TMC chief whip Sudip Bandyopadhyay tells KUNAL MAJUMDER that Mamata Banerjee wants the Maoists in the mainstream. “Our appeal to all those carrying arms is that they should give them up and join the mainstream, get involved in the peace process,” he says.
Month: August 2010
IN 1989, Kashmir changed for ever. Militancy assumed an ugly face in the Valley, altering the lives of Kashmiris and putting a stop to Muzaffar Ali’s ambitious project — Zooni. Ali, then 43, had already made a name for himself through Umrao Jaan and was working on a film about Habba Khatoon, a poetess who lived in 16th century Kashmir and rose to become a queen. Unnerved, he returned to Delhi. Waiting to restart filming Zooni, he began a small project to make films on improving the habitat. At his new office in the Sarai Kale Khan area in south Delhi worked a 20-year-old architecture graduate from Gujarat’s Institute of Environmental Design — Meera Saluja.
IN1989, Lal Krishna Advani embarked on his infamous rath yatra to mobilise the kar sevaks. As his procession travelled through north India, communal violence spread, leaving hundreds dead and a country, long known for its secular values, divided on communal lines.
This is when Kajal Sikka, 21, a Punjabi Khatri girl studying economics at Jesus and Mary College, and Aijaz Ilmi, 28, a Muslim boy from Uttar Pradesh who had just come to Delhi after completing his medical studies in Bengaluru, fell in love.
FAKHRUL NAQVY is 67. His wife Roda is 65. And they are anything but an elderly couple taking a walk at a children’s park. As the monsoon hits the city, the two have found a new escape: a game of Scrabble. And when they do take time out to have a chat, Fakhrul recalls his first meeting with Roda, a 23-year-old Parsi beauty, at Porbandar in 1968.
CBI lawyer KTS Tulsi tells KUNAL MAJUMDER that the Gujarat Chief Minister is interfering in the Sohrabuddin case. “I think the chief minister is continuing to interfere with the judicial process. I don’t think it is correct for the CM to give a certificate of innocence to any accused from a public platform,” he says.