Table of contents for August 2016 in Open Magazine

editor@openmedianetwork.in LETTER OF THE WEEK This refers to the essay ‘Pakistan Without Tears’ (22 August 2016) by Ramachandra Guha. It is extremely interesting to learn about Pakistan’s history and how its image has been shaped over the years. Guha offers a view of the country that is not biased or apologetic, but downright honest. Usually when one reads about Islam, the writing is almost always prejudiced because many have come to view the religion as extremist. But the truth is that there is much more to the faith; so also, to Pakistan. It is sad to learn about the politically volatile past that country has had. Even though this is something that has been covered before, Guha has been able to narrate it with greater impact because he has woven…

I HAVE A PASSION for vegetables. But don’t worry, this is not about to become a non-veg column, in which I discuss their well-known erotic associations. The only non-gastronomic vegetable pleasures I enjoy are from growing and cooking them, although I find them wondrous to behold as objects. Still life is perhaps my favourite form of art. It was often the art director’s cover of choice on the first recipe books I bought, back in the 1970s, when my vegetarianism was permitted at home only if I made my own food. My favourites were Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson, the spattered pages of which slyly reveal the recipes I’ve returned to again and again. I’ve made some amateur attempts at growing vegetables, first as my grandfather’s assistant. The husband and…

IN THAT BIG pulpy mass called the brain, there is small little wavy area which goes by the mouthful of Subgenual Anterior Cingulate Cortex. On 16 August, researchers from Oxford University came out with a press release with the heading ‘Finding the brain’s generosity centre’. The import of it was that it was located in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex. This is the part that starts buzzing when you, through goodness, set out to do something for someone else. While that might be a very good thing to know, it does a raise some questions problematic for the human race. The study found that people, in general, like to do things for themselves first and then move on to helping others. No surprises there. But they also found that some…

THE PAKISTAN that concentrates the Indian mind has two familiar lives. First, the ever paranoid nationalist’s bogeyman, the engineer of all our woes, in Kashmir and elsewhere. This Pakistan is an error in a bloody history, and the original repudiation of the India imagined by its founding fathers. Its very reason to exist is bogus, and it continues to be a territorial anomaly born out of a subcontinent ruptured by religious exclusivism. It is kept alive by a customary diet of anti-Indianism, and our tolerance of its terrors is a reflection of what we are essentially, a soft state, and stoic to the core. This Pakistan is the enemy and we have condemned ourselves to its designs. This Pakistan is an exaggerated truth, a necessary evil to accentuate the historical…

‘WHAT MAKES US human?’ is a question that has challenged and tormented scientists and laypeople alike down the ages. While the answer would be the stuff of numerous theses, we can agree that language, tool-making and laughter—with language heading the list—would be the top contenders. Few people in the country have done as much for the cause of language as activist, professor and linguist GN Devy. And even fewer know as intimately as he does what makes us human. Devy’s explorations began back in the 70s as a literature professor at the University of Baroda. His wife Surekha Devi (a Chemistry professor at that time) and he would set out on his Lambretta scooter every Saturday morning to a neighbouring village to spend time with the people there to try…

NOT WAR, NOT PEACE? MOTIVATING PAKISTAN TO PREVENT CROSS-BORDER TERRORISM George Perkovich and Toby Dalton Oxford University Press 297 Pages | Rs 695 IN 1965, SOME years after the war in Vietnam began, US military planners posed an interesting question: was there a way in which military force could be used to send a signal to Communist North Vietnam to sue for peace and come to the negotiating table? The idea was simple even as it was innovative: inflict pain on your enemy and dent its will to fight. The trouble was, no one knew how to go about doing it. When consulted on how to execute the idea, Thomas Schelling—the Harvard University economist who would later win the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions to game theory—suggested…

ON 15 AUGUST, THE Bengaluru Police filed a First Information Report against the NGO Amnesty International. This happened after a discussion where cases of human rights abuses in Kashmir were to be highlighted degenerated into a shouting match between separatists and citizens concerned about the integrity of India. A case of sedition—probably one of the most serious offences against the state in India—has been made against the NGO. In turn, Amnesty has cried foul. ‘Merely organising an event to defend constitutional values is now being branded ‘anti-India’ and criminalised,’ it says. Whether or not Amnesty is guilty of a crime is for the police to investigate and an appropriate court to determine. India is no banana republic and so the matter will reach the Judiciary in accordance with well-established legal…

In diplomacy, and in many dealings in life, the escalation of a dispute is a useful strategy to restore equilibrium to a troubled relationship. This is what Prime Minister Narendra Modi did when, during his Independence Day address, he referred to areas in Pakistan like Balochistan where separatist movements exist. India has traditionally kept off that zone, but given Pakistan’s recent stridency over Kashmir, the message sent was that everyone could fish in troubled waters. Of course, escalation works so long as it does not cross over into open aggression, where other irrational dynamics rule. The trick is to manoeuvre below that line where the opponent picks the greater good over greater harm because of a potential threat. WORD’S WORTH “The skillful leader subdues the enemy’s troops without any fighting”…

AN AMERICAN CONSULAR official in Calcutta was once explaining to his ambassador visiting from Delhi that everyone in West Bengal including the Chief Minister, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, on whom he had just called, was actually from East Bengal. “I’m not!” blurted out a smart, young party-going company executive. “That’s what I meant,” the consul told his boss. ‘Bangal’ and ‘Ghoti’, slang terms for people from East and West Bengal respectively, may still be used in popular discourse but the sharp cultural difference they once signified has mellowed with political change and the passage of time. Ray and his successor, Jyoti Basu, were both technically Bangals with proud ancestral roots in what is now Bangladesh. Born and raised in the dust of lower middle-class Calcutta, Mamata Banerjee must be reckoned a…

WHEN L NITIN CHORDIA was appointed lead consultant for Godrej Nature’s Basket in 2007, his first task was to source chocolate. He spent a year meeting 80 different chocolatiers from around the world, trying to understand what was good and bad cacao. On one such trip, Chordia was working on a presentation when he popped a small piece of chocolate into his mouth. The flavour was so intense and tangy that he thought he’d eaten a fruit by mistake. It was his introduction to single-origin chocolate. Single-origin chocolate, made of beans sourced solely from a particular region, came up in defiance of commercial brands that use blends with cacao or coffee from several different countries, caring more about volume than flavour or quality. “Pure cacao has never really been in…

SLEEPING DOGS Thomas Mogford Bloomsbury 256 Pages | Rs 499 STASI CHILD David Young Bloomsbury 408 Pages | Rs 399 GOD’S DOG Diego Marani Dedalus 147 Pages | Rs 725 THOMAS MOGFORD IS back with a new Spike Sanguinetti mystery. Spike who, you might enquire. He is a Gibraltarian lawyer (yes, people do seem to live on the Hyde Park-sized rock) who, having battled villains in the previous three mysteries and lost the woman he loved, takes a holiday in the north east coast of Corfu where his business partner, Peter, has a house overlooking the azure blue sea. His father, Rufus, accompanies him. They are received at the ferry station by the housekeeper’s older son, Lakis. The two old men (Peter and Rufus) play cupid and invite Spike’s former…

THE NEWS THAT Britain’s new Prime Minister Theresa May is affected by Type 1 diabetes has become one of the biggest post-Brexit stories. Doctors are inundated with questions from their patients—isn’t Type 1 diabetes supposed to occur in childhood? Classically, diabetes has been divided into two broad categories—Type 1, also called insulin dependent or juvenile/childhood diabetes, and Type 2, the common variety of diabetes that threatens to engulf countries like India. Type 1 diabetes is caused by autoimmune destruction of the pancreatic insulin-secreting (beta) cells, leading to a state of absolute insulin deficiency (‘autoimmune’ is when the body starts treating one of its own organs as an enemy and attacks it). Type 2 diabetes is caused by an interplay of myriad factors, which include resistance of the body cells to…

Tough Luck Industry insiders are saying Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavati is jinxed. Just when it seemed the filmmaker had pulled off a casting coup in landing Shahid Kapoor to play the third lead in his ambitious Deepika Padukone-Ranveer Singh starrer, now the rumour is that Bhansali may have lost Ranveer. According to the story being bandied about town, Ranveer reportedly asked Bhansali for a complete bound script before committing to the project, but the filmmaker balked, insisting that Ranveer sign the film in good faith. As of now, Ranveer may not be doing the film at all. Rumours are abuzz that Bhansali has approached both Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan to play the lead. However, well-placed sources say this news is being circulated solely for the purpose of increasing the…