GS' Beats

School Days! Back in my Class XII, our school Principal decided that henceforth the School Pupil Leader (SPL) should be "Elected" by the Students, and not selected by the Senior Teachers as had been the norm in the past. I was one among the three Assistant SPL when I was in Class XI. The other two were girls from the Science stream. Thanks to constant reluctance of one of the other two, there were effectively only two of us doing the duty of Assistant SPL. The duties of Assistant SPL or even the SPL typically included ensuring that students stood in straight lines during the prayer session, students did not bunk the session by staying inside the class, making the late comers wait outside the gate, calling out people to read the news, thought for the day, make some announcements in "English" and the like. And yeah, the most important duty of howling loudly "Standard At Ease! Attention!" The eternal cure for a sore throat as you blow out all that you...

This is in response Lakshmi Chaudhry's article in the Firstpost.com titled " Unnecessarily Personal ", where she and her co-author Sandip Roy had blasted Modi for being "personal" in his attacks on the Gandhi family in his Amethi rally. Four points are in order - One, she should be reminded that "personal attacks" or "comical take on personalities" aren't necessarily journalists' realm. Anybody can do that as long as there are listeners, and is within the so called "Lakshman Rekha" or "Point of Decency". Blunt frontal attack of the abusive nature, such as the ones churned out Digvijay Singh, Beni Prasad Verma, Mamta Bannerji or that once-cerebral-now-ridiculous Derek O Brien, are the ones that are rank indecent.  She should probably remember that in the past she had her own "personal take" on "Robert Vadra", on how he managed to get "Priyanka Gandhi", leaving aside his pers...