Table of contents for 02 July 2018 in Open Magazine

BEING LONELY IN INDIA Given the shocking news of several celebrity suicides in the last few weeks, it is all the more important now for India to take mental health more seriously (‘Lonely’, June 25th, 2018). Why are psychological and emotional problems still considered a joke and often stereotyped as problems only women face? In reality, men too are faced with problems of depression, low self-esteem, loneliness, and with emotional breakdowns. Such issues are serious and when those affected are left to handle it alone, at a time when they are emotionally incapable of doing so, it can lead to chronic depression or even suicidal behaviour. This can only be avoided if we act together as a society and reach out to individuals who are suffering from feelings of alienation…

THERE MUST BE a hidden eye somewhere in the ruling establishment that watches over the media. But before critics of the Modi Government jump to conclude that this columnist has confirmed their fears, let me remind them that all governments take a dim view of an independent media, regardless of who is in power. Back in the early 60s, the late Rajinder Puri, easily the best political cartoonist that this country has produced, found himself rendered unemployable while still in his twenties when the capital’s leading English daily eased him out after he did particularly biting cartoons questioning Nehru’s failed China policy. How Indira Gandhi sought to turn the media into a poodle is well-documented. Rajiv Gandhi used the commissioning of Doordarshan programmes, which turned many a pauper into a…

A GLOBAL TRADE WAR is in the offing if it is not already on. After US President Donald Trump identified $200 billion worth of Chinese exports for additional—special—tariffs, it was only a matter of time before other countries responded. Even before this, Trump had singled out steel exports from China for extra tariffs. The meeting of the Group of Seven Countries (G-7) last month broke into acrimony over trade issues. Historically, it has been far more difficult to bring down tariff walls across the world than to erect them. The US Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 arguably sparked off a trade conflict between the two World Wars. That episode went on to something much worse than mere tariffs. The post-World War II consensus on trade relations was founded on the realisation…

A cricket team (England playing against Australia) scored 481 runs in an ODI match, at one point looking likely to score over 500. On that same day, elsewhere in England, the visiting India A team scored 458 runs in a 50-over match. According to Alex Hales, who scored 147 in the England-Australia match, the 500-run barrier will soon be broken. When that milestone is crossed, the format’s death knell will have rung. A few years ago, it was possible to get bowled out in a 50-over match. Any team score of 300 runs plus was considered phenomenal and victory was near certain. That’s not true anymore. The need to make ODIs thrilling enough to rival T20s for fans seems to be enabling teams to put up ever bigger totals. The…

SURESH KABADE’S FAMILY switched over to sugarcane farming just as the 1970s began. The cooperative movement was taking off in western Maharashtra and a factory came up in the region. Where earlier farmers used to grow rice, groundnuts, soya beans and other crops, sugarcane gradually became dominant. “Farmers used to get more money from sugarcane. Everyone got attracted,” he says. After his ninth standard, despite the strong disapproval of his family, Kabade had had enough of formal education. Aged 15, he began heading to the fields and found that it was his calling. His grandfather and father managed to get about 25-30 tonnes of cane per acre on their land, the average of all farms in the area. But he was interested in modern methods of farming and began to…

Individuals cannot be blamed for feeling lonely in contemporary society. It is society which should be hauled up for failing people (‘Lonely’, June 25th, 2018). However, I don’t think loneliness can be limited to just the big cities. It is also present in smaller towns and even in rural settings. Wherever the mobile phone goes, loneliness invariably follows because this device teaches us to be self-absorbed. While we may be in active communication with a hundred different people, we are not connecting with them in any real way. Also, facilities for mental health are not available in rural areas at all and only to a small extent in urban India. No matter where they live, most people are not encouraged to seek professional help when they feel unhappy or depressed.…

IF THE ROYALS are here, can the paparazzi be far behind? Stating the obvious perhaps, so ubiquitous have the massed photographers become that they are now an accepted part of the scenery. (Sadly, everyone seems to have forgotten the central role they played in the death of Princess Diana.) I bring this up now because of two large newspaper items I read here. The first is about France’s Closer magazine, which is appealing the £92,000 damages awarded by a French court to the Duchess of Cambridge (Kate, wife of William) for publishing her topless photographs. Apparently William and Kate were sunbathing on a private holiday in the South of France when two photographers snapped these pictures. A clear case of invasion of privacy, you would think, but Closer is appealing…

THE BALL HANGS deliciously in the air about four minutes into the game. A cross from Portugal’s Goncalo Guedes is on its way. Below it, waiting for it, a mad scramble has ensued. Men are pushing for it, shoving each other to deny it. The Portuguese centreback Pepe moves his large frame from the left of the goal-post to the right, shoving his body into the Moroccan player Khalid Boutaib, which later prompts the manager of the Morocco team Herve Renard to say, “I’m not going to say what I think because I don’t want to get in trouble.” But Renard says it anyway: “… look at what [Pepe] does on the corner... it was a foul.” As the cross comes in, as Pepe collides to the ground, taking a…

IN MY LAST column, I brought in the Parliament. Therefore it is high time I brought in an issue that people are debating. I mean the question of simultaneous elections. In 2016, the then President spoke about it and said, “With some election or the other throughout the year, normal activities of the Government come to a stand-still because of Code of Conduct. This is an idea the political leadership should think of. If political parties collectively think, we can change it.... The Election Commission can also put in their ideas and efforts on holding the polls together, and that will be highly beneficial.” The Prime Minister has repeatedly spoken about it, including at the June 17th Governing Council Meeting of the Niti Aayog. There was a discussion on Mygov.in,…

AT THE DAWN of the seventeenth century, decades after Vijayanagar fell before the might of the Sultans of the Deccan, a fascinating new work of poetry took form in the Tamil temple-town of Madurai. The Rayavacakamu (‘Tidings of the King’) is ostensibly about Krishnadeva Raya (reign:1509-1529), but the composition stands out primarily for its polemics against Muslim kings. ‘What are the Turks,’ it declares, ‘but drunkards and opium eaters!’ while Brahmins, with ‘their diet of rice with salt and sambar’, are cast as a vastly better sort who ‘don’t suffer from pride and malice’. Elsewhere, Hindu agents of the Deccan’s Sultans lament how ‘Our lords are drunkards who have no faith in gods and Brahmins. They are,’ these characters cry, ‘barbarians and cow-killers.’ When spies from Vijayanagar travel to the…

“THE FURTHER I GOT AWAY FROM SIERRA LEONE’S CONFLICT, THE MORE I SAW THAT THE COUNTRY HAD REPAIRED ITSELF IN A REMARKABLE WAY”AMINATTA FORNA author Aminatta Forna grew up in Sierra Leone, Scotland, Iran, Thailand and Zambia. She is the author of four novels and a memoir. An ardent canid lover, she has also written a children’s book called The Angel of Mexico City, which features an angel-in-training, a homeless boy, and a dog. For most of her adult life she has lived in London, but for the last three years she has held the position of Lannan Visiting Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University in the US. Her novels have explored the nature of violence and trauma, particularly the effects of civil war, in countries like Sierra Leone and…

NO 44, UTKRUSHA-B, Adarsh Road, Vile Parle East, Mumbai, is an exciting location. At times, the living room of this apartment that is home to a 60-year-old detective Lalli, and her writer niece, Sita is littered with newspapers as the duo search for a pivotal news report, and at other times, the matrons gather on the couch to pull out the most bizarre cases. It is often on the kitchen table over cups of cocoa, mint lime tea, or jeera rasam that several of these cases are pieced together. Here, the doorbell could mean a victim, a culprit, a cop or Mahesh bhai, who slides his hands deep into a muslin bundle and tugs out beautiful induri saris along with clues vital to a multi-layered case. Kalpana Swaminathan lives a…

ANTHONY Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential (1994) kick-started my obsession with food memoirs. This was the late 90s. I was a student in New York City, and subscribed to The New Yorker, which carried a piece entitled Don’t Eat Before Reading This. Bourdain’s shocking stories about the underbelly of New York restaurants was a compelling read—more so because I had just finished George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, where the Etonian was in dire straits in Paris after a thief made off with his money. Orwell describes his long hours as a plongeur, a dishwasher, the lowest of the low in the Parisian restaurants, and his life in the tenements, with hunger banging away on his door. Not that Bourdain is an Orwell. The two wrote in different ages:…

DIVERSITY IS THE word of our times, and it is for questioning the emerging diversity dictatorship that the gutsy Lionel Shriver has become the new bogeywoman for the liberal elite, particularly the burdened White men. In her recent Spectator column, she debunked the lofty correctness of a publishing house which wanted its future lists to reflect the ethnic, gender, social and physical diversity of the UK population. The famed house has also done away with a university degree as a mandatory qualification for its new employees. Shriver wrote, ‘Thus from now until 2025, literary excellence will be secondary to ticking all those ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual preference and crap-education boxes. We can safely infer from that email that if an agent submits a manuscript written by a gay transgender Caribbean…

GREAT POETRY IS not just malleable in its interpretation but also appears to be speaking truths for all that went before and after it, in the personal and the political. For instance, Hollow Men, which TS Eliot ends with: ‘This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.’ These lines are recited by Kurtz, the character Marlon Brando plays in the classic Apocalypse Now, just before he is killed. It is then a statement of the descent of humanity symbolised in the pointless US war on Vietnam. The purpose of the war was to war and that is how human beings are. The whimpering end of the civilised…

“HISTORY,” WINSTON CHURCHILL said, “will judge me kindly, because I intend to write it myself.” He needn’t have bothered. Of the great mass murderers of the 20th century, he is the only one to have completely escaped the odium deservingly bestowed on his rivals Hitler and Stalin, to have been crowned with a Nobel Prize (for Literature, no less), and now even with an Oscar. As Hollywood confirms, Churchill’s reputation as what Harold Evans has called “the British Lion-heart on the ramparts of civilisation” rests almost entirely on his stirring rhetoric during World War II. Churchill had nothing to offer but “blood, toil, tears and sweat”. And, of course, an exceptional talent for a fine phrase. “We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end.... We…

THE PERMANENCY OF AN OWN GOAL, ON THE SCORESHEET AND IN THE SCORER’S MIND, ENSURES THAT SOLACE IS HARD TO FIND MOROCCO’S AZIZ Bouhaddouz scored a goal at the World Cup. That’s all he was asked to do. That’s all he did. That’s all he perhaps ever hoped for. The substitute striker was introduced late into Morocco’s opening match of their campaign, against fellow lightweights Iran, with the sole intention of breaking the deadlock. To score a goal. But when he did, when he beat the goalkeeper and the ball rustled against the net, the moment fast unravelled into the lowest point of his career and life. Bouhaddouz’s own goal was also one of the most devastating moments of the first round of this World Cup’s ongoing group stage, setting…

AS ONE REFLECTS ON THE POSITION OF THE US TODAY, WE CANNOT BUT BE ASTONISHED AT THE GAP WHICH EXISTS BETWEEN ITS INFLUENCE IN POLITICAL TERMS AND ITS SOCIAL AND CULTURAL HEGEMONIC FORCE THE MOST DANGEROUS Place: A History of the United States in South Asia (Allen Lane; Rs 799; 472 pages) is a history of the engagement of the United States with South Asia—more precisely with India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Much like the author’s earlier works, this book is readable and follows an accessible chronological approach. While the narrative is densely packed with historical detail, the author also stands back frequently and focuses on larger trends and processes so the end product is a history which explains and enlightens and is simultaneously enormously informative. Its scope is also vast,…

LAST WEEK I was treating an anxious 24-year-old man, weighing 110 kg, who had just been diagnosed with diabetes. As is often the case, a question that kept recurring in our discussion was the possibility of reversing his newly acquired affliction. Finally, I told him, “If you lose 10 kg weight, you can possibly get rid of diabetes.” He walked out of my office in disbelief. Was I trying to end the conversation or was I justified in my advice? Can one reverse diabetes through weight loss? Once considered the hallmark of affluence, health and happiness, obesity is actually our biggest enemy—the mother of all diseases. All obesity is not the same—central or abdominal obesity, which particularly affects Indians, is the worst form. Central or visceral (especially the liver) fat…

Not Just Another Star Kid Arjun Kapoor was shooting in London and missed the trailer launch event of Dhadak (while the rest of his family showed up to support Janhvi Kapoor), but the actor has been looking out for his half-sis. Insiders reveal that Arjun has had nothing but the kindest things to say about the trailer, and the first impression she makes in it. Recently after the passing of Sridevi in Dubai, Arjun and his sister Anshula put aside old differences and rushed to be by the side of Janhvi and her younger sister Khushi as they dealt with their tragic loss. Apparently, in the weeks since, all four of Boney Kapoor’s children have spent some time together, and Arjun has told friends he was particularly impressed with Janhvi’s…