Search Results

Tracy is a hired killer. The mission required her to reach Dubai where Ibrahim Sarfraz – a weapons dealer operating from Switzerland  was holidaying in a glitzy hotel. The task was assigned by Pakistan’s Intelligence Wing (ISI) to kill Ibrahim at his hotel suite. It was April 2009 and Ibrahim was finishing his dinner with his aides and strolling towards his room, he was happy as beautiful blonde Suzanne was waiting for him - it would be a wonderful night he chuckled. “Good evening, Mr. Ibrahim, how do you do?” Ibrahim looked at her and was shocked, the girl was not Suzanne. “Who the hell are you(?)”. “You will come to know soon dear.” Tracy snarled. Ibrahim ran towards the bathroom, “Help, help!”. There was no one. Tracy snapped her Beretta and flashed one bullet towards Ibrahim, it missed the target. She doubled up and in one swift movement was in front of Ibrahim, she pushed him to the chair and fired three shots !! Ibrahim Sarfraz was dead instantly. 5 years ago. Tracy Halbaum had been a college dropout working as a car washer in Stuttgart, Germany. After long hours at the shop going back home had been a drag. She had been living with Alex Hummer, a ruffian to say the least – she was disgusted  with his wild ways and often wept, she could not walk out from this penury. She was waiting for an opportunity to wriggle out of this appalling mess. And one day that opportunity came. Tracy heard Alex shouting in his car, “Come into the car quickly, Police is after me. What happened?” Tracy jerked and ran inside the car, Alex was running the car at break neck speed and was crashing shops here, vegetable carts there. “Stop the car, Alex”– Tracy shouted. Out of nowhere a police car came running in front of them and crashed into their car. Alex and one of his friends came out of the car and started running, the Sergeant told him to stop and as Alex opened fire the Sergeant shot him in his chest. After that incident Tracy’s life changed for the better. ISI HEADQUARTERS, ISLAMABAD. AUGUST 21, 2009 Rafiq Ahmed, the station chief, was piping his cigar. It was 10 AM at Islamabad and he was briefing two people an important assignment that they had to carry in India. One of them was Tracy. Rafiq knew Tracy was the right fit for the job !! “Let me introduce you to Azim Sultan of Pakistan Secret Service. Azim is working very closely with me on critical assignments in India. He will assist you to complete your mission seamlessly.” “What is the job(?),”  Tracy was anxious as she knew operating in India would not be easy. “Look, Tracy – Rafiq dropped his chin very close to the table and met Tracy eye on eye, “the last assignment would be paid in cash, USD 1 million in this office before you leave for India.” “That will do.” She seemed happy. “The task I am assigning you now would fetch you USD 5 million, half as advance and the rest after eliminating the target.” “But…!” Tracy was curious. “Miss Firdaus Kenni is the chief editor of the news channel, Independent. She has been lately writing excellent reports about Pakistan’s involvement in terrorist activities in Jammu and Kashmir as well as in Manipur.” “I see,” Tracy quipped. “We are very disturbed at what Madam Firdaus is writing. She is at present holidaying, you will be given her co-ordinates very soon, prepare for the journey - your passport and other documents would be handed over to you by Azim at the airport.” Tracy was in Paris to see her mother when a phone call came from Rafiq Ahmed. She had been summoned to Islamabad to report for duty. Azim would meet her at Karachi International Airport on Sunday afternoon, 1 pm. The operation had been codenamed Glass. Performing as a hired killer was not easy for Tracy. After getting picked up by the Pakistan Intelligence Wing in Germany she underwent two years of rigorous training. Rafiq was very impressed with Tracy’s skills and she sprang to the top tier of Rafiq’s army very soon. Firdaus Kenny’s Mumbai Nariman Point office was buzzing with activity. The Chairman Atul Mohan of Independent  believed in his Chief Editor and Firdaus had earned a name for herself as a vibrant and successful political journalist! She was driven and can go to any length to unearth a piece of information. Independent as a news channel had an excellent reputation, a large part of the credit went to Firdaus. “Sir, I need a break. I desperately want to spend some time with Family, Nisith (her husband) has given me ultimatum.” “When last you took a holiday Firdaus?” Atul was smiling at her. “I think two years back and that too was cancelled by you Atul, thanks to the TRP we got on the huge breaking news, I was able to run for a few days!!” “Well, I’m telling in front of Nisith, this time I wouldn’t because the piece you are handling on Kashmir extremism can’t wait.”  Atul was smiling. “Give me a week Atul, the tickets and hotel bookings had been finalised, I need to go.”  This time Firdaus was a bit irritated. “Ok, ok. Don’t get disturbed, I’ll not stop you. So, you’re joining on 15th, right?” “Yes.” “Chalo, all the best. Enjoy yourself, ring me if you need anything.” That night Firdaus, with her family, had a wild blast at Atul’s house, these were the house parties Atul excelled in, and the staff were happy they worked under a young Director! OPERATION CODE NAME GLASS. MAURITIUS, DECEMBER 23, 2009. Firdaus and Nisith checked in at Hilton Mauritius Resort. It was a sunny afternoon and Firdaus decided she would not miss a day, lunch outside and then sight-seeing on boat! A quick check in and they were out for lunch, grilled fish with champagne, French onion soup in wine, chocolate souffle, crepes coupled with salade nicoise. Boeuf Bourguignon was marvellous, the dessert tarte tartin had the rustic upside-down caramelized apple tart having a deep buttery flavour. Nisith: I’m full and raring !!  Excellent food had lifted the spirits of Nisith and Firdaus. Firdaus: Wait, darling – we just need to hire a boat for the waters. Give the papers please. In no time Firdaus was on the boat, the flush green waters of Indian Ocean were mesmerizing. Time flew like no other as Firdaus and Nisith ambled across the scenic beauty of wonderful Mauritius. Another boat was behind them, a couple, kissing, perhaps in their thirties, and laughing – it seemed odd to Nisith somehow – but yes, all have come to enjoy the waters. Have I seen the girl(?),  Nisith glanced once again, the boat was quite afar and Firdaus was calling him. Tracy checked in at the adjacent hotel with a different passport – Nikita Downing was a British national holidaying in Mauritius !! Tracy: Hi, Sushil, (Azim checked in Hotel Taj Mahal, Mumbai as Sushil Gupta – a real estate co-ordinator) the glass consignment has arrived here, I’m close to the consignment. Message Boss. Azim: Copy that. Change the phone and I’ll text you the next move. ISI HEADQUARTERS, ISLAMABAD. DECEMBER 23, 2009 Rafiq: The asset has reached destination and establishing contact. Tell local operatives to signal for activation of eyeball. 1st Officer: Yes, sir. Rafiq to Azim: Tell asset all angles of Glass fully operative, additional resource on standby, asset to furnish co-ordinates to stand by. Azim: Ok. Tracy: Target co-ordinates found, back up with active eye balls. Azim: Eyeballs activated; movement routed to wire. Tracy: Copy that. Azim to Rafiq: Target on easy reach, paused for suitable time to initiate Glass. Rafiq to Azim: Tell operative to lookout for active cameras on location, operative to kill cameras immediately activating Glass. Azim: Ok, sir. Nisith noticed the boat was again speeding towards them, the couple giggling and dancing – as it tried to go past, it swerved rapidly towards left leaving Nisith’s boatman with no option but to speed along the coast on the left. Firdaus indicated she needed to get down for some moment ! She needed some time on the coast !! The coast was full of large, dense foliage with trees in between bearing fruits she had never seen. Firdaus could spend some time here, she thought and was happy for the time well spent. All of a sudden, without sound or warning, a black Doberman crashed through the dense foliage, its frenzy breathtaking. Before Nisith could react, the dog, salivating, lunged into Firdaus’ stomach in full force, its teeth bared. The whole thing happened in seconds and Firdaus, in shock and disbelief, jumped into the nearby water. The dog followed her into the water and before Firdaus could close her eyes, she saw a woman silhouette approaching her with a gun. Tracy had fired two shots at Firdaus and came swiftly from the water and their boat sped away before Nisith could comprehend what happened. Tracy had to eliminate the Doberman and one shot on the head was enough. Back in the hotel, after dinner, Tracy made love with her partner on the boat, she was helpless – Donald would be too dangerous for her mission. He had to be silenced !! Azim wired 50,000 dollars to Firdaus’ boatman; he had done a splendid job navigating the boat to the desired direction. She rapidly gathered her belongings and headed for the airport, she had to catch the late-night Quantas flight to Sydney! Mauritius, 10 January, 2010 - Mauritius expelled three high-ranking police officers in connection with the world-wide search for a woman called Nikita, who was believed to be an important link in an international terrorist network. The suspect, whose real name, thought to be Tracy Halbaum, was being sought in the killing of one Indian high profile national and an Italian informer at a posh hotel on 23 December, 2009. The two killings had led the police at the site and in Britain to what they felt was the trail of a major network of international terrorist agents. In the search for Nikita, Mauritian and British policemen discovered large arms caches that linked to an international network. Next morning Tracy flew from Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport to Athens, she hadn’t seen her little sister Isabelle for a long time. Isabelle was suffering from Cerebral palsy !! …………. to be continued. Will Tracy get caught (?). Please visit the next article to know more about Firdaus, Azim and Tracy !! Disclaimer: All characters in this article are imaginary and have no resemblance to any person(s) dead or alive.

It was time for Lazmi to quickly regroup her life. Jogi was indeed dear to her and the disbelief at the brutality her brother inflicted on Jogi completely shattered her. Her first reaction was to flee Majora and head for Calcutta, where she had a dear friend – she believed things would work out anyway. She took the first train to Calcutta to reach the humdrum of muzzled people running to somehow eke a living out of nothing !! Dear Reader, many of you had expressed desire to know what happened to the extraordinarily beautiful girl Lazmi. Her love for Jogi turned out to be fatal for the young guy as her wild  brother – Rehmat – a dacoit – snuffed the life out of the young peasant who had only paused Lazmi’s life with love. And lots of love! Love for Lazmi would endure everyone to visit the earlier content. Let's help her build a life !! It took two years for Meryl Reetherspoone to visit India again, now as Meryl Reetherspoone Dexter, wife of Bill Dexter – Tutor of English at Queens College. During regular visits to Queens College, Adela, Meryl’s mother, chanced upon different teachers at the school. Bill Dexter was a sweet personality, Adela believed, and would be the right guy for Meryl, she thought. A meeting was arranged and Meryl agreed to the marriage as she knew her mother had little time with her - the cancer was aggressive and the doctors found no hope. But Meryl was happy she was in India once again, the fiery roads and simple women folks – who endured many unhappy moments in their lives, as she came to acknowledge - and had in mind a profound desire to know this country many Englishmen spoke with a broad smile back home. Couple of years back, as you know, Meryl had come to India for a week’s visit along with her mother, hosted by local British officer Charles Hope. Meryl announced that she was desirous to see India in all its forms. Meandering through several discussions Meryl said she avoided speaking to Indians unless they were her own servants, but amused everyone by saying I want to know India and I want to see Indians! Mrs. Jennifer Morton, well known to Adela, had long been to India. A stupid British woman, Jennifer spoke without hindrance and more often than not left the audience bite the dust for her shameful utterances. When Meryl stepped to visit the place and know Indians, Jennifer was left astounded: “Wanting to see Indians? What I mean is I was a nurse before my marriage and came across Indian natives a great deal. So, I know. I really do know the truth about Indians. A most unsuitable position for any Englishwoman – in my native State one’s only hope was to hold sternly aloof." “Even from one’s patients?” Adela asked wickedly. “Why, the kindest thing one can do to a native is to let him die!!” Mrs. Morton had been weird and hopeless with her non-stop blabber. Enduring these two long years Mrs. Morton would still be in India and seeing her Meryl was disgusted and was ashamed at the half-witted Shakespeare-an English she gulped out, more so now when Bill Dexter would look at her disparagingly, “…what kind of friends do you make Meryl? I didn’t know her, she bounced on my lap in my earlier visit, I had a long stint with her, do you mind helping me with a glass of wine, dear?”  Meryl was irate, one with the hot sun and the other, with Bill’s pointedly disgusting remarks. Bill strode to pour some wine for Meryl. Next day Meryl went to the Ballard Pier. It is known that Bombay Port Trust reclaimed 22 acres of land at Ballard Estate between 1914 and 1918, Ballard Estate was named after Colonel J.A. Ballard, a founder of the Mumbai Port Trust, which constructed the Port and Ballard Pier. Meryl was fascinated with the efforts at the Pier and she would love to know the endeavour her fellow Englishmen would have put to increase business from this seemingly important Port. But to her consternation, Meryl was greeted with contempt at the Port with a large, angry crowd uttering abuses for the English and demanded they leave India immediately. It turned out that earlier in the day, one Indian worker at the port was manhandled and subsequently killed by an English police officer. She shouted at Bill and told to return immediately as the crowd was increasingly becoming restive. All of a sudden, an Indian officer, with khakis on, strode quickly towards Meryl, “Mrs. Dexter – no need to worry, I’m in charge and the situation would be fully under control in no time. Please be my guest and I’ll be honoured if you have faith in me”. Meryl was struck by the confidence and power of his personality. Standing at almost six feet with bright eyes Rahul Singh was easy with his English and had an assured gait, Meryl felt, which was quite often not found among these people !! Meryl was almost sure, but could not believe, and after days of thought questioned herself “Am I overly taken in by Rahul?”. She had no time to blush, all of a sudden Rahul had taken her senses completely and she was helpless as she could not overlook him. Bill had crossed her path with having very little or no impact on her life. She realised she did not love Bill. She muttered to herself, her marriage was in ruins !! It was raining heavily and Meryl was quickly escorted by Shane Gough, the entourage manager, to a waiting cart and to safety. Did Rahul arrange all this(?), Meryl was not sure! Nehru dreamed of an India, freed alike of the shackles of poverty and of superstition, unburdened of capitalism, an India in which the smoke stacks of factories reached out from her cities, an India enjoying the plenitude of that Industrial Revolution to which her colonizers had denied her access. No one might have seemed a more unlikely candidate to lead India towards that vision than Jawaharlal Nehru. Under the cotton khadi he wore in deference to the dictates of Congress, he remained the quintessential English gentleman. In a land of mystics, he was a cool rationalist. The mind that had exulted in the discovery of science at Cambridge never ceased to be appalled by his fellow Indians who refused to stir from their homes on days the sadhus forbade them to. He was a publicly declared agnostic in the most intensely spiritual area in the world, and he never ceased to proclaim the horror the word religion inspired in him. Nehru despised India's priests, her sadhus, her chanting monks and pious sheikhs. They had only served, he felt, to impede her progress, deepen her divisions and ease the task of her foreign rulers. And yet, the India of those sadhus and superstition-haunted masses had accepted Nehru for thirty years as he had travelled across India haranguing the multitudes. Clinging to the roofs and sides of tramways to escape the slums of India's cities, on foot and by bullock cart in the country sides, his countrymen had come by the hundreds of thousands to see and hear him.  Many in those crowds could not hear his words nor understand them when they did. For them, it had been enough however just to see, over the ocean of heads around them, his frail and gesticulating silhouette. They had taken darshan, a kind of spiritual communion received from being in the presence of a great man and that had sufficed. He was a superb orator and writer, a man who treasured words as a courtesan jewels. Anointed early by Gandhi, he had advanced steadily through the ranks of Congress eventually to preside over it three times. The Mahatma had made it clear that it was on his shoulders that he wished his mantle to fall. For Nehru, Gandhi was a genius. Not surprisingly, Nehru's cool, pragmatic mind had rejected almost all of Gandhi's great moves: civil disobedience, the Salt March, Quit India and many more! But his heart had told him to follow the Mahatma and he, would later admit, had been right. Gandhi had been, in a sense, Nehru's guru. It was he who had re-Indianized Nehru, sending him into the villages to find the real face of his homeland, to let the fingers of his soul touch India's sufferings. Whenever the two men were in the same place, Nehru would spend at least half an hour sitting at Bapuji's' feet, sometimes talking, sometimes listening, sometimes just looking and thinking. Those were, for Nehru, moments of intense spiritual satisfaction, perhaps the closest brush his atheist’s heart would ever had with religion. Abhimanyu Sen (Abhi) had come to the Calcutta station to receive Lazmi. Abhi was a nice boy of good parentage and had been working at Lahore Talkies as an assistant to camera operator. They had met earlier once when Lazmi was in Calcutta to see her aunt. Lazmi felt assured of herself finding a good foot at this crowded city, more so to get Abhi know her tragedy and he promising her to get a job – she had to feed two mouths. Her mother Mehroz Bano was still in shock what happened to Jogi back in Punjab. After all, Lazmi had Bano’s back when it came to Jogi. Lazmi got a job at Lahore Talkies, helping technicians to fix the sets before a take. Abhi was happy for her as both grew affectionate towards each other, Lazmi often brought lunch for Abhi and he loitered with her in spare time. Things took a turn when Saifuddin Khan, or Khan Saheb, or Saifu, spotted Lazmi in one of his visits to Lahore Talkies. Saifu was the Producer at Roy Talkies – a business house much bigger than Lahore Talkies and Khan Saheb had enough money power to produce at least two films a month. Lazmi was offered a dance role in one of Saifu’s films with a condition that she had to make an impromptu dance sequence of her own in one of Saifu’s many lavish parties !! And she did dance to the amusement of the large crowd that night. Lazmi was in, as a dancer in Saifuddin Khan’s next film. Over time she slowly kept Abhi aside as he was only an assistant to cameraman and Saifu had catapulted her  to be a rising star of Roy Talkies. She did not shed a tear when her friend, Sheila, told her that Abhi had lost his job at Lahore Talkies, Saifu did not like Abhi and now he was back to being out of employment. Lazmi was reluctant to give Abhi a hand in his time of distress !! Saifu was head over heels in love with Lazmi – she took it as an opportunity to further her career. Saifu was married with two children but how such triviality did matter to Saifu, he was besotted with Lazmi. Abhi was pained at what Lazmi did to her, in fact it still did not go down with him that she was in Saifu’s arms – how did he not recognise such a licentious woman eager to splay for money, how could she be so indecent and lewd hurling Abhi out of the window in a flash not knowing that corrupt Saifu would milk every inch of her skin and would throw her away !! Shreshta was right about Lazmi, when she assessed her as an opportunist swimming with the tide to make money. That day Abhi realised the worth Shreshta had in his life, how so different she was from the wine gulping and cigar smoking Lazmi !! Abhi decided to marry Shreshta at the first opportune moment, immediately after getting a fresh job, his father would be very happy to have Shreshta at the Family. As soon as Abhi got a job at Roy Talkies as a waiter he married Shreshta Roy – it did not matter to him a bit that Lazmi was working at the same studio - she was an actress now! Life had taken a brutal turn for Abhi and he would reminisce his early days, the long walks with Lazmi, the happy lunch time together at Lahore Talkies, the friendly staff there always pushing them as a lovely pair and above all, the togetherness she showed. Was it all unreal? Only time would tell. Between Gandhi and Nehru, a fascinating father-son relation grew up, animated by all the tensions, affections and repressed guilt such a relationship implied. All his life, Nehru had an instinctive need for a dominant personality near him, some steadying influence to whom he could turn in the crises engendered by his volatile nature. His father, a bluff, jovial barrister with a penchant for good Scotch and Bordeaux, had first filled that role. Since his death, it had been Gandhi. Nehru's devotion to Gandhi remained total, but a subtle change was overtaking their relationship. A phase in Nehru's life was drawing to a close. The son was ready to leave his father's house for the new world he saw beyond its gates. In that new world, he would need a new guru, a guru more sensitive to the complex problems that would assail him there. Although he was perhaps unaware of it as he sat in the Viceroy's study that March afternoon, a vacuum had opened in the psyche of Jawaharlal Nehru. Much had changed in the world and in their own lives since Nehru and Mountbatten had met for the first time, but the undercurrent of mutual sympathy which had warmed their earlier encounter soon made itself felt in the Viceroy’s study. It was not surprising that it should. Although, Mountbatten, of course, did not know it, Nehru was partially responsible for his being there. Besides, there was a great deal to bind the scion of a 3000-year-old line of Kashmiri brahmins and the man who claimed descent from the oldest ruling family in Protestantism. They both loved to talk and expanded in each other's company. Nehru, the abstract thinker admired Mountbatten's practical dynamism, the capacity for decisive action that wartime command had given him. Mountbatten was stimulated by Nehru's subtlety of his thought, he quickly understood that Nehru was the only Indian politician who would share and understand his desire to maintain a link between Britain and Delhi. With his usual candour, the Admiral told him that he had been given an appalling responsibility and he intended to approach the Indian problem in a mood of stark realism. As they talked, the two men rapidly agreed on two major points: one - a quick decision was essential to avoid a bloodbath and two - the division of India would be a tragedy. Then Nehru turned to the actions of the next Indian leader who would enter Mountbatten's study, the penitent marching his lonely path through Noakhali and Bihar. The man to whom he'd been so long devoted was, Nehru said, 'going around with ointment trying to heal one sore spot after another on the body of India instead of diagnosing the cause of the eruption of the sores and participating in the treatment of the body as a whole.' The gulf between Gandhi and Nehru had become wide apart !! Meryl was immensely happy when Shane Gough arranged a tour to the Barabar caves. These caves are the oldest surviving rock cut case in India, situated on the eastern stretches of town of Gaya. The caves are placed in the twin hills of Barabar and Nagarjuni. Shane had arranged for Rahul Singh as the safety and escorting officer for the tour, knowing Meryl was very fond of Rahul. Except for the Barabar caves - and they were twenty miles off, the city of Gaya presented nothing extraordinary, edged rather than washed by the river Falgu, it trailed for a couple of miles along the bank scarcely distinguishable from the rubbish it deposited so freely. There were no bathing steps on the river front, as the river happened not to be holy here, indeed there were no river front, and the bazaars shut out the wide and shifting panorama of the stream. Rahul had arranged for a makeshift wash room for the ladies, twenty-five of them laughing and giggling all the way to the banks, not a care in heaven for the extremely torrid sun on their heads! Meryl would silently study the handsome Rahul and the expert way of him to arrange things. Shane was happy she enjoyed the company of Rahul – he often led her to different sites around the cave, sometimes holding her soft hands as she slipped through rough lanes muttered with stone and silt !! The Gaya streets were mean, the temples ineffective and though a few fine houses existed they were hidden away in gardens and down alleys whose filth deterred all but the invited guests. Gaya was never large or beautiful, but two hundred years ago it lay on the road large and beautiful, then imperial, and the river, and the fine houses date from that period. The rest of the decoration stopped to the 18th century. Scarcely there were any carving in the bazaars, the very wood seemed made of mud, the inhabitants of the mud moving, so based, so monotonous was everything that met the eye that when the Falgu River came down it might be expected to wash the excrescence back into the soil. Houses did fall, people were drowned and left rotting, but the general outline of the town persisted, swelling here, shrinking there like some low but indestructible form of life. Shane had arranged an elephant ride for Meryl to the caves, she enjoyed thoroughly as Rahul was at the front taking care of the mahout and the roads that led to the mountains. It was very dark inside, the local officer had allowed a large crowd into the cave, men and women who had braved the scorching heat quickly settled into the darkness, at least the heat had to be withered away. Rahul took Meryl’s hand and led her into the pathways to the cave. Soon, they were ahead of the crowd and though the darkness instilled fear Meryl would feel comfortable and assured in Rahul’s company. Slowly she came close to Rahul and in one swift move hugged him tightly. The cave had become lonely then and Bill was outside with Shane – both were busy arranging food and niceties. Meryl would not let go of Rahul as he planted a passionate kiss on Meryl’s lips, so profound was the togetherness that time stopped there for a while as if enjoying the love both had for each other. Back to the cottage, that evening was so overwhelming in the life of Meryl. She loved India and loved Rahul dearly but was very unsure how future would behold for them. Bill had to be told of the development immediately after reaching England, Adela would have reached by now, she left early as the cancer needed immediate medical attention. The next morning Meryl found an express telegram on her table, her mother had passed away as she could not brave the dreaded disease. Meryl was required immediately in England, the travel plans would have to be done quickly – Meryl had to reach in time for the funeral. She moved swiftly, summoned Shane Gough and told him to arrange tickets. Seeing Meryl distraught with pain and grief, Shane assured he would inform Rahul about the plans and after sometime request Rahul if he was willing to pay a visit to Meryl in England !! Meryl had to leave Rahul behind ! Maybe next time Meryl would come alone, Bill had to be on his own, almost surely, she felt, to tread a fresh path with Rahul, for a fresh journey into the soft lanes and muddy roads of her beloved India !! Over time, can Rahul reach out to his dearest Meryl? Who knows !! References: 1.        India’s Struggle for Independence – Bipin Chandra 2.       India After Gandhi – Ramchandra Guha 3.       A Passage to India – E. M. Forster 4.       Train to Pakistan – Khushwant Singh 5.        Gandhi my Father – Amazon Prime 6.       Freedom At Midnight – Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre Disclaimer: The names Jogi, Rehmat, Lazmi, Adela, Meryl Reetherspoone, Charles Hope, Bill Dexter, Rahul Singh, Shane Gough, Mehroz Bano, Shreshta Roy, Abhimanyu Sen and Jennifer Morton are imaginary and do not hold any resemblance to any person(s) dead or alive.

The three men who were not supposed to come back stood in the sparsely furnished confines of Retiring Room number six of the Old Delhi railway station watching the bustle of tongas, carts, creaking buses, swarming by in the street below. The Indian police had an inkling and they wanted to save the life of Mahatma Gandhi. They did not have time, possibly only hours, at their disposal. Godse, Apte and Karkare had just fixed in that dim railroad station room their rendezvous with history. They had chosen the precise time when they would kill Mohandas Gandhi. They would assassinate him at five o’clock the following day. The three men asked for a sumptuous meal: rice, vegetables, curds, chapatis and sweets. Since the waiter did not have sour curds and sweets to offer, Nathuram (Godse) called the waiter and gave him five rupees: Look, this is a very important meal for us. We want curds and some sweets, you go anywhere you have to go but at any cost bring us curds and sweets. After the curds and sweets arrived, they had had a meal to remember. As Apte and Karkare started to leave the room, Karkare turned back for a last glance at Godse. The man who was going to kill Gandhi was already stretched out on his bed reading one of the two books he had brought with him to Delhi. It was an Agatha Christie detective story. Meanwhile in a remote place in Punjab love blossomed. Joginder Singh had been gone from his home about an hour. He had only left when the sounds of the goods train told him it was safe to go. Lying on the field, Jogi stretched out his hands over his head and behind him, groping, the girl dodged him. Jogi caressed her cheeks, eyes and nose that his hands knew so well. He tried to play with her lips to induce them to kiss his fingers. The girl opened her mouth and bit him fiercely, Joginder jerked his hand away. With a quick movement he caught the girl’s head in both his hands and brought her face over to his. Then he slipped his arms under her waist and hoisted her into the air above him with her arms and legs kicking, then he brought her down flat upon him limb to limb. The girl slapped him on the face and angrily mouthed crashing words which Jogi enjoyed thoroughly. Joginder Singh crossed his arms behind Lazmi’s back and squeezed her till she could not talk or breathe. Every time she started to speak, he tightened his arms around her and her words got stuck in her throat. She gave up and put her exhausted face against his. He laid her beside him with her head nestling in the hollow of his left arm. With his right hand he stoked her hair and face. Joginder’s hands strayed from the girl’s face to her bosoms and her waist. She caught it and put it back on her face. His breathing became slow and sensuous. He stretched his left arm that lay under the girl’s head and caught her reproving hand. Her other arm was already under him. She was defenceless. In a state of frenzy, she dug her nails into his thinly bearded cheeks. The stars above her went into a mad whirl. Sands gritting in her hair, the breeze trespassing on her wind spattered limbs, she pushed the moment away and started heading home. It was an evening of wild love making ! That night, in this little town of Majora, five armed dacoits disembarked from a train coming from Lahore. There was no stoppage at Majora, as the train slowed the armed men silently slipped into the darkness. It would not be before morning the train reached Delhi station. Rehmat, the leader, had come to finish Joginder Singh as he had heard enough of his flirtations with his sister Lazmi. That night, Jogi was fatally wounded and Lazmi silently took her mother and left Majora for good. She was heading for Calcutta where she would find a job at the theatre for a living. In the summer of 1941 Jogi had vanished into the gunshots of Majora !! In the pre-Independence era Punjab and Bengal bore the largest brunt of mayhem and bloody killings. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place on 13 April 1919. A large, peaceful crowd had gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab, during the annual Baishakhi fair to protest against the Rowlatt Act and the arrest of pro-independence activists Saifuddin Kitchlew and Satyapal. Through it, just as the meeting had begun, marched Amritsar’s Martial Law Commander, Brigadier R.E. Dyer, at the head of fifty soldiers. The Jallianwala Bagh could only be exited on one side, as its other three sides were enclosed by buildings. After blocking the exit with his troops, Dyer ordered them to shoot at the crowd, continuing to fire even as the protestors tried to flee. For ten full minutes, while the trapped men, women and children screamed for mercy, the soldiers fired more than 1600 rounds. The bullets killed and wounded more than 1500  people. Convinced he had done a jolly good thing, Dyer marched his men back out of Bagh !! Dyer was reprimanded for his actions and was asked to resign from the army. He was, however, allowed to retain full pension benefits and other rights due to him. His demonstration was applauded by most of the British in India. In clubs all across the country, his admiring countrymen took up a collection on his behalf, amassing the then prodigious sum of 26,000 pounds to ease the rigors of his premature retirement. Does modern Britain loathe him? I wonder ! This typical British distaste for all things Indian was nauseating, where an aura of inhumanity attracted cheers and applause. Many British families those days would come to India for a visit – they wanted to see and know how India looked like, how the Indians are different from theirs and how Britain poured enormous sums of profit to its coffers from this Jewel in their Crown. Meryl Reetherspoone had come to India for a week’s visit along with her mother Adela, hosted by local British officer Charles Hope. While Charles, who had an eye on Meryl, offered a drink on arrival, Meryl refused and announced that she was desirous to see the real India. And meandering through discussions Miss Meryl said she avoided speaking to Indians unless they were her own servants, but amused everyone by saying I want to know India and I want to see Indians! Mrs. Jennifer Morton, well known to Adela, had long been to India. A stupid British woman, Jennifer spoke without hindrance and more often than not left the audience bite the dust for her shameful utterances. You would come to know how silly she was ! When Meryl stepped to visit the place and know Indians, Jennifer was left astounded: “Wanting to see Indians? What I mean is I was a nurse before my marriage and came across Indian natives a great deal. So, I know. I really do know the truth about Indians. A most unsuitable position for any Englishwoman – in my native State one’s only hope was to hold sternly aloof." “Even from one’s patients?” Adela asked wickedly. “Why, the kindest thing one can do to a native is to let him die !!” “How if he went to Heaven?” asked Adela with a queer smile. “He can go where he likes as long as he doesn’t come near me. They give me the creeps!” When Jallianwala Bagh happened General Michael O’Dwyer was Punjab's Lieutenant Governor. As a result, his actions were considered among the most significant factors in the rise of the Indian Independence Movement. O'Dwyer endorsed Reginald Dyer’s action at Jallianwala Bagh and made it clear that he considered Dyer's orders to shoot at the crowds was correct. He subsequently administered martial law in Punjab on 15 April and backdated it to 30 March 1919. In 1925, he published India As I Knew in which he wrote that his time as administrator, Punjab was preoccupied by the threat of terrorism and the spread of political agitation. On March 13,1940, in retaliation for the massacre, O'Dwyer was assassinated at Caxton Hall, London by the Indian revolutionary and freedom fighter Udham Singh. After leaving Godse in the room, Apte and Karkare decided to go to a cinema. It was a film based on Charlie Chaplin. At the lobby during intermission, they went back to what Nathuram had said: It’ll be all over by tomorrow or day after tomorrow. Karkare was nervous, Will he be able to do it? Godse had several unsuccessful attempts at killing Gandhi. Apte drew up close, “Karkare, I know Nathuram better than you do. I'll tell you what happened , when we left Delhi on 20 January, we went down to Cawnpore (now Kanpur) in the first-class compartment. We were chatting for a long time and not having a good sleep. At about six in the morning, all of a sudden, Nathuram jumped down. He shook me "Apte, are you awake?" he asked. '’Listen," he said, "It's I who am going to do it, and no one else. This must be done by one man who is ready to sacrifice himself. I will be that man. I will do it alone.” That day, Apte found to his relief and surprise the entrance of Birla House posed no problem. The guard had been increased, but there was no one to search for weapons. He was relieved. Godse had made his entrance safely. Karkare and Apte walked out to the end and there they saw Nathuram mingling with the crowds. He seemed composed and in a spirited mood. The crowd was scattered around the lawn. At five o'clock, as the time for the prayers grew near, people began to move together. Apte and Karkare took their places as was discussed in the retiring room amidst several alternatives! Karkare's eyes were on Nathuram lest he falters; he shook the pistol softly in the brass bowl and put his fingers to get a feel of it. He had decided to pay respects to the man who had rendered admirable service to his country. When Gandhi was only three strides from him, Nathuram stepped into the corridor with the brass bowl in his hand. He bowed slowly from the waist, and said to him Namaste Bapu. As Manu - Gandhi’s aide, stooped to lift Godse, at that instant Nathuram's left arm shot out, thrusting her aside. The black Beretta pistol hidden in the brass bowl lay exposed in his right hand. Godse pulled the trigger three times. Three sharp shots shattered the stillness of the prayer ground. Nathuram Godse had not failed. All of the three rounds tore into the chest of the slender figure advancing towards him. On 30 January, 1948 around 5.17 pm Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated  by Nathuram Godse !! On February 10, 1949 Godse and Apte were convicted and were sentenced to death. Karkare was given life sentence and subsequently released from prison in October 1964 !! In 1943 Archibald Wavell was appointed by Churchill as the Viceroy. He was supposed to sit tight and keep India quiet through World-War II. But to Churchill’s great irritation he did something what his earlier political masters had never done – he came up with a policy precisely opposite of what history and instincts would have suggested, but it was correct and it was what his successor, Mountbatten would do. Wavell saw that nothing the politicians had been doing had prepared India to look after herself as there was no economic preparation. The choice was to stay for another generation – which Wavell thought would be impossible. Lord Mountbatten, an officer of impeccable record was sent to Delhi to hand over India undivided and unscathed to Mohandas Gandhi. Moreover, his plan had to be approved by Gandhi’s inner circle of politicians; Pandit Nehru, Md. Ali Jinnah, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad and Frontier Gandhi. As Jinnah kept on pestering for a separate Muslim State, Gandhi had no option but to offer him the Prime Ministership of Independent and undivided India. If Gandhi’s political allies refused to endorse his scheme, as Gandhi reasoned with his colleagues, the new Viceroy - Mountbatten - might get thrust into a corner and the only win-win situation for him would be partition. Only Gandhi knew, as he walked barefooted vast expanses of villages in Noakhali and Bihar, appeasing the people, that the best way to get Independence was through peaceful means. He had understood, more than those political leaders he worked with, the tragedy partition might lead to. He had seen in the huts and swamps what havoc communal fury, once unleashed, could wreak. Partition, he argued, risked unleashing those passions, not dampening them. Desperately he reasoned with his followers to accept his idea as their last chance to keep India united and to prevent that tragedy. But Nehru and Patel stood their ground. There was a limit to the price they were prepared to pay to keep India united and handing over power to their arch-rival, Jinnah. They did not share Gandhi's conviction that partition would inevitably lead to nation wide violence. Broken-hearted, Gandhi would have to report to the Viceroy that he had not been able to carry his colleagues with him. The real break was still some distance ahead, but Gandhi and those men he had so patiently groomed had drifted far apart. Gandhi's journey was nearing its final steps and it would only stop in the stillness of his soul. And so it seemed ! Amidst all this, Jinnah turned out to be a real villain. Mountbatten had an ugly spat with him when Jinnah spoke nonchalantly leaving Mountbatten flabbergasted: “India has never been a true nation. It only looks that way on the map. The cows I eat, the Hindus stop me from killing. Every time they shake hands with me, they have to wash their hands. The only thing the Muslims have in common with the Hindus is British slavery.” Jinnah wanted Pakistan at any cost as he continued preaching Mountbatten, “India has to be divided, and that division would have to produce a viable state and that meant two of India’s great provinces, The Punjab and Bengal . These would have to go to Pakistan despite the fact that each contained enormous Hindu population.” When Mountbatten shouted angrily that the partition would entail endless bloodshed and agony, Jinnah assured him nothing of that sort would happen. Mountbatten was stunned at the absurdity and rigidity of Jinnah. “I never would have believed”, he later recalled, “that an intelligent man, well-educated, trained in the Inns of Court, was capable of simply closing his mind as Jinnah did. It wasn't that he didn't see the point. He did, but a kind of shutter came down. He was the evil genius in the whole thing. The others could be persuaded, but not Jinnah. While he was alive nothing could be done.” Jinnah was hopelessly self centred and brutally anti-Hindu, which Mountbatten found to his chagrin. Jinnah could have divided India into many parts – not two – to get his claim to an independent Pakistan. A protector of Muslims(?), sadly No. Jinnah, who never went to a Masjid to offer prayers, hardly read Quran, smoked heavily, drank beer and wine with pork – how could he be the saviour of thousands of Muslims who looked up to their Quaid-e-Azam, who believed he would protect them from the Hindu onslaught if Pakistan happened, who believed they would get a beautiful, prosperous country to live in the name of Pakistan. Alas, how wrong were they !! During Partition around 2 million people died in which around sixty percent were Muslims. There is nothing sadder in India’s Independence than the way it traversed its way. At three minutes before midnight on 14 August 1947 the unity of the Indian subcontinent was broken. Pakistan was established as an independent, sovereign state. Exactly five minutes later India became independent. Here is an explosive secret capable of changing the course of history.  Mountbatten came across a medical report of the doctor who treated Jinnah. The report described in detail a chest X-ray; the plate confirmed the advanced stages of tuberculosis. In spring of 1947, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the inflexible Muslim leader who had quashed all of Mountbatten’s efforts to preserve India’s unity knew he had only a few months left to live !! Mountbatten was astounded. “If I had only known this at the time, the course of history would have been different. I would have delayed the granting of independence for several months. There would have been no Partition. Pakistan would not have existed. India would have remained united. Three wars would have been avoided.” And Gandhiji would not have been assassinated !! There would be no Pakistan, there would be no POK, there would be no Bangladesh !! Jinnah died on September 11, 1948. Dear Reader, this article is not about Mahatma Gandhi – the Father of Nation – but about his pain and sufferings, about his inability to instil sense into his trusted colleagues who desperately wanted to get rid of Jinnah. This is about his assassination by a maverick who thought Gandhi was siding with the Muslims and was the reason for partition. Do you think Gandhi knew that Jinnah was going to die in a few months? Maybe yes !! References: 1.        India’s Struggle for Independence – Bipin Chandra 2.       India After Gandhi – Ramchandra Guha 3.       A Passage to India – E. M. Forster 4.       Train to Pakistan – Khushwant Singh 5.        Gandhi my Father – Amazon Prime 6.       Freedom At Midnight – Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre Disclaimer: The names Joginder Singh, Rehmat, Lazmi, Adela, Meryl Reetherspoone, Charles Hope and Jennifer Morton are imaginary and do not hold any resemblance to any person(s) dead or alive.

Shortly before a carefully orchestrated series of terrorist attacks devastated the eastern seaboard of the United States on the morning of September 11, 2001, several western intelligence agencies received an intriguing report to the effect that Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq had placed his troops on AlertG , the highest state military readiness Iraqi troops had seen since 1991 Gulf War, intelligence agents based in Iraq claimed that Saddam himself had retreated to one of his highly fortified bunkers in the family fiefdom of Tikrit, in northers Iraq. Meanwhile his two wives, Sajida and Samira, women who in normal circumstances shunned each other’s company, had been moved to another of Saddam’s secret bunkers. The clear implication was that Saddam had retreated to Tikrit in early September 2001 because he had prior information of the September 11 attacks, in which groups of suicidal al-Qaeda terrorists flew fully laden civilian airliners into the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. killing thousands of innocent civilian office workers and military personnel. A fourth team of Islamic terrorists had planned to hijack their aircraft into the White House but were prevented from doing so by the heroism of some of the passengers who tackled the hijackers thereby causing the aircraft to crash in a field south of Pittsburgh, killing everyone on board. In the chaotic days that followed the world’s worst terrorist atrocity Saddam Hussein’s Iraq soon emerged as one of the most likely targets for retaliation, the intense secrecy and security that surrounded Saddam’s every move meant that it was. impossible to say for sure if the intelligence reports about the Iraqi leader’s action prior to September 11 attacks were accurate. But even though American and British intelligence were unable to find a clear proof of Saddam’s involvement in September 11 attacks, Washington’s deep seated institutional antipathy toward the Iraqi dictator was such that President George. W. Bush, in the days immediately following the atrocity, found himself having to urge restraint on his more hawkish colleagues. Bush believed all available evidences linked the hijackers directly to Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, Bush’s speech on September 20 did have a scraping mention of Saddam’s whereabouts in the morning of September 11. Where was Saddam on the morning of 9/11 ? Interior minister of Czech Republic issued a report that Mohammed Atta, one of the ringleaders of September bombings had met an Iraqi intelligence officer five months before the attack. Atta was believed to have entered Prague in April 2001 where he met Ahmed-al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence officer. Ani, who worked as a Second Consul at the Iraqi Embassy in Prague was suspected of engaging in activities beyond his diplomatic duties, the euphemism used to denote espionage. Atta was the lead suicide bomber in the plane that dashed into World Trade Centre !! Although there was nothing to link the Iraqi agent with the September 11 bombings the very fact that the formidable intelligence apparatus controlled by the world’s most notorious dictator might have established contact with the world’s most ruthless terrorist organisation meant that Saddam might quickly find himself in the cross hairs of Pentagon’s military planners. The Prague report was conclusively discarded by FBI and CIA and it was learnt that Atta never met Ani prior to 9/11. That Saddam’s name should be implicated in the first place came as no surprise to the international counter terrorist experts who had been investigating the Iraqi dictator’s links with international terrorism since the early 1970’s. The butchery side of Saddam Hussein. But Saddam Hussein was no saint. In November 2004, Human Rights Watch estimated 250,000 to 290,000 Iraqis were killed or disappeared by the regime of Saddam Hussein. The estimate of 290,000 disappeared and presumed killed included more than 100,000 Kurds during the 1987-88 Anfal campaign and lead-up to it; between 50,000 and 70,000 Shia were arrested in the 1980s and held indefinitely without charge. Did these atrocities play a part to implicate Saddam ? An estimated 8,000 males of the Barzani clan were removed from resettlement camps in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1983; 10,000 or more males were separated from Feyli Kurdish families deported to Iran in the 1980s. Saddam was a dictator who never believed anyone, even his own family. He was always under the notion that the world is at a loss to understand his ambitions, his intentions, his military prowess. He lacked subtlety. Given the long history of tension between Washington and Baghdad, Saddam Hussein did not exactly help his cause during the crucial weeks, in late 2001, when the Bush Administration was formulating its policy on how best to prosecute the war on terrorism. In late October Saddam published a rambling open letter to the American people in which he condemned the military action USA had taken in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban. He also claimed the US foreign policy was being driven by Zionism and hinted that the US mainland could be subjected to further terrorist attacks ! Saddam rejected UN inspection of weapons in Iraq as the Iraqi dictator was accused of using nerve gas to bulldoze enemies into defeat; and to add insult to injury, an Iraqi Government Survey Commissioned at the end of the year proclaimed Osama-bin-Laden as Iraq’s Man of the Year 2001, an accolade awarded for his dedication in defying the USA and championing Islam. The Government owned Iraqi TV station showed an Iraqi tribal chieftain reciting a poem he had written, With the Soviet Union no longer in existence, Saddam’s Iraq had become a dangerous anachronism. Saddam continued to irritate Washington in the Spring of 2002 when he ordered his security officials to provide aid to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers ! The Bush Administration quickly formed to view that the war on terror should be extended to include Saddam Hussein, even if many of Washington’s western allies were averse to vilify Iraq as no conclusive evidence emerged regarding Saddam’s involvement in 9/11 attacks. Tony Blair was baffled as the British Premier had delivered an emotional speech on September 14 citing unconditional support to Washington fighting terrorism but later felt disquiet, like other western allies, in supporting renewed hostilities against Iraq. MI5 and MI6 had worked closely with American intelligence but they could never find anything but bits and pieces information about Saddam’s involvement. It was Osama all the way and it is of importance to note that Osama-bin-Laden was eventually hunted down and killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan by US Navy SEALS of Seal Team Six in May 02, 2011, ten years after the September 11 attack. President Barack Obama oversaw the whole operation with Ms. Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State and the entire team, but in 2001 President Bush did not have a plan in place to annihilate Osama and the closest he went was to pour his disdain on Saddam Hussein. The warrior Saddam (!). In spite of all his misadventures, Saddam Hussein deserved a better deal from the United States of America. It was a huge folly on part of George Bush to misread Saddam’s intentions and his involvement in 9/11 attacks - a folly for which the European allies, the Arabs and the rest would not forgive him. Ever. Bush Junior would continue to be recognised as one of the most inefficient American presidents that sat in the White House, one of the weakest world leaders in present history !! As a warrior and a soldier, we salute you President Saddam Hussein !!

Lily Brooks, a small-town girl fresh out of college, lands the job a million girls would die for. Hired as an assistant to Claudia Wozniaki, the high profile, fabulously successful editor of Showstopper magazine, Lily finds herself in an office that shouts Armani, Versace at every turn, a world populated by impossibly thin, heart wrenching stylish women and beautiful men clad in fine ribbed turtlenecks and tight leather pants that show their life long dedication to their ilk. But with breathtaking ease of a tigress, Claudia can turn each and every one of these hip sophisticates into a scared, whimpering child. To her great disappointment Lily found, working with Claudia, over the years, that she was a Boss, a Devil from Hell. She had known first-hand the deep, dark, satanic view of life at the top only read by commoners in Cosmopolitan and discussed in the trendiest cocktail parties. My eyes rolled when I was asked by the Boss to send the latest not-yet-in-stores Harry Potter issue to Claudia’s children in Paris by private jet: Now, more than ever, Lily finds herself wondering why stress plays such a key role in the fashion industry. It’s a wickedly fun, soulful, and creative field, so why do most people in it seem to be on the brink of a breakdown half the time? The classical definition of stress is: The perceived or actual physical, psychological, or social sensation you feel when you are unable to bridge the gap between expectation and ability. It seems to me that the fashion industry places too much emphasis on expectation and results - the show (both literally and metaphorically) - without valuing the journey it takes to get to the top. In 2015, several supremely talented designers stepped down from powerful brands due to intense workload and pressure. Raf Simmons decided to leave Dior; Alexander Wang, Balenciaga; and Albert Elbaz; Lanvin. When the big players are questioning the manageability of their workload, where is the hope for the rest of us? “It’s almost impossible to say, oh well, it’s just a job, because the lines between your work and you are so blurred.” There is this belief that when you work in such a desirable industry, there’s a queue of people lining up to snatch your job if you’re not willing to do it. So, you’ve got to work harder, push further, achieve more each season, and be the absolute best that you can be. It’s also an industry that’s incredibly under-resourced, where designers work every hour of the day, and then some, before their shows (five months' work condensed into approximately 11 minutes), presenting their collections - but really, themselves - to the outside world. As it’s such a personal thing when critics slam your work, or your editors come down on you, or your boss says it’s not quite right, it’s almost impossible to say, oh well, it’s just a job, because the lines between your work and you are so blurred. I’ve worked at the same company for over five years and a busy workload is all I’ve ever known. I’ve enjoyed the obstacles and thrived on the stress, but that changed last March, after a vacation to New York. I’d just got engaged and finished an incredibly busy period at work (the notorious November to March stretch); life was nonstop, and one day my back came out in a rash. The rash looked like chicken pox and, by the next day, spread to my arms, scalp, and tummy, drying into scaly patches that a dermatologist later identified as psoriasis triggered from a severe reaction to stress. “I've heard horror stories of fashion publicists throwing up from stress in the morning before going to work, have friends whose periods have ceased, whose hair falls out in clumps, all in the name of their careers.” I remember feeling shocked, because I’d always managed my stress. So why was my body making such a blatant protest now? I’d heard of stress manifesting itself in physical symptoms — horror stories of fashion publicists throwing up in the morning from stress before going to work, friends whose periods have ceased, whose hair falls out in clumps, all in the name of their careers. But I had always seen myself as someone who was 100% in control. I spoke to my friends in the industry about their experiences and whether they feel a burnout is inevitable. In October 2007, after 15 years of working in the fashion industry, I walked away from my job, got on a plane, and went to the other side of the world. I was heading up the fashion division of a successful PR agency and had the trappings of a successful life. But most of the time, I just wanted to cry. I was tired. I had no energy; I was terrible company. But in hindsight, walking away was the best thing I did. I felt like I needed to have as much physical distance as possible from my normal life to be able to think properly, put things into perspective, and get the fashion world out of my system. I came back to London with a completely different perspective: Nothing is ever as important as one's health and peace of mind, and that if I don't enjoy doing something then I should walk away from it, I am not obliged to make myself unhappy to facilitate someone else's ideas or wishes. History of Haute Couture. Fuelled by France’s empirical rule and obsession with exoticism, fashion looked further afield for inspiration in the early 20th century. Enter Paul Poiret, the celebrated designer who spun Eastern influences into fantastical haute-couture creations. Gone were austere restrictions of post-revolution France; lavish fashion was à la mode once more as art nouveau swept across Europe. Freeing women of organ-crushing corsetry, Poiret introduced billowing kimonos, capacious harem pants and elaborately decorated turbans and sultana skirts, cementing his reputation as the King of Fashion. The Competition. It was 1973, along with four other French superstars – Hubert de Givenchy, Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro and Marc Bohan of Christian Dior – the iconic Yves Saint Laurent was about to have his reign rivalled by five American designers in the fashion competition of the century. Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Anne Klein, Halston and Stephen Burrows arrived at Versailles with an entourage including Liza Minnelli, Broadway dancers and 36 models (10 of whom were Black, in unprecedented diversity). The successful advertise. Riding piggyback on The Battle of Versailles, the brainchild of PR whizz Eleanor Lambert, was designed to fund the restoration of the namesake palace; it had celebrities and high society in a tailspin to grab tickets. The dynamism of the American designers and their coterie (namely high-energy Black models such as Pat Cleveland) forced France to relinquish its crown, at least temporarily. Fashion was changing rapidly !! After the French Revolution, fashion trends changed dramatically. Revulsed by the opulence of royalty, an era of anti-fashion followed the French Revolution; society adopted a working-class uniform of aprons, clogs and mobcaps. The government drew influence from outside of France, and fashion turned towards flowing gowns that mirrored society’s fascination with egalitarianism. The cockade (a rosette of ribbons first worn by free men in ancient Greece) became the enduring symbol of the revolution, appearing on everything from shoes to hats. However, society’s rebuttal of opulent fashion would turn out to be a trend itself – and one that would be overtaken. Dear Reader: I have put forward a glimpse of the torrid, fast paced fashion industry, its ecstasies and the rampant heartbreaks. Written in first person, Lily Brooks has been perceived to be working with someone like Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue. This article is conceptualised on Lily’s experiences working with Anna and the vagaries, burnouts that engulf the fashion world. And did Anna Wintour wear Prada ? Disclaimer: The names Lily Brooks and Claudia Wozniaki are imaginary and do not hold any resemblance to any person(s) dead or alive.

Winston Churchill was closely connected with India from 1896 until 1947 when India finally achieved independence. No other British statesman had such a long association with the sub-continent or sought to influence its politics in such a sustained and harmful manner. Churchill consistently sought to sabotage moves towards any degree of independence and for five years led opposition to the Government of India Act, crippling the legislation before its passage in 1935. In 1939 he congratulated himself that he had created a three - legged stool on which Britain could sit indefinitely. As Prime Minister during the Second World War Churchill worked behind the scenes to frustrate the freedom struggle, delaying India’s Independence by a decade. To this day he is regarded as the archetypical imperialist villain, held personally responsible for the Bengal Famine. This is Churchill at his malign, cruel, obstructive and selfish worst. But the same man was outstandingly liberal at the Colonial Office, generous to the Boers and the Irish, to the detriment of his career. He later rushed colonies in the Middle East towards Independence. So why was he so strangely hostile towards India ? Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer twice served as Prime Minister of United Kingdom, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an adherent to economic liberalism he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924. I am Nathan Obigalu and this is my friend Catherine Hastings. We study in Germany and wish to make names of ourselves for our country Greece and Romania ! We are participating in a very important discussion with regard to a man who is considered God in United Kingdom. Sir Winston Churchill had made UK proud by fighting with the Nazis at a time when all seemed lost. The next few pages will be dedicated to him as I and Catherine would put forward very interesting but different aspects of Winston. Churchill’s India sojourn. On 18th June 1898, Winston Churchill, a junior officer in the Fourth Hussars set sail for Europe from Bombay. He cut an elegant figure in his cavalry uniform. He was good looking, his eyes blue, his hair ginger and his countenance distinctly boyish. He had none of the jowly bulldog appearance of Karsh’s famous photograph of 1941 (title picture above), the image that came to symbolise his defiant leadership of the British people as they fought for survival. In Bombay, after months in the saddle, his figure was lithe. Was Churchill a racist(?). Churchill viewed British domination around the globe, such as the British Empire, as a natural consequence of social Darwinism. Charmley argued that similar to many of Churchill's contemporaries, he held astonishingly weird hierarchical perspective on race believing white Protestant Christians to be at the top of this hierarchy, and white Catholics way beneath them, while Indians were higher on this hierarchy than black Africans. An imperialist to the core, he saw British imperialism as a form that benefited its subject peoples because he believed by conquering and dominating other peoples, the British were also elevating and protecting them. To Churchill, the idea of dismantling the Empire by transferring power to its subject peoples was anathema – especially manifested in his opposition to the Government of India Act 1935 and his acerbic comments about Mahatma Gandhi, whom he called a seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir. Goodness gracious !! Henry Wallace, Vice President of the USA, reports in his diary that during a White House lunch in May 1943, when Churchill said why be apologetic about Anglo-Saxon superiority, that we were superior, that we had the common heritage which had been worked out over the centuries in England and had been perfected by our constitution. Churchill made disparaging remarks about Indians, was it driven by color, one would never know but the future beheld very unkindly to Winston as modern England loathed him as a racist and all the good work he so studiously gained and reputation nurtured went down the drain. John Charmley has argued that Churchill's denigration of Gandhi in the early 1930s contributed to fellow British Conservatives' dismissal of his early warnings about the rise of Adolf Hitler. Churchill's comments on Indians – as well as his views on race as a whole – were judged by his contemporaries within the Conservative Party to be extreme. Some historians have debated whether Churchill was driven in this antipathy by imperialism or by any other social menace. He was angered in autumn 1930 by the Labour government's decision to grant dominion status to India. He argued that it would hasten calls for full independence from the British Empire as he joined the Indian Empire Society which opposed the granting of Dominion status. In his view, India was not ready for home rule because he believed that the Brahmins would gain control and further oppress both the untouchables and the religious minorities. In March 1931, when riots broke out in Cawnpore (now Kanpur) between Hindus and Muslims, he claimed that the situation proved his case. I now put Churchill, with all his idiosyncrasies, his indulgences, his occasional childishness, but also his genius, his tenacity and his persistent ability, right or wrong, successful or unsuccessful, to be larger than life, as the greatest human being ever to occupy 10, Downing Street. Winston Churchill always believed himself to be a man of destiny. Because of this he lacked restraint and could be reckless. His self-belief manifested in his affinity with war of which he exhibited a profound and innate understanding. Churchill considered himself a military genius but that made him vulnerable to failure and Paul Addison says the Gallipoli disaster was the greatest blow his self-image was ever to sustain. However, that although Churchill was excited and exhilarated by war, he was never indifferent to the suffering it caused. On 19th May 1940, Winston Churchill made his first broadcast as Prime Minister. With defeat in France imminent and speaking just seven days before the start of the Dunkirk evacuation, he paddled down Nazi invasion in Biblical terms. Churchill urged Britons: Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict, for it is better for us to die in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. In a hurry to destroy Russia, Adolf Hitler had expected London to sign a quick armistice in exchange for the Royal Navy's freedom of the seas and the preservation of the British Empire. Churchill never signed any armistice and doubling it up his fiery speech to the Nation earned him huge acclaim from the people of Britain and the Royal family, and heartfelt love from his wife. Churchill spoke haltingly, but passionately. I have to declare the decision of His Majesty’s Government – and I feel sure it is a decision in which the great Dominion will, in due course, concur – but we must speak out now, at once, without a day’s delay. I have to make a declaration, but can you doubt what our policy will be? We have but one aim and one single irrevocable purpose: we are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime. From this, nothing will turn us – nothing. We will never parley; we will never negotiate with Hitler or any of his gang. We shall fight him by land, we shall fight him by sea, we shall fight him in the air, until, with God’s help, we have rid the Earth of his shadow and liberated his people from his yoke. Any man or State who fights against Nazism, will have our aid. Any man or State who marches with Hitler is our foe. That is our policy and that is our declaration. It follows, therefore, that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people. We shall appeal to all our friends and Allies in every part of the world to take the same course and to pursue it as we shall, faithfully and steadfastly to the end. Germany was never able to defeat Britain and Churchill’s leadership was enamoured by all !! The lighter side of Churchill. Winston was playful with his mates, but very rarely, when in one occasion his famous V sign for victory was interpreted as up your bum by one of his office secretaries – the hilarious encounter brought a lighter side to Winston’s persona (picture below). Churchill was a soldier, reporter, writer and politician. He fought dervishes, escaped from a Boer prisoner-of-war camp and held almost every cabinet position in the British government. He made mistakes that would have destroyed careers of lesser men, but nevertheless rose to become Hitler’s chief nemesis, enough of a thorn to be name-checked in der Fuhrer’s speeches. He delivered epigrams with the flair of Samuel Johnson, won the Nobel Prize in Literature, amassed great fortunes and did it all while consuming heroic quantities of alcohol and cigars – but seldom got drunk !! Churchill’s upbringing fell short on expectations in many ways. Winston Churchill attended a boarding school, St George’s, for six years and then went to Harrow for seven more; the latter is among the most elite of British public schools. While at Harrow he wrote 76 times to his parents between 1885 and 1892, and received not more than six letters. In one of these, his mother Jennie remonstrated him over his schoolwork and thoughtlessness, adding you repay your father’s (Lord Randolph) kindness to you badly. Lord Randolph remained convinced that his eldest son Winston would never amount to anything and took little interest in him. Once Lord Randolph castigated Winston for incessant complaints and his total lack of application at Sandhurst. Wealthy, privileged and fiercely independent New Yorker Jennie Jerome (Winston’s mother) took Victorian England by storm. As Lady Randolph Churchill she gave birth to a man who defined twentieth century: her son Winston. But as the family’s influence soared, scandals exploded and tragedy befell the Churchills. Jennie was inescapably drawn to the brilliant and seductive Count Charles Kinsky – diplomat, skilled horse racer and a deeply passionate lover. She disrupted lives, including her own, as their impossible affair only intensified leaving Randolph Churchill’s sanity frayed. Forced to decide where her heart truly belonged, Jennie risked everything – even her son – on both sides of the Atlantic ! Violet, one of Jennie’s many accomplices, once quipped – Jennie barely spared Winston a thought when he was a boy. Only when he was old enough to be interesting – to worship her as she liked – did she bother to take him. Poor chap might have been raised by wolves !! Winston Churchill’s childhood and adulthood were sketchy and were bereft of proper guidance. The hollowness created was thus deeply ingrained in his personality and in later years was scornful like a bull. Lord Randolph Churchill, erstwhile father of Winston, made his career in politics winning a seat in Parliament in 1874 as a Conservative, rising as a Tory leader of significance, enjoying the favour of Prime Ministers Disraeli and Salsbury, until an untimely, prolonged illness struck him at the age of 40. After June 1885 election Randolph was appointed Secretary of State for India. He worked for brief seven months and built military capacity in India and strengthened British position in Burma; but after being appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1886 he differed with Salsbury on issues and offended Queen Victoria by sending his resignation letter while a guest at Windsor Castle, using Royal stationary, what was then a glaring breach of etiquette! That was an unceremonious end to what had been estimated as a stellar political career. While in India, Randolph was scathing in his remarks on its people, as vast sheet of oil, whom he considered an ocean of humanity with an insulted creed. In one of his several speeches he noted: Our rule in India is, as it were, a vast sheet of oil spread over the surface of, and keeping calm and quiet and unruffled by storms, an immense and profound ocean of humanity. Underneath that rule lie hidden all the memories of fallen dynasties, all the traditions of vanquished races, all the pride of insulted creeds; and it is our task, our most difficult business, to give peace, individual security, and general prosperity to the two hundred and fifty million of people who are affected by these powerful forces; to bind them and to weld them by the influence of our knowledge, our law, and our higher civilisation, in the process of time, into one great, united people; and to offer to all the nations of the West the advantages of tranquility and progress in the East. That is our task for India. That is the raison d’etre in India. That is our title to India. A wayward mother and a whimsical father were what Winston got and the upbringing in those venomous surroundings brought about in him, apart from other reasons, a deep hatred for India. Churchill and the ignominious famine. In 1943, India, then still a British possession, experienced a disastrous famine in the north-eastern region of Bengal - sparked by the Japanese occupation of Burma the year before. At least three million people were believed to have died - and Churchill's actions, or lack thereof, had been the subject of criticism. He refused to meet India’s need for wheat and continued to export rice to fuel the war effort. The War Cabinet ordered the build-up of a stockpile of wheat for feeding European civilians after they had been liberated. So, 170,000 tons of Australian wheat were stored, starving India - destined not for consumption. Churchill even blamed the Indians for the famine, claiming they bred like rabbits. Boy, boy, boy ! Winston’s parentage took precedence. Jennie must be overwhelmed with happiness ? The End of Empire – India gained freedom. There is nothing sadder in India’s Independence than the way it traversed its way. At three minutes before midnight on 14 August 1947 the unity of the Indian subcontinent was broken. Pakistan was established as an independent, sovereign state. Exactly five minutes later India became independent. The British Empire could not hold on to the Jewel in their Crown. In spite of all efforts !! How Wavell turned the tide(!). In 1943 Archibald Wavell was appointed by Churchill as the Viceroy. He was supposed to sit tight and keep India quiet through the war. But to Churchill’s great irritation he did something what his earlier political masters had never done – he came up with a policy precisely opposite of what history and instincts would have suggested, but it was correct and it was what his successor, Mountbatten would do. Wavell saw that nothing the politicians had been doing had prepared India to look after herself as there was no economic preparation. The choice was to stay for another generation – which Wavell thought would be impossible. He felt the Empire’s attitudes towards India negligent, hostile and contemptuous to a degree nobody had anticipated. Repeatedly the Indians would find being offered a form of words which was known to mean one thing to them and quite another to those making the promise. The weasel statements, the deliberate misunderstandings were difficult to excuse. They were the reasons that Indian politicians, then and now, accused and accuse the British of bad faith. Well, Winston, you lost your hat here ! Wavell and Mountbatten. The War over, Britain no longer had the means, financial or otherwise, or indeed the strength of will, to hold on to India. But the Labour Government which was elected in 1945 had no wish to let go of India entirely. For geo-strategical and prestige reasons India was to be kept in the Commonwealth and tied in to defence commitments. It was envisaged that an area around Delhi would not pass out of British control and that there would be a continuing British presence. Sadly, it did not happen. It was never meant to be. While Winston Churchill kept fuming, India got freedom beating all his appalling tribulations. One can see above when he, with his wife, in one of the many ceremonies at Buckingham Palace, kept pointing his sinister eyes at Lord Mountbatten (not in the frame) whispering in her ears: This is the man who engineered everything. He gave India away !! Shut up! Clementine Churchill was quick to retort. References: 1.        Churchill – Amazon Prime 2.       The Crown: Season I – Amazon Prime 3.       That Churchill Woman – Stephanie Barron 4.       Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: The British Betrayal of India – Walter Reid 5.       Churchill: Walking with Destiny – Andrew Roberts 6.       Churchill: The Unexpected Hero – Paul Addison 7.       Fighting Retreat: Churchill and India – Walter Reid 8.      Churchill and India: Manipulation or Betrayal – Kishan Rana Disclaimer: The names Nathan Obigalu and Catherine Hastings are imaginary and do not have any resemblance to any person(s) dead or alive.

Dear Reader, I am here to give you yet another view of the death of one of the most charismatic personalities of this century – who enthralled the world with her charm and was liked by many across the globe : Princess Diana or simply Di. She was an icon and the world has yet not come to grips regarding her death; was she murdered or was it a simple accident! I would be putting my views which you will find a tad different from the volumes you already have read or listened to. I request your attention to what I am going to describe. The description will be split into two – for the motion and against the motion. For the motion would detail what the whole world thinks: it was monstrous to kill Diana. Against the motion would describe what led to the situations which prompted the powers that be to take this extreme step and could Princess Diana have taken a separate path to live, a rather mundane and quiet life for the sake of her sons, William and Harry, whom she loved dearly? Was it not childish of her to ruffle feathers with the people in power knowing fully well that her life was in danger? FOR THE MOTION. In early hours of Sunday morning, 31st August 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales was killed in a high-speed car crash in the Pont del’Alma road tunnel in Paris, together with her boyfriend Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul, the chauffer. The mangled remains of the car after the crash (picture below) tells the impact with which Diana’s car hit the pillar. Diana was only 36 years old then, charming and loving. And a whole world beckoning her. What a tragedy ! Official investigations into the crash maintained that it was simply a tragic accident caused by Henri Paul’s drunken loss of control at the wheel while being chased by paparazzi photographers. AGAINST THE MOTION.  Diana had jetted to Paris and was on course to stay with Dodi the night before reaching London to be with her sons telling them an important announcement – that she never could tell one, would remain the greatest disappointments for William and Harry. When Diana did get the feeling that somebody was constantly watching her, tracking every move of her – she could have been more inquisitive why the steel bodied armoured Mercedes which was to take them that night was changed all of a sudden! Henri the driver was on duty as the regular driver was on leave and told Dodi that choosing the less acclaimed car would avert the paparazzi and they could quietly escape from the rear of the Hotel. Wrong, Utterly Wrong !! The small Mercedes S280 was chosen purposely to clean up the assassination job. She should at least have told Dodi to check with his father Mohamed Al Fayed in London the changed plan which Dodi did not. Henri Paul – as later revealed - was on the roll of MI6 and was instructed by the military intelligence to convince Dodi to agree to the small car and the rear exit of Hotel Ritz Carlton. Contrary to the official accident report Henri Paul was not under the influence of alcohol nor was any paparazzi following them forcing the car to speed at 120 kmph upwards. The tabloid papers were quick to print what was told to print – that Henri Paul was drunk (picture below) and Henri sped to teach paparazzi a lesson. What a folly ! FOR THE MOTION. The car quickly entered Alma Tunnel, Paris en route to Dodi’s Flat at Champs de Elysees and in no time reached high speeds of 120-125 kmph. One white Fiat Uno sped quickly followed by a motor bike and cornered the car, the bike flashing a deadly bright light on the driver, Henri lost control and smashed the car on the 13th pillar of Alma tunnel, the car overturned, rolled and thudded onto the other side of the wall. Dodi and Henri were instantly dead. Trevor Rees-Jones, Dodi’s bodyguard was seriously injured and survived the crash. Diana was rushed in an ambulance to Salpetriere Hospital and in spite of all efforts, due to massive internal bleeding, succumbed to her injuries. AGAINST THE MOTION.  The time when Dodi met Diana, he was not a celebrity. But Diana was. She should have objected to the rash speed Henri was galloping into and she along with Dodi should have smelled rat immediately and instructed Henri to stop the car or at best reduce the speed. Why Diana could not do that? It was very surprising for a woman who was at a risk for her life did not raise any alarm when Henri started speeding. Dodi’s flat was not far off from Ritz hotel and what was the urgent need to speed the car. Dodi and Diana were so head over heels in love that they could not see death coming !! The Ritz CCTV footage above shows Dodi holding Diana leading her to the car on that fateful night. Diana should have been more alert to what was happening around her, the entire event was centred around Diana, not around Dodi. She could have controlled the nitty-gritty of every move concerning her. FOR THE MOTION. In March 1991 London based journalist Andrew Morton wrote a particularly significant article in the Sunday Times. It was based on a deliberately leaked material from Princess Diana provided to Morton via her friend Dr. James Colthrust. The article contained specific insider information regarding the situation within the Charles – Diana household. On another instance on New Year’s Eve 1989, Princess Diana was at Sandringham House when she spoke by telephone to her longtime close friend, James Gilbey. During that conversation Diana referred to her husband Prince Charles’ family, the British royals : Bloody hell, after all I’ve done for this sickening, dreadful family. James Colthrust started conducting secret interviews at Kensington Palace with Diana. Interview recordings were passed onto Andrew Morton via Colthrust, in preparation for an upcoming book. Within months Diana was warned through her private secretary Patrick Jephson – that the men in grey suits at Buckingham Palace knew about her involvement in Morton book. AGAINST THE MOTION. Chilling, aren’t they? This instance could have given Diana a grave warning, that her phones were tapped and there were people in her household who had been instructed to keep a close watch on her. In 1995, when Diana chose to give her bodyguards a slip and drove alone in her famous Audi, she found to her horror that the car brakes had been manipulated and she had no brakes when the car was speeding through. By God’s grace she could disembark and took a taxi to meet her brother. In another incident, on 22nd March 1996 a Porsche 911 smashed into a parked Fiat Uno and sent it careering into the path of Diana’s rented BMW. Looking at the badly dented BMW she could see that there were people who had started plotting her death. Were you a kid, Diana? Means seriously being such an intelligent woman how could it did not sound a ring to you? What happened in Paris on 31 August, 1997 could have happened on that evening – how defiant were you not to take into your course that you were already being treated as a subject and some very powerful group of people wanted you to disappear. Annus Horribilis. Years of mistreatment at the hands of senior royals, the long-term affair between Charles and Camilla, media and public pressure had pushed Princess Diana to the point where she felt she could no longer bottle up her feelings. She believed she had to reveal to the public some of the true nature of what was occurring in her life and her marriage. Build-up of mounting pressure led her to Morton collaboration. This created a lot of bad mouthing from the royals followed by a ferocious letter from Prince Phillip to Diana. The Queen declared 1992 to be her annus horribilis. The Morton book was, to a very large extent, responsible for formal separation between Charles and Diana in 1992. FOR THE MOTION. On 12 January, 1997 Princess Diana landed in Angola on a mission to help landmine victims and campaign for the worldwide eradication of anti-personnel landmines. She announced : It is an enormous privilege for me to be invited here to Angola, in order to assist the Red Cross in its campaign to ban once and for all anti-personnel landmines. There couldn’t be a more appropriate place to begin this campaign than Angola because this nation has the highest number of amputees per population than anywhere in the world. By visiting Angola, we shall gain an understanding of the plight of the victims and how survivors are helped to recover from their injuries. We’ll also be able to observe the wider implications of these devastating weapons on the life of this country as a whole. It is my sincere hope that by working together in the next few days we shall focus world attention on this vital but, until now, largely neglected issue. Earlier Diana’s friend Simone Simmons had travelled to war torn Bosnia to help out her friend Morris Power the head of the Red Cross in Tuzla. On return Simmons told Diana the carnage and suffering of the war-weary population partly because of exploded and unexploded landmines. AGAINST THE MOTION. Princess Diana’s Angola visit was extensively publicised around the world but caused a furore amongst Conservative politicians back in the United Kingdom. Earl Howe, the Junior Defence Minister stated publicly that Diana is ill-advised and is not being helpful or realistic. We do not need a loose cannon like her. Peter Viggers, a member of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee declared that Diana was ill-informed and her efforts did not actually add much to the sum of human knowledge. Four days after Diana’s return from Angola the Queen chaired the royal Way Ahead Group and during the following months pressure against Diana took a more sinister turn. What you call this – a childish behaviour? Or I-don’t-care-whatever-you-do attitude? Why did she keep on forgetting time and time again that these over-the-top mis-adventures were putting Diana and her children in grave danger, the children whom she loved so much? How could she plan to overcome the fiery disdain with which the State were treating her? In February 1997 Diana received a threatening call at her home in Kensington Palace, her friend Simone Simmons was there: I was with Diana in her sitting room at KP when she beckoned me over and held her telephone away from her ear so that I could hear. I heard a voice telling her she should stop meddling with things she didn’t understand or know anything about and spent several minutes trying to tell her to drop her anti-landmine campaign. Diana didn’t say much, she just listened and I heard clearly the warning You never know when an accident is going to happen. Diana went very pale. Her life was in danger and she needed a new partner with impressive and precise credentials who must be wealthy, available and good with her children !! Meanwhile the Al-Fayeds jelled very well with Diana. Mohamed Al-Fayed, owner of Britain’s prestigious Harrod’s and Hotel Ritz of Paris maintained a steady friendship with Diana through 1997. Dodi’s death took the life out of the senior Fayed and till his death in 2023 he was never granted UK citizenship primarily because Al-Fayed blamed the British royal family for the deaths of Diana and Dodi. He accused the Royal Family of ordering British security services to assassinate Princess of Wales to stop her marrying Dodi. Diana’s love for Dodi heralded a dangerous phase for the royal family facing twin risks of losing control of William and Harry and also Diana producing revelations that might cause irreversible damage to the monarchy. In August 2000, lawyers for Al-Fayed announced plans to sue U.S Govt agencies that he believed had unreleased information about the fatal crash. I believe they are withholding some documents at the request of British secret services. They cannot afford to let the truth be known because they know exactly where the truth lies. Harry was closer to Diana. It was known to one and all that Prince Harry was closer to his mom than the elder brother Prince William. While Harry loved her Di unconditionally, William was sore at the thought of Diana having an eye on marrying Dodi – who was at best weird to him. They miss their mom even to this day and if someone requested if they were given hand of God, they would promptly recall their mom to have fun with them and love them !! You left too early. You could have done better Di ! References: 1.        Princess Diana: Who Do You Think She Was – Amazon Prime 2.       The Diana Investigations – Amazon Prime 3.       Andrew Morton: Diana-Her True Story 4.       Robert Johnson: Diana, Closely Guarded Secret 5.       Nod Botham: The Murder of Princess Diana 6.       Trevor Rees-Jones: The Bodyguard’s Story

It was a muddy afternoon of November 1988 in Maldives. People from Maldivian National Security informed President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom that mercenaries propelled by businessman Abdullah Luthufi had invaded the Presidential Palace for a coup. Gayoom and Family were quickly escorted to safety. About 80 armed mercenaries landed in the capital Male before dawn aboard speedboats from a hijacked Sri Lankan freighter. Disguised as visitors, a similar number had already infiltrated Male earlier. The mercenaries quickly gained control of the capital, including the major government buildings, airport, port, television and radio stations. Operation Cactus. President Gayoom requested military intervention from Sri Lanka and Pakistan but both denied any help, citing a lack of military capabilities, then Singapore declined citing the same reasons. After that, he contacted the United States but was told that it would take forces 2–3 days to reach the Maldives from their nearest military base in Diego Garcia, 1000 km away. The president then contacted the United Kingdom, which advised them to seek assistance from India. Following this, when Gayoom contacted the Indian government for assistance, India swiftly accepted their request and within 16 hours of the SOS, India was ready to commence their operation with Operation Cactus  !! That was India saving Maldives. The operation started on the night of 3 November 1988. The Indian Army paratroopers arrived on Hulhule in nine hours after the appeal from President Gayoom and immediately secured the airfield, crossed over to Male using commandeered boats and rescued President Gayoom. Troopers eventually restored control of the capital to President Gayoom’s government within hours. Some of the mercenaries fled towards Sri Lanka in a hijacked freighter. Those unable to reach the ship in time were quickly rounded up and handed over to the Maldives government. And the accolades(!). India received international praise for the operation. US President Ronald Reagan expressed his appreciation for India's action, calling it a valuable contribution to regional stability. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reportedly commented - Thank God for India, President Gayoom's government has been saved. The new era begins. In November 2023 voters in the Indian Ocean archipelago of Maldives elected Mohamed Muizzu as the country’s president. Muizzu, candidate for the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), roundly defeated incumbent President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP). Muizzu is widely seen as sympathetic to China’s interests in the country, and less favourably disposed towards India, who has been Maldives’s traditional security and economic partner for years. The accidental President(!). Moizzu was an unlikely candidate for the presidency after serving as construction minister in the government of his mentor Abdulla Yameen. But Yameen’s jailing on corruption charges - which his party says were politically motivated - saw Muizzu pitchforking to lead the party as his proxy in an election where the strategically placed country’s ties with China and India were on the ballot. Yameen the villain. It was Yameen’s turn towards Beijing that first alarmed New Delhi. India shares concerns with the United States and its allies about China’s growing assertiveness in the Indian Ocean. And why not ! As minister under Yameen, Muizzu oversaw several Chinese - funded infrastructure projects in the country of less than one million people, including a USD 200 million bridge linking the capital with the archipelago’s main airport. The stage was set for the onslaught to commence !! Muizzu told Chinese Communist Party officials during an online meeting last year that his party’s return to office would expand the strong ties between the two countries. It goes without saying that Muizzu’s election success hinged on a sustained campaign against India’s outsized political and economic clout in the Maldives. But the clout was friendly, please note, you unfriendly ignorants. Let us now spread our eyes on why China has fallen head over heels for Maldives (?). The Maldives sits in a strategically vital position in the middle of the Indian Ocean, astride one of the world’s busiest east-west shipping lanes. China has interests in those shipping lanes. The details are striking ! If you can see the above infograph China imports huge amounts of crude oil from countries across the world. The top six countries alone export around USD 151 billion worth of oil. As the blue and black lines in the topmost map show the passage of oil transportation encumbers practically the whole of globe and the involvement of China is almost in every country that matters except USA, Australia and India – this can be seen in the second map. Let us look at the Pakistan angle now. Obviously, the oil routes involve circumventing India waters, namely the Indian Ocean. The routes also touch Africa and Sri Lanka. New Delhi gathers that China in order to avoid treading India waters - it certainly looks down upon India as less economically and militarily strong – and in a major shift, has touched Pakistan to reach out an alternate route to Beijing which reduces the travel path to a great degree and also induces an avenue to placate Islamabad to rebuild business policies ending up with a win-win situation for China and for Pakistan! What a folly. Today, the much-hyped China - Pakistan Belt Road Initiative has now become a joke(!). Since Pakistan China Belt Road Initiative has fallen flat (the ex-Pakistan premier Imran Khan has closed down the Kashgar – Gwadar initiatives from China amid widespread misappropriation of funds – it is believed that one of the Pakistani Generals had opened a series of food chains across USA with that fund pushing Pakistan into a hopeless debt trap) it is curtains now for Pakistan. No wonder Imran Khan is facing so much ridicule in Islamabad. Please visit www.cheekychatur.com for in-depth analysis on Belt Road Initiative in Will Pakistan Lease part of POK to China. Pakistan was coaxed by China to build a transport line from Gwadar through Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) to China’s north-west Kashgar (illustration above) to avoid the sea route, which is long and passes through India. It was the failure of BRI that pushed China into present scheme of things.  The failure of the Belt Road Initiative (BRI) forced China to think of other alternatives, one was to grab land in Maldives. The nation constitutes a large number of archipelagos and Beijing believes a foothold in a couple of them would facilitate maritime snoop !! After the Pakistan card now China plays the Maldives card !! Picture above shows a group of two archipelagos with a number of atolls; for example, the Raa atoll on the left and Alifu Alfiu atoll on the right in addition to other atolls. There are 1192 islands in the Maldives and the country is naturally divided into 26 atolls or chain of islands. A couple of atolls is all China needs to spy over India !! But you cannot deny that India had done enough for this tiny nation. Be it India's prompt assistance during the 1988 coup or aid during natural disasters, the country has reinforced its credentials of being the first responder for the Maldives in times of crisis. Hence Maldives, you Brutus, your folly is unpardonable and you must succumb to your sins !! Munch through the data and you will find that trade between India and Maldives has increased by four times since 2014. In 2022 the total trade volume was USD 501.82 million compared to USD 173.50 million in 2014. Quite a jump that ! You have no business to belittle India. Since the advent of Muizzu, the close and cordial ties between India and the Maldives have nosedived following derogatory social media posts by a number of Maldivian ministers against our PM following his visit to Lakshadweep. While the Maldives has attempted to control the damage by suspending three deputy ministers, the relations between the countries were already in choppy waters following Muizzu adopting a softer tone towards China. Muizzu does not understand that China has set its eyes to milk Maldivian economy. When Muizzu visited China, several people warned him about Beijing's debt-trap policy. Male has taken massive loans from China - the China Development Bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and the Export-Import Bank of China hold over 60 per cent of Maldives' sovereign debt, according to a report by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF). My question to Maldivian Ministers : Are you a kid, gentlemen ? Cannot see the storm coming ? A month before Muizzu took over as President, the World Bank said growing external and fiscal vulnerabilities were posing risks to the Maldivian economy, particularly if Male continues to borrow at high costs. It said by 2026, the USD 5.4 billion Maldivian economy will have to service a record USD 1.07 billion in external debt. Asia Nikkei reported that the bank's latest assessment added to existing concerns about Male's obligation to spend an average of USD 300 million a year to service foreign debt from 2022 to 2024. Despite expectations of reduced deficits, Maldives’ total debt is set to remain high at over 115% of GDP. Cry of a Maldivian. Dear President Muizzu, as you walk on thin ice it is catastrophe and more catastrophe for you. Trust me, when I say you should not be here because you do not fully deserve this, we cannot wait to watch you play and trip over, do not forget to give a Dorian smile out there because that is all the nation expects from you waiting silently for the catastrophe to happen. Being the leader of a predominantly Muslim nation you should be aware of how China has been treating Uighur Muslims. The abominable brutality ! There is no respite from this. Amla Clooney is not going to save you from this imbroglio. (Hollywood superstar George Clooney’s wife Amla has been hired by Muizzu to see him through troubled waters of Uighur). Another Maldivian says. While you are eyeing the economic benefits that China has to offer you must remember the debt trap Sri-Lanka is facing and you must realise that this trap is also coming at you thick and fast !!  You need to choose your allies wisely, understand Mr. President ? When John was having a cup of tea at a restaurant in Male, he had to say this to his old friend Shehroz – of Maldives he tells – It is a story I know well and I know what your child had been through. The pride of you must have been in your heart completely wrenched seeing your 20 - year son nudging to school blankly without a dream. People of Maldives have forgotten to live a dream. Because there is no dream. This is unfathomable, incomparable. Disclaimer : The names John and Shehroz are imaginary and do not resemble any person(s) dead or alive.

Apartheid has grown in its colours; it has fanned out in many ways in our society. If in a premier French restaurant, a high-end family is enjoying a pre-office breakfast then a coloured executive of an established advertising firm getting cold shoulders and nasty looks from people around, then that nasty look is apartheid. If a celebrated white cricketer refuses to a planned pre-match bend your knees ordeal to support Black Lives Matter, then that refusal is apartheid. When a coloured professor in an esteemed University does not get the recognition he deserves for his epoch-making research, then that lack of recognition is apartheid. When and where it all started(?). One of the most effective tactics used to justify anti-Black racism and white supremacy has been scientific racism. Through the years, scientific racism has taken many forms, all with the goal of co-opting the authority of science as objective knowledge to justify racial inequality. Some 19th-century scientists, like Harvard’s Louis Agassiz, were proponents of polygenism, which posited that human races were distinct species. This theory was supported by pseudoscientific methods like craniometry, the measurement of human skulls, which supposedly proved that White people were biologically superior to Blacks. Early statistical health data was weaponized against Black Americans in the late 1800s, as it was used to claim they were predisposed to disease and destined for extinction. By the early to mid-20th century, polygenism and biology-based racism were widely disproven, and racism in social science had gained popularity. Studies showing high rates of imprisonment among Black Americans were used as proof of innate criminality, while pseudoscientific intelligence testing claimed the mental superiority of white people. These flawed, biased studies failed to account for political and social factors such as poor housing, poverty, lack of healthcare, and virulent racial oppression. But they provided the so-called evidence needed to fuel systemic forms of anti-Black racism, like segregation. And, for many Americans looking for objective reasons to justify racist beliefs and behaviours, studies like these were more than enough. And our eyes are still cloudy(?). Contemporary scientific consensus agrees that race has no biological basis, but scientific racism still exists. While it is now more subtle than craniometry, its long history demonstrates the influence social ideas about race can have on supposedly unbiased research. Apartheid is still rampant in United States of America but its social landscape is different from that of South Africa. In USA the blacks are in minority and are abhorred in spite of the fact that in many areas, like sport, it is the Blacks who have excelled and carried the American flag high. In South Africa the whites are in minority but due to the paradigm of scientific racism it was always Whites ruling over the Blacks. What is Apartheid as we know(?). Racial segregation was long evidenced in South Africa, but the practice was extended under the government led by the National Party (1948–94), and the party named its racial segregation policies apartheid (Afrikaans: apartness). The Population Registration Act of 1950 classified South Africans as Bantu (black Africans), coloured (those of mixed race), and white. Other apartheid acts dictated where South Africans, on the basis of their racial classification, could live and work, the type of education they could receive, whether they could vote, who they could associate with. History says that Europeans first colonized what is now the country of South Africa in the middle of the 17th century, it was not until the 1948 election of the Afrikaner - led National Party that the system of apartheid - with which the nation of South Africa came to be so closely associated for the second half of the 20th century - was formally instated. While this strict system of racial classification and segregation drew on a variety of existing measures that had limited the rights of non-whites, the 1950s saw a dramatic eruption of discriminatory laws. Under apartheid, the South African population was divided into four distinct racial groups: white (including Afrikaners, who speak a Germanic language called Afrikaans), black, coloured, and Indian. Strict residential, economic, and social segregation was enforced on the basis of these racial categories. Non-whites were not allowed to vote in national elections. At this time Nelson Mandela entered the fray. Because of the injustices it perpetuated, the apartheid system gave rise to a broad resistance movement. The primary organization leading the struggle against apartheid was the African National Congress (ANC). The ANC was founded in 1913 in response to the oppression of non-white South Africans at the hands of the white ruling class. In 1943, Nelson Mandela - then a law student - joined the ANC and co-founded its youth division, the ANCYL. Mandela (picture below) and other young activists had begun to advocate for a mass campaign of agitation against apartheid. In 1949, the ANCYL gained control of the ANC and a year later Mandela was elected national president of the ANCYL (African National Congress Youth League). To his prudent persona, Mandela's political outlook began to shift: while he had previously opposed cross-racial unity in the fight against apartheid, he came to be influenced by the writings of socialist thinkers who supported apartheid across racial lines. He was also influenced by the non - violence emancipation of Mahatma Gandhi who resided in South Africa for more than 20 years (1893-1914). The story goes thus: a young Gandhi (picture above on right) was travelling to Pretoria for a legal case on the cold night of June 7, 1893, when a white man objected to his presence in a first-class carriage. Gandhi, naturally, refused to move since he had a valid first-class ticket. The train had reached Pietermaritzburg by then, and Gandhi was unceremoniously thrown from his carriage onto the platform. The waiting room where he spent the night is today peppered with posters and a computer kiosk presentation that recounts the incident in great detail. It was winter, and winter in the higher regions of South Africa is severely cold. Maritzburg being at a high altitude, the cold was extremely bitter. My overcoat was in my luggage, but I did not dare to ask for it lest I should be insulted again, so I sat and shivered. I began to think of my duty. The hardship to which I was subjected was superficial, only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice, Gandhi writes about that night. It was a long night for Gandhi, one that would make him think about the situation back in India and mull over what he could do about it. I was born in India but was made in South Africa, commented Gandhi once. It has been 130 years since that night, but the statue and the waiting room in Pietermaritzburg leave Indians teary - eyed to this day. Well gentlemen, this is apartheid at its worst. The filthy class-colour divide would have been denounced much earlier but yes South Africa is a changed nation now nevertheless the inherent abhorrence for the coloured people by the whites – in minority though – still exists and is in full view !! Gandhi came to India to fight against British imperialism but the burning urge to free India came from his deep despise for white people manning the swathes of Indian citizens always telling them that they are a coloured race and are fit to be ruled. India’s Apartheid was as despicable as that of the South Africa’s. There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India - as horrible as it may have been – was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself. If anything, the administration of India was a cost to Britain. So, the fact that the empire was sustained for so long – the story goes – was a gesture of Britain’s benevolence. Research published by Columbia University Press deals a crushing blow to this narrative. Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, it was calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly USD 45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938. For perspective, USD 45 trillion is 14 times more than the total annual gross domestic product (GDP) of the United Kingdom today. The Dorians and the eternal thieves !! What a shame. Here’s how it worked. The East India Company began collecting taxes in India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues (about a third) to fund the purchase of Indian goods for British use. In other words, instead of paying for Indian goods out of their own pocket, British traders acquired them for free, buying from peasants and weavers using money that had just been taken from them. It was a scam – theft on a grand scale. Yet most Indians were unaware of what was going on because the agent who collected the taxes was not the same as the one who showed up to buy their goods. Had it been the same person and the theft being noticed – who knows – by today India would have been an economy more throbbing than China and the USA. Picture above shows Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, and his wife, Lady Edwina Mountbatten, ride in the state carriage towards the Viceregal lodge in New Delhi, on March 22, 1947. Don’t go by the look and smile but instead read the face telling – hey I am the boss and you, my subjects. Never mind Lord, our own Rishi Sunak now tells you he is the boss and the whole of UK are his subjects ! Redemption. In today’s world USA and France are the worst offenders of apartheid. George Chauvin, an American police officer was caught in camera stifling a black American George Floyd around the neck in Minneapolis in May 2020 and was responsible for his death. Do not go by the glitz !! 9 in 10 black people in mainland France say they are victims of racist discrimination. On February 15, 2023 the Representative Council of France’s Black Association (CRAN) presents to the Assemblee Nationale its second evaluation of the perception and experience of discrimination against Black people in France. Is the French society flawed(?). France, Canada, USA, UK, Germany are denounced for their dirty mindset and for their two-faced socialism. No wonder a heap of global worries is on their heads now as they unflinchingly tread on trampling colour and creed to arrive at pre-ordained destinations. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently revealed that he faced racism during his childhood.  Sunak also shared that his parents enrolled him in extra drama lessons to speak without an accent, to help him fit in. During an interview with ITV News, Sunak opened up about the challenges he faced growing up and recalled the pain of hearing slurs directed at his younger siblings, adding that racism stings and hurts in a way that other things don't. You are conscious of being different. It's hard not to be, right, and obviously I experienced racism as a kid, he said. Why do humans like fair skin (?). The attraction is driven by preferences based on moral assumptions. Researchers have found out that people are sub consciously attracted towards fairer skin due to its with virility and danger. Want to employ artificial intelligence to peep into the sub-concious ?

Gurpreet Singh is an Indian Sikh living in Amritsar and he says : We have suffered a lot. You can go back to the Indian National Movement and I distinctly remember the pain encumbered on us when the British soldiers brutally killed 329 people and injured thousands in April 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, many of whom were women and children. After partition of India a good of Punjab went to Pakistan and the Sikhs remained a combative lot – life made cruel encounters off them; literacy was low and young Sikhs wavered towards gang robbery, theft, hooliganism – which at a later stage took the horrible shape of terrorism and militancy. It was not until June 1984 when Sikh militancy was challenged by Indian State, when the Army attacked Golden Temple to flush out the miscreants, when Operation Bluestar was activated killing thousands of civilians trapped inside the gurudwara, apart from the militants. There is an excellent book An Uncommon Road : How Canadian Sikhs Struggled Out of the Fringes and Into the Mainstream – by Gian Singh Sandhu where he lists out the initial days when Sikhs ventured into Canada for employment somewhat guided by an unknown sense of hatred towards India and reciprocated by Canada playing an amazingly warm host. Sikh settlements grew in Canada by leaps and bounds in those times. Gian Singh has been usually candid through the book when he writes : After the massacre at the Golden Temple, I, like the rest of the 20 million Sikhs worldwide, was outraged. I am not an inherently angry or emotional person; I prefer to think of myself as rational (perhaps to a fault). My default manner is to be calm, sometimes to the point of appearing detached. I am more likely to focus on solutions than to sit and brood over the problem. As an advocate of our community, a sort of innate level-headedness has served me well. As a storyteller, though, I may leave you wanting to look elsewhere for a more emotional narrator who wears his angst on his sleeve. Punjabi Sikhs became a prominent ethnic group within the workforce in British Columbia almost immediately after initial arrival in Canada. The early settlers in 1905 built the first Gurudwara (Sikh temple) in Canada and North America. And they never looked back. After the trouble in Golden Temple, was the Sikh angst real and pounding (?). Yes. To a fault !  Operation Bluestar was sloppy and in order to eliminate one Sikh militant, who was hiding inside the temple (picture below), India made enemies with the entire Sikh community. On October 31, 1984, barely four months after the Golden Temple was attacked, Sikhs assassinated the then Prime Minister of India, Mrs. Indira Gandhi. She was murdered by her own security guards. Angst swelled up into irrational demands. Sikhs started demanding a separate State for them. The demand for Khalistan peaked in India during those times but armed insurgency was swiftly crushed by Delhi. In present times even calls for Khalistan are still loud among some in the Sikh diaspora in countries such as Canada, Australia and the UK. Delhi has reacted sharply to demonstrations for and referendums on Khalistan by Sikh activists in these countries. It goes without saying that there are many Sikhs in India passionate about their country !! Then, what is unique to Canada ? Canada is averse to lose Sikh sympathy at any cost, Sikhs there feel sheltered. But if you go back in time, you will realise that relations between India and Canada have survived previous strains - Ottawa reacted sharply to Indian nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998; India expressed its disappointment in 2005 after two Canadian Sikhs accused of a deadly Air India bombing were acquitted. In 1985 Air India flight 182 was bombed en route from Toronto to Delhi killing 329 people. It is believed that on board flight 182 were members of a Khalistan group called the Babbar Khalsa (banned in Europe and the USA) and other related groups who were at the time agitating for separate Sikh state. India and Canada have mostly been on good terms, except for the Khalistan issue !! They are both Commonwealth countries and members of the G20 group of leading world economies. Canada, which wants a bigger footprint in Asia, sees India as a counterweight to China. Canada. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch ! Problems galore ahead. It is not just geopolitics, the countries also have strong trade links. India was Canada's 10th largest trading partner in 2022, with bilateral trade in goods at USD 11.9 billion that year, up 56% from the previous year. They were very close to signing that trade agreement, now on the backburner. What is the reason of the backburner(?). H. S. Nijjar. Canadian police are hot on the heels of the two men believed to be responsible for the fatal shooting of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in the British Columbia province in June 2023. And now, fingers are pointing at us. Ties between India and Canada came under severe strain following Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's allegations in September of a potential involvement of Indian agents in the killing of separatist Nijjar outside a gurdwara in Surrey city on June 18. India had designated Nijjar as a terrorist in 2020 and has rejected Mr. Trudeau's allegations as absurd and motivated. Why Canada is so amenable to Khalistan supporters(?). Canada is home to world’s largest Sikh population outside India, who number nearly 770,000 people, or 2.1% of the country’s population. In Trudeau Canadian Sikhs found a person companionable and comradely to a point finding them seats in national cabinet. Ottawa is now bound by that politics. A selfish blunder I suppose !! Signs of a weak global leader. Tensions among Indian and Canadian officials first simmered in 2015, when Trudeau came to power and appointed four Sikh ministers to his then 30-member cabinet. In the past, Indian diplomats had raised issues over Sikh Canadians who express support for the Khalistan movement, which calls for a separatist Sikh homeland in India. Anti India reactions continue. Anti India slogans abounded, many temples were vandalised in 2022 with graffiti that read death to India in Urdu and Khalistan, Sikh Canadians had organised local referendums over Sikh independence from India. In 2018, Trudeau’s trip to India was criticized when his delegation, which included a Sikh contingent, met Jaswal Atwal, a Sikh man convicted of attempted murder of a visiting Indian cabinet minister. Can Canada live without India(?). No with a capital N. Justin Trudeau saw India as a critical partner under its Indo-Pacific strategy, given the country’s growing economic and demographic importance in the region. As recently as in May, both sided appeared optimistic that a trade agreement on automobile, agriculture and information technology would be signed. It never happened because of a very angry India. (Please visit www.cheekychatur.com and read the article India’s Demographic Sweet Spot for details). But it appears that Canada does not care, why (?). One of the reasons being USA always plays big brother to Ottawa. USA’s trade with Canada in 2022 totalled an estimated USD 909 billion. Canada is the largest purchaser of US goods exports accounting for 17.3 % of total US goods exports ! Now India is worried(!). Khalistan extremism is growing in Canada with friendly assistance from Islamabad, London, USA and other European nations. Judgement days lie ahead folks ! It sure does. Picture above shows pro-khalistan flags seen at the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. Former Chief Minister of Punjab Amarinder Singh claimed (hear from the horse’s mouth !!) that the extremism in Punjab is backed by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Khalistani sympathisers in Canada, UK and Italy to name a few. Ah, the Dorian faces. Well, now the Dorian faces of Canada, USA and UK have been exposed they would surely face our PM in global forums - he would be asking difficult questions to these Dorians what they have done to make India feel friendly. They would rather leave India minding their own business !! Disclaimer : The name Gurpreet Singh is imaginary and does not resemble any person(s) dead or alive.

Picture above shows Saja Moussa drawing on broken tiles from her family's house in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, damaged by Israeli bombing Life is so critical at Rafah sir (?). Maya Dengzongpa asks her Dean, Prof. Richard Jenekins of Johns Hopkins University: International Relations, United States of America. Maya Dengzongpa and Harish Mariwala of India, Christina Constantinos of Spain, Norman Gafford of USA, Joseph Ari and Yehuda Judah of Israel and Amina Hassani of Palestine are students of Richard at Johns Hopkins working on a research paper The Eternal War between Palestine and Israel – No Signs of Rapprochement. The subsequent article delves on these students’ understanding of the present Hamas-Israel war and the ability of Richard to make them perceive how grave is the imbroglio the world has been stunned into. Richard Jenekins. Well Maya if you look at the map above, Rafah is the southernmost part of Gaza and it becomes important because it is the entry point to Egypt where most of the Palestinians want to flee and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) want to thwart the mass evacuation! Amina (Hassani) you start with your briefing on Hamas and tell everyone here the ongoing conflict as much as you understand. Amina Hassani (Palestine). Thank you, sir. Hamas is a Palestinian group which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007. The group is sworn to Israel's destruction and wants to replace it with an Islamic state. Hamas has fought several wars with Israel since it took power. It has fired - or allowed other groups to fire - thousands of rockets into Israel, and has carried out other deadly attacks. In response, Israel has repeatedly attacked Hamas with air strikes. In 2008 and 2014, it also sent troops into Gaza. Together with Egypt, Israel has blockaded the Gaza Strip since 2007 for what it describes as security reasons. Hamas - or in some cases its military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades - has been designated a terrorist group by Israel, the United States, the European Union and the UK, as well as other powers and Iran backs the group providing it with funding, weapons and training. Norman Gafford (USA). But USA tried to settle the issue long back when President Clinton recognised PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) and made Yasser Arafat shake hands with Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin on Sep 13, 1993 if I am not wrong !! USA cannot recognise PLO as well as Hamas. Hamas gunmen launched an unprecedented assault on Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 07, 2023 killing more than 1,400 people and taking at least 239 hostages. Since then, Israel has been carrying out retaliatory strikes on Gaza, in which more than 10,570 people have been killed as on November 08, 2023. Joseph Ari (Israel). Well Amina do you think Hamas was right on this, I mean the Israeli sanctions were always there after the Arafat - Rabin friendship fell out. Rabin was subsequently assassinated. But yes, this assault was uncalled for ! I am sure Yehuda would agree with me. Christina Constantinos (Spain). And Israel counter attacked violently. If you look at the demonstration below every hour around 42 bombs are dropped on the Gaza strip killing children and destroying buildings. Many innocent people are killed. Hospitals are not functioning properly; communicable diseases are rampant and international aids are few and far between. And to top it all US Senator James Risch, former Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, placed a hold on USD 50 million in reconstruction aid to Gaza and the West Bank even after Tony Blinken’s meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu ! What is happening Norman ? The Plunder in Gaza every hour !! Richard Jenekins. Christina, it is becoming now a war of words something totally uncalled for and does not behove scholars like you. I will state a few words going to 1947 and beyond and strive to know how it all started. How it all started. Britain first took control of the area known as Palestine (picture below) following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled that part of the Middle East, in World War I. The land was inhabited by a Jewish minority and Arab majority, as well as other, smaller ethnic groups. Tensions between the two peoples grew when the international community gave the UK the task of establishing a national home in Palestine for Jewish people. This stemmed from the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a pledge made by then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Britain's Jewish community. The Declaration was enshrined in the British mandate over Palestine and endorsed by the newly-created League of Nations - forerunner of the United Nations - in 1922. To Jews Palestine was their ancestral home, but Palestinian Arabs also claimed the land and opposed the move. Between the 1920s and 1940s, the number of Jews arriving there grew, with many fleeing from persecution in Europe, especially the Nazi Holocaust in World War II. Violence between Jews and Arabs, and against British rule, also increased. In 1947, the UN voted for Palestine to be split into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem becoming an international city. That plan was accepted by Jewish leaders but rejected by the Arab side and never implemented. You can see from the above demonstration how Israel slowly accumulated land from 1947 through 2023 leaving the Arab Palestinians a few crumbs to live in and this went on under the open glare of the international community who had their own agenda to service and never wholeheartedly tried to solve the impasse. I have listened intently to the BBC World – Al Jazeera podcast where Gideon Levy – a journalist from Israel and Tahani Mustafa - a professor living in Jordan place their understanding of the conflict. Listen to Gideon Levy from Israel. I strongly believe what is happening in Gaza is Israel’s undoing. It is a sort of revenge reaction. One thing I am certain of that after the war Benjamin Netanyahu is finished – he is facing issues of malpractices. Hamas attack was pre-planned and I would blame other countries for instigating this strike. I have spoken to Jews as well as to Palestinians and they say they do not want this war; it is Hamas’ one point agenda to stop Israel’s total domination of Gaza – a sort of Islamophobia has taken place. Listen to Tahani Mustafa from Jordan. Palestinians in Gaza are afraid, very afraid. They are in survival mode now and this population where 53% live below the poverty line still believe Hamas can solve their woes, it is a sort of gamechanger and answer to Israel brutality!! To the young Palestinians Hamas has become very popular and are flabbergasted why they have suddenly withdrawn themselves from the battle with Israel. They are in shock and these Palestinians are hurt because they are being marginalised from Arab world. They want Hamas to get the world change its outlook towards Palestinians. Well guys, please put these facts in your research papers without blunting its sharpness and pricelessness. This is a discovery above everything else. Harish Mariwala (India). But why Hamas did this daring attack on West Bank knowing fully well the might of Israel Defence Forces (IDF) ? When they abducted Jews did they not know there would be a strong counter attack from Israel ? How can they be so dumb ? Joseph Ari (Israel). It was all pre-ordained Harish. Hamas attacked in response to the desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the blockade of the Gaza Strip and continued Israeli settlements. It was more out of rage than anything else and in return the innocent citizens are the hapless fall guys. The Masjid Al-Aqsa, or simply Al-Aqsa, means the farthest mosque or the farthest sanctuary, and refers to the lead-domed mosque within the sacred precinct of Haram al-Sharif – the Noble Enclosure. The precinct includes the Dome of the Rock, the four minarets, the compound’s historic gates and the mosque itself. On Sept. 28, 2000, Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon and a delegation guarded by hundreds of Israeli riot police entered the precinct. This sparked protests and a violent crackdown (picture below) by Israeli authorities with multiple casualties. Many Muslims worldwide considered this a desecration of the sacred mosque and the event helped ignite the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising. Harish Mariwala (India). Why Hamas chose October 07 as the date of attack ? Joseph Ari (Israel). At around 6.30 am IDT (UTC+3) on October 07, 2023 Hamas announced the start of what it called Operation Al-Aqsa Flood firing over 5,000 rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel within a span of 20 minutes. It was a major Jewish holiday (Simchat Torah) and rockets came striking areas indiscriminately. Tensions over Al-Aqsa Mosque and the expansion of Jewish settlements along with disruption in normalisation of Israel-Saudi Arabia ties were the main motives of the attack. The Al-Aqsa Mosque, also known as the Qibli Mosque or Qibli Chapel, is the main congregational mosque or prayer hall in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem. Maya Dengzongpa (India). So, the attacks are not without reason ! The desecration of the Al-Aqsa mosque has ignited the fire and is still raging, no respite in sight as international community stand a dumb audience seeing the mutilation of such a historically important and sacred piece of land reduced to rubbles. Richard Jenekins. Quite right Maya. But some countries have reacted vehemently. Take the case of South Africa as it recalled all its diplomats from Israel in condemnation of the bombardment of the Hamas ruled Gaza Strip and threatened to take action against Israeli ambassador in the country. A change of heart at last : Israel has eased Rafah border of late and citizens with valid documents are allowed to cross the border. Take the case of Tala Abu Nahleh. Tala’s mother is a Jordanian citizen and luckily Tala, with other foreign passport holders are going to be allowed through, so are the wounded and the seriously sick. Tala's 15-year-old brother Yazid is disabled and suffers from seizures. He can only move from one place to another with the aid of a wheelchair. The hospitals in Gaza have run out of the medication he needs, while the bombing has exacerbated his condition. Once the escalation started, Tala says, he got very afraid, the seizures kept getting worse and worse. Every time I believe it's gotten to the worst, it just keeps getting worse. There are six in the family and Tala is the sole financial support. She won scholarships and studied in the US and Beirut, Lebanon. Confident and articulate as she is, it is easy to imagine her guiding her family through the challenges of life beyond Gaza's borders. We are trying to survive. We're not sure we're going to make it, but we're trying to do everything we can to survive, because I simply don't want to die at 24. The border is a place where the word luck has different meanings. It means escaping bombing, hunger and lack of water. It also means having to leave behind those you love who don't have foreign passports, or who are not badly wounded enough to merit evacuation, or who are trapped under fire and cannot reach the border. The number of those who have left, or will be able to leave, is only a tiny percentage of Gaza's population of 2.2 million people. Mona - she did not wish to give her surname - is an Australian citizen through marriage. She came to the border alone and was haunted by the thought of her family trapped in Gaza. I'm not happy at all, because I'm leaving my other part, my brothers and sisters, my whole family is still here. I wish, God willing, they would all be in a safe place. The situation is terrible, it's very, very bad, she says. Footnote: Disclaimer: The names Maya Dengzongpa, Harish Mariwala, Christina Constantinos, Norman Gafford, Joseph Ari, Yehuda Judah, Amina Hassani and Richard Jenekins are arbitrary and do not resemble any person(s) dead or alive.

On July 22, 2023, Greek island of Rhodes experienced a devastating wildfire that swept across the nation, causing chaos and destruction. Situation escalated as fires continued to rage, compelling authorities to evacuate people from affected areas. One such incident occurred on the picturesque island of Corfu, where tourists and locals were forced to flee a beach in a desperate bid for safety. The wildfires on Rhodes had been raging for days and despite best efforts they remained uncontrolled. This uncontrollable blaze prompted the evacuation of around 19,000 people over the weekend as the fire encroached on coastal resorts along the island's southeastern coast. Rhodes and Corfu, renowned for their stunning landscapes and warm Mediterranean charm, are among Greece's top destinations, attracting tourists primarily from Britain and Germany. While wildfires are not uncommon in Greece during the summer months, the severity and frequency of such incidents have increased due to climate change. Southern Europe has experienced more extreme heatwaves, exacerbating fire risks and amplifying the challenges faced by firefighters and rescue teams. Temperatures had soared above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in many parts of Greece in days to the fire and forecasts indicated that the scorching weather would persist. Well, well, well ! Wildfires are traumatic and it is in the know of everyone around that the destructions are savage and quite recently it has become a regular feature across the globe. So let us come to the obvious question : Why wildfires are happening and how(?) Consider this. Around the same time Rhodes Island was burning there were heavy rains triggering floods in California. Heavy rains in the Northeastern United States in mid-July brought storm impacts in several states including New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Vermont received two months of rain in just a few days !! Let us go to the map below. Greece and the United States are placed on two opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. So, what’s the big deal ? The answer to the question is: Dipoles are created in the Atlantic Ocean !! What is an Ocean Dipole(?). Due to sudden changes in the Thermohaline Circulation; one part of the Ocean water gets heated as the other part cools off. Hence a di-pole is created. When it is created one part which has become warm causes intense rains, floods, cyclones et al and the cooler part becomes excessively dry and heated. These dry parts in summers are tantamount to forest fires and wildfires. I am giving you another example. Flooding and landslides in East Africa have killed dozens of people and forced hundreds of thousands to abandon their homes. Meanwhile, many miles away in Australia, a period of hot, dry weather has led to a spate of bushfires. Both weather events have been linked to higher-than-usual temperature differences between the two sides of the Indian Ocean. There are other reasons of wildfires though, but they are dwarfed in scale and would need a Himalayan notoriety to reach Rhode Island proportions !! As shown in the demonstration above heavy downpours have devastated parts of East Africa, with the Horn of Africa seeing up to 300% above average rainfall. Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia and South Sudan have been particularly badly affected, with flash floods and landslides hitting communities across the region. And, Australia, has a spate of bushfires. Weird things happening !! But why(?). This is happening because of Indian Ocean Dipole. What is (IOD)?. The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is the difference in sea surface temperature between two areas (or poles, hence dipole) – a western pole in the Arabian Sea (western Indian Ocean) and an eastern pole in the eastern Indian Ocean south of Indonesia. During a positive phase warm waters are pushed to the Western part of the Indian Ocean, while cold deep waters are brought up to the surface in the Eastern Indian Ocean. This pattern is reversed in the negative phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole. Bury yourself in the excellent book Indian Ocean Dipoles, Sea Surface Temperatures and Seasonal Rainfall by Gyan Prakash Singh to know more about ocean dipoles. The Book. Over the past several decades South Asian continents have found several droughts and floods. The book delves into exhaustive investigations of rainfall variability over South Asian Region and gives a good account of basic understanding of climate variability. In recent decade the sea surface temperature of all major oceans has warming trend which leaves its impact on rainfall and circulations. Thus, a dynamic of anomalous change is created leading to intense rains and catastrophic dry weathers ! Andrew Watkins, head of an Australian forecast bureau said the dipole was crucial to understanding the heatwave. The key culprit of our current and expected conditions is one of the strongest positive Indian Ocean dipole events on record, he says. A positive IOD means we have cooler than average water pooling off Indonesia, and this means we see less rain-bearing weather systems, and warmer than average temperatures for large parts of the country. Picture below depicts two diametrically opposite weather conditions borne out of Indian Ocean dipoles. So, what happened in Greece Rhode Island for an Atlantic Ocean dipole is replicated in Australia through Indian Ocean dipole. Fascinating !! The Future. Extreme climate and weather events caused by the dipole are predicted to become more common in the future as greenhouse gas emissions increase. In a 2014 study published in Nature, scientists in Australia, India, China and Japan modelled the effects of CO2 on extreme Indian Ocean dipoles, such as those in 1961, 1994 and 1997. Assuming emissions continue to go up, they projected that the frequency of extreme positive dipole events would increase this century from one every 17.3 years to one every 6.3 years. The countries in the west of the Indian Ocean, on the African coast, are going to see much, much more flooding and heavy rainfall relating to these events, say ocean researchers. We are going to get more damaging impacts on crops and on infrastructure and flooding. On the other hand, in the east of the Indian Ocean, islands on the west side of Indonesia are going to see a greater chance of drought and reduced rainfall. How to predict Indian Ocean Dipoles. Technology to the Fore. The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is a mode of climate variability observed in the Indian Ocean Sea surface temperature anomalies with one pole off Sumatra and the other pole near East Africa. An IOD event starts sometime in May-June, peaks in September-October and ends in November. Through atmospheric teleconnections, it affects the climate of many parts of the world, especially that of East Africa, Australia, India, Japan, and Europe. Owing to its large impacts, previous studies have addressed the predictability of the IOD using state of the art coupled climate models. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). Awakened to such large-scale damages, technology has come to predict the IOD using machine learning techniques, in particular artificial neural networks (ANNs). The IOD forecasts are generated for May to November from February-April conditions. The attributes for the ANNs are derived from sea surface temperature, 850 hPa (hectoPascals - Earth’s atmospheric pressure on the surface, standard pressure at sea level is about 1013 hPa) and 200 hPa geopotential height anomalies, using a correlation analysis for the period 1949–2018. An ensemble of ANN forecasts is generated using 500 samples with replacement using jackknife approach. The ensemble mean of the IOD forecasts indicate the machine learning based ANN models to be capable of forecasting the IOD index well in advance with excellent skills. The forecast skills are much superior to the skills obtained from the persistence forecasts that one would guess from the observed data. The ANN models also perform far better than the models of the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) with higher correlation coefficients and lower root mean square errors (RMSE) for all the target months of May-November. Please visit www.cheekychatur.com and read the blog The Rise of Artificial Intelligence. How it looks 100 Years From Now for an engrossing detail on Artificial Neural Networks. Please go to the first article and tap See All to view. How to predict Forest fires. Technology to the Fore. Geneva, Switzerland, 16 January 2023 : A dramatic rise in the frequency and severity of wildfires is undermining efforts to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in combating climate change. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 30% of the world’s population is exposed to deadly heatwaves on more than 20 days a year. The World Economic Forum launched the FireAId initiative to address the wildfire crisis in January 2022. Successfully piloted by Koc Holding in the South Aegean and West Mediterranean region of Türkiye in 2022, this wildfire risk mapping and logistic planning project improved wildfire prediction by combining static and meteorological datasets and reduced both response time and risk to firefighters. Due to its success, the approach is being scaled for wider use. During this difficult period of growing fire seasons and climate change, we are committed to continuing and strengthening this global engagement. We hope this report will inspire you to join these efforts, which can address the key drivers of catastrophic fires, increase the pace and scale of forest management and improve the resilience of increasingly threatened communities globally, said Jeremy Jurgens, Managing Director at the World Economic Forum. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning. This report urges the increased use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in predicting and directing responses to wildfires and managing forests. It follows the launch of the Global Risks Report 2023, which highlights failure to mitigate and adapt to climate change, natural disasters and extreme weather events, and biodiversity loss and environmental degradation among the top risks faced by societies. Do not worry. We are doing everything possible for you to lead a quality life !!