Esfahan

Memo to all Indians reading this: if you have a few days and a little money to spare, and enjoy travelling, come to Esfahan. Iran Air flies to Tehran and the connecting flight to Esfahan will probably be thrown in free; it is very cheap anyway. Week-long tourist visas are available to Indians on arrival in Tehran, so that's not an issue. Just pack a bag and get on that plane, the weather should be good till the beginning of June.
We've seen just a couple of the highlights of this town, but they're magical. Now we are talking of buildings of the calibre of the Alhambra, the Taj Mahal and Chartres Cathedral. These aren't places where you walk in, say hey, this looks interesting, look around for a few minutes, click a couple of pics and head for the next mosque or museum on your list. No, here, your breath is taken away as you enter, you linger for half and hour, an hour, scrutinising this and that detail, and then return in the evening or the next day. These are not places you get confused about a week or a month down the line. "Where did we take this photograph? Was it the Vakil mosque in Shiraz? Or maybe the other one in Yazd?" That kind of memory failure will not happen in the case of Esfahan's Imam mosque and Lotfollah mosque. You will remember them, and you will remember walking out into the marvellous Imam Square, which is comparable in impact to Venice's St.Mark's square, though its atmosphere is entirely different.
Esfahan has, apart from amazing mosques and an atmospheric plaza, some exceptional palaces and gardens, a river with lovely bridges, some of which hold cosy teahouses where you can while away an afternoon, a bazaar selling superb handicrafts, and hotels of every class. Once Iran turns more liberal about liquor and women's clothing, Esfahan will develop into one of the world's favourite heritage tourism destinations. I recommend forgoing the liquor, bearing up with the scarf, and getting that ticket right away.
We have squeezed the rest of our itinerary to make space for three whole days plus an evening in this city. It's been four consecutive days of travelling hundreds of kilometers (trip to Persepolis / Parsagade; bus to Yazd; trip to Meybod etc.; bus to Esfahan), but I'm really happy we planned things the way we did.

I will write in more detail about Esfahan tomorrow or the day after, but right now I want to continue with, and conclude, the discussion about Persian nose jobs. Since I wrote last, I have seen, not just dozens of women, but a fair number of men with the nasal bandage. It appears to be a status symbol in these parts. They say some people wear them without even having had the operation. I didn't believe it till I spotted this mannequin.

Yazd

We arrived in Yazd at 9pm, and were accosted by taxi drivers in a manner familiar from India. While we waited for the man we had selected to get his car, another, very grubby gent insisted we come with him. When the car we were awaiting arrived, there was an exchange of words before our man reluctantly signaled that we should go with the other guy. It was a case of licensed taxi versus moonlighter.
At Silk Road Hotel, we were led us across the street to another joint called Orient. “The owner is the same”, the bellboy explained, when I asked what the point was of booking weeks in advance. Silk Road and Orient are restored homes in Yazd’s old city, equipped with a few mod-cons. The rooms are modest, set around a large courtyard in which people gather for meals or just to hang out. Our hotel, unfortunately, was taken over by a group of loud Italians (is there any other kind?).
Yazd is situated between two deserts, and its old quarter consists of winding lanes flanked by houses made from straw and sun baked bricks. The living rooms of large houses are under ground level, ventilated by towers which funnel the breeze downwards. It’s an ingenious way of keeping cool in blazing weather, but, needless to say, doesn’t compare with electric coolers. The traditional houses of Yazd, like those in so many other cities, will soon be gone, replaced by metal and brick constructions. The only exceptions will be those preserved for the tourist trade as hotels, restaurants and museums.
We took a day trip to sites close by Yazd: Meybod, Chak Chak and Kharanaq. Four buildings in Meybod stood out: the fort, caravanserai, ice house and ‘pigeon tower’. The last of these functioned as part of a postal network that used homing pigeons to deliver inter-city mail. Thousands of birds roosted in niches inside the tower, each specializing in one route: Yazd – Shiraz, Yazd – Esfahan, Yazd – Tabriz and so on. Now, stuffed pigeons are places in a few of the niches, to give some idea of how the place must have looked while functional.
Just as the form of the pigeon tower was conditioned by its use, so was the shape of the ice house, a hollow pagoda lined with clay with a tiny opening at the top. Indian architecture is rarely interesting for its mix of form and function; what's important about it usually relates to decorative impulse rather than practical orientation. More on this topic when I return, and have time for a long think-piece.
Chak Chak is an important pilgrimage centre for Zoroastrians, the place where the last Zoroastrian princess disappeared into a mountain. The landscape is imposing, but marred by the guesthouse constructed at the shrine.

Kharanaq is an abandoned town that hints at how this area must have looked before modern construction took over. The buildings are crumbling fast, a process that an ongoing restoration project is attempting to reverse.
On returning to Yazd, we walked to the Atashkdeh, a temple in which a fire burns that has supposedly been preserved for 1400 years, moving two locations in the process. Continuing the Zoroatrian theme, we headed for the abandoned Towers of Silence at the edge of town. When we got there it was nearing dusk and the gatekeeper said the site was closing. From a distance the towers, built at the top of two adjacent hills, looked like miniature forts, blending perfectly with the hills and landscape. The form of corpse disposal Parsis favour seemed perfectly appropriate, even dignified, in this climate and landscape. We were resigned to viewing the towers from a distance, but our intrepid taxi driver signaled he would get us up the towers, and drove round the back where there was no fence or gate. We began scrambling up the steep side of the taller of the two hills, and realized once again how much easier such climbing appears from ground level than it actually is. Not having expected a hike of this sort, I was wearing sandals and carrying a cumbersome satchel. Both Jabeen and I nearly gave up at one point, but sliding downhill seemed an equally bad option, so we convinced ourselves to keep going, and made it to the top while the last hint of light remained. The interior of the dokhmeh was spare, a circular pit now containing stones and gravel. We walked down the easy way and round the hill back to our waiting cab driver who took us to our hotel. He had a metered cab, unusual in Iran, and the fare at the end was 40,000 Rials: a mere 200 rupees for driving five kilometers out and five back, and waiting an hour. After being consistently charged 20,000 Rials for two or three kilometer journeys, this was a bargain. I tacked on a 50 rupee tip, which the driver accepted with surprise and evident pleasure.

Persepolis

Sunday was spent travelling to and gazing at the palaces and tombs of the Achemenid kings. When one has built up a place in one's imagination the reality is often disappointing. That's what I felt in Greece, with Delos and Knossos. But Persepolis lived up to expectations. Built as a way for the King to show off his wealth and power to visiting foreigners, the site is impressive in scale and quality of workmanship.
Our driver mentioned that many Parsis come to Persepolis, and that it is like a religious site for them. Many Zoroastrians moved to India after the Arabs invaded, he said. Always interesting to hear how locals spin inconvenient facts from their past. In this case, Islam is not in any way to blame for the flight of Zoroastrians, nor are Iranians themselves. It is the barbaric Arabs who were responsible.
As far as I know, the Achemenids were not pure Zoroastrians, though they worshipped Ahura Mazda. The next great Persian dynasty, the Sassanids, who rose about five hundred years after Alexander had defeated the Achemenid king and torched Persepolis, were far stricter in their adherence to Zoroastrian belief. It was made the state religion, and Christians, Jews and people of non-Zoroastrian faiths were viciously discriminated against. This is something Parsis tend to gloss over. Everybody wants to be a vicitim.
This thread of victimhood is stronger in Iranian culture than in most others. It's rooted in the founding story of the Shia faith, the killing of Imam Husain at the hands of Yazid's army. A small band of people, pure in their belief, put to the sword by a powerful tyrant. Following this story, told and retold endlessly, Iranisns tend to believe lost struggles are worth it. That's the logic behind their support of the Palestinians. Asking what the Palestinians have got after sixty years of fighting the more powerful Israelis is almost irrelevant. After all, what practical benefit did Imam Husain and his band receive for confronting Yazid? What does it matter if the Arabs are against Iran, the Israelis are against Iran, the Americans are against Iran? They are all crooks and rascals, and only Iran stands up to them.
Few things are more dangerous than making martyrdom the centrepiece of political ideology.
OK, back to Persepolis. There are many halls in the place. A hall of 32 columns, another of a hundred columns. The Achemenids, like the ancient Greeks, Chinese, Indians and Egyptians, had no knowledge of arches and domes. The bigger a hall, the more pillars they had to put in; the taller the hall, the thicker those pillars needed to be. The temple of Karnak at Luxor is like a forest of bulbous tree. While the columns in Persepolis are slimmer, I suspect those in the back rows had a pretty bad view of proceedings.
An hour's drive from Persepolis is Pasargade (also spelt Pasargad, Pasargada and Pasargadae), the capital city built by Cyrus the Great 2500 years ago. It consist now of four clumps of ruins set in a meadow. The Iranians, having forgotten who actually built these places, gave them fanciful names. Pasargade, for some reason, was deemed to have a lot to do with Solomon's mother.
Pasargadae is very atmospheric: the ruins within a large plain ringed by hills hint at what a great city it must have been in its prime.
On returning to our hotel, I saw my first bandaged nose. Lonely Planet talks of the love Iranian women have for nose jobs, and Jabeens had spotted a couple of post-operatives on the streets. Having noticed one, I began seeing them all over the place. One or two, presumably straight from the operating theatre, wore huge mask-like bandages, while other had an elegant strip running across the bridge of their now-slim noses.
We are back again in the discussion of hijab and its consequences. If all that men get to see of womens' bodies is a few square inches of face, a lot of work needs to be put into it. Loads of make-up is a prerequisite, but obviously that doesn't suffice given the tendency of Iranians to have hooked beaks.
Funny thing is, nose jobs are common in many places across the globe, but only here do women feel no need to hide the fact of their cosmetic surgery.
I'm hammering this out in a 'coffee net' in Shiraz bus terminal. Our transport to Yazd was cancelled and we have a three hour wait for the next coach. Blame the typos on these difficult circumstances, I'll clean up the text once I'm back in Bombay.

In Shiraz

Shiraz can’t be called a beautiful or charming town, but it has more than enough of interest to keep one occupied for a couple of days. After a heavy breakfast, we walked to the Pars museum opposite the citadel, before rambling through Vakil bazaar looking at carpets, ornaments, glassware and nuts. The only thing we bought were two kurtas, both made in India, for Jabeen, who is now reassured she doesn’t have to wear a long coat at all times. The bazaar, like most of Shiraz’s heritage sites, is being carefully reconstructed. Parts of the old town look bombed out, full of crumbling naked brick structures; but everywhere are signs of rebuilding, and whatever restoration work we’ve seen is of high quality.
After taking in the Vakil mosque, we spent an hour at the Shah-e-Cheragh mausoleum. It contains the tomb of the brother of Imam Reza, whose own tomb in Mashhad is the central monument of the Shia faith in Iran. The inside of the Shah-e-Cheragh memorial is a fabulous collection of glass covered ceilings and pillars, room after room of mirrors gleaming over visitors saying namaaz, asking for intercession or just lolling around on the carpeted floors.
A very different atmosphere was found in a madarsa we happened upon, which wasn’t in our guidebook. The courtyard had a garden of the sort Iran specializes in, with flowering and fruit bearing trees. This was a laid back place: clerics relaxed on benches or sat around in alcoves enjoying the spring morning. The Shiraz breeze is cool and refreshing, blowing in from the mountains that ring the city.
After lunch, we headed to outlying sights: first Bagh e Eram in the northwest, a centuries old garden now in the charge of Shiraz’s botanical college. There’s a slightly kitschy nineteenth century palace in the middle of the grounds. On one side of the palace is a traditionally laid out Persian paradise garden. On the other side, foreign influences have been allowed in, involving a Japanese rock garden and a European-style lawn ringed with flowers. The only drawback of Bagh e Eram was that the watercourses had been allowed to run dry. This is always the case in India’s Mughal gardens (except for that tomb in Agra which receives a zillion visitors), but I hoped the Iranians would have kept the water flowing.
We then took a taxi to the tomb of Hafez, a poet every Iranian loves. After having a cup in the teahouse, we climbed to the tomb and were surprised to find it was in an open circular pavilion within a compact square. Visitors sat at the periphery, many reading from the works of Hafez. The divides of the country seemed to melt here: on a bench in an adjacent garden, which contains the graves of renowned artists, two girls sat smoking and chatting. One had her hair dyed blue, the second mauve. The next bench was occupied by women in voluminous black cloaks. There was, however, one tense moment at the site. As we walked up the pavilion steps, we saw a woman resting her right hand on the cenotaph and whispering some words, perhaps a prayer or a favourite couplet. A group of three young things were taking pictures, and one by one, they sat on the cenotaph itself while their friends clicked happily. I was rather taken aback, and so, obviously, was the woman, who went away shaking her head and joined her husband who was staring daggers at the merry trio.
The tension dissipated as more people walked up and did as the woman had done, placing a hand on the inscribed slab of rock and murmuring reverently. Some placed roses on the tombstone.
Our last stop was the Nasir ol Molk mosque in the south east. The taxi driver had a coughing fit as we approached the place, and nearly collided with a van in the process. He stuffed a tissue into his mouth and tried to stop the coughing with such determination that tears welled in his eyes. I wondered if I should offer him my handkerchief, but we arrived at the mosque just then. The driver extracted the tissue, and I saw it was stained bright red. I gave him a 20,000 Rial note, and when he handed 5,000 back, I was tempted to say, “Um, actually, keep the change”.
Iran asks tourists planning to visit from India to have themselves tested for HIV, TB, and Hepatitis A, B and C. Since they’re so concerned about health, maybe they should do something about consumptive taxi drivers.
We were the only people at the Nasir Ol Molk mosque, which made a great end to the day. Till the sun sank, we sat in the courtyard admiring the finely decorated tiles on the facades and the stained glass in the winter prayer chamber, Our guidebook also mentioned ‘exquisitely carved stone pillars’ in that chamber, but both Jabeen and I took one look at them and had the same dismissive thought: You want exquisitely carved stone pillars, come to India.

Journey to Shiraz

Our vacation in Iran and Syria began today. Air Arabia allows us to fly to Shiraz and return from Aleppo, saving us the trouble of back-tracking to Tehran and Damascus. On the negative side, the airline’s schedule is brutal. Our flight was to take off from Bombay at 4.55am, meaning zero sleep the previous night. Then there was a five hour wait at Sharjah before the connector to Shiraz.

It’s understandable if one is tired at the end of a journey, but we were exhausted before it even began. Just as we were due to board, an announcer said there was weather trouble in the UAE, and our flight would only leave at 7am. I longed for the grimy recliners that used to occupy the Sahar airport departures lobby, but they’ve been removed in the recent upgrade.

We finally got on the plane and sped across the sea, but were placed on a holding pattern for about half an hour, circling the dunes till we felt dizzy. I heard the word ‘khamsin’ being mentioned by the Arabic announcer, and, if I remember my Tintin, that means sandstorm. There was no sandstorm visible in Sharjah itself, but Dubai’s towers appeared cloaked in brown. Maybe the khamsin had moved to the neighbouring Emirate by the time we landed.

Sharjah airport can’t be described as a dump, because it is clean, but there’s absolutely nothing to do there. No wi-fi, no duty free to speak off, unless you want to buy stuffed toy camels, and just one place to grab a bite, a Costa Coffee outlet offering 22 Dirham sandwiches. We ate one each because Air Arabia offers nothing free to eat or drink apart from 100ml of water. (Update: on our return journey we discovered a wing of the airport we had missed, which has a large but expensive duty free section and a food court)

The journey to Shiraz was bumpy, but enlivened by some incredible landscapes, places where the earth seemed to have given way completely: one particular cliff’s edge evoked a real end of the world sort of feeling. At Shiraz airport, there was no place open that would change our dollars but a woman selling perfume agreed to exchange 100 dollars at a fair rate. The transaction was assisted by an Iranian we’d met on our flight, who is a student in Pune, but he didn’t necessarily make things less confusing. The Iranian currency is the Rial, and it has been devalued greatly in past decades. That means we are back again in a land where calculations have to be made in tens or hundreds of thousands. To make matters worse, Iranians don’t believe in the Rial, they are hung up on a currency called the Toman which existed in the distant past. They quote all prices in Tomans, though not a single Toman is to be found anywhere. So I’d start counting what the perfumer had given me, and as I said, “50,000… 1,00,000…” the friendly student from Pune butted in with, “No, no, not 50,000, it is 5,000” “But see here on the note, it says 50,000”. “No, no, there’s a mistake in our currency, there is an extra zero, it should actually be 5,000”.

Luckily, dollars are accepted for large transactions, allowing an escape from the Rial-Toman dialectic.

Though dog tired, we took a walk around the city centre before dusk. Jabeen was feeling the injustice of being forced to wear a scarf. It’s something she’s been upset about considerably in advance of the fact. It’s obviously a big deal in Iran how many centimeters of hair are actually visible under the cover, a sign of how traditional or liberal a woman is. With women confined to coats and scarves, the space for exhibitionism has been taken over by Iranian males. They like their shirts tight and their pants tighter, and strut about in a manner that brings the word ‘gigolo’ frequently to mind.

Prabhakaran: how will it end?

Governments across the world are asking for an immediate ceasefire in Sri Lanka, but they know it isn't going to happen. No army stops operations while so close to a decisive victory at the end of a long civil war. The LTTE, in a final demonstration of brutality, has used civilians as shields, putting at risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of people it claims to represent. It is another matter that Tamil protesters across Europe and writers like Arundhati Roy refuse to see this strategem for what it is, and choose to blame only the Lankan government for civilian casualties.
It is likely that Velupillai Prabhakaran, the ruthless leader of the LTTE, will be captured or killed in a matter of days. Most commentators believe Prabhakaran will choose death over imprisonment. He told journalists in 2002 that LTTE cadres had instructions to kill him if he compromised the ultimate goal of the organisation.
A surprising number of leading terrorists and insurgents, however, have ended up in jail.

Abimael Guzman of Peru's Shining Path was caught in a ballet studio in Lima where he had been living comfortably.


Carlos, 'the Jackal', hopped from country to country till his Sudanese hosts gave him up to foreign intelligence agencies.


Abdullah Ocalan of the Kurdistan People's Party was trapped by Turkish agents in Kenya. In each case, news of the capture came as an anti-climax, because these men's actions had made them into larger-than-life personalities in the minds of the public.
The Sri Lankan authorities might decide they prefer Prabhakaran dead rather than alive, but if the man who sent thousands to a gory end is given a choice, don't be surprised if he timidly chooses a cell block over of a grave.

Election flip-flops

This election campaign, largely bereft of issues, is turning into a series of shoot first, mumble later episodes. Here are some positions taken by leaders and then renounced or modified.

L K Advani: We will renegotiate the nuclear deal.
We cannot disregard an international agreement.

Manmohan Singh: The Left is always on the wrong side of history.
I have high regard for leaders of the Left parties.

Sharad Pawar: A Maharashtrian should get a chance to be Prime Minister.
I don't have the numbers.

Karunanidhi: Prabhakaran is a good friend.
One cannot forget that the LTTE was behind Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.

Pranab Mukherjee: Lalu will find it difficult to even become a minister because he is with nobody.
Lalu is part of the UPA, my broken Hindi created the confusion.

Varun Gandhi: I will cut off their hands.
Non-violence is my religion.

The futile search for Satyam's siphon

The Serious Fraud Investigation Office has submitted its final report on the Satyam case last week, and it tallies with my belief that Ramalinga Raju was broadly telling the truth in his confessional statement. He created fictitious sources of funds, plumped the company's balance sheet in order to keep the stock price high, and made hundreds of crores by selling shares at prices he knew were far in excess of what the company deserved.
I wrote three months ago that we are conditioned to believe fraud must involve skimming and siphoning. Throughout the Satyam investigation, enforcement officials as well as the media have been convinced that large scale embezzlement is at the root of the scandal. Since no evidence of embezzlement has been found by the SFIO, journalists are counting that as a setback to the investigative process. Hindustan Times carried a funny article on the issue two weeks ago, in which 'flummoxed' CBI officials complained about the Raju brothers' failure to co-operate on the issue of siphoning. The presumption on part of the writer as well as the investigating agency was that embezzlement had to have taken place, the only question was how. Moneycontrol put out a report last Friday headlined, 'SFIO fails to figure out siphoning of Satyam funds by Rajus', and Mint carried a similar piece, both with the same underlying assumptions regarding the nature of the Satyam fraud.
Early on in the crisis, there were allegations that the Rajus had created fictitious employees, and diverted the salaries of these non-existent individuals to their personal account. That would have been one way of taking money directly from the company, but would have worked at cross purposes with the strategy of inflating profits. I wasn't surprised when this allegation was disproved.
Ramalinga Raju provided us with a convincing motive for his actions, as well as an indication of how he went about defrauding shareholders. The SFIO has uncovered perfectly good evidence of bank deposits which did not exist, evidence that backs up Raju's original story. The Maytas episode also fits perfectly into this picture. Why, then, are the police and media trying to jam the pieces of evidence into a completely different jigsaw puzzle?

The Taxi Driver's Story

Reading a report about Sikhs being forced to pay Pakistan's Taliban a levy, I was reminded of an encounter with a taxi driver in London back in September 2006. After landing at Heathrow, the painter Sudhir Patwardhan and I called for a cab to take us to our hotel in Southwark. Fifteen minutes later, a Sikh man walked into the terminal holding a placard with my name written on it. He was about fifty, dressed in a spotless white button-down tucked into dark trousers. He greeted us cordially and offered to take our suitcases. We declined.
After feeding the details of our destination into the GPS prompter in his car, the man asked in fluent Hindustani where we lived and what brought us to London. Our replies elicited more questions. I wasn’t in the mood for much talk after the overnight flight, but eventually felt obliged to ask him where he was from.

“Afghanistan”, he said.

My interest, and Sudhir's, was suddenly roused.

“Afghanistan? How long were you there?”

“I was born near Kabul.”

“So did you parents move there?”

“No, our family was in Afghanistan for over 300 years.”

“But you speak such good Hindi.”

“I speak many languages. Pashto, Russian, Uzbek, Punjabi, Hindi, now English.”

“And how long have you been in England?”

“Eight years.”

"You left when the Taliban took over?”

“No, before.” His voice turned bitter. “Everybody here speaks about the Taliban, but for us the mujahideen were much worse. The Taliban only made Sikhs and Hindus wear different clothing, so they could be distinguished from Muslims. That way we wouldn't be forced to say namaaz and things like that. But the mujahideen would insist we become Muslims, and we had to keep bribing them to leave us alone”

He stretched his left arm so the sleeve rode back to reveal laceration scars on the wrist. “I have these all over my body: arms, abdomen, back. That’s what they did to people who refused to convert.”

He was born in a village, but his father wanted to educate his sons well, and sent him to university in India. After graduating, he opened a chemist's shop in Kabul. Business was good during Najibullah’s reign; he imported medicines from India, tying up with companies like Ranbaxy and Alembic to supply life-saving drugs. Once the civil war reached the Afghan capital, the bad times began, and got rapidly worse after the Soviet withdrawal. Business declined and persecution of minorities rose. He sold one of his two houses to pay off the mujahideen, and closed one of his two shops. In those days, Kabul had a law that one chemist had to stay open late each night. It was done by rotation and, the day it was his turn, he was kidnapped in the small hours as he returned home after closing shop.

"They tortured me for days. I was sure I wasn't going to get out alive. I tried reasoning with them, saying that God was the god of humanity, not just the god of Muslims, and that force was no way to propagate religion. That only made them beat me more.

"Luckily, a friend from my village was visiting Kabul and dropped in to meet me. When my wife related all that had happened, he told her this country is no good for you any more, you have to leave, sell everything if you must. He used his contacts to locate the kidnappers, fix a ransom, and free me. He arranged transport, taking us all to Peshawar. I barely remember what happened in the days after that, the places we were taken to, loaded onto and unloaded from trucks. Finally, we came to Karachi and were put on a boat to England. The British were very good to us. Their mission in Kabul checked the details I provided, and once they were sure we were telling the truth, we got asylum.
"It's funny where life can take you. I'd never have thought I would be driving a taxi in London. But my son and daughter are studying now, the boy is in university, he won't be a taxi driver."

The world's media get it wrong on farmer suicides

OK, I've been going hard at TOI, Mumbai Mirror, NDTV and other Indian news outlets for a while, and feel it's time to illustrate how their foreign brethren don't necessarily do a better job. Two days ago, the Belfast Telegraph headlined a story, "Farmers in India commit mass suicide as crops fail". The first line read, "Over 1500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today." I haven't been able to find where 'it was reported'. If you can, please let me know. The state in question is Chattisgarh.
So, the Belfast Telegraph, which presumably has no correspondents in India, picks up a news item from who knows where, and tacks on a misleading headline. The phrase 'mass suicide' gives the impression of a co-ordinated, cult-like act. Strangely, London's Independent, which does have reporters based in this country, picks up the Belfast Telegraph piece. Then, Huffington Post links on its home page to the Independent's coverage, and carries a blog post by Mallika Chopra, wellness-guru Deepak Chopra's daughter, based on the unverified story. Discussing the 1500 suicides, she writes, "To give a more tangible visualization of that number, that's about four full jumbo jet planes' worth of passengers suddenly committing suicide." Which would be dreadful, except it never happened. 1500 Chattisgarh farmers did not 'suddenly' take their own lives.
I don't want to diminish the real and continuing tragedy of farmer suicides, but irresponsible journalism is hardly the best way to focus international attention on it.