Kusum Choppra

In the old days, there used to be War Correspondent courses for journalists. I don’t know if they still have them. Perhaps such need to be reinforced and made absolutely compulsory for our loquacious TV commentators.  These ‘journalists’ fall over each other to make revelations of what is happening on the front, hoping to later claim credit for having sparked off another Indo-Pak war …... complete with hectoring of the Armed forces and the administration  on how they should handle situations that they have been trained for, cocksure in their belief that they and they alone know how any and every situation should be handled!!  Obviously opposition leaders cannot afford to be left behind  in hectoring and making absurd demands which, if anything, exhibit how far from reality they actually are. This morning’s Indian Express Op-ed page (August 13, 2013) carries a very very rationale argument “A Competitive Pseudo-Patriotism”  by Rtd. Lieutenant General ...

  www.facebook.com/kusum.chopppra ?s around couples ….. “Palaces have a strange virus. They echo, quite maliciously, the unspoken word.” The author of a book that recounts a unique relationship in an ancient tale in poetry format, that is highly evocative and passionate, questing and loving, acknowledged his wife in the writing of the long, long poem during long winter evenings.  Twenty years down the line, the same author lives up to his bureaucratic biases to bring out learned tomes, dry as dust on assorted suggestions for policy change.   There is no mention of the wife any more.  What does that hint of the relationship two decades on? Couples, especially long lived ones, do evoke unspoken queries in our times with its rising sensitivity to man-woman relationships at all levels.  Question marks often surround senior couples seen in public parks and gatherings: Is that eternally smiling grandma faking it? Or that smirking hubbie? ...