A summary of the first day's play in the Ranji Trophy league matches at various venues.
'I can tell you the case that hurts me the most is the one in which the little boy is forced to sign the Kohinoor over.' 'You take a mother away from a child, you surround him with grown ups speaking a different language, you tell him he must sign this over or else...'
'Even if you give me a good role, I will try to make it look bad because nobody is perfect.' Manoj Bajpayee gets ready to play yet another negative character in Tevar.
'I loved doing Bunty Aur Babli. I love working with Rohit Shetty. I just shot for Dilwale. Kuch bhi karva leta hain mujhse (he makes me do anything)!' I worked in Jolly LLB for free. It was just a night's work. We laughed till we died during the shooting. It was such a cute character!' Meet Bollywood's busiest actor, Sanjay Mishra.
The civil services seem to have gone sour under the NDA government. Ministers exercise executive power in a partisan manner. Consequently, a regime of favouritism holds sway over the corridors of power, feels Ram Ugrah.
Round-up of the Ranji Trophy games being played across the country
'Mr Mehta's jousts with owners and politicians taught many in the trade that editorial freedom is not given, it has to be fought for daily, and seized, especially in these times when the borders between journalism and paid-for-content masquerading as the real thing has permeated almost every newspaper in the land barring a couple.'
The most successful team in the history of Ranji Trophy, Mumbai, did it again! With splendid performance by their players, Mumbai managed to secure quarter-finals berth.
M R Venkatesh, chartered accountant turned political commentator tells Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com that Modi's war is not against the opposition parties or the Congress but against the bureaucracy and the establishment.
'The starting point of the Udta Punjab casting was that we didn't think stars would do a film like this, so we'd take non-stars. As the names kept rolling in and we had Kareena Kapoor and Shahid and Alia Bhatt, I was like yaar yeh ho kya raha hai?'
Round-up of the Ranji Trophy matches being played in different parts of the country.
'Until India fully absorbs the fundamentals of international relations, it will continue to get evil for good,' says Brahma Chellaney.
The new ordinance on land acquisition will allow land grabbers to deprive millions, destroy agriculture, horticulture, rivers, forests, tree cover and mangroves to extract minerals as well as ground water, without replenishment at a pace that will not leave anything for the next generation, warns activist Medha Patkar.
The National Innovation Foundation India (NIF), Ahmedabad shared the ideas that shined at the IGNITE 2015.
'To be complimented for a fantastic performance after just viewing the trailer! This never happened to me before.' 'If you have given a party a mandate for five years, stop blaming it for everything under the sun.' 'My kind of films do not make stars. Now we, the actors, after years of struggle, have created a parallel industry where we have made a name for ourselves. But stars we are not nor can we be.' 'For a boy coming from a remote village of Bihar at the Indo-Nepal border where no transport was available to commute to the nearest town, even coming to Delhi and then Mumbai and finally watching himself on the silver screen was a huge thing!'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Arunachal Pradesh on Friday, February 20, irritated the Chinese government so much that it summoned the Indian ambassador to register its protest against Modi visiting a territory China claims as Southern Tibet.
'Where have we failed, as parents, teachers and leaders, that our children have forgotten all tenets of decent behaviour and respect for women?' President Pranab Mukherjee asks the nation on the eve of Republic Day.
Mahesh Rangarajan, director of the historic Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi, tells Sheela Bhatt how the first prime minister will always remain relevant, and the efforts being made to keep his legacy alive.
'By resorting to divisive issues, the BJP is giving the impression that even if it is voted to power it won't do anything new to give Bihar a facelift. It will repel voters with the belief that the BJP can't do anything without communal polarisation as its core ideology. This is sad and unfortunate,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'He is just a 22 year old who has no knowledge of India's laws or Constitution. How will such a man handle a discussion on reservations in an intelligent, lawful manner?' 'Let me alert everybody that he is using the 1985 formula. Back then they opposed reservations based on caste for OBCs and now they want to be included in the same category. This clearly tells us what their intention is. They don't want reservations; they want reservations to be cancelled altogether.'
'The Modi-Xi and Modi-Obama meetings, with an interval of just 12 days, are juxtaposed superbly at a crucial point in the prime minister's life. Can Modi carve out a win-win situation with the superpower and the emerging superpower at the same time?'
'It is obvious within these two months that in many ways Narendra Modi has a great degree of resemblance with Indira Gandhi.' 'The same style of management of power. The same kind of attempt to reduce a large section of the political leadership into, if not spectators, bureaucrats. His leaders are taking orders from him and executing those orders.' 'This is the model that has worked in Gujarat. And he is hoping that it will work in India.'
Natraj Behera scored his second century of the match as Odisha rallied to earn a draw after being forced to follow on against Mumbai, on the fourth and final day of their Group A Ranji Trophy match, in Mumbai.
'Minorities should not fear a Modi sarkar... Who has given the right to kill in the name of religion? No one! You are not James Bond 007, that you will just take a shotgun and kill anybody at your whims and fancies. We are not living in a banana republic...' The inimitable Shatrughan Sinha on Narendra Modi as a dabbang action hero, what a Modi Sarkar would be like.
'If Modi arrived like a juggernaut, he left like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were being dismantled bit by bit. It was as if India had seceded quietly from him.' Shiv Viswanathan's social science fiction about what India would be like in 2020.
Eminent business journalist and author Tamal Bandyopadhyay discussed Budget with rediff.com readers on Tuesday.
Fifty years ago, India and Pakistan fought a short but bloody war. The author finds out how Sainik Samachar, the defence ministry's journal, reported it.
