Table of contents for 28 August 2017 in Open Magazine

editor@openmedianetwork.in LETTER OF THE WEEK In its hunger for profits and need to attract more readers, the press in India is losing its credibility and reputation (‘Media in the Mirror’ by Shashi Tharoor, August 21st, 2017). The freedom and objectivity of the media was what made it a platform of mass communication worth investing in. However, these days, almost no one believes or passionately follows the news anymore. As Tharoor argues in your Freedom Issue, it is the media’s obesession with ‘glamour’ and ‘sensational news’ that undermines its ‘watchdog responsibility’ in a democracy. For example, while going through a popular newspaper’s mobile app, it is not uncommon to find political headlines or serious news of crime and lives lost interspersed with titbits of what some Bollywood actor wore to an…

PUTTING AN END to terrorist activities anywhere requires more than just guns and men to wield them. In the case of cross-border terrorism, especially, much more is needed. From putting pressure on countries sponsoring terrorists to international efforts at squeezing their funds are essential if peace is to have a fighting chance. For the better part of the last 30 years, India has laboured alone in bringing peace to the Kashmir Valley where various terrorist groups with a mind-boggling variety of ideologies and goals have been at work. This has largely been the handiwork of Pakistan. ‘Help for India’ has finally started. On August 16th, the US designated the Hizbul Mujahideen, a separatist group operating mostly in south Kashmir, as a ‘terrorist organisation’. The designation was effected under two separate…

THE WORD FISSIPAROUS is an adjective for ‘the inclination to cause or undergo division into separate parts or groups’. It seems imprinted on the DNA of every politically ambitious socialist ever since Ram Manohar Lohia made a call for ‘sudhaaro ya todo’ (reform or break it), a trait that has resulted in a succession of splits within the ranks, especially when ideological differences have reached a critical level. Sharad Yadav has made that slogan his lodestone for success over a large part of his career in politics. He has honed it into an art, the practice of engineering divisions and balkanising what was once a broad Janata Parivar. It suited Sharad Yadav’s self image: that of a strategist and leader, if not of men, then of ideas and plots. A…

PANDYA’S GAME IS SOMETHING TEST CRICKET HASN’T EVER SEEN BEFORE—MONSTER STROKES MINUS THE VIOLENCE “ATTAGASAM, MACHANG. Attagasam.” Roshaan, a Tamil-Muslim college student from Kandy, seated on a shoulder of a grass embankment in the gorgeous Pallekele International Stadium, uttered those words in loop, like a mantra, to anyone who was listening for about five straight minutes. He said it when Hardik Pandya’s six landed about 20 feet to his left, causing a fist-sized crater in the grass. He had said it the previous ball as well, when Pandya’s first six of the Malinda Pushpakumara over, immediately after two consecutive fours, whistled over long-off. And he would go on to say it again a ball later, when Pandya’s third six of the over and fifth boundary hit in five balls, was…

“Sometimes fiction makes us feel less alone in the world, sometimes it makes us understand other people’s pain. Sometimes it takes us out of the world we’re living in” KAMILA SHAMSIE WE TRIFLE WITH the word ‘awe’ these days. Everything is awesome, everything is awe-inspiring. We use it to describe custard, and the Colosseum. But even in the daily deluge of images, at times, we come across moments that do inspire ‘awe’; a feeling of fear and reverence, which could be evoked by a ‘supreme being’. And that superior human being could be the lone protestor. We look at an image of a single man or woman facing off the machinery of the state, and we do feel awe-struck. The individual can be crushed in a jiffy, but for that…

How Aamir Became Fat One of the great physical transformations for cinema has got to be Aamir Khan’s in Dangal. The actor famously piled on the kilos to become an overweight former wrestler for last year’s blockbuster hit. But the film’s director, Nitesh Tiwari, told me earlier this week that his perfectionist star needed to be convinced why Mahavir Singh Phogat had to be a bulky beast of a man. “Aamir regularly joked that he could play the girls’ father as a George Clooneyish distinguished older man. He had no reservations about getting fat, but he needed to be convinced why it was important that the character look that way.” Tiwari says he pointed out to Aamir that most has-been wrestlers tend to let themselves go in their later years.…

THE PRIME MINISTER’S Independence Day speech from the Red Fort is preceded by an overload of expectations. Yet, why is it that so few of the 69 speeches that preceded Narendra Modi’s on August 15th, 2017, are remembered? Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi had the opportunity of addressing the country from the Red Fort on the most number of occasions, but is there even one speech comparable to Nehru’s ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech on the night of August 14th/15th, 1947, in the Central Hall of Parliament? Nehru tended to be a bit ponderous and spoke down to the masses, while Indira, never an accomplished public speaker, was often inclined to be shrill. Atal Behari Vajpayee, whose oratory could be enthralling— particularly when he had nothing much to say—always seemed tonguetied…

THE EVENTFUL AND barmy reign of Pahlaj Nihalani is over. So spooked have filmmakers been by the spectre of Nihalani working his scissors as the release dates of their films neared, that his ouster, when it finally occurred, resulted in a gush of tributes for the new chief, Prasoon Joshi. Anurag Kashyap, who had a public spat with Nihalani over the release of his film Udta Punjab, seemed incapable of containing his joy. He told reporters, “It’s like wow! Did this really happen? And that, too, before my film came out.” He also said, “What is amazing [about Joshi’s appointment] is that a dialogue is possible... [With Nihalani] it wasn’t a dialogue but only a monologue, where he would be the one talking; and he’d tell you what to do.”…

WITH THE MONSOON Session of Parliament behind us, one of the issues that understandably vexes many observers is the predictability of most parliamentary debates in the Lok Sabha. The Government will propose. The opposition will oppose. If matters come to a head and a vote is called, the Government’s brute majority will dispose. The merits of the issue will matter little. There will be no reasoned attempts to persuade the other side; or rather, when such attempts are made by the well-meaning, they will prove futile, since persuasion, reflection and exchange are not the purpose of the exercise. Increasingly, parliamentary debates have become a ritual, the obligatory airing of opposing views, until the whip is cracked and MPs duly vote on party lines. Even sensible suggestions by the opposition—with which…

A FEW DAYS AGO, Navika Kumar, managing editor of Times Now, during a panel discussion on the singing of Vande Mataram, told one of the panelists who had sidetracked to the death of children in the Gorakhpur hospital, “The debate is on Vande Mataram. You are bringing up this issue because you are running away from the real issue.” It was a stupid thing to say even by the standards of television journalism. She obviously meant ‘issue at hand’ instead of ‘real’, but when the points in the game are won by decibels, no one really bothers about form or substance. For long Arnab Goswami was the undisputed king on this front, but Times Now has impressively engineered mutated clones of him ever since his switching over to launch Republic.…

IN THE WORLD of spymasters, it is said, like cats, the smartest among them have nine lives: in the first three lives, they play; for the next three, they stray; and for the last three, they stay. Former spy and current National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, now 72, too, has multiple lives, some built on myths and others that are real. People who have known him for long aver such distinctions are par for the course for most intelligence—or ‘intel’—operatives, but add that such dualities tend to get blurred on closer examination, as in the case of the Pauri Garhwal-born, Kerala cadre Indian Police Service officer of the 1968 batch. He cut his teeth in the grime and dust of the turbulent Northeast of the 1970s, and got the better…

BUNTY WAS A dangerous criminal. Too dangerous. Threatening, dacoity, even murder charges, you know,” says Sanjiv Tyagi, superintendent of police in Uttar Pradesh’s Auraiya district, over the phone. “He was calling people home, and then he was beating up people. People were afraid to even complain against him. Too, too dangerous.” Tyagi has the flourish of a small-town cop. Originally from Delhi and transferred to the UP hinterland, his speech is unguarded, often filled with exaggeration, and he seems to give little thought to the weight of his accusations. About a month ago, a resident of Auraiya, Rajesh Kumar, who is now based in Agra, sought Tyagi out. Kumar had a problem, and the lower-level police were doing nothing to fix it. As Tyagi realised, Kumar had a complaint against…

THE CORRIDORS OF Yash Raj Films have witnessed the creation of many a star over the decades. The place exudes a sense of competition and contentment. The same energy is evident in one of the studio’s recent protégés, Bhumi Pednekar, 28, who made a name for herself in her charming debut film Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015) as an overweight bride. Just one film old, and two films ready for release, Pednekar is raring to go. While most actors complain about the promotions of a film, she seems to be revelling in it. “When I imagined I would be an actor, I imagined all this. I imagined walking the red carpet at Filmfare [Awards]. I imagined doing interviews, stage shows, promotions, interacting with audiences. In fact, I have been preparing…

THIS HOUSE OF CLAY AND WATER Faiqa Mansab Viking 270 Pages | Rs 499 SET IN THE hauntingly beautiful city of Lahore, Pakistani writer Faiqa Mansab’s debut novel This House of Clay and Water—three cheers for that wonderful title!—is about three principal characters: Nida, Sasha and Bhanggi. The daughter of an upper-crust political family with old coffers and older traditions, Nida is married to Saqib, an aspirational if insecure politician whose domineering family is both deeply jealous and darkly critical of her. A sudden tragedy casts a shadow between Nida and Saqib, which solidifies into a wall that grows a few inches every night. The glamorous Sasha, married to the mousy and middle-class “He’s so... blah!” Luqman who cannot keep up with her consumerist obsessions, takes to casual relationships in…

WRITERS HAVE often used food as a metaphor to convey the essence of an Indianness. Spices (Hari Kunzru), chapatti (Kiran Desai, Amitav Ghosh), pickles (Arundati Roy, Salman Rushdie), etcetera, have been used to create a link between the flavour of the past and its values, and the present. These authors use specific dishes to highlight an ‘Indian’ identity; to portray the identity of a migrant, of an Indian abroad, of an exile who has left behind a multi-course gastronomic lavishness for a frugal, fast-food, and microwaved food existence. They tackle an India versus a non-India. It would be interesting to examine the identities that show up in the use of food by an author of regional Indian fiction whose challenge is to draw the contours of a much more local…

MILK HAS BEEN a part of human diets for thousands of years. In India, cow and goat milk consumption was common during the Indus Valley Civilization. The importance of the cow as a source of milk is probably one of the chief reasons it was venerated in the ancient cultures of India, Egypt and Greece. Worldwide, cow’s milk continues to be the most commonly consumed. In India, where the cow is still worshipped, more than half the milk production is from buffaloes. What is it about milk that makes it such a popular food? Apart from the general ease of availability, the fact that milk is a rich source of protein and calcium makes it a saviour for many undernourished populations. A 200-ml cup of cow’s milk contains about 140…