Table of contents for 05 March 2018 in Open Magazine

ALL BANKS UNDER WATCH It would be an understatement to say that the Nirav Modi fraud at Punjab National Bank has shocked the country (‘Diamonds are Not Forever’, February 28th, 2018). It is disheartening to learn that this fraud, which originated way back in 2011, kept going on till January 2018 and no one raised any alarm. There are internal, external as well as regular RBI audits of banks, but somehow Modi’s case never got noticed. Now that it is in the public domain, Modi and his associates should be made to repay everything. The action taken should be swift and time bound. It is a lesson for other banks as well, as there might be something similar lurking in their own books; they had better thoroughly audit the LoUs…

IN SEMINARS AND on social media, the editorial classes often emphasise the importance of giving space to the lives of subalterns and the marginalised. In practice, media coverage of the social or geographical periphery is centred on atrocities. If a poor Dalit gets beaten up—and not necessarily only because of caste hatred—the ambulance chasers with cameras and notebooks are quick off the mark with their feigned indignation. If there is a killing, the media adrenaline really starts flowing, because the story can be milked—and with political consequences. The problem arises with ‘normal’ activities such as competitive politics. The past week has witnessed election campaigns in three states of the Northeast: Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland. The dynamics of the three are very different. But they are all interesting in their own…

THE ONGOING VISIT of Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to India seems to have gone horribly wrong. Within hours of his arrival, there were loud whispers that he was being snubbed. When he landed on February 17th, he was received by a junior minister, Gajendra Shekhawat, and not by a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet. There was no customary welcoming tweet from the Prime Minister either. The Canadian leader’s eight-day visit was noticeable for another reason: the scant number of official engagements. All this would be no more than reading tea leaves—there were no departures from protocol—but for the political baggage that accompanies Trudeau. Much of this has to do with the uncomfortably close relations between Trudeau and a very vocal section of the Sikh diaspora that continues…

If you give a suspect assurance, then make sure you have a large time frame. Richard Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop One has just signed an agreement that promises a hyperloop transportation system between Mumbai and Pune within the next five to seven years. The hyperloop will have pods or capsules travelling at high speed through tubes which will be erected on columns or laid underground. The 10 km track will reduce travel time from a proposed airport in Mumbai to Pune to 25 minutes, saving traveller's three to four hours. The system will reportedly be operated at speeds of upto 1,000 kmph. The only problem is that this is a technology that exists only on paper. No country has ever used a hyperloop track with human passengers even for small runs…

DIAMANTAIRES ARE DIAMOND dealers. So they buy diamonds, polish and then sell the diamonds. It is a trading mentality,” Nirav Modi once told an interviewer. “Jewellery making is more about creation.” To the hardy, no-nonsense diamond trading community in India, primarily Gujaratis in Mumbai and Surat, Nirav Modi—although one of their own kind, a Gujarati and someone who dealt in diamonds—was a somewhat haughty and supercilious figure, the type of person who liked to give the impression that he wasn’t just about money. That unlike them, he had culture. Some years ago, Nithin Khandelwal, a well-known jeweller and chairman of the All India Gem & Jewellery Trade Federation, went to a Nirav Modi store in Mumbai. He couldn’t get much further than the door. “[The staff] were asking too many…

“Being an actor myself, I think I understand the psychology of actors. I personally feel all actors are children at heart”ANAND TIWARI filmmaker THERE’S A TYPICALLY bittersweet moment in Anand Tiwari’s Love Per Square Foot (the first Hindi film globally distributed by Netflix) where Sanjay Chaturvedi (Vicky Kaushal), an infotech employee at a multinational bank, has just been denied a home loan by his charming colleague Karina D’Souza (Angira Dhar). A frustrated Sanjay retorts that no bank ‘karamchaari’ shall keep him from his dream home for long. Karina, a Bandra Catholic girl, doesn’t know Hindi well enough to understand that the word simply means ‘employee’, and not a pejorative as she assumes. As Sanjay storms off, she runs after him saying, “I’m not a bloody karamchaari!” even as their colleagues…

MOIN MIR’S BOOK Surat is fascinating. I could not put it down until I finished reading it. The book is yet one more instance of the skulduggery of the East India Company whose officers were unscrupulous and dishonest and did everything to enhance their own income— and, incidentally, that of the East India Company—by looting Indian rulers. Surat was the prominent port of western India. Bombay had not still come into existence and all western India trade moved to and from Surat. The story begins in 1573 when Akbar captured Surat and a castle was built to keep out the Portuguese. So lost in admiration of Surat was Akbar that he decided to build the first naval fleet of the Mughals, to be stationed at Surat. The city attracted rich…

The relationship between Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel has for a long time been subject to debate and opinion (‘The Towering Two’ by Swapan Dasgupta, February 28th, 2018). Some assert that they were good partners and even friends, while others point out that they differed on several topics and Patel is often pitted as the bad guy when it comes to politics. This is sad because according to historians, he was a man to be admired, especially when it came to his foresight and political awareness. Also, he really loved India and thus India should love him back as well. It is fortunate that the tide seems to be turning in Patel’s favour in the last few years as evident in the construction of his statue in Gujarat to…

Steve McCurry’s most famous photograph even today is the Afghan Girl, published in 1985. When I first noticed Azadeh Etebarian at a dance festival in Goa, I was immediately reminded of Sharbat Gula. She had the same searing eyes and angular jaw line. The black shawl around her only added to her enigma. An ‘Iranian paradoxical artist’, Azadeh juxtaposes universally recognised Western characters with Eastern elements. She is currently working on a new art collection on the theme of utopia. Her work moves away from the Western version of the Orient and highlights the role of women in contemporary Iranian society.…

IN THE BEGINNING there was nothing but barren land. The introduction to Akash Kapur’s recently published anthology, Auroville: Dream and Reality, describes the early dreamers who came looking for a new world and instead found ‘a parched denuded plateau, Auroville’s moonscape like a mockery of their expectations of a grand city’. The book talks of an American couple, Robert and Deborah Lawlor, as the first to settle the land, building a little hut at the edge of a canyon: ‘They had no electricity, no road, no water—not even a handpump. Robert’s letters, vivid with privation, of near-mythic struggle against the elements, convey the back-breaking work that must go into building any new reality. ‘Those who would come to Auroville must understand that it is not a sanctuary but a battlefield,’…

CAN INTELLIGENT MACHINES overthrow humans? After the extraordinary progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially in Machine Learning, the possibility that machines are not far from human-level intelligence has caught the attention of scientists and the general public. Strictly speaking, that is not true yet, and fortunately so for humans; the feats that impress us so much (in chess or Go, say, or in reading X-rays) are examples of skills in narrow, specific domains. We can also comfort ourselves that these machines are not self-aware: they are merely doing very fast computations without any context; that is, they have competence without comprehension. The kind of intelligence that superior androids might have would be Generalised Intelligence, where they would have what amounts to ‘consciousness’ of themselves as distinct from humans. They do…

A frog goes into a bank, and hops up on the desk of the loan officer. “Hi,” he croaks. “What’s your name?” The loan officer says, ‘’My name is John Paddywack. May I help you?” “Yeah” says the frog “I’d like to borrow some money.” The loan officer finds this a little odd, but gets out a form. “Okay,what’s your name?” The frog replies, “Kermit Jagger.” “Really,” says the loan officer. “Any relation to Mick Jagger?” “Yeah, he’s my dad.” “Hmmm,” says the loan officer.“Do you have any collateral?” The frog hands over a pink ceramic elephant and asks, “Will this do?” The loan officer says, “Um, I’m not sure. Let me go check with the bank manager.” “Oh, tell him I said hi,” adds the frog. “He knows me.”…

Throughout his career, A.-L. Breguet consistently demonstrated his exceptional mastery of time measurement. His strong involvement and his revolutionary developments earned him significant recognition and numerous honours. Renowned the length and breadth of Europe, Breguet found a particularly active admirer in Louis XVIII, king of France. In 1814, the latter appointed him a member of the Bureau des longitudes in Paris. Breguet became the horological authority, notably for the calculation of longitudes at sea. As an extension of this distinction, through an ordinance issued on October 27th 1815, Louis XVIII awarded A.-L. Breguet the official title of chronometer maker to the French Royal Navy. This was the most prestigious title a horologist could hope to receive, given that the very concept of marine chronometry implied scientific knowledge. It also involved…

FOR A FIRST-TIME author, Lucy Maud Montgomery seemed to have a charmed career. At age 34, out of a relationship that her family disapproved of, and living with her widowed grandmother, she published a book about a little orphan girl with red hair called Anne. She had already had a few rejections for the manuscript, so she bundled it up and put it away, but upon rereading she realised she still thought the book was good, so she sent it out again, and this time it met with approval. And such approval. The book was an instant success, an instant classic. That’s how narrow an escape we had from never meeting Anne of Green Gables, her fairytale storybook world, her ‘kindred spirits’. I am a Montgomery super fan. Unlike the…

WITH ALL THE sexual harassment allegations flying around the global entertainment industry and people losing jobs, Hollywood has its share of problems. After Kevin Spacey was accused of sexual harassment, even though he had finished shooting for All the Money in the World, its director Ridley Scott and producer Sony Pictures decided that the movie would not be released with Spacey playing the role of Jean Paul Getty; he was replaced by Christopher Plummer. The director did the impossible by reshooting all the scenes that Spacey was in, and still managed to get the film ready for release on time.Mark Wahlberg, who plays an ex-CIA negotiator in the film, talks about reshooting his Spacey scenes with Plummer. What was your reaction when Ridley Scott asked you to reshoot your scenes…

The Perfect Impersonator If you’re really nice to him, chances are Ranbir Kapoor will pull out his phone and show you the teaser of his next film. This is the Sanjay Dutt biopic he’s made with Rajkumar Hirani, slated for release at the end of June. The film, titled Sanju—don’t go by news reports that its makers are dithering between calling it ‘Dutt’ or ‘Baba’—has been described by trade pundits as the most crucial project for the actor at this stage of his career. No wonder, he’s showing off the teaser to all and sundry for feedback. During a pre-production meeting recently for his next film, the Ayan Mukerji-directed Brahmastra, Ranbir reportedly showed the teaser to Amitabh Bachchan who also stars in Mukherji’s film. An eye-witness reveals that the clip…

I READ The Only Story by Julian Barnes at a time when the balance of sexual power is determined by a hashtag, when a liberation movement updates the lines of Philip Larkin: Sexual intercourse beganIn nineteen sixty-three(which was rather late for me) –Between the end of the Chatterley banAnd the Beatles’ first LP. Between Weinstein and SheToo, it all seems to have run its course. Then, elsewhere in this novel, in which an ageing memoirist returns to the love of his youth, I read this: ‘Good sex is better than bad sex. Bad sex is better than no sex, except when no sex is better than bad sex. Self-sex is better than no sex, except when no sex is better than self-sex. Sad sex is always far worse than good…

AFTER DEMONETISATION had come into play and its implications became evident, it was as if Paytm’s founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma had received an answer to a prayer he didn’t even make. The brand became a household name overnight as the digital replacement for cash, getting millions of new customers. A viral video of a company get-together soon after saw Sharma joyfully screaming about Paytm’s growth: “In this country, there is no fucking brand better than us. Numbers that others took as many as eight years to reach, we did in two.” As big Indian startups once touted as potential global players began imploding, Paytm continued to ride the wave. Until now, that is. With just one more entrant in the digital payment business, it suddenly faces an existential question. WhatsApp…

ON the first day of the New Year, a jeweller quietly left India. Within days, his uncle followed him. No one paid any attention. After all, Nirav Modi, creator of fine jewellery, had extensive interests abroad straddling the world’s hotspots of diamond sourcing and haute glitter fashion. Nor would anyone have bothered, but for a peculiar occurrence in Mumbai. A fortnight after Modi’s departure, an employee of his firm walked into the Brady House branch of Punjab National Bank (PNB) in Mumbai, requesting buyer’s credit for making payments to suppliers overseas. The bank declined. In banker parlance, Modi’s firm had no sanctioned limit for the issuance of a Letter of Undertaking (LoU), a bank guarantee that would enable the firm to borrow money from another bank abroad. The PNB branch…

AFTER HER SON was born three-and-a-half years ago, Smita Hirlekar, a yoga teacher from Mumbai, realised that she had some weight to lose. Always in the range of 55 kg, the scales now tipped at 70 for her. Hirlekar, who is 38 now, started on a disciplined yoga and workout regimen and managed to get down to 55 again. The fat around the stomach, however, remained recalcitrant despite the crunches and lunges. She knew it was an issue that all women faced post pregnancy, but that was little consolation. Last year, she went on a keto diet that reduced carbohydrate consumption to a bare minimum. After two months, she also started doing Intermittent Fasting, a regimen that tweaks the hours of eating to small periods. She began by having her…

“GANDHI ONCE SAID that the history of India may well be written with textiles as its leading motif,” said Martand Singh (1947-2017), or Mapu as he was affectionately known, in a fascinating interview with fashion stylist Prasad Bidapa. The hour-long interview, in many ways, sets the tone for the exhibition commemorating Mapu, arguably India’s best-known textile revivalist and expert on traditional and contemporary textiles and fashion who also designed the landmark Vishwakarma Master Weavers exhibitions for the Festivals of India in the 1980s and 1990s. It’s also a fascinating thought. After all, India became the forerunner in dyeing and printing techniques as far back as the Indus Valley Civilisation, since blue dye could only be generated from indigo plants; and the knowledge of extracting blue colour from the green leaves…