Sommaire pour 13 November 2017 de Open Magazine

editor@openmedianetwork.in LETTER OF THE WEEK Secularists and liberals in India have had the tendency to consider anything associated with Hinduism or Hindu culture communal and nonprogressive (‘Unabashedly Hindu’, November 6th, 2017). But their ‘intellectual brainwashing’ will not work under strong and able administrators like Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath. In a bid to secure a minority vote bank and defame the Sangh Parivar, the previous UPA regime tried to popularise the term ‘Hindu terrorism’. This revival of Hindu culture has the power to resist anti-national activities and global jihad, which has the potential to destroy the nation. Successive BJP victories all over India are clear signals of a Hindu awakening and cultural unification. This sudden Hindutva thrust is not just confined to prominent politicians of the BJP, but is also…

AN ACTOR PLAYS an imaginary character but returns, owned by the audience in his true personality, to their homes, residing in their thoughts, sometimes becoming delusionally real. Those who jump orbits into stardom turn ultimately into extreme objects of voyeurism. At the heart of this connection, pervading across it like ether, is sexual fantasy. People are not interested in what shoes Shah Rukh wears or the kitchen of Deepika Padukone’s new home because of their expertise in leather or interior design. A fantasy can never be achieved, but to keep it going constantly needs fuel to be poured into it as oblation and that is done by collecting and hoarding details of the star. Such relentless embellishment of the obsession is, in turn, exploited for commerce and industries that rotate…

ACCORDING TO A new survey by the World Health Organization, half the children in the world are now obese. This revelation was largely ignored by the UK media, perhaps because only about one in ten of British children is affected. ‘Not our problem’ seemed to be the attitude. But obesity levels in the US, China and much of East Asia are far higher, and on a global level this is a truly worrying development. Why? Because food is such a bedrock of our communities and therefore of our politics. Of course, in a headline sense it is good news that at least one of the horsemen of the apocalypse may be out of a job. Famine is terrible; the most dehumanising of catastrophes, with its gradual destruction of bodies and…

WE THAT ARE YOUNG Preti Taneja Hamish Hamilton 548 Pages | Rs 599 IF TRAGEDIES ARE MEANT TO BE THE RAPID UNRAVELLINGS OF THE FATES OF MEN, WE THAT ARE YOUNG STANDS TALL AS A TRAGEDY OF WOMEN This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behaviour—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity —Edmund, King Lear (Act I, scene ii) THE BASTARD SON of the Earl of Gloucester in William Shakespeare’s King Lear, when calling out our tendency to absolve ourselves of our own wrongdoings, suggests something intrinsic: if we are only posing as villains by necessity, maybe we are, in fact, villains by nature.…

HUNGER: A MEMOIR OF (MY) BODY Roxane Gay Harper 320 Pages | Rs699 ROXANE GAY HAS established herself as a powerful voice that speaks of feminism, queerness and fatness with sensitivity and nuance. She has that rare ability to nurture two conflicting ideas at once, without needing to privilege one over the other. With Hunger, she takes us through the story of her struggles with and for her body with heartbreaking candour. Throughout, she is deeply aware of all the paradoxes that underlie her life: her weight is her fault, and yet how can it be her fault when she used it to overcome her assault? She loves her body, it is her body, it keeps her safe, and yet, she hates this ‘unruly body’ that will not be disciplined…

THIS YEAR’S Khushwant Singh Literary Festival (KLF) in Kasauli turned out to be an unusually low-key affair. It wasn’t intended to be so. Like every year, this October, too, the laidback cantonment, which still presents a picture of civic orderliness, was expected to spring to life with celebrities from the world of literature, arts and cinema, talking books and everything else, interspersed with long breaks for convivial eating and drinking. You wouldn’t grudge them that; the Kasauli weather is a catalyst for merry-making. Several big guns were supposed to boom this year. Arun Shourie was to kick off the proceedings. In his present state of mind, the chosen topic, ‘How to recognise rulers for what they are’, promised ample opportunity to unleash lethal one-liners and other quips aimed at you-know-who.…

EVER SINCE IT took charge, the Narendra Modi Government has tried very hard to woo investors and investment. From personal visits to the Gulf region to Silicon Valley, much effort has been expended on opening the world’s purse strings for India. It has worked, to an extent. A big block in this mission has been the kind of signals investors receive. Most do not have the wherewithal to carry out specific research to figure out if India is a suitable destination for their money. Instead they rely on globally accepted indicators that demonstrate a country’s willingness to help businesses overcome red tape. One of the better known tools for this purpose is the World Bank’s Doing Business (DB) ranking, which assesses countries on 10 business-related parameters. Ranked every year, this…

Politics is a matter of appearances. To succeed, you have to, if necessary, get your hands dirty. But the pretension of cleanliness is paramount. After an entire year of whispered meetings with leaders from the BJP, hints and denials of him joining the party and becoming a part of the state cabinet, Narayan Rane dumped the Congress but did not join the BJP. Instead, he formed his own party. Rane has often been accused of graft. And his joining the BJP and becoming a part of the cabinet appeared to be unacceptable. But Rane has his clout in the state’s Konkan region. Reports say Maharashtra’s Chief Minister is now expected to induct Rane into the cabinet soon. It may seem an unsubtle long-winded way of getting his support—having him form…

ON NOVEMBER 8TH last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a dramatic announcement. In one go, he outlawed notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 that constituted 86 per cent of the country’s currency in circulation. It was perhaps India’s boldest policy experiment in over a quarter century. A year later, a paradox of sorts has emerged: while intellectuals and analysts in India have slammed the step, Indians at large have reacted positively to it. The usual explanation is that the economics and politics of demonetisation bear no connection, with the idea finding favour with citizens by virtue of the populist appeal of its moral logic. Lost in the noise are the modernising features of a larger process that began with creating no-frill bank accounts for the underprivileged and has…

46% of Indian patients with Type 2 diabetes are below 40 69.2 Million diabetics in India according to WHO figure in 2015 87 Million Indians are likely to suffer from Type 2 diabetes by 2030 438 Million Expected number of Type 2 diabetics globally by 2030; currently the figure is 285 million Sources: WHO; Indian Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism UNE-BASED Dr Anjali Bhatt recalls a typical case: of a 37-year-old patient she wishes to call ‘Sharma’. He was obese and diabetic, like 62 million other Indians who suffer from the disease, a figure which grew 442 per cent from 1980 to 2014, according to the scientific journal The Lancet. One million Indians die every year from this health scourge, with the country contributing 7 per cent of all global…

HOW TO TRAVEL LIGHT: MY MEMORIES OF MADNESS AND MELANCHOLIA Shreevatsa Nevatia Penguin Books 237 Pages | Rs 399 IN MY FAVOURITE chapter in Shreevatsa Nevatia’s memoir about his struggle with bipolarity, the author examines his relationship with films such as Apur Sansar and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Discussing a scene in the former where the protagonist Apu stands in for a ‘mad groom’ and marries a young girl he has never met before, Nevatia says that he sees two aspects of his own personality in these two men: Binu, delusional, clad in finery and destined to fall, and Apu, ‘scared and reluctant, but desirous of grandeur’. To me, this passage—and what follows in the chapter—reads like intense, very personal film criticism of the sort I have…

BEAUTY AND BRAINS is what you see when you look at 36-year-old Jessica Alba. According to Forbes, the actress-turned-entrepreneur has a net worth of $340 million. As a young girl, Alba suffered frequently from asthma and allergies. She co-founded the nontoxic-household goods startup The Honest Company in 2011. The business began largely as a subscription service for diapers and baby wipes, but now sells over 100 products. We meet the actress—best known for Sin City and Fantastic Four—at her office in Playa Vista California. How did The Honest Company come about? Believe it or not, laundry detergent started this company. My mom, about 10 years ago, recommended that I use a certain laundry detergent; it was the same detergent that she had used on me when I was a baby.…

ONCE AN ANCHOR, always an anchor. That especially applies to those who are in TV studios day after day, quizzing people left, right and centre. So it was with Rajdeep Sardesai, one of India’s most civilised television hosts, when he was pitched into the unfamiliar role of a panellist. The occasion was the recent launch of Sardesai’s book, Democracy’s XI, at Mumbai’s Royal Opera House. This column has carried a piece on the heritage building’s renovation, as good a re-creation of the original as it is possible to do. The owners of the property, the erstwhile Maharaja and Maharani of Gondal, Joytendrasinhji and Kumud Kumari Jadeja were in the auditorium. I can’t remember the last time I asked to be introduced to someone, but here I unabashedly did: I wanted…

Saif’s Acid Test The abysmal failure of Chef has put Saif Ali Khan in a precarious position, and tabloids have reported that the makers of his new film Kalaakaandi are no longer willing to invest in publicity to release it theatrically. Cinestaan Film Company, the studio that has bankrolled the picture, has reportedly been in talks with Netflix to release the film straight-to-online-devices. But director Akshat Verma (writer of Delhi Belly), producer Ashi Dua, and Saif are putting up a solid fight, urging Cinestaan’s Rohit Khattar to give the film a breathing chance. Those who have seen the film are saying it is a cutting-edge Hindi film with a bravura performance by Saif, but Cinestaan does not want to pour any more money into the project, and would rather make…