Table of contents for 29 May 2017 in Open Magazine

editor@openmedianetwork.in LETTER OF THE WEEK The story of Steve Smith displays all the traits needed to succeed and achieve greatness in sports—hard work, perseverance and above all foresight and humility, all of which are evident in his interview and talk at Open House (‘All About Steve’, May 22nd, 2017). Very often we forget to see the human being behind the face of the sportsmen thanks to all the media attention and fan frenzy surrounding them. In some ways great sportsmen have now been reduced to celebrities and the sheer amount of hard work and sacrifice put in by them is overlooked. However, unlike most professions, sports demands a great deal from the player both mentally as well as physically. It is thus always an eye-opener and a pleasure to read…

WE ARE WITNESSING the last days of Triple Talaq, a practice that even a number of Islamic countries have given up as having no place in a civilised society. It continues in India in the name of protecting a minority right which happens to be exclusively male. The Supreme Court is now cautiously deciding whether Triple Talaq should be done away with. Anyone with a sense of fairness would agree it should. Even the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) which however, pleads against its ending in the Supreme Court because it does not want outside agencies to thrust the decision. Who will then make this reform, given that the board itself is just another NGO without any sanction to speak for 170 million Muslims? There is no answer…

THE BOYS HAVE started visiting Sri Ramakrishna. But they are boys. For them as yet he is an eccentric. They argue among themselves— about what he says, about what he is. They have heard that he cannot even touch money, that he is repelled by it. One day, when he is out of his room, they slip a coin under his mattress. As Sri Ramakrishna returns, he goes to his cot. He has barely sat down that he shoots up as if an electric current has shocked him. The boys feel ashamed to have to put him to a test. On another occasion, under similar circumstances, Swami Premananda sees a person secretly slip money under the mattress; when Sri Ramakrishna returns to the room, he is not able to even…

ADVOCATE CHANDRA SHEKHAR Azad ‘Ravan’—that is how the man on the phone introduces himself. “Ravan fought for his sister’s honour. I fight for the honour of thousands of my Dalit sisters,” heexplains. Thereare25policecasesregisteredagainst him for allegedly inciting violence, rioting and communal tension and for damaging public property. A wanted man, he is in hiding, but he agrees to speak to Open over the phone. Right off the bat, we talk about the protest on May 9th against atrocities on Dalits in Saharanpur that went awry. Organised under the banner of Azad’s outfit, Bheem Army, it turned into a full-fledged clash between the police and the members of the army, who burned buses and other vehicles and beat uponlookers. “It was a well-planned move by the police to defame us. Those…

IN A COUPLE of weeks the term of law officers of the Central Government will be up for renewal. The top two , Attorney General Mukul Rohtagi and Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar, are most likely to continue. They, no doubt, have taken a huge hit in financial terms, but, I would like to believe, the loss is more than compensated by the honour of holding that constitutional position. For all practical purposes, the AG is the leader of the bar. However, a churn is expected at a level immediately below the SG, with a couple of additional solicitor-generals keen to go back to active practice. Again, the main motive might be money. Additional SGs are called upon to do the heavy lifting but remain relatively below the radar. They would…

FOR NOW, KULBHUSHAN Jadhav, the former Indian Navy officer who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court, lives. On Thursday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the judicial organ of the United Nations, ordered Islamabad not to execute Jadhav until a final decision on the matter was taken by the court. As far as interim measures go, this is certainly a big reason for India to cheer. Not only was Jadhav arrested, allegedly in Balochistan, and tried under dubious circumstances but even more importantly, India was denied consular access to him despite 16 attempts to do so. The ICJ concurred with India’s submission that Jadhav’s execution was imminent and refused to accept Pakistan’s contention that there was a 150-day window of clemency, until August, for Jadhav. The…

Images of protest tell us plenty about our time. Last month, Pepsi learned the dangers of appropriating, commercialising and thus trivialising the Black Lives Matter protest with their Kendall Jenner ad. But the recent image that truly emphasises the power of protest is of schoolgirls in Rohtak, Haryana. Clad in blue and pink salwar-kurtas, the girls look weary and exhausted. It was reported that 83 girls from a government high school in Rewari said they would fast unto death to demand an upgrade of their current school to a senior secondary one. The girls alleged that they are regularly harassed by rogues while travelling to the senior secondary school located three kilometers away. With the State government agreeing to upgrade the school, the girls broke their fast. Patriarchy is entrenched…

“You understand the expression ‘prime the pump’?” My colleagues from The Economist and I nodded. Ahead of our meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office earlier this month, we had discussed with his staff our desire to focus the discussion mainly on the president’s economic policy. Now the president appeared to be testing our knowledge of Keynesian economics. It seemed a bit odd. But, as Trump, resplendent behind the Resolute Desk, warmed to his theme, it was about to get stranger. “Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it,” mused the 45th president, illuminated by the sunlight pouring in from the Rose Garden behind him. “I mean, I just… I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good.…

‘I have a clearer eye for the limits and contradictions of modern liberalism and its arrogance’ IN AN ANGRIER, resentful world, the establishment politician is an endangered item. Defying the divisions of ideology and the restrictions of demography, the aggrieved legion is asking for change and politics-as-usual has only shop-worn platitudes to offer. Here comes the insurgent. Call him the populist, the nativist, the isolationist, or whatever it may take to describe the new troglodyte at the gate. Brexit, a vote that sought to make Great Britain worthy of the adjective, was the first salvo. Then Trump happened, turning both red America and blue America on their head. In his new book, The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics (Hurst; 278 pages), David Goodhart calls…

IN 2011 WHEN Parineeti Chopra appeared on the big screen for the first time, one could have easily mistaken her for that cute cousin, best friend or loud neighbour. That’s how convincing she was as Dimple Chaddha in Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl where she played the big-mouthed, impulsive, spoilt brat from north Delhi whose innocence was still intact. She owned the part like few newcomers could. Every time she spoke, it felt like she was grabbing you by the collar, to make you sit up and listen. She walked into the movies at a time when lip-glossed, high-heeled mannequins were passing off as actors all too often. She reminded me of Rani Mukerji—natural, spontaneous and unapologetic. Today, five years later, as I see Parineeti walk down the aisle of a…

LOCK-UP: JOTTINGS OF AN ORDINARY MAN M Chandrakumar Translated by Pavithra Srinivasan Tranquebar 127 Pages | Rs 195 FOR 13 LONG days in March 1983, M Chandrakumar woke up and slept in a ten-feet-by-ten room. A ‘crude hole’ in the door allowed in food and water. A small opening in the wall by the door functioned as a urine outlet. Food was served once a day. During most hours the room stank of sweat and urine, fear and despair. During the rare good hour, it smelt of beedi. The door was opened once every day, in the morning, affording the rooms’ occupants the luxury of morning ablutions—that rare chance to feel human. The only other outlet to the outside world was a window through which familiar faces let in food…

HIS POLITICAL humour on Saturday Night Live (SNL) has him sketched as an artiste provocateur, and actor Alec Baldwin has slowly come to terms with it. “I know there’s an impression that I’m someone who seeks to have violent confrontations with people,” he told New York in 2014. Baldwin’s orange-tinted impersonation of President Donald Trump has caused a riot. He recently appeared in Dreamworks’ The Boss Baby, voicing the character of a suited baby who is a secret agent. How did it all begin? And when did you realise that you had nailed the Trump impersonation? I went to meet Lorne (Michaels), the producer of SNL. He and his writers asked me if I could do it and I said no. I was booked to do a film, Shock and…

ONE OF THE late RK Laxman’s best ‘You Said It’ cartoons featured the city’s favourite subject, its roads. Laxman’s befuddled Common Man, umbrella in hand, glasses in place, is peering into a large pothole—a Maruti 800 has fallen inside. There are people in Mumbai who go around the city taking an annual pre-monsoon census of its roads. Actually, not its roads, but the potholes on the roads. These are not BMC officials—their job, which is to ensure that a minimum number of potholes are created every year, is over by then—these are private citizens. This annual pothole- counting shows how civic-minded some people are. It shows how much time people have on their hands too. Nonetheless, it’s a useful service: how can BMC officials sleep peacefully at night unless they…

MONUMENTS TEND TO be the prime attractions in cities. The first to-dos on most traveller lists are a roundup of the buildings to be looked up, and traversed through. Occasionally, however, a city’s highlight, could be something altogether different, but as meaningful. It could have to do with flowers. If late March to early April announces the papery cherry blossoms of Washington DC, then the waxen, molten tulips tell us spring has arrived in Amsterdam. If DC has its cherry blossoms, so does Japan, and if Holland has its tulips, so does Kashmir. The endemic yet inter-national nature of these blooms makes them seem exotic, yet familiar. But haven’t you ever wondered if these cities have their flower specialties, why doesn’t Delhi organise amaltas spotting tours? The glory of the…

APRIL 24, 2017 25 CRPF personnel are killed in an ambush in Sukma, Chhattisgarh JULY 18, 2016 An IED blast in Aurangabad, Bihar, claims the lives of 10 Cobra commandos DECEMBER 1, 2014 10 Cobra commandos are killed in an IED blast in Aurangabad, Bihar MARCH 27, 2012 A blast in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, leaves 12 CRPF personnel dead JULY 12, 2009 30 policemen, including an SP, are killed in an attack in Rajnandgaon, Chhattisgarh APRIL 11, 2015 STF soldiers, including its commandant, are killed in Sukma MAY 25, 2013 28 people, including senior Congress leaders, die in an ambush in Darbha Valley, Chhattisgarh MAY 3, 2011 11 police personnel are killed in a landmine blast in Lohardaga, Jharkhand APRIL 6, 2010 75 CRPF personnel and 1 policeman are killed in…

ON MAY 15TH, Union Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that India has seen only “isolated incidents” of cyber attack by the WannaCry ransomware, the latest variant of computer viruses that typically lock up PCs and demand ransom in return for recovering files. A day later, employees of Indian Railways in Palakkad, Kerala, saw on their monitors the cryptic message: ‘Ooops, your files have been encrypted’. An officer who is familiar with the warning—he has seen it over the past several days in dailies — tells Open that he never thought the malware would affect his computer or those of 22 others in his regional division. “It was only after we snapped the internet connection that we started to breathe easy,” he notes. At that very moment, it…

MAPS OF DELHI Pilar Maria Guerrieri Niyogi Books 392 Pages | Rs 4,500 FOR ME, ONE of the great fascinations for maps is their gift of inaccuracy. While travelling in Rajasthan in the 1980s, we relied on local road maps to get us from one city to the next. In some areas, the roads disappeared under sand, in others, the road’s absence on the map was due to poor printing. Every flaw kept us guessing. On the road between Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, the driver brought the jeep to a sudden halt in the middle of nowhere. I got out from the back to check only to find that the tarmac before us had disappeared altogether. Far away, I could see, it reappeared again from underneath a sand dune. In another…

BAAZ Anuja Chauhan HarperCollins 430 Pages | Rs 399 TO TAKE A break from scripting training videos for a voluntary organisation (work that gratifies the conscience, but is not much fun), I agreed to review Anuja Chauhan’s Baaz. So reader, I have to confess that I might be praising Baaz more than it deserves, simply because of the respite it offered me. Having said that, Baaz is an entertaining read. The story establishes its charming characters early on and both plot and pace-wise, it flies. Chauhan, was a name in advertising before she resigned in 2010 to chase a full-time (successful) career in commercial fiction. Two of her earlier books are being made into Hindi films. Baaz shouts ‘Bollywood movie’ from its first scene, I mean, chapter one. Chauhan establishes…

Winning over South Beach Priyanka Chopra knows how to work a crowd. I saw the actress do her thing at the red carpet before the world premiere of her first American film, Baywatch, in Miami last weekend, and boy does she know exactly how to get them eating out of her hand. For one, she showed up fashionably late—well after most of the other cast had arrived and were doing press— and appears to have decided she was going to dress elegant and conservative despite knowing the other ladies would more than likely go bolder since the event was at South Beach. It worked. Her hair pulled back casually in a pony tail, and wearing a shimmering blue dress that mostly hid her curves, she stood out amongst the sea…