By Neeta Omprakash

HUMOUR adds spice to life and in this age of fast food, spices have special significance in the culinary industry. Everybody can laugh but only few can make others laugh, cartoon is a strange combination of seriousness and humour. An essential quality expected in a cartoonist apart from the sense of humour is the intelligence to analyse a situation objectively and generalise it to be presented in an art form. He needs to be an alert critic. Many cartoonists misunderstand the profession; they feel it is to create humour by distorting figures and add lengthy lines which ultimately make no sense.

ICU? ABU? Had I heard right? Dazed, gathered enough energy to check out how much money I had in the cupboard. I shoved it all in my purse. Still unbelieving, I hurriedly hailed a passing rickshaw and rushed to the hospital. “Abu, Abu” I blurted out to the man sitting at the counter. I had never been inside a hospital before. The receptionist guided me to the ICU. I walked cautiously. It’s true then, I thought to myself, Abu was indeed in deep trouble.

By Daniel F de Souza

THE FIRST ten-day popular tiatr festival of commercial tiatrs organised by the Tiatr Academy Goa culminated on March 6, 2010 at the Pai Tiatrist auditorium, Margao, with the awards presentation ceremony. Ten commercial tiatrs fulfilled the criteria for participation and competed in the first ever tiatr festival organised by TAG since its inception.

By Our Special Correspondent

THE WOMEN’S liberation movement which started a hundred years ago in the countries of the West has come circle in India with the passing of the historic 33 percent Women’s Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha on March 9, 2010. It’s a breathtaking windfall of a gift for women coming as it did just a day after women urban and rural had finished celebrating and grumbling at various venues to mark “International Women’s Day” on March 8, 2010!

By Tara Narayan

IF YOU haven’t discovered the legendary restaurant of O’Coqueiro yet you have missed out on something! You can’t miss it. It’s right there flush on the highway to Mapusa at Porvorim …a single line of golden bulbs running around the twin-bungalow complex of Portuguese vintage. Low and inviting, it has a cool open courtyard set within and set off by this beautiful frangipani tree…

THE GOVERNMENT of India’s fresh advisory to the electronic media to exercise caution while covering incidents of terror attacks must serve, I think, the Government of Goa to appeal to our newspapers not to afford wide publicity to the loud statements of some of the ministers in the cabinet, especially known for lack or limited standard of education, yet very vocal to deceive their gullible followers and voters with promises and more promises of development in their constituencies, or action on their grievances shortly or soon when the actual meaning of this period is NEVER. Such brash noisy pronouncements mostly found on front pages in the newspapers are irritable, annoying to the educated readers and even suspicious. With my high regard for the present day journalism in Goa such charges are painful to me.

AND A few more stray thoughts and a few more observations for yet another Sunday. For a Sunday following the week when the group of seven demonstrated its electoral strength in the just concluded Zilla Parishad elections. For a Sunday following the week when Chief Minister Digamber Kamat showed signs of having developed some backbone and started hitting back at the group of seven. For a Sunday following the week when the ghost of merger or at least Maharashtrawadi hovered over Goa again. For a Sunday following the week when politicians in Goa were as agitated as politicians in the rest of the county over the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha.

GLOBALISATION has resulted in deep inter-linkages among world economies. This, of course, is a truism. But you might still be surprised if someone told you that US Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke would determine the fate of Pranab Mukherjee’s 2010-11 Budget. Here’s how.

The Women’s Reservation Bill is the first piece of legislation witness­ing strong opposition within Parlia­ment because this legislation will af­fect the fortunes of every single politician. If a secret voting is al­lowed on this important bill, Mrs Gandhi and BJP party bosses who have issued a whip will discover how deeply resentful their own party members are over this bill.

THE ARRESTS of alleged drug peddlers Dudu and Atala has brought the narcotics trade in Goa to the forefront. The Anti Narcotics Cell (ANC) seems to be on overdrive and those directly or indirectly associated with the illegal trade of drugs for a long time are now being apprehended. The recent arrest of the watchman of St Xavier’s College in Mapusa, Bahadur Singh, infamous for his alleged drug deals within the campus and outside, came as a shock for many Xavierites as well as parents.