Someone sent me a photograph via WhatsApp this Sunday morning from the tiny parish of Sikandra in the Jamui District of Bihar. The Church of St. Francis Xavier hosted a Fathers’ Day event, where the Dads who came to church, whether in their 20s or their 80s were felicitated and handed flowers. Along with today […]
The World Day of Social Communications was formally celebrated on Sunday 2 June – the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord – which falls on the Sunday before Pentecost Sunday. That’s part of the tradition behind this annual opportunity for reflection, established after the Second Vatican Council to generate insights about how we’re all […]
The Voters in Sikkim keep close the integrity of the Himalayan state, by once again keeping out the ‘outside parties. The new Chief Minister will most probably be P S Golay, and the leader of the Opposition will most probably be Pawan Chamling. Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) party is all set to form the […]
Mizoram state, in northeast India which shares a border with Burma (Myanmar) appears to be the new hot transit zone for the illegal trafficking of girls and women. Human trafficking and the modern slave trade, unfortunately, appears to be flourishing. The traffickers just find new sources and new routes. People in distress are the easiest […]
Bihar, undivided. 52 years ago. It’s 1967. The sun shines brightly overhead. Scorching heat, the clay-baked dry fields are riddled by cracks through which the last drops of water have evaporated. Along a railway siding, one can see people scrabbling in the dust, in a desperate attempt to scoop up the loose grains that may […]
Strange isn’t it? Just yesterday, the 20th of March, we the ‘conscious intelligentsia’ marked two events or ‘international days’. One was the day of the house sparrow, and the other was the international day of Happiness, whatever that means. The sparrows that would nest in the rafters of our houses and bungalows a few decades […]
It will be an action packed year for the Catholic community in the state of Bihar as the Archdiocese of Patna rolls out a series of events and activities to mark its first 100 years. After a scintillating three day Bible ‘mega-fest’ in October last year, that followed the rather simple and low-key inauguration of […]
Over the past two hundred years or so, Catholic Nuns and other women changed Bihar In the year 1852, five single women travelled all the way from Bombay to Patna, doing the last few days on a bullock-cart through thick jungles. These were the German nuns, belonging to the order of the Institute of the […]
As the world celebrated the International Mother Language Day on Thursday, a sobering thought is that the heartbeat of several cultures and identities, the Mother Tongues, are slowly dying out, being replaced by lingua franca and official languages. Lingua Franca literally means ‘the language of France’, and there was a time that the bridge language […]
On the first Sunday of February, for thousands of Catholics in and around Bihar, and also for some who are journeying from other places, all roads lead to the Mother of Divine Grace. This shrine dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus, attracts large numbers of people on the occasion of the Feast day. ‘Holy […]
In these troubled times, and despite what the apologists for a particular political regime want to say, these are definitely troubled times; three thousand Catholics, over half of them the rural poor, congregated at a church in Patna to acknowledge the source of their faith. And for so many who came, this was an act […]
PATNA (OCTOBER 16): The Transforming and liberating Word is at the heart of a celebration that has drawn some 3000 Catholics from different parts of Bihar to a three day Bible Mahotsav at Queen of Apostles’ Church, Kurji, in Patna, the state capital. The festival is one of the first major events in a year- […]
