Khatola Tribune

For practical news you can use, you know which paper to turn to.

Gotta problem in getting a visa? Take heart because there are many like you. But no, they ain’t heading to the visa office, the queue is instead in front of a stump of a 100-year-old banyan tree in Mupkal village ? about 45 km from Nizamabad in Telangana.

Hundreds of visa seekers have been thronging this ‘visa temple’ since those whose wishes were granted spread the good word around. This latest ‘temple’ is the second one of its kind in the state ? the honour of being the first goes to the ‘visa god’ at Chilkur Balaji temple in Himayatsagar on the outskirts of Hyderabad where thousands of devotees have been coming for the past few years.

Banyan tree with visa power- The Times of India

From the land of lassi and parantha, this tasty morsel:

In a little-known Punjab village, 72-year-old Mehnga Singh, who just returned from his field, casually places his spade in the corner of the local community polytechnic and removes his shoes. After washing his hands, he heads for a computer to check e-mail from his son in Dubai. His grandson is in the neighbouring swimming pool and his wife in an all-women gym.

This is Palahi, the village that gives Punjab’s other 12,500-plus villages a complex. Three kilometres off National Highway 1 near Phagwara, this 3,000-strong population village has a twinning IT arrangement with Cambridge University and has ensured that every resident has an e-mail address.

Gurdip Singh’s month-old baby, the village’s youngest resident, is the only one who does not have an e-mail address yet. “Actually, we still have to name him,” says Gurdip. “That’s not a very good excuse,” chides Gurmit Singh, engineer-turned-principal of the polytechnic.

Here everyone has an email ID- The Times of India

He drew the flag on (gasp!!!) paper! Thanks to vigilant neighbours, Nation’s Honour is saved.

Bawali’s grandsons pestered him for getting national flags on Independence Day. The labourer drew the tricolour on papers, which the kids took out.

However, some local residents, alleging that the sketch was wrongly drawn and was not being properly used, lodged a complaint with the police.

Police took Bawali into custody after registering a case under Section 2 of Insult to Nation’s Honour Act, 1971 against him.

A little tough on the toothless pauper, perhaps, but certainly a small price to pay considering the stakes involved. Well done, vigilant Orissis. You may now ceremonially wrap Advani’s used underwear around your heads.

Man draws flag on paper, arrested

These people are so frustrated with trains not running, that they have blocked train tracks in their agitation.

Traffic on the Central Railway route was disrupted at Mumbra station in Thane district on Wednesday morning after hundreds of angry commuters blocked the lines protesting ‘enormous delay in resumption of rail services’.

It should then come as no surprise, then, that

The rail roko protest is still on, the railway police said.

But the irony is likely to be lost upon the protesters.
Trains stopped at Mumbra

Being on of the richest men in the world clearly makes you a sharp thinker as well:

“I think, our structure is superior to the Infosys global delivery model,” Premji told reporters here in response to a question on how Wipro’s organisation structure compared with that of Infosys’ global delivery model.

“Frankly, I have not fully understood the Infosys global delivery model. ”
…

“It’s not for me to comment on somebody else’s structure,” he added.

Our structure superior to Infy: Premji

Another Bengali cries buckets over the demise of the fatherland.

For Calcutta intellectual Ashok Mitra, the this following chain of thought is but the work of a monet: death of communism ==> death of ideology ==> death of ideas and ideals ==> death of idealism ==> death of principles ==> death of conscience ==> “deaths and pestilence befouling the neighbourhood”.
(more…)

In its quest for universal chastity, the puritanical government in Gujarat has moved to restrict marriage thus, according to good old ToI:

The Gujarat government has asked courts not to register marriages unless there?s parental consent in writing.

This has created problems for love marriages.

“Created problems for love marriage” — oh really. Our intrepid newspaper is delightful in its choice of headline: Honeymoon with love marraige ends.

This Rediff columnist (aren’t they the best?) quotes a pacifist song with approval, and then dives headlong into the militarist nonsense he just described as crap:

‘Who is the strongest, who is the best?

Who holds the aces, the east or the west?

This is the crap our children are learning….’

So sang former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters in his solo album Radio KAOS

Let’s face it, we are neither the strongest, nor the best.

Nor do we hold all the aces.

But does that mean we fold our hands and wait for deliverance?

That is precisely what we seem to be doing in this so-called peace process which we are pursuing with our neighbor.

Drawing pictures of people is frowned upon by religious authorities, and thus by the police. It remains to be seen whether the rest of mankind will be arrested like this textbook publisher for pictorial offenses:

MEERUT: Police on Wednesday arrested a person for allegedly publishing school books depicting imaginary picture of Prophet Hazrat Mohammad in one of its chapters and sealed the publication’s office here.

Imaginary, eh?

We are told that

Police dhamkis to scriptwriter, part-time bookie and confirmed weirdo, Jayesh Muni, means English blockbusters like Ganpati, Intention, Single Fish, Sumo, UFO, Annaconda part III and Hindi ones like Indira, Maniben and Gundi won?t quite make it to the Oscars.

Nausheen weirdo needs help