Watching history as it unfolds: Remembering September 16, 1984. My Sunday siesta was rudely shattered by an office call asking me to rush to the Raj Bhavan. Governor Shankar Dayal Sharma, I was told, invited N.T. Rama Rao to form the Government. He was back in power a month after he was undemocratically toppled by…
This was on a March afternoon some years ago. We considered a short drive. “No temples, no relatives. Only a long drive,” insisted the Gen Next of the family, wary of our spiritual preferences. “All right,” we agreed—but read on what happened. Not sure where to head, we hit the Warangal highway. We were about…
It was in September 1971 that Kasu Brahmananda Reddi (KBR), the longest-serving Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh at the time, stepped down in the aftermath of the Telangana agitation, which had seen nearly 370 persons killed and thousands injured in police firings. At the peak of the movement, he had tendered his resignation in…
Over my long career, I have had many bosses with queer personal traits. Some were stern outwardly, yet kind at heart, some friendly, yet others moody and throwing tantrums, childlike and sulking, but luckily, none were cunning or downright vindictive. To start with, we had V.S. Ganapati Sarma deputed by the Indian Express, Madras, to…
Vintage fake (pheku) news – September 24, 1970. It was just another Thursday, so it seemed, when I returned home from work. I had hardly changed when I heard commotion outside – people whining and screaming. I came out only to see men and women fleeing in panic for their dear lives. I could make…
What is there in a name? Shakespeare seems to say, ‘Well, nothing. That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ I do not quite agree with the take of the Bard of Avon if you consider the way my name has been twisted, distorted, misspelled, and pronounced, not to…
Dasu Krishnamoorty, a towering figure in Indian journalism with a legacy spanning seven decades, will step into his 100th year this Tuesday, July 1. Hailing from a family of journalists, Krishnamoorty was part of the first batch of journalism students at Osmania University, studying under the renowned Prof. De Forest O’Dell during 1954–55. He topped…
Yes. April 4, 1990 was a turning point in our life. Amma, who caringly steered the family through difficult times, had just departed. Having lived all our lives in rented houses, we decided to build one of our own. We moved from the heart of the city to outlying but serene Alkapuri as a first…
The Gond tribes of Adilabad district believe he is God; they deify him and the younger generation remembers him as their saviour. That was Prof. Christoph Von Furer Haimendorf (1915-1995) who lived among them at Marlawai. Haimendorf was an eminent social anthropologist who taught at the University of London. He had spent many years in…
Adilabad is in the news, thanks to the ongoing Nagoba Jatra, the biggest tribal festival of the country – at Keslapur. Over the years, my reporting assignments had taken me to various places in the Telugu states, but Adilabad was the one I instantly fell in love with. This was one reason I had chosen…
