ANobel laureate no less, Aung San Suu Kyi is most idolised and subsequent reviled leader in modern times. In November 2010, when she walked free, the entire world cheered for Aung San Suu Kyi. She was the darling of the entire free world and considered to belong to the ranks of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King Junior. Czech President, Václav Havel- instrumental in lobbying the Nobel committee to award her the Peace Prize - had said of her: “She speaks for all of us who search for justice
Seven years later, Suu Kyi is a political pariah. All discussions about her unbending rigidity on the issue of Myanmar’s tormented Rohingya Muslims have resulted in widespread criticism
While the rest of Myanmar may subscribe to the theory of hating the Rohingyas - the common misbelief is that they are Bangladeshis and immigrants –Suu Kyi does represent her party and her failure to speak against active genocide has resulted in her fall from grace. News reports that she asked the US to avoid even using the term Rohingyas witnessed a backlash of criticism from the developed world
Those who interacted with her in earlier years recall, “She was a gentle soul, extremely gracious and graceful. I was posted in Burma and an elderly relative who had come to visit us had died. As a result, we had made our excuses for a dinner that she was throwing for the diplomatic community. A day later she learned the reason and a massive wreath of white lilies arrived… It was not a close relative, and the gesture was not required as per protocol… but she did it anyway,” recalled one officer.
Another diplomat, an Indian, remembers Suu Kyi sending generous portions of plum cake to every mission staffer at Christmas. Yet another officer who interacted with her in India regularly says, “She was a voracious reader, and loved detective fiction. She loved fiction with descriptions of food”. In fact, in her book ‘Letters from Burma’ Suu Kyi herself says she decided to learn how to cook chicken fricassee after reading a description of it in one of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books.
Drawing room debates about Suu Kyi now revolve around whether her incarceration – at great personal cost – made her like this, or was it that she was always this way but the imprisonment and its attached publicity obscured reality.
In keeping with Burmese tradition, her name is derived from her parents, and her paternal grandmother: Aung San was her father’s name; Khin Kyi was her mother’s and Suu from her paternal grandmother. ‘As a child, she would have been addressed as Suu, and now the Burmese as a mark of respect prefix Daw (an honorific for any revered woman) or Amay (mother).
A little understanding of the country and its affairs is necessary to understand Suu Kyi. Her compatriots refer to themselves as Burmese and the country as Burma. But since the nation comprises people of other ethnicities, the politically correct usage is Myanmar.
Burma’s icon was born in June 1945 in Hmway Saung village outside Rangoon (officially called Yangon now). Her father Aung San had negotiated independence from the British Empire in 1947 and assassinated by political rivals shortly afterward. Catapulted into the political limelight after her husband’s death, Khin Kyi then brought up Suu and her other children in Rangoon.
In 1960, Khin Kyi was appointed Burma’s ambassador to India and Nepal and moved to New Delhi. While one son had drowned in childhood, another had moved to the United States. Thus, it was Suu who accompanied her, to finish her schooling at the Convent of Jesus and Mary, in New Delhi.
Students who were with her at the Lady Shri Ram College, where she studied Political Science, say that in addition to Burmese, English, French, and Japanese, which Suu Kyi officially speaks fluently, she had absolutely no problem with Hindi too. She then went on to St Hugh’s College, Oxford.
Married to Michael Aris in 1972, Suu Kyi, a mother of two, returned in 1988 to care for Khin Kyi who was ill. She, however, found herself the leader of the pro-democracy movement there. In 1995,Aris visited her for Christmas. This would be the couple’s last ever meeting as the then Burmese dictatorship denied Aris any further visas
Two years later Aris was diagnosed with terminal cancer and appeals from the Pope and the UN Secretary-General failed to secure him a visa. Instead, the government of the day encouraged Suu Kyi to leave Burma to visit him. Fearing that she too would be prevented from reentering, Suu Kyi did not go. Aris died in 1999 having met his wife only five times in the past decade.
Her steely determination to sacrifice her personal life towards the cause she stood for was what brought Suu Kyi’s name to the lips of students across the world, making her a household name
Global media who had only been reporting Burmese affairs sporadically had started taking note of the woman who had been under house arrest for 15 years over a 21-year period.
Suu Kyi was repeatedly offered a deal, in which she would be allowed to leave Burma if she promised to never return, which she refused. “As a mother, the greater sacrifice was giving up my sons, but I was always aware of the fact that others had given up more than me…my colleagues who are in prison suffer not only physically, but mentally for their families who have no security outside- in the larger prison of Burma under authoritarian rule,” she has said explaining the decision.
In 2015 Suu Kyi became State Counsellor of Burma, a post that was created especially for her. The Burmese constitution prevents her assuming the office of President as her children and late husband were foreigners.
In interviews to the international media, the head of the Burmese state, Suu Kyi has denied that there is any ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas. She has, however, has taken no steps to bring them any relief vis-à-vis citizenship. All they get is a token residency card with no guarantees of citizenship ever. Why the silence? Is the Suu Kyi spirit finally broken or has she been co-opted?
Kathmandu’s Durbar Square is a sprawling area in the heart of the Nepal capital adorned with palaces, temples, courtyards, royal buildings and government offices. It is the most important historic and tourist destination of Nepal along with Pashupatinath, Swayambhunath and Bhaktapur. A walk through the square transports you to another world. And amongst such relics from Nepal's deep past stands a simple two-storied palace, home to the Kumari or Nepal’s Living Goddess.
The 2015 earthquake brought much of Kathmandu's historic Durbar Square, a World Heritage Site, tumbling to the ground. Nepal's showcase temples and palaces were reduced to ruins. But save for a few cracks, the home of the city's Living Goddess remained intact.
Largely unknown to the outside world, Nepal's centuries-old institution of the child deity, the Kumari Devi, is deeply embedded in the culture of Kathmandu Valley. Young, beautiful and decorous, even a glimpse of her is believed to bring good fortune.
As we walked around absorbing the Square’s overt historicity, our eyes kept flicking to our watches as we were told while inside the modest palace that the Kumari would appear to the outside world for a brief moment at 4 pm sharp. Not having set eyes on a living goddess before the excitement was natural. At four sharp from nowhere the courtyard which looks up to the Kumari (a virgin in Nepali) quarters were filled with all colours of tourists from across the world. A gaggle of Japanese girls waited with bated breath and clasped hands looking skywards towards the little window set amongst the Newari architecture which would open to reveal the Goddess to the faithful.
And Lo Behold! At four sharp the window creaked open and soon a little girl seated herself at one corner of it looking down at the curious mix of onlookers all staring, gaping at the nubile face all painted and wrapped in red. In my moment of excitement, I tried to wave to this little girl looking stoically down at us and thought I saw a little smile escape the corner of her soft lips. After all, I don’t think she sees too many hands waving at her, instead, they are all folded in reverence. The wonder lasted all of five minutes after which the little brown window shut on our eager faces.
A hush had descended on the tiny stone courtyard, an expectant lull in which every footfall, every cough, the beating of a pigeon’s wings resounded like a thunderclap. Outside, Kathmandu’s diurnal jangling of rickshaw bells and motorbike horns seemed part of another world. At a nod from their guide, a group of Japanese tourists puts away their cameras.
Without warning, a child had appeared at the window. No more than 12 years old, she gazed sternly down on the assembled foreigners, pouting slightly, looking mildly inconvenienced. Her eyes were exaggerated with thick lines of kohl reaching all the way to her temples. She had bright-red lips and her hair was bound up tightly in a topknot. Dressed entirely in red, she had gold ornaments around her neck and bangles on her wrists. Her tiny hands, with redpainted fingernails, clasped a wooden rail across the bottom of the window, as if she were a captain at a ship’s helm.
Just as suddenly she was gone, leaving a flutter of red curtains.
This little peek happens once a day at best and if you are a born Hindu you could get a proper darshan in the morning and of course some blessings too.
The Kumari of Kathmandu is the best known of several girls who are worshipped across Nepal and is revered by many though she lives an isolated and secretive existence inside the house and is rarely seen.
I’d just caught a glimpse — or had darshan, as the Nepalese say — of the living goddess, or Kumari, of Kathmandu. The practice of worshipping Kumaris was once widespread in the Kathmandu Valley. The tradition remains strongest in the valley’s three ancient royal cities— Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur. The Kumaris are chosen at around the age of three or four from the valley’s indigenous, relatively well-educated Newar community, after being put forward by their parents as candidates. Astrologers then select the girl with the most auspicious horoscope, after checking her for physical imperfections like scars or birthmarks. Life for the chosen girl becomes a rarefied existence governed by centuries-old codes of behaviour; her friends and family can visit, but they must show her deference. The Kumari of Kathmandu is regarded as the guardian of the nation, and her reactions are scrutinized for presentiments of earthquakes and civil unrest. Every year, Nepal’s president kneels at her feet to receive her blessing. When the goddesses retire at puberty, they become mortal again, joining the swim of everyday life.
The Kumaris remain a tender echo of a time when Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur were resplendent capitals of separate kingdoms just a few miles apart. From the late fifteenth century up until Nepal was unified in the eighteenth century, the so-called Malla kings of those cities would build palaces and splurge on temples and devotional sculptures honoring the region’s blend of Buddhist and Hindu deities. The most vivid reminders of these old kingdoms are the “Durbar Squares” — the open plazas in front of the palaces, which contain temples, devotional columns, dancing platforms, public bathing tanks, water fountains, and other striking architectural features. “As an ensemble,” wrote the English journalist Perceval Landon in the 1920s, “the Durbar Square in Patan probably remains the most picturesque collection of buildings that has ever been set up in so small a space by the piety and the pride of Oriental man.”
Selection criteria for aspiring Kumaris are strict and include a number of specific physical attributes such as an unblemished body, a chest like a lion and thighs like a deer. Even if a girl fulfills all the physical requirements, she must then prove her bravery by not crying at the sight of a sacrificed buffalo.
The tradition has drawn criticism from child rights activists who say the Kumaris are denied a childhood and their isolation from society hinders their education and development. In 2008, Nepal's Supreme Court ruled the living goddesses should be educated and they are now taught inside the palace where they live and are allowed to sit their exams there. Many former Kumaris have spoken about the struggles they face reintegrating into society after they are dethroned
A three-year-old girl was anointed the new ‘living goddess’ of Kathmandu by Hindu priests in September this year and taken to a palace where she will remain until she reaches puberty. The new Kumari - or living goddess - Trishna Shakya was taken from her home in the Nepali capital to the ancient Durbar Square for a short initiation ceremony before being moved into the temple-palace where she will live under the care of specially-appointed guardians
The ceremony took place on the eighth day of the two-week-long Dasain festival, the main religious festival in Nepal. Shakya left behind a twin brother, Krishna, who cried as his sister was taken from the family home.
As the Kumari, Shakya is considered the embodiment of the Hindu goddess Taleju and will only be allowed to leave the temple 13 times a year on special feast days.
At midnight, Hindu priests will perform an animal sacrifice, which the new Kumari will attend as part of her initiation as a 'living goddess'. Historically, 108 buffalo, goats, chickens, ducks and eggs were slaughtered as part of the ritual - a number considered auspicious in Hinduism - but the number has been scaled back under pressure from animal rights activists.
Meanwhile, the outgoing Kumari, Matine Shakya, 12, left the temple-palace via a side door shortly after the younger girl arrived to take the throne. Matine still wore the red Kumari makeup, which includes a 'third-eye' painted on her forehead, and the ornate robes of the goddess
The 12-year-old was carried on a sedan chair back to her family's home, which she left at three in 2008 when she was anointed as the Kumari.
Evidence of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state since the 7th century is not accompanied by a narrative of harmony with the Buddhist majority in Burma (Myanmar) throughout this period. But since 1970-80, increased repression, economic deprivation, denial of citizenship rights could possibly be because of the reverberations following the Iranian revolution in 1979.
Saudi Arabia, particularly shaken by the emerging, bipolarity in the Muslim world, took the lead in drumming up an anti Shia hysteria. Riyadh had an interest in diverting the world’s attention towards Iran because a much bigger danger had reared its head within Saudi society.An anti monarchy, radical, Islamic group had occupied Islam’s most important mosque in Mecca for weeks almost at the same time as the Iranian revolution. Saudi needed to create Wahabi enclaves wherever they could.
This brief background is essential to understand antecedents to the current exodus of 4,00,000 Rohingyas.
There is a twist to the Rohingya tale, particularly the unprecedented military crackdown in August resulting in the refugee crisis. A source for this narrative has been the unlikely figure of Grand Mufti Ahmed Bader Eddin Mohammad Adib Hassoun, Syria’s highest religious authority on a visit to India last week.
The Mufti deserves to be introduced.
If a conversation is the art of hearing and of being heard, one half of that dictum is totally ignored by this cleric, donning the grandest headgear. Seated at the head of a long dining table, his speech is an unstoppable torrent. In this instance, it serves a purpose: it enables the guests to relish, with dedication, a multi-course feast, something which has gone out of fashion from the current relatively frugal, diplomatic fare.
Scattered throughout the Mufti’s elaborate exposition are nuggets of information. If these are “plants”, why would New Delhi accord hospitality to a cleric at a fairly high level? He met Home Minister, Rajnath Singh. The office of the National Security Adviser gave him quality time, as did Kashmir Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti and several others. Clearly, the Mufti is well briefed on the post-conflict mopping up operation in various parts of Syria. There is priceless intelligence scattered all around.
Americans no longer deny that they have from time to time fallen back on militants or terrorist groups as tactical assets. In an interview with Christiane Amanpour, Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov made exactly that allegation and Amanpour would not risk a counterallegation, even a question. Heaven knows what beans Lavrov might spill on live TV.
Since the Mufti’s visit, a disturbing piece of information circulating in some circles concerns the Rohingyas. It makes their plight even more tragic. According to this narrative, the present crisis was precipitated from outside.
The story begins in 2012 when Prince Bandar bin Sultan, former Saudi Ambassador to the US (nicknamed Bandar Bush because of his friendship with George W. Bush), who had then been given the “Syrian portfolio” by the late King Abdullah, invited a Rohingya named Hafiz Taha, to his office in Riyadh.
Taha was given the task to develop “Islamist sleeper cells” in Rakhine. The idea was twofold: to promote Islamism of the Wahabi variety among a people who were otherwise inclined towards a folksy form of Sufism. The second purpose was to sow seeds of long-term conflict in a country abutting China’s Kunming (Yunnan). There is some anxiety in the West that parts of Mandalay are increasingly Chinese dominated.
In her study on the Rohingyas for the Council on Foreign Relations, Eleanor Albert’s version tallies with the Mufti’s narrative on how the trouble started in Rakhine in August. Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army “claimed responsibility for attacks on police and army posts.” Is it any surprise that the government declared ARSA a terrorist organization? It was then that the military mounted a “brutal campaign that destroyed hundreds of Rohingya villages and forced more than five hundred thousand Rohingya to leave Myanmar, approximately half of the Rohingya population out of the country.”
Military brutality never seen in history was then unleashed: security forces allegedly opened fire on fleeing civilians and planted land mines near the border crossings used by the Rohingyas to flee to Bangladesh.
A long-simmering conflict, intensifying over the past decade, was custom made for outsiders to ignite and cause an explosion. This precisely is what appears to have been precipitated in Rakhine state two months ago. “But why would sleeping cells be activated now?”
US Intelligence agencies learned a lesson from turning their back on Afghan militants after they had helped expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in 1989. This reservoir of lethal Islam found work for itself in Kashmir, Egypt, Algeria and so on. Since the genie could not be put back in the bottle, Saudis, under western supervision, began to refine Islamic terror as an exportable asset.
Much of the cloak and dagger US operations became public either at Senate hearings on the Hill or through diplomatic leaks. After all, nothing could be hidden from the Russians in Syria because they had boots on the ground.
In the Syrian whodunit, Americans have actually been admitting their mistakes with endearing docility. Remember Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter, his face distinctly in the lower mould, being grilled by a congressional committee, then by the media, for the clumsiness of US Special Operations in Syria? The “moderates” they were training left their weapons with the Al-Nusra Front and sought safe passage. Carter announced, on live cameras, that a $500 million training programme had been discontinued.
Remember Gen. Lloyd Austin admitting to the Armed Services Committee of the Senate that “only four or five” fighters trained by the Americans were “in the fight.”
In an interview with Thomas Friedman of the New York Time in 2015, President Barack Obama admitted that he had not bombed ISI when it first reared its head because “that would have relieved pressure on Iraq’s Shia Prime Minister, Nouri al Maliki” whose departure, and not ISI’s elimination, was a US priority.
The cake for flaunting terrorism as an asset goes to Bandar bin Sultan who promised a “terrorism-free Sochi Olympics” in February 2014 to Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin if only the Russians helped him show Bashar al Assad the door out of Damascus.
The plight of those in the Rohingya exodus is even more heartbreaking because they have no hint of the Kafkian script which has maliciously affiliated them with the externally financed Rohingya Salvation Army, a group they know nothing about.
The last calligraphist of Urdu Bazar in Old Delhi, Mohammad Ghalib sits in a small Urdu bookshop opposite Gate No. 1 of Jama Masjid. He has been a katib (calligraphist) for 35 years. Originally from a small village located seven to eight kilometers away from Shahjahanpur district, he learned calligraphy in Darul Uloom Deoband. “There was no plan as such to take this up as a profession. We had to study many subjects and this was one of them”, he says matter-offactly
“Back in my days, there was a huge demand for katibs. But as technology advanced, we stopped getting as much work as we used to. There are very few of us left in Old Delhi. There used to be two more calligraphists here, but they have become really old. I am the only one who sits in Urdu Bazaar now
“With age, it gets difficult to keep up with the art. I sit for hours together when I do calligraphy. It requires a lot of patience which I have developed over the years. I do yoga to keep my mind and body fit and I even walk as much as possible,” he says.
Talking about the history of Calligraphy as an art, he says,“Calligraphy originated thousands of years ago. It was written in various languages, Farsi, Hindi, Arabic, English... However, Urdu calligraphy originated only during Shah Jahan’s time. The Mughals wrote in Farsi before him. Calligraphy is an ancient art form which was popular among the rich. Even emperors learned this art, and Aurangzeb was one of them.”
Mohammad Ghalib’s workplace is surrounded by Urdu literature. He even recommends a few Urdu books to customers. “I am very fond of reading. When I am not doing my work, I pick up a book and start reading it. I like reading taarikhein kitaabein (history books). I also like to read poetry, especially Mirza Ghalib’s shayaris, I think they’re beautiful”, he says.
Ghalib says he does calligraphy for various platforms such as magazines, newspapers, wedding cards, posters, etc. “When people realise there are a few things that cannot be written on the computer, they come to me and ask me to write for them. Turns out the computer is not advanced enough to really play with fonts, font sizes and colours the way I can”, he smirks.
“In my youth, calligraphy was a well-known and respectable profession. Business was good back then. A lot of newspapers and magazines would come to us and ask us to write for them. But it reduced considerably after computers came on the market. I do get work, but it’s not as much as it used to be.
“Now speed is more important than the quality of work. Earlier elephants and horses were used to travel long distances, now we have trains and planes. There was a time when it would take months to get from one place to another, now it takes just a few hours. People are addicted to this fast lifestyle,” he says. “
“But I am thankful to Allah for still sending work for me, however big or small it may be. As long as I am in a position to bring food to the table for my family without taking financial support from anyone else, I am happy. Work is not much but Allah is making sure I do not just sit at home unemployed. And I am satisfied with the work I do because I really enjoy it”
On asking him about his one big regret he says, “I did want to learn how to use a computer. I had even bought one. But due to the lack of financial resources at that time, I could never learn it. I thought my children would learn it after me, but they weren’t interested. Eventually, I had to sell the computer because the doctor told me it would make my eyes weaker.”, he said.
In a time when calligraphy is dying, Mohammad Ghalib the only katib left in Urdu Bazaar is doing his bit to keep this art alive. His passion for calligraphy shows in his work, and it saddens him that this beautiful art will soon become history.
Cricket has gone through a major transformation in India and in the process has lost out on it’s pathfinders. Solely dominated by the Parsis in the 1800s, the Indian cricket team now almost 200 years later, does not possess even a single Parsi player.
“Parsis were the pioneers of Indian cricket”, said Piloo Reporter, a former Indian international cricket umpire. “The first ever Indian team that visited England in 1886 consisted of Parsis. The first tour was unfortunate, but they were a little better during their second tour in 1888.” SH Harvar and JM Morenas were the only two players that toured during both the years.
“Parsis did not dominate Indian cricket, they started it. They were in the frontline,” reminds Nari Contractor, a former Indian test player. “Earlier the Parsi youth was only interested in cricket, it was difficult in selecting the team. But somehow the Parsi youth is not taking up the game anymore.”
Cricket was a popular sport among the marines, sailors and tradesmen of the East India Company. They played in Cambay (close to Bombay) and in Kutch. These were the areas that consisted of a major Parsi population in India. When the Parsis came here as refugees they settled down in these areas which is where the sport became popular among the community. “
“The Parsi cricketers had a lot of courage. They had a greater sense of entrepreneurship”, said Fredun De Vitre, a former Indian cricket commentator. “In olden times the cricketers had parallel professions such as doctors, photographers But now there is very little time for a cricketer to pursue another profession, which could probably be one of the reasons why there are not many Parsi cricketers these days
Cricket gained popularity in India after the Quandrangular and Pentangular tournaments which consisted of teams based on communities such as Parsis, Hindus, Muslims, Europeans and The Rest (which was added in the Pentagular tournament which consisted of other communities such as Jews, Buddhists, etc) “The Quadrangular and the Pentangular encouraged a lot of people to participate in the sport. However they tapered down after the emergence of other tournaments like Ranji Trophy that gained more popularity,” recalls Fredun De Vitre. After tournaments like Ranji Trophy and Duleep Trophy, teams began to be formed based on cities and states and not on communities, which considerably reduced the number of Parsis playing the sport. The competition became tougher as slowly the entire country was beginning to participate in the game
In spite of the tough competition the Indian team did manage to produce some brilliant test players such as Polly Umrigar, Nari Contractor, Farokh Engineer and Rusi Surti. Farokh Engineer was the last Parsi cricketer to play for the Indian team in 1975.
“There seems to be a dip in the level of enthusiasm in the sport among Parsi boys, which is contradictory as the sport is doing so well in the country and a lot of boys are actually making a living out of it”, Fredun De Vitre wonders.
“I was coaching at Parsi Gymkhana, but who do you go coach when nobody is there. On Bombay Gymkhana’s ground I had scored 400 runs in an inter-collegiate match, and that record is still standing. But there is nobody in college or in school playing the game. And the academies we start, nobody wants to come to them,” regrets Nari Contractor.
“Parsi boys don’t appear to be taking the game seriously,” says Piloo Reporter. “The Parsi gymkhana offers free coaching, even kits are given. So much effort is being made. But the youth these days is just involved in their phones and computer games and nobody is willing to take part in the sport anymore,” Nari points out adding that “very few Parsi boys are willing to make the effort like Sachin Tendulkar who began from scratch and went on to claim the top slot.
Cricket has changed in the last two centuries. The formats of the game have changed and so have the interests of the people who first played it in the country. We owe the Parsis the credit for introducing us to this sport, because if it wasn’t for them, maybe Indian cricket wouldn’t be where it is today.
Karan Kapoor is a classical photographer of the subdued and nuanced genre. Almost like his late mother, theatre and cinema actress, Jennifer Kendal. His father, Shashi Kapoor, Bollywood’s megastar and actor in some of the finest and internationally acclaimed English movies with brilliant cinematography and archival scripts, especially crafted by the legendary Ivory and Merchant films, was, in fact, a bubbling, peppy and boisterous character, as he was depicted in many of the box office hits of Bombay.
Karan is more like his sister Sanjana Kapoor, who runs the famous Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai, where almost all the greats who mixed theatre and cinema, lived precious parts of their artistic lives; they do their work, brilliant as it is, rooted as it is, merging with the margins and the mainstream as effortlessly like a black and white picture, luminescent with its twilight shadows and incredibly mysterious zones of possibilities
Karan’s camera and the eye and mind and soul of his camera remain rooted in this moment of revelation, celebrating the unknown, the undocumented, the unseen and unheard with a measured click of the machine, trained as it is with his own everyday experience with this subject. That is why, there is deep humanism, compassion, and beauty in his black and white images.
In Delhi recently, where his travelling photo show was exhibited amidst the archaic architecture of the Bikaner House, Karan’s show, ‘Time and Tide’, is a documentation from the 1980s to the end of 1980s, of the forgotten life and times of Anglo-Indians in India, especially in the ancient lanes and bylanes of old-age homes in old Calcutta, replete with a certain character and depth where the faded walls and the inner shadows of homes in eternal oblivion tell their own, invisible stories. The pictures have been documented by Tasveer of Bengaluru and published in a hardback coffee table with lovely introductory notes by author William Dalrymple, and Karan’s aunt, Felicity Kendal.
Shashi Kapoor produced some of the modern classics in contemporary India with his own hard-earned money – magnanimously giving back to creative cinema what he got from it: Junoon, Kalyug, Utsav, Vijeta, etc, with some of the great directors of the time. 36, Chowringee Lane, his beautifully sensitive film of Anglo-Indian exile, loneliness and longing in a Calcutta in transition with the new generation of the middle class turning cold, deceitful and shallow, directed by Bengali director and actress, Aparna Sen, another living genius, celebrated Jennifer Kendal as the lonely Anglo-Indian woman who seeks love and compassion from a young Bengali couple who uses her, and her home, for their romantic rendezvous, and then choose to dump her with cold-blooded precision. Karan spent a lot of time with his mother in this living Calcutta of a forgotten community, he inhaled the images with his inner mind and captured them on his camera.
He has also gone to and fro into the sublime beaches of Goa, where he spent his childhood with his brother and sister, and into the homes of fishermen and ordinary folks, weaving their nets inside their shack’s courtyard, celebrating their catch on a fullmoon tide night on the sea, enjoying a simple marriage walking on the streets, clicking a lovely, lively picture of a young girl who has won a Marilyn Monroe look-alike contest.
And, of course, Bombay, where he lived his humble childhood with famous parents, a legendary grandfather called Prithviraj Kapoor and top stars who were uncles and cousins. Every portrait is a story of deep feeling, a geography of emotions, subdued, but expressed into a pictorial narrative. There are no frills, no attachment to the superficial, no exaggeration. A portrait is a story untold.
His images are haunting: old people in their embroidered dresses, inside old-age homes preserving their dignity and the shadows that surround the nooks and crevices of the walls and staircases, young boys with a bottle, young boys on a scooter, their eyes full of dreams, fishermen on a tide, eyes speaking unspoken narratives of a time buried in the sands of yesteryears, humble and humane faces looking out of their frames, music on the streets. “I keep going back to Goa, where I spent my childhood with the fishermen. They are still my friends. Some of them are dead, some are still alive. My pictures are a tribute to them,” says Karan with a shy smile as we bid goodbye
Shy he is, avoiding the glitz and glamour of Bollywood and its mappings and trappings. However, his camera speaks. A thousand short stories in one click. Sometimes, epical too. All celebrating humanity’s passing into time and space, like the silence in the background
He has been named Nutan Kumar by his parents. He hates the name, changes it willfully to Newton, defying the laws of tradition and family, especially a quasiauthoritarian father, who seems helpless in the face of his stoic, dogged, unmovable, young, educated son. He refuses to get married to a girl who left studies after class nine preparing to be a homemaker under her insistent and doting parents, despite the fact she makes wonderful ‘pakoras’ and is coming with a huge dowry. “She should at least be a graduate,” he says. “Nutan,” his mother scolds him affectionately. “Newton,” he corrects her yet again, as obstinate like a steady, unwavering, stick-in-the-mud.
Directed by Amit Masurkar, written by an unknown experimental writer, Rohit Tiwari, with fabulous cinematography shot in limited locations in the forests of Chhattisgarh by Swapnil S Sonawane, the black comedy, Newton, is India’s official entry in the foreign language category at the prestigious Oscars this year, the 90th Academy Awards. It has earlier won laurels at the Hong Kong and Berlin Film Festival. Running into packed houses all over India, this low profile, low budget, no glamour or glitz movie, has the added bonus of lovely songs by the veteran genius Raghubir Yadav and Amit Trivedi. Apart from Yadav, who yet again excels as a ‘lowly government clerk plus self-styled author’ and a diabetic who cannot control his ‘bodily motions’ in the forest inhabited by Maoists, and is obsessed with the idea of learning English by watching English movies on his dilapidated mobile, the film stars Rajkumar Rao, Pankaj Tripathi, in an excellent rendition of an ironical paramilitary officer, and dusky Anjali Patil as a local tribal woman, who knows the zigzags of the dense forest like the back of her hand, now working as a teacher.
However, the actor who steals the show and is the protagonist of this incredible film is young Rao. Dogmatically honest and ethical, and outside all ideologies, as if his DNA has been trained in an immaculate conception, his eyes, sharp and steady, his face clenched like a fist fighting against all odds, this wiry government official in the lower rungs, chooses to enter a dangerous terrain and accept a difficult job, in a context when the most experienced of his senior colleagues choose to slink away. He agrees promptly, as a ‘reserved’ official on duty, to become the returning officer in a remote outpost, in the interiors of the forest dominated by armed Maoists, to celebrate the enactment of elections as a sign of India -- the largest democracy.
And, thereby, begins a rollercoaster ride of both a farce and a nightmare, as the cracked mirror of Indian democracy comes into full play in an Adivasi twilight zone, trapped in the dense shadows of a dark continent, as backward and marginalized as it could be, as poor and unaware as it could be, as helpless and exploited as they could be, without fundamental rights or constitutional protection, outside the spectacle of globalization or media glare, beyond the gaze of Delhi, the Indian State, the mainstream, the media, or the civil society.
Eerie interiors of Abhujmarh, that is the incomprehensible and unexplored inner lanes of the forests of Dandakaranya, where even the Britishers would not dare to enter, and where a para-military unit is camped, protected by guns and barbed wires, on this or that side of a ‘shifting LoC’, as a soldier comments cryptically, against an invisible guerrilla army of Maoists, waging an infinite war against the Indian State. Here, the forces do not even trust the children playing on top of a tree, suspecting them to be ‘advanced informers’ in an area where the occasional tribal disappears into the woods as quickly, as the terrain becomes tricky and sublime, entering into vast spaces of eternal solitude. Except that fear lurks, like schizophrenia, hanging like dying and death, in the still air.
Burnt houses (who burnt them, the forces or the Maoists?), an empty one-room school, graffiti on the walls sounding out revenge against the ‘agents of death, destruction and injustice’, tribal villages with their chicken floating in the air, humble, poverty-stricken, thatched homes outside all the paradigm shifts of modernity or development, resurrecting their daily simplicity and an honest, hard-working life in the forest, they are treated like cattle by the gun-toting forces. Hurriedly dragged
and pushed into voting by soldiers, slapped for a little delay, whereby the ‘returning officer’ waits endlessly for the first voter in his makeshift ‘polling booth’, the film marks the idealism of a naïve young officer, who continues to believe that every vote cast is a measure of his honest and ethical duty in the exercise of democracy.
A top army officer arrives with a foreign lady journalist, who promptly declares how Indian democracy is functioning even in the most adverse circumstances, unaware as she is, that the whole affair is stagemanaged. The Adivasis do not even know who are the candidates, what are they poll symbols, what is their manifesto, how to press the EVM button. They really care two hoots. In their broken eyes and weatherbeaten faces, the entire farce plays out like a theatre of the absurd – they have seen it year after year and they know that nothing will change for them, even as the tribal teacher categorically states that what can they do really, they are trapped between the rock and the deep sea.
In this pessimistic, dead-end scenario, Newton sees through the game but is helpless. He can’t defy the laws of gravity. It is the army officer who is finally playing a multiple-double speak – he too is ironically trapped, knowing fully well that this is all but a farce. He is only doing his duty. He tells Newton, “You are Newton. Don’t try to become Einstein,” even as he bullies and cajoles him into play. Indeed, he has to follow his officer’s command, while he too cares two hoots -which tribal presses which button. All he wants is to go back to his ‘safe camp’ along with his troops before the sun sets because that is the time ‘they’ might attack, and have his early morning shot of ‘medicine’ with boiled eggs.
The greatness of this brilliant movie is that it takes no sides. Its neutrality itself is the silver lining which carries it through the difficult complexity of the status quo, idealism and guerrilla resistance. All it posits, through the film, are two things: that idealism is still alive, even if it is defeated, in a democracy which can be as failed, farcical and fragmented, as the stage-managed electoral verdict in a remote Adivasi land.
Indeed, the last shot is significant. As the teacher comes to visit him, he fishes out a framed certificate from his drawer, in his musty government office. It is a certificate lauding him for his punctuality.
It’s really been a dream come true for young Avani. She spent her growing years wanting to fly like a bird and today she stands at the threshold of history as one of the three women fighter pilots to be inducted into the Indian Air Force (IAF). Flying Cadet Avani Chaturvedi, along with flying cadets Bhawana Kanth and Mohana Singh, is the first three women cadets to be cleared for flying fighter aircraft.
The three women flying cadets are undergoing flying training at the Indian Air Force base in Hakempet along with their male counterparts. There is no special treatment for the women cadets. They undergo the same rigorous training as the men. No concessions -- physical fitness or mental robustness, the tests are the same.
While women pilots have been flying helicopters and transport aircraft since 1991 in the IAF, it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who finally took the decision to open the cockpits of fighter aircraft for women. There was some reluctance initially, but the IAF is now going all out to make this experiment a success.
This is a learning experience for the IAF too. This is the first time it will be putting women cadets in the fighter aircraft cockpit. And it hopes to benefit from this experience.
The three women cadets have undergone the mandatory 55 hours of flying on Stage I trainer -- the Pilatus PC 7 basic trainer. They are currently undergoing Stage II training on the Kiran Mark II. Once they clear this stage, they will graduate to the Advanced Jet Trainers (AJT) for fighter flying training.
"The IAF will get its first woman fighter pilot on June 18, 2016,'' Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha, chief of air staff announced to thunderous applause addressing a seminar on women in uniform - on the occasion of International Women's Day. The women cadets will have to clear every physical, mental and psychological test to be cleared for flying fighter jets.
"So far they are performing better than our expectations. They are mentally very alert and physically as fit meeting all the requirements. Once we put them in a fighter cockpit we will test them to take more than 5 G + (more than five times the gravitational pull the body experiences) while flying,'' sources added. The male fighter pilots undergo up to 9 G pull during some complex maneuvers. The women cadets will have to undergo the same before being cleared for combat fighter flying.
The missions envisaged for women fighter pilots will be slightly different from their male counterparts initially. The women fighter pilots will fly combat air patrols (CAPs) and protect Indian skies from hostile elements.
Currently, these women flying officers are undergoing intensive training on the weapons system that will take them more than two years at the Kalaikunda Air Force station near Kharagpur, West Bengal. They have already undergone training on the combat version of British Hawks at Bidar, Karnataka, sources told BusinessLine.
For security reasons, these women have been kept out of bounds and are not allowed to speak to the media. History will remember these women for opening the gates for women in combat roles in the IAF. They have been trained on Pilatus PC 7 basic trainer and Kiran Mark II during the first stage. However, compared to their male counterparts, these women pilots will not be flying over enemy territory but will be put in combat air patrol with the mission of protecting the skies from external threats, sources said. Daughter of an executive engineer with the Madhya Pradesh government, Avani Chaturvedi was born in Satna and did her BTech in computer science. However, it was her brother, who is in the army, who had been her inspiration to join the forces.
Bhawana Kanth hails from Bihar. Her father is an officer in the Indian Oil Corporation. But she had always dreamt of flying fighter jets. She has done BE in Medical Electronics from BMS College of Engineering, Bengaluru. Finally, Mohana Singh comes from Rajasthan and she belongs to an Air Force background as her father is an IAF personnel. She studied at Air Force School, New Delhi and did her bachelors in electronics and communication from Amritsar.
The three women cadets as of now are training hard to touch the sky with glory.
NOT MANY OF US give much thought to food and eat it hoping that it will always be around and in the way we like it – fresh, tasty and lots of it. Right now the thought seems okay but not for long. As population grows and climate change cuts into the available water and the amount of land that is available for farming, we may have to rethink this whole food thing. We may need to make more with less. That will mean getting smarter and more efficient about the way we make food.
It takes a lot of water and a lot of energy to produce a kilo of meat and therefore people are actually trying to find out ways to grow meat in a lab, one cell at a time. If successful it would end up cutting animals out of the food chain altogether, although it will take a long time to scale the whole thing to a commercial level.
Or maybe an alternative could be to start eating bugs. Companies in the West are offering cricket flour as cheap protein. It's easy to produce, and if people get used to sprinkling a little cricket on their pasta, it could make a big difference — assuming we can get over our collective insect issues. And so let's give some thought for food.In America, to produce 1 pound of beef, the friendly neighborhood farmer needs 13 pounds of grain and an estimated 2,500 gallons of water. If a 1,000-pound cow yields 600 pounds of beef, that cow used 1.5 million gallons of water and 7,800 pounds of grain. So, on a basic level, farming at this scale is pretty inefficient, when you could effectively feed thousands of people with just the grain and water it takes to produce that one cow.
It’s not that inefficient if you’re one farmer with a few cows and chickens (though it’s more expensive to raise animals that actually graze) and just your family to feed. But it’s a mathematically unsustainable equation.
Today, up to a third of earth’s landmass is used for grazing and growing crops. In the US, 70 percent of grain goes to feeding livestock. This has led to a critical situation where demand is expected to far outweigh supply in the next 50 years. But inefficiency isn’t nearly the only problem.
Man-made climate change, or global warming, is primarily caused by an increased concentration of greenhouse gasses (GHG) — water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, ozone — in the atmosphere. Activities such as deforestation, burning fossil fuels, and yes, raising livestock emit greenhouses gasses, and all have been on a steep rise since largescale manufacturing processes were applied to various industries, including farming.
The levels of greenhouse gas emissions have seriously increased since the Industrial Revolution, and most scientists agree that we’re facing a devastating climate situation.
This is what people mean when they tell you, that factory farming is unsustainable. The population explosion means more mouths to feed, and meat consumption overall has been on the rise proportionally to the rest of our diets; this increases pressure to raise more animals, and more food to feed them, which in turn gravely stresses our environment. The huge number of animals produces waste and polluting byproducts, and eventually, we’re going to not only simply lack the livestock to meet demand, but will face the high environmental costs to boot. Most experts believe that our effect on climate change is reversible, but only if we act immediately
We have three options moving forward. We can all become vegetarians, we can continue to destroy the planet, or we can try something new
Vegetarianism is on the rise — by some estimates it’s at an all-time high of 10 percent in the United States — but it also feels fair to agree that it is the most likely way to address our problems, even as some meat eaters reduce their consumption.
Initiatives like Meatless Monday — which encourages families to replace meat in just one weekly meal — have proven quite popular. But, for most people, when you cut out meat, you need to replace it with something. Americans aren’t going to go for a plant-based diet that easily, right? And that’s where a handful of new, Silicon Valleyfunded companies swoop in.
To the vegetarian, it usually really doesn’t. Meatless meats have been around for a long time. But new companies trying to create meat alternatives, or meat replacements, aren’t really trying to go after vegetarians. The goal is to get everyone else on board.
For Beyond Meat, and a handful of other companies such as Hampton Creek Foods, a San Francisco-based startup that makes egg replacement products, the model is pretty straightforward. They work in concert with world-class food scientists to come up with meat alternatives — let’s call them Tofurkey 2.0 — for consumer products that aren’t only better-tasting than their ancestors, but they’re healthier, and often cheaper, and marketed in a way that meat eaters won’t be turned off of.
Hampton Creek Foods takes a similar approach, but it’s trying to convince people to replace eggs. An easier sell, if you consider that many doctors regularly suggest people limit their egg consumption anyway: with 184 mg of cholesterol, egg yolks contain one of the highest concentrations per serving of any food, which, in addition to foods high in saturated fat, raise cholesterol levels in the blood. But it’s also true that eggs are the most consumed animal protein in the world.
People have been using (egg-based) egg replacements for years, but a lot of those products aren’t good for baking or using in recipes, or they aren’t that much cheaper than eggs themselves. The goal of Beyond Eggs, Hampton Creek’s egg product, is to function just like an egg, regardless of how it’s being used, and still be cheaper than eggs. Their powdered egg alternative is made from peas and sorghum, among other things. It’s totally plant-based. Hampton Creek Foods is funded by Khosla Ventures, which routinely supports technology-based, environmentally disruptive businesses, and also by Gates himself, through Khosla.
For both of these companies, selling to consumers is only part of the equation. Selling wholesale to other, much larger food companies is also a big piece of their business. Tetrick is angling to change the world’s egg consumption the way that margarine changed the world’s butter consumption: by being much cheaper, while still behaving a lot like the original.
There’s a lot of money to be made in these startups: they’re nascent markets, ready for growth. Astute money men — people like Khosla or Gates — are often best at seeing the future, and in this case, they see tremendous market potential. They’re small companies which apply scientific methods and develop their products in labs and at universities. And they have the environment in mind.
But what about your hardliner? The person who, regardless of health, food safety, environmental, or ethical concerns, just wants a great burger, made of real beef, at his weekend brunch? He hasn’t been forgotten either. In fact, he’s getting arguably the biggest chunk of money and scientific research in food technology. Because in this case, the goal is nothing less than putting the egg before the chicken. Or more properly, the chicken breast before the chicken… or even: the burger before the cow.
Since the 1990s, the possibility of growing animal cells in a lab by using stem cells has become a viable prospect. NASA spent the early 2000s working with turkey stem cells, and the first edible specimen — cultured goldfish cells — were successfully produced in 2002. In the United States, the effort to grow meat in a lab has been most vocally supported by Jason Matheny, who in 2005 authored an influential paper in the journal Tissue Engineering, a paper responsible for renewed interest in the topic of growing meat in a lab in the US.
In 2009 he told the University of Chicago Magazine that cultured meat "will be the purest meat ever," lacking the additives, antibiotics, and growth hormones given to most livestock today. In 2004 he founded New Harvest, a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness of in vitro meat, also called test tube meat, or cultured meat. In 2008, Mark Post began investigating culturing meat in a lab with $4 million in funding from the Dutch government.
Around 30 labs in the world are working to create cultured meat .
Post estimates that within 20 to 25 years, we could have a commercial product: labgrown beef which is indistinguishable from that which comes from an animal, grown in a lab. Theoretically, one crop of stem cells could create a huge amount of meat, with no animals harmed, no grazing land needed, grown in a sterile environment.
The final challenge, however, is whether people will buy it. Can we get over our sense of how "weird" cultured meat is? Of course, there are those who say we don’t have 20 to 25 years left to address the environmental issues. For them, the in vitro meat project, even if successful, is just too far off, and they believe that people need to reduce their meat consumption now to impact the environment positively.
Two million years ago, there were probably naysayers too, laughing at the guy with the DIY spear running after a bear. And there were also probably plenty of people who disagreed when it was first suggested that you could raise massive quantities of animals, and that meat could be something which even poor people could afford to eat on a daily basis. At every turn, man’s innovative nature has answered the call to solve critical problems. Why should this time be any different?
With Nirmala Sitharaman’s elevation as Defence Minister, the whole country has been talking about our women breaking the glass ceiling. Yes, Indian women have repeatedly breached the glass ceiling in every sphere of the workplace, at home and abroad.
But what these women also need to do is to break the glass floor so that many others can reach for the ceiling. And not only do away with the sticky floors but help crash the ceiling too. In this issue, we bring stories of some such women who have sure-footed what was known to be a ‘Man’s World.’ Indian women have been on the top of the corporate and business ladders for a while now. We not only profile women at home who have done us proud but also those who were born in India but achieved fame, glory, and success in other parts of the world. These women earned their spurs across countries, but one thing's for sure: you can't take India and their Indianness out of them. After all, many of them are what and where they are because of their cultural roots, and their ability to adapt them to a new milieu.
We also bring you a short profile of our new Defence Minister and her journey through the dusty world of politics and into governance. And then the Vedica Scholars, a unique MBA programme designed exclusively for women.This 18-month residential, postgraduate management course specifically for young women is sure to make a huge difference in the corporate world.
In London, the British Council’s UK/India Year of Culture celebrates with an event, Illuminating India, which commemorates 70 years of our Independence. A curtain raiser and peek into what’s on offer.
The Indian Army is looking at some major reforms from ‘Tooth to Tail’ which is going to impact are combat readiness. In Platform, we look at how this is going to work for India. Under Economy, a quick look at how demonetisation has impacted our economy a year after the bold move.
And of course, the usual mix of columns, politics, books and fashion. Not to forget the great festival of Diwali, a time to light up our lives and spread good cheer. So out darkness, and in light. Let’s all light a diya for a better world this Diwali. Jai Ganesha!
GST//Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will meet the chief of the Goods and Services Tax Network AB Pandey today to discuss fixing glitches in the implementation of the mega tax reform. The industry bodies and exporters will also be a part of the meeting to discuss problems they are facing in filing tax returns and on refunds under the new national tax regime. Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the country's top bureaucrats to “handhold” traders to resolve their problems relating to GST.
Challenges like the GST Network portal, the IT backbone of the new tax process, crashing repeatedly is said to have compounded confusion and Mr Jaitley will discuss that, sources said.
Sources in the Federation of Indian Export Organizations (FIEO) will raise the issue of significant delays in GST refunds and will also suggest an e-wallet facility for exporters to the Finance Minister.
Exporters have complained about working capital being blocked since the launch of GST in July brought in sweeping changes in the way taxes are paid and have sought quicker refunds. Exporters have also sought that export benefit scrips be allowed to pay taxes. The meeting follows up one held by Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu with industry leaders earlier.
The government is under attack from the opposition, particularly the Congress, on the way it has implemented GST. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has accused the government of crushing small business with a complicated process, criticising the need to fill multiple forms under the new rules and has said his party will pressure the government to simplify the procedure.
In a stinging critique of the government’s handling of the economy yesterday, senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha said, “a badly conceived and poorly implemented GST has played havoc with businesses and sunk many of them.”
The Prime Minister reiterated that small businesses must register with the GST Network to take advantage of business opportunities and said the common man and the trader must benefit from this “pathbreaking” decision.
The Finance Minister had earlier this month constituted a Group of Ministers to monitor and resolve the IT challenges faced in the implementation of GST. Arun Jaitley has also set up a committee under Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia on exports to look into problems faced by the export sector and to recommend to the GST Council a suitable strategy for helping the exporters post-GST.
Meanwhile, Former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha broke his silence on the economy and wrote a piece in The Indian Express that essentially tore the government apart on its economic policies, particularly Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s handling of the situation. Mr Sinha has predicted that the economy may not recover in time for the next Lok Sabha elections. Union Minister Jayant Sinha, who is Yashwant Sinha’s son, has also written a piece in The Times of India in which he defended the government's policy decisions. Yashwant Sinha, accused Arun Jaitley for making a “mess” of the economy and blamed it partly on what he called a hurried launch of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and notes ban. He also blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s shock move to ban high value currency last year. The BJP veteran, has pointed to the slowdown in economic growth and warned that the economy is unlikely to recover by the next national election in 2019. Stressing that the “short-sighted” decisions are being rushed by the central government, Yashwant Sinha reiterated that there is no denying that the economy has hit a rough spot. “I stand by my analysis,” he added. However, Arun Jaitley, in his caustic rejoinder to the criticism of the state of the economy, obliquely referred to Yashwant Sinha as “a job applicant at 80”. BJP
DEATH// Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, who helped usher in the 1960s sexual revolution with his groundbreaking men's magazine and built a business empire around his libertine lifestyle, died on Wednesday at the age of 91, Playboy Enterprises said. Hefner, once called the “prophet of pop hedonism” by Time magazine, peacefully passed away at his home, Playboy Enterprises said in a statement. Hefner was sometimes characterized as an oversexed Peter Pan as he kept a harem of young blondes that numbered as many as seven at his legendary Playboy Mansion. This was chronicled in “The Girls Next Door,” a TV reality show that aired from 2005 through 2010. He said that thanks to the impotency-fighting drug Viagra he continued exercising his libido into his 80s. “I’m never going to grow up,” Hefner said in a CNN interview when he was 82. Hefner settled down somewhat in 2012 at age 86 when he took Crystal Harris, who was 60 years younger, as his third wife.
DIPLOMACY// The quarrel between India and China over a territory that China and India’s friend Bhutan both claimed as their own is over, with both sides pulling back their soldiers in the area. The quarrel may have developed into a larger war, had both sides not come to an agreement. The problem started two months ago when the Chinese began building a road in Doklam, an area in Bhutan close to the Indian and Chinese borders. India became worried as control of Doklam brought the Chinese close to the ‘chicken neck’, a narrow patch of land in northern West Bengal that is the only land connection between north-eastern India and the rest of the country. So, India stepped up to help Bhutan, leading to a stand-off between India and China. With an agreement reached between India and China, the Chinese have stopped building the road and both sides have pulled back their soldiers. Everyone who was worried about war can now heave a sigh of relief! The Doklam handling tells us that there’s indeed an effective way to talk tough issues with China, and not by giving in or speaking out, but by showing up and conversing relentlessly to find convergences.
DIPLOMACY// EAM Sushma Swaraj addressed the United Nations General Assembly last month. She spoke about several global challenges like terrorism, climate change, maritime security, unemployment, gender empowerment, nuclear proliferation and cyber security. Notably, showing mirror to Pakistan, Ms Swaraj highlighted the glaring difference between India and Pakistan. She mentioned, “On one side India is working to create IITs, IIMs, AIIMs and prepare scholars but on the other side Pakistan is creating terror institutions like LeT, JeM, HM.” DOKLAM
ROHINGAS// Over the past few weeks, a steady stream of people have fled our neighboring country Myanmar, pouring into Bangladesh. These are the Rohingas, a group that is fleeing after fights broke out between them and Myanmar’s army. The Rohingas follow the Muslim religion and are a minority in Myanmar which is dominated by Buddhists, those who follow the religion founded by Gautama Buddha. Around a million Rohingas live in Myanmar but the country does not recognize most of them as its citizens. Hence conflicts have broken out between the country’s military and the Rohingas. In cases, other citizens of Myanmar have also turned against the Rohingas. Almost 400,000 Rohingas have fled Myanmar since August this year. The majority of them have moved across the border into Bangladesh, where many live in an area called Cox’s Bazar. To flee trouble in Myanmar, over a million Rohingas have left the country since the 1970’s. While Bangladesh has over 850,000 of them, 40,000 also live in India. India is not sure what to do with them, and the government has said that it fears that the Rohingas are a security threat to India. The government believes that some Rohingas may be plotting against India and could be looking to cause trouble in the country. It would like to send those staying in India without proper permission back to Myanmar. The fate of the Rohingas in India will be decided by the the Supreme Court.
Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is herself a winner of the Noble Peace Prize, has said that Myanmar’s military was not going after the Rohingas. Her statement has not been believed by many, and even an international body like the United Nations has accused Myanmar’s military of trying to wipe out the Rohingas. Stuck in Bangladesh, with no hope of returning home, the Rohingas, almost a million of them, have become Asia’s nationless people.
BADMINTON// Shuttler PV Sindhu beat Japanese player Nozomi Okuhara to win the Korea Open last Sunday. At the World Championships final a few weeks ago, the Japanese player had defeated Sindhu in the final. The Korea Open was also a hotly contested match with Sindhu finally winning 2220, 11-21, 21-18. Both players competed hard with long rallies for many points. At the World Championships, the match lasted one hour and 50 minuites, making it the second-longest women’s singles match in history. At the Korea Open too, the match lasted for an hour and 23 minutes with a key (important) point in the third game lasting 56 shots! Sindhu has become the first Indian to win the Korea Open. Sindhu told reporters after the match: “I am really very happy winning the Korea Open Super Series and I think it was a very good match. Again playing with Okuhara and definitely beating her may be a sweet revenge. Overall it was a good match and even she played very well.” Sindhu now goes on to play in the Japan Open and here’s hoping that her winning streak continues!
INAUGURATION// After a 54-year-long delay, the Sardar Sarovar Dam was finally inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 17. However, the prime minister’s comment that the dam faced numerous hurdles, did not go down well with the Congress, which called the inauguration an “election gimmick.” The world’s second largest dam, the Sardar Sarovar will supply water and electricity to three large states-Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. MYANMAR’S
CALAMITY// A massive earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter Scale, rocked central Mexico on Tuesday, September 19, . The capital city of the North American country, Mexico City, was also badly affected. The earthquake toppled many buildings, broke gas and electricity connections and caused fires. Around 330 people are feared dead. The new quake comes just two weeks after another powerful quake killed 98 people in southern Mexico. When the trembling started, millions of people fled into the streets and as buildings came down around them, the search for survivors began. A school, a supermarket and a factory were among the buildings that collapsed. Earthquakes of size 7 or above are regarded as major and are capable of causing widespread heavy damage. Another 11 aftershocks were registered after the initial quake at around lunchtime on Tuesday, the most powerful of which measured 4.9 on the Richter Scale. After a magnitude-7.1 earthquake shook Mexico last week, another earthquake struck on Saturday and caused buildings to sway in Mexico City. Saturday's earthquake registered a magnitude of 6.1 and struck the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, which endured the most damage. Some highways and a bridge that had been damaged in the earlier earthquake collapsed in Oaxaca. Sixty survivors have been pulled from the wreckage till now. The earthquake’s death toll (at the time of going to press) includes 19 children and six adults that were killed when the Enrique Rebsamen school on the city’s south side collapsed. Eleven children were rescued; however, news of a young girl still trapped at the school that gained attention across the nation and world proved false. Authorities stated that all students had been accounted for. The capital's mayor reports that 87 percent of the 7,649 properties examined have been deemed safe. However, roughly 1,000 are uninhabitable. Many of those who lost their homes are living with family or friends.