Tabla de contenidos para October 24, 2016 en Open Magazine

editor@openmedianetwork.in LETTER OF THE WEEK Arvind Kejriwal has been a let-down for the people who trusted and voted for him. As reported in ‘The K Files’ (17 October 2016), he has turned out to embody exactly those traits that he had once fought against—corruption and dishonesty. His government is certainly not as ‘clean’ and ‘transparent’ as he made it out to be. One would think that given the fact that Delhi brought him back to power not once but twice, he would be more committed to his stated cause. Aside from launching a few traffic schemes and pointing fingers at the Central Government and Prime Minister Modi, Kejriwal and his party have very little to their credit today. It is time for him to buckle up and put his money…

URBAN WAR IS always messy. Unlike sparsely populated areas where armed forces can quickly ‘dominate’ territory, in cities each square foot of area has to be fought for. That is always messy. People die and are injured by the thousand. But even worse pathologies often emerge: populations become ‘weapons’ when they are held hostage, to be used as bargaining chips for whatever military commanders seek—territory, supplies, respite, anything. Fighting in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, began five years ago in mid-2011. Originally a contest between militants who had moved into the city from the countryside and the forces of Syria’s strongman Bashar al-Assad, the war in Aleppo is no longer one of attrition. With the entry of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar on the side of rebels, and later Russia on…

The most important attribute of a brand is trust, and when that comes into question, it can have serious repercussions. After the batteries of Samsung’s flagship phone Galaxy Note 7 started exploding, it recalled units it had sold. And then there were reports that replacements were also catching fire. Consumers might be forgiving once, but twice? From what was a manageable problem, it might now be an existential crisis for the company whose growth in recent times have been driven by smartphones. It was seen as the main competitor to Apple in this market. It has now decided to permanently stop production of its Note 7. The damage done by it to the brand will only become clear gradually. WORD’S WORTH “If you make the customer a promise... make sure…

A TOUR VERY LAST meeting, PV Narasimha Rao asked me for an exhaustive note on the Babri Masjid controversy. “Never mind how critical, just put down all you knew and thought. I want your own views.” He said he had asked others for similar reports. I got the feeling in those final months that his mind ranged over events and incidents of the past without ever relinquishing its grip on the present. I never saw anyone else in that rather forlorn Motilal Nehru Road bungalow when I called on my not very frequent trips to Delhi. But overheard snatches of conversation when he was on the telephone indicated a deep involvement in mysterious happenings. I had an impression of legions of shadowy followers at some remote distance to whom he gave…

THE WORLD DOES does not congregate in grey pinstripes once every three years to contemplate selling handguns to children or for legalising speed, but it does convene to horse trade the teeth of elephants and the horns of rhinos with great gusto. The Chinese and the Japanese revel in Asian diplomatic finesse as they send their top foreign-service officers to negotiate international trade in ivory, rhino horn and tiger parts. The Japanese join the Norwegians and Icelanders to do the same on rights to trade whale parts. Namibia and South Africa, with a smaller assortment of other Southern African Development Coalition partners, grandstand shrilly about selling their natural resources (read elephant, lion, rhino) to the highest bidder. The Caribbean nations go with the Japanese, the rest of Africa goes…

 “In politics, as anywhere else,’ wrote Václav Havel, ‘it is impossible and pointless to say everything all at once, to just anyone. But that does not mean having to lie. All you need is tact, the proper instincts, and good taste. One surprising experience from ‘high politics’ is this: I have discovered that good taste is more useful here than a degree in political science. It is largely a matter of form: knowing how long to speak, when to begin and when to finish; how to say something politely that your opposite number may not want to hear; how to say, always, what is most significant at a given moment, and not to speak what is not important or relevant; how to insist on your own position without offending…’ For…

THERE WILL BE music in the cafes at night. And revolution in the air. Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2016. For the very first time (since 1901) has ‘poetry, singing-songwriting’ made it to the award-winning genres. All one can say is high time, high bloody time. Poetry has figured often in the last century of Nobel winners, and Dylan will now join the ranks of Rabindranath Tagore, Herman Hesse, TS Eliot, Pablo Neruda and Seamus Heaney. By awarding Dylan for ‘for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’, the Swedish Academy has embraced the oeuvre of the song itself. After all, what is a song but verse in melody, a stanza accompanied by an orchestra and a poem brought to life…

HAVING WITNESSED FROM close quarters the rise and fall of several governments in the past four decades, I can say that the one now in the saddle in New Delhi is easily the cleanest. There is not a whiff of corruption associated with the Modi dispensation. Before his advent as Prime Minister, a change of government had merely meant a change of political executive while everything else largely stayed the same. This continuity suited entrenched interests well. They would soon begin to do business with the new regime. A popular Hindi saying, ‘Darbar badalta hai, darbari nahin’, captures the point well. But in many ways, Modi has sought to transform the ossified culture of India’s capital. He may or may not have created new jobs, but he has made redundant…

THE HIDDEN LIFE OF TREES: WHAT THEY FEEL, HOW THEY COMMUNICATE Peter Wohlleben Introduced by Pradip Krishen Allen Lane 317 Pages | Rs 699 WE TEND TO take trees for granted, because, well they’re always stuck in the same place for all our lives—and much longer—unless of course we chop them down or they fall over in a storm or die (slowly) of some unseen cause. And most of the time they don’t seem to be doing anything, except standing there waving their leaves and branches in the breeze. For a generation that’s addicted to instant gratification, they may seem, dare one say, boring. Ah, but that’s only because trees are slow and deep and only now—thanks to the persistent study and observations by people like Peter Wohlleben—are revealing their…

WE ALL KNOW of someone who has, or have, as in my case, suffered from the excruciating joint pain produced by the mutated virus making the rounds of Delhi since August. The advice from the doctor was to drink lots of water, and have several baths in lukewarm water to bring down the temperature. “We know very little about how and why the virus flits from one victim to another, and we have no antidote to the virus,” said the doctor. She added that some pharmaceutical companies are experimenting with ways to breed ‘killer’ male Aedes aegypti (the dengue mosquito) by feeding it with goat’s blood and fish food, and releasing it to mate with the female; the eggs would contain a fatal gene that would kill the new…

YOUR COLUMNIST, always firmly convinced that choice of death is an inalienable right of a human being, was once upon a time an admirer of the Jain custom of Santhara, where a person, usually aged, decides to fast to death. He thought it a dignified and courageous exit when life has fulfilled its potential. However, the fullness of time has caused a revisitation of those views, primarily for two reasons—Santhara requires an enormous act of willpower and the adulation that accrues from it within the community might lead those who don’t possess such will to embark on it; secondly, it is a public spectacle and a person once committed to it will find it hard to reverse the decision because of the humiliation and embarrassment involved. Like most things in…

IT SEEMED SUMMER was never going to end but the spreading crimson on the Virginia creeper on the back wall and the browning leaves on the horse-chestnuts in the park prepared us for the sudden change this weekend. Now leaves are falling and the days are shorter. The squirrels are racing around the dying garden stocking their larder for the winter, no doubt digging up my newly planted spring bulbs. It’s time to move indoors. A twist of the thermostat makes water suddenly move through the underfloor heating pipes which protest the sudden awakening from their long summer rest. Radiators warming after several months smell faintly of dust. I must check on my supplies of coal and kindling and candles to drive away the gloom. We are all talking about…

NO ONE SEES the Kashmir dispute having a solution in the foreseeable future. Everything has been tried: war, repression, elections, and inducements. Bad as the situation is now, the dreadful possibility is that it could spiral out of control. The decades of the 1980s and 1990s could return, and thousands of more Kashmiris could die. Infinitely worse, whether by choice or accident, is the possibility of nuclear catastrophe. Having cagily pranced around the nuclear threshold for three decades, for Pakistan and India to make the final journey to hell is not impossible. These gloomy truths are undeniable. Fortunately, Uri was finally contained and appears to be winding down, just as Pathankot was earlier. But will the next crisis also be manageable? Realism demands calm thinking, letting passions subside and moving…

“I don’t want to mix politics with governance. Ideologies are not a hurdle in this case. The Union Government is very enthusiastic about our plans and goals” PINARAYI VIJAYAN Chief Minister of Kerala  MANY YEARS AGO, when his intra-party rival VS Achuthanandan was Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, who was then the chief of the ruling CPM’s state unit, attended an all-party meeting to discuss the width of state highways. It was a departure of sorts for a party strongman to turn up at such a gathering, especially since the Chief Minister was of his own party. Typically, such tasks would be assigned to party leaders junior to him. Even the opposition Congress leaders were surprised to see Vijayan there. After all, no consensus was in sight on the…

CHETAN BHAGAT, AUTHOR of seven novels in the last 12 years, who has sold more copies than any other English language author in the country, is a deeply divisive figure. Readers either hate him or love him. A quick search on Facebook and Twitter of his latest title, One Indian Girl (Rupa; 272 pages; Rs 176) will throw up numerous entries that plop on both sides of the divide. Some readers will bemoan that this man knows nothing of women and that his books are only toilet-paper worthy. Others will applaud, ‘This is my story, this is my life’, and send him a hundred hearts. This extreme reactions that Bhagat and his books evoke reveal more about Indian English readers and their mind sets than they do about him. Today,…

Collateral Damage Newspaper reports that the makers of Shah Rukh Khan’s new film Raees have decided to replace Pakistani actress Mahira Khan have got everyone in Bollywood talking, and frankly, sweating under the collar. After Raj Thackeray and the MNS party threatened to ‘block’ the release of Raees and Karan Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil for starring Pakistani artistes, there has been a wave of fear in the film industry. Both films, after all, have already been completed, and are awaiting release. Insiders from the unit of Raees, however, reveal that no decision has been taken to replace Mahira. Apparently, she plays a key role in the film and features in several important scenes that cannot be reshot because it would require sets to be rebuilt and other actors’ availability…