Call it a play on words, but after a recent, rather harrowing drive, this writer is convinced the answer is a resounding yes. What began as a neatly planned road trip from Hyderabad to Bengaluru on April 29 nearly spiralled into a roadside nightmare—saved, quite literally, by a blinking dashboard sensor most of us barely…
Much like Much Ado About Nothing, the enduring drama over Andhra Pradesh’s capital risks becoming an exercise in noise rather than necessity. What began as a legitimate post-bifurcation challenge in 2014 has, over a decade later, devolved into a prolonged political spectacle—rich in rhetoric, poor in resolution. Amaravati has remained at the heart of this…
Among public figures, Garikapati appears to be the first high-profile “victim” of the paraabhava dhaati predicted in the panchangam during Ugadi. Few would have imagined that a preacher admired for his blunt, unapologetic style—often seen as a counterweight to the more measured approach of contemporaries like Chaganti—would face such a sweeping and viral backlash. The…
Happy Ugadi The first two words should bring a smile to you, while the other two—in Telugu and English respectively—may create an eerie feeling of anxiety. But that’s how this year is destined to be, if we go by what the Hindu calendar, or panchangam, portends for us to ponder over. Every year marks the…
This writer has a habit (don’t know whether it is good or bad) of forcefully convincing his close friends and relatives not to miss something which he feels compelled to say. When he was trying to do this over the phone to a former student cum close friend, he shot back,’ Why don’t you write…
A recent trip to Tirupati offered this writer the opportunity to discover an extraordinary place, despite having visited the temple town several times earlier, including a year of college study there in 1974. The place may be new to this writer, but its history stretches back over 2,200 years. One wondered whether he was the…
A recent incident involving a Kova Bun vendor during the Medaram Jatara prompted me to reflect on the larger street food culture in our cities. Today, one can spot customised mini closed vans selling Kova Buns across the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. The episode involving “Kumari Aunty” has not yet faded from public…
When does political theatre cross into a national security concern? That is the uncomfortable question now confronting the nation after excerpts from an unpublished memoir of former Chief of Army Staff Manoj Mukund Naravane surfaced in public discourse — and were cited on the floor of the Lok Sabha by Leader of the Opposition Rahul…
The phrase “not a crow will weep” is often attributed to the 16th-century Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga. It conveys an absolute — so brutal and total were his purges that not even the lowliest scavenger would mourn the dead. Today, that phrase feels eerily resonant in the digital age, where tragedy is met not with…
This headline went viral when an anchor-cum-journalist of a Telugu TV channel shouted at a sitting MLC of the BRS party. The tone and tenor of the exchange, notwithstanding the provocation, became news for a more sensitive reason: it was directed at a hardcore Telanganite by an Andhra anchor. That alone was enough to arouse…
