Blog Posts by Tenzin Yangdon

The latest incident of eve teasing in a city like Mumbai makes me wonder if all the candle light vigils and the "fight against the system" are just hogwash. A sham to make you feel like you're part of a movement. Does that not make the "voice of India" selfish? How about if we fight the goons in our society before corruption?

It's easy to take a day off work and shout slogans against corruption because that doesn't put your life in danger. But why did not one person come to Keenan and Reuben's rescue? The two boys may have lived if someone in the "audience" had at least dialed an ambulance. Is a person's life less important than "corruption"?

Last week, one of my colleagues faced a similar situation. He was out for dinner with a friend when a few men started eve teasing her. When he objected, they picked a fight with him. Fortunately for Akshay, cops were close by. Otherwise, who knows, Akshay may have received more injuries than the cuts on his face.

Laws against eve teasing should be

I have a list of people I wish I had met, the kind who, when they leave this world, leave a huge sense of loss. Ustad Bismillah Khan is the first person on my list. On his fourth death anniversary, that feeling only intensifies.

He passed away on August 21, 2006. It was a Monday. I was in the Production Control Room (PCR) of a news channel, keeping a track of the numerous monitors with live feeds coming in. Outside in the newsroom, all channels were covering Bismillah Khan's death, trying to get the first pictures. Strangely, I don't remember much of that particular day except a feeling of a void.

What I remember more vividly of the Ustad was watching the BBC documentary on him a few years before his death. I don't remember every detail of the film. All I recall are the gullies of Benaras, the narrow winding roads that lead to the Ustad's ancestral home. It wasn't the kind of a house you'd imagine a legendary musician living in. It was evident that money wasn't abundant in

The only thing about our independence I know is the struggle for it. Since I was born much after the Chinese occupation of Tibet, to be a citizen of an independent country is a feeling I'm not very familiar with.

When we were younger, the small Tibetan community evoked patriotism by watching street plays that illustrated the hardships our fathers and their fathers suffered, crossing the Himalayas barefoot and fleeing the Chinese brutality. So to me, Independence equaled suffering, violence, deprivation. Worse still, it made us "identity-less", gave us the tags of exiles.

During teenage years, my idea of Independence Day was the function at school, before classes — the day we dressed in our (or borrowed) Indian best. It was a day when we acknowledged the importance of the maintenance staff in our lives- in a residential school. Instead of the Principal, the Indian flag was always hoisted by a watchman, a cook or a sweeper.

In my early twenties, Independence Day was just

July 27, 2010

"I am very happy with the rains…it will ensure that the Commonwealth Games are spoilt."

Even as New Delhi races against time to be ready for the Commonwealth Games this October, there's one person who wishes for the Games to flop. Considering he's the former Union Minister for Sports, his comments will not go down well with the rest of his party men.

But senior Congressman Mani Shankar Aiyar minces no words. Outside the parliament this afternoon, Aiyar said, "Personally, I will be unhappy if the Commonwealth Games are successful". He says that if the Games do succeed, that mean there'll be more such games to host in the future, which translates to more money being spent on something "unnecessary".

This is not the first time he has voiced his displeasure. Back in June, Aiyar said "People will laugh at us for organizing the Commonwealth Games, there is no sense in putting on a charade when there is so much poverty in the country." He even thrashed the government

Over the past six months there have been days when the world has seen faced terror attacks, natural calamities, and the pointless strife between people. But there have also been days when we've looked at the world and were happy to be a part of it.

Some of us spend our lives, not just for thinking about ourselves but by helping others. Here are some heroes who, in the face of adversity, saw opportunity. By their achievements, they make the rest of us wish we were a little like them.

Would a cobbler have ever thought that his son will one day crack one of the toughest entrance exams in the country and secure a place in one of the country's most coveted institutions? Not very likely. But that's just what happened. Abhishek Kumar Bhartiya's father is a cobbler, earning a daily wage of Rs 60. So having his son rank 154th out of over ten thousand students writing the IIT-JEE is no mean feat. "We have just one small room where six of us live and that too without electricity. So,

August 12: Arjun breaks silence: Breaking his silence on the 1984 Bhopal gas leak disaster, senior Congress leader Arjun Singh today gave a clean chit to then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in the exit from India of then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson in the wake of the disaster. Singh suggested that the then Union Home Ministry under P V Narasimha Rao had a role, saying there were persistent calls from Home Ministry officials to grant bail to Anderson. Read more

July 11: Union Minister for Environment, Jairam Ramesh says sorry for the govt smuggling out Union Carbide waste and moving it to an incinerator in Pithampur. He goes on to say the people of Pithampur should have been taken into confidence.

Jun24: Even as the Group of Ministers (GoM) get set to meet the union cabinet later in the day to discuss its recommendations, activists and victims of Bhopal gas tragedy protest the GoM's report on the compensation. The group had recommended a relief package of Rs 1,500