View Articles

In parts of the Arab world and India, interestingly, poetry is witnessing “a huge revival. At the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, students took to platform and sang Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge; the same happened in the Jamia Millia University”, said Tariq Ali, now editor of the pro-Trotskyist magazine New Left Review, in his keynote speech on the second day of Lahore Biennale-02 at the National College of Arts. One of the prodigal sons of Lahore, Ali sees in poetry the birth of a new internationalism, no matter “whether that poetry was sung by great stars or not”. The day the US started bombing Iraq, he remembered, he was with the great Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef, who had written a new poem the week before. The poet, Ali recalled, was in Baghdad and corresponded with fellow Iraqi poet-in-exile in Damascus Mudhaffar Al-Nawab addressing him in the poem, ‘What are we going to do, O Mudhaffar Al-Nawab?’ The poem was titled The Jackals’ Wedding. In Iraqi tradition, a jackal’s wedding has a different – and an unpleasant – connotation to the one it has in South Asian culture.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman began her speech by saying that the Union Budget was “woven around three prominent themes” — aspirational India, economic development for all and building a caring society. Achieving any of these would require extraordinary efforts on the social sector front starting with allocating additional resources for health, education, nutrition, employment guarantee, and social security schemes.

Kozhikode: Real Kashmir (RK) walked away with a 1-0 win over Gokulam Kerala (GK) from the EMS Corporation Stadium in Kozhikode on Saturday. Mason Robertson scored what turned out to be the match-winner in the 49th minute.

Kolkata: A superb hat-trick from Roy Krishna powered ATK to a 3-1 win over Odisha in a Hero Indian Super League clash at the Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan here on Saturday.

New Delhi: After successfully carrying out three editions of the Khelo India Youth Games, the Indian government has decided to conduct the Khelo India University Games.

Pune: Czech star player Jiri Vesely produced a brilliant performance to register a sensational come-from-behind 6-7 (8-10), 7-6 (7-3), 7-6 (9-7) win against the second-seed Ricardas Berankis and entered singles final at the third edition of the Tata Open Maharashtra at the Mhalunge Balewadi Stadium here on Saturday.

The Modi government has gone on record in parliament that it has not taken any decision till now to prepare the National Register of Indian Citizens. This was the reply given by the minister of state for home affairs, Nityanand Rai, to a written question. This is in line with what the prime minister had said at a rally in Delhi on December 22, 2019 that since his government came to power in 2014, there has been no discussion on the NRC.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s intransigence over economic slowdown continues to baffle. She seems to be suffering a mental block in accepting the reality and is in need for some serious counselling by not just psychologists, but economists as well.

At the time of writing this column, most hectic election campaign in Delhi has come to a grinding halt. It is time one can hazard a guess about the poll outcome. From all accounts, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party appears to be far ahead of their rivals; BJP and the Congress. Unless there is a miracle, Kejriwal appears certain to get second term as Chief Minister. This is because of good work done by him in spite of hurdles created by the Centre and LG. Kejriwal says BJP created Shaheen Bagh because it could not counter the good work done by the AAP government in the past five years.

Pune: Czech star Jiri Vesely chalked out a sensational three-set victory against Ilya Ivashka of Belarus to storm into the single semi-finals of the Tata Open Maharashtra at the Mhalunge Balewadi Stadium in Pune on Friday.