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Making Cat Calls
Mohammad bin Tughlaq had ruled over vast stretches and tracts of land that today constitute India. He was a great ruler who left behind a legacy. A legacy that is today most identifiable as an adjectival derivative of his name – Tughlaqesque. The word is too complex to have an exact synonym. Tughlaqesque would mean exotic, Quixotic, far-fetched, well-meaning, ill-conceived, arrogant, grandiose, all at the same time. It is also a word that can be routinely associated with India’s later-day rulers. Especially, the ones who have lorded over us since Independence.
There is one Tughlaqesque idea that is doing the rounds these days and the gullible Indian media has fallen flat for it – that of reintroducing the cheetah in India.
Seeing the cheetah in the Indian wild is any Indian wildlifer’s wet dream. It is something that sets our hearts aflutter. But let’s get real and see what this dream is all about.
The minister and his words
Of militants, and tackling militancy
It's the kind of news item that tends to get buried under others of heavier national importance; for it hardly has any news value that any journalist worth one's salt would ascribe to it. This particular news item one read was about 36 former militants being appointed on Saturday as constables in the Jammu and Kashmir police. No big deal, that. In any case, nothing new about such a measure either.
It is not the news item in itself that is a cause for worry – reading between its lines is, and also by going beyond the straightjacket, desultory headline.
A writer, a filmmaker, a people's man
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Sometime back I chanced upon a moth-eaten book at a relative’s place. The author’s name on the spine had caught my eye and I was sure I had struck gold as I gingerly pulled the paperback out from under a pile of books that were meant, quite possibly, to be disposed of. The writer was, to me, one of the greatest names in Indian cinema. His repertoire can be summed up in one word – life. It embodied just one element – people.
So FTV has hurt the government's sensibilities, again
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So the morally upright Indian government has once again banned FTV, albeit for 10 days. But banned nonetheless. The information and broadcasting ministry, for its part, has been extremely thoughtful in announcing the reason to the public as well.
An official statement tells us that it was noticed by the ministry that "A programme on FTV channel was telecast on September 4, 2009 at 15:37:34 hours and 19:01:48 hours showing women with nude upper body which was offending against good taste and decency." The Indian government had banned FTV a few years back on the same grounds.
Well, if FTV goes off air it wouldn’t make a fig of a difference either to our GDP or the stock index. It wouldn’t make people in our rural areas any poorer than they already are. If you leave out some diehard fashion aficionados, FTV’s absence is not going to peeve anyone.
To save these people, you need to keep them out of our sight
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The most recurring, quoted number in India today is 1,411 – the mean count of tigers ostensibly remaining in the wild in the country. Everyone knows and everyone seems pretty upset. The number, of course, can be disputed and refuted too if needed; but that can be the topic for another discussion. What is evident is that given the rate of decline, it might be just another 20, or maybe 50, years by when tigers would vanish from our landscape. This number, till the other day, remained in the knowledge domain of wildlifers – conservationists, activists, enthusiasts. Thanks to the biggest ad campaign of the year, most people now know that 1,411 is too small a number in itself. Alarming, is how most ordinary people have been describing the number as.
This is one of India's most blacked-out stories
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It ought to be counted as one of India’s most downplayed stories of the day. It is about the struggle to save an ecosystem called Niyamgiri in Orissa from mining, deforestation and devastation. It is about indigenous people and the rights over their land.
Vedanta Resources, a stinking rich British company owned by NRI Anil Agarwal, intends to dig an open-pit bauxite mine in Niyamgiri. This mine will destroy the forests on which the Dongria Kondh depend and wreck the lives of thousands of other Kondh tribal people living in the area. The Supreme Court has given the go ahead for the project, but the battle rages on. Albeit silently. This project, by the way, will also see the death of the centuries-old sacred groves of these people. The Dongria Kondh do not live anywhere else and there are just 8,000 of them left.
Retelling India’s fashion story
There’s a beeline for India – from publishers of magazines and newspapers to manufacturers of garments and textiles. Not quite without reason – its ever-growing affluent section is bigger in numbers than many European nations put together.
If you care to look beyond the obvious, you will realise those making this beeline have not just been taken in by speculative hype alone. Numbers scream realities, and the numbers indicate that the Indian fashion market is huge, it is growing, it is vibrant. The rich are getting richer, and the number of the rich is also increasing at an alluring rate. This lure is for all those who see India as the promised land for fashion and retail.
So what is it with fashion in India? What is it with sportswear in this country?
Memories of another death
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Sometime in the second half of the 1970s there was this frail boy who one fine morning fell heads over heels in love with cricket, a game he could not play by any measure. Because he could neither bat, nor bowl, or field. He loved the game, nonetheless. For its sheer grace than anything else, perhaps. The more he realised that he could not weild the willow or hurl the cherry, the more he grew passionate about the game.
He loved the game because of two players who used to be the favourite Sportsweek pin-up boys at the time – two of the Amarnath brothers – the stylish Surinder and the gritty Mohinder. He rooted for the former more than anyone else donning the India flannels. It was just because of him perhaps that he had begun loving the game that those days only gentlemen played.