Innholdsfortegnelse for 15 May 2017 i Open Magazine

PONTIFICATION IS EASY. It doesn’t cost anything. Besides, it makes the pontificator look good. But the real test comes when, expected to live up to your stated ideal, you actually fall woefully short. That is generally true of most politicians, quite a few judges, and, of course, a majority of media pundits. Given half a chance, we think nothing of cutting moral, if not legal, corners in order to get ahead, especially the go-getters among us. Take this case of a retired apex court judge. He might have nixed many an act on grounds of nepotistic abuse of power during his career as a judge. But finding himself in a high-profile postretirement sinecure, he could not resist the temptation to engage his own lawyer-daughter to assist him in administering the…

“When what’s happening to us is as real as a tree falling on us, why are we pretending that it is in some other realm of possibility? One of the profoundest reasons why it is so hard to write a story on climate change is that there is no redemption, there is no happy ending. And no possibility of one” AMITAV GHOSH In many ways, a country is like the theatre. It needs a resplendent cast of characters to stay inspired and plots to entertain it. The eclectic mix of people we feature in this section perform diverse roles and functions. They include activists, conservatives, opinion leaders, rebels, crusaders, doers, dreamers and innovators. Collectively, all of them contribute to the making of the passion called India. We have among us…

Scheduling Woes Aah, so rumour has it that Deepika Padukone has had to bow out of Tanu Weds Manu director Anand L Rai’s Shah Rukh Khan starrer. Apparently she’s neck deep filming Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavati, and he won’t release her dates so she can take on the new film. Despite two major hiccups while he was shooting—twice did protestors vandalise his sets—Bhansali is adamant on making his December release date, as if to show that he cannot and will not be cowed down by bullies. As a result, he’s shooting long days and expects that his actors be available to him when he needs them. Although he had previously agreed to give Deepika some time off from Padmavati so she could start at least two new projects, the new breakneck…

MUMBAI HAS A weighty problem. Her name is Eman. By now, of course, everyone who keeps up with news would know about Eman Ahmed Abdulati, the Egyptian woman who was the world’s heaviest at 500 kg. In just over three months at Saifee Hospital here, she’s lost the title and 330 kg. At 170 kg, she is not exactly ready to walk the ramp, but she has gained something much more precious: the chance to live a far better life than before. At 500 kg, she was five feet wide and completely bed-ridden. Now she can even sit up; importantly, the pressure on her vital organs has reduced, thus prolonging her life. All this is thanks to Saifee and its bariatric surgeon, Dr Muffazal Lakdawala. If you were a tourist…

Early this year, Barack Obama spoke to The New York Times about how important books were to him during his White House tenure. “At a time when events move so quickly and so much information is transmitted,” he said, reading gave him the ability to occasionally “slow down and get perspective” and “the ability to get in somebody else’s shoes”. The minds we’ve mapped in the Soft Power section do exactly that—their books, their art, their films slow us down, and slip us into somebody else’s shoes. This slowing down allows us to see the world from different angles, it gives us pause and forces us to re-jig our thoughts. Walking in another’s shoes grants us empathy, the most humane of qualities. Too often the arts are relegated to the…

Noise pollution is injurious to the casual mind. What we call discourse, for all its corrosive purposes, has become a festival of shrillness. Simulated angst, pumped-up nationalism, raw hatred, and imaginary fear. It’s competitive logorrhoea to create an India—benighted or blessed, your choice—that exists only in the mind of the polluter. The toxicity of unhinged words intensified after the political shift in 2014. What was liberation for some was end-of-entitlement for others. India’s right turn, led by a man who had nothing at stake except his idea of an India that differed vastly from the political inheritance of a dynasty, shattered the official establishment of the mind, which was leftist to the core. There was no attempt to engage with the new order or its leader or what he imagined…

OPRAH WINFREY is a household name, thanks to her iconic talk show, but over time she has also proved herself as an actress. She is easily the best part of the recently released The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the HBO film based on Rebecca Skloot’s non-fiction book of the same name. Henrietta, an impoverished Virginia tobacco farmer and a mother of five, was in her thirties when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1950. The doctors took samples of both her cancerous and healthy cells without her permission, later cultivated and used it to advance modern medicine. Winfrey plays her daughter Deborah, who goes on a quest to learn more about her mother’s impact on modern medicine. The movie cracks open the question of personal choice versus the…