Table of contents for 03 September 2018 in Open Magazine

A MAN LIKE NO OTHER If there was ever an ideal politician, it would be none other than Atal Bihari Vajpayee (‘The Beloved’, August 27th, 2018). It’s very rare that words aren’t enough to describe a politician, but such was Vajpayee’s stature in politics. True statesman, gentleman, great orator, brilliant democrat—these adjectives are inadequate for him. After his death, Indian politics has become poorer. A good barometer of the success of a politician is how well he or she is accepted beyond his party, and that is where Vajpayee has no parallel. He will be remembered for many things, but on the top of that list would be the nuclear test at Pokhran, diplomatic talks with Pakistan and the Kargil War. He also carried on with the spirit of economic…

ATAL BIHARI VAJPAYEE had a reputation for being a genial man. He loved laughter and he loved food, especially deep-fried street food. However, beneath the conviviality and inspiring poetry was also a very sharp tongue. Vajpayee had the knack of demolishing people and arguments with the minimum of words. He was both adored and, at the same time, feared. I recall the flurry of nervous whispers after a small BJP top brass meeting during a National Council meeting in Gandhinagar in the early-1990s. There was some talk in the meeting about projecting LK Advani more aggressively. As usual, Vajpayee sat through the meeting seemingly preoccupied with other things. Then, after KN Govindacharya, then the Sangathan Mantri deputed by the RSS, had made a remark, Vajpayee butted in with just one…

FOR THE LAST couple of years, the most captivating storyline in tennis—in a perverse, fascinated-by-aircrash-investigations sort of way—was the fall of the once indestructible Novak Djokovic. Just like that in mid-2016, all of three weeks after his coronation as tennis royalty (by winning the French Open and holding all four Grand Slam titles at the same time), Djokovic lost in the third round of Wimbledon. And just like that, akin to an alcoholic who has promised himself to stop after one drink, his career plunged swiftly and precisely towards the bottom. Nobody could really put a finger on what happened. Not even Djokovic himself. Since that first slip, Djokovic fired coach Boris Becker, hired and fired Andre Agassi, and also fired a ‘happiness coach’ who specialised in extremely long hugs.…

THERE AREN’T MANY brand names that have made me go ‘Huh, what?’ at first brush. Videocon was one of them. Colour was new on the Indian idiot box, imagery was all set to outplay reality, Apple hadn’t yet shrunk the screen to a handful—though it would shortly smash a Big Brotherly one in 1984—and with an archrival called Onida selling TV sets on the devilish promise of envy-arousing pride, ‘Videocon’ sounded suitably smart-alecky for the era, a subtle crack at optical obsessions. Videocon did exceedingly well. It sprang upon the country with affordable colour TVs, showing India the wonders of achieving vast volumes in a fast-swelling market, which kept its per-unit costs low and gave it an edge over rivals. Success with this business model led it to cast around…

FOR MUCH OF this and the last year, conversation within the Tibetan community of Dharamshala has turned to the Karmapa Lama. Or, more specifically, to whether he will return to India. The Karmapa Lama, arguably the second-most important figure in Tibetan Buddhism currently—tipped by some to lead the exiled Tibetan community in the post-Dalai Lama world—hasn’t returned to India from the US since May last year. This is the longest he has been in a country other than Tibet, where he was born, and India, to which he escaped in 2000. Earlier this year in May, he appeared in a video message at the Kagyu Monlam prayer festival and explained that he had to prolong his US stay because of the hospitalisation of a close attendant and concerns over his…

MANY INDIVIDUALS attribute their nonspecific and unclassifiable health problems—like fatigue and body aches—to a minor vitamin deficiency that shows up on laboratory tests. Quite often, these symptoms are caused by lack of sleep, an unhealthy diet, lack of exercise or just plain mental stress, rather than a specific vitamin deficiency. However, anxious to ascribe a medical cause to their symptoms, and in their quest for perfect health, people often tend to overdose themselves with vitamins. Disturbingly, this is sometimes promoted by doctors and nutritionists too. A typical example of this is vitamin D. This is a fat-soluble vitamin, essential for our bone and muscle health. Its primary role is to transport calcium from our intestines to the blood from where it reaches our bones. Dietary sources of vitamin D are…

Everybody Loves Keerthy You won’t come across too many Bollywood actors who will acknowledge the work of a fellow nominee while accepting a competitive award. Rani Mukerji, when she was declared best actress for her work in Hichki (2018) at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne last week, made it a point to give a shout-out to Keerthy Suresh and her incredible performance in the Telugu film Mahanati (2018). Rani said she loved the film, and especially Keerthy’s nuanced portrayal of the south Indian actress Savitri. And she wasn’t merely paying lip service, the makers of Mahanati confirmed. The film’s director Nag Ashwin, and producer-siblings Priyanka and Swapna Dutt revealed that Rani, who they didn’t know from Adam, was among the first people to call them out of the blue…

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an extraordinarily gifted politician and person (‘The Beloved’, August 27th, 2018). Despite belonging to the BJP, he was never labelled as a hardliner or extremist like some of his contemporaries. Vajpayee’s views and policies were inclusive. After his death, there is a gap left behind in Indian politics that will never be filled again because Vajpayee was a leader in a league of his own. He also managed to forge a connect with youngsters in the country, much like Narendra Modi has done. Not many of them would know that he was sworn in as Prime Minister not one but three times and that the first time he held that post it was for less than two weeks. He never gave up hope and eventually got…

AS IN EARLIER times when people used to be stoned for the sin of blasphemy, if a particular virus that infects this country has its way, the cardinal sin today will be that of anti-patriotism. Since it is a little difficult to deduce this characteristic in times of peace, one of its measures is the emotion an Indian exhibits towards Pakistan. You have to therefore admire Navjot Singh Sidhu’s unapologetic stand over his acceptance of an invitation to visit Islamabad for Imran Khan’s coronation and hugging the army chief there. Even his own Chief Minister has bowed to popular sentiment, but Sidhu remains defiant. Let’s now turn to Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code and check how his actions measure against it. Has he by ‘words, either spoken or…

WHEN PAKISTAN WAS created in 1947, its founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah publicly expressed the hope (and the expectation) that its relations with India would come to resemble those between Canada and the US. His idea was of two countries with more in common than not—separate politically but united culturally, and linked by strong economic ties and close human relationships. As we all know, that was not to be. Today, 71 years later, with a cricket hero the newly anointed prime minister of Pakistan, how should we look back at this relationship, and look forward to the uncertain future? Pakistan was hacked off the stooped shoulders of India by the departing British in 1947 as a homeland for India’s Muslims, but—at least until very recently, if one can extrapolate from the…

HERE, IN NO particular order, is a list of the last few pieces of contemporary art I remember: an audio clip of Atlantic puffins on a Norwegian coastline; metal bras hanging from a metal clothes hanger. A floor-mat style installation where the artist invites the audience to step on it, voluntarily seeking defacement of his work. An assortment of blood samples—an artist’s statement on equality; a room full of structures made up entirely of photographs, all of which can be realigned to form new shapes; a mango-tree growing project in rural Gujarat; spines of books that could have been; an English-tea-party style installation using broken crockery and lace—an inverted vision of colonial history. Not all artists come from a painting or sculpture background; some are photographers, some architects, some writers…

ATAL BIHARI VAJPAYEE died at a time when nations were too engrossed by the theatre of revenge to return to the back-pages of gentle leadership. As he lay there, beyond the intrusions of headlines, the stage outside was occupied by idyll-breakers and fantasy hawkers. He died at a time when the disruptive power of a new leadership of grievance was at its peak. We have lost the calmer version of the national retriever. While in power, he was the face of an awakening, an argument, a rejoinder to the Congress century. India had turned right, and the overwhelming motif of the winner’s story of struggle and eventual freedom was ‘demolition’. When the story was retold, he was not the hero who dared. He was not the mobiliser. Not the Hindu…

THERE IS SOMETHING peculiarly medieval to the expressions ‘sacrilege’ and ‘blasphemy’ and in an avowedly secular country, this is doubly so. Yet, that has not prevented Punjab’s cabinet from recommending a bill for the consideration of the state Assembly that prescribes a prison sentence for ‘sacrilege’ against holy books. The Code of Criminal Procedure (Punjab) Amendment Bill, 2018, and the Indian Penal Code (Punjab Amendment) Bill, 2018, will be tabled in the state’s Legislative Assembly in a session that starts on August 24th. If passed, it will lead to the insertion of a ‘Section 295AA’ in the Indian Penal Code that provides that ‘whoever causes injury, damage or sacrilege to the Guru Granth Sahib, the Bhagvad Gita, the Quran and the Bible with the intention to hurt the religious feelings…

Perhaps Madonna can really only speak about Madonna. What a strange thing being a celebrity is—and there are few living celebrities better known than Madonna currently—if being called upon to pay tribute to a celebrated singer who has just passed away also presents itself as an occasion to speak about yourself. Madonna appeared at the MTV Video Music Awards recently, dressed in a horned headgear, heavy necklaces and a colourful tunic, looking nothing like her 60 years, and paid an awkward tribute to Aretha Franklin (1942-2018). Her actual references to the ‘Queen of Soul’ were almost non-existent, but Madonna launched into rambling anecdotes about herself, including one about being robbed when she was an aspiring star. Perhaps that is what comes of a lifetime spent with the world so overly…

I FIRST CAME ACROSS the name of Chandra Shekhar in the summer of 1971, during an England-India Test series. He was one of the immortal Indian Spin Quartet, whose other members were Bishan Bedi, Venkataraghavan, and Prasanna. Exotic names, artful deliveries. To this day, in Britain the name Chandra Shekhar is associated with leg spin, not politics. Come 2018 and I am in Delhi on the trail of another Chandra Shekhar, a neglected political figure from the last century who led a minority government for seven months in 1990-91. But he was proving as difficult to pick up as a well-executed googly. Chandra Shekhar the Prime Minister came to my notice as I was researching a book about Indian politics, and he had immediately captured my imagination as a politician…

Deborah Levy is the author of six novels, a collection of short stories, a volume of poetry, and two living autobiographies. She has immaculate posture and favours bright lipstick and pearls. Her favourite poet is Apollinaire for his explosion of beauty, muscularity and delicacy. After publishing her first novel, Beautiful Mutants (1989), she used the money to travel around Europe with her typewriter stuffed in a pillowcase. Levy has also written plays and librettos. She keeps journals because she believes they’re good for catching thoughts before you can censor them. She insists that all writing is chasing arguments and slyly pretending not to. One of her heroines is Simone de Beauvoir. The Second Sex, she says, captures the mysteriousness of wanting to suppress women. Another heroine is Marguerite Duras, whose…

AGROWN-UPANDOVERWORKED Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor’s character in the eponymous 2018 film) has all but forgotten his animal friends from his childhood, until one day an older Winnie the Pooh arrives in London and reconnects with him. And through their renewed acquaintance, Christopher learns the values of family and friendship. Owner of over a dozen motorcycles, the Scottish actor has travelled the world twice on a bike and likens a good ride to ‘meditation’. Is there still a little of the child in you? I’ve always been a bit childish. I find myself doing things that keep me young through my motorcycle and bicycling adventures and my music, and now with my own kids, doing things with them takes me back to my childhood. Technically, as an actor, it must have…