MANY OF THE WEEK’S EDITORS would have been in school when Princess Diana’s famous photo from the minefields of Angola surfaced in 1997. The iconic beauty and humanitarian was shown walking down a narrow path in a minefield, flanked by signposts bearing red, triangular signs marked with a skull and crossbones in white. Perigo Minas, the boards screamed in Portuguese. Danger Mines.
“I come with my heart…,” Diana told journalists gathered in Huambo, Angola. A few months ago, Photo Editor Bhanu Prakash Chandra went to Sri Lanka with his gear, and his heart, to tell the story of how death continues to lurk in the island nation’s fertile soil.
Less than 5cm underground, landmines and unexploded ordnance lie waiting to be thrown up by a plough, or to be stepped on by a child. Sometimes the verdict is instant death, sometimes a maimed eternity. I hope that you will find the article deeply touching, as it did for me, dear reader. And let that feeling inspire us to shun violence in all forms and in all spaces.
While Bhanu followed his heart to Sri Lanka, Correspondent Badar Bashir travelled to Kashmir for something close to my heart. Senior Special Correspondent Tariq Bhat suggested this week’s Untold Story before he tragically passed away on November 4. I resolved not to let the idea die.
So, the lot fell on Badar to report from Guryul ravine. Scientists say that the ravine, 30 minutes away from Srinagar, preserves the clearest record of the ‘Great Dying’—earth’s most devastating extinction that took place 252 million years ago. You did not get to file the article, dear Tariq, but the ideation was not in vain.
Senior Special Correspondent Kanu Sarda balances law and life in her article on Harish Rana vs. Union of India, where Harish’s parents have begged the court to let their son die. One cannot read the article without weeping. In 2013, Harish slipped and fell four storeys to the ground. He was in his final year of civil engineering. Today, he cannot do much beyond blinking.
“Maa ke liye mrityu maangna chhoti baat nahi hoti (For a mother, asking for death is not a small thing),” says mother Nirmala. “Par aisi zindagi ka kya fayda (But what is the point of such a life)?” As a father of three and grandfather of five, I cannot even bear to imagine being in the shoes of Nirmala and Ashok Rana. The heaviest burden that life can impose on a parent is to make him watch his child suffer.
Recently, Alice and Ellen Kessler, the pop-singing twins, made headlines worldwide when they died by their own hand. They were 89 years old. The Kesslers were accomplished and popular, and had committed lovers whom they never married. They made a pact to remain single after they saw their mother suffer domestic violence. On their 88th birthday, they told Italy’s Corriere della Sera that their wish was “to leave together, on the same day… as the idea that one of the two will go first is very difficult to bear”.
The reporter’s last question to them was: “Do you consider yourselves happy today?” “Happiness is present one day, less so the next,” they said. “We can say, however, that we live a peaceful and blissful life.”
That is a serene space to be in, I must say. And, on that note, let me wish you a blessed 2026, filled with happy days and good health.
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