Table of contents for 05 February 2018 in Open Magazine

editor@openmedianetwork.in LETTER OF THE WEEK What is remarkable about Deepika Padukone is the grace and sophistication with which she handles both her on-screen and off-screen presence (‘Being Deepika Padukone’, January 29th, 2018). It would be impossible to deny that she is one of the biggest stars in the Hindi film industry today and has taken on a variety of difficult roles, all of which she has done justice to. From Piku to Chennai Express and now Padmaavat, her acting skills have come such a long way since her debut in Om Shanti Om. As you mention, she is a hard working professional whose dedication and sincerity shine through in her films. That said, it is a pity indeed that her latest release has become the subject of an unwarranted controversy.…

IT IS NOT easy to behold the sight of cowering children as their school bus comes under attack from lumpen elements pelting stones. Yet, that is what the so-called agitation against Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film Padmaavat has come to. What began as a questioning of one-sided historical portrayal of a community’s traditional practices has now been reduced to nothing more than a series of law-and-order issues across states in northern and western India. These should be crushed in accordance with law enforcement rules. The question of a debate on the film does not arise at all. Much water has flown since the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) issued a certificate for the film after its conditions were met. This was a prolonged process where all concerns of the Karni…

Union Minister of State for HRD Satyapal Singh was recently quoted as saying that the Theory of Evolution is scientifically wrong. The science he uses for his assertion is ‘since man is seen on Earth he has always been a man’. Singh, now rapped on the knuckles by his Cabinet Minister, also asked for evolution not to be taught to Indian students. What else would he want on the curriculum? That God created everything? Would that meet his scientific standards? There is at least some evidence going for evolution, but the idea of man springing up suddenly out of the blue on earth has none whatsoever. WORD’S WORTH ‘You can’t even begin to understand biology, you can’t understand life, unless you understand what it’s all there for, how it arose,…

IN A COUNTRY like India, documentation of innovations in governance has two important dimensions. Firstly, as society, it is important we take our innovative thinking to the next level from what has been famously described as jugad! Ideally, it connotes an ability to invent solutions through simple means. But over the years, it has also acquired a bad name, as many perceive jugad as an art of overcoming obstacles by bending rules as also hoodwinking the system. With true innovations getting due respect, inclination for this kind of jugad may diminish, bringing greater scope for a genuine urge to find lasting, respectable and replicable solutions. Prime Minister Modi has recognised the importance of inculcating the culture of innovation from a young age. To this end, the government’s Atal Innovation Mission…

“BETWEEN YOU AND me, oils are just a hundred-year-old phenomenon. And they express a Western point of view. It’s auction houses that have decided that oils are more important than watercolours. On the other hand, watercolours and gouache go back to the Persian miniatures,” exclaims an artist with works on display at Verdant Memory, a watercolour and graphite based exhibition in Delhi. “My technique demands a brush that is ten times zero squirrel hair. In other techniques, we’d use a brush that is only about three times zero. The delicacy that comes in watercolours is not possible in any other medium. And I apply a base, then another layer. This gets washed. The process occurs about ten times. There are small images that are left behind—small reminiscences from each wash.…

JASODA Kiran Nagarkar Fourth Estate 265 Pages | Rs 599 THE BEGINNING OF a novel is always a blank page. Kiran Nagarkar’s latest, Jasoda, too has its introductory pause after which its eponymous protagonist appears on stage for a brief moment. In that glimpse, she unyokes the cows, takes off her ghagra, lets her son play with the drawstrings and gives birth to a baby girl, a girl she strangles to death. Another blank page hits us, for the novel hasn’t even begun. It’s just the prologue. Jasoda is the woman in parenthesis here, a woman who belongs to the fictional village of Kantagiri, struggling to feed her family, a woman just like any other bound by duties of hearth and home. Bringing his heroine to life after 20 years…

STEVEN SPIELBERG’S The Post has rightly been hailed as one of the biggest movies of the year. Meryl Streep plays Katharine Graham, publisher and editor of The Washington Post, a paper that was struggling to rise. In the summer of 1971, The New York Times and The Washington Post published extensive excerpts from the Pentagon Papers pertaining to the top-secret government history of the Vietnam War. Graham had to make a decision: should she publish the papers and risk losing everything? Why is Katharine Graham relevant today? Well, she took a very brave and costly stand and she did it at a time when she was uncertain even about her legitimacy in the position that she held. She should not have been self-conscious or intimidated or insecure, but she was,…

LAST WEEK, I attended the third session of the Australia-India Leadership Dialogue, an annual event that alternates between sittings in India and Australia. Last year, it was hosted by Australians in Melbourne and culminated in a wonderful dinner at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground. The Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull dropped in briefly during a session break and chatted with the Indian visitors. It was quite clear that Australia attached a great deal of significance to its emerging relationship with India. And they took great care to show it. This year, the Australians sent a big delegation to the Dialogue in Delhi. Most of them were familiar faces and there was a significant representation of university heads. Education is one of Australia’s big income generators and it has overtaken the…

OVER THE YEARS, after much criticism, the sagacious but arguably prejudiced heads that comprise the jury of the Academy Awards have begun to open up the floor to more diverse voices. This feels particularly so in the recently-announced nominations for 2017, with #MeToo and the protest against discrimination towards Black artists not too far behind. For a long time, the Academy has exhibited another distaste—towards anything popular, especially in the genres of fantasy and horror. The last and only time a fantasy film won Best Picture was the final instalment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King. For horror, you would have to go even further back to The Silence of the Lambs in 1991, which was really a somewhat-horror film, and the only one…

HINDUS ARE CONSIDERED prone to believing in assorted signs and soothsayers; our fondness for astrology, for instance, is widely observed. It is true that a Hindu without a horoscope is like an American without a credit card, and is subject to many of the same disabilities. I even have two horoscopes: one cast for me soon after my birth in London by an expatriate Indian doctor there, another by the family astrologer at the village in Kerala. They didn’t match, and to this day, it seems, I have been pursuing two mutually incompatible fates, in the worlds of public service and authorship. Still, is it fair to saddle Hinduism with the burden of being responsible for its astrologers, many of whom are undoubtedly charlatans? Or should the belief of certain…

No Sparks Yet Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt, who’re playing the leads in Ayan Mukerji’s ambitious desi superhero film Brahmastra, visited Israel this past New Year’s Eve weekend, and two theories began doing the rounds. One, that they’d taken off on some romantic getaway. And two, that they’d begun shooting the film since Ayan had accompanied them on the visit and a day later the film’s producer Karan Johar joined the group. As it turns out, both theories are wrong. There’s nothing brewing between the pair (“not yet,” say insiders who’ve been predicting that sparks will fly between the two single stars), and the film hasn’t begun shooting either. The actors made the trip to meet Ido Portal, a Tel Aviv-based ‘movement coach’. Ido’s online profile says, ‘has spent years…

ON MIDNIGHT OF August 15th, 1947, while giving his ‘Tryst With Destiny’ speech, Jawharalal Nehru also had these words to say: ‘The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.’ It is a dissonant idea from a man who fashioned himself as an amateur historian—that history would be shaped by breaking off from it. India is, however, timelessly stoic in its essence and men greater than Nehru have failed at taming its habits, as recent events over the movie Padmaavat once again bear out. ‘History begins anew for…

ALYSSA AYRES IS a South Asia specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think-tank. In her previous role as the US deputy assistant secretary for South Asia in the Barack Obama administration, Ayres had a ring-side view of events in one of the most challenging parts of the world from an American foreign policy perspective. She has written extensively on the region. Her first book, Speaking Like a State: Language and Nationalism in Pakistan (2009), was a scholarly monograph on that complex country. Her most recent book, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, was published earlier this year. She was in India recently to participate in a seminar. In our conversation, she speaks of the challenges India faces and the strides…

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST: MY JOURNEY THROUGH INDIA’S GREEN MOVEMENT Sunita Narain Viking 227 Pages | Rs 599 I WAS READING Conflicts of Interest on a flight out of Delhi when I noticed my co-passenger peer at the book with interest. He was a young tourist from Egypt who wanted to see the world and had used his savings for an India trip. So far, it had been disappointing. The Taj was amazing, but Agra was steeped in rubbish, and Delhi was thick with smog, his lungs weighed heavy, “making even breathing difficult.” You may say we don’t need visitors like him, but anyone who lives in Delhi NCR and breathes the world’s most polluted air cannot deny his truth. I felt a sense of shame, but as I gripped the…