Innholdsfortegnelse for 21 February 2022 i India Today

A fortnight after the ‘genera tional feud’ in the Trinamool Congress erupted on social media, party chairperson Mamata Banerjee finally broke her silence at the hastily organised organisational polls on February 2. After being re-elected to the post (obviously without contest), the first thing she did was to assert her supremacy. “A leader does not fall from the heavens. He/she becomes one through work,” she said amid deafening silence. The gibe, many say, was directed at nephew and party No. 2 Abhishek, seated next to her, and the young brigade, who had been going ga-ga on social media over his ‘leadership qualities’, especially the way he enforced Covid protocols in his Lok Sabha constituency, Diamond Harbour, when the Gangasagar Mela was on. On January 8, Abhishek had come out and…

Ganga-jamuni tehzeeb flowed freely in Bulandshahr on February 3 when Priyanka Gandhi’s convoy passed by Akhilesh Yadav and Jayant Chaudhury’s rath during their respective campaigns in the western UP town. All smiles, the political rivals—Priyanka the Congress general secretary in charge of UP, and Akhilesh the chief of Samajwadi Party in alliance with Jayant’s Rashtriya Lok Dal—waved at each other and exchanged greetings. The camaraderie extended all the way to social media as Akhilesh posted the picture on Twitter, with the caption, ‘Ek dua salaam, tehzeeb ke naam (a greeting in the name of civility)’. Priyanka returned the favour with another photo, and a salubrious ‘Hamari bhi aap ko Ram Ram (greetings to you too)’, tagging both Akhilesh and Jayant. Political strategists believe there’s more than meets the eye in…

A week after the Congress’s humiliating defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, one of the party’s young Turks who also happened to have been a minister in both regimes of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), told INDIA TODAY: “Now Pappu will understand what it means to be in politics. It’s not easy surviving in the Opposition camp.” Pappu, of course, is a derogatory reference to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, popularised in social media by his detractors. The comment was later withheld at the leader’s request, but it was one of the first indicators of disgruntlement among the younger lot who had come to the fore after Rahul joined politics in 2004. While the Gandhi scion has ‘survived’—even helmed the party at one point despite the multiple electoral debacles since…

FROM HIGH ABOVE, Teressa Island resembles a giant green boomerang, frozen mid-throw over an azure sea. Last December, this island in the Nicobar chain was a military objective for over 100 soldiers from an elite army unit. Leaping out of the back of a C-130J transport, paratroopers from the Agra-based Shatrujeet Brigade practised parachuting onto the island and securing a drop zone, simulating how India would react to an invasion of the islands. In a real-world scenario, it would be the entire 3,000-man brigade parachuting and airlanding to capture key installations like airfields before a larger friendly seaborne force arrived. The brigade’s emblem, a winged centaur drawing a bow, symbolises its composite capabilities. It has seen action in all of independent India’s conflicts—two successes in the modern era involved an…

VIKRAM VEDHA Saif Ali Khan and Hrithik Roshan team up for the second time in a remake of this acclaimed Tamil film featuring R. Madhavan and Vijay Sethupathi SELFIEE Yet another Prithviraj film gets a Hindi spin. Akshay Kumar and Emraan Hashmi star in this rem ake of the Malayalam comedydrama Driving Licence SOORARAI POTTRU Suriya was pitch-perfect in this biopic of Air Deccan founder Captain Gorur Ramaswamy Iyengar Gopinath. Sudha Kongara Prasad, director of the Tamil drama, will helm the remake SHEHZADA Kartik Aaryan has big shoes to fill as he features in this remake of Allu Arjun-starrer Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo, the Telugu hit that was one of the most watched films online during the first lockdown AYYAPPANUM KOSHIYUM Biju Menon and Prithviraj were splendid in this Malayalam drama about…

The first time Rahul Rawail—aged barely 16—saw Raj Kapoor in action on a film set, “it was like watching him conduct a symphony.” This experience was followed by many others of its type. “I saw the Immortal Master weave his magic,” he tells us in his book’s prologue; later descriptions include “the puppeteer who deftly manipulated the strings” and “the man who was the epicentre of Indian cinema”. Rawail, a childhood friend of Rishi Kapoor, began assisting Raj Kapoor on Mera Naam Joker, and went on to work on Bobby—two films, very different in content, tone and scale, that represented a transitional period in RK’s career. Raj Kapoor: The Master at Work has many stories about the making of these films, along with more general recollections about Raj Kapoor’s working…

For Natasha Sharma, homemaker and mother to four-year-old twins, 2022 began inauspiciously. The 34-year-old Pune resident tested positive for the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in the first week of January. For two days, Sharma had a consistently high fever and a sore throat. Following her doctor’s advice, she treated her symptoms with paracetamol and multivitamins. By day three, her fever had gone and her throat began to improve. But over the next 10 days, Sharma continued to experience weakness, aches in her leg muscles, insomnia and tiredness. Her doctor diagnosed her with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, a complex, multisystem disorder, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). “It felt like there was no strength in my fingers. Just getting myself up and off the bed was a task. It was hard to…

Come Ugadi, the Telugu New Year on April 2, and Andhra Pradesh will double its number of districts to 26. The move is in keeping with Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s 2019 assembly election promise to improve governance. The advantages, the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) government claims, are plenty. For one, the reorganisation will bring district headquarters closer to the average citizen, except perhaps in the proposed Araku district. More districts also mean a greater share of Union government funds from programmes that take the district as a unit. “The reorganisation of districts is based on geographical boundaries and demographics and is not merely on the basis of parliamentary and assembly constituencies,” says G.S.R.K.R. Vijaya Kumar, planning secretary, Andhra Pradesh. To improve governance, the Jagan Reddy government…

They may be a vanishing breed in Indian politics in terms of sheer numerical strength, and Uttar Pradesh may be ground zero for some of the big issues that have contributed to their margi nalisation. Despite that larger existential crisis, the 2022 assembly poll seems set to make a new beginning for Muslim politics in the state. The older faces would voice ‘Muslimness’ in ways that didn’t necessa rily ensure the best crossover appeal—take an Imran Masood, who hit the headlines with intempe rate remarks against Narendra Modi before the 2014 general election, or Yakub Qureshi, who announced a reward of Rs 51 crore for anyone beheading the Danish cartoonists who satirised the Prophet and justified the Charlie Hebdo attack. Neither has a ticket to ride this time. Instead, UP…

Growing up in Talwandi Salem village of Punjab’s Jalandhar district, Aman-preet Kaur, 20, was eager to learn about the workings of the brain. Between attending school in nearby Nakodar, helping out at her family’s grocery store and flour mill, and devouring the Goosebumps books by R.L. Stine, the science student would read up on social stigmas attached to mental health. After Class 12, Kaur didn’t think twice about heading to Canada for further studies, especially since her elder brother was already there. “Canada…that seemed an easy road to take,” Kaur says. “If you’re planning to study something in India, especially in the medical field, it takes a lot out of you. You have to clear the entrance examination, you have to pick a nice college that exposes you to a…

Filmmaker Anup Singh remembers it was 4.54 am when his wife Catherine woke him up. His phone had been buzzing repeatedly, disturbing the quiet of their French country residence. Singh recalls grabbing the phone and making his way to the garden. He had received hundreds of messages, telling him about Irrfan’s passing. He was still hoping they were rumours, so he texted Irrfan’s wife, Sutapa Sikdar, who confirmed the news. Dazed, Singh sat under a cherry tree. Anup Singh and Irrfan had worked on two films together: Qissa (2013) and The Song of Scorpions (2017), and were preparing for their third collaboration when Irrfan was diagnosed with a malignant tumour. “There was so much that was left incomplete in terms of our work, our relationship,” says Singh. It was almost…

ANGOOR (1982) Gulzar’s take on A Comedy of Errors—with two pairs of twins caught in an identity switch that becomes progressively manic—was one of the high points of the 1980s’ Middle Cinema. HAMLET (1996) Of the many Hamlet films, Kenneth Branagh’s may be the most daring, since it retains the full text of the play—which results in a four-hour epic. But Branagh’s visual sense along with the talents of a huge cast makes it deeply rewarding. GOLIYON KI RAASLEELA RAM-LEELA (2013) Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s brand of filmmaking isn’t to all tastes, but this opulent, darkly poetic reimagining of Romeo and Juliet is one of our best mainstream Shakespeare films, with two lovers who seem as passionate about guns as about each other.…

Last year in March, then Rajasthan minister for school education Govind Singh Dotasra snubbed teachers who had come seeking his help, asking if they thought the government was a “nathi ka bada (charity)”. The comeuppance has come now with Dotasra humiliated by the question paper leaks in the Rajasthan Eligibility Entrance Test for Teachers exam. Adding insult to injury, miscreants (allegedly from the opposition BJP) painted a ‘Nathi ka Bada’ sign outside Dotasra’s home. —Sandeep Unnithan with Amitabh Srivastava, Jeemon Jacob, Kiran D. Tare and Rohit Parihar…

On February 20, the 21 million voters of Punjab will have to choose carefully. The question before them is: who should lead them out of this dangerous quagmire? For the first time, they have a smorgasbord of parties and contestants to select from. In the past two decades, they have given decisive mandates to one or the other party to rule the state’s 117-seat-strong legislative assembly. But this time around, even political pundits are puzzled. Pramod Kumar, development economist and political analyst, says, “It’s actually 117 mini-elections, with each constituency an election by itself. No party seems to have any well-defined programme or distinct ideology, except freebies. They may sound different, but they don’t look different. For the first time in 50 years, I find it difficult to sense which…

It’s hard times for PCC chiefs, past and present. If Navjot Sidhu is nursing a whole bunch of ruffled feathers, his predecessor Sunil Jakhar too has announced retirement from electoral politics. Their greatest common enemy is also the Congress’s CM face. Sidhu at least was open about his chief ministerial ambition, but it took a viral video to expose Jakhar’s aspiration—he claims he was the first choice of MLAs as Amarinder’s replacement, Charanjit Channi the last. Elsewhere, the party’s one family, one ticket policy left the Bajwa brothers—Partap, PCC chief till 2016, has and his sibling Fateh Jung—sulking, pushing Fateh Jung BJPward. On Feb. 3, H.S. Hanspal joined AAP and the band of unhappy ex-PCC chiefs after grandson Sundar Singh was denied a ticket. Other ex-PCC chiefs left ticketless—Mohinder Kaypee…

It was like lustral water, her voice. It made the body sacred… Complex feelings arise, therefore, when you see Lata Mangeshkar in the fullness of her legacy—a complexity that her own voice did not hold. For, wasn’t it the very antonym of complex, of everything difficult? Yes, it was light itself…and lightness of being. A singer such as Lata does not reside merely on the music shelves, to be turned to at the end of the day, after weightier matters are accounted for. She was the ambient soundscape of a whole time in history, filling out physical space. The turntable next to the posh divan, the transistor balanced on the migrant labourer’s shoulder walking back from dust-laden construction sites, the evening bustle at the smalltown nukkad shop selling meetha Banarasi…

Unlike, say, Hollywood or even the South Korean entertainment industry, India’s zombie cinema output has been meagre. Our various film industries’ contributions to this genre have been limited—Go Goa Gone (2013), the Netflix shows Ghoul (2018) and Betaal (2020), a Dibakar Banerjee short for Ghost Stories (2020). Director Aditya Sarpotdar, a fan of Korean zombie period drama Kingdom (2019, Netflix), wanted to change that. “It is quite shocking that this genre hasn’t seen more,” he says. Sarpotdar’s Marathi film Zombivli, recently released in theatres, fills that gap. In it, zombies descend upon Dombivli, a city in Thane, Maharashtra. Though the zombie comedy has all the cliches we associate with the walking dead—groaning, slow movements, spooky faces—Sarpotdar and his writers also make it a point to highlight several socio-economic schisms and…

Everyone in the coastal village of Geilpur smells of fish, someone observes in the new Bengali series Mandaar (streaming on Hoichoi). “And I’m a cat. Meow!” replies a newly-arrived cop named Mukaddar, speaking in effete-sounding English. In another scene, he liberally pours ketchup over the catfish on his plate, a culinary travesty. On the face of it, such moments don’t belong in a Macbeth adaptation, but then those fish do appear to be “steeped in blood”, and Mukaddar (played by director Anirban Bhattacharya) is a stand-in for Shakespeare’s Macduff—a much more corrupt version. Mandaar nicely recasts the play’s characters. Mandaar/Macbeth (Debasish Mondal) is a strongman who works for a local leader, and whose impotence is a source of frustration for his wife, the sensuous Laili (Sohini Sarkar), obsessed with having…

What would Indian urban life be like without posters of political leaders staring at pedestrians? More importantly, ever wondered what happens to these banners made of vinyl sheets once they have outlived their purpose of inflating “the egos of neighbourhood apparatchiks during functions and festivals”? Curated by Ranjit Hoskote, Ritesh Uttamchandani’s debut show A Lease of Life (on view at the Cymroza Art Gallery, Mumbai, until February 28) tracks these posters down to the most unexpected settings where they are repurposed rather imaginatively—as body covers for auto-rickshaws, awnings for roadside stalls and mats for vegetable vendors. Hoskote’s favourite image is that of a boy sitting at a roadside stall with a political poster forming part of the display surface. “For a brief moment,” Hoskote says, “the loud rhetoric of leadership…