tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-107878532024-03-14T01:22:33.134+05:30Reporter's diaryAll the 5 W's, 1 H and a BIG O-pinion.Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.comBlogger205125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-15138917779031450942014-01-09T05:09:00.000+05:302014-01-09T05:09:12.715+05:30Early weeks of motherhood
In the first few weeks after I delivered bub, I felt as though a truck had run over me but somehow left me with a very cute baby. I was dazed, sleepless, in pain, exhausted and with just about enough sense to recognise the joy of finally bringing bub into the world. Life was a blur of feeding and nappy changing with a background score of a lot of crying.
People often ask me what motherhood Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-3396178480028234592014-01-04T05:34:00.001+05:302014-01-04T05:49:08.380+05:30The pleasures of being out and about with bub
“How old is he?” asked the old lady next to me on the bus. She was expecting a grandchild any day and was excited by the sight of bub who was in his buggy fast asleep in his thick woolly bunny outfit. Since I’ve had bub, I’ve had conversations on public transport with all kinds of women - young, middle-aged, old, Asian, black and white and after four years of living here, its helped me discoverAlaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-72507488195720965962012-12-09T19:09:00.001+05:302012-12-09T19:10:24.555+05:30Pack a 'State of Wonder' for your holidays
I recently read this book for a book club meeting and thought I'd post this short summary here as suggested reading while you lie on a beach somewhere on your December break.
The women of the Lakashi tribe living deep in the Amazon forests are having babies even in their 70’s. If this miracle of science can be cracked and marketed in a little pill, the pharmaceutical company bankrolling the Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-49596968331218900362012-11-19T02:31:00.000+05:302012-11-19T02:36:32.809+05:30Pakistan must seize the day and educate its children
15-year old Malala Yousafzai is recovering in a UK hospital.
When a Taliban fanatic’s bullet wounded 15-year old Malala Yousafzai, Pakistan was forced to make a choice. It could continue it’s dangerous drift towards the bigotry and ignorance of her attackers or decide to invest in a future where education can dispel them. Thankfully, this last week, Pakistan has shown that it is ready to Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-25226812450095740792012-08-16T06:21:00.000+05:302012-08-16T06:24:13.051+05:30In Mamata Banerjee's Bengal - don't ask, don't yell
Shiladitya Chowdhury, arrested for asking questions.
Tilak Chowdhury has just had his worst Indian Independence
Day.
His brother Shiladitya Chowdhury was arrested last week for
asking West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee a few uncomfortable questions
about the rise in fertiliser prices at a public rally. In Mamata’s version of
democracy that is unacceptable and the poor man Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com0SH 5, West Bengal, India22.031886 87.17810921.560879 86.546395 22.502893 87.809823000000009tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-12778672578001912352012-08-06T06:41:00.000+05:302012-08-06T06:47:14.437+05:30Women’s boxing makes its breakthrough at London 2012
India's M. C. Mary Kom in action at the Olympics
Another
all-male bastion was broken into today with the start of the first ever
women’s boxing competition at the Olympics and it was a lucky
last-minute internet search that revealed two tickets for a place at
this historic ringside. My interest in women’s boxing was really due to
the belated discovery that an Indian woman from Manipur, Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-92156639342117383002012-05-26T18:20:00.000+05:302012-05-26T18:22:57.134+05:30London boys, keep your hands to yourself
Courtesy: The Guardian
At the Charing Cross station last night, a tall gangly
teenager had the audacity to squeeze my bum on a crowded platform and walk on
calmly. He probably looked like a hero to his friends because the girl in the
group was giggling. I glowered at her and she quickly said, “It wasn’t me, it
was him.”
Since she confirmed that and since a police officer
descended the Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-44415178915967657762012-04-04T00:21:00.002+05:302012-04-04T00:25:11.089+05:30TIME magazine should pull Narendra Modi off the list
Reuters' Arko Dutta's iconic image of Qutubuddin Ansari begging for mercy during the riots.
TIME magazine has shown extremely poor editorial judgement by including Narendra Modi in a voting list of 2012’s “influential” people who are “leaders, artists, innovators, icons and heroes.”
As Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat, Narendra Modi is an elected leader - a sad outcome of India’s flawed Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-87171844768509234942011-12-10T05:55:00.005+05:302011-12-10T06:09:45.363+05:30Book Review: 'The Snow People' by Marie Herbert
I suppose we will all promise anything in the first flush of romance. So it was with British Polar explorer Wally Herbert, who offered to take his newly wedded wife, Marie Herbert and their 10-month old daughter to live 800 miles within the Arctic Circle with one of the most isolated people on Earth – the Inughuit or ‘real people’.
The young family came to live on Herbert Island, just off the Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-71384066043281704422011-08-30T04:19:00.003+05:302011-08-30T04:39:51.847+05:30Jill by Philip Larkin'Jill' by Philip Larkin is an insight into the stratified world of 1940s Oxford University. A young man, John Kemp from the north of England ends up sharing a room at the University with a brash, uber-confident Londoner, Christopher Warner. Kemp's desperation in trying to get with the in crowd even as they mock and denigrate him at every turn reveals some incredible class differences. Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-53888014151113200112011-08-21T01:16:00.002+05:302011-08-24T01:30:51.716+05:30'Gujarat Beyond Gandhi'At the height of the Ayodhya movement, with tension spreading in large ripples across north India, political and social psychologist Ashis Nandy interviewed an RSS pracharak (worker). Despite being very familiar with the Hindu fundamentalist ideology that was leading to those dramatic shifts in Indian political and social life, Nandy emerged from that interview completely shaken.
He wrote about Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-9212010742187629952011-07-14T04:26:00.000+05:302011-07-14T04:26:16.332+05:30States love their secrets but we want the factsAll governments say they want to stop the flow of illicit arms, but listening to many of them at the UN today, it became clear that not many are willing to do anything about it.
This is because it will involve much greater transparency on how they report on arms transfers and this immediately makes governments uncomfortable.
Amnesty International’s findings show that the biggest source of Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-57755296971642745592011-07-04T22:20:00.002+05:302012-01-27T04:05:15.155+05:30Urban houses for an ancient tribe destroys a way of life in Nicobar
One of the new houses built by the government for the Nicobari tribals. Courtesy: Prince Rasheed.
The force of the 2004 undersea Indian Ocean earthquake was so intense that the island of Trinket split in three. Trinket is part of the Nicobar archipelago of 22 islands that belong to India. The government moved all the local Nicobari tribals to a neighbouring island but Gopinath Jeem and a few Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-21324421461648584622011-06-22T23:42:00.000+05:302011-06-22T23:42:01.920+05:30How I got my water bottle afterall<!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
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mso-padding-alt:0cm Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-28063649006185841482011-05-28T17:13:00.002+05:302011-05-28T17:17:41.014+05:30A place for philosophy in UK's immigration policy
The world famous Notting Hill Carnival. One reason for starting it, among others, was to respond to the race riots.
I was tempted to put an old college assignment in a Royal Mail post box a few weeks ago addressed to David Cameron, the British Prime Minister.
While pursuing a Master’s degree, I had written a prescriptive policy paper addressed to him, keeping in mind his personal and Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-41222582830941511372011-04-18T04:40:00.000+05:302011-04-18T04:40:15.654+05:30Open letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moonDear UNSG,
I read the testimony of a survivor of the Sri Lankan war that ended in May 2009. She said many things that moved me but I was struck by the fact that even in the tiny northern strip of Sri Lanka, far, far away from your headquarters in New York, she remembered and hoped that the UN would intervene to rescue her and her children.
UNSG Ban Ki-moon
That was a long time ago. The Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-40274449263815957932011-03-30T04:44:00.001+05:302011-03-30T04:46:30.293+05:30Cricket made me nostalgic about IndiaI rarely get homesick. But today, on the eve of the Indo-Pak cricket world cup semi-final, I’m bummed that I’m not in India.
I love what cricket does to the country - how CEOs, housewives, students, peons, society types, slum dwellers and everyone in between is just Indian (or Indian origin, if you want to get technical) for a day.
I remember that feeling so well from a match between IndiaAlaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-75919809289073107532011-03-27T01:00:00.000+05:302011-03-27T01:00:25.668+05:30Why your signature matters to the people on the street in BahrainOn Friday morning the online team at Amnesty International was in for a pleasant surprise.
At work we have our Amnesty website open on our computers throughout the day and are very familiar with trends on the number of people who sign our web petitions.
That’s why when we posted a petition addressed to the King of Bahrain on Thursday afternoon we were amazed to see that in less than 24 hours Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-2751163047832574282011-03-20T07:38:00.000+05:302011-03-20T07:38:28.494+05:30Book Review: Egypt's Road to Jerusalem.At the height of the February uprising in Egypt I happened to come upon former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s book ‘Egypt’s road to Jerusalem’. I thought this was a good time to read his story and found a cautiously written tale about the inner workings of the negotiating teams of Egypt and Israel that led to the signing of the historic peace treaty between the two countries in Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-24720439171672452712011-03-03T23:18:00.002+05:302011-03-03T23:46:38.975+05:30Net-savvy granny blogs about life in a long-forgotten India
Lalitha Ramakrishnan at her daughter's house in Chennai
A young Indian man working in the Home Ministry in Delhi received an urgent telegram in 1945 from his parents in south India. It said, “Start immediately. Marriage fixed.” Even as he dutifully began preparing for his travels to marry a woman he had never met or spoken to he received another telegram. “Don’t come. Marriage cancelled.”
Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-2495556398112675102011-01-20T20:23:00.003+05:302011-01-21T03:46:58.552+05:3010 things to know about the injusitce done to Dr.Binayak Sen
Dr.Binayak Sen's appeal hearing is coming up on Monday, 24th January. Any reporter will tell you that covering a legal battle involves so many twists and turns that audiences and readers end up getting overwhelmed and bogged down in the detail killing their interest. To simplify things, here is a brief background and some key things to know about Dr. Binayak Sen.
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/* Font Definitions *Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-7705774638441690272011-01-17T17:23:00.000+05:302011-01-17T17:23:28.016+05:30Travel blog updatesApologies for the drought here in recent months. I've been working, worrying, traveling, thinking etc. etc. There have been a few updates on the travel blog so let me direct you there while I think of something sensational to say here.
Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-56102640047758812282010-10-13T01:52:00.005+05:302010-10-13T04:24:46.257+05:30Howard Jacobson thinks Indians really get his humour
Howard Jacobson, author of The Finkler Question signs copies of his book at the Royal Festival Hall in London . His book has been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2010.
I recently suggested to my friends that we all read the Man Booker prize-winner of 2010 and get together to discuss the book.
One of the recipients of my email wrote back saying we should also place bets on which of theAlaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-44858730464170475282010-10-04T03:49:00.003+05:302010-10-04T03:59:42.224+05:30Starfish EnterpriseKeeping me company on the Tube these days is "Half the Sky", a book about the horrors of trafficking in women, written by the American journalist couple Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. At the end of a chapter called "Rescuing girls is the easy part", where the authors narrate their experience rescuing two Cambodian girls from the clutches of pimps, there is a beautiful old Hawaiian parable. Alaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10787853.post-30149911327939491572010-09-25T16:49:00.001+05:302010-09-25T16:50:32.321+05:30Intro to Alaska in the Guardian
Seward Highway leading out of Anchorage into the Kenai Peninsula. One of the most beautiful roads I have ever driven on. It is flanked by the waters of the Cook Inlet and the Chugach Mountains.
Wrote an introduction on Alaska for the Guardian travel website. You can read it here. http://www.ivebeenthere.co.uk/places/united-states/alaska/profile.jspAlaphia Zoyabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18407523065033603718noreply@blogger.com0