Samrat Chakravorty 🧶

Finished with the first book of 2020 - Mossad , gripping accounts of unbelievable missions! Things to learn from @IDF for everyday life: Identify problem - Isolate root cause - eliminate problem!

His name was Rajan. He was a final year engineering student at the Regional Engineering College in Calicut, Kerala. His father, T V Eachara Varier, was a Hindi professor at the Government Arts and Science College in the same city. On the morning of March 1 1976 the police came to the college campus and took Rajan away. India was under Emergency. Civil liberties were suspended. Courts had effectively turned away. His father found out the next day from the college principal. He went to every police station in the district. No one admitted to having his son. He met the Home Minister of Kerala, K Karunakaran, directly. He sent petitions to the Home Secretary of the Government of Kerala three times. Not a single reply or acknowledgement came. He wrote to the President of India and the Home Minister of the central government, with copies to every Member of Parliament from Kerala. Nothing. What Eachara Varier did not know at the time was that his son had been taken to an illegal police interrogation camp at Kakkayam. He was tortured. A practice called uruttal was used, where a heavy wooden log is rolled over the body of the victim. Rajan died from his injuries. His body was disposed of by the police and was never found. When the Emergency ended in 1977 Eachara Varier filed a habeas corpus petition in the Kerala High Court. It was the first such petition filed in Kerala after the Emergency. He did it without legal training, without political backing, without money. He had spent everything searching for his son. The court case slowly unravelled the truth. It forced K Karunakaran to resign as Chief Minister of Kerala in 1978 when the adverse judgment came. Rajan’s mother became mentally unstable from the grief. She died in 2000 still not knowing where her son was. Eachara Varier wrote his memoir, Memories of a Father, which won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 2004. In its final lines he wrote, “I don’t close the door. Let the rain lash inside and drench me. Let at least my invisible son know that his father never shut the door.” He died on April 13 2006. He never found his son’s body. Rajan was picked up from his college campus on a March morning in 1976. He was never seen again. Repost this. Some stories must not be allowed to disappear.

Inside India’s 1st semiconductor chip packaging cluster in Gujarat .. "this is the first time a semiconductor facility is being established in a developing nation.. If the projects fail, the damage extends far beyond Gujarat" theprint.in/the-fineprint/… via @theprintindia

@RapidoCares Hi, have shared details and ride ID screenshot in DM

@samcvorty Hi Samrat, we are sorry to learn about the captains unprofessional conduct. Captains are not allowed to collect anything beyond the fare shown in the app. Please share your registered mobile number and ride ID at DM so we can assist you promptly. twitter.com/messages/compo…

Hey @rapidobikeapp so I recently encountered this practice in pune, where auto takes booking via app, post otp also starts the meter, and collects the higher fare of the 2, tho I understand y they may do so but is this allowed, certainly not fair fr customer

Bone chilling article.. a must read by @dharmadispatch dharmadispatch.in/commentary/the…

No Prizes for Guessing, I guess 😄 @himantabiswa

Bad days for....(You know who) @SuvenduWB

Finally went to Avijit Sarkar’s house, 5 years after he was lynched during post poll violence in 2021. Even today, his brother runs a shelter for rescued strays. He has built a little memorial to the murdered puppies right next to Avijit’s memorial. 3 murdered puppies were laid to rest under a Tulsi plant. Bishwajeet told us how Avijit’s killers’ family still lives next door to them, but they never hurt them even when BJP came to power. Because violence is NOT ‘political culture of Bengal’

Her name was Subhadra Kumari Chauhan. She was born on August 16 1904 in Nihalpur village, Allahabad. At nine years old she wrote her first poem. It was published in a national magazine. At 16 she married and moved to Jabalpur. At 18 she was pregnant and leading protesters through the streets of Nagpur holding the Indian flag. She was arrested. She became the first woman satyagrahi to be sent to jail in India. She delivered her first daughter Sudha safely at home after her release. Then went back to the streets. In 1942 the British came for her again. Her husband had already been arrested. She had five children. The youngest was a toddler with a cleft palate who could barely speak. She prepared her eldest daughter to look after the younger ones. Left food for them. Then walked to prison carrying her sick youngest child in her arms. Inside jail she gave up her own food to prisoners facing harsher punishment. She was released months later with a life threatening condition and underwent immediate surgery. She later described all of this with humor. She said the garlands placed around her neck on the way to jail were so many that she made a pillow of them in her prison cell. They reminded her of the flowers on her wedding night. Between arrests, pregnancies, court dates and protests she wrote 88 poems and 46 short stories. Her most famous poem was Jhansi Ki Rani. The one every Indian child has read in school. Khoob ladi mardaani woh toh Jhansi wali Rani thi. She wrote it about a queen. She lived it herself. On February 15 1948 she died in a car accident near Seoni, Madhya Pradesh, while returning from a legislative assembly session in Nagpur. She was 43 years old. A mother of five. A poet. A prisoner. A freedom fighter. Today is Mother’s Day. Most Indians know her poem. Almost none know her name. Follow for stories India deserves to remember.

Dostoevsky was 28 when they stood him in front of a firing squad. Blindfolded. Hands tied. He could hear the rifles being loaded. At the last second a messenger on horseback arrived. The Tsar had commuted the sentence. The entire execution was staged. Psychological torture designed to break him. It worked. He had a seizure on the spot. They sent him to a labour camp in Siberia. 4 years. Freezing. Starving. Sleeping on wooden planks next to murderers. His epilepsy got worse. He had no paper. No pen. Nothing. When he got out he was broke. His first wife died. His brother died. He inherited his brothers debts. He was so desperate for money he signed a contract with a publisher that would have given away the rights to everything hed ever write if he missed the deadline. He wrote The Gambler in 26 days to make it. Dictated it to a 20 year old stenographer named Anna. Married her three months later. Then the real work started. Crime and Punishment. The Idiot. Demons. The Brothers Karamazov. The greatest novels in the history of the Russian language. Maybe any language. The man who stood blindfolded before the firing squad, who convulsed on the ground while soldiers watched, who slept next to killers in Siberia for 4 years, who was buried in debt and grief. That man wrote: "every minute can be an eternity of happiness." He earned the right to say it. its never over. never give up fren.

Four years ago, I sat down with my 12-year-old daughter in the US and told her I was walking away from a successful tech career and real estate business to return to India for public service and politics. At that age, she didn’t realize “public life” would slowly take her Appa away from her for months… and years. But I came with conviction. So for the last 4 years, we gave everything we had — for example -In villages like Subramaniapuram and Vellanaikottai, we built bus shelters, restored a 100-acre pond, removed seemai karuvelam, strengthened bunds, planted thousands of palm saplings, supported students’ education, organized medical camps and career workshops, built community sheds, encouraged youth and sports activities, and contributed to annadanams. It cost several ten lakhs of hard-earned money - just for this village alone. But more than money, it cost time… family moments… and precious years watching my daughter grow up from far away. Then elections came. And the same village chose a candidate who had barely visited them in five years. In the end, one week of election-time money defeated four years of sincere service. Yesterday, my daughter quietly asked me over video call: “Appa… can you now tell me what exactly politics is?” For the first time in my life, I did not have an answer for my chellaponnu. @svembu

A Sacred Land Reclaimed : There comes a moment in a nation’s history that plays a decisive role in shaping its future. That moment has come with BJP’s emphatic win in Bengal. The State is coming back into the fold of uncompromising nationalism after over a century. How a land that produced spiritual & nationalist giants like Vivekanand, Aurobindo, Pravananand, Netaji Bose, SP Mukherjee, Rabindranath Tagore & countless revolutionaries like Khudiram Bose who forced the British to unite divided Bengal in 1911 , slipped into the hands of pseudo-nationalists & anti-Bharat forces is some kind of a mystery. The roots are in Congress’s compromising nationalism that led to phenomenons like Muslim Appeasement & ‘ Non-violence at any cost’ which destroyed the State’s virile immunity system which in turn was fully exploited by Jinnah to divide Bengal & our nation. This victory coupled with BJP’s equally emphatic win in Assam - also a state facing threats from intruders like in Bengal - under the most dynamic leadership of @himantabiswa — has proved that the forces of nationalism will lead the nation against the threat of divisive forces. Clearly, there is still a lot of stuff left in Bharat or that it has gained in past 11 years under PM @narendramodi ‘s leadership than that meets the eye. But on the flipside there is also a challenge in how to restore the legacy of these great men. Clearly, short-cuts won’t work, long-term vision based on the principles of these great man will. Ideological commitment has no option is what the new rulers of Bengal will have to remember. People might be surprised how Veer Savarkar figures in the attached photo. Well, the answer is that, apart from Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, it was Savarkar who played a key role in saving half of Bengal. And not many know that it was Savarkar who brought Mukherjee into active Hindutva politics in 1939. True history remains a most interesting subject.

1. Just got off a call with @UnSubtleDesi. I couldn't be happier for her and both of us couldn't help but discuss the harrowing days of post poll violence in West Bengal in 2021. So I am going to share what happened five years ago just so ppl know what happened. #WestBengal2026.

“I am Amit Shah”. December 2014. Kolkata. Straight out of a movie.

Before the world knew the power of Big Pharma, a journalist in a tiny lab in Bombay created a substance so potent it triggered a trade war with London. It was a yellow grease that did not just soothe headaches but funded a movement, bypassed British blockades, & became 1 of the few Indian products to make the Empire's own medicine look like scented water. Unlike other brands started by chemists, Amrutanjan was founded by Kasinadhuni/Kasinathuni Nageswara Rao, a man who was primarily a journalist & a freedom fighter. In the late 1800s, the pain balm market in India was a British monopoly. If your head throbbed, you bought imported ointments. Rao saw this as a tax on pain. He retreated into a lab & perfected a formula that was significantly more potent than anything coming out of London. The British tried to push their own balms like Vicks/early menthol rubs as sophisticated & odorless. They attempted to smear Amrutanjan as primitive because of its overpowering scent. Rao leaned into the scent. He realized that in a country where literacy was low, a brand could not just be a name, it had to be an experience. He distributed free samples at music concerts (Sabhas) & religious festivals. By the time the British tried to patent the market for pain relief, the entire Indian public had already associated the smell of camphor & menthol with trust. The British balms felt alien & weak compared to the sensory explosion of the yellow tin. The smell of Amrutanjan... that piercing, camphor-heavy aroma became the literal scent of the freedom struggle. If you walked into a room & it smelled of Amrutanjan, it was a silent signal: A patriot is present. It was a scent the British police could not arrest, yet it was everywhere. The British had a Patent Medicine Tax that made imported drugs expensive. However, by classifying Amrutanjan as an Ayurvedic Proprietary Medicine, Rao managed to navigate a complex legal gray area. He essentially used the British legal system against itself. By proving his ingredients were ancient yet his manufacturing was modern, he avoided the crippling taxes that applied to purely Western drugs, while maintaining a price point (initially 10 annas) that made British imports look like daylight robbery Rao fought back not just in the market, but in the press. He used the profits from the balm to fund Andhra Patrika, 1 of the most influential anti-British newspapers. The British were literally paying for their own downfall. Every time a British officer’s wife bought a jar of Amrutanjan for a migraine (because it worked better than the London balms), she was inadvertently funding the printing of revolutionary literature that called for the end of the Raj. By the 1930s, this Indian yellow grease was being exported to Indian diaspora & locals in South Africa & Ceylon. It became a global symbol of Eastern Wisdom defeating Western Chemistry. It was 1 of those few occasions, an Indian OTC (Over the Counter) product achieved cult status internationally w/o a single pound of British investment. In fact, the yellow tin became so iconic that it did not need a label in the villages. The color & the smell were the brand. It was a biological Swadeshi. While others were fighting with words, Rao was fighting with molecular relief.

Never thought a company would actually make a jingle out a Tax law suit they fought for 25 years in various courts which they eventually won in the Supreme Court. But the iconic jingle outlived the legal proceedings.

He is also soft spoken, well behaved and extremely sweet. His mom makes food and brings it to the hotel ( Best Kadi Chawal & Bhartha among other things ) for the entire team every IPL ❤️I never heard him complain or come late when he sat on the bench. Watching him shine fills me up with so much joy cuz nothing is more rewarding than to see a good guy win 🔥❤️🦁Sorry I couldn’t help commenting on ur write up as it popped up in my timeline👍

😅🤣 Gold!!

As we assimilate into the Global economy, we need to de-stigmatise a Layoff. It happens. A high skilled corp employee should be ready for at least one such shock in your career. “Naukri chali gayi” in a society wid no social security & unemployment is big, but life doesn’t end. Be ready.

7/ Finally we redeemed the giftcards in front of Kabir Singh while watching him live through his own webcam!