’s Trevor Bailey and the thoughtful columnist Peter Roebuck, both of whom I had long conversations with the day before, that my credentials were vouched for. Thanks to their intervention, Bird relented and agreed to half an hour.

That meeting is etched in my mind, not so much for his views on umpiring or on his own cult status, but for the cadence and charm of his conversation. Listening to him, I felt he could have been a marvellous commentator, lacing authority with wit and a Yorkshireman’s candour. The initially stiff Bird, eased further when I told him that I loved John Arlott’s commentary. When I mentioned this impression to Bailey and Roebuck the next day, they broke into hearty laughter, as if to say they had always known Bird’s hidden flair. I also noticed something more, which reflected the professionalism of that generation. Be it Bird, Bailey, Roebuck, or any of their contemporaries, they insisted on meeting scribes in the hotel lobby, never in private rooms or suites. It was a small but telling gesture, upholding both dignity and distance. In Harold “Dicky” Bird, I remember a man who was hunched in the shoulders yet towering in his integrity. He never sought to be a figure of awe, yet players across the cricketing world revered him instinctively. He belonged to a breed that placed the game above the individual, even when the individual himself became an institution.

Barely a day after umpire Dicky Bird had turned me down politely, but had relented later thanks to a delighted Bailey, who appreciated a half-page article I had written on him. That conversation with Bailey turned into a two-hour masterclass in wit, warmth, and dry English humour. He spoke glowingly of his fellow commentators. “We were different in temperament but gelled beautifully,” he mused. I mentioned my eternal favourite, Brian Johnston “Johnners” to millions, and asked if he would pass along a letter of admiration. Bailey not only agreed but actually did, which I later confirmed through Peter Roebuck, the sharp Australian columnist seated beside me in the Press Box that day as India triumphed over New Zealand and Gavaskar scripted his only ODI hundred. Bailey smiled when I reminded him how Johnston and Moseley would dissolve into helpless giggles during commentary, and how Johnston had dubbed him “The Boil” after an Aussie distortion of his name (Boiley). He recalled the leg-pulling in the commentary box, often at the expense of Henry Blofeld, with the mischief of a schoolboy reliving dormitory pranks.

Bailey, nicknamed "Barnacle" for his gritty, immovable batting, laughed when I teased him about the long pauses in his speech that made it sound like he was trying to dislodge a piece of obstinate chicken bone from his throat. “You’ve noticed that too?” he chortled, clearly unbothered. He was candid about his sporting life: “I was actually a better footballer. I could dribble longer than I could bat,” he quipped in that clipped British accent. Yet, behind the acerbic wit was a man who understood the art of restraint. On the field and in the commentary box. “We never read out scorecards or explained field placings. Still, nothing escaped us. Commentary was fun, not a frenzy. And yes,” he added with a wink, “we did enjoy our wine and cakes, often sent by admirers.

”Toward the end, when I asked him if I could get Johnston’s book autographed someday, Bailey’s tone turned briefly sombre. “Johnners isn’t doing well... but I’ll pass on your sentiments.” That autograph never came. Johnston passed away a few years later. I had hoped to make up for it the next time Bailey visited India. But that reunion never happened either. He and Roebuck, the two men I met within days of each other, passed away within nine months of each other in 2011. The article I wrote on Bailey is now a tattered relic of yellowing paper, but the photograph remains intact. A reminder of a golden afternoon when I spoke with a man who embodied cricket’s wit, grit, and old-world grace.

That same week, I had another enriching encounter. With Peter Roebuck. Sharp, deeply perceptive, and unfailingly courteous, Roebuck had the disarming quality of turning an interview into a conversation among equals. We spoke at length about cricket, commentary, and writing. It struck me then -- and has stayed with me since -- that these men, Bailey and Roebuck, were giants of insight and elegance, yet wore their brilliance with quiet modesty. Both gone in the same year, they left behind not just cricketing wisdom, but a rare kind of human warmth that no obituary can fully capture. Unlike Bailey, I was occasioned to meet Roebuck a couple of times later. What struck me was his affability to meet anyone and everyone without any airs.

In their very different ways, Roebuck and Bailey embodied cricket’s finest virtues. Sharp minds, dry humour, and unshakeable integrity. Fittingly or ironically, both left us in 2011, just months apart.

(NB: The pic is 39-years-old. Between me and my dear colleague Moiz Haq, we handled the special four-pages devoted to World Cup. At the cost of patting our backs, we did an exemplary job.)  

‘No Comebacks” meets cricket’s return artists!

Raju Korti
The flutter around Virat Kohli’s supposed Test comeback was brief but intense. Following India’s second home Test series whitewash in a year, whispers surfaced that the BCCI might request him to rethink his retirement from the longest format. The board swiftly rubbished the speculation, yet the broadcaster probed Kohli about it after the Ranchi ODI against South Africa. Kohli responded with a smile and a clear “Yes, and that’s how it’s always going to be. I am just playing one form of the game,” shutting down the theory with trademark candour. His majestic 135 in MS Dhoni’s hometown had revived the old question that tends to follow iconic players. Can cricket afford to let them go or does the sport instinctively look back at them for stability and sparkle.

Bobby Simpson

The idea of summoning a retired great has a storied past. Australia’s Bobby Simpson remains the most celebrated example. Having retired in 1968, Simpson was coaxed back a decade later at the height of the World Series Cricket split. At 41, he returned as captain and struck three centuries against India in the 1977 to 78 series, proving that touch, temperament and experience can occasionally defy time. His comeback remains one of cricket’s gold standard return stories.

England turned to Colin Cowdrey in even more dramatic circumstances. In the 1974 to 75 Ashes, Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson were terrorising English batting with pace and menace. Cowdrey, 41 and long retired, was summoned to lend spine to a traumatised team. He walked out at Perth to greet Lillee with the unforgettable line, “Good morning. My name is Cowdrey. Pleased to meet you.” The comeback was more symbolic than triumphant, yet it embodied courage and cricketing spirit in a period of raw intimidation.

There have been other noteworthy returns. Imran Khan came out of retirement in 1987 to lead Pakistan to their first ever Test series win in India, later returning again in 1992 to win the World Cup. Closer home, Sourav Ganguly was effectively retired by selectors in 2005 before forcing a comeback a year later and finishing with impressive consistency. On the other side of the ledger are players whose returns did not quite work. Muhammad Yousuf’s international reappearance never recaptured his earlier fluency and Aravinda de Silva’s brief Test return lacked conviction. These stories reinforce that comebacks can elevate legacies or dilute them depending on timing, form and the competitive landscape.

Colin Cowdrey

Viewed through this lens, Kohli’s clarity appears rooted in self awareness. He remains the fittest and most driven Indian batter of his generation, yet he knows precisely what he wants from the final phase of his career. His white ball numbers still surge and his intense competitive streak remains intact, but the grind of Test cricket is something he has chosen to leave behind. A comeback for sentimental or stop gap reasons has never been his style.

The broader question of returning from retirement carries both promise and peril. The advantages are obvious. A seasoned player brings institutional wisdom, dressing room calm and proven technique. He or she can lift younger teammates and offer stability in turbulent phases. Yet the risks are equally real. The intensity of modern cricket demands peak fitness and unwavering mental sharpness. A returning player must recondition mind and body for pressures they had already stepped away from. Fans and selectors often expect vintage performance, which creates a psychological burden. Team dynamics can shift and the comeback might unintentionally stall the growth of emerging talent.

Cricket’s history shows that comebacks can sometimes rejuvenate teams and redefine careers, yet they work only when the motivation is pure and the player is completely aligned with the demands of the return. Virat Kohli seems to recognise this with rare clarity. For now, his story of reinvention lies firmly in the limited overs arena and the romance of a Test comeback is best left as a passing rumour rather than a real possibility.

Time to say adieu to Gambhir’s experiments!

Raju Korti
Gautam Gambhir’s stint as the head coach of the Indian cricket team has turned into a troubling case study of how poor strategy, erratic decision making and muddled communication can derail an inherited cricketing powerhouse. His politics has nothing to do with this evaluation. The failures stand on their own. What makes the situation alarming is the consistency of those failures across Tests, selections, role definitions, dressing room atmosphere and public communication. The pattern is unmistakable and the conclusion is unavoidable. Gambhir has not succeeded as India’s coach and the time has come to consider a change.

His record as coach is the most straightforward indictment. India under Gambhir won only three Tests, lost eight and drew one. That is roughly a one in three success rate. For a team that has built a reputation as a dominant Test side for over a decade, this slide is startling. The 3–0 whitewash at home against New Zealand in 2024 was unprecedented. India had not lost a home Test series for twelve years and they did not merely lose this one but were comprehensively outplayed. The pattern continued with a 3–1 defeat in Australia, prompting Sunil Gavaskar to publicly question the purpose of having a coaching staff when the basics of preparation and reading conditions seem consistently wrong. The decline has now deepened with the series loss to South Africa after the defeat in the second Test, a result that further underlines how far the team has fallen under his stewardship. These losses were not unfortunate. They were built on flawed planning, indecisive selections and players entering matches without clarity or confidence.

One of the most destabilising aspects of Gambhir’s tenure has been his restless experimentation. His frequent tinkering with the batting order has unsettled players instead of empowering them. Sanju Samson, for instance, has been made to oscillate between opening and batting as low as number eight, a shift that would unsettle even the most seasoned cricketer. Shreyas Iyer, despite a strong record, has been ignored, while Harshit Rana, associated with Gambhir from their KKR days, has repeatedly been preferred ahead of more deserving and experienced bowlers. Shubman Gill’s elevation across formats, including Tests and T20s, has also raised doubts about whether personal preferences are outweighing merit. And I am not even speaking about Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. This sense of unpredictability has created an atmosphere where players are unsure of their role, position or security, a stark contrast to the stable environments created by earlier coaches.

The recent Test against South Africa at Eden Gardens provided a telling example of how Gambhir’s decision making repeatedly backfires. The pitch became the subject of national ridicule after Sourav Ganguly revealed it had not been watered for four days. It was totally unfit for a proper Test match. India fell while chasing a target of only 124. Instead of acknowledging the poor call, Gambhir insisted there were no demons in the pitch and that the team could have easily chased down 124. That defence was not just specious. It was unconvincing and tone deaf. The team had gone in with four spinners, including Washington Sundar, who barely received any overs. The planning was confused. The execution was worse. The outcome was a collapse of their own making.

Adding to the technical failures is Gambhir’s temperament and communication, which have not helped create a cohesive dressing room. He appears withdrawn and humourless and rarely projects the warmth or assurance that helps players handle pressure. Many find him unapproachable and stiff. Younger aspirants like Sarfaraz Ahmed must wonder what more they need to do to break into the eleven. Even in public communication, he often appears defensive or combative rather than introspective. His tendency to dismiss criticism outright, whether regarding the New Zealand whitewash or the Harshit Rana selection debate, further isolates him from stakeholders. It is telling that former influential players including Gavaskar, Srikkanth and even R Ashwin have voiced concerns over his methods. Such criticism from seasoned names rarely emerges unless the rot is deep.

Gambhir also compares poorly with his predecessors. Rahul Dravid offered calm, clarity and a clear developmental arc for players. Ravi Shastri provided authority, tactical firmness and man management. Gary Kirsten brought emotional intelligence, structure and the ability to build a united team environment. Gambhir, by contrast, has neither the stability nor the vision that these roles demand. To be fair, he remains a man of great passion and strong will and his support for young players and India’s 2025 Champions Trophy triumph stand out as positive notes in an otherwise uneven tenure. Yet these are exceptions, not the blueprint.

Indian cricket thrives on structure, confidence and long-term planning. Gambhir has introduced uncertainty, inconsistency and fragmentation. The team often looks unsure of itself, its selections, its hierarchy and its tactical direction. That is the direct result of a coach who has failed to provide clarity, cohesion or conviction. The evidence has piled up long enough. It is clear that India needs new leadership, someone who can restore stability, inspire trust and bring sharp cricketing judgment to the job. Gambhir’s continued presence in the role risks further decline at a time when Indian cricket stands at a critical juncture. The team deserves better. The time for change is now.

Decoding the whimsical nature of India’s cyclones!

Raju Korti
As someone who evinces keen interest in Climate Physics, cyclones hold an abiding interest for me as a way to understand how oceans quietly script the fate of nations and the more I observe the recent churn in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea, the more I realise that India is living through a climatic inflection point that is both scientifically fascinating and deeply unsettling because cyclones are no longer following the seasonal discipline we once took for granted. Since the early onset of the monsoon in the second half of May 2025, the number of cyclonic disturbances has risen sharply and almost rhythmically, beginning with Depression ARB 01 and Deep Depression BOB 01 in May, continuing through Deep Depression BOB 07 and Depression ARB 03 in October, and culminating in intense and damaging systems like Cyclone Shakti, Cyclone Montha and now the expected Cyclone Senyar around November 26. What is striking is not merely their frequency but the time window in which they are forming because cyclones typically prefer predictable seasons whereas this new behaviour is a climate signal that cannot be ignored.

(Pic representational)

The Bay of Bengal has always been India’s cyclone factory owing to its warm surface waters, abundant moisture, and favourable atmospheric structure. Between 1990 and 2020 it recorded 190 cyclones compared to the Arabian Sea’s 73, but what has changed is the velocity and intensity of this engine. Warmer waters are the raw fuel for cyclogenesis and the Bay of Bengal is now consistently warm enough to trigger and sustain more frequent storms, which explains why Cyclone Montha could intensify rapidly before hitting Kakinada and why a low-pressure system over the Strait of Malacca is already primed to turn into another depression by November 24. What is even more telling is the Arabian Sea’s newfound restlessness because historically it remained cooler during most of the year, limiting cyclone formation, yet in the last two decades its cyclone frequency and intensity have gone up appreciably owing to human-induced climate change that is warming its upper ocean layers faster than expected.

This year’s early monsoon itself was a clue that the ocean-atmosphere machinery was behaving in overdrive because an active Madden Julian Oscillation, a positive Indian Ocean Dipole, and unusually strong cross-equatorial winds through the Somali Jet created a conveyor belt of moisture that pushed the monsoon ahead of schedule and simultaneously set the stage for more cyclonic spin-ups. When such background conditions persist, cyclones are no longer anomalies but expressions of a new normal that is deeply tied to global warming. In climate physics terms, every extra tenth of a degree in sea surface temperature increases the probability of a cyclonic system drawing enough latent heat to intensify quickly and unpredictably and this is exactly what India is experiencing. The grim reality is that once sea temperatures rise beyond a threshold, there is no known human intervention that can cool ocean surfaces on a regional scale because heat absorbed by the ocean is a global, not local, phenomenon and therefore part of the broader crisis of global warming that needs coordinated international mitigation.

Untimely cyclones wreak havoc on economies because they disrupt ports, power grids, transport networks and coastal industries and they strike hardest at the agricultural heartland which depends on predictable rain cycles. When storms like Shakti or Montha arrive in the wrong month, they flatten standing crops, ruin soil fertility through salinity intrusion and throw rural livelihoods into chaos. Each cyclone comes with an invisible economic signature in the form of damaged fisheries, lost workdays, reconstruction expenses, and insurance burdens. In the long run, a climate of frequent cyclones becomes a drag on GDP as governments are forced into perpetual relief and rehabilitation cycles while farmers grapple with the psychological toll of unpredictability.

Whether governments are alert to these disturbing shifts is a question that demands uncomfortable honesty. India’s meteorological systems are improving in tracking and forecasting but mitigation remains fragmented because true cyclone management means tackling the root cause, which is global warming. No coastal embankment can compensate for warmer oceans and no disaster management manual can keep up with a climate that is mutating faster than policy. What is required is not just national preparedness but a sustained global campaign to cut emissions, invest in renewable energy, restore coastal ecosystems and negotiate climate justice with more urgency because warming oceans do not recognise national borders and neither do cyclones.

The sudden proliferation of cyclones in 2025 is therefore not a coincidence but a climatic message written in the language of physics. It tells us the oceans are warmer, atmospheric rhythms are shifting and the boundaries of our old assumptions have dissolved. Cyclones were once seasonal events and are now year-round reminders that climate change is not a theory but a lived reality.

(NB: The picture is representational, since cyclones generally look and behave alike, differing only in their severity and the impact they leave behind. So there!)

In a world of strange viruses, survival Is the real marvel

Raju Korti
I have been thinking a great deal about the Washington case where an elderly resident became the first human to die of an H5N5 bird flu strain that had never before crossed into people. It is a chilling reminder of how easily the microscopic world can ambush us. The patient lived far from the bustle of Seattle, kept a backyard flock of domestic birds, and by all accounts had no reason to imagine that a virus unknown to medicine would slip silently from his poultry into his bloodstream. He arrived at the hospital with a blazing fever, confusion and laboured breathing. Tests revealed the strain had jumped from birds into him, but thankfully it has shown no inclination to spread among humans. His isolated tragedy is a stark illustration of how little we truly control in the biological universe that swirls around us.

When I first read a deeply researched Time Magazine piece on viruses sometime in the late seventies, immunology and virology were still finding their feet. Even then, scientists warned us that humanity lives on a razor’s edge, surrounded by a cosmos of invisible particles. Today we know the scale far better. Earth is home to an estimated ten nonillion virus particles. That is a number so absurdly large that it makes the stars in the universe look sparse. Fewer than seven thousand viruses have been studied in any meaningful detail and millions more continue to exist in forms we have not catalogued. The astonishing part is that most of these do not harm humans and never will. They float in the air we breathe, drift through oceans and soil, ride on insects and animals and even infect bacteria, yet our bodies repel their advances without us even knowing.

(Pic representational)

That, to me, is the real marvel. The human immune system is a fiercely intelligent protector that learns, adapts and remembers. It keeps guard from the moment we are born until the moment we die. Every second of our lives it is intercepting invaders, neutralising threats and outsmarting organisms that would overwhelm us if not for our internal vigilance. It is almost miraculous that we survive at all in an atmosphere saturated with viruses that exist only to replicate. Their behaviour is strange. They have no cellular structure, no heartbeat, no metabolism. They are obligate parasites that do nothing until they enter a host cell. Once inside they hijack the cell’s machinery, forcing it to produce viral copies instead of doing its usual work. Some viruses behave so cleverly that they seem to bend the rules of life itself. There are giant viruses whose genomes are so complex that they mimic cellular organisms. Others display behaviours that almost feel sentient, as if they network with fellow viruses or borrow protective coats from other viruses to survive. It is a world that sits right at the edge of what we define as living.

Every now and then one of these organisms mutates or leaps across species and reminds us how vulnerable we are. The recent resurgence of chikungunya in several countries is one such reminder. Anyone who has experienced it knows the misery of its joint pains and fever. There is no cure and the fever eventually ebbs, but the pain can linger stubbornly and make even daily chores a challenge. Viral illnesses are mostly like this. A small number can be cured, but most are managed. The Hepatitis C virus is a rare triumph because modern antivirals can eliminate it in more than ninety five percent of cases. Ebola too can be cleared fully with specific treatments. But chronic infections like HIV and Hepatitis B can only be held in check. Antibiotics are useless because they work on bacteria, not viruses. For most viral diseases we treat the symptoms and wait for the body’s defences to push the invader out.

When scientists warn us about the unpredictability of bird flu strains like H5N5, they are really reminding us of the delicate interaction between humanity and the viral world. From what I can gather, viruses shape evolution. They alter genes. They influence ecosystems. A world without viruses would collapse because they keep entire biological cycles functioning. They infect plants, animals, fungi and even bacteria. They are a necessary evil in the grand design of life. Total victory over them is neither possible nor desirable. The real achievement is our ability to coexist with them without being destroyed.

As I reflect on the Washington case, I realise that fear should not be the dominant emotion. Awareness is essential, vigilance matters, and responding with science instead of panic is what keeps us safe. The miracle is not that there are outbreaks. The miracle is that outbreaks are so rare when the world is saturated with trillions upon trillions of viral particles. Our survival is a quiet daily triumph of biology over chaos. Viruses were here long before us and will be here long after us, yet we continue to flourish in a world teeming with them. In the end, coexistence is the only equilibrium nature offers and the one we must continue to respect.

The leopard question: Crisis or overreach?

Raju Korti
I write this as someone who has been a wildlife enthusiast from very early in life and who lives tantalisingly close to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai, a region where leopards routinely stray into human spaces. During the COVID period one leopard slipped into our residential complex in the dead of night and on another occasion two cubs were spotted very close to the SGNP fringes, indicating the continued presence of an adult pair and reminding us that this is a living, overlapping habitat where the boundaries between human and wild are porous. Against this lived reality, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis recently directed officials to declare leopard attacks on humans as a state disaster and prepare a proposal for the next cabinet meeting that seeks to remove leopards from Schedule I and reclassify them under Schedule II so that officials have greater flexibility in dealing with confirmed man-eaters.

The announcement came after a high-level meeting attended by Deputy Chief Ministers Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, Forest Minister Ganesh Naik and senior officials in the wake of rising leopard attacks, especially in Pune district’s Shirur tehsil under the Junnar forest division where three persons were killed in just over a month, triggering public outrage and even arson in which a forest department vehicle was torched. A man-eating leopard in this very tehsil was ultimately shot dead by sharpshooters in early November after repeated attempts to capture it failed.

(Pic representational)

The state has responded with a mix of immediate and structural directions: deploying cages in vulnerable areas, using drones to track leopards near villages and urban settlements, increasing patrols by police and forest personnel, expanding rescue teams and vehicles, enhancing the capacity of existing rescue centres like Gorewada in Nagpur, setting up two new rescue centres in Pune district within the next two to three months, and securing the Centre’s permission to sterilise man-eating leopards. District planning committees have been asked to fund cages, manpower and vehicles to intensify capture operations. These measures reflect the administration’s argument that Schedule I protection often creates operational challenges, particularly when officials have to deal with repeat offenders. The government says reclassification under Schedule II will streamline permissions and enable swift action, including sedation, capture, sterilisation or controlled removal of confirmed man-eaters.

The broader context makes the debate more urgent and more complicated. Maharashtra is home to one of the largest leopard populations in the country, with national and state estimates placing the number in the approximate range of 1,600 to 2,000 individuals depending on survey year and method. Yet an RTI-based report recently revealed that between January 2022 and September 2025, some 537 leopards died in the state from causes including road accidents, electrocution and poaching. At the same time localised attacks like those in Shirur overwhelm the administrative capacity of field officers and lead to sudden law-and-order flashpoints that the state struggles to contain.

As a Disaster Management Consultant, I feel that whether these incidents justify classifying leopard attacks as a “state disaster” demands a careful reading of disaster law. The Disaster Management Act allows states to notify calamities to unlock funds and coordinate responses, but typically disasters are large-scale events such as floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, radiation leaks or cyclones that exceed the coping capacity of local authorities.

Leopard attacks, although serious and tragic, are spatially concentrated and usually addressed through wildlife and forest management mechanisms. Declaring a state-wide disaster invites criticism as an administrative overreach unless supported by clearly documented evidence that the frequency, spatial spread and socio-economic consequences of attacks have grown beyond local handling. For a few tehsils where fatalities cluster, the “disaster” logic may hold; for a whole state it requires careful justification so that precedent does not dilute the very meaning of disaster classification.

Reclassifying leopards from Schedule I to Schedule II is an even more sensitive proposal. Schedule I confers the highest protection under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, imposing stringent penalties and permitting intervention only under narrow, well-regulated circumstances. Moving to Schedule II relaxes these constraints and allows more administrative discretion for capture, handling and lethal control. The state argues this is essential for quick and decisive action in conflict zones. The conservation community worries that the shift weakens deterrence against poaching, emboldens illegal killings and creates a permissive environment where the line between a confirmed man-eater and a merely sighted leopard becomes dangerously thin. The Shirur case, where a leopard was shot dead by sharpshooters, illustrates the slippery slope: when pressure mounts, lethal force becomes the path of least resistance.

Understanding why leopards enter human spaces is crucial to assessing the wisdom of such policy shifts. The primary drivers are habitat loss, fragmentation and decline in natural prey, all of which compel leopards to seek food near human habitation. In many landscapes, the prey base within forests is depleted due to habitat degradation and human pressure while stray dogs, cats, calves and goats near villages and city fringes provide easy pickings. Some leopards are old or injured and no longer capable of hunting wild prey; others become habituated to scavenging near human settlements, and in rare but documented cases, access to human corpses in cremation grounds or desolate areas can initiate dangerous behavioural changes. These ecological stresses, coupled with human encroachment into forested land and expansion of urban infrastructure, mean that leopards are often not invading human spaces but navigating a shrinking habitat mosaic in which humans have already advanced deep into their former ranges.

The contradiction at the heart of the government’s approach becomes clear here. On one hand it plans to ease legal protection, making removal easier; on the other hand, it promises to rehabilitate, treat and house leopards in newly constructed centres. Rehabilitation relies on strong legal safeguards because without them, capture can quickly slide into disappearance, and treatment into mere holding before euthanasia or unofficial disposal. If protections are diluted, the incentive to invest in long-term rehabilitation diminishes and the risk of leopards being killed under vague justifications rises. Poaching, already a documented threat, could exploit the relaxed schedule to mask illegal trade and killings under the guise of conflict control. This risk grows in landscapes already stressed by reported leopard mortality in the hundreds over just a few years.

The way forward lies not in blunt reclassification but in calibrated, evidence-led policy. Immediate measures such as cages, drones, increased patrolling and rapid-response teams are necessary to protect human lives and calm public anger. Long-term solutions must focus on habitat restoration, prey-base strengthening, secure wildlife corridors, strict action on encroachments, transparent protocols for defining and handling man-eaters, improved training of forest staff, rapid compensation for livestock loss, and community involvement in coexistence strategies. Scientific monitoring through camera traps, telemetry and GIS mapping should guide interventions. If any legal reclassification is pursued, it should be narrow, time-bound and limited to specific circumstances with independent oversight to prevent misuse.

Human safety is non-negotiable but conservation cannot be an afterthought. Treating leopard attacks as a “state disaster” and lowering their protection may produce short-term administrative convenience but could, if not tightly regulated, erode long-term ecological stability and legal safeguards. The real challenge is ensuring that compassion, science and law work together rather than at cross-purposes. Maharashtra’s response must rise to this complexity rather than simplify it, for if we reduce the debate to an administrative binary, both people and leopards will remain trapped in a cycle of conflict that neither emergency declarations nor legal downgrades can solve.

No EMI, No GST, just bliss: The joy of daydreaming

Raju Korti
I confess, with no remorse whatsoever, that my favourite entertainment involves neither OTT platforms nor blockbuster movies nor five-star vacations. I simply lean back and… drift. Yes, daydreaming. The finest pastime ever invented, and the best part is it costs nothing, not even small change from the pocket of your kurta. There are no rules, no regulations, no committees hovering over your imagination with red files. In this private universe of mine, the mind has a free run like a child in an empty maidan, picking characters, locations, conversations and rewards at will. These are dreams without the inconvenience of sleeping. And unlike my waking life, no one cross-questions my motives. My daydreams remain my closely guarded secrets, a kind of agreeable split personality that stays blissfully distant from the jarring cacophony outside.

Science, in its earnest way, is still debating how mind-wandering works. Theories come and theories go, but frankly, I daydream too happily to worry about their technicalities. Freud, with all his seriousness, believed daydreaming was the polite version of suppressed instincts, made more lucid by a “secondary revision.” Others say it’s a liminal state, standing halfway between logic and lullaby. To me, the heartening truth is simpler: the mind is not idle even when the world thinks it is. During these wanderings, we sift through memories, tinker with future goals, polish our psychological selves and still manage to keep one ear on the cooker whistle. It is multitasking of the most graceful kind.

Of course, even this delightful habit comes with disclaimers. Too much daydreaming and you may find yourself staring blankly at your laptop while the world assumes you are deciphering national budgets. It can become maladaptive if it starts interrupting daily life. And yes, escaping into fantasy may soothe you but it won’t fix your rising electricity bill or that colleague who specialises in stress distribution. Like all good things in India, from pickles to politics, moderation is key.

What truly excites me is that science now suggests wandering into comforting, playful thoughts lifts the mood and sparks creativity. If someone ever conducts brain-mapping on utopian daydreamers, I volunteer as a sample with unmentionable sections safely censored. Perhaps my own blogs are children of these mental excursions, though I won’t reveal the rest of the “benefits.” They might scandalise those who pretend they never daydream, the saints.

Let me share some of the harmless, uplifting scenes from my internal cinema: perfect weather, soulful vacations, politicians who are honest, officials with integrity, colleagues who are benign, neighbours who are helpful, and good Samaritans everywhere. Meals that are healthy, trains that are on time, medical treatment that is free, money that flows generously to the needy, recognition that arrives in heaps, and the humility to stay grounded while the world showers praise. A world where everything is hunky dory and no one steals your peace of mind. Now tell me, which multiplex offers this?

My two cents: daydreaming is a glorious escape, a personal amusement park where you can be king, wanderer, poet or philanthropist on the same day. It is a creative intermission, a mental vacation with you as architect, director and hero rolled into one. Enjoy it, indulge in it, but don’t let it hijack your schedule. After all, even fantasy tastes sweeter when savoured at the end of a long, honest day’s work.

When death becomes clickbait!

Raju Korti
I began the day reading that Dharmendra, the original macho man of Hindi cinema, had passed away. Within minutes, social media was flooded with “RIP” messages, mournful tributes, and pictures of him in his heyday. As I write this, Dharmendra thankfully remains alive, hopefully for many more years. Yet, a section of both social and mainstream media seems content to send him on a premature heavenly journey. No one really knows the truth, but that hardly matters in the viral economy of grief.

Parallelly, Jackie Chan too became a trending topic worldwide after Facebook lit up with news of his “tragic death.” A photo showing him on a hospital bed did the rounds, along with fake claims that his family had confirmed the news. It was all fabricated. Fans panicked, the media speculated, and for a few hours, the virtual world buried him alive.

What intrigues me is this perverse obsession with celebrity deaths. Why are people, especially those on social media who fancy themselves as journalists, so eager to write epitaphs before their time? Is it the thrill of “breaking news,” the hunger for attention, or the morbid delight that fame brings even in death? Many celebrities have died multiple times before they actually died. Lata Mangeshkar, Dilip Kumar, and Amitabh Bachchan have all been victims of such premature digital funerals.

The anatomy of a rumour is simple yet sinister. It feeds on fear, curiosity, and the herd mentality that governs our online interactions. It spreads through anxiety and thrives on our need to feel informed or relevant. Once unleashed, it mutates, gathering new details, false confirmations, and emotional hooks. Until it becomes indistinguishable from fact.

But rumours are not harmless chatter. They can wound reputations, distress families, and corrode public trust. When falsehoods are circulated about public institutions or leaders, they can even shake faith in governance and democracy itself. A society that thrives on fake information eventually forgets how to think critically.

India does have laws against rumour-mongering, Various sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Disaster Management Act, and the Information Technology Act prohibit spreading false information. Yet convictions remain few and far between. The lack of strict enforcement makes rumour-mongering seem like a trivial offence when in fact, it eats away at our moral fibre.

We all must die someday, but death should not become a matter of speculation and spectacle. Let us not make mortality a trending topic just because it fetches likes, clicks, and fleeting visibility. If we cannot honour life, the least we can do is respect death.

Facebook’s ‘Digital Royalty’: "Digital Creators" and their "followers"

Raju Korti
There was a time when Facebook was a cheerful adda for long-lost friends, old classmates, ex-colleagues, and that uncle who sends ‘Good Morning’ messages before sunrise. You could share photos, poke fun, disagree, even argue; and yet remain friends. The unwritten rule was simple: friendship meant affection, not algorithmic hierarchy.

But now, as I scroll through my feed, I realise that Facebook has been quietly colonised by a new tribe: the Digital Creators. These self-styled geniuses are convinced that everyone else exists only to “follow” them. Their profiles proudly declare, “1.8K followers, 123 following”. As if the fewer they follow, the more divine their existence.

My notifications keep telling me: “So-and-so has highlighted a post for you.” Really? Highlighted? As if it is some royal proclamation. And when I open the post, I find that I have been automatically demoted from friend to follower. In other words, a humble spectator whose sacred duty is to clap, like, and share.

(Pic representational)

Let me confess: I hate this word follower. It reeks of servitude. I joined Facebook to make friends, not to become part of some digital durbar. It is very rare that I send a friend request, yet, when I do, I find myself converted into a “follower”. A faceless minion expected to hang on to every selfie, quote, and “motivational” post my new monarch uploads.

Now, I am told that a digital creator is someone who “produces and distributes original, engaging, and valuable content.” Beautiful words, but quite meaningless when you look around. What exactly are they creating? Ninety percent of what passes for “original content” today is a recycled meme, a borrowed quote, or a dance reel set to someone else’s song. If this is creativity, then the world’s WhatsApp groups are full of creative geniuses.

And please, don’t tell me there was no creativity before the digital age. By that logic, the likes of Shakespeare, Tagore, R.K. Laxman and Sahir – to name a few -- must have been mere amateurs because they never monetized their content through reels. What unmitigated nonsense!

What irritates me even more is how these digital creators hardly ever acknowledge others’ posts. They live in a world of one-way admiration. You comment on their post, and silence follows. The royal silence of someone too elevated to notice the commoners. Yet their “followers” dutifully shower likes and emojis as though attending a daily darshan.

To me, friendship is about equality. I don’t want to lead, and I certainly don’t want to follow. I want to connect. Genuinely, without hashtags or hierarchies.

If this obsession with followers continues, perhaps Mr. Zuckerberg should consider rebranding Facebook altogether. Maybe call it Followbook or Feudalbook. At least then we’ll know where we stand, kneeling at the feet of “digital creators,” proudly part of an utterly stupid algorithm.

Some might take offence to this post. That’s fine. After all, Facebook still asks me, “What’s on your mind?” I only hope it doesn’t soon change that to, “What’s on your leader’s mind?”

Aliens are human too. They're entitled to boredom!

Raju Korti
It all began when I stumbled upon this rather delightful theory by Dr Robin Corbet of NASA. He calls it radical mundanity, which, in plain language, means that aliens might be as ordinary as us, only with slightly shinier gadgets. For years, we have imagined them cruising around in shimmering spaceships, manipulating gravity and sipping quantum cocktails. But Corbet suggests they might be no more exciting than a cosmic neighbour who once bought a telescope, got tired of stargazing, and decided to stick to their version of afternoon tea.

Pic as imagined by me, Who ese?

The more I thought about it, the funnier it seemed. Imagine an alien research council somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy holding an emergency meeting: “Operation Contact Earth: Status?” And one sleepy alien saying, “We sent them a signal 3 million years ago. Still buffering.” At some point, even the most patient civilisation would give up and reach for a plate of samosas instead.

It turns out that sending messages across galaxies is not like sending a WhatsApp text. It takes colossal amounts of energy and time. Possibly millions of years just to get a ‘hello’ back. So, after a few cosmic centuries, our alien friends might have realised it was not worth the trouble. You can almost picture them sighing, “These humans can’t even agree on the taste of chai. Let’s move on.”Dr Corbet’s theory also punctures the grand myth of aliens being godlike. He suggests they might just have slightly better tech. An iPhone 42 instead of an iPhone 17. Which means, instead of building galaxy-sized marvels or bending space-time, they could be stuck dealing with their own version of power cuts, software crashes, and interplanetary traffic snarls.

In fact, this makes the universe feel oddly familiar. The Fermi Paradox, the question of why we haven’t heard from anyone yet, might just have the most human answer imaginable: they got bored. Picture the aliens tuning into Earth’s broadcasts, watching endless election debates on television, and deciding that advanced communication with us was a bad idea.

But on a serious note, there is something oddly comforting in this mundanity. If they are indeed out there, maybe they are not perfect, not terrifying, just as flawed and easily distracted as we are. Maybe their greatest invention wasn’t some interstellar engine but a better version of the pressure cooker.So yes, the universe might be full of intelligent life, but it could also be full of civilisations that simply lost interest halfway. In the end, perhaps we are all, humans and aliens alike, victims of the same cosmic condition: short attention spans and the irresistible lure of comfort over curiosity.

After all, even in the grand theatre of the cosmos, it seems boredom truly is universal.

When the monster turns: Pakistan’s Taliban dilemma and India’s calculus

Raju Korti
I have always believed that history punishes those who ignore its lessons. The events now playing out between Pakistan and the Taliban are a grim reminder of that truth. Creating a monster in the hope of controlling it is a strategy that never ends well. From a diplomatic and strategic standpoint, nurturing groups like the Taliban was a miscalculation of monumental proportions. And now, the fallout is at Pakistan’s doorstep.

What was once Islamabad’s prized proxy has evolved into its most formidable adversary. The recent breakdown of talks between Pakistan and the Taliban has set the stage for a dangerous confrontation. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), emboldened by ideological kinship and territorial sanctuary in Afghanistan, has declared open hostility toward its former patron. The hunter has indeed become the hunted.

Divided by barbs

The Taliban’s defiance of Pakistan’s pleas to rein in TTP is not mere brinkmanship. It signals a deeper shift in regional power equations. The Taliban, now in control of Kabul, no longer needs Pakistan’s patronage or protection. For the first time, it sees itself as an independent force. Perhaps even as the arbiter of South and Central Asian jihadist politics. That confidence, or arrogance, makes the situation far more volatile.

Pakistan’s military, long seen as the orchestrator of regional power plays, suddenly finds itself cornered. The optics of TTP fighters moving freely in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and mocking the Pakistani army are not only humiliating but also destabilizing. For Islamabad, this is no longer about containing insurgency. It is about surviving a rebellion it once armed and funded.

In this shifting dynamic, India inevitably enters the frame. Pakistan’s accusation that the Taliban is now acting as an “Indian puppet” borders on the absurd. India has maintained a consistent distance from the Taliban, both ideologically and diplomatically. No senior Taliban leader had set foot in India since the group recaptured Kabul on August 15, 2021; until now. The visit of acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to New Delhi marks a cautious, calibrated engagement, not an embrace.

India’s position must remain clear-eyed. Any engagement with the Taliban must serve two purposes: safeguarding Indian interests in Afghanistan and ensuring that terror networks with cross-border ambitions find no sanctuary there. While dialogue is not endorsement, it does signal a pragmatic recognition of the new realities in the neighbourhood.

But caution must remain the watchword. The Taliban’s past record of duplicity, ideological rigidity, and support for extremism cannot be overlooked. Its promises of moderation have so far been largely rhetorical. India must balance outreach with vigilance, ensuring that any diplomatic engagement does not legitimize or embolden a regime still struggling to align with international norms.

For Pakistan, the crisis is existential. Its decades-long use of militant groups as instruments of state policy has finally imploded. The Taliban, now its nemesis, refuses to dance to Islamabad’s tune. The threat is not only military but also psychological. Pakistan’s strategic depth has turned into a strategic disaster.

As the dust settles on this dangerous confrontation, one thing is clear: Pakistan’s experiment with terror as foreign policy has collapsed under its own weight. The Taliban’s rise may have changed Afghanistan’s power map, but its newest battleground lies within Pakistan itself. For India, this is a moment to watch, not rush. In the great game of the subcontinent, patience, prudence, and preparedness will be the best weapons.