Table of contents for 12/26/2016 in Open Magazine

editor@openmedianetwork.in LETTER OF THE WEEK Jayalalithaa was a one-of-a-kind politician in her generation and this is evident in the sheer volume of well-wishers who turned up for her funeral (‘The Farewell’, December 19th, 2016). It is interesting to note how she is being portrayed by the media and rival political parties after her death. In life, she was the target of scandal rakers and corruption allegations. But now that she has passed away, the whole country seems to have painted her as a saviour and a mother figure to her state. When one sees images of her funeral, it is hard to imagine that this was the same woman who had to go to court to fight law suits against her party’s dealings. Now it seems that her slate has…

Soon there will be a new incumbent in the White House. He will have plenty on his plate to deal with. From Syria to the South China Sea, his predecessor will have left a trail of problems begging for resolution. Perhaps ‘resolution’ is the wrong word to describe geostrategic disasters left in the wake of foreign policymaking best described as asleep at the wheel. Undoing this damage will be tough, if not impossible. Consider the situation. In Syria, Russia has pummelled opposition fighters into rubble in Aleppo, a key stronghold of those opposed to Bashar al-Assad. American dithering over this civil war over the past four years has now borne fruit: Iran and Russia are the unquestionable winners. Key US allies in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia have either…

Politics is a strange profession. The people who participate in it must exhibit empathy, but the singleminded pursuit of power must also inure them to such feelings. And so you have bizarre symbolisms like the distribution of laddoos in Delhi by BJP workers to people queued up outside AT Ms. The gesture was doomed to backfire and has predictably come in for ridicule. Tea and biscuits are more appropriate and that is why you see them distributed in the aftermath of natural calamities. Imagine handing out laddoos on those occasions. WORD’S WORTH “Because of the diverse conditions of humans, some acts are virtuous to some people, as appropriate and suitable to them, while the same acts are immoral for others, as inappropriate” THOMAS AQUINAS…

INDIA IN 2016 saw the normalisation of extremes, just as the rest of the world did—the unthinkable was thought out aloud and the undoable done. While the politics of victimhood, sentiments and political correctness came under scrutiny for distortion of facts and misrepresentation of reality by flag-bearers of nationalism, policymaking became bolder and more ambitious, attracting salvos from an opposition that termed it adventurist and drastic. As the fear of consequences was disregarded in favour of shedding the status quo, institutions were bypassed and conventions flouted. In the light of new trends gaining in popular appeal globally and especially in India, sticking to old standards was looked upon as inappropriate— which was so even for the media, which had to bare its partisan ways. The idea of post-factual politics showed…

NON-FICTION THE EXILE: THE FLIGHT OF OSAMA BIN LADEN by Adrian Levy & Cathrine Scott-Clark (Bloomsbury) Rigorously sourced, with primary research material dug up using a career’s worth of contacts made in South Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the US. It starts in the recent past, comes right up to the present day, and then looks ahead to what is to come. RING OF TRUTH AND OT HER MYTHS OF SEX AND JEWELLERY by Wendy Doniger (Speaking Tiger) Why do rings continually appear in stories about marriage and adultery, love and betrayal, loss and recovery, identity and masquerade? What is the mythology that makes finger rings symbols of true—or, as the case may be, untrue—love? RED: THE HISTORY OF A COLOU R by Michel Pastoureau (Princeton) This illustrated book…

The demonetisation exercise has, quite predictably, obsessed India since November 8th. However, beyond the usual chatter over the wisdom or craziness of the move, the kerfuffle has thrown up interesting questions about Indian behaviour. One that fascinates me centres on the pace of change in India. The critics of Narendra Modi maintain that he wants to transform India too fast. Indian civilisation, they say, is accustomed to baby steps and change has always been gradual, almost seamless. Modi, they contend, is coercing India into the cutting edge of the 21st century and this frenzied pace argues against India’s civilisational ethos. The critics do have a point. Change in India has often been unhurried. Despite the colonial encounter, Independent India inherited vast tracts that had barely changed since the mid-19th century.…

In the prevailing outrage against the demonetisation drive, we have identified our chief complaints—the cash crunch in the market, the wasted man hours spent in long queues, and the limited access to our own money. Underlying all this is our relationship with the Automated Teller Machine (AT M). In the last two decades or so, the AT M card and kiosk on the street corner have come to form an intrinsic part of our lives. Personal finance is a sensitive domain and Indians are suspicious by nature. When cash machines were first introduced, and sometimes even now, many used to worry if the machines would eat up their cards or glean and pass on account details. Yet we got over those initial suspicions. We began to trust it and even…

The year 2017 will mark the 70th anniversary of the birth of India and Pakistan. While official Independence celebrations will no doubt be organised on both sides of the Radcliffe Line to mark the event along with a host of patriotic observances and festivities, Partition itself is certain to receive a sustained bout of attention. A slew of public events involving not just denizens of the divided Subcontinent but also its far-flung diaspora are already afoot to commemorate it in a grand way. In Amritsar, a Partition Museum is fast coming up. A small initiative at University of California at Berkeley to collect stories from Partition survivors living in the US has expanded into a much larger operation involving scores of citizen-historians reaching out to these survivors living in over…

THIS YEAR HAS been a landmark one for non-fiction. In 2016 , climate change became the subject of literary soirees; serious research and personal documentation wove into the warp and weft of mental illness; a young neurosurgeon and father wrote about succumbing to finitude; and the power of the monologue became apparent. The fiction titles provided fewer gems. Leading authors such as Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan, JM Coetzee and Aravind Adiga wrote fine books, but not their best. Paul Beatty winning the 2016 Man Booker Prize for The Sellout was expected as it was well-deserving and also the most politically scathing of the books shortlisted. The most contentious award this year was undoubtedly the Nobel Prize for Literature. Bob Dylan, it must be said, kept his head, even while everyone…

I wake up every morning and absolutely have to smell the coffee! In the upper compartment of the Bialetti stovetop coffee maker, I put one heaped tablespoon of Devan’s coffee (a blend of Malabar monsoon and organic coffee) or Coorg coffee from a small plantation (if I am lucky to find someone willing to bring it for me from Bengaluru). It simmers on the cooking range and within five minutes, the whooshing sound of the decoction indicates that the coffee is ready. I pour it into a large mug, add a dash of boiled milk, and a teaspoon of soft dark brown sugar to offset the bitterness. This ritual, I assumed, was ingrained in my genes. That I was replicating an age-old tradition in Tamilian households. Well, complete hogwash. Though…

It was around a year ago that Bollywood found itself in the midst of a public debate over whether India had become ‘intolerant’. This was fuelled by an Aamir Khan comment which was later echoed by Shah Rukh Khan. And now the year ends for Bollywood with the image of Shah Rukh meeting Raj Thackeray, an obeisance to a toothless tiger so that the release of his movie Raees in January is not disrupted, leading to the question—how much can a man be party to intolerance against himself? Six years ago, another movie of his, My Name Is Khan, had been targeted by another Thackeray and that time too the reason the Shiv Sena cited was connected to Pakistan: Shah Rukh speaking for Pakistani cricketers to participate in the Indian…

MJ Akbar Minister of State, External Affairs My new book for 2016 is 51 years old. Its relevance has been resurrected by contemporary events. I rediscovered it during a wander through a famous New York bookstore, the Strand, which mixes old and new titles with judicious intelligence. Theodore White’s The Making of the President 1964: A Narrative History of American Politics in Action was lying on a pavement shelf outside the store amid a clutter. Its price? Two dollars. White was a reporter who turned his coverage into a book after the famous election of 1960 that took John Kennedy to the White House. But the classic is his account of the contest between Lyndon Johnson, who spoke like a Texan and possessed the heart of a liberal; and an…

Mind Your Manners Kangana Ranaut does not want to be roped into another controversy. The Tanu Weds Manu star, who recently returned to Mumbai after a long schedule of her Hansal Mehta-directed project Simran in the US, was egged on by journalists to pick who she feels is more deserving of the Best Actress award this year between frontrunners Sonam Kapoor and Alia Bhatt. Dodging what could’ve proved to be a fatal bullet, Kangana cleverly replied that she was in no position to make such a decision as she was on no jury, and made it a point to add that she didn’t believe in the idea of competitive awards anyway so she didn’t care who the juries decide to award after all. It’s evident that Kangana, who is on…