By Ratnakar Tripathy Democracy: at a cold moment! I feel very blessed for where I live in Patna. No, it’s not a posh colony or a gated limbo of a  software community. The reason I feel lucky is on my right flank as I write, is a gynecological hospital, where babies keep getting born all the time. I get woken up by the forceful and healthy cries of hours-old babies demanding attention dictatorially at 2 AM. They sound like someone appealing urgently through my ever open window. The scolding cry of the helpless! There is human future on the right. On the left is the big wide lane that leads... 

  Ratnakar Tripathy The way I grew up and the kind of people I have come to know through choice or inheritance, the very word ‘rape’ was avoidable. As for the act, one thought rapes happen in some kind of netherworld that never dare come into contact with my universe. Way back in my teens, there was some hushed up gossip about a distant family member inflicting himself on a pretty worker in the village, I knew quite well. The matter was suppressed. But I do remember the woman wilting away with indignity after the incident and her stuttering husband’s face too, who lost all affection... 

Ratnakar Tripathy By Ratnakar Tripathy I am not a well-travelled man. Certainly not, compared to some globe-trotting friends and relatives who post impossible landscapes and objects on their facebook, kind of GPS footprints, as they gallop around the globe. But I have learnt one simple lesson during my travels – if you want to communicate with people, just treat their hearths as the ultimate centre of the earth. It helps you escape your own mental and material confines but more important, turns you into a joiner rather than a whishing meteorite from outer space. That’s why when I make the half-yearly... 

  Ratnakar-Tripathy By Ratnakar Tripathy Ghagha Ghat is no boondocks! It is just 200 meters away from Gandhi Ghat, the most glamorized ghat of Patna, meant to be a showpiece for the new shining Bihar.  It is also where I live. I believe I am well-placed in life, musically, if not otherwise. Everyday as I sit down to work and at times when in deep slumber, I get reminded of human mortality. For Ghagha is just a 2-minute walk from Gulabi Ghat, the cremation hub for my part of the city. As the funeral processions move hurriedly along the lane, they chant ‘Ram Naam Satya Hai [Ram’s name is... 

  The great Strife: choreographed! By Ratnakar Tripathy Recently a friend of mine sent me a mail which was all attachments – not a word in the mail but altogether 11 attachments in a multi-storeyed arrangement. These were news reports, pictures, photographs of posters hung in the Jawaharlal Nehru University by students who decided to organize a Mahishasur martyrdom Day on 29th October. Yes, Mahishasur, the famed character slain by the goddess Durga all over the pooja pandals in North and often South India being the man-buffalo in focus! Then there was a photo of the posters destroyed by... 

Batras  [बतरस] Ratnakar Tripathy By Ratnakar Tripathy Gaya: even as Nitish, the CM of Bihar is trying to mobilize the masses to assert Bihar’s right [adhikar] to special status, the Bihari populace or at least a large number of them seem more interested in their rights [adhikar] vis a vis the state government led by Nitish. This irony is becoming clearer by the day as after many years, politics in Bihar is stirring up and new and old voices are finding ready platform and eager audience. This even includes the stale jokes of a Laloo Yadav who is suddenly able to muster large crowds wherever... 

Ghoora [घूरा] Politician vs citizen: the philosophical essence of Lokpal/ Anna movement By Ratnakar Tripathy Despite all the yelling and jeering in the Indian parliament over the Lokpal issue in recent days and weeks, we the educated should calmly look at the philosophical drift of the great debate that Indian democracy is going through. The parliament will never be a tame and sober affair like an academic seminar in a university department. It will always remain a cross between a knives out board meeting and a family conference, where power play can be felt most palpably on the... 

Ghoora [घूरा] Death & Choora dahi in the village: lessons from nothingness! By Ratnakar Tripathy Recently, when I visited my village, as I now routinely do twice year during the months of November and then in March, I did get to sit around the Ghoora [open fireplace] and mix among the village folk as best as I can. This helps me justify the title of this column even though anyone in the village could make out I am just an impostor from the city as I never do manage to sit on my haunches with comfort, the inbuilt chair possessed by the human body. For fear of toppling face down... 

Ghoora [घूरा] The killing of a Bihari hero: Ramvilas Singh from Lakhisarai! By Ratnakar Tripathy Everyone loves good news. We even tend to avoid those people who have a habit of shouting bad news loudly from rooftops but prefer silence when there is something pleasing to report. The educated in Bihar in particular have become so greedy for good news these days, they plug their ears if you try to make a critical comment. There is a nice word in our language too that suggests itself to me – ‘mahatiyana [महटियाना ]’, meaning to ignore or avoid! This is understandable. For... 

Ghoora [घूरा] Division of UP: the argument and the politics! By Ratnakar Tripathy The most hurtful thing an opponent can do to a politician is to steal his ‘insincere’ slogan and make it its own. Even worse? To build up a good, indeed better argument in the favour of the slogan. This is what seems to have happened in Uttar Pradesh with Mayawati deciding to take measures to split the state into four parts – Poorvanchal, Paschim Pradesh, Bundelkhand and Awadh. The BJP, the Congress, the Samajwadi party and Ajit Singh’s RLD are all stumped. Their bewildered responses highlighted...