Quantcast
Channel: Sanity Sucks
Browsing latest articles
Browse All 25 View Live

Whose war is it, anyway?

Arundhati Roy quotes my interview with Maoist supreme commander Ganapathi in her latest essay.

View Article



Somewhere, anywhere

As long as there is fire the mosquitoes keep away. But as soon as the embers begin to die, they come back. And so does the pain in the knee. I sit on the rooftop, alone, caressing a drink, as the smoke...

View Article

The Khaki Fidayeen

The Khaki Fidayeen: Five policemen from Kashmir who have broken the back of militancy in the valley. Read here.Pic: Shome Basu

View Article

Journeys

I am writing today because my body is sort of forcing me into it. I have this sinking feeling that refuses to go away, and I think writing – punching the keypad hard – would at least partially take...

View Article

Trader of stories

It is 3.45 am. Give me some coffee. Or, can I have some silence, please? I am tired of the noise around me. It makes my head spin. I can feel the bile in my mouth. The noise enters my body and hides in...

View Article


My name is Dharmendra Kumar

The media is overwhelmed with Shahrukh Khan. I mean, I care a damn if his film does not work. Or that the multiplexes are not able to run his film. In any case, the government is so pusillanimous that...

View Article

Times of Parting

Love dies slowly. Like an ember. More strands of hair have turned grey – the right temple looks like a blooming cotton field. There is dust on bookshelves. Pens look pensive. Empty notebooks lie...

View Article

Everything ends with Formalin

The police arrived and went straight to Bajirao Potawe’s house and beat him up. “With their boots and lathis,” he says. “They said bad things to my mother and sister, called me a bastard, and said how...

View Article


बारिश का एक दिन

आज बारिश बहुत हो रही थी. तुम भीगते हुए पहुंची और कैफे के दरवाज़े पर मुझसे लगभग टकरा गयी. मैं वहां खड़ा तुम्हे दूर से आते हुए देख रहा था. बहुत सुन्दर लग रही थी तुम... मन हुआ तुम्हारे बाजू पर स्माल पोक्स...

View Article


The Absent State

My book, "The Absent State" (with Neelesh Misra) is out in book stores now. Hachette India has called it the non-fiction book of the year. It has already topped the non-fiction list of The Hindu. Here...

View Article

Among the guerillas

With Maoist guerillas somewhere on the Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh border

View Article

The Long March

Walking with Maoist guerillas along a flooded river, somewhere along the Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh border

View Article

Fever is a jilted lover

It is so tough to unsettle the haze, he thinks. The haze inside his chest. Sometimes it scares him. And then he has to close his eyes and imagine light - red light - surrounding him, like some sort of...

View Article


Hemlock Destiny

“Why do you say every man is a planet?” the demon asks him, licking his scalpel. He lies on the ground, wounded, bruised, tattered, crippled, fragmented, nauseated, destroyed. He passes a faint smile...

View Article

The Unsaid Words

A woman remembers her best friend, a man dubbed a Maoist and killed by the Republic of India. He happened to be her journalist husband “For the first time in my life,” says Babita Pandey, “I had a...

View Article


In Pursuit of a Collector | OPEN Magazine

In Pursuit of a Collector | OPEN Magazine (Pic by Ishan Tankha)

View Article

Muchiness

Long time ago I used to know this woman who was much older than me. We met at a bar one cold winter night where we sat at different tables, both of us alone, and both of us nursing the same brand of...

View Article


Hello, Bastar

PRAISE FOR "HELLO, BASTAR":"Rahul Pandita had done something unusual - He had studied the Maoist movement at ground level for more than a decade, growing ever more interested in the way it functioned,...

View Article

Guerilla in the forest

This girl is a member of the Chetna Natya Manch, the cultural troupe of the CPI (Maoist). Along with other members, the girl travels from village to village in the guerilla zone. If need be, she can...

View Article

The Autumn of Hypocrisy

Tonight, they will raise a toast. Tonight, they will pat one another’s backs, and, in the confines of their apartments in New Delhi and elsewhere, may even take out victory marches. Someone might even...

View Article

Hypocrisy of Distant Cheers

View Article


There never has been a home

“But is it wrong for a man to make a house, a place where he can return in the evening?” – The Journals of John Cheever There never has been a home. He thought of it many times. In the cacophony of...

View Article


There Are No Attendants

Every man is an island. That is what I was told when I arrived in this city as a new migrant. But even when I knew nothing about its machinations, I did not believe in the aloofness of the human soul....

View Article

Puncturing the separatist discourse

The following post by Sualeh Keen, my friend from the Kashmir Valley, should not be seen as a review of Gowhar Fazli's review of my book, "Our Moon Has Blood Clots." I see it as a needle that has...

View Article

My response to the CRPF IG's so-called clarification

My former employer, The Hindu, in its January 4 edition, has published a so-called clarification from the Inspector-General (Operations) of the CRPF in Chhattisgarh, Mr. HS Sidhu, over my report...

View Article

Browsing latest articles
Browse All 25 View Live




Latest Images