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India 2 - Australia 1 was the result in 2018 too. But this time it's special than the last time. The Australian team in 2018 wasn't at its best. The two of their best batsmen, Steve Smith and David Warner, were out of the team because of being banned after the infamous sandpapergate. And the captaincy was handed over to a very new face, Tim Paine, who might never have become the captain of the Australian side had that scandal hadn't happened. It was the Australians that were the underdogs in 2018 and it would have been an upset if Indians hadn't won that year. But as India had won a test series in Australia for the first time, it was a big achievement. And every member of the 2018 team deserves credit for what they achieved in that series. But 2021 was a different mission altogether. With Smith and Warner back in the Australian squad and Virat Kohli deciding to return home after the first test, congratulations to him and Anushka for the baby girl, Indians had a big cha...

Remember the call for boycott of the Tanishq ad last year where a hindu girl was shown married in a muslim family? The ad was intended to address the secularism in the nation. And that was their fault. They tried talking about something people in our country don't like. People like Godse and Savarkar are considered patriots by many. Few days later, we got boycott Bingo trending on the internet because of an ad where Ranveer Singh told some science terms and people claimed it was a jibe at late Sushant Singh Rajput and his love for science. Our collective love and sympathy for SSR led us to collectively hate the Bollywood community where we were enjoying seeing some of the celebrities being pulled in and probed and criticized and defamed. We are worrying about our privacy which would become vulnerable because of WhatsApp's revised policies, not realizing our media channels openly broadcasted somebody's private messages for weeks. We enjoyed seeing JNU students getting beaten...

Is IPL 2020 over already for the CSK? After 13 of their team staff, that includes one of their premier bowler, Deepak Chahar, contracting the COVID-19 virus, Suresh Raina too decided to return to India, for no clear reasons yet, and even though the team didn't seek a replacement for him and he's been showing willingness lately to play the tournament, it's still not clear if he'll be seen playing the tournament or not. And a couple of days back, Harbhajan Singh too announced he won't be playing the tournament this year for his personal reasons.  So the debate is on in the sports fraternity whether the CSK might have their worst season of their IPL history this time around. Honestly, the franchise does look at the crossroads of many an uncertainties and dilemmas of their playing 11, especially after they have agreed to play the season opener against Mumbai on 19th. But I believe it's too early to write off CSK even before the tournament has started based on the cu...

"कल और आएंगे नग़मों की, खिलती कलियाँ चुनने वाले| मुझसे बेहतर कहने वाले, तुमसे बेहतर सुनने वाले| कल कोई मुझको याद करे, क्यूँ कोई मुझको याद करे, मसरूफ़ ज़माना मेरे लिये, क्यूँ वक़्त अपना बरबाद करे| मैं पल दो पल का शायर हूँ||" My love affair with cricket revolved around Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his style of play was what drew me into the game and made me like the sport. It was 2006 or 2007, I'm certain it was before the 2007 ODI World Cup. I don't know exactly which match it was, since I didn't like watching cricket before that, but the Indian team had won that day. My father and I were watching a quiz show of Mandira Bedi and she asked this question, "Who was the Man of the Match in today's match?". My father had a great interest in cricket. He was a regular in the playing XI of his village's cricket team. So as sure as I was that he would know the answer to this question, I asked him for the answer to that question. And he replied, "Dhoni dho daa...

  "आँख में पानी रखो, होंटो ​​पे चिंगारी रखो। जिंदा रहना है तो तरकीबे बहुत सारी राखो।" The cult poet whose opening lines of one of his poetry symposiums, "Bulaati hai magar jaane ka nahi" flooded the social media with memes earlier this year, to another of his most famous lines, "Sabhi ka khoon shaamil hai yahan ki mitti mein, kisi ke baap ka Hindustan thodi hai" which became a widely accepted and used slogan in anti CAA protests, Dr. Rahat Indori knew the nerves of his audiences and always proved so with his compositions, be it his shayaris or songs, which could make the young and old rejoice alike whenever he was on the stage. The Urdu scholar cum teacher cum lyricist cum poet cum painter, Indori sahab was undergoing treatment at the Sri Aurobindo Institute of Medical Sciences. He had tested positive for COVID-19 and was being diagnosed for the same. Sadly, he passed away yesterday due to cardiac arrest, as confirmed by his son, Satlaj Indori. About his l...

Within under 24 hours of the announcement of the New Education Policy by the HRD minister, Mr. Ramesh Pokhriyal and the Information and Broadcasting minister, Mr. Prakash Javadekar, the policy has caught the attention of almost everyone across the nation. The new policy which will replace the previous policy which was announced in 1986 and was modified in 1992, by its first look, seems very promising majorly because of the targets it has set to achieve in their stipulated time frame which, if happens, would revolutionize the education sector of the country which has been long criticized for having too many loopholes and hence not been serving its intended purpose all this time. Before we get into the details of what this new policy has in store for the students and their family members, in turn the whole of the country, I think it's important I point it out that this bill was given clearance from the cabinet, chaired by the PM Mr. Narendra Modi, without it being brought into the Pa...

If I had gone for an opening like "In a country where we have countless Goddesses who we worship, violence on women is nothing new", you might have considered it a banality, but isn't it more disgraceful that such statements which should be drawing immediate attentions are rather a reality of our world which don't startle us anymore. We do empathize with the victims for a brief moment when we hear about such incidents but soon forget about it. I'm not trying to blame anyone here for such an attitude of ours but I would surely call for us to think about it and introspect. What would it take, for the nation as a whole, to unite against woman abuse and make sincere efforts to combat it, not just on paper but in practical? If you were guessing that i was going to provide a solution here, I'm sorry to disappoint. For the record, the domestic violence complaints rose to a 10 year high in the period of March to May 2020. That means when the whole nation was under loc...

Dominating the first half of 2020, Coronavirus is definitely here to stay for a long time. It was nearly 4 months back when my CEO had asked all of us, his employees, to work from home until things get better for resuming work from office again. And in the last team call a couple of days back, he informed us that we might have to continue working from home like this for longer than any of us had expected. Getting straight to the point, this virus has certainly gotten onto the nerves of almost everyone now. With India now reporting around 28000 daily cases with such consistency, all the claims by the Government of having things under control only sound vague. The only ray of hope around is the news of some of the vaccines in development having shown successful results in the trials. A team of IIT Delhi have come up with Corosure, promoted to be the cheapest alternative in the market. Russia is planning to launch a vaccine by mid August. Earlier, ICMR had asked Bharat Biotech to in...

There are enough evidences that support that more than the cure, which often takes time to be developed, it is the human behaviour and awareness that goes the long way in the fight against any deadly virus. Be it Ebola of West Africa around 2014 or Polio that troubled India since late 1970s till 2012, what helped big time in the fight against these viruses were active mass participation of communities and change of behaviour to better the living conditions. To analyze how India should move forward in its fight against COVID-19, let's try and draw some insights from our fight against Polio. In 2009, India reported the 741 Polio cases, more than any other country. The country faced unique challenges in its fight against this virus. Some of the major ones were high population density, poor sanitation, widespread diarrhoea, and reluctance of many communities to accept the vaccine. It was a humongous task for the Government and the health agencies to overcome these constraints so ...

If you aren't spending most share of your time every day in lock down staring at a screen, you are definitely a sage. But if you are somebody who has become a slave to the screen, that's fine as well. For some of us, it's our office work that keeps us glued to our monitor or mobile screens, for some, it's the online classes, and for others, it's their own reasons of doing so. So it isn't surprising to see web applications for meetings and video conferencing like Zoom, Google Meet, and many more, gaining the limelight all of a sudden since the pandemic took over our freedom to meet people in person. But it isn't just this pandemic which has increased our urge to stay connected all the time. If you notice, the history of existence of phone calls and text messaging for conversation dates long back that most of us can't recall a day when we weren't having them in our lives. The reason behind all of these is to reduce the distance which is there when we a...