Aman

Last week Doordarshan was celebrating its 50th anniversary. And they were showing the journey which they had undertook in last 5o years. Well I remember a little of those days when we had 1 channel in whole TV. Those were much better than today, when we have more than 100 channels in our TV sets. Still there are hardly any good serials or programmes on TV. But that time we used to be so happy watching ‘Shree Krishna’ on Sundays and ‘Aladdin’ on Fridays. Best of them were ‘Surabhi’ and ‘The Discovery of India’. Those were the best days of my life. I mean not only in forms of TV best in every field. We had a good balanced life. But nowadays we have extra of everything. 24 hours knowledge channels, 24 hours news channels in all languages, even 24 hours cartoon channels. Today I must say must say this that those who are spending their childhood now are perhaps most unlucky. Every where there is tension and they are growing up in this kind of atmosphere. What kind of effect this is going to...

Listening to Grasshoppers is the latest book by Arundhati Roy. In this book she combines brilliant political insight and razor sharp prose. The book is collection of essays. In these, she takes a hard look at the underbelly of the world's largest democracy, and shows how the journey that Hindu nationalism and neo-liberal economic reforms began together in the early 1990s is unravelling in dangerous ways. Starting from 2001 attack on Parliament, 2002 Gujrat genocide till the 26/11 terrorist attack on Mumbai. Her book gives us a look into these incidents with a different perspective. She shows us how the poorest of us are denied justice by Indian establishment. 'The Briefing', included as an appendix, is a fictional text that brings together many of the issue central to the collection. As it tracks the fault line that threatens to destroy India's precarious future, Listening to Grasshoppers asks fundamental questions about democracy itself, a political system that has, by...