New Delhi, Nov.7 (ANI): It was as close to the slum-dog moment as the Obamas could get in their India tour. The US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama met with 16 children of labourers at the Humayun's tomb in New Delhi today.
 
The children, aged between five and seven, do not go to a regular school because they are too poor. They receive informal education due to the voluntary efforts of  Mr K.K. Mohammad, the Superintendent of the Archaeological Survey of India who has taken upon himself to get some basic literacy tools to these kids.
 

New Delhi, Nov.6 (ANI): Most Indians are puzzled as to why foreign heads of state would choose to pay a visit to Humayun's tomb in New Delhi rather than the Red Fort, which is architecturally more ornate, and historically, has recorded more events within its walls.  

President Obama will be visiting the tomb of this Mughal emperor on November 7 and not the Taj Mahal in Agra, which is not too far from Delhi, and is one of the wonders of the world, but also the tomb of one of the later Mughals. 

New Delhi, Nov 4(ANI): Highly placed sources in Washington have revealed that United States President Barack Obama is likely to stop over for a few hours in Pakistan on his way to India.

While Obama had announced that he would be visiting Pakistan in 2011, sources said that the pressure on the President by Pakistan for a brief stop-over was very intense and possibilities of his stopping to have a meeting solely on anti-terrorism operations could not be ruled out.
 

Washington, Oct. 6 (ANI): The first ever visit by President Barack Obama to India will be marked by its ordinariness instead of its extraordinariness, if one goes by what US officials say. There are no big ticket items on the agenda and certainly nothing comparable to the civilian nuclear deal signed during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington in 2005.
 

A few days left for Eid and Srinagar is like a ghost town. It is the holy month of Ramadan and in normal course, the bazaars should have been chock-a-block full with shoppers. Instead there are security forces patrolling the streets trying to save themselves from arsonists and ensuring that the curfew is not disrupted.

On other days, strike calls by the separatist Hurriyat leaders keep shops shut and people inside their homes. The daily fast or 'roza' is broken in silence inside tomb like homes with just a frugal iftar. The elaborate preparations are missing. Very few families can afford to buy dry-fruit and more pertinently, who will risk going out into the streets to buy them?

Smita Prakash, New Delhi

As India observes Teachers Day this weekend, it is time to spare a thought for the Kashmiri students who are not in school.

Children in Srinagar, the summer capital of the restive state of Jammu and Kashmir, have been sitting at home for the past two-and-a-half months, unable to attend classes due to a cycle of shutdown calls given by the separatists and curfew orders imposed by the administration.

The young children are witnessing rage on the streets and frustration at home.Some are joining the protests, egged on by peers and adults who urge them to be part of the struggle for 'azadi' (freedom), telling them that education can wait for now.

New Delhi, Aug.28 (ANI): On August 20th, Priyanka Gandhi appeared at Veer Bhoomi, the memorial in New Delhi dedicated to her father and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, to pay her respects on his 66th birth anniversary, and photographers at the location went into a tizzy clicking her from every angle.  

The reason was that Priyanka had changed her hairdo. Gone was the severe crop cut which accentuated her near perfect features? In place was a ‘bed hair’ look. It’s a relatively new style where tousled curly hair sits naturally on the head and nape and doesn’t look purposefully styled. It is less severe than the crop cut that she used to sport.
 

New Delhi, Aug.25 (ANI): The recent spurt in violence in a few districts of the Kashmir Valley is being termed as an Intifada by many journalists. Perhaps because they perceive that the fight is popular and the street protestors are fighting a repressive regime.

Let us go back to see what exactly is an Intifada. In Arabic, the term means "shaking off". Webster defines the Intifada as an armed uprising of Palestinians against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The first Intifada (1987-1993) and the second Intifada (2000-2004) led to the popularisation of the word and soon any revolt, armed or unarmed, by the Muslim people came to be termed as an Intifada.

The recent protests in the Kashmir Valley were first termed as an 'Intifada ' by The Kashmir Action Committee of Pakistan (KACP). This is a Lahore-based organisation, run by Justice Sharifuddin Bokhari, a retired Chief Justice of the Punjab High Court. Consisting mainly of some retired bureaucrats and ex-army men, it gets support from expatriate Pakistanis, who remain convinced that the so-called liberation of Kashmir is an issue supreme in the minds of ordinary Pakistanis.

And now, the government has joined up with the disbelievers. Indian Communication Minister A. Raja said in Parliament last week that security agencies were unable to intercept and monitor in readable format Blackberry services like messenger, chat and email because of their encryptions.

Sounds easy right? Not to me. I slipped, dunked, got my eyes red and ears sullied as I tried to float in the warm waters. I can swim like a fish in a pool, but here, it is a different issue. You can't swim; you can only float, and, that too, if you lie still. So, I try. All in the hope that this water would make my skin glow and hair shine. So I had been told.

Even before I stepped into the museum, the thought that plagued my mind was that why don’t we have a similar museum in India - one that chronicles the trauma of partition?