Sunil Kumar Banerjee

@yansan Salaam Ustadji !

Sarod maestro Pandit Buddhadeb Das Gupta once recounted an enchanting story that took place at 25 Dixon Lane, the residence of Pandit Jnan Prakash Ghosh. This house, which now serves as the House Staff Hostel for NRS Hospital, has hosted many maestros, but Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan was a particularly frequent guest. ​The house featured an old, sluggish ceiling fan. Frustrated by its lack of speed, Khansahib looked up at it and pleaded, "Thoda tez chalna, bhai". When the fan failed to oblige, he mocked it by replicating its screeching noise and rhythmic drone through a sharp taan in Raga Multani, singing in perfect synchronization with the fan's mechanical rotations. ​Like many of his contemporaries, Partition deeply affected Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. He moved to Pakistan in 1947, but he found the cultural atmosphere there stifling and longed to return to India. His wish was eventually fulfilled by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru ten years later, in 1957. Upon his return, he divided his time between Mumbai, Kolkata, and Hyderabad. ​Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan was inarguably one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century, a modern day Tansen who transcended politics, division, and religion. He once famously remarked, "If even one child in every home had been taught music, India would never have been partitioned." On this day in 1902, Ustad Ji was born. Let us remember him on his birth anniversary. Below : a rare Philips Radio Adv

फिल्मी पर्दे पर एक्टर्स दिखते हैं प्लेबैक सिंगर नहीं। किसी लोकप्रिय गाने में जब आप उसके प्लेबैक सिंगर को देखते हैं तो वो अनुभव अलग ही होता है। मसलन- इस गाने में हेमंत कुमार (दादा) को देखकर समझ आता है उनकी आवाज को ‘Voice of God’ क्यों कहा जाता था। #Raaggiri @YRDeshmukh @hvgoenka

Britain’s Lebanon surveillance network: A digital map for war London’s security architecture in Beirut serves control, data extraction, and the groundwork for war. By @KitKlarenberg thecradle.co/articles-id/36…

@SamDalrymple123 The story of the several mutinies of Indian soldiers for being poorly fed and naked discrimination in Malaysia,Singapore and the East Indies during WW II while fighting and helping the Japanese by INA needs to be told to reconcile our undigested and conflicting histories.

The Headquarters of the INA A short distance north of Kandawgyi Lake in central Yangon stands a gorgeous old teak mansion that once housed Subhas Chandra Bose - an army of diaspora Indians from Southeast Asia, mixed with some prisoners of war, who were willing to fight against Britain during WW2.

@iqtibaas88 @supriyan Nativisation of Christianity. Inevitable for increased growth and numbers in the Indian sub-continent.

The Last Supper, painted in 1940 by the Indian artist Angelo da Fonseca (1902–1967). Jesus Christ & his disciples are seated on chaukis in traditional Indian style, with thalis before them on the floor.

@archeohistories It is only the insane who knows what is sanity.

On September 11, 1999, newspapers across Britain broke the story, and an 87-year-old great-grandmother stepped outside her home to face an international press pack assembled on her quiet suburban street. She expressed no remorse, stating plainly that she had acted not for money but out of ideological conviction, believing her actions helped a system that provided ordinary people with affordable food, education, and healthcare. The then Home Secretary Jack Straw announced that, at her age, there was no point in prosecuting her. The KGB considered her to be of more value than the famous Cambridge Five, a ring of British double agents widely remembered as some of the most dangerous Western traitors in espionage history. She never faced criminal charges, lived out her final years in relative quiet, and died on June 2, 2005, at the age of 93. Her story later inspired the 2018 film Red Joan, starring Judi Dench, bringing the tale of Britain's most consequential female spy to a new generation of audiences. Melita Norwood's four decades of espionage had consequences that reverberated far beyond the walls of a London research office, as the technical secrets she passed to Soviet handlers almost certainly accelerated the USSR's atomic weapons program by several years, fundamentally altering the balance of nuclear power during the Cold War and compressing the timeline of a global arms race that shaped every major geopolitical decision of the mid-twentieth century. Her exposure in 1999 triggered a fierce public debate in Britain over intelligence failures, raising uncomfortable questions about how a known Communist sympathizer was allowed to work adjacent to classified nuclear research for so long without meaningful scrutiny, and the government's decision not to prosecute her deepened the controversy, leaving many to argue that ideology and age had placed her above the law. Beyond policy and politics, Norwood's legacy endures as a case study in how ordinary life can conceal extraordinary deception, and as a reminder that the most damaging breaches of national security are often carried out not by trained operatives, but by quietly determined true believers.

Melita Norwood was born on March 25, 1912, in Bournemouth, England, to a British mother and a Latvian father whose own radical politics would shape her worldview from childhood. Her father, Peter Sirnis, was a committed revolutionary socialist who translated works by Lenin and Trotsky and published a labor newspaper before his death from tuberculosis in 1918, leaving Melita fatherless at just six years old. She excelled academically, winning a scholarship to Itchen Secondary School and later studying at the University College of Southampton before dropping out in 1931. After a year in Heidelberg, Germany, where she became involved in anti-fascist activism, she returned to England and in 1932 took a job as a secretary at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association in London. The organization's mundane name concealed a critical mission: it was deeply involved in Britain's top-secret atomic weapons research program, known by the code name Tube Alloys. Her position as secretary to G. L. Bailey, the head of a department connected to Tube Alloys, gave her access to documents central to Britain's nuclear development. In 1935, she was recruited by the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, through a recommendation from a senior Communist Party member, and by 1937 she was a fully active Soviet agent. Her method was remarkably simple and effective: she would slip into her supervisor's office when no one was watching, open his safe, photograph the classified documents inside with a KGB-supplied camera, and return them before anyone noticed. She was operational from 1932 to 1972, stealing documents from her boss, photographing them with a KGB camera, and returning the intelligence to his safe unnoticed. Her Soviet handlers cycled through a series of code names for her, ultimately settling on the name that would define her espionage legacy: Agent Hola. She was briefly connected to the Woolwich Spy Ring, several members of which were arrested in January 1938, though Norwood herself escaped detection entirely. In April 1950, following the conviction of atom spy Klaus Fuchs, Norwood was temporarily placed on hold out of fear she might have been compromised, but contact was resumed in 1951. The Soviets recognized the extraordinary value of what she was providing and in 1958 awarded her the prestigious Order of the Red Banner of Labour. Journalist and personal acquaintance David Burke stated that the information she supplied on the behavior of uranium metal at high temperatures permitted the Soviet Union to test an atomic bomb four years earlier than British and American intelligence thought possible. British security services eventually identified Norwood as a potential risk in 1965, but chose not to question her in order to protect their own investigative methods. She retired quietly from British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association in 1972, having spent 40 years there, all while conducting one of most sustained espionage operations in British Cold War history. She lived an outwardly ordinary life in a semi-detached house in Bexleyheath, south London, known to neighbors as a mild eccentric who delivered copies of communist Morning Star newspaper and sipped tea from a Che Guevara mug. Her husband, who had changed his surname from Nussbaum to Norwood, died in 1986, and she later acknowledged he had never approved of her secret activities. The entire hidden chapter of her life remained buried until 1999, when former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin, who had defected to Britain in 1992, handed over six trunks filled with thousands of pages of handwritten notes documenting decades of Soviet intelligence operations. Mitrokhin Archive exposed extensive Soviet penetration of Western institutions, identifying over 300 agents and assets in Britain alone, among them Norwood, whose files detailed her recruitment in 1937 and her provision of technical data on Britain's Tube Alloys atomic project from 1943 onward. #archaeohistories

@ParaRjs The neo-liberal values of individualism,success and opportunity-grabs perhaps excites another generation to exploit every exposure or experience for optimum utilisation.Military service is one such with even some of the veterans trying to catch-up with this mistaken idea.

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@Aunindyo2023 Quizzing is like reviews.They give you leads on things early even before you've had the opportunity.Saves time to see the world yonder on high shoulders further.Quizzes are a window or a crack that let's the beam of light in.

My friend and I organised the 1st proper quiz in our school. Our principal - the legendary Vibha Parthasarathi - opposed the idea of quizzes. She said, quizzing fills the mind with superficial trivia, displacing depth. As I've grown older, I've begun to agree with her.

@Gramergolpo Traffic jams hopefully have been taken into account.

Kolkata Municipal Corporation is turning unused space under a bridge into a sports complex.

@nimishdubey @suubsy Like they say the depth of the foundation presages how high would be the building. Congratulations Mr Nimish !

December 18, 1993 Someone had just started writing. And had a letter published in The Sportstar. Thankee, @suubsy!!

@IndiaHistorypic @SuparnoSatpathy The trouble is we publish whatever trash we feel like without corroboration or historical evidence.And then circulate it heedless even to the self-respect of the individual in question.Just being of a family does not make a historical signpost !

In 1939 8 Yrs Old Child Nandini Satpathy Pulled Down The Union Jack of British Govt Later at The Age of 41 Years She Became The Chief Minister of Odisha ( Kranti Mandir, Red Fort Delhi )

A Day in the Life of Der Leader [English] | #memefest *Nothing in this bears any resemblance to anyone dead or alive

T-270 Wishing you a very Happy Utkal Divas 🎉, celebrating the vibrant culture 🌺, glorious heritage 🏛️ and indefatigable spirit 💪 of Odisha. #Odishaday #odisha #utkal #April चैत्र पूर्णिमा #UtkalaDibasa #UtkalDiwas #UtkalDivas #Israël #aprilfool #IranWar‌ bande utkala janani

@prinstaz Priyanka are you even living or an inanimate bot ? Your kind envies those who've done well and excelled individually and as a family and they happen to speak and write English well among other things. You want to achieve the same.But then you've to do better than abusing.

Utter nonsense, Mr. Azad! What “rich experience” of Nirupama Rao are you talking about here? That her dad was in the Indian Army ? Or that her sister was married to a Vice Admiral in the Indian Navy? Rao’s claim to fame is purely because of her entitled + privileged background. As for her own “credentials” (read colossal career failure): Nirupama Rao’s tenure is when the secret MoU with China was signed, that NO action against Pakistan was taken despite repeated Pakistani terror attacks on India, that India was down into doldrums labelled as “fragile five economies”. Save yourself the public embarrassment of being called out alongside imbeciles like Ms. Rao. Thanks!

@rwac48 @ParaRjs No one in the Global South considers India to be an honest broker any more.Modi has put all his eggs in the Israeli basket and is reaping the consequences thereof which the old-hand has already transferred on to the hapless Indian people including his bigoted lumpen sheep.

Spot on.

@RanaAyyub @NMenonRao When Cowardice masquerades as silence and circumstances leave evidence of a bloody trail, when speaking inaudibly and incoherently passes off as autonomous diplomacy,even the ghosts of Orwell 2026 run scared.

One of the most reasonable takes from our former foreign secretary @NMenonRao. “Even if New Delhi can cushion the blow, it cannot plausibly claim that the blow itself serves India. The deeper question is whether India is willing to say so with sufficient clarity.”

@Rohan_KSingh In your blind love of Mido you sell the free India to the new East India Company .

@PravinSawhney In your hate for Modi, you have started to hate India. Congratulations!

America faces a far more humiliating defeat in West Asia than is understood by most Indian analysts. These fellows are experts in narrative building like they did in #OperationSindoor !

@adi_yogi_1 @PravinSawhney Military strategy has to be a part of the larger political objectives.When the latter is wrong there can be no winning war strategy.The operational planning,if any can only manage a defensive retreat in the face of poor or negligible statesmanship.

What is actually happening in West Asia is a live demonstration of everything these analysts have been wrong about - that superior air power breaks adversaries, that SEAD operations neutralise integrated air defence, that precision strike decapitates command structures. None of it has worked the way the doctrine promised. Iran's IRGC is intact. Its missile arsenal is dispersed and functional. The AWACS is burning on a Saudi tarmac. A $100 million F-35 made an emergency landing after taking a hit over Iranian airspace. India's strategic community has a structural problem i.e. it consumes American doctrine as gospel and retrofits facts to fit the conclusion. When the facts become too inconvenient, they reach for the narrative instead. The real lesson from West Asia for Indian defence planning is uncomfortable. We should be studying it with that discomfort, not managing it away.

@mjavinod Israel has many ways to bribe reluctant customers with small brains and heart but large stomachs.

KARGIL 1999 I was in Battle Axes 7 Sqn ISRAEL Broke the Digi Bus code Integrated Litening pod Trained us And threw out Pakistani’s without even crossing LAC/LC / IB Namby, Pat, TV, Ash, Toks and the team were the unsung heros NEVER FORGET WHAT ISRAEL DID FOR US

@rwac48 When was America defeated as per you, sir ?

Sir, these are fundamentals. After 30 days even the resources required for any kind of ground operations are still being marshalled. US military was not prepared for them. Yes, air power was available and well used. As a soldier since 1968 (active until 2008), I have followed all wars of US. Never lost a battle but never won the war.