Hindustan Times

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Raj jailed, his men sack Mumbai

It's something Mumbai had not seen in eight years - a near-total shutdown.

As news of Raj Thackeray's arrest in Ratnagiri spread, taxis and autorickshaws went off the roads, schools declared a holiday and business establishments stayed shut. The last time Mumbai saw something like this was in July 2000, when Raj's uncle, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, was held for instigating a communal divide.

There was an anti-Raj sentiment across the country with Parliament witnessing unruly scenes, chief ministers seeking action against him and protests against the Maharashtra Naynirman Sena (MNS) chief turning violent in Bihar.

Raj was brought to Mumbai and got bail in a Bandra court, but he couldn't be taken to a Kalyan court before it shut. He was facing charges for the attacks against North Indian railway recruitment board candidates by the MNS on Sunday. He remained at Manpada police station for the night and will be produced in the Kalyan court by noon on Wednesday Over 1,000 MNS workers have decided to camp outside the police station through the night.

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Labels: arrest, autorickshaws, buses burnt, candidates, damaged, MNS, mob attacks, Mumbai, protests, Raj Thackeray, Raj's uncle, RRB, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, taxis

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Board of Control for Cricket in India was on 25-year ‘tax holiday’

It was a 25-year-old lapse that few outside the cricket board’s inner circle knew of.

According to documents available with Hindustan Times, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, one of the richest sport bodies in the world, did not file returns on income 1980-81 onwards.

Over the last three years, the BCCI treasurer’s office has had its hands full.

N. Srinivasan’s first job, when he took over as treasurer in 2005, was to try and regularise the registration of documents to the Registrar of Societies Act.

A top BCCI source confirmed the contents of the treasurer’s report that will be presented at the board’s 79th Annual General Meeting in Mumbai on September 27. “Yes, the returns were not filed since 1981, but they have now been regularised,” he told HT, declining to be identified because the report is yet to be presented.

The board, through its auditors, undertook the arduous task of collating the necessary documents pertaining to that 25-year period and filed them with the registrar in 2007.

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Labels: BCCI, Board treasurer N. Srinivasan, cricket board, documents, income, Mumbai, Registrar of Societies Act, tax holiday

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

King Khan in crosshairs now

He game of one-up man ship between the feuding Thackeray cousins - Raj and Uddhav has put Bollywood actors in their crosshairs.

With Raj taking on Jaya Bachchan for what he termed an insult to Maharashtrians, his uncle Bal Thackeray, Uddhav's father - threatened with losing the 'Marathi manoos' agenda picked on Shah Rukh Khan for calling himself a "Dilliwala" through the party mouthpiece.

Jaya asking Maharashtrians to forgive her for speaking in Hindi at a music release gave Raj, head of the Maharashtra Naynirman Sena (MNS), the perfect excuse to again rake up the 'Maharashtra for Maharashtrians' issue.

And he forced the Shiv Sena to extend its attack to another star "Mumbai made Khan a baadshah (king), but he still calls himself a Dilliwala. If that is the case, why did you come to Mumbai?"

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Labels: Jaya Bachchan, Maharashtra, Maharashtrians issue, MNS, Mumbai, Raj Thackeray, Shah Rukh Khan, Shiv Sena

Monday, September 8, 2008

For them, Yoga is just childs play

It begins to rain, and the snails curl into their shells.

The two and three-year-olds have just done a variation of an asana which helps digestion. Mumbai's youngest yoga pupils, some of whom have barely learnt to walk a few months ago, cannot follow instructions more complex than that.

These sessions at Little Bo Peep, a playschool at Khar Danda, are attended mainly by children from upscale nearby Khar and Bandra. Even Kid's Concept at Pali Hill, Bandra, has yoga sessions for toddlers.

"Nowadays, competition and stress begin at a very young age. This will provide them with some ammunition and focus for the years ahead," said Poonam Mirchandani, founder of Little Bo Peep.

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Labels: asana, competition, digestion, Khar Danda, Little Bo Peep, Mumbai, playschool, sessions, shells, snails, Yoga

Monday, August 25, 2008

Mosques lead attack on terror

From Friday, the old, rusty loudspeakers atop the numerous mosques in Mumbai's far-flung northern suburb Mira Road started beaming a distinctly new message.

Before and after each azaan or prayer, imams of at least 24 of the 30-odd local mosques are asking residents to report suspicious terror-linked activity to either the mosque authorities or the police.

With the tremors of 31 bombings in Gujarat and Karnataka in the last two months still being felt across the nation, Mira Road, usually in the news for drinking water crises, has had a bigger reason to worry.

While all l6 suspects in these bombings are Muslims, Mira Road has housed the A-League of suspects like prime accused in the 11/7 Mumbai train blasts Asif Khan and Ehtesham Siddique and Ahmedabad serial blasts key suspect techie Abdul Subhan.

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Labels: Ahmedabad serial blasts, anti terrorism, attack, Hadis, imams, Islam, Mira Road, mosques, Mumbai, Muslims, prayer, suspects, terror

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

15km/hr - Delhi's traffic is India's second slowest: Study

Here is another dubious distinction for Delhi: its peak-hour traffic crawl has been found the second worst in a countrywide survey at 15 kmph. But for Bangalore, it could have been the worst.

A large number of Delhiites got a taste of this crawl on Tuesday as they rolled off the Gurgaon Express way and drove straight into a jam tailing off for miles from the Dhaula Kuan clover leaf.

“It was maddening,” fumed an office-goer who had spent a better part of the day negotiating the crawl. And he was worried about the journey back, through the returning peak-hour crawl.

Let’s just call it The Great Delhi Crawl.

It has now been endorsed by a countrywide survey conducted on behalf of the urban development ministry by Wilbur Smith Associates. Bangalore came out worst at 10 kmph peak hour traffic speed.

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Labels: Bangalore, BRT, clover leaf, crawl, delhi, Delhi's traffic, Delhiites, Dhaula Kuan, India's Second Slowest, jam, Kolkata, Mumbai, peak hour traffic speed, traffic

Monday, August 18, 2008

Travellers shift to trains as airfares soar

With low cost carriers becoming increasingly expensive, frequent fliers, particularly between Delhi and Mumbai, have switched to train travel.

In July, there was a 47 per cent jump in earnings from reserved tickets in trains originating across North India.

"In May and June, the number of passengers who went from Delhi to Mumbai was 33.7 per cent more than usual," said a senior railway official on condition of anonymity "We had to augment capacity in every train to carry that additional load."

Fourteen extra coaches have been attached to 12 Rajdhanis. Twelve Shatabdis have got 19 extra coaches, while around 50 mail/express trains have got 80 additional compartments.

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Labels: airfares, carriers, coaches, compartments, delhi, expensive, express trains, low cost, mail trains, Mumbai, passengers, railway official, Rajdhanis, Shatabdis, tickets, trains, travel

Monday, August 4, 2008

Aboard the Beijing Bullet, lessons for Delhi

IN LESS than two minutes, the Harmony silently glided past the top speed of India's fastest trains, the Rajdhani and the Shatabdi.

A week before the most definitive moment in China's modern history as a rising superpower - the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing at 8.08 pm on 08.08.08 - I bought a second-class ticket out of the capital. HTs daily dispatch for the Beijing Olympics began aboard China's latest and the world's fastest intercity bullet train that will shuttle football fans between inland Beijing and coastal Tianjin at a record 350 kmph in 30 minutes. By 2013, a high-speed railway wn cut train travel between BeijingShanghai from 10 hours to five. I skipped the media test ride to line up as a common commuter between inland Beijing and China's third-largest city and its busiest northern seaport about 135 km away The Made-in China bullet trains cut the com- mute from a previous 70 minutes at 200-250 kmph to 30 minutes. The new commute combines Beijing and Tianjin into one city Chinese researcher Zhou Gansi told China Central Television. "It can dramatically change people's way of life." The local train from Mumbai's southern financial hub to its northern suburbs takes twice as long. Imagine the potential of a Delhi-Chandigarh or Mumbai-Ptme train giving professionals the choice of a comfortable daily intercity commute instead of migration. The fastest Mumbai-Pune train takes three hours to cover 192 km. The seven-year infrastructure revolution inside India's largest and most powerful neighbour goes beyond its 37 Olympic stadiums.

My journey began at Asia's largest railway station (by one estimate, the size of 20 football fields) that opened in south Beijing last week with none of the fanfare that would accompany such an event if it happened in India.

After all, Beijing opened the world's biggest international airport terminal this year, to welcome over 10,000 athletes and modern China's biggest-ever influx of foreigners (about half a million) from August 8-24.

The solar panel-roofed station looks like an international airport, and is bigger than the 91,000-seat Bird's Nest stadium that will host the opening ceremony. As commuters bought instant noodles they prepared with hot water from the station taps, I was the only Indian in the crowd, struggling to decipher Chinese signs.

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Labels: Beijing, Beijing Olympics, china, fastest trains, International Airport, Mumbai, pune, trains, travel

Monday, June 30, 2008

Are you feeling Seasonal Affective Disorder? Blame it on the rains

Dark Skies and incessant rain are casting a cloud of depression over Indian cities, say scientists, terming the phenomenon as SAD -Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Thirty four-year-old Mumbai yoga instructor Pallavi Acharya, for instance, finds it hard to get out of bed these days. "The grayness, gloominess and rains make me feel low during the monsoons. When you open the papers and read about diseases such as leptospirosis, dengue and malaria, it gets you down," she said.

Mental health charities in Mumbai record an 80 per cent increase in calls to helplines during the rains. Some callers are clinically depressed, but there are also large numbers of previously happy people who just feel low because of the weather.

"From September to June we get around five calls a day but during the monsoon it is 15-18," said Johnson Thomas, director of Aasra, a mental health NGO. Dr Rajesh Sagar, psychiatrist, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, said there should be two episodes of depression in consecutive months to classify it as SAD. "It is not commonly diagnosed in Delhi. It is more prevalent in European countries." However, one of the world's leading SAD ex perts told Hindustan Times that seasonal depression also occurs in tropical coun tries during the monsoon months.

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Labels: dengue, helplines, malaria, Mental health charities, Monsoon, Mumbai, Mumbai yoga instructor Pallavi Acharya, rainfall, SAD, weather, Yoga

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Mega rock show to wow fans in India and aliens in space

Flying Saucers, Paul McCartney's brainwave projections, and robots in a green field is what Frank Yandolino wants at a Woodstock-like music festival in India. His object: to greet aliens.

The 62-year-old assistant to the producers of the original Woodstock festival is organising Signal To Space, a three-day rock show to be held in world capitals New York, Berlin and Tokyo, and one Indian city in summer 2009. Yandolino is currently scouting for green sites of over 100 acres in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore to be the Indian venue.

"This is a festival about science and experiments, and it will be the largest music festival ever.. India is perfect because it is an IT country and this festival is all about space and technology," says the man who was inspired by Michael Luckman's Alien Rock: The Rock 'n' Roll Extraterrestrial Connection, that records experiences rock musicians have had with aliens.

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Labels: aliens in space, delhi, fans India, Frank Yandolino, largest music festival, Mega rock show, Mumbai, Woodstock festival

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Jaipur beat Mumbai, help Delhi reach semis

Mumbai are hosting the climax of the inaugural IPL tournament, but they may have been shut out of their own party.

On Monday, an unbeaten sixth wicket stand of 69 runs between Niraj Patel and Ravindra Jadeja took Jaipur to a nail-biting last-ball win.

Even in the beginning of the league, Sachin Tendulkar's forced absence, compounded by Harbhajan Singh's ouster after 'Slapgate', had Mumbai reeling. Only after the Little Master returned that the team hit a purple patch and nurtured hopes of a final-four showing.

Before Monday's contest, with their fate hinging on the outcome of the last two matches, the one team Mumbai would have desperately wanted to avoid was Shane Warne's Jaipur Unbeaten in the fortress of the Sawai Man Singh stadium all tournament, Jaipur cut down Mumbai and confirmed that Delhi, on 15 points, entered the semis.

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Labels: climax, cricket, delhi, harbhajan singh, inaugural IPL tournament, IPL, IPL matches, Mumbai, Niraj Patel, Ravindra Jadeja, sachin tendulkar, semifinals, Shane Warne

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