Tag: Scandeep

The headline was hard to miss – and too salacious to skip the story. Here, in nutshell, goes the story that appeared in a leading Odia daily under the catchy title “Angel Priya bhabi asithile; dekhile Sukuti Sahu” (“Came in search of Angel Priya, Found Sukuti Sahu instead”) today. Attracted by the beautiful profile picture […]

The organisers must have been pleasantly surprised. With rains lashing the city almost all day on Friday, empty stands at the Kalinga Stadium, the venue for the ongoing Hockey World League (HWL), would have been entirely along expected lines notwithstanding the fact that it was the semi-final of the marquee event. Instead, it was a […]

The mask has fallen off. The Narendra Modi government at the Centre has proved that for all its talk of ‘cooperative federalism’, partisan party considerations outweigh its commitment to federalism, the bedrock of Centre-state relations in India. Instead of acting as the ‘neutral umpire’, it has acted in a manner that is designed to protect […]

One of the key attributes of a successful politician is the ability to say something in public while meaning something entirely different. Thus, when BJD President and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik says on the eve of the winter session of the Assembly “We are ready to discuss any issue that the Opposition may raise,” what […]

It looks like only yesterday when expectations about a film – at least of the blockbuster variety – were built up over months and, in some cases, even years. Fans waited with bated breath for the big banner film with their favourite stars to hit the silver screen. And when it did, it invariably stayed […]

Two different cases in two different cities nearly 1150 kms apart in the recent past tell us the one bitter truth we have ignored for far too long: our school children are under great stress. In the first, a Class XI student of Ryan International School in Gurugram allegedly killed Pradhyumn Thakur, a Class II […]

There is absolutely no doubt that Koraput police has messed up the Kunduli gang rape case big time. Over three weeks after the gang rape of a Class IX girl allegedly by a group of four armed, uniformed men in Kunduli that sent shock waves through the state, the police is no closer to identifying […]

The signals emerging from the series of meetings Odisha Congress leaders have had with party vice president Rahul Gandhi in the last week or so make one thing clear: it is all over bar the shouting for Prasad Harichandan. They also suggest that he is most likely to be replaced by Niranjan Patnaik, who was […]

Losing an election is part of the game for a political party. Every party has had its share of electoral setbacks, only to bounce back again. One just has to remember the stunning comeback of the Congress barely three years after it suffered a morale shattering defeat in the 1977 general election or the spectacular […]

Assembly elections in Odisha are still two years away. But the battle for the control of the media, especially of the electronic variety, between the two principal contenders for power is already getting uglier by the day. Neither the BJD, which is facing a challenge for the very first time from an aggressive BJP, nor […]

The fight has now begun in right earnest. Ahead of the BJP national executive meet in Bhubaneswar on April 15 & 16, the battle of attrition between the saffron party and the ruling BJD has sent the political temperature soaring in the state. With both sides determined not to give an inch, things can be […]

By Sandeep  Sahu Think of transgenders and the images that come flashing across the mind are those of garishly painted wannabe women landing up at your place for the customary bakhsis whenever there a birth in the family, seeking to fleece unsuspecting people in trains, bus stops and other public places with their nauseating antics […]

By Sandeep Sahu Having announced to the snooping landlord that I would be checking out the next day, I was determined not to return without finding a new accommodation, but did not know where to find one. Early next morning, I went to the Vani Vihar campus and was sitting at my favourite place in […]

By Sandeep Sahu Suddenly, there are few takers for houses on rent in Bhubaneswar. Just about everyone in the city seems to have a house – even those who squatted on public land till a few years ago. And everyone is busy adding floors or extending the constructed area on the lone floor to make […]

By Sandeep Sahu It is the worst time to be a journalist in years. Never before has it so happened that you are in the middle of chasing your latest story when you get a terse two-liner on your mailbox or receive a phone call from your boss informing you that you have been ‘fired’! […]