Ajith’s Asal is progressing at a fast pace and December 18 has been announced as the final shoot date.

Asal is produced by Sivaji Productions and rumors are on that the film will be released for Pongal. But the Sivaji camp has other ideas, it is believed. As almost a practice most of the late actor Sivaji’s films were released on Republic Day and there are speculations that Asal also may be released on January 26th 2010.

But Sivaji’s son Ram Kumar is keen on a Pongal release. One has to wait for further news from the Sivaji tent about the release date.

Congratulations and best wishes to the people of Turkey on the occasion of Turkey’s Republic Day on 29th October.

Thursday September 24 is Republic Day.  Do you know why we celebrate it?  What does Republic Day mean to you?

For more information, check out our Republic Day page.

It is decades since I watched the Beating Retreat ceremony in Delhi, but the memories linger to this day. Television, unfortunately, cannot recreate the mood, the ambiance, and the splendor.

So, what is “Beating Retreat”?

In the olden days, soldiers on the battlefield stopped fighting for the day at sunset, and would resume the next morning – sounds strange? Sunset was heralded by buglers, whose bugle calls would be heard on the battlefield – and the fighters would “beat the retreat” so to speak.

Today, “Beating Retreat” is largely ceremonial, and has become a part of the Republic Day celebrations in India – it is held on 29^th January every year.

Vijay Chowk is located at the foot of Raisina Hill, with the Rashtrapati Bhavan in the background and the two majestic wings of the Central Secretariat buildings flanking the venue for this awe-inspiring ceremony.

The camel cavalry on the ramparts of the Secretariat buildings, the impressive President’s Bodyguard, on their horses, accompanying the carriage of India’s Head of State, and the presence of the three Service Chiefs is a splendid sight.

The massed bands of the Army, Navy and Air Force, marching proudly down Rajpath onto Vijay Chowk, provide a mere prelude to an hour’s spectacle.

Forming intricate patterns, wheeling around, and playing some truly melodious and rousing music, the bands variously conjure up images of the hills of Kumaon, the lush green fields of Kerala, the rugged Vindhyas, the valor of the men of the armed forces, and spirit of courage and determination.

My favourite was the pipes and drums – an amazing spectacle.

The end of the music by the bands is followed by the drum beats. It’s hard to describe, and words will not do justice in describing it, but you wonder, as you watch/hear the staccato rat-a-tat of the snare drums, as to how the human hands can move so incredibly fast.

A hush descends over Vijay Chowk as sunset approaches. In the distance, one hears church bells, a lone trumpeter picks up the lilting tune of “Siki Amo Le”, followed by the softly played hymn “Abide by Me”.

And, in the rapidly descending darkness, as the bands, as also the camel cavalry move away, thousands of light-bulbs come on at Rashtrapati Bhavan and the surrounding buildings – spellbinding, indeed.

It is brilliant, and I hope I can watch this again some time.

Kargil Vijay Diwas

The alarm did not go off.
The newspaper lay on the floor by the entrance, sealed in its polythene bag.
The bed stayed unmade until after lunch, which in turn happened only around tea time.
The couch in front of the television remained occupied for most of the day. Even a classic 80’s family melodrama, with the demon-like mother-in-law wreaking havoc on her docile daughter-in-law, was consumed, as the remote control was too far out of reach.

… until I put in a Herculean effort to roll out of the couch to make some instant coffee.

Out of the sheer kindness of my heart, I first bent down and picked up the remote control, intending to give it to my husband. Before handing it over, I could not help doing the habitual flip through the channels until I came to a documentary.

I stood listening.

Today was July 26th, and it marked the tenth anniversary of India’s victory in the Kargil War. On this day in 1999, the Indian armed forces finally put an end to an intrusion across the Line of Control by insurgents aided by Pakistan. Over five hundred brave Indian soldiers had made the supreme sacrifice by the time the Tricolour was hoisted atop Tiger Hill.

Clearly, with the passage of time, the significance of this date too had slipped from my mind.

Tricolour on Tigerhill

Kargil was India’s first televised war which shot NDTV’s Barkha Dutt to fame, as it relayed to the common man the goings on at the war-front in real time.

Today, television channels were back in the Drass sector of Kargil, to cover the ongoing celebrations. A montage of shots brought back memories of what I saw on television in 1999. Back then, I was ten years younger, with fewer responsibilities, more time at my disposal and riding high after my graduation. And yet, I could spare no more than 30 minutes, over dinner and NDTV news, to catch up on how my country and countrymen on the front, fared at war.

Today, however, I chose to pause.
The coffee could wait.

My husband and I stayed glued to “Kargil, 10 years later”, where Barkha Dutt revisited the war-ravaged paths she had traveled a decade ago.
Put together like a reporter’s diary, the engaging documentary showcased moments from both the past and present. Counter-positioning the images, thoughts, conversations and milestones of soldiers who survived the war, with the sentiments and nostalgia of the families of martyrs and her own recollections and reflections, Barkha attempted to understand how the war had affected and altered each of them as individuals and as families.

Barkha made a good documentary, redeeming herself in some ways especially after her somewhat shallow coverage of the Mumbai attacks in 2008. She may have become an icon for youngsters after her debutant war coverage in 1999, but over the years, perhaps unintentionally, Barkha has appeared to sensationalise most news items. Myopic effects of this were evident in the Kargil documentary too where Barkha sometimes put herself on the same podium as our soldiers. She could not help recollect, eloquently, how her life was in peril when she brought us the live footage a decade ago. It was factual, yet annoying, but still worth being glossed over this one time.

“Kargil, 10 years later” moved me.

Perhaps it was the stories of these young men, just a bit older than I was ten years ago, sitting huddled in their bunkers after a day of hide and seek with bullets, while I was at the cinema munching popcorn with my girlfriends.

Perhaps it was the sadness at the loss of innocence that came through all the brave words they uttered, and the mask of composure they wore despite a heady mix of fear and courage that must have been brewing within.

Perhaps it was my heart sinking, hearing the martyrs’ families talk about the irreplaceable voids left in their lives, with pride.

I could not help cringe at how oblivious I had been, to a war fought in my time, all these years. For me, Barkha’s documentary came as a reminder and the Kargil Vijay Diwas celebrations were a wake-up call that my respects were due. The war was fought for me and I could not remain unmindful to the memory of those that lived in danger and did their duty for the safety of my family.

Wilfred Owen, one of the greatest war poets, whose intense personal experiences as a soldier in the First World War inspired a lot of his poetry, has spewed anger, hatred, and eventually pity at the trauma of war, in in many of his works. In his poem “Greater Love”, he wrote -

“Heart, you were never hot
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not”.

In these lines, Owen glorified a soldier’s love of suffering and of sacrificing his life for his countrymen to be greater than every other form of love known to man. Society, Owen suggested, can never experience or ever be exposed to the same sufferings of war as that of a soldier, and likewise, a soldier’s selfless love for his countrymen, his comrades and for his country remains unsurpassed.

In “Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not”, Owen mocks our consciousness as we lead our lives, detached from this reality.

In a few weeks our 62nd Independence Day celebrations will begin.

From different corners of familiarity in India I have heard resentment as August 15th falls on a Saturday this year, dashing the hopes of many who would have liked to take a long weekend off to relax. Although the events on this day will not match the elegance of our Republic Day celebrations, I am convinced we will read an article or see a show that questions whether the celebrations really amount to anything more than an inconvenience for the public or wastage of the country’s resources.

Earlier this year when we celebrated Republic Day, on another Barkha Dutt programme on NDTV, “We the People”, the subject of discussion was “Do we need an annual Republic Day parade?” A live SMS poll on the show revealed that nearly 30% of the people believed that the parade was “irrelevant”.
A celebration marked to commemorate the historic day when our country became a Republic, had in the minds of many of its citizens, clearly been relegated from a source of inspiration and pride to horror stories of traffic jams and hold-ups, wastage of the armed forces budget, to security issues and a threat to national peace.

We are a nation with a billion plus views on any subject.
There can be no clear right or wrong.

The truth simply is that any honour or celebration we bestow on our heroes falls short in comparison with the monumental sacrifices they have made and continue to make for us. The least we could possibly do is make some space for them and the institutions they belong to, in our minds and hearts.

And, I do think we need reminders for this. It does not matter whether these come in the form of parades, gun salutes, two-minute silence, television documentaries or newspaper features; what is important is that when they do come along we need to learn to pause, remember and reflect.

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First Class Mine Manager

Mechanized Mining Methods – Under Ground Mining and Open Cast Mining

A MINING ENGINEER WITH NEW VISION FOR THE MINING INDUSTRY Ethics and values in Extraction of Ore.     Mines Vocational Training Centre Malanjkhand Copper Project My Work Experience in Metalliferous Mines in IndiaWho is an Engineer Factors affecting transportationAccident investigation –why, how, and after

Home – Mining Engineer First Class Mines Manager ProfileMines Manager Profile OPERATOR’S DAILY CHECK SHEET Safety rules on Truck and Dumper Operation

Blasting in Mines to improve Fragmentation and Reduce Vibration in Mines – ‘Blasting in Mines – an Art or a Science?

A MINING ENGINEER WITH NEW VISION FOR THE MINING INDUSTRY

Follow the link below to read a story I wrote, with help from the program assistant Phil Molnar, about Ghana’s Republic Day soccer match, published on NYU’s Web site.

As my roommate said, “A non-NYU student getting work published on our site? This is a travesty.” Yeah boy.

Check it out here.

If the link doesn’t work, here’s the url.

http://journalism.nyu.edu/africadispatch/index.html

Today is Republic Day in Italy,  Festa della Republica, marking the overthrow of the monarchy by popular referendum in 1946.

The Sri Lankan government is to celebrate Republic Day on Friday 22 May 2009 – the day when all non-Buddhist non-Sinhalese lost equal rights in the island.

Furthermore, there is evidence that the Sri Lankan government is also continuing its massacre of Tamils.

Friday 22 May 2009 is Black Friday for all Tamils worldwide.

Wear all black all day and remember the 25,000 Tamils who have been murdered in recent months by the Sri Lankan State’s genocidal war with no witness. Tell the world we are mourning the loss of Tamils in the bloodshed in the Tamil homeland by the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil struggle for freedom will continue.

Chabees Janvaree (26th January) is a big day for the joint forces of Shri Badal Chand Sugan Kanwar Balika Senior Secondary School and Mahaveer Public School. We enter the playground of the former to see rows of children in freshly-pressed, white uniforms sitting – or rather shuffling, turning, and whispering – on plastic chairs. The girls among them have plats tied with shiny, red ribbons; the boys have oiled side partings.

“Does Monica Jhod go to this school?”, we ask a sensible-looking, sari-clad teacher, as she makes her way across the schoolyard towards us.

“Monica Jhod…”, she runs over a mental image of her register.

“Yes, yes, she is attending this school.” A male teacher – bespectacled, slightly older and perhaps more senior – takes control of the situation.  “You are most welcome here. Today, as in all of Hindustan, we are celebrating the Republic Da-”

“- Yes, we know. But we have come to see Monica Jhod get her prize,” explains (fellow volunteer) Corinne, “Does she attend this school?”

“Ok, ok. You kindly sit here.”

We are sat in the second row; the first is comprised of an odd collection of padded chairs and a sofa – clearly for guests very important, vey fat, or both. I had arrived in Jodpur from my village the night before. Govind, boss of Sambhali Trust (the NGO with which I’m currently volunteering), had requested that Helen and I join his three Jodhpur-based volunteers to attend various Republic Day events in the city. On the itinery: a school prize-giving; the dancing-marching-bandplaying collaboration of ten city schools at the local athletics stadium; and a brunch buffet at the residence of the new ‘Jodhpur Divisional Commissioner’ – all before Helen and I were to head back to the village to oversee the programme our own pupils were putting on for their parents and guests.

So there we were, in the playground of a local, private school, sitting on our plastic, second-row seats, waiting to see Monica receive the prize for the best student of the year. (Monica, by the way, is a fifteen-year-old Dalit (‘untouchable’) girl, and a participant of the Sambhali Trust’s ‘Jodhpur project’; she is also sponsored by the trust to attend this school. Confident, outgoing, and intelligent, she is a firm favourite with the volunteers.) But there was no sign of her yet.

A handful of smartly dressed, (self-)important-looking adults entered from the back of the playground and congregated beneath a tall flagpole. The Indian flag was raised, showering them with confetti as it unfurled. The children clapped; the VIPs brushed bits of glitter from their noses trying to look as if they weren’t; the teachers shuffled and frowned.

A drum started. Uniformed children marched past the flag (arms swinging up to exaggerated right-angles) and re-formed into their ranks beside the stage. The VIPs followed: walking normally and therefore out of time, they looked somewhat awkward, self-conscious after the practiced precision of the marching. They were each given a bouquet of fabric flowers before taking their padded seats at the front. The most important of these veryimportantpeople sat alone, in a pinstriped suit, on the first row’s centrally-placed sofa, with the look of a man uncomfortable being looked at.

A teacher said a few, echo-ey words into the microphone, and the programme began. A group of girls in their early teens came jogging onto the stage in fully buttoned-up white polo shirts, white tennis skirts and white plimsoles, and filed into lines. There was a loud crackle from the audio speakers, and Run-D. M. C.’s 1983 classic It’s Like That (And That’s The Way It Is) came blaring out…

It is difficult to pinpoint the exact effect of the performance – the choreographed aerobic-workout – that followed.

It lay somewhere – on some previously unchartered territory – between Jane Fonda, 1950s Wimbledon, and a Bollywood set piece.

Is it just me? I thought, Or is this reeally weird?

I looked around: a small boy was picking his nose nonchalantly behind me; in front of me teachers with clipboards were talking among themselves.

Is this even Indian?, I wondered.

***

Arundhati Roy – writing on the subject of Indain-ness and the feverish need of her country’s people (or rather, its politicians, and anyone else with a vested interest in the concept) to define and protect it – suggests (tongue firmly in cheek) ‘a practical list of things to ban and buildings to break’ in its name:

They could begin by banning a number of ingredients from our cuisine: chillies (Mexico), tomatoes (Peru), potatoes (Bolivia), coffee (Morocco), tea, white sugar, cinnamon (China)… They could then move into recipes. Tea with milk and sugar, for instance (Britain).

Smoking will be out of the question. Tobacco came from North America.

Cricket, English and Democracy should be forbidden. [Etc.etc.]

Is India, then, not entirely Indian? True, the country has absorbed, gobbled, mimicked, and had thrust upon it the customs of various alien civilisations since the 1500 BC movement of Aryan tribes from Afghanistan and Central Asia. Indeed, the uniquely-Indian chaos of India is fueled by the heady, sometimes incongruous, yet somehow functioning mix of races, religions, cultures and values that exist within its perameters. Perhaps this very intermingling is what’s Indian; I’m not sure.

***

If the morning’s school prize-giving displayed the country’s more culturally-omnivorous tendencies, our next stop (the dancing-marching-bandplaying collaboration of ten city schools, as you will recall) felt more reassuringly, authentically Indian. Accha.

In keeping with tradition and the mindset of a people whose national language has one word for both yesterday and tomorrow, the performance started an hour late. A polite though bodiless voice told us to feast our eyes upon the colours of the Great Desert State of Rajasthan as school girls twirled and turned to fast-paced drumming. Then children with ribbons (either saffron, white or green) tied to their wrists formed into three blocks and waved their arms in the air, so that serendipitous air-passengers flying overhead would have been able to make out the Indian flag. For those on the ground, the effect was less, well, effective.

Our brunch party was somewhat less colourful. In the place of Rajasthani reds and oranges were sober suit-greys and the neutral bieges of kurta-pyjamas. It was less noisy, too: the guests’ hushed small talk was muffled still by sticky mouthfuls of gulab jamun. Stared at and randomly greeted (on account of our white skin) whereverelse we go, inside the marquee we were pointedly snubbed by other guests. Refreshing, yet mildly offensive.

Was this Indian, then? Not Indian as I’d known it so far. Not very: only partly.

My uneasy sense that I wasn’t getting the Indian-ness I’d been promised was not allayed by the Republic Day event at my own village school. Though it included receitals of (nominally) English poetry, and Hindi speeches, it felt more local, more Marwari than anything else – dominated as it was by fast-paced, wrist-turning drum dances.

Were the girls of Bengal in the East, Tamil Nadu in the South, or Kashmir in the North waving the same saffron, white and green plastic flags as my pupils? Probably. Did they feel some sense of patriotic sisterhood? Probably not: not really. Here they don’t even call Republic Day ‘Republic Day’; subconsciously stripping it of its national significance, reducing it to a mere date, they call it ‘Chabees Janvaree’.

Khushi, with Rajasthani bangles

Yogita

***

The idea of India is one Bollywood, Indian politicians, and plastic flag shops wish to promote and concretize, and one internationally-acclaimed Indian writers (often of the Non-Residential variety) wish to reveal as myth. Salman Rushdie, in his BookerofBookers Midnight’s Children, pinpoints the birth of said myth as the moment of India’s independence from British rule: Midnight, August 14th 1947.

August in Bombay: a month of festivals, the month of Krishna’s birthday and Coconut Day; and this year – fourteen hours to go, thirteen, twelve – there was an extra festival on the calendar, a new myth to celebrate, because a nation which had never previously existed was about to win its freedom, catapulting us into a world which, although it had five thousand years of history, although it had invented the game of chess and traded with the Middle Kingdom Egypt, was nevertheless quite imaginary; into a mythical land, a country which would never exist except by the efforts of a phenomenal collective will – except in a dream which we all agreed to dream, it was a mass fantasy shared in varying degrees by Bengali and Punjabi, Madrasi and Jat, and would periodically need the sanctification and renewal which can only be provided by rituals of blood.

Though I have been fortunate enough not to have witnessed in my time here any ‘rituals of blood’, I have found there to be some truth in Rushdie’s last point. The idea of India was, for me, most tangible, most alive at Attari, an Indian-Pakistani boarder crossing-point in Punjab. It was one man’s job to whip up (with the help of a microphone and several large speakers blasting out Bollywood music) a vociferous patriotism in the Indian crowd. On the other side of the gate and the two flapping flags, it was another man’s job to do the same with the Pakistani crowd. Both sides were full: the people in both crowds were willing to pay to be part of something larger than themselves, to sharpen their sense of selfhood against their supposed enemy. But perhaps that’s the case with any distinction: that we define things (and ourselves) against what is Other.

And, it has to be said, the fierceness of the Attari crowds was not seriously threatening. It was the competitive fierceness of proud parents at a school hockey match, not that of bloodthirsty nationalists…

Elsewhere, I’ve heard, it’s more bloodthirsty.

Ah, the V-Day was peaceful! So was the I-Day, the R-Day, the Babri Masjid Demotion Anniversary Day, the anniversary of Total Solar Eclipse in 1832 AD(some contest that it was partial) etc, hereby referred to as *Days, adding to about 300 days in a Calender year. Strangely, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day were marred by sporadic violence in large of the country. The NRI population in Turkmenistan has condemned this burst of anger against such days protesting with a silent march till Istanbul in Turkey with black arm bands around hips, resulting in a sudden demand of polyester(Refer article why Non-Rely-ance remains profitable, to be published). We talked to the leading fashion disastgner Pro-sad Beedi-pa, he candidly admitted that he was in fact responsible for the 1400 designer wear that people wore during the silent march and said that his designs were recession-proof and begged errrrr, sorry urged people to buy the same!

Other fashion designers who wished to remain totally anonymous said that his/her affiliation to Shri Ram Sene was in fact true, saying that it is definitely good for their business. He/she said and I quote ‘Creating Artificial Demand, is the way to provide stimulus to this ailing economy, people have started buying more clothes, haven’t they? Prammy and us are great friends, and in fact the entire lingerie collection of mine is inspired by our friendship as we are chaddi-dost. I also wish to thank St. Valentine ‘. Unquote. Wow.

Now coming to our original topic of the *days in India, our President and the PM said equivocally that from now on we shall have flag hoisting and parade for every *day. When asked for the reasoning behind this the President said,’See, we celebrate I-Day, but are we really independent? ‘, shocked and awed by the rare intelligent answer from the President we simply we saluted and cried our hearts out. But then she also added that Republic day should change to Rebaric day as she felt pubs were against Indian culture, which drove out all the shock and reinforced our initial judgments. The PM, Sonia Gandhi acknowledged this by enacting a street play with her as the protagonist and Wo-Manhattan Sing as the side-kick.

Buskar*-eh-threats and Al-attacks  has threatened to ruin celebrations when it comes to I-day, R-day and has said will release a document of those days on their respective websites. On the other hand, The Senas have told anything from the West shall be blocked, and hence have started researching on the erstwhile project, ‘The Sun Should Set In The Center’.

Meanwhile, Indian Institute of Terror and Anarchy(IITA), TundraRegionPur, one of the 570 institutes set up by the GOI has said that in this war against powerless the powerful shall win(paper presented after 400 man years of study at General Assembly, United Nations, which exactly now have 2 villages in Antarctica as member nations).

The days shall be filled with peace, said a random person on the road, and he was immediately taken into police custody. Commissioner I. N. Efficient has said such modules shall be busted soon and we shall have days filled with riots and more public agony. ‘See, people celebrate, let them na? Gladiator dekhiye aap, haan, saala kutte kamine, vat you people i say, don’t know meaning of yen-tear-attain-mint(see gladiator you dog, piece of shit!, you people have no idea what is entertainment)’.

In other news, tomorrow is P-day and we will talk about P-day in posts to come.

*Buskar- stop it