Innholdsfortegnelse for 30 April 2018 i Open Magazine

THE IMAGE OF SALMAN KHAN Hindi cinema is incomplete without thinking of the three big Khans (‘Being Salman Khan’ by Rachel Dwyer, April 23rd, 2018). Salman Khan, especially, has managed to create a different niche for himself, especially amongst young men who are inspired as well as awe-struck by his lifestyle and physique. Yet, the argument that his private life is not for the public to judge is incorrect because he has brought it out in the public. Simply because he is an actor does not mean he should be shown pity for any misconduct or misdeeds. Rohit Shariff What stands out about Salman Khan is the way in which he has changed his image from a young man to a mature, rugged, action hero. He commands much more stage…

WE SOMEHOW survive the dread of the morning headlines. We still manage to push the girl with large liquid eyes back into memory’s darkest corner, lest the last questions she didn’t live to ask crowd our waking hours. We find words—we do—that can reduce cruelties to a set of political aphorisms, conscience-proof. We get the names wrong, the places wrong, but no matter, we know the story is populated by the same characters, it has to be, and variations in the plot keep them newsy, prime time. These are headlines that deny the Indian countryside the romance—the widely shared Indian pastoral among politicians and poets—we have been taught to treasure. That’s useful sociology, but false aesthetics. The reality is raw, brutal. No amount of poetry can wish away the casual…

BACK IN 1960, the artist MF Husain made a suggestion to Ram Kumar. “One day Husain came to me and said, ‘Let us go to Benaras and sketch,’” Kumar recalled this incident a few years ago in an interview with the online auction house Saffronart. Husain was already an established name by then, whereas Kumar was a figurative artist still in search of his voice. The two travelled with Sripat Rai, Munshi Premchand’s son who owned a house in Varanasi and stayed with him. “Benaras was a very funny, funny thing,” Kumar recounted. Once the two artists reached the city, Husain had another suggestion. “Husain said, ‘You go in one direction and I will go in another. We will meet in the evening and see what we have done.’” But…

THE PROFIT POTENTIAL in healthcare is so stark, it’s a wonder that the upscale hospital chain Fortis has not attracted more bidders for a takeover. Manipal Health Enterprises, which upped its offer in response to a Fortis shareholder outcry over its initial proposal, has been the frontrunner to acquire the chain, but a joint offer by Hero’s Munjals and Dabur’s Burmans has given its board yet another set of numbers to consider, even as Malaysia’s IHH Healthcare dangles still more money and China’s Fosun moves in as a tail-end suitor. All this hasn’t just thrown the board into a quandary over whether to opt for a smooth deal or top dollar—now for a bid evaluation committee to resolve—it has also stirred a minority shareholder revolt against some of its directors.…

IN FEBRUARY, THE Open Access journal PLOS One published a paper on the traits of members of the Idu Mishmi, a tribe in the Dibang Valley of Arunachal Pradesh, who had attempted suicide. The total population of the Idu Mishmi is around 15,000, but a PhD study that came out in 2011 recorded as many as 218 suicides over four decades. Dr VR Rao, an anthropologist and co-author of thePLOS One paper, had been piqued by this phenomenon when he had visited the area while with the Anthropological Survey of India. He decided to look into the biological and genetic aspects behind this tendency, in particular the influence of aggression and impulsivity. There were a few things Rao’s study found which were striking. Of the 177 Idu Mishmis surveyed, as…

LIKE PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT REFLECT SOULS, NEWS DOES NOT CARRY THE SPIRITUALITY OF DAILY LIVING, MOMENT TO MOMENT. THERE IS ALSO THE EXHAUSTION OF NEWS, ONE THAT COMES FROM ITS SPEED NEWS WAS SOMETHING that always happened to others, in other places. Growing up in Siliguri, whose name I first heard mentioned on national television in 1988, that was my working definition of news. I still remember the evening: my brother and I, 10 and 12 years old respectively, sitting in front of our Telerama (which my mother continues to mispronounce as Tell-Rama) television set, waiting for Gitanjali Aiyar to tell us about something we’d watched just a few hours ago. Siliguri was hosting the Nehru Gold Cup in 1988; it was the first time we’d watched White sportsmen in action.…

A HISTORICAL NOVEL WITH a sprawling canvas, Memories of Fire is publishing veteran Ashok Chopra’s first foray into fiction. Set in Shimla and Punjab, the story revolves around five friends who bond at St Edward’s School, Shimla and stay connected for over 50 years. Their stories, told in a series of flashbacks, unfold against the backdrop of political storms including the rise of Sikh nationalism and Operation Blue Star in Punjab, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination, and the anti-Sikh riots in the blood-splattered 80s. Political developments in Pakistan are also woven into the novel’s rich tapestry. The five friends—Vijay Thakur, Radhey Shyam Upadhyay, Reza Ahmed, Deepak Kumar, and Balbir Singh—come across as distinct individuals. Vijay, the black sheep of the group who is attracted to the theatre, is ‘an impenetrable…

The Adamant Superstar Ali Abbas Zafar, director of Salman Khan blockbusters Sultan and Tiger Zinda Hai, is diving straight into his next film Bharat for the superstar’s own production banner. Zafar says Salman sent him a DVD of the Korean filmOde to My Father, asking him to figure out how to adapt it for an Indian audience. Zafar was reluctant “because it’s very specific to Korean history and culture, and because it’s a massive story that spans 70 years”. But the superstar was adamant, and Zafar says he found a way to make it work. They’ve already shot a ‘look test’ with Salman, in which he goes from his twenties to a distinguished septuagenarian, and those who’ve seen it are impressed. “Salman Khan’s father Salim saab said this film has…

The southern states are wrong in believing that the only agenda of the Central Government is to take advantage of the south (‘Sour South’, April 23rd, 2018). The decisions have been taken keeping the benefit of the entire country in mind. For long, the south has been complaining of a bias against them in the north, when it comes to language, resource allocation and culture, etcetera. But while this is assumed by many, there is little by way of fact to back such an opinion. Nobody is trying to dilute southern culture or welfare schemes. But certain politicians will always use any thing they can to sway public opinion and get more people to believe that the Centre is working against them. We should not think of India as north…

YOU STRUGGLE YOUR entire life in the most cutthroat of professions and, in the rare instance of having made it to lead a country, an inner gene kicks in to ask what are you going to be remembered for? Even successful politicians who don’t believe in the afterlife obsess over their legacy. Will Narendra Modi have demonetisation in his list? Almost certainly not, and the blame for that lies squarely on the Rs 2,000 note. The ghost of demonetisation, despite its short-term political gains (or at least it did not affect the Uttar Pradesh election outcome), is going to keep returning everytime there is a crisis with cash or banks. The current shortage of notes in ATMs illustrates this. It is not easy to efface the image of an entire…

ARENDRA MODI ARRIVED in London to the kind of red carpet welcome he so obviously expects N and appreciates. As with all of his international excursions, he strutted the stage with his signature confidence and style, with one eye on the audience back home and the other on his standing as a world leader from a country demanding both attention and respect. To his evident satisfaction, no Commonwealth leader is being accorded higher honours or such privileged access, including a private audience with Her Majesty the Queen. At one level this is merely a deeply-felt thank-you for turning up at all. No Indian prime minister has attended a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, or CHOGM as it’s called, for the best part of ten years. Modi’s predecessors clearly didn’t think…

AS OUTRAGE OVER the Kathua case began to pour in from all over, a picture of two men at an airport in Turkey, wearing T-shirts, one of which read, ‘Women are not worthy as cows in India’, was circulated widely on social media. The message turned out to be photoshopped; in the original picture, the two men, with their backs towards the camera, wore plain white T-shirts. Such propaganda angers a certain section of patriotic Indians, especially if it is believed to emanate from foreign soil. It strengthens their belief that there are invisible forces hell-bent on sullying the country’s image. While that may be true, the fake message on that T-shirt will surely resonate with most women in India. The angry Indian who finds glory in Bharat does not…

YOU CAN BE lonely anywhere,’ writes Olivia Laing, in her book The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, ‘but there is a particular flavour to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people.’ In one of Leonardo Pucci’s photographs, a man, enshrouded in the blue light of city dawn, looks out of the window, his back to us. In another image, a man stares at us, a coltish figure framed in a dormer window, as dawn breaks around him in golden spray. It would appear the characters—Pucci’s subjects in these Carveresque visual short stories of urban loneliness—could even have a conversation with each other in spatial time. Their solitudes may intersect in unrecorded time. In Zoë Heller’s novel, Notes on a…

INDIA IS ENJOYING a graphic novel renaissance—they are tackling the new as well as re-inventing the old. Indira, written by Devapriya Roy and drawn by Priya Kuriyan, takes on the life of the country’s original Iron Lady. To the French, comics are classified as the ‘ninth art’. Hegel began this aesthetic classification and theorists kept adding to this: for example, cinema was included as it was ‘a superb conciliation of the Rhythms of Space (the Plastic Arts) and the Rhythms of Time (Music and Poetry)’. This ‘conciliation’ also explains the appeal of graphic novels. They are often at the junction of journalism, architecture, photography and film-making—drawing on all their strengths, yet preserving a certain character unique to the medium. Such an approach is necessary for Indira Gandhi. After all, she…

MOST OF YOU may have read the controversy doing the rounds in the media regarding targets of diabetes control based on recommendations by the American College of Physicians (ACP). It tells people what they want to hear—that they can be lax in their control of diabetes. Such an approach might harm people by lulling them into a false sense of complacence, and thereby impact their health, but that is not the media’s responsibility; that is for doctors to rectify. Most diabetes patients (type 2, the common, adult variety of diabetes) have no symptoms. They are detected to have high blood sugar incidentally—in a health check or while testing for some other disease. Why should we be treating a laboratory value? It is not without reason. If we allow our blood…

IT IS ALMOST 43 years since I first came to the UK. Having lived in that country for nearly 10 years and having visited it each year since the mid-1990s at least a couple of times, I can say without any exaggeration that it is the only country, apart from India, I know well. It is only in the past few years that each visit tells me this country is in the throes of permanent angst. This has precious little to do with politics or which party—Labour or Conservative—is in power. It has everything to do with newer and newer social and, by implication, political attitudes that engulf a slice of ‘educated’ British society. It has been a choppy, rollercoaster ride these past three years. First there was all that…

INDIA IS ALONE among major powers in the world that keeps its armed forces at an arms-length when it comes to defence planning and policymaking. The usual explanation is that the formulation of policy is the preserve of the civilian leadership. As far as excuses go, this is quite weak for a country with one of the largest standing armies on the planet. In a world where warfare is increasingly sophisticated and for a country that faces threats that range from non-state actors all the way to nuclear aggression, India’s defence planning structures are woefully outdated. That is set to change. On April 18th, the Government announced the formation of a Defence Planning Committee (DPC) led by the National Security Adviser (NSA). The DPC will include the chairman of the…

Science and faith have stood at two opposite extremes of the human belief system. While the former is based on logic and reasoning, the latter asks us to repose our faith and belief in the existence of a higher being. Mythological stories and religious texts and iconography are all used to service this faith system. Consider then the strangeness of a recent episode. Biplab Deb, the BJP’s recently sworn-in Chief Minister of Tripura, wants us to believe that one of the supernatural parts of the Mahabharata story, a charioteer granted the ability of watching distant events and then recounting what was happening in a war to a blind king, literally occurred in real life. The minister does not stop there. He also co-opts the greatest invention of modern science, the…

What has been the guiding force behind the inception of brand in 1989? The late 1980’s saw Da Milano enter the Indian market with a distinct Italian flavour, the designs have since then been the benchmark of the industry. Da Milano manufactures and retails quality leather bags and accessories. Since its inception the brand has consistently delivered quality of the highest standards, every season, year after year. How has the journey been from a single store to 60 + stores? Fashion industry in a developing country is always perceived to be elitist. Building a brand in the segment therefore was an arduous journey. Ideas were considered utopian, even thoughts of embellished or colored bags or leather luggage were considered non-marketable. Leather was always to be for classes. To have ensured…

BACK IN 2011, the Hyderabad-based geneticist Kumarasamy Thangaraj was part of a study that looked at lactase persistence, or the ability to consume milk and milk products, in India. This is an unusual trait. Absent in other mammals, a mutation in human genes is believed to have allowed some to be able to digest lactose, the sugar in milk, right into adulthood. Other mammals can’t consume milk past infancy once they’re weaned off it. Even among humans, lactase persistence isn’t universal. More than two-thirds of the world’s population is known to suffer from lactose intolerance: they drink milk only at the risk of nausea, abdominal pain and digestive miseries like diarrhoea. “All babies produce the gut enzyme lactase,” explains Thangaraj, who works at Hyderabad’s Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology…

Residential Status: Only resident individuals having total income up to Rs 50 lakh only by the way of salary, one house property and other sources can file ITR1. Non-residents and not ordinarily residents can’t use ITR1. Details of Income from Salary: You will need a complete breakup of your salary as under: a. Salary (excluding all allowances, perquisites and profit in lieu of salary) b. Allowances not exempt c. Value of perquisites d. Profit in lieu of salary e. Deductions u/s 16 Details of Income from House Property: Furnish complete information in case of income from House Property, as below: a. Gross rent received/ receivable/ letable value b. Tax paid to local authorities c. Annual Value (a – b) d. 30% of Annual Value e. Interest payable on borrowed capital…

WE ARE ALL, rather unfortunately, avidly interested in the private lives of ‘celebrities’ past and present, and most of all in their misdemeanours and illnesses. This book caters to these nefarious desires. It is a collection of anecdotes about the surgical problems of the good and the great (and some not so good and great) from the Persian King Darius to President John Kennedy. Although surgeons, according to the author, a surgeon himself in the Netherlands, ‘are treated with great respect and often portrayed as heroes who, in the face of adversity, save people’ what is probably unique about them as doctors is that they share a special one-to-one relationship with their patients. The sick individual before an operation puts his or her life in the surgeon’s hands and he…

Pankaj Kapur’s most sublime quality is his ability to disappear: an unlikely trait for a hero, an essential for a preternaturally gifted actor. In a conversation at a select gathering, he spoke of diving inside the heart of a script to extract its subtext, rather than seeking inspiration from outside it. And then there were the inside stories: about his role as Tarneja in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, as Abbaji the don in Maqbool, and as the carrot-crunching detective in Karamchand…

JENNIFER LAWRENCE IS one of the highest paid actresses in the world, best known for her role in The Hunger Games and Silver Lining Playbook for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress (2013). In the recent Francis Lawrence-directed film Red Sparrow, she plays a ballerina who meets with an accident and is then offered a job as a spy. It is fascinating to see her morph from dancer to spy in this violent spy thriller. What were some of the physical challenges required for your role in Red Sparrow? For four months I think I trained in ballet for three hours a day, which was obviously [hard] for me, because I wasn’t just going to turn into a prima ballerina. I had to learn to use my…