This story first appeared in Times of India Blog

Forget the film that swept the 95th Academy Awards. As far as we are concerned, our two Oscars are everything, everywhere all at once. Of course we’ll make a song and dance about them, especially ‘Naatu Naatu’ which bagged Best Original. Unlike ‘Jai Ho’/ Slumdog Millionaire in 2009, its film is made by an Indian and doesn’t glorify poverty. Btw, Deepika Padukone merely introduced the historic item at the Dolby Theatre, but she got more coverage from media than from her low-and-behold LV gown.

Aamaam, kandipa, we also won the Best Short Documentary award, but how can a Whisperer compete with the rumbustious Telugu refrain which knocked such divas as Rihanna and Lady Gaga off the board. One was left crying, ‘Lift Me Up’; the other ‘Hold My Hand’. Why, even voting slips might join the RRRah-rah and offer ‘Naatu Naatu’ instead of NOTA NOTA.

Both film and song resonate with the current anti-all-foreign-rulers mood; The Elephant Whisperers harmonises with nature and sustainability. These are messages that our PM-ji so winningly scripts at home and abroad. In fact, several other Oscar winners fit our political big screen. For instance, no one sweeps the election-awards like his Bahut Jeeta Party. Isn’t it Everything Everywhere All At Once? Apart from being a vote-blockbuster, it has the Best Director and the Best Supporting Actor. Who cares if Mamata wins the Best Actress Oshcaar? The governing party would rather keep anything remotely Chinese at arm’s length. Or arms’s length.

Coming to the also-rans for Best Film, AAPka Admi is the Maverick. However, no one is quite sure about Rahul’s current Avatar; his leadership style is fluid, like The Way of Water. But his Bharat Jodo Yatra too could win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

Considering the shindig (Shindeg?) in Maharashtra over the real Shiv Sena and other wars, there can be no Indian version of All Quiet On The Western Front.

Similarly difficult to adapt would be a simplistic take on Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. Too many contenders for the puppet-boy whose nose got longer each time he told a lie.

* * *

Alec Smart said: “Same-sex is not shame-sex. It won’t queer our social pitch.”

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This story first appeared in Times of India Blog

The desperate scenes in Afghanistan have dredged up memories of the two Kabuliwallas of my childhood. The one perched atop a serrated mountain of dry fruit in Calcutta’s New Market, who always handed me a little batua of nuts after my mother had ended her bargaining. The other was a gentle giant in baggy shalwar and gold-flecked turban who would chat with us as we waited for the school bus; a more worldly cousin hissed that he was ‘a moneylender whom no one dares mess with’.

Even further away from today’s blood-chilling horrors was Tagore’s bitter-sweet 1892 short story, brought to a wider audience by Chhabi Biswas and then Balraj Sahni essaying the title role. There was also a much-later Malayalam version of this complex portrayal of filial love. In serially savaged Afghanistan, bonds filial or fraternal stand as exposed as a shrapnel wound. They are conspicuous by their absence in Taliban’s unstoppable Juggernaut. But their presence is on display in the human spirit which always transfigures terrible times.

Which brings me to Farida Nekzad, the Kabulwalli I met in Lahore – carrying her doll of a daughter, Muskaan. It was a conference in 2008 to give final shape to South Asian Women in Media (SAWM). This doughty group highlights repression in all the countries of our savaged region. The Afghan contingent is the latest recipient of our support and advocacy. Words are all we have. Don’t diss them, for words are swords.

In arenas where brutish power has unleashed the howling ‘dogs of war’, journalists must risk their lives. As managing editor of Afghanistan’s main independent news agency, death threats have been a way of life for Farida Nekzad. During the funeral of her murdered colleague, Zakia Zaki, in  2007, her cell phone buzzed with calls warnings of  a similar fate ‘so gruesome, no one will be able to recognise you’.

After her agency’s story on a notorious warlord, she narrowly escaped a kidnap bid by  jumping  out of  a speeding taxi. Recognising her and warning her not to write such stuff, the driver had rammed the accelerator and swerved off in a different direction. She began changing her schedule daily and sleeping in a different room each night.

Farida’s courage has been feted by global awards. Whether or not they keep her any safer, she and Afghanistan’s other intrepid mediawomen soldier on. The Taliban this time is actually granting them an interview or two. It may be tokenism to win international legitimacy. But remember, in its previous control, the ultra-Islamists  had rendered the whole gender faceless, literally and figuratively.

Today a sleep-deprived Farida whatsapps that she must keep advising, handholding other women journalists; keep them secure – or help them leave the country if that’s their unchosen choice. Hope young Muskaan can hang on to her smile.

* * *

Alec Smart said: “Neeraj’s fave choorma is same-to-same as politics. Butter up with ghee, and crush those who disagree.”

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This story first appeared in Times of India Blog

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This story first appeared in Times of India Blog

They had united in 1990 when the US-based Rice Tec tried to appropriate ‘Texmati’. In support of their unquestionable claim, they had cited its mention in Waris Shah’s 1766 Punjabi poem, Heer Ranjha. What’s far more legendary is that India and Pakistan have seldom been lovers, but their relationship is nevertheless star-crossed. Partition was a bloodying divorce, and now both demand custody of basmati. Maybe it is of a piece with Pakistan’s long-simmering claims on Kashmir – home to the saffron that elevates the fragrant grain to biryani.

You may think that warring over biryani rice is really ‘dum’, but whichever country creams off the GI tag will get the monopoly over exporting it to Europe. India could tuck into a steaming $500 million in a couple of years. The adjudicating authority certainly cannot rule that it will divide the spoils. It will have to choose between India and Pakistan. Who wins is a real Radcliffe-hanger.

Some may say it is not cricket to enter into such a mahayudh over basmati, especially when Pakistan’s claim is no match against ours. But let’s not forget that the rivalry is as much internal as cross-border. Conflicts over the respective varieties of Indian rice may come to a boil; there are sorties over surti kolum vs Kolkata chiney kamini, for east is east and west is west, and the twain meeting will end up as a messy khichdi. But none of this beats Basmati intra-rivalry. The respective proponents of the Ambala/ Dehradun/ Dilli/ Rampur … product get so violent that you fear there’ll be cereal killing. Truly, Bhat-bhat mein, the baat escalates.

So to return to the Indo-Pak GI conflict. Like the contentious K word, this is a bilateral issue, but third-party intervention could bring the warring sides to the table. If backroom, aka kitchen, negotiations don’t succeed, the matter may have to be settled at another historic summit. Sitting down to an Imran Khana is perfectly possible since all the veg ingredients for a pulao parley can be found at any good Modi ki dukaan.

* * *Alec Smart said: “Loan Ranger to the economy’s rescue? Don’t bank on it.”

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‘Why aren’t there 10 numbers from 1 to 10?  Because seven ate nine.’ Something akin to this corny joke seems to have happened to the NDA sarkar’s calculations. Covid’s gargantuan appetite has gobbled up the rah-rah of the previous six years. So mean, no? This has allowed the usual suspecters to scoff that ‘The Magnificent Seven’ has been rescripted as ‘The Sagnificant Seven’. Seven political Samurai are difficult to find these days, but film ‘bluffs’ could add the 1955 movie famously featuring Marilyn Monroe’s uncontrollable white skirt. ‘The Seven Year Itch’ was about wanting to scratch around for someone sexier when wedded bliss turns to hiss. In our case, someone called TINA isn’t allowing us to satisfy the urge, but the perfidious virus has certainly made ‘itch’ sound like ‘glitch’.

This seven is quite a number. You never quite know what it adds up to since it divides itself between ominous and auspicious. On the debit side: Seven Deadly Sins, Susanna’s Seven Husbands/ Saat Khoon Maaf, Lord Ram’s 7×2 vanvas. Good and bad: Economic cycles and the Bible’s seven years of plenty followed by as many of famine. It’s a bummer that this NDA anniversary year is such a party-pooper because seven figures far oftener with nice stuff: Wonders of the world, colours of the rainbow, hills of Rome, jerseys of Dhoni and his hero Ronaldo. Even schmaltzy songs like ‘I would sail the seven seas with you/, Even if you told me to go and paddle my own canoe.’ Opposition netas will skip this caveat; Sounds too much like the Centre sending states adrift, telling them to go net their own vaccines.

Hinduism has the saat phera and seven rebirths, though some marriages make you feel you’ve died as many times already. Islam’s 786 is the total value of the letters of ‘Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim’. Seven candles grace the Jewish menorah. In Persian Zoroastrian texts, a saviour and six companions will restore the ravaged world; today’s Iranians decorate their Navruz tables with seven auspicious symbols.

God created the world in six days. Earthly deities may take as many years to create theirs, but clearly they can’t rest in the seventh.

***

Alec Smart said: “GoI and Twitter are trying to ouwit-ter each other.”

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In a post-Truth world, easily lies the head that wears a frown. The khela is still hobey-ing in West Bengal, and now it looks like BJP has scored another own goal. This time in a national fix-ture. Twitter threw a spanner into the ‘Congress toolkit’ which had been so indignantly ‘exposed’ by Sambit Patra et al. Twitter’s tag of ‘manipulated media’ has turned the tables on the un-shut-up-able BJP spokesperson and his fellow tweeters, putting them under a cloud for allegedly having themselves created that toolkit. If verified, then the ruling party has inadvertently ended up declaring the Dead Old Party as its most threatening rival.

The blaring question is ‘Whydunnit?’ What made the mighty BJP attribute such influence to a party so manifestly disabled, discredited and disemboweled-by-dissent? More important, does such unwitting ‘endorsement’ mean that Shri BJP-ji fears it is still far from achieving its aim of a Congress-mukt India? Strange. We thought successive polls had already managed that.

If Twitter’s charges hold, then the creators of such jiggery-fakery will have to eat their words. The most indigestion would be suffered by the clinically verbose Shri Patra. Clearly Sam-bit off more than he could chew. Which might remind us of the chutneyed and steamed festive Parsi dish, now tweaked to ‘Fishy Patra’.

Of course, the state can unleash its power to protect itself. So, the Delhi police did its usual Rambo act, barging into the Delhi offices of Twitter to ‘serve notice’ in connection with its probe into the toolkit case. This led to Twitter’s HQ getting into the act. The matter has escalated further  since the platform dared tag the tweets of BJP functionaries as ‘manipulated media’, the matter reportedly could go all the way up to the US government, and create a diplomatic frisson.

So, will POTUS have to divide his attention between sending us oxygen and looking into the charge of ‘free speech’ gasping for breath in India? Last heard, the SpO2 levels of this threatened species had sunk so low, that it is a wonder it is alive. That’s a real Variant of Concern.

***

Alec Smart said, “Chyawan-prashna: Can Baba Ramdev boost immunity against allopathy?”

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Just when we thought we could move closer to old normal – or simply move closer – we are being swept away by the rising tide of infections. Covid-19 peaked and ebbed in 2020, but has engulfed us again. Unlike the brash young billionaires of silicon startups, it clearly won’t be ‘21, and done’. Coronavirus is changing its spikes faster than electorally expedient politicians.

Last year, the Vaccine was as devoutly sought as the Holy Grail. Knights in scientific armour found it. But it’s not yet ‘Jab we met and lived freely ever after’. So, how will we cope with new new normal of the second surge? As devout desis, we could simply invoke the cosmic trimurti: Vishnu, the preserver of our O2 levels, Shiva the destroyer of the viral load, and Brahma the creator of a firewall against infection. But there’s no way we can avoid a fully prostrate ashtanga namaskaram to its secular avatar: masks, social distancing and handwashing.

Not only must we bow to this triumvirate of behaviour change, we have been forced to accept meaning change – of these three plus two other totems of the pandemic.

1. Mask. In its original form it was sinister, mysterious, covert. Covid has transformed it into something openly admirable, the mark of a person facing up to his or her social responsibility.
2. Handwashing. It was either boringly routine or Lady-Macbeth psychotic. Its elevation has been as dramatic as No 1’s.
3. Social Distancing. Again, this once had casteist overtones of ultra vires to the Constitution vis-à-vis Art 17, and punishable under Sec 153A, IPC. Now not practising untouchability 2.0 invites institutional wrath.
4. Positive. This one has moved from desirable to dreaded. The darling of motivational speakers sinks heart and hope when it appears on a test report.
5. WFH used to be about women with small kids trying to scrounge some crumbs from their shelved careers. The pandemic turned it into the pan-imperative of corporate functioning. Boon and bane, WFH let you attend meetings in comfy trackpants, but made working hours stretch uncomfortably. Now the second wave has cut off all escape from online. Might as well embrace it with ‘Zoomma, chumma de de’.

* * *

Alec Smart said: “In ministries, Home is where the hafta is.”

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March 8 is round the corner. But a Women’s Day is only as good as our fortunes in the past year. Take the Dickensian paradox. ‘It was the best of times’ for XX chromosomies? You’re joking, no? ‘It was the worst of times’? Yes, seriously. Political lords now drive patriarchy’s juggernaut, reducing rebellion to naught. The good news was that feasting recklessly on power could end in falling flatulent on your face. Akbar got his just desserts, but he is not the only emperor nakedly strutting about.

Topping the list of victims turned victors was Priya Ramani – helped by lawyer Rebecca John, and her doughty sisterhood of the similarly humiliated. Magistrate Ravindra Kumar Pandey served notice to every testosterandy predator who believed his influence condommed him against any fall-out. While granting bail to Disha Ravi,  ASJ Dharmender Rana’s terse remark – ‘Sedition cannot be invoked to minister to wounded vanity’ – struck another blow for women  deemed easy targets by an authority ‘red in tooth and claw’. While on toolkits, break into a bhangra for the armoured kaurs of the farmers’ protest, and a jig for Rihanna and Greta who turned it into a global hashtag.

A ‘Boo!’ to Kangana Ranaut who has made herself the obiter dicta-tor of Twitter. Which brings me to her earlier target and 101% political pawn: Rhea Chakraborty, torn apart by the government’s kennel of vicious hounds. Uncaged by contrast were Pinjra Tod’s Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal, et al, who remained bloodied but unbowed by the draconian UAPA in the northeast Delhi riots case. In the same context, sat the dadis of Shaheen Bagh, led by Bilkis Bano, the grandmother of them all.

In a hoarier rollcall of brutality lies the Hathras teen, the four-year old raped there soon after. and the 17-year-old found similarly savaged days ago. All on the watch of a ‘Yogi’, darling of the regime which coined ‘Beti bachao…’

In an increasingly asphyxiated media, please add the case against Shillong Times editor Patricia Mukhim  and obscene rape threats to Ahmedabad’s Deepal Trevedie – both  for ‘fake news’, more correctly known as calling truth to power. Allow me to include senior journalist Nidhi Razdan so shockingly phishing-ed, and her former NDTV colleague Barkha Dutt frivolously FIRed.

Mercifully it wasn’t all Dickensian Bleak House. Draped in a power sari, Nirmala Sitharaman presented a no-nonsense Budget to pull up a Covid-ravaged economy. We were spellbound as young Mahua Moitra delivered her riposte with an oratory so missing in today’s puerile parliamentary debate.  Her boss, La Belle Dame Sans Mamata, still held her public in thrall. Kerala health minister KK Shailaja commanded the state’s first, UN-commended attack against Covid-19, and we basked in the reflected glory of WHO’s chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan. As we did more whoopingly in the election of Kamala Harris.

Last week, Vinesh Phogat grabbed gold at Kiev. The openly Gay Arjuna Award winner Dutee Chand continued her advocacy of the rights of female athletes over their bodies and sexuality. In the corporate world, absurd controversy forced Myntra to change its allegedly sexist logo and Tanishq to withdraw its beautiful interfaith ad. More commendably, those for fairness creams were also axed. Kiran Shaw Mazumdar continued to burnish her entirely self-made reputation while a trove of other head henchos was recognised in such industry ovations as the ET awards.

Who says women are from Venus? Just look at Dr Swati Mohan, the bindi-ed babe who headed to Mars with Perseverance.

***

Alec Smart said: “Wah! Jumbo vax centres get a trumpeting response.”

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A toolkit used to be a household essential. All of a sudden it has become the manual for sedition-secession. In the past week, Disha Ravi has turned from eco-activist to Khalistani. Apart from the ominous-omniscient Delhi cops who whisked her away from Bengaluru, no one knows for sure whether she’s a certified clean Green or a greenhorn who has played into those dirty ‘foreign hands’ conspiring to overthrow the Indian state. Either way, social media can’t have enough of her. ‘Gimme Mo!’

But think about it. It is actually the power-tools kit that’s been up and whirring with deafening regularity, handy for the Sarkar to smash or cut critics to size. If you want them broke, fix them.

The screwdrivers are the foremen. The screws they can turn on you are laws such as UAPA, NDPSA and  IPC sections such as 124A (sedition), 153 (intention to provoke rioting), and 153A (promoting enmity on grounds of religion, race, caste etc) which seems to be breached more by the enforcer than the accused.

Screwdrivers are assisted by several other tools. Pliers aren’t needed for the pliant, but this versatile implement can effectively grip, twist those who aren’t correctly wired, and even cut them off.

The hammer is used to apply great force on small objects – stand-up comics, 9gm charsis, cartoonists or even their ‘Likers’. Hammers never have difficulty finding ways to nail them.

Once clamp-ready agencies such as FIR-happy cops, ED and NCB, target you, they’ll get you in a vice-like grip with the legal tools at their disposal. No one can throw a spanner in their works.

Finally, the crowbar, used baar-baar. It can legitimately prise out economic offenders such as Mallya and the wrong Modis, criminal absconders, corruption, Covid etc. But it is increasingly deployed against more dangerous entities. Assorted anti-nationals such as libtards, the Lutyens/ Khan Market crowd, Leftist intellectuals, bleeding-heart NGOs, purveyors of fake news (ie anything not pro-government), and the most-recently exposed ‘andolanjivis’.

Go for them. You know the drill.

***

Alec Smart said: “The FM’s ‘Doomsday Man’ needs to halt his own party’s Doomsday Clock.”     

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Before Gujarat’s storied chief minister souped up Ahmedabad’s Kankaria lake, the gentle Reuben David had built a small but lively zoo on its shore. Here, he had created a Biblical ideal, the antithesis of the reign of Modiji as both CM and PM. ‘Reuben-Dada’ had made ‘the lion lie down with the lamb’; the bitch Blackie shared the cage with the majestic Montu whom she had nursed as a foundling cub. This fortnight another of Dada’s experiments became more relevant: the tigon. Unfortunately, the coming together of the Bengal Tigress and the Gir Lion at Netaji’s 124th birth anniversary celebration has only led to cross tempers and an absence of good breeding. Who the faulty party is will depend on your political stripes.

The venue was Kolkata’s famed Memorial, and the Bengal empress aptly echoed Maharani Bhicktoria by conveying a pursed lipped, ‘Bhee are not amused.’ Of course, nishchoy, how uncivilised, ki oshobbo!, to invite someone to an auspicious occasion, and then ‘eensult’ her, that too on her home turf. No one can pretend that those in the crowd who shouted ‘Jai Shri Ram!’ as Mamata rose to speak were innocently voicing religious exultation. Even the BJP admitted this.

Instead of retreating into an offended sulk, why didn’t Didi launch one of her trade-mark offensives? She could easily have hoisted her hecklers with their own petard. After all, there’s not a little irony in BJP’s stormtroopers wanting to ‘religionise’ everything, but, at the same time, ‘secularising’ a sacred chant. Worse, reducing Lord Ram and his reverent salutation to a tawdry political slogan. Sadly, ‘Jai Shri Ram’ unfailingly remains a red rag to bullish Banerjee.

Saffron is red mixed with yellow, but there’s nothing cowardly about the way the Gir Lion has leapt into the tigress’s lair. She may have her back to the wall, but she has not one but two precious cubs to protect: Bengal and its ours-alone mascot, Netaji. BJP may be a coldblooded killer but merciless Banerjee too is La Belle Dame Sans Mamata.

* * *

Alec Smart said: “Farmers refused to retract; instead, they re-tractored.”

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