Table of contents for 21 August 2017 in Open Magazine

STYLE AND SUBSTANCE They make Open one of the best-edited magazines. (Clockwise from top -left) Monalisa S Arthur, Aresh Shirali, Pallavi Pundir and Sonali Acharjee THE VISUAL GURU Creative Director Rohit Chawla manages the aesthetics. EVERYTHING IS BY DESIGN They make what you see and read a beautiful experience. (L-R) Champak Bhattacharjee, Sharad Tailang, Saurabh Singh, Madhu Bhaskar (seated), Anup Banerjee and Veer Pal Singh PHOTOGENIC PAIR Their pictures tell a bigger story. (L-R) Ashish Sharma and Raul Irani DIGITAL DYNAMICS They make the passage from print to digital a seamless process. (Clockwise from top-left) Mohit Bisht, Hamendra Singh and Vijay Soni…

The two-way religious displacement between India and Pakistan from mid-1947 had a predictable quality to it. Millions of Muslims crossed from India into West and East Pakistan; Hindus and Sikhs in similar magnitudes moved in the opposite direction. Despite the violence and trauma of this process, most Muslims chose to remain in India; in East Pakistan too, most Hindus did not leave. But overall, if a person or a family was on the move in 1947 or 1948, their religious persuasion would almost invariably indicate in which direction the movement was taking place. But this was not always the case. Less well known are the instances of Muslims who moved in the opposite direction while they should have been, in the normal course, pillars of the new Pakistan. Three stories—of…

For a state that was considered in the list of backward states of the country, where nothing moved, where the bureaucrats were ruling the roost and the industrial climate was vitiated by failing law and order, the turnaround in ground realities in the last few months in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, has both been pleasant and stunning. In the last months of the Yogi A.dityanath regime, the state has climbed a few notches in the public perception of where things are headed ro in terms of their prosperity and development. One has ro admit that though the state always had immense potential but the change of mindset amongst the state bureaucracy, led and guided by the Chief Minister, has begun to make the much desired…

As India turns 70, and I do too, Hindu nationalists have renewed their onslaught on the republic’s first Prime Minister. As one of Midnight’s Children, I grew up in the shadow of Jawaharlal Nehru’s towering presence. My father, Minoo Masani, started out as his confidant in the 1930s and ended up leading opposition to his pro-Soviet socialism in the 1950s and 60s. But for all their ideological differences, Father might not have approved the way Nehru is being thrown out today. President Kovind’s omission of Nehru from his inaugural speech was no Freudian slip, but a rewriting of history every bit as partisan as the past Nehru cult of personality. In the 1980s, I earned the displeasure of my former academic supervisor, Dr S Gopal, for writing a review criticising…

If one needed confirmation that the supposedly timeless, unchanging India of cliché is indeed transforming itself unrecognisably, one need not look beyond the dramatic changes in our country’s media. If Once dominated by government programming, India’s visual media landscape is now brimming with numerous private offerings, with over a hundred 24x7 television news channels today in multiple languages—the medium-sized state of Kerala alone has 13 all-news channels in Malayalam—catering to the Indian public through a range of increasingly breathless and hysterical shows aimed at attracting the highest number of eyeballs and ratings. Welcome to India’s extraordinary media environment today—an environment in which the Fourth Estate serves simultaneously as witness, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. Media now is driven by the ‘breaking news’ culture and the search for the villain of…

Hum India kyun jaa rahe hain? Udhar toh saarey kaafir hotey hain…woh toh achche nahin hotey (Why are we going to India? Only infidels live there. They aren’t good people),” said Maham, a five-year-old girl when her father told her he was going to be posted to Delhi as a defence attache. In a study conducted by Gallup Pakistan, it was revealed that 76 per cent of the Pakistanis surveyed have never met an Indian. Seventy years after the blood-stained Partition, the physical divide between the two countries has only crystalised communal identities, drawing clear lines between what it means to be a ‘pure’ or pak Pakistani, and what construes as the Hindu ‘other’. Across the border, rising nationalism premised on religious zeal has also carved out a distinct criterion…

NOT UNLIKE ERRANT schoolchildren behaving like docile little lambs after a severe tongue-lashing from a stern headmaster, BJP MPs are a much chastened lot now, dutifully attending proceedings in the two Houses of Parliament. The overnight transformation came about thanks to the riot act read by the no-nonsense party chief Amit Shah. The provocation for the show-cause was the absence of some 30-odd members, including ministers, from the Rajya Sabha when the opposition pushed through an amendment to a constitutional amendment bill a few days ago. It had a magical effect, with usually carefree members getting all serious, mindful of their parliamentary duties, even if the agenda might be dull as ditchwater, which it often is. No longer are they seen hanging around in the Central Hall, gossiping over cups…

Music, theatre, television and movies— Ricky Martin wears many a hat, albeit in a high-octane mode. Martin’s contribution to the arts has been seen globally, and his philanthropic activities—from India to his hometown in Puerto Rico—have garnered wide appreciation. Currently working on The Assassination of Gianni Versace in South Beach Miami, a story of Versace’s assassination by a serial killer, the actor has immersed himself in the character of Versace’s partner. How did this project come about? I had worked with [director] Ryan Murphy when he was working on Glee. I had heard that he was shooting this film but I didn’t think that I’d be in it. Then he called me to have dinner and talk about the project. We talked about this amazing story and I got really…

“In 1997, when India was celebrating 50 years of independence, we were all happy and joyous about Free India, and at the same time very sad, thinking about the communal violence and intolerance around; I was wondering as an artist how I shall deal with these mixed emotions... and exactly at that moment I came across this statement by Mahatma Gandhi: “I am not a seer, rishi, or a philosopher of non-violence; I am only an artist of non-violence and desire to develop the art of non-violence in the realm of resistance.” This quotation triggered a series of paintings, and it’s still on...…

NO ANTHROPOMORPHIC IDEALISATION of India has quite the backing in this country as ‘Bharat Mata’ these days, but the one that ought to intrigue us for a variety of reasons is bridal rather than maternal in its appeal: “India is a beautiful bride and Hindus and Muslims are her two eyes.” This is the oft-cited saying of a man born two months short of 200 years ago, the often-doubled-guessed educationist of Aligarh, Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–1898). “If one of them is lost,” he would sometimes add, “this beautiful bride will become ugly.” Optically speaking, what she’d lose would be depth of vision, but never mind, the burden of his exertions is clear, and what draws it under scrutiny today is a twin-blade question: what is it that lets some scholars…

“They no longer use bullets and ropes. They use the World Bank and the IMF ” —Jesse Jackson Given the frenzied pace of change in the modern world, 70 years is a very long time in the life of an independent nation. It should have been more than enough time to banish poverty from a country even as large as India, given the enormous economic growth that has happened. Several countries have done just that. However, the truth is that today, in 2017, the number of the officially poor, a severely conservative estimate in itself, is still much greater than the entire population of undivided India at the time of independence in 1947. This extraordinary public failure is not coincidental. Economic development was supposed to have tackled the challenge of…

In Western philosophies, the binary of free will versus determinism underlies the discourse on human action—are we entirely free to choose what we can do, or are these choices constrained in some way? In the Subcontinent, these conflicting ideas about the extent of personal freedom are most creatively discussed in a radically different vocabulary in classical stories. In our myths and epics, characters have their actions contained and circumscribed by karma as well as by boons and curses. What they can do is often determined by their deeds in the past, sometimes even by the deeds of others. Further, the gods and powerful sages can intervene in the course of a character’s life by bestowing boons or curses as rewards and punishments. If karma and powerful supernatural forces are what…

Though the Congress movement was dominated by lawyers, its writers were always more influential. Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru can claim to have written modern India into being. Hind Swaraj (1909) and The Discovery of India (1946) described India as a living entity, with a coherent past and an unfathomable oneness. The India they celebrated could be loved and fought for. But to what extent was it an illusion? Gandhi wrote of India’s historic unity, which he believed the British had destroyed, and he tried to revive and guide that unity himself, initially at the head of the Khilafat Non-Cooperation agitation of 1919-22. But that movement, with a foreign religious issue at its heart, was an amalgam of discontents rather than an authentic expression of the whole nation. Too many…

It was five thousand years ago. In Mohenjo-daro the morning opened like a sleepy lotus flower at the touch of the sun. And the cocks crowed shrill praise to the Giver of light. Men and Women and children stirred on their charpoys.’ These are the opening lines of Mulk Raj Anand’s A Day in the Life of Maya of Mohenjo-daro. Published in 1968, it is a wonderful tale around the life of a little girl who lived and went to school in Mohenjodaro, whose father was a potter and trader, someone who took his wares to Harappa on the one hand and to Ur in Mesopotamia on the other. I have begun with this for at least three reasons. First, my own curiosity about the Indus or Harappan Civilisation began…

Regular morning walks, uninterrupted yoga sessions and an overall healthy lifestyle seem to be a distant concept in today’s times. Our 24x7 busy schedules, our devotion to our phones and I pads has somewhat alienated us from a lifestyle that can help us lead a longer and a better life. It’s important to take into account our health, wellness, and sleep, having a deep understanding of these concepts and embracing them. Health as a concept is a dynamic one. The more we engage in healthy practices such as workouts, good eating habits, and regular medical checkups, our health remains constant and gets better. However, a complacent attitude towards our food habits and physical activities can lead to a poor health, even sickness. Keeping an account of all of the aforementioned…

Won’t the breeze blow? Won’t it sing a song? In Sethupathi’s land In Sivagangai Seemai THE RELENTLESS HEAT of Tamil Nadu in July seems to impart a more superficial meaning to poet Kannadasan’s wistful lullaby from the film Sivagangai Seemai (1959). The sun follows you around, making you feel like an absurd character from an Albert Camus novel, about to give in to rage at the light crashing down on your forehead. On one such dizzyingly hot day, we arrive in the town of Sivaganga, an hour’s drive from Madurai, to trace the history of an early resistance against the British that is all but forgotten outside of Tamil Nadu. But history is as elusive as the breeze in Kannadasan’s song; in the knotted streets and colourful plazas named after…

SEPTEMBER 1981 WAS an unusual month in Punjab. It was the month when the writ of government finally broke down. In the middle of it, an obscure preacher who had engaged in a provocative display of weapons and fire power in the national capital dared the state police to arrest him. Less than a year ahead, India was to host the 9th edition of Asian Games, and here was this man from a small, unknown town in north Punjab who could not care less. When, finally, warrants were released to arrest him, no one had the courage to nab him. Worse, he set the date for his ‘arrest’ from the pulpit of Damdami Taksal, the seminary in Chowk Mehta that he led. In less than a month after his ‘arrest’,…

Some life insurers have started bundling health covers for specific critical ailments with your life insurance policy. While this might be a welcome move to safeguard the interests of a large section of individuals who don’t opt for comprehensive health covers, it is better to keep your objectives and focus clear when buying insurance to cover our risks. Indians are largely underinsured in all respects. However, it makes most sense to keep your insurance covers simple and uncomplicated. You must be clear what you need the cover for and ensure that the risks you have identified are covered. Don’t complicate your policy with add-ons that you don’t really need, or which are not your priority. So far as life covers go, it is best to opt for a term plan…

Time enables forgetting. This amnesia can make rogues of citizens and clunks out of children. If we turn ignorant about how our countries have suffered and survived, if we forget what our grandparents and great-grandparents have witnessed and endured, we do injustice to our past, and turn willfully blind to the forces that define us. This is where fiction comes in. The novels and short stories set around Partition and the Independence movement force a remembering. These stories, spun from history, chronicle the blood-soaked origins of two countries, the depravity of it all, and the humanity that shone through. We choose four compelling characters from Partition literature to remind us of the turmoil of that time and the human struggle—lest we forget. SUNLIGHT ON A BROKEN COLUMN by Attia Hosain…

THERE ARE MENTALISTS in many parts of the world. But for some reason, many of them are from Israel. This may have to do with the fact that the ‘father’ of mentalists, the man who started it all, is from that country. His name is Uri Geller, now 70, who reached the peak of his fame sometime in the 1970s. Geller astonished the world by bending spoons and moving them just by looking at them. (The dictionary calls it ‘telekinesis: the ability to move objects by mental effort alone’.) He did some other amazing things too—for example, copying a drawing done by a stranger seated in an adjoining room. So astonishing were his many feats that there was much speculation about how he did them. Was it real magic? Was…

Public Frenemies It’s true what they say: nothing is permanent in Bollywood, neither friendships nor enmities. Earlier this week, when Karan Johar shared a picture of his twins on Instagram, it was the first time that anyone outside his inner circle was getting a look at the babies. The director finally appeared to have got comfortable with showing them off to the world. But I’m digressing. Not long after Karan had shared the picture, Kajol, his friend of 25 years with whom he is no longer on speaking terms, ‘liked’ the picture, thereby ending a sort of cold war that has existed between them for the past few years. The filmmaker and the actress famously fell out, when, according to the former’s memoir, an ugly incident transpired between Karan and…