Barbarians At The Gate
On December 13, in a gruesomely fitting finale to a year of terror and blood, Islamic terrorists invaded Parliament. In the end, they were shot down by valiant policemen. But not before killing nine brave Indians-and shaking a billion Indian hearts.
In many ways, 12/13 was a fitting culmination to 9/11, the attack on the world's strongest democracy being followed up with an assault on the world's largest democracy, even if the international media attention wasn't quite similar. Angry politicians and outraged people alike sought retaliation, an effacement of the jehad factories across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. For Delhi, an anyway highly-strung city, it was a replay of the terrifying days of the 1980s, of the the terror of "radio bombs".
The determination of Delhi's policemen and of the unarmed Watch and Ward staff of Parliament won India new icons. They fought alone and they fought with bare hands, snatching rifles from the terrorists to hit back. If only the politicians they died to save displayed similar resolve (above and below).

"Forget the questions. Just feel the vibrations of 5,000 years"
Datta Bharati/Horst Brutsche, German devotee at the Kumbha
The Naga Sadhus were the stars of the Maha Kumbha that took place under a conjunction of stars that occurred after 144 years.

Sounds Of Silence
Devotees and priests, clergy and laity, the Kumbha attracted them all. Adept performers, the priests, some of them coming out of their secluded domains in the mountains for the first time in years, knew a photo-op when they saw one. To the West, the Kumbha was a marriage of 1960s counter-culture and millennial commerce. Channel 4 spent £1 million telecasting it live to devotees in Britain. The pilgrims who came over the month-and-a-half of the epochal event starting January 9 scarcely knew that, though. They knew only faith, hope and piety (above).

In The Name Of The River
Seventy million pilgrims came to plunge into the sacred water at Triveni Sangam and stayed at Kumbhanagar, the temporary, 1,200-hectare city on the riverbanks. The city was a municipal marvel, run with unIndian zeal: garbage free, mosquito free, disease free. Now if only ...(above and below)