Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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heir sagging morale lifted after a
thumping win over Pakistan,
Indian spinners will now have to
brace up for the ever-dangerous Chris
Gayle when the team squares off
against defending champion West
Indies in its second match of the ICC
WT20 here on Sunday.
A victory against Pakistan was just the
kind of shot in the arm that was required
before facing a team that has worlds most
devastating T20 batsman in Gayle.
While a rampaging Gayle can take
away the game at any point of time with
his blazing bat, the Indian spin trio of
Ravichandran Ashwin, Amit Mishra and
Ravindra Jadeja will definitely pose a few
problems for the Jamaican Marauder.
Gayle has mini-
mum footwork as he
believes in stand and
hit technique. With Ashwin successfully
employing a round the wicket technique
to bottle up batsman and Mishra invit-
ing him to come out by flighting his
deliveries, it will be a challenge for Gayle
to devise a counter strategy.
While spinners will hold the key,
Dhoni would also expect that
Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohammed
Shami dont bowl length balls to Gayle
as it has a chance of consistently land-
ing in the stands.
However, Indian bowlers will also
have to deal with an attacking batsman
like Dwayne Smith, who has the ability
to hit over the in-field consistently dur-
ing Powerplay overs.
Dwayne Bravo and Marlon Samuels
are also capable enough to destroy any
bowling attack on their day.
While Samuels might take some time
to settle down, he can effortlessly shift
gears as he had shown some 18 months
ago during the last editions final at the
Premadasa Stadium in Colombo.
The Indian batsmen had an easy day
in office against Pakistan with a smaller
target to chase. But both Shikhar Dhawan
and Rohit Sharma would also do well to
get a big score under their belt. The two
openers got good starts yesterday but
failed to convert them into big scores.
Dhawans perennial problem against
the short ball was again exposed as Gul
got him with a well-directed bouncer. The
left-handers habit of not having proper
balance while playing
the hook shot has been
causing his downfall.
Rohit, on the other hand, had played
some fantastic shots including a six over
long on off Umar Gul. But as has been
his problem, he wasted a good start try-
ing to play a cut shot to a sharp off-break
from Saeed Ajmal.
But Dhoni would be pleased with
Virat Kohli and Suresh Rainas form
which has really been good so far. It is
now expected that Kohli will perform in
crunch situations but Rainas form has
been a revelation for India
It will be interesting as to how
Indians will counter Sunil Narine. But
it will probably be attack is best
defence policy.
MIF: After a disappointing
start to the tournament,
Pakistan would like to get
their ICC World T20 cam-
paign back on track when
they meet the mighty
Australians in a group league
encounter here on Sunday.
Mohammed Hafeez and his
boys would like to quickly for-
get the humiliating defeat against
arch-rivals India yesterday and
pose a serious challenge for a
very quality Australian side led
by George Bailey at the Sher-e-
Bangla Stadium.
Another slip-up might just
end Pakistans chances in the
marquee event but they will try
and gain confidence from the
fact that their record against
Australia in T20 Internationals
is quite impressive.
Thats the reason, Bailey
spoke about getting the momen-
tum straight-
away with a
win. Its nice
to start with a win. In a tourna-
ment like this, momentum is
really important. Starting with a
win gets you off and running.
Without being great at mathe-
matics, I dont think you can
drop that many games. I think
you can only lose one or two to
not get through. The more we
win, the better it is. There is no
doubt about that, Bailey said at
the pre-match press conference
here on Saturday.
Pakistans chief coach Moin
Khan also knows the conse-
quence of one more defeat.
Whenever any team loses
the first match of the tourna-
ment, chances of winning is
greatly reduced. This is now a
very important game for us. If
we have to sur-
vive in this
tournament,
we have to win this game.
However, we must
remember that in this format to
play consistently is very diffi-
cult. I dont believe any team
will enter the final by playing
consistently, the former
Pakistan wicketkeeper said.
They (Australia) are a good
side and we have to now be at
our best. After losing the first
match, we cant afford to slip
now. Australians play with a
great attitude and it will be a
tough match, Moin added. Pll
MIF: Indias Suresh Raina says that
most of the top-order West Indies
batsmen prefer playing big shots
rather than rotating strike against
spinners, an area which he feels can
be exploited by Amit Mishra and Co
when the two teams square off on
Sunday.
Asked about the threat the explo-
sive opening pair of Chris Gayle and
Dwayne Smith could pose, Raina
said, West Indies will be a totally dif-
ferent team as they have a lot of play-
ers who can hit sixes but they dont
have an idea about how to rotate the
strike against spinners by taking
singles and doubles. Therefore, the
more pressure we put on the bigger
players, better it will be for us.
The in-form left hander said that
Amit Mishras bowling will again be
key while countering the likes of
Gayle, Smith and Samuels. We have
Mishra, who has done well in the last
match. Ashwin has also bowled well
and Jadeja is doing well too. But T20
is dependant on who is better on that
particular day.
Also depends on what you
intend to do after winning the toss.
Spinners will be key in this contest.
Especially in the manner, we bowled
against Pakistan, which plays spin
really well.
Elaborating on the role of
tweakers, Raina said that overs 7-11
will be key against the slower
bowlers. About facing spinners,
its not that there is great turn (on
this track) but some turn available.
While shaping up for a shot, you
need to come under the ball.
Your thought-process should be
clear. If you think you want to hit it
then you should go ahead and if you
decide against it then be it.
Between 7 to 11 overs, is the
time when you need to rotate
the strike well. If you get
even one loose ball, if you
can convert it into
fours and sixes,
then its good.
For shorter
formats, Raina
wants that bats-
men should try
to achieve
smaller targets.
De f i ni t e l y,
Pakistan had
Ajmal, West
Indies has
Narine. In
these shorter
formats, youve to
plan for two overs. You
need to decide whom to attack
and whom to defend. Weve good
middle-order. Weve Dhoni, Yuvraj
and then Jadeja and Ashwin. So if we
get a good start, weve batsmen
down the order.
Making a comeback into the side
after being dropped from the Asia
Cup squad due to repeated failures
in ODIs, Raina has been in good
form of late with scores of 41, 52 and
35 not out.
Asked what he did during the
forced break, Raina said, I did
what I had done earlier. I analyzed
my game and what can be done
in upcoming games. I worked
really hard at nets with my
coach. I also played a few
matches in domestic
tournament (Vijay
Hazare Trophy).
Raina said he
enjoyed playing
the role of a fin-
isher and he
would try to win as
many games as pos-
sible for India. My
game is such that
irrespective of the
format, my aim is to
win as many matches
as possible for India,
Raina said. Pll
8I86lF8
WITh kW khkh MkIhTkIh8 IEk
Khanty Mansiysk: Fivelime world chamion
viswanalhan Anand on Salurday gave jillers lo his
ans beore signing an early draw wilh lo seed
Levon Aronian o Armenia in lhe eighlh round o
Candidales chess lournamenl here. The draw againsl
Aronian was imorlanl or Anand as lhe ndian ace
nol only mainlained his joinl lead wilh lhe Armenian
bul now also has our while games lo come in lhe
lasl six rounds lhal gives him an edge over olhers.
vladimir Kramnik o Russia could nol gel asl lhe
solid deences o a resurgenl comalriol 0milry
Andreikin and had lo sellle or a draw and lhe game
belween veselin Toalov o Bulgaria and Shakhriyar
Mamedyarov o A/erbaijan was also drawn aler
showing romise o an inlense ballle. n lhe olher
game o lhe day, Feler Svidler was ighling hard lo
salvage a hal oinl againsl Russian leammale
Sergey Karjakin. wilh six rounds slill lo go, Anand
and Aronian have ive oinls aiece and lhey are
ollowed by Kramnik on 4.5 oinls. Svidler on 8.5
has an exlra ongoing game in hand comared lo
Toalov, Andreikin and Mamedyarov, who all inched
lhemselves u lo lhe same score. Karjakin on 2.5 is
on lhe lasl sol. The slakes are high in lhe
candidales as lhe winner lakes home 185OOO Euros
as ri/e money aarl rom lhe righl lo challenge
Magnus Carlsen in lhe world chamionshi malch
laler lhis year.
6hEI8Ek T k8EhkI 60
London: Chelsea handed Arsene wenger one his
mosl demorali/ing deeals as Arsenal manager as his
1,OOOlh game ended in a GO roul on Salurday, and
lhe reeree also endured embarrassmenl al Slamord
Bridge. Chelsea earned ils biggesl league viclory
under Jose Mourinho and was u 2O aler jusl seven
minules lhrough goals rom Samuel Elo'o and Andre
Schuerrle. Reeree Andre Marriner lhen rovided lhe
London derby's big lalking oinl by sending o lhe
wrong Arsenal layer aler 15 minules. Allhough Alex
0xladeChamberlain blalanlly handled lo kee oul
Eden ha/ard's shol, il was Kieran 0ibbs who was
dismissed desile his leammale's rolesls. ha/ard
scored Chelsea's lhird rom lhe resulling enally,
beore 0scar nelled lwice and Mohamed Salah
comleled wenger's misery wilh his irsl goal or lhe
leaders. Arsenal saw ils lille ambilions seriously
denled al il ell seven oinls behind Chelsea, and
aced being dislodged rom lhird lace by Manchesler
Cily, which hosled Fulham laler in lhe day. For
wenger lhe margin o deeal malched lhe revious
lowoinl o his 18year reign - an 82 loss al
Manchesler uniled. And lhe humbling only served lo
jusliy Mourinho's recenl gibe lhal wenger is a
'secialisl in ailure' as lhe Frenchman wenl an 11lh
game wilhoul bealing his Forluguese rival. 'Twonil
aler seven minules and lhe game is over, because
we were loo slrong or lhem,' Mourinho said.
T1 FIMk T6k k6Ih TkY
Greater Noida: The slage is sel or ndia's irslever
lruck racing chamionshis as 12 Tala T1 Frima
vehicle is gearing u lo /oom in lhe lanes o Buddh
nlernalional Circuil (BC) here on Sunday. Twelve
exerienced Brilish drivers will be comeling or six
leams al lhe maiden heavyduly machine's race.
racers, in lhe onemake chamionshi, will use
modiied Frima lrucks having maximum seed o 11O
km/hr. The comelilion is modelled on lhe Brilish
Truck Racing chamionshi and Euroean Truck
Racing chamionshi. The six arlicialing leams,
unveiled in a grand ceremony on Sunday, include
Caslrol veclon, Cummins, Tala Technologies
Molorsorls, Allied Farlners, 0ealer 0aredevils and
0ealer warriors. The organisers have ollowed
guidelines rom Brilish Truck Racing Associalion lo
make lhe lrucks il or racing and have subsequenlly
made 22 modiicalions lo meel saely and
erormance needs.
YkkV EFIk6E8 Ih1E hkYk
Mumbai: Allacking middleorder balsman
Suryakumar Yadav has relaced his Mumbai
leammale Abhishek hayar in lhe wesl Zone squad or
lhe Fro 0 B 0eodhar Trohy lournamenl
commencing in vishakaalnam rom on Sunday. The
relacemenl was necessilaled due lo an injury
suslained by hayar, according lo Mumbai Crickel
Associalion Joinl Secrelary F v Shelly. Shelly,
however, did nol elaborale on lhe nalure o hayar's
injury.
MkkE kIII 6kFTkIh: Y8I, 1kVE
Karachi: Fakislan's loss lo ndia in lheir world
Twenly2O oener has sarked massive crilicism o
skier Mohammed haee/ wilh ormer calains such
as Javed Miandad and Mohammad Yousu
demanding lhal he be relaced by lamboyanl all
rounder Shahid Aridi. 'haee/ needed lo be more
allacking wilh his bowlers and ield lacings once we
were able lo sel lhem only a largel o 18O runs,'
Miandad said aler Fakislan's loss lo ndia. 'The key
lo winning lhe malch was lo slo lhe runs i wickels
were nol alling so lhal lhe run rale increased and lhe
ndians came under ressure. unorlunalely haee/
ailed lo do lhal as calain. he should have used his
bowlers more roaclively,' Miandad said. Yousu also
crilicised lhe body language o haee/. 'wilh beller
calaincy and lhe righl ressure we could have made
lhis lolal o 18O like 1GO or ndia bul lhis didn'l
haen,' Yousu added.
TF 8Tk8 I IhIk 8FE 8EIE8
New Delhi: Cremedelacreme o world badminlon,
including world chamion Ralchanok nlanon and
world number one Lee Chong wei, will be seen in
aclion when lhe ourlh edilion o lhe ndia 0en
Suer Series kicks o al lhe Siri Forl Sorls Comlex
on Aril 1. Besides nlanon, lhe enlire lo1O women
and seven o lhe lo1O men's singles layers will
ealure in a ield which will also have ndian
challengers in Saina hehwal, F v Sindhu, F Kashya
and K Srikanlh. This year's evenl is more imorlanl
or lhe layers as well as organisers since il is also a
dress rehearsal or lhe Thomas and uber Cu leam
chamionshi, one o lhe mosl resligious evenl in
lhe badminlon calendar which will he hosled al lhe
same venue rom May 18 lo 25.
6h6hIII TkkE h FhE I6
Vasco: Churchill Brolhers will look lo carry lheir AFC
Cu orm inlo lhe League when lhey lake on Fune
FC in a crucial malch on Sunday al lhe Tilak maidan
here. Churchill are acing relegalion and are al lhe
bollom wilh 15 oinls, lwo oinls below lhe
Mohammedan Sorling. Churchill Brolhers have no
olion bul lo kee on winning rom now on i lhey
are lo avoid relegalion. Fh8lkgenries
MIF: West Indies captain
Darren Sammy wasnt amused
when he heard that Suresh
Raina has dubbed his batsmen
as six hitters and dared the
Indian bowlers to stop them
from hitting the maximums
on Sunday.
We dont care much about
what Raina thinks. If he thinks
we are only six hitters, then stop
us from hitting sixes, Sammy
replied when asked about his
batsmen inability to rotate strike
against spinners.
As usual, the affable West
Indies skipper seemed to be in
good mood as he answered the
questions with a bit of fun and
a lot of seriousness.
Whats there on Chris
Gayles mind, asked a scribe. I
am not Jesus Christ! I dont
know whats going on in his
mind, he laughed and replied.
Then he got serious. But I
know he (Gayle) is really
pumped up to play here.
Whenever he is playing for the
West Indies, he is very pumped
up. And tomorrows game
everyone will be pumped up.
Will India be easy oppo-
nents, was what he was asked
first up at the media conference.
You seriously ask that ques-
tion? Sammy asked. No, I
dont think any team is an easy
opponent. India started off on a
winning note and most likely
theyll have a lot of confidence
going into the game. We know
what were capable of doing and
weve been playing some good
T20 cricket and the guys are con-
fident that wed come good once
we play to our full potential.
West Indies have some
world beaters in the shortest for-
mat and that gives the captain of
the defending champions side to
remain confident about teams
chances. Weve top T20 players
whove played around the world.
Weve Gayle, Narine, Bravos all
of them have a lot of experience
playing T20. With the two open-
ers, weve guys who can give us
great impetus in the first six
overs. Then weve Marlon, Bravo
and myself to finish the innings,
Sammy said.
If you look at our bowling
unit, weve Narine, who is to me
the No 1 bowler in this format.
Badree, Bravo, and weve a
young guy called Krishmar
Santokie, who couldve a great
impact in this tournament. So
were happy with the balance of
our side. And yes were a very
good team especially in this for-
mat, Sammy said.
Left-arm seamer Santokie is
an unknown commodity in the
sub-continent but it seemed the
skipper had a lot of faith in his
abilities. He is the leading T20
bowler in the Caribbean and has
taken a lot of wickets in the
Caribbean T20 league. Most of
his wickets are clean bowled and
leg before wicket. Youve to see
him to know exactly what I
mean, Sammy said. Pll
matchpreview
matchpreview
ndia face champions
wl |l s|xes oul car'l rolale slr||e: Ra|ra
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6hITTkh: Opener Kusal Perera made a
strokeful 61 before Sri Lankan bowlers pro-
duced a brilliant show in the death overs to pull
off a thrilling five-run win over South Africa
in their ICC World Twenty20 campaign open-
er here on Saturday.
Electing to bat, Sri Lanka posted a chal-
lenging 165 for seven in 20 overs, riding on a
40-ball 61 by Perera and then restricted South
Africa to 160 for eight, thanks to some fine
bowling towards the end.
South Africa seemed to be cruising towards
the target of 166 as they required 19 runs from
the last two overs, but Sri Lankan pacers Nuwan
Kulasekara and Lasith Malinga choked the
Protea batsmen with their superb bowling.
South Africa needed 15 runs from the last
over bowled by Malinga and there was still hope
for a win as David Miller (19) was still batting.
But, they could not hold on to their nerves and
two run-outs in the last over, including that of
Miller, sealed the match in favour of Sri Lanka.
South Africas run chase was built on a 60-
run second-wicket stand between opener
Hashim Amla (23) and top-scorer J P Duminy
(39) to find themselves in a strong position at
75 for one at the halfway mark only to fritter
away the advantage in the next 10 overs.
Opener Quinton de Kock (25), A B de
Villiers (24), who stood in as captain in place
of an injured Faf du Plessis, made useful con-
tributions but for a lost cause.
For Sri Lanka, off-spinner Sachithra
Senanayake grabbed two wickets for 22 runs
while Kulasekara, Angelo Mathews, Malinga
and Ajantha Mendis chipped in with a wicket
apiece. Earlier, Perera smashed a strokeful 61
as Sri Lanka posted 165 for seven after elect-
ing to bat.
Brief Scores
Sri Lanka: 165/7 in 20 overs (Kusal Perera 61,
Angelo Mathews 43; Imran Tahir 3/26) beat
South Africa: 160/8 in 20 overs (JP Duminy 39;
Sachithra Senanayake 2/22) by 5 runs. Pll
FTI Q ChTTA00h0
N
ew Zealand started their World
Twenty20 campaign on a pos-
itive note after beating England by
nine runs via Duckworth-Lewis
method in a Group 1 league match
that was called off following heavy
rain and thunder storm at the
Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury
Stadium here on Saturday.
After restricting England to 172
for six in their stipulated 20 overs,
New Zealand were cruising at 52 for
one in 5.2 overs when heavens
opened up, interrupting the match.
With heavy rains unabated, play
could not be resumed and the game
was abandoned by the umpires.
When rain stopped play, New
Zealand were nine runs ahead of
England at that stage. It was skip-
per Brendon McCullum, who
pocketed the win for the Kiwis by
blasting two sixes and a four in the
fifth over off England captain
Stuart Broad to put them ahead
before rain interrupted play.
Chasing 173 to win,
McCullum (16 not out) and open-
er Kane Williamson (24 not out)
added 23 runs off 11 deliveries for
the second wicket after the dis-
missal of opener Martin Guptill
(11) in the fourth over.
Earlier, England produced a
solid batting performance to post
a challenging 172 for six in their
campaign opener. Number three
batsman Moeen Ali (36), opener
Michael Lumb (33) and middle-
order batsman Jos Butler (32)
came up with useful contributions
to set the foundation for the score,
while it was Tim Bresnan's 17 off
8 balls towards the end which took
England across the 150-mark.
Brief Scores
England: 172 for 6 in 20 overs
(Moeen Ali 36, Jose Butler 32;
Corey Anderson 2/19) lost to New
Zealand: 52 for one in 5.2 overs
(Kane Williamson 24 not out,
Brendon McCullum 16 not out;
Jade Dernbach 1/13) by nine runs
through D/L method.
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New Zealano get tle letter of Inglano
sport 12 NEW DELH SUNDAY MARCH 23, 2014
'Ia4Ia aee4 m0re 0aIkeeer traIaers'
QHow would you rate the Indian
goalkeepers who played in the HIL
and what will be your advice for
them?
I think Indian goalkeepers are
good. It was unfortunate that only
Harjot (Singh) got the number one
spot in a team. However, I think
that more attention to goalkeepers
in India is required, especially at
younger age. Goalkeeping is a dif-
ferent art.
Indian goalkeepers get special
goalkeeping training only when
they reach the national team. Youve
got to create the talent. There is a
need for more goalkeeper-trainers
in India and the budding goal-
keepers need to be provided with
the right training and skills. In
Holland, all 14 year old goalkeep-
ers get proper training at least
once a week.
QWhat is your opinion on the
standard of goalkeeping in this
years HIL?
I think the standard of goal-
keeping in the HIL was very, very
high. There were many good per-
formances by goalkeepers, both
foreign as well as Indians.
QYour team lost the final via
penalty shoot-out. Please tell us
about that.
Upfront, we knew that Delhi
was the toughest opponent. The
only match we lost was against
them. We won one and we lost one.
The final match was unfortunate.
We had better chances but could-
n't convert them into goals. Then
the shoot-outs we didn't do well
whereas Delhi did better.
QWhat is your thought on the
team's overall performance?
I think we improved a lot com-
pared to last year. Last year was dis-
appointing, however a learning
year. The things we didn't do well
in last year, we improved this year.
Our gameplan was better and it
paid off for us this time. We con-
verted a lot of the penalty corners
and it became our strength. The
whole program was less exhausting
for the players. I think all these fac-
tors made us play way much better.
I am satisfied with the overall per-
formance this year.
I also think the squad was an
improved one with players like
Sandeep (Singh), Affan (Yousuf),
Satbir (Singh), (Jake) Whetton and
Agustin Mazzilli. These guys were
the missing links.
QHow would you evaluate your
own performance?
I am satisfied with my own per-
formance. I could save some nice
balls and help the team in the
defence which is important for a
goalie.
QPersonally, how much of impor-
tance does the Most Valuable
Player of the tournament holds for
you?
Hockey is a team sport and I am
not playing hockey to win person-
al awards. There is no I in a team.
However, I am very honoured to be
named MVP. I think it is very spe-
cial to win this prize as the first for-
eigner and especially as a goal-
keeper.
QDuring the tournament you
seemed to have carried on the bril-
liant performance from the HWL
Final for the Netherlands to the
HIL. How did that help you?
The HWL was an important
tournament for the Netherlands,
since it was the last tournament
before the World Cup in my own
country. I think the HWL helped
me to get in right form for the HIL.
We trained really hard before we
went to India for the HWL. It got
me in the right shape at the right
time, for both tournaments.
QApart from being the goalkeep-
er, what were your responsibilities
within the JPW team?
For a goalkeeper, it is very
important to get your defence
organised. Good defence reduces
the work you have to do. I took the
responsibility of putting my defence
at the right areas. Moreover, I real-
ly liked the Indian players and
enjoyed gelling with them. We
really were a team and I have a lot
of new friends now.
QIt is believed that goalkeepers
reach their peak at a slightly older
age. Do you think this is the best
stage of your career?
People say goalkeepers are at
their best in their thirties. I agree.
It is all about experience and men-
tal strength. Physical strength is less
important than other players
players run around 10 km per
match and goalkeepers run less than
a km. I am 29 and I feel I am still
learning and improving. I think my
best is still to come.
QExperts rate you as the best
goalkeeper in the world at the
moment.
I cannot judge that, its up to
experts. However a feel very hon-
oured when experts have such an
opinion.
QWhat is your experience of India
as a country?
I really love India and its peo-
ple, food and the hockey. I enjoy
every single part of it. I have hard-
ly seen any more open-hearted,
friendly people than the Indians.
When you give a smile, you will get
an even bigger smile back. The
Indian dishes are amazing. My
favorite is Butter Chicken. Back in
Holland, I like to order it when I
don't want to cook. And the hock-
ey here is amazing. India is like
hockeys heart. When we play here,
all players like to play attacking
hockey which is really nice to
watch. The fans are so passionate
and it gives you that extra power to
perform.
QFinally, please sum-up your
overall experience and the best
and worst thing about HIL.
I think HIL is the game chang-
er for international and Indian
hockey. I feel the HIL is the best
league in the world and I can say
that because I also play in the Dutch
league, which was considered the
best.
These days, money is required
to make a sport big and with the
corporates showing interest, the
game is growing. It pleases me to see
Indian tal ent standing up.
Unknown talented players like
Gurinder Singh (from JPW) can
now get recognised. The HIL is a
platform for talent to be seen.
Everyone needs to realise that it will
take some years to get your nation-
al team back to the glory days and
I am 120% confident that it will
happen.
The worst thing about it is that
it is over and I have to wait for one
full year.
6hkTSh0w
Jaap
Stockmaan
Hockey
think HL is the game
changer for
international and
ndian hockey. feel
the HL is the best
league in the world
and can say that
because also play in
the Dutch league,
which was considered
the best
JAAP STOCKMAAN
JAAP STOCKMAAN playod a koy rolo in holping Jaypoo Pun|ab Warriors roaoh tho Hookoy ndia Loaguo (HL) inal this yoar. Tho Nothorlands
intornational was tho Most valuablo Playor o tho month-long tournamont or his rook solid outing in ront o tho post whoro ho aooountod or moro
than 50 savos. Tho 29-yoar-old, who plays or HC Bloomondaal in tho Dutoh Loaguo, talks to ABHSHEK PUPOHT about goalkooping, HL and
ndia. Exoorpts
sunday
magazino
8eaI 8herI0ck 0Imes
Was one 1erome 6aminada
Ihe reaI inspiraIion behind
krIhur 6onan oyIe's rreaIion
oI 8herIork hoImes?
ast0 em0Wers
VasIu 8hasIra eIiminaIes
negaIive vibraIions, raIming
Ihe house and Ihe aggressive
Ieenager in parIiruIar
0rIssa's trIaaIe
dayagiri, IaIiIagiri,
aInagiri rissa's
diamond IriangIe, redisrovered by
Ihe krrhaeoIogiraI 8urvey oI India
Now Dolhi, Maroh 23, 2014
S
eptember 2012. The phone rang. Not an
unusual sound for a journalist like Simon
Denyer. But that day was different. Simon
thought of letting the phone ring out, fear-
ing some bad news coming his way. He had,
after all, just written an article in the Washington
Post, claiming Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh was in danger of going down in history as a
tragic figure who looked the other way as his col-
leagues filled their pockets, and probably should
have resigned at the end of his first term. He had
also mentioned the jokes that were in circulation
for months about officials going into meetings
with their phones on the Manmohan Singh mode,
and a cartoon of a dentist pleading with the Prime
Minister to please open your mouth here at least.
When I saw the number, I thought not to pick
the phone and call back a little later. But there
didnt seem much point. Stepping out into my
garden, I took a deep breath and answered, recalls
Simon. Pankaj Pachauri, the Prime Ministers
communications adviser, was on the line. And he
was furious for projecting his boss in a bad light.
But why was Singh so angry at a foreign
correspondent when the desi media was full of such
criticisms about him? I later learnt that Prime
Minister Singh was not just angry but also hurt. His
reputation at home might have been tarnished, but
he was still respected abroad and he clearly valued
this standing. My article threatened to make
him lose face with the Americans, says
Simon, as he reminds how a senior
Congress leader told him that the Prime
Minister was more concerned about his
constituency in Manhattan than in
Mumbai.
Simon, in his latest book Rogue
Elephant (Bloomsbury), tells us how
Singhs political career has always been
about loyalty, timidity and exaggerated
deference. These, he says, have
constantly been preventing Singh from
asserting himself vis--vis Sonia Gandhi.
He, however, falls short of calling him a typical
Indian babu who would do what his political
masters would want him to do. Former Cabinet
Secretary TSR Subramanian, in his recent book
India at Turning Point, brings out this side of the
Prime Minister when he tells how Singh changed
from being an ardent critic of the West in the late
1980s to an American admirer within a couple of
months just because his then political master,
Narasimha Rao, wanted him to do so. Strange as
this may seem, those familiar with Manmohan
Singhs career would not have been surprised at all,
says the former top bureaucrat, adding how
everyone in the bureaucracy knew that Singh was
destined for greatness and that he would go far as
he was quick to grasp what the boss wanted,
forward the same even before he was told, couch it
with arguments replete with economic theory, make
it sound profound and put it up for the bosss
approval. No wonder, Singh became the father of
Indias liberalisation in the early 1990s and the
destroyer of the same legacy two decades later when
he was told to do so by his new political master.
In a free-wheeling interview with Agenda,
Simon Denyer talks not just about the silent fall of
Manmohan Singh, but also about Rahul Gandhi not
learning the right lessons from his family history, as
well as about Narendra Modi transforming himself
from having disdain for foreign media to an
outright charmer, and Arvind Kejriwal being
honest, impatient and autocratic at the same time.
Excerpts:
What made you write the book, Rogue Elephant?
I arrived in India in 2004 before the Lok Sabha
elections and followed LK Advani on his rathyatra.
I also followed the Gandhis, all three of them,
particularly when they were campaigning in Uttar
Pradesh. The entire process of going to people and
convincing them to vote was fascinating. That was my
first introduction to India and the complexities of its
democracy.
Indian democracy gets a very bad press globally.
Everyone thinks its ruining the country; that its
democracy which is bringing India down. I must say
that its not right; in fact, democracy is Indias
strength. When you go to fringe States like Kashmir
and Manipur where it doesnt function well, then you
realise the importance of democracy. You value it
when its gone, where its not working properly.
When I first came to India in 2004, the country was
all gung ho to join the superpower club. The air of
optimism was everywhere. But it all had changed when
I was away from India for 18 months. When I returned
from Washington I found gloom everywhere. I could
see the dream of India as a prospective superpower
crumbling and the mood changed from complacent
optimism to resigned pessimism. I saw it happening
almost instantly. I believe complacency in the earlier
phase was overdone, so was pessimism that followed
soon after. The reason for writing Rogue Elephant is that
I wanted to chronicle and examine the so-called lost
decade wherein the power of democracy hadnt always
been channeled into productive things, but in reality
saw some of the interesting developments like the Right
to Information Act or the movement against
corruption.
Why did the mood of the nation change so fast?
I trace it to so many corruption cases in the country,
particularly the 2G and CWG scams. In the end the
Commonwealth Games went off well, but the run up
to it was quite embarrassing, particularly when the
Indians saw China organise the Beijing Olympics so
well and use it to enhance its global image. These
things made a dent to the national confidence.
Another reason was the UPAs political indecisiveness.
As time went on and more and more difficult
decisions were put off even when the economy was
going down, there emerged a sense of anger and
frustration. People could have forgiven the UPA-I
because of the overawing presence of the communists
in the Government, but in the second term when the
Congress came up with greater numbers and there
was no Left presence in the coalition, there was no
excuse for such politico-economic indecisiveness.
You talk about the decline and fall of Manmohan
Singh. How do you see him?
Prime Minister Singh is in the danger of going down
in history as a failure, as a silent, tragic figure who
probably should have resigned at the end of his first
term in 2009. The tragedy is that on one level he
undoubtedly cares for the poor and is dedicated to his
work and his country. He hasnt used his office to
personally enrich himself. And he is hard-working to
the point of obsession. I remember one of his
daughters telling Caravan magazines Vinod K Jose in
2011 that she had only seen him take one vacation in
her lifetime, and that was a three-day family trip to a
hill station outside Delhi.
Yet, if a decent man cant stand up to his values,
he should put in his papers. He should stop doing the
job. Lame excuses like my hands are tied or the
compulsions of coalition dharma dont cut much ice
after a point of time. There came a time when Singh
started blaming the media for exposing corruption
and at that moment I realised that he was looking at
the wrong direction. Theres no doubt that hes a
decent man but in the end you have to perform or
allow someone else to do the job.
No one questions Manmohan Singhs honesty, but
theres a feeling among most Indians that he is a
typical babu who will do whatever his political
master will tell him to do
Thats what I believe too. Loyalty, timidity and
exaggerated deference: These have constantly been
preventing Singh from asserting himself vis--vis
Sonia Gandhi.
>> Z
when Simon 0enyer irsl came lo ndia in 2OO4, lhe counlry was dreaming big, very big. And lhen wilhin a coule o years, il
all lurned gloomy and essimislic. n an inleraclion wilh uTFAL KuMAR, 0enyer exlains why ndia missed lhe bus, and how
lhe 'silenl' decline o Manmohan Singh has led lo lhe raid rise o harendra Modi as also Arvind Kejriwal
F R O M T H E E L E P H A N T ' S T R U N K
Young, first-time voters
are worried about their
future. They need jobs,
they need an assuring
figure and Modi
fits the bill
During the Delhi gang-
rape protests, Rahul could
have become the youth
leader, but he was
missing. He was absent
whenever he was needed
Kejriwal goes into the
battle sincerely and much
before he could reach the
logical conclusion, he
gets bored and moves
into something else
Manmohan Singh is in the
danger of going down in
history as a failure, as a silent,
tragic figure who probably
should've resigned at the end
of his first term in 2009
F R O M T H E N S D E
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lr|gler|rg proless|or
lo oe |r sorel|res.
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sunday
magazino
mi11l it1iJ !
Ch00YAM TRuh0FA RhF0ChE, A Bu00hST
ME0TAT0h MASTER, SA0 ThAT STuFAS
C0hThuE0 T0 BE BuLT BECAuSE 0F ThER
ABLTY T0 LBERATE 0hE SMFLY uF0h
SEEh0 ThER STRuCTuRE
Now Dolhi, Maroh 23, 2014
M
ost of the recent rediscov-
eries of lost heritage sites
by the Archaeological
Survey of India (ASI) have
emerged from the descrip-
tions found in the travelogues of Chinese
travellers Xuanzang and Fa-xien.
Archaeologists found many ruins and
relics from the travelogues of Xuanzang
but they were still unable to trace a place
described as Pusi-po-kili, situated
somewhere in Wu-cha (that is how
Xuanzang described Orissa, a place he
visited in 639 AD) which the Chinese
traveller referred to as a Buddhist centre
of learning. Xuanzang described its posi-
tion over a hill with a super natural
light. Along with this ancient Buddhist
text written by Taranath of Tibet, also
mentioned is a place called Ratnagiri in
the same area with a huge setup of a
monastery.
In 1869, a man named CS Banerjee, a
sub-divisional officer in Orissa, visited
two mounds covered with deep jungle
and frequented by wild animals. To his
extreme joy he found a huge number of
relics, artifacts and other antiques scat-
tered all over the place. He immediately
sent a report to the Journal of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal in Calcutta which gener-
ated such an interest that archaeologist
John Beames visited the place to start his
work to un-explore these places.
In 1890, another Government official
called MM Chakravarty visited another
mound in a hill-jungle and found a huge
mound full of antiquities. What he found
is known as Ratnagiri today. The same
man also found a similar mound
enriched with a brick structure and arti-
facts in 1905 nearby. Based on his report
in 1927, the Indian Museum, Calcutta,
under the supervision of RP Chandra,
studied the place and Lalitagiri came to
light. The entire area was declared a pro-
tected monument. These three newly
found archaeological sites were known as
Udayagiri the hill of rising sun,
Lalitagiri the red hill, and Ratnagiri
the hill of gems. An excavation was
ordered in 1896 but it actually started in
1958. In 1984, when it was completed, it
uncovered an amazing treasure of our
pristine past and unearthed another
ancient centre of learning. The discovery
of a huge number of sculptures, images,
antiquity, fragments, stone tablets, potter-
ies, coins, stone and terracotta tablets,
and many huge stupas cemented the fact
that these three places described by
Xuanzang are the ruins of a university
complex called Pushpagiri university
which shared an equal status with
Nalanda and Vikramshila universities.
Buddhism blossomed in Orissa in the
sixth century when King Harsha sent
Jayasena, a scholar from Nalanda, to
Orissa. In the eighth century, through its
numerous sea ports, Orissa kings bridged
political and religious relations with
China.
However, its fall came in the eighth
century when new rulers started backing
Hinduism and at this crossroads of histo-
ry, Mahayana Buddhism lost its appeal to
common people. For the sake of rejuve-
nating Buddhism, the Vajrayana school
came from Tibet. As this was deeply
influenced by Hinduism, a wave of
image-worshipping and legends entered
Buddhism which allowed sculptors an
avenue to express their creative freedom.
It flourished in full bloom in the Greco-
Roman style of the Gandhara school and
in Pushpagiri it perhaps took its finest
form.
The site should be explored from the
Udayagiri ruins which contain a small
brick stupa that houses a colossal Buddha
in the celestial bhumisparsha position.
The stupa has three outer windows where
small yet magnificent Buddha statues are
found. One of these is in the royal crown
known as Bodhisatta Amitabha while the
other two are common Shakyamuni
Buddha. A flight of stairs takes you to an
excellent stone-carved gate that has
superb depictions of human figures
detailing Buddhas life.
Udayagiris best treasure rests on the
opposite hilltop where another colossal
Buddha in the same celestial position is
found under a roofless chamber. The
chamber is adjacent to a huge Chaittya
Griha which is decorated with many
small stupas. The stone floor leads you to
many other images nearby. In front of
this, there is an excavated stone pathway
running towards some more votive stu-
pas.
The most outstanding feature of
Udayagiri is its extraordinary stone gate
found next to a stone well. Although the
well still exists, the gate was shifted to the
Patna museum long ago. The name
Madhavapura Mahavihara was found on
various seals unearthed here. The last
phase of excavation took place between
1997 and 2000.
Another part of Pushpagiri lies in the
site of Ratnagiri which was excavated
between 1958 and 1961. Here the archae-
ological boom came in the ninth century.
The discovery of many terracotta seals
with the words ratnagiri mahavihara
arya vikshu sangha helped ascertain the
original name of the place.
Enriched with two monasteries and
one grand stupa, Ratnagiri is a treasure
trove. This site is full of votive stupas, a
big stupa, a courtyard with several
images, various images of humans and
gods, a colossal Buddha and the most
amazing of all are various giant Buddha
heads, unique artifacts hardly found
anywhere else in India. More than two
dozen such giant Buddha heads are
found here which resemble the Buddha
heads found in Barbadur in Indonesia
and Anuradhapur in Sri Lanka. Most of
them are displayed at the courtyard that
houses decorated cells on the left and a
sanctum sanctorum where a huge
Buddha statue in the bhumisparsha pos-
ture is placed. The 12 ft high statue is
built in sections and its nose is dam-
aged. It is teamed with two smaller stat-
ues of Padmapani and Vajrapani. The
sanctum is decorated with two stone
guards at its entrance.
This stone-paved monastery built in
the ninth century with a huge central
courtyard containing 24 cells was exca-
vated from a mound known as
Ranipokhari.
At first what draws ones attention
here is the stone gate of the site. An excel-
lent artistic exuberance, this gate is
carved on green granite with extraordi-
nary craftsmanship. The door is decorat-
ed with human figures in royal clothing.
The figures are exceptionally distinctive.
A smaller monastery stands next to this
which is not as grandly decorated as the
first one. A standing Buddha in varada
mudra is the main attraction of this
monastery.
The brick-made mahastupa is sur-
rounded with various votive stupas which
are exceptionally big in size and very dif-
ferent in shape. From a distance they look
very similar to the votive stupas of
Indonesia and this clearly proves the fact
that the Rantagiri school of architecture
made an impression in Java, Sumatra and
Bali. Colonisation of these places by the
Oriya king Sailendra made such an
impact that the Buddha statues found in
Barbadur are stylistically the prototypes
of the statues found in Ratnagiri.
The latest site discovered at the
Pushpagiri complex was Lalitagiri. Being
a centrally protected monument from
1937, it was first excavated in 1977 by
Utkal university and then by the ASI in
1985-1991.
It uncovered a massive stupa inside
which lay the biggest discovery two
stone caskets in which Buddhas teeth in
the form of a bone were found. This is
the only Buddha relic stupa in the east
after Vaishali in Bihar.
The huge chaitagriha unearthed here
is one of the prime attractions. The stone
paved chaitagriha is encircled by many
votive stupas and they are very different
in shape and size. Various stones and ter-
racotta slabs found here are inscribed in
the Kushana-Bramhi language.
Apart from four more monasteries,
all built between the sixth and eleventh
centuries, a plethora of votive stupas were
found. The stairs of those are designed of
lotus petals while each and every votive
stupa is different. The surprising discov-
ery is a huge chaitagriha surrounded with
many votive stupas. Monastery number
four houses a huge colossal Buddha bro-
ken from the middle. From this it is clear
that this place was influenced by both
Mahayana and Hinayana schools of
Buddhism and later, from the ninth cen-
tury onwards, it was flooded by
Vajrayana thinking. So in that way this
site is the only site where the cultural
chronology of Buddhism is found. A
plaque found there reads Sri
Chandraditya Vihara Samagha Arya
Vishnu Sangha, a testimony that this was
also a residential learning centre.
Lalitagiri has a spot museum that dis-
plays most of the treasures found from
the site which include a rich collection of
Buddha statues in various postures along
with many Buddhist deities. A visit to
Lalitagiri is incomplete without a tour of
the museum. It is also evident how
Hinduism made an entry into Buddhism
through Vajrayana. Here all Buddhist
gods and goddesses are replicas of various
Hindu gods. Some of them like Aparajita
Tara, Padmapani, Hariti, Vajrapani,
Manjusri are close to common Hindu
gods.
Both Udayagiri and Lalitagiri were
built in several phases between the fifth
and eleventh century. From the tenth
century onwards, however, owing to the
relocation of the sealine from this place
and the gradual decline of Buddhism as a
religion, Pushpagiris fall from glory
began and it was slowly lost in the dark-
ness of time. Further, centuries of utter
neglect, the debilitating dust of time and
random vandalism of the carved stones
for the sake of decorating palaces and
local temples. Over time all three sites
were deserted and vanished under deep
vegetation and mud. It is our good for-
tune that by accident all three places were
rediscovered and India got back a lost
chapter of its glorious past.
Today these three sites are known as
the diamond triangle of Orissa represent-
ing a rich heritage, a point in history
when architecture and sculpture of the
post Gupta era Indian art touched a new
zenith of excellence.
Since 185O, lhe Archaeological Survey o ndia has been rediscovering our losl herilage siles which had vanished inlo
oblivion or cenluries. S0MEh SEh0uFTA visils udayagiri, Lalilagiri and Ralnagiri lo showcase 0rissa's Buddhisl asl
diamond
The
triangle
of Orissa
Bu00hSM BL0SS0ME0
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SXTh CEhTuRY whEh
Kh0 hARShA SEhT
JAYASEhA, A SCh0LAR
FR0M hALAh0A, T0
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CEhTuRY, ThR0u0h TS
huMER0uS SEA F0RTS,
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RELAT0hS wTh ChhA
F R O M P A G E 1
Why was there so much brouhaha
when you did the story in the
Washington Post, particularly
when there was so much negative
being written and said about
Manmohan Singh in Indian
media already? Does it in any way
show that he was more concerned
with his American constituency
than the Indian?
Thats the question I ask myself.
And thats the impression that I got.
When you look at Singh, you find
out that on only two occasions he
stood up to be countedfirst was
the India-US nuclear deal, because
of the promises he had made to
George W Bush; and the second
was the FDI in retail, because of his
assurances to Barack Obama.
When the Washington Post
criticised him in 2012, one senior
Congress leader told me that he
was more concerned about his
constituency in Manhattan than in
Mumbai. So, yes, theres that
feeling.
You say that Rahul Gandhi hasnt
learnt lessons from his family
history. Why?
I think that Rahuls father and
grandmother did some things very
wrong. I am not saying they didnt
do anything right. For example, the
kind of secularism we saw under
Rajiv Gandhi which was nothing
but appeasement for Muslims,
followed by pandering to Hindu
extremism, was not in any way
ideal. If you dont view them
uncritically, as Rahul has often
done, then you know that he hasnt
taken the right lessons from those
mistakes. I strongly believe in
democracy, freedom of speech and
secularism some of the things
that I admire about India. When
you exploit or mess around with
them, then thats dangerous. If you
dont learn from history, you are
fated to repeat it.
I do think that Rahuls heart is
in the right direction. But I also
think that theres a fundamental
contradiction when somebody who
says that he stands for a new type
of politics, a cleaner and merit-
based one, and yet he remains the
beneficiary of an undemocratic,
sycophantic party that elevated him
without any track record to show.
So the fundamental contradiction
is what he says he believes in and
what he stands for.
Last 10 years have been a huge
wastage of opportunity for him. He
was found missing whenever he
was needed. I remember people
asking me during the December 16
Delhi gang-rape protests where
Rahul Gandhi was. He could easily
have become the youth leader then,
but he was found missing. In 2004
when I met him, he appeared
humble and frankly confessed that
he had to learn. But in politics you
have to stop learning at some time
and start delivering.
You say that Priyanka Gandhi has
a star quality which her brother
lacks. Why do you think the
Congress shies away from
promoting her?
It is possibly due to the internal
workings of the family, Sonias
desire to protect her family from
politics and not have all of them at
the same time. But the fact remains
that Priyanka is a natural
campaigner. When I followed her
during a campaign trail, I saw a
group of people setting up a
microphone for her to chant a few
slogans. But Priyanka would
instead mingle with the people, talk
to them. She has the natural way of
interacting, which I gather her
grandmother had too.
You have mentioned about the
transformation you saw in
Narendra Modi from when you
first met him in 2007 to the
second time in 2012. Why were
you unsettled on both occasions?
When I met him for the first time,
Modi was quite disdainful of me.
But if Modi made no secret of his
disdain for foreigners in that first
meeting, my next interview with
him, five years later, was very
different. To my surprise, he was
extremely nice this time. He
seemed keen to impress me, to
make a case for his international
rehabilitation, but then I wasnt
sure if that was sincere. Because
when you meet someone for the
first time and if he is not that
welcoming, then you are not sure if
the good gesture in the second
encounter is at all genuine. You
wonder, Why are you suddenly so
nice and joking with me? I must
admit both the encounters were
unsettling for me.
What explains the rise of Modi?
A decade of weak leadership and
inept governance has made people
look for someone strong and
decisive. Modis governance record
is clear and has something to talk
about. The other reason is the
strong desire for change. We saw
this happening in Delhi when a
political novice, Arvind Kejriwal,
could unsettle the political
apparatus. He had no organisation,
no money and no hope. And yet he
became the Chief Minister. So,
theres a deep desire for change.
Also, there are a lot of young, first-
time voters who are worried about
their future. They need jobs, they
need an assuring figure and Modi
fits the bill as his economic record
in Gujarat is good. Also, to Modis
advantage, these young voters dont
have any personal recollection of
the 2002 Gujarat violence.
In your book you call Arvind
Kejriwal an honest person who is
impatient and has elements of
autocracy
I havent been in Delhi during the
last few months but the autocratic,
impatient elements could be seen
in Kejriwals early days as well. I
reached this conclusion after
talking to people he had worked
with at some point in his life. For
them, he picks up an issue,
pretends to consult people, but
ultimately goes ahead with the
conclusion he already has in his
mind. He goes into the battle
sincerely and much before he
could reach the logical conclusion,
he gets bored and moves into
something else. We saw this in the
corruption movement. We saw the
same in the Robert Vadra land
deal. We saw it in almost
everything he did.
Yet, Kejriwals break-down-
the-door politics has its relevance.
It galvanises people brilliantly. But
clearly we see the disadvantages
when it comes to governance, and
he has squandered credibility in the
last few months, for which he
seems to have lost the support in
the elite and upper middle class
voters. But I dont think he is too
worried about it as he has
compensated the losses with gains
that he has made in the lower
middle class voters. In the end,
however, its dangerous for Kejriwal
to lose the English-speaking middle
class. This class, after all, not only
shapes the opinion of the nation,
but also is its conscience-keeper.
You also talk about the media
particularly Arnab Goswami and
his journalism of outrage. How
do you see the Indian media?
When I first came to India, I was
actually impressed with the
media and the debate conducted
by it. I had the feeling that the
24x7 television was a positive
force. Over the course of the last
decade I have also seen some ugly
incidents. We must understand
that we have a weak leadership
and have politicians who dont
talk. In this scenario, the anchors
will dominate the show. When
politicians dont talk, anchors like
Arnab Goswami
will do the talking.
There are many other good
journalists, but the reason for
talking extensively about Arnab is
that he is an apt example of whats
good and bad about Indian media.
The 24x7 television has played an
important role in bringing about
change, setting a agenda, and
providing support to the anti-
corruption movement. What
worries me is its interference in the
countrys foreign policy. The
perception, rightly or wrongly, that
the Government is weak, provides
space to the media to assert itself
and take up an ultra-nationalistic
stand. That can be a worrying
phenomenon.
Now that you are based in China,
tell us how the Chinese are
reacting to the emergence of
Modi.
China has other areas of concern
right now. The issue of Japan is of
greater relevance and urgency than
the relations with India. So, the
feeling in China under the new
leadership is probably to bash
Japan but be relatively friendly with
India. I may be wrong, but thats
what I feel. China is right now not
alarmed by the rise of Modi and his
aggressive foreign policy assertions.
The Chinese largely believe that
once Modi will come to power, he
will adopt a more moderate path.
But at the same time, it needs to be
understood that China is sensitive
about what it calls southern
Tibet, and must be watching the
situation in India closely.
Poguo olophant, pliant mahout
When you look at Singh, you find out
that on only two occasions he stood up
to be counted ~ first was the ndia-US
nuclear deal, because of the promises
he had made to George W Bush; and the
second was the FD in retail, because of
his assurances to Barack Obama.
HDDENSOULS
FRAM00 FAThAK
sunday
magazino
sji|ilJlil; l
h0L0h0 0h T0 Ah0ER S LKE 0RASFh0
A h0T C0AL wTh ThE hTEhT 0F
ThR0wh0 T AT S0ME0hE ELSE; Y0u
ARE ThE 0hE wh0 0ETS BuRhE0.
- 0AuTAM Bu00hA
Now Dolhi, Maroh 23, 2014
T
he story dates back to the 1960s when John F Kennedy got
elected as the President of the United States. Shortly after
assuming charge, the President called Robert McNamara,
the then President of Ford and offered him to become the
Treasury Secretary. McNamara was honest enough to decline the
offer stating that he was not qualified for the job. Kennedy, keen
to induct him in his team then asked McNamara to take charge of
the position of the Secretary of Defence. McNamara declined
again citing the same reason. This time Kennedy reacted in frus-
tration stating that there was no school to train people to be
Presidents. The moral of the story is that leadership is a different
ball game. No one knows what makes a leader but what a leader
should do is in fact common knowledge. As per a study around a
decade back by the Centre for Creative Leadership, the US had
estimated that a good 40 per cent of new CEOs fail in their first
18 months. Business and political leaders face many similar prob-
lems of which the most important one is to discover how to lead
an endeavour from its present position to a higher destination.
As India readies for its exercise to find a new CEO to run the
country, the question that crops up in our minds is somewhat
similar who is the right person? And President Kennedy was
right. There are no schools to train for the top job. Neither can
the PR gimmicks work no matter how many crores are spent over
them. The war rooms are also not the answer though the spin
doctors and their techno savvy understudies may try to prove this
in so many words. Leadership at best is an art. Two things cer-
tainly matter judgement and courage. And they are directly
related to the Leaders values.
The Ramayana, our classic mythological text, offers some
basic clues to the art of leadership; on how Ravana, the mighty
demon king with all his wherewithal, wealth and team of heavily
armed warriors and strategists was humbled by Rama, the bare-
foot prince of Ayodhya with only an army of monkeys and with
no armour or protection gears. The first and foremost reason was
adharma, that is, non-righteousness. Noble intentions must be
there behind the vision. Ravanas intentions were bad. The second
reason was his diseased ego, his haughtiness, the ahankara, that
clouded his judgement. He was autocratic to the hilt and did not
listen to anybody. His decisions were driven by negative emotions,
lust, greed, envy and pride. So even his boon could not come to
his rescue. Rama on the other hand, was driven by the right cause,
was humble and listened to his people. He respected their views
and sought their advice. It was his trust in his people that paid
dividends. Leadership is about taking critical decisions.
Sometimes you have to take close ones, as close as one with a
51:49 probability. It calls for a great amount of moral strength and
courage to make a judgement on a decision like this. Leadership is
a tight ropewalk. You have to be above your people but you also
have to be one among them. It is about striking a balance and
opportunities, though temptations to flounder are many. One slip
and you fall. It is under these trying circumstances that leadership
is tested. And the values of a leader are his greatest armour.
l| W|i|| i + p|u|u|, l|Ji+| S|uul u| |i|, |+||+J (1|+|||+|J). | +|
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T
he henolic comound
avenanlhramide (AvE) -
ound only in oals - may
ossess anlioxidanl, anli
inlammalory, anliilch and
anlicancer roerlies. l
suggesls lhal oal AvEs may
lay an imorlanl role in
rolecling lhe hearl. Ealing
whole grains is associaled
wilh a reduced risk o
chronic and cardiovascular
diseases. "0ur sludies reveal
lhal lhe heallh beneil o eal
ing oals may go beyond
ibre," said Shengmin Sang
rom horlh Carolina
Agricullural and Technical
Slale universily. Eleven lo
scienlisls rom around lhe
globe resenled lhe indings
in a session lilled
'Fhysicochemical Froerlies
and Biological Funclionalily
o 0als' al lhe Annual
Conerence o lhe American
Chemical Sociely in 0allas.
T
here is very lillle evi
dence lhal drinking
waler romoles weighl
loss. "l is one o lhose
selerelualing mylhs,"
said Belh Kilchin, Fh0,
and assislanl roessor o
nulrilion sciences. "'m
nol saying drinking waler
isn'l good; bul only one
sludy showed eole who
drank more waler burned
a ew exlra calories, and il
was only a coule o exlra
calories a day. Yes, eole
do need lo gel luids; bul
il does nol have lo be
waler," Kilchin said.
Caeinaled beverages
such as coee also ro
vide hydralion. "when you
drink coee, your body is
relaining much o lhal
luid as lhe body adals,
resulling in a reduced loss
o luids." The idea lhal
cold waler burns more
calories, as lhe body has
lo work lo raise lhe lem
eralure, is also a mylh,
according lo Kilchin.
B
rilish archaeologisls, who
discovered lhe evidence
o lumors lhal had devel
oed and sread lhroughoul
lhe body in a 8,OOOyearold
skelelon ound in a lomb in
modern Sudan in 2O18, are
hoeul lhal il will oer new
clues aboul cancer.
Researchers rom 0urham
universily and lhe Brilish
Museum analysed lhe skele
lon using radiograhy and a
scanning eleclron micro
scoe, which showed clear
images o lesions on lhe
bones indicaling lhal lhe
cancer had sread lo cause
lumors on lhe collar bones,
shoulder blades, uer
arms, verlebrae, ribs, elvis
and lhigh bones, |cx |cws
reorled. Michaela Binder, a
0urham Fh0 sludenl who
led lhe research and exca
valed said lhal lhe analysis
has shown lhal lhe shae o
lhe small lesions on lhe
bones can only have been
caused by a sol lissue can
cer, bul lhe exacl origin is
imossible lo delermine
lhrough lhe bones alone.
08 8LkLfI8
60 8L10k0 hL hLLh
NL M1
k0 hLLF NLI6h L088
I
t was about a decade ago. I
saw a teenager picking up a
flower vase, the first thing
that he could lay his hands
on, and banging it on the
floor. He had just turned 17 and the
only way he thought he could catch
his fathers attention was by
showing aggression. His behaviour
towards his siblings too was turning
violent and his mother was getting
tired of his tantrums. Moreover, his
parents had already been
summoned to school once because
he almost broke his classmates arm
in an unusual scuffle.
Many would call this attitude
transition the result of hormonal
changes or see it as normal teenage
anxieties. Unfortunately, this
attitude change, which affects
millions of teenagers across the
globe, is mostly diagnosed
erroneously.
Such children are the victims of
the negative environment of their
living spaces. Maha Vastu in its
research and observations of over
20 years has found that if the flow
of vibrations in the childs house is
gentle and positive, the child will
behave in a calm and composed
manner, think rationally and
logically, and will also be creative.
On the other hand, negative
vibrations can be a cause of severe
mood disorders and aggressive
actions.
These negative vibrations are
emitted in the house either by vastu
faults or by ignorance of the power
of directions and colours by the
residents of the house. For instance,
if the entrance of the childs house is
in the east zone towards the
southeast direction, then not just
the child, but all residents of the
house will see spurts of extreme
aggressive actions. The southeast
entrance, says Maha Vastu research,
has precarious effects on the boys of
the house as they tend to behave in
a manner that their elders start
resenting them, resulting in a bitter
relationship.
Also, if the room of the child is
in this zone, the child will become
aggressive. As per Vastu Shastra,
this zone is the zone of fire, hence it
ignites hot temper and negates the
coolness of mind.
Generally, the symptoms are
seen in the children of a family that
shifts to a new house. If moving
into a new building is unplanned
and you fail to identify the right
vastu zones, then most likely you
will make an ignorant mistake
which can be the beginning of
miseries.
Such problems can be avoided
by consulting a knowledgeable
Vastu Shastra practiser. All that you
may need or have to do could be
the conversion of another room
into the childs bedroom, or change
the colour of the walls and make
small alterations in the placement
of the electronics. For instance, if
the walls of the bedroom in the
southeast are painted in light yellow
colour, the colour would absorb the
extra radiations emitted in the zone
of fire and the child sleeping that
room will not have to bear the
negative impact of the same.
Maha Vastu has also figured
out many other faults that are
directly related to the temper of the
child. For example, even if the child
is not physically living in the
southeast direction, but only his
photograph is placed in that zone,
the child will most likely bear the
same negative effects. And the
remedy here is not changing the
colour of the walls, but to change
the photographs location.
Another important element is
the location where their beds are
placed. The crucial zone, as per
Vastu Shastra, is the east-southeast
direction. If the childs bed is in this
direction, he tends to become over-
logical and unnecessarily analytical,
and begins to lose temper. This
keeps increasing and is prominent
in children who are older than 16
years.
Other than these two
directions, if you see a change in
the pattern of the childs behaviour
even after the basic setting is
changed, it is recommended that
you do a thorough vastu check of
the house. For example, if the
kitchen in the house is in the
northeast zone, or even if the
shades of red, or any other element
that represents fire or heat, are
present in this zone, then
everybodys mind in the house
tends to be aggressive. As per Vastu
Shastra, the northeast zone is the
zone of the mind, a direction that
helps in creativity. Hence, it is well
understood what damage fire or an
element of fire can do in this
direction.
So, to control your childs
aggressive behaviour, it is important
to understand the house as much as
it is to understand the child. Vastu
will not just make you aware of its
fundamentals, but will also help
you in finding remedies that will
prevent aggression and violence in
children, as well as help in boosting
their talents and lifting their
morale.
l| W|i|| i + l|i|+J V+|u /p||
Jle ioeal of unconoitional love
L
ove may be symbolised by a
triangle. The first angle is, love
questions not. It is not a beg-
gar. Beggars love is no love at all.
The first sign of love is when love
asks nothing, when it gives every-
thing. This is the real spiritual wor-
ship, the worship through love.
Whether God is merciful is no
longer questioned. Whether God is
omnipotent and almighty, limited or
unlimited, is no longer questioned
too. If He distributes good, all right;
if He brings evil, what does it mat-
ter? All other attributes vanish
except that one infinite love.
There was an old Indian emper-
or who on a hunting expedition
came across a great sage in the for-
est. He was so pleased with this sage
that he insisted that the latter come
to the capital to receive some pre-
sents. At first the sage refused. But
the emperor insisted, and at last he
consented. When he arrived at the
palace, he was announced to the
emperor who said, Wait a minute
until I finish my prayer. The emper-
or prayed, Lord, give me more
wealth, land, health and children.
The sage stood up and began to
walk out of the room. The emperor
said, You have not received my pre-
sents. The sage replied, I do not
beg from beggars. What can you
give me? First satisfy your own
wants!
Love never asks; it always gives.
When a young man goes to see his
beloved, there is no business rela-
tionship between them; theirs is a
relationship of love, and love is no
beggar. In the same way, we under-
stand that the beginning of real spir-
itual worship means no begging. We
have finished all begging: Lord, give
me this and that. Then will religion
begin.
The second is that love knows
no fear. You may cut me to pieces,
and I will still love you. Suppose one
of you is a weak woman and see a
tiger in the street snatching your
child. I know where you will be; you
will face the tiger. Another time a
dog appears in the street, and you
will fly. But you jump at the mouth
of the tiger and snatch your child
away. Love knows no fear. It con-
quers all evil. The fear of God is the
beginning of religion, but the love of
God is the end of religion. All fear
has died out.
The third angle of the love-tri-
angle is that love is its own end. It
can never be the means. The man
who says, I love you for such and
such a thing, does not love. Love
can never be the means; it must be
the perfect end. What is the end and
aim of love? To love God, that is all.
Why should one love God? There is
no why, because it is not the means.
When one can love, that is salvation,
that is perfection, that is heaven.
What else can be the end? What
can you have higher than love?
I am not talking about what
every one of us means by love. Little
namby-pamby love is lovely. Man
rails in love with woman, and
woman goes to die for man. The
chances are that in five minutes John
kicks Jane, and Jane kicks John. This
is materialism and no love at all. If
John could really love Jane, he
would be perfect that moment. His
true nature is love; he is perfect in
himself. John will get all the powers
of yoga simply by loving Jane,
although he may not know a word
about religion, psychology, or theol-
ogy. I believe that if a man and
woman can really love, they can
acquire all the powers the yogis
claim to have, for love in itself is
God. That God is omnipresent, and
therefore you have that love,
whether you know it or not.
E/|p| ||u| Vi1|+|+|J+ Jiuu|
Love is incaable o challenging, il is aboul uncondilional service even in momenls o sureme crises, says SwAM vvEKAhAh0A
Who is a
leader?
Leadershi is like a lighl
roewalk, lhereby making balance
ils mosl crucial lool or success
ATTTu0E ChAh0E,
whCh AFFECTS
MLL0hS 0F
TEEhA0ERS ACR0SS
ThE 0L0BE, S
M0STLY 0A0h0SE0
ERR0hE0uSLY.
SuCh ChL0REh
ARE ThE vCTMS 0F
ThE hE0ATvE
EhvR0hMEhT 0F
ThER Lvh0 SFACE.
ThE vBRAT0hS 0F
ThE Lvh0 SFACE,
ESFECALLY ThE
h0uSES 0F ThESE
ChL0REh hAvE A
0RECT MFACT 0h
ThE wAY ThER
Mh0S REACT.
aggression
Vastu
6k6L 6L0L8 Ik
k6ILk 8kLLL0k
Aggression in leenagers is nol merely hormonal. l can also be due lo lhe
negalive vibralions in lhe house's vastu /ones, wriles KhuSh0EEF BAhSAL
How
overpowers
M
ost fashionable new words
describe new things (bit-
coins) or new trends
(twerking). Yet the most endearing
new word of 2013, olinguito, denotes
something that has been there all
along, though no one had noticed.
Unlike man in his natural
state, the olinguito is solitary,
furry, nocturnal, fruit-eating and
small. It has little round ears like
those of the once-popular televi-
sion performer Sooty. The cat-
sized olinguito had been sitting in
the mountainous cloud-forests
separating Colombia and Ecuador,
eating figs, since time immemori-
al. It was simply ignored.
Since August 15, 2013, we
have all known about the olingui-
to, even if, to tell the truth, we had
never previously heard of its
cousin, the common olingo.
By contrast, the bitcoin,
though not nocturnal, had crept
up on us gradually. It was
launched in 2009 as a virtual cur-
rency. Each one was worth 30 US
cents. In 2011, it had its own pri-
vate South Sea bubble, rising to a
value of $32 then crashing to two
dollars. But this month, with the
US Senate recognising its legiti-
macy, it rocketed to $900.
Now the olinguito is easy to
understand. The bitcoin is impos-
sible to understand. That is not
because it is unlike any other cur-
rencies, but because it is very
much like them. All currencies are
a confidence trick. Pull out the
confidence, and down they tumble
like houses of cards. Bitcoins are
a fad, says Felix Salmon, the man
who predicted the popping of
their modest bubble in 2011, and
theyre a fad which will pass, a bit
like Beanie Babies.
If Beanie Babies passed you by
in the 1990s, then you ought to
know that they werent edible, like
jelly-babies or jelly-beans, but
huggable soft toys, like olinguitos
only without the sharp little teeth.
They were falling out of populari-
ty in 1998, the year that the
American Dialect Society
announced that its word of the
year was e-. Eh? Just e-, the prefix
that turned mail into email and
commerce into e-commerce.
The American Dialect Society
has monitored neologisms since
1889, and its annual choices since
e- provide a fairground ride
through the fads of the past
decade and half: Y2K, chad
(remember those in the US elec-
tions, especially the hanging
kind?), 9/11, WMD, metrosexu-
al. Then, in 2004, the committee
turned down the useful phish in
favour of the dull red States and
blue States, a distinction in
American politics.
The next year they also blun-
dered by plumping for truthiness,
with podcast as a runner-up. The
winner in 2006 never grew to
maturity: To pluto, meaning
demote, like the planet Pluto.
Things cheered up in 2007 with
the apocalyptic subprime, fol-
lowed naturally the next year by
bailout, and in 2009 the winner
was certainly a winner: Tweet.
Since them weve had app,
Occupy (the street movement)
and hashtag.
Still, one cant help thinking
that the American Dialect Society
has its eyes a little too close to its
computer screen. In Britain, our
eyes are bigger than our stomachs,
which is saying something. In
2013, cronut was bidding to outdo
olinguito and bitcoin as word of
the year. It is an iced doughnut
constructed from croissant pastry.
Cronuts, too, are an American
import. The Telegraphs own Jon
Swaine reported them going like
hot olinguitos on the streets of
SoHo, at five dollars a piece.
Cronut is a portmanteau
word: Croissant and doughnut,
geddit? Portmanteau word itself
should have been the word of the
year in 1871, when it was invented
by Humpty Dumpty, or rather his
frontman, Lewis Carroll. Most
such formations dont work.
Six out of the 12 words nomi-
nated last year by Collins
Dictionaries for its own word
championships were portman-
teaus, and they were all duds. One
of them, Jubilympics, sounds as
though the speaker had started
saying Jubilee and corrected him-
self. Another, broga, meaning
yoga for men (bros), looks like a
misprint for an expensive knitted-
accessory company.
It is the fault of the dictionaries
that vogue words such as Jubi-
lympics are kept on artificial life-
support. At the moment, a dictio-
nary war is raging in which rival lex-
icographic enterprises publicise their
latest shock findings about words
they are considering for inclusion.
Oxford Dictionaries words of
the year over the past decade have
been chav, sodoku, bovvered,
carbon footprint, credit crunch,
simples, big society, squeezed
middle, omnishambles and selfie.
To me, bovvered and simples are
catchphrases. They are hard to use
without being boring (or boring-
snoring, as the editor of Newsnight
this year, by a slip of his Twitter
account, ungallantly called the MP
Rachel Reeves, a guest on his pro-
gramme). Big society and
squeezed middle are political
catchphrases, and failed ones
at that.
The decades undoubted sur-
vivors are sodoku (a new thing)
and chav. Chav was a new word
for an old thing, just as bonk was
in the Eighties. Like bonk, chav
promised to make it possible to
talk about a concept without
sounding crude. The promise was
short-lived.
Perhaps that is why, in my
book, twerking cant be the word
of the year. We dont really talk
about it, at least not without feel-
ing slightly soiled. It may be
alarming that this word for lewd
dancing is part of a sub-culture.
But it is the sub-culture of Miley
Cyrus and Robin Thicke, not of
you and me.
I have reservations, too, about
the next most obvious choice,
which Oxford Dictionaries have
named the word of 2013: Selfie. It
simply means a self-taken photo-
graph. There has been some syn-
thetic controversy about whether
selfies at funerals are permissible.
Since the Pope himself happily
stood as the background to a
young admirers selfie, it is hardly
a mortal sin. But it has a worry-
ingly close connection with sex-
ting (portmanteua word), the fool-
ish practice of sending explicit
mobile-phone images of oneself.
Perhaps, after all, the stuffy
old American Dialect Society is
right in taking the long view. It
has named a word, never used
until the 12th century, as word of
the past 1,000 years: She. What
would we do without it?
(Courtesy: The Daily Telegraph)
am a4mI Farty's
eIect0raI tamasha
F 00I0I I 8
0IIII08I Il0II
Reader response to
Swapan Dasguptas column,
Usual Suspects, published on
March 16:
Sand in the shoe: Ross Perot
was a successful businessman
who contested the US presi-
dential election as an inde-
pendent candidate, standing
up to both Democrats and
Republicans. When asked if
he had a chance of winning,
he said: I wont win, but I
want to give others a run for
their money. I am that grain
of sand in the oyster that will
agitate till we get a pearl in
the process.
Comparing Arvind
Kejriwal to Perot may not be
appropriate, but he is the
sand in the shoe that will
make the election anything
but a walk in the park.
Sandy
Underestimated rival: This
troll will influence voters.
The other day I heard some
people saying that Arvind
Kejriwal did good work in
Delhi. I was shocked. We
may be under-estimating
Kejriwal and his party
gnr
Call his bluff: BJP karyakar-
tas must call the bluff of
Arvind Kejriwal before the
people. This has to be done
by interacting with the voters
and exposing the AAPs false
claims with evidence.
Shan
Indias tea party: Arvind
Kejriwal and his band of
sanctimonious politicians
remind me of the Tea Party
of the US.
Uday
Ignore the man: The media
should ignore Arvind
Kejriwal, and his party will
die out soon. The Congress
may try to revive the party,
but that will not help.
Jagadesanv
Modi unperturbed: The
authors observation regarding
Narendra Modis contemptu-
ous silence over Arvind
Kejriwal is correct. Modi has
endured the mainstream
medias onslaught for long. He
is least bothered by Kejriwal.
Jayateerth Patil
Failed strategy: The Aam
Aadmi Partys leadership, on
behalf of the Congress, hopes
to stop Narendra Modi.
Fortunately, the partys rank
and file is under the impres-
sion that it is fighting cor-
ruption and, therefore, the
Congress. The AAP will end
up hurting the Congress and
helping the BJP.
Phanibhushan Joshipura
k0 IIt0l II0I0 I0l
I00 600l0
Reader response to
Rajesh Singhs column,
Plain Talk, published on
March 16:
Lost battle: If a sitting
Member of Parliament does
not want to contest an elec-
tion or wants to move out to
another safe seat, then it is
certain that the MP and his
party have seen the writing
on the wall and know
their fate.
The levels of desponden-
cy are so high among
Congress leaders that they
want to run away from any
electoral or political chal-
lenge that is thrown at them.
While these leaders would
not like to contest the Lok
Sabha election, they may have
trouble entering Parliament
through the Rajya Sabha route
if the Congress ends up with
just close to the three-digit
mark. The Congress is fighting
a lost battle.
Bal Govind
Bleak situation ahead: The
Congress has failed miser-
ably on all fronts. It has
effectively already lost the
election even before the first
vote has been cast.
As for Aam Aadmi Party
chief Arvind Kejriwal, he
behaves more like an activist
and less like a politician. The
Third Front, a motley group
of political outfits that have
precious little in common,
stands no chance.
Also, it is doubtful
whether the BJP will get a
majority on its own. It seems
that the final outcome will be
that of yet another coalition
regime at the Centre.
Meanwhile, the only
good the Aam Aadmi Party
has done in this electoral
season is to infuse political
interest among certain suc-
cessful professionals be
they industry leaders, acade-
mics or even movie stars,
who are now aspiring for a
place in the Lok Sabha.
M Kumar
Time is up: The Congress is
clearly doomed. And, per-
haps, this is for the best, at
least for the time being. This
party has continuously
impoverished India with its
bad politics and poor gover-
nance levels. It has only per-
petuated the fortunes of the
Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
subodh1945
Waiting to be defeated:
Congress leaders dont want
to face the people. They are
anticipating defeat. Even
senior leaders Mani Shankar
Aiyar fear rejection.
RL Pathak
PLANTALK
RAJESh Sh0h
Know your litcoin from
your olinguito, oo you?
w
halever you may say aboul lhe Aam Aadmi Farly, you cannol deny
lhe acl lhal il is high on decibel and low on conlenl. wilh a orl
nighl lo go or olling, lhe eole slill do nol know whal lhe arly
slands or. All lhal lhey are aware o is lhal il no longer reresenls lhe
dreams and asiralions o lhe common man, esecially lhe youlh which
is deserale lo break away rom lhe shackles o volebank olilics and
elecloral rheloric. when lhe AAF's leaders are asked whal lheir ideology
is, lheir slock resonse is lhal lhey are commilled lo ighling corrulion
and communalism. This is hardly a dislinguishing mark, since all arlies
are ublicly wedded lo lhose values.
The AAF believes lhal by conlinuously ranling aboul communalism
and corrulion, il can delecl ublic allenlion rom ils lack o coherence
on crilical domeslic issues. This is lhe reason why lhe arly's leaders
have been lhrowing muck al harendra Modi and cerlain induslrialisls
wilhoul roviding a shred o evidence lhal backs lheir allegalions. They
hoe lhal al leasl some o lhe dirl will slick. This is also lhe reason why
lhe AAF has resorled lo all kinds o oulisl dislays such as slreel
rolesls and mayhem. l elches lhe arly ree media ublicily.
Yel, none o lhis hides lhe deicil in lhe arly's sland on mallers such
as lhe resolulion o lhe Kashmir issue. The AAF does nol have a clear
osilion because il has no underslanding o lhe comlexilies. Thereore,
one ine day, ils leader Frashanl Bhushan slales lhal a reerendum should
be conducled among lhe eole o Kashmir valley on lhe conlinualion o
lhe Armed Forces (Secial Fowers) Acl. n olher words, lhe lay cili/en,
who has no access lo crilical inlelligence aboul lhe securily silualion in
lhe region, musl have lhe ower lo delermine whelher our armed erson
nel who oerale in lhe valley and ace lhreals lo lheir lie every minule o
lheir working hour, should be shielded by lhe rovisions o lhe Acl.
Bul even lhis is aarenlly nol lhe AAF's oicial osilion, since arly
chie Arvind Kejriwal laler clariied lhal Bhushan was merely exressing
his ersonal oinion. So, lhe AAF, which asires lo be a nalional arly, is
clueless aboul an issue o such grave nalional imorlance. when
Bhushan's oinion sarked a major row, AAF leaders lried lo douse lhe
ire by assuring lhal lhey were giving inal louches lo lhe arly's sland on
key nalional subjecls, and Kashmir was one o lhem. This remains a work
in rogress, as lhe arly's osilion conlinues lo be unslaled and erhas
slill lo be sensibly ormulaled.
l's nol jusl Kashmir. The AAF has no roadma or lhe counlry's eco
nomic recovery - unless we assume lhal branding induslrialisls as
lhieves and crooks who have lhe
media and many olilicians
allegedly ealing oul o lheir hands,
will lead lo a lan o aclion lhal
will energise lhe cororale world
and bring doubledigil growlh. we
may crilicise lhe roadma lhal lhe
BJF or lhe Congress or even lhe
Lel Fronl has suggesled, bul al
leasl lhere is an idea lo deliberale
uon. Kejriwal and his grou are
idealess. 0o lhey believe in a con
lrolled social economy? 0o lhey
avour regulaled cailalism? Are
lhey LeloCenlre or Righlo
Cenlre or lain conused Cenlre?
The AAF has no answer.
There is anolher subjecl o
dee domeslic concern lhal lhe
AAF remains ambivalenl aboul:
The lhreal lo our democralic ab
ric which lhe Maoisls ose. The
arly has in ils ranks cerlain eo
le who are known lo have nur
lured or long a sol corner or lhe
Maoisls. 0oes lhe AAF believe
lhal lhe Maoisls musl be handled
wilh kidgloves or does il avour a
slrong carrolandslick olicy?
The eole have yel lo hear a
clear slalemenl rom Kejriwal and
his grou. Ferhas lhe AAF can
begin by exlaining lo lhe eole
whal made lhe leadershi give
lickels lo eole who are accused
o heling lhe killer Maoisls? Also,
which AAF leader o rominence
has condemned lhe Maoisls or
lheir recenl allack on securily er
sonnel in Chhallisgarh lhal
claimed more lhan a do/en lives?
There are olher queslions
lhal Kejriwal and his band o lead
ers musl answer. They can run
away rom lhem only al lhe cosl o acceling lhal lhey do nol have
nalional asiralions and are looking lo conine lhemselves lo 0elhi. Thal
obviously does nol seem lo be lhe case; lhe arly aclually dreams o win
ning 1OO Lok Sabha seals. There is no law againsl daydreaming, bul
even daydreamers musl have a vision. So, whal is lhe AAF's osilion on
lhe counlry's oreign olicy? Should we enhance relalions wilh lhe wesl
or erhas reach oul more lo lhe slamic nalions? Musl we demonslrale
more aggression on issues lhal concern China and Fakislan, or conlinue
lo be sol? 0iven lhal lhe AAF has managed lo draw inlo ils old many
academics and inlellecluals o all sorls, an enuncialion on lhese mallers
should nol have been diicull or lhe arly. Yel, as o now, we know more
o AAF's slreel anlics lhan ils views on lhese issues.
having realised lhal lhe Congress is on lhe decline and no urose will
be gained by logging a dead horse, AAF leaders have begun concenlraling
on Modi. Kejriwal, like any olher good old dyedinlhewool 'secular' olili
cian, has been meeling Muslim clerics lo reilerale his secular credenlials.
he is nol alone; olher leaders rom his arly have doing lhe same. Al one
such recenl meeling, Kejriwal even lel go his 'Main |ccn aam aaJmi' (or
whalever) ca and donned a skull ca. Remember how his eole had cre
aled a commolion in lhe 0elhi Assembly when lhey had insisled on wearing
lheir lrademark cas lhere. while il is ine lo lhrow a lanlrum when asked
lo conorm lo lhe dignily o lhe house, il is erecl lo lel go lhe common
man's ca or anolher when il serves an immediale arochial urose!
The AAF's sland on corrulion, which is lhe arly's lagshi issue,
remains badly exosed. l had brealhed ire againsl Sheila 0ikshil, bul
when in ower, il did nol roceed againsl her. we are lold lhal lhe AAF
regime was on lhe 'verge o acling' beore il was orced lo quil. hobody
comelled lhe AAF lo resign; il deliberalely crealed a silualion or ils
dearlure so lhal il did nol have lo eilher govern or acl againsl lhe
allegedly corrul Congress leaders.
There are more recenl inslances o lhe arly's doubleseak on lhe
issue. while lwo aceless leaders have been sacked or suosedly
demanding money in lieu o Lok Sabha lickels or asiranls, lhe arly's
leadershi has nol acled againsl lhe more highroile leaders on whom
similar charges had been earlier levelled. we are lold lhe arly "inquired"
inlo lhese accusalions and ound lhem "baseless". how convenienl.
l should be o greal relie lo lhe counlry lhal lhe AAF is unlikely lo
be anywhere near lo assuming ower al lhe Cenlre, or even inluencing
lhe course o evenls lhere.
There has been
controversy
whether selfies
at funerals are
permissible.
Since the Pope
himself happily
stood as the
background to a
young admirer's
selfie, it is
hardly a mortal
sin. But it has a
worryingly close
connection
with sexting
sunday
magazino
jitit
Now Dolhi, Maroh 23, 2014
F E E D B A C K
hew words will come and go, bul which o lhose lhal we heard or lhe irsl lime in 2O18 are here lo
slay? 'Twerking' can'l be one. we don'l really lalk aboul il, al leasl nol wilhoul eeling slighlly soiled
The AAP has no
roadmap for the
country's economic
recovery ~ unless
we assume that
branding
industrialists as
crooks who have
the media and
politicians allegedly
eating out of their
hands, will lead to a
plan of action that
will energise the
corporate world
and bring a growth
of double digits
T Sh0uL0 BE 0F 0REAT RELEF T0 ThE
C0uhTRY ThAT ThE AAF S uhLKELY T0 BE
AhYwhERE hEAR T0 ASSuMh0 F0wER AT
ThE CEhTRE, 0R EvEh hFLuEhCh0 ThE
C0uRSE 0F EvEhTS ThERE
GUESTCOLUMN
ChRST0FhER h0wSE
A
debate is currently raging in the polity regarding
reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Tribes (SC/ST) in the private sector, similar to the
one that is provided in the Government and the public
sector. The private corporate sector constitutes a rela-
tively small portion of the national income, namely,
around 18-20 per cent. We do not have separate statis-
tics on the number employed by the private corporate
sector and proprietorship and partnership (P&P sector)
forms of organisations. Many companies do not provide
information on the number of people employed by them
since it is not required to be given in their Annual
Reports.
We find that the employment in the Government
and the public sectors stagnated in the nineties and has
actually shown a decline in the last two years. The rea-
sons are two-fold. One pertains to the public sector,
compared to the socialistic approach of the sixties when
everything from bread to rockets was made by the
Government. The second reason is that the Government
is broke, and more so, at the State level. Salaries and
pensions constitute more than 50 per cent of the
expenses of many State governments. The Government
(both Centre and States) have shifted from defined ben-
efit to defined contribution pension schemes. The
dependency ratio (the number retired to number cur-
rently employed) is increasing at an exponential rate for
most Government departments. Hence, employment in
the Government has been significantly reduced and this
impacts the SC/ST also.
According to the Government of India, as claimed
in the Economic Survey, there were 5.5 lakh persons
employed in trade activities (wholesale and retail) in
2011 in the whole country. This presumably includes
hotels and restaurants also, since they are not separately
provided and they come under the trade category in our
statistics. Also, the number of people employed by the
construction industry is stated to be only 1 lakh in the
whole country during 2011. According to the figures, in
the transport, storage and communications sector, only
1.9 lakh persons were employed in the whole country in
the year 2011 unreli-
able data. It is unfor-
tunate that major
national policies are
being formulated
using such fiction.
The Government
and private organ-
ised sector have only
a small share of the
total workforce of
the country. The
organised private
sector employs a
total of 114 lakhs,
which is around 3
per cent of the total
workforce (nearly
400 million). Under
the circumstances,
even if the entire
organised private
sector is reserved for
the SC/ST/ OBC, the
gains from employment will be very meagre. But the
perspective needs to be different. The more pertinent
issue is the share of the SC/ST/OBC in the ownership of
the private sector.
We have the exhaustive Economic Census 2005,
conducted by the Central Statistical Organisation (C
SO) which covers 41.83 million enterprises engaged in
different economic activities other than crop production
and plantation. It deals with own account enterprises as
well as establishments, an enterprise run by employing
at least one hired worker. It covers private profit and
non-profit institutions, co-operatives, and all economic
activities including dharamshalas/temples.
We find that nearly half of all enterprises are owned
by SC/ST/OBC. In the rural areas, it is 55 per cent. This
encompasses manufacturing, construction, trade, hotels,
restaurants, transport, finance, business and other ser-
vices. The Enterprise Survey reveals that out of the total
of 41.83 million enterprises in the country, 37.63 million
were found to be self-financing. This speaks volumes
about our credit delivery systems. What is required to
be debated is the enhancement of credit systems for the
enterprises, and more so to those owned by the
SC/ST/OBC. In other words, the focus should be on
the Vaishya-visation of large segments of our civil
society, instead of creating a large number of proletari-
at in the fashion of nineteenth century economic mod-
els.
The Marxist postulate is that, it is inevitable that
the petite bourgeoisie becomes a proletariat in the
process of the growth of capitalism. But that is based on
19th century experiences. Policy planners and experts
need to work on a road map to calibrate changes in our
current context. Already, we find that it is difficult to
locate a tailor or a cobbler in many towns. Let us
remember that Wal-Mart was built in rural America by
liquidating thousands of mom-and-pop stores which are
equivalent to our street corner kirana shops.
The arrival of the Internet and cell phones presents
opportunities to innovate in the linking of millions of
small Vaishyas to create scale economies. Indian civili-
sation has always been innovative in finding solutions to
social problems. Maybe, the time has come for the
Government to perform the task of a Kshatriya (internal
and external security) and encourage large segments of
our society to become Vaishyas through instrumentali-
ties of credit delivery, taxation, social security and devel-
opment of regional and community based clusters. This
may go a long way in enhancing the social status of the
SC/ST/OBC rather than providing some limited job
opportunities in listed companies.
l| W|i|| i || +u||u| u| 8]SXP D]X]R
sunday
magazino
lJ||lt l
TThE huMBER 0F h0Ah v0TERS hAS RSEh
FR0M 17G MLL0h h ThE FRST 0EhERAL
ELECT0h h 1O52 T0 S0ME 814 MLL0h h
2O14. ThE hCREASE ShCE ThE LAST L0K
SABhA F0LLS 0F 2OOO wAS AB0uT 1OO MLL0h
Now Dolhi, Maroh 23, 2014
T
he AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal had said
in Mumbai and Bangalore recently that it
would be an utmost privilege to become
a martyr like Bhagat Singh was.
Interestingly however, resigning from the
post of the Chief Minister of Delhi and contesting
against the BJP s Prime Ministerial candidate,
Narendra Modi, in the Lok Sabha elections define
martyrdom for him.
Recently, a video of Kejriwal with TV anchor
Punya Prasoon Vajpayee was leaked. In it too, he
was emphasising on the essence of Bhagat Singh.
Apparently, he had chosen February 14 to resign as
on the same date, Madan Mohan Malaviya had
filed a mercy petition before Lord Irwin after the
Privy Council had rejected the appeal of Bhagat
Singh and his accomplices, Rajguru and Sukhdev.
Kejriwal also chose March 23 the day the trio
were executed for his Varanasi rally to announce
his candidature against Modi.
kkF 6khIkTE8 T88IE
C
ontroversies have erupted concerning the AAP
candidates in Delhi. Mahendra Singh from
North-West Delhi has returned his ticket alleging
Rakhi Birla of demanding money from him. South
Delhi candidate Devendra Sehrawat has also come
under the scanner of many other leaders of the
party. Sehrawat was defeated in the assembly
elections. One of the leaders has written a letter
questioning how someone who could not win a
single seat out of those 10 can guarantee a victory
this time. Likewise, Ashutosh, Ashish Khetan and
Anand Kumar too are facing fierce opposition from
within the party. Ashok Agarwal, the founder
leader of the AAP, has resigned because of alleged
differences over Ashutosh. Leaders in East and
North-East Delhi are also resigning en-masse.
kZk I FkhIhIk 6kMFkIh
R
ight from K Rahman Khan to Salman Khurshid
and Shakeel Ahmad, the Congress has many
faces to project but only Ghulam Nabi Azad will
campaign for it nationally. Ahmed is in-charge of
Delhi, Haryana and Punjab so he will campaign in
these three states along with his home state Bihar.
Likewise, Khurshid is contesting elections himself
and Rahman Khan too will be active in Karnataka
and Uttar Pradesh. Azad will campaign at every
nook and corner of the country. That is why it has
been decided that he would not fight the elections.
Reportedly, the party had decided to field him from
his home district Udhampur but later decided that
it was not proper to stick him to a single seat. A
roadmap is being prepared for his campaign
program on almost 150 seats.
I8kFFIhTE YTh8
T
he Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had
said that the youths would get at least 30 per
cent of the tickets but till date they have got only 10
per cent of them. There is much disappointment in
the NSUI, the student wing of the Congress, and
the Youth Congress. This time these organisations
were hopeful that they would get tickets for at least
70 people but out of the 260 declared seats they
have got only 25. Last year, Rahul had said that the
youths would be made responsible in every way.
But the fact is that the youth brigade of Congress is
disappointed particularly with those youths who
have actually managed to get a ticket.
FIMkY hEFTI8M Ih ThE 6hE88
R
ahul Gandhi has chosen 15 candidates through
Primary and states that to promote democracy
inside the party, this will be followed in every
election. However, reportedly, most of these
candidates are either sitting MPs or the kith and
kin of senior leaders.
From Sri Ganganagar in Rajasthan, former MP
Shankar Pannu has won while the State leaders
were not in his favour. Likewise, party MLA Pravin
Rathod has won from Bhavnagar in Gujarat. He is a
Koli and State leaders reportedly wanted to give
this seat either to a Patel or Kshatriya.
In Primary, Sagar Meghe, son of MP Datta Meghe,
won in Sagar; Manas Bora, son of Assams minister
Akon Bora got the Guwahati seat and Rajbala Ola,
daughter of Sis Ram Ola became a candidate from
Jhunjhunu. Ajay Maken, JP Aggrawal and
Minakshi Natarajan are sitting MPs and they have
retained their candidatures. Apart from these, a
close aide of Amit Deshmukh, son of the late Vilas
Rao Deshmukh, won through Primary in Latur
and the close aide of the former Chief Minister of
Karnataka, Siddaramaiah, has won in Bangalore.
81F FEIEIh FkTY 6hkhE8
T
he BJP has given at least a dozen tickets to
those who have changed their parties. The
sitting MP from Dumariaganj in Uttar Pradesh,
Jagdambika Pal, who spent almost 40 years with the
Congress, has got a BJP ticket again from the same
place. Likewise, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh and
Kirti Vardhan Singh, who were with the SP, might
get BJP tickets from Kaisarganj and Gonda
respectively. It is speculated that Nand Gopal
Nandi, formerly in the BSP, and Shyama Charan
Gupta, former MP from Banda and Kesari Nath
Tripathi are strong contenders for the Varanasi seat.
Out of the 53 announced candidates in Uttar
Pradesh, at least three are parachute candidates.
The party has also made the BSP s Rajya Sabha
member SP Baghel and Lok Sabha member Rajesh
Verma its candidates. Apart from this, the party has
given ticket to Ravindra Kushwaha, son of SPs late
leader Harikewal Prasad.
VETh Ih WE8TEh F
L
eaders of the BJP and BSP anticipate the real
fight to be only between the BJP and BSP. After
the Muzaffarnagar riots, both are over-confident of
polarisation.
But the situation has drastically changed and RLDs
Ajit Singh has re-entered the race. The Jat voters are
still BJP supporters and want Modi to become the
Prime Minister, but they will vote for Ajit Singh
with a gut feeling that junior Chaudhary will
support the BJP after the elections. For them voting
for the RLD is akin to vote for the It seems Ajit
Singh remains only with the ruling party.
Jat reservation has also changed the scenario.
Besides, the joining of Rakesh Tikait, son of the
BKU leader, the late Mahendra Tikait, has also
changed the wave. Jaya Prada and Amar Singh have
also joined the RLD.
IEkE8 IIEE 6hE88
T
he Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is
motivating his leaders and party workers.
Talking at Google Hangout, he is lifting his party
workers morale. Party leaders however believe that
Rahul should have instead advised his leaders not
to leave their Lok Sabha seats to go to the Rajya
Sabha just before the elections.
Their concern was evident even in Anand
Sharma s press conference. Leaders like Kumari
Selja from Haryana, Digvijaya Singh in Madhya
Pradesh and Sanjay Singh from Uttar Pradesh
have been sent to the Rajya Sabha which has
impacted the drive of the party workers.
Reportedly, Digvijaya Singh is not happy with the
party; he thinks that he is being ignored. The
seats of many MPs have also been changed and
many big leaders from Kerala, Tamil Nadu and
Rajasthan have refused to fight elections. After
the decision to divide Andhra Pradesh, almost
half of the 90 Congress MLAs from Seemandhra
have also left the party.
sunday
gupshup
hAR ShAhKAR vYAS
Rahul 0andhi has
chosen 15 candidales
lhrough Frimary and
slales lhal lo romole
democracy inside lhe
arly, lhis will be
ollowed in every
eleclion. however,
reorledly, mosl o
lhese candidales are
eilher silling MFs or
lhe kilh and kin o
senior leaders. Sagar
Meghe, son o MF
0alla Meghe, won in
Sagar; Manas Bora,
son o Assam's
minisler Akon Bora gol
lhe 0uwahali seal and
Rajbala 0la, daughler
o Sis Ram 0la became
a candidale rom
Jhunjhunu.
I
n February 2000, we got a phone
call from Bhopal. It came from
the office of the then Chief
Minister of Madhya Pradesh,
Digvijaya Singh. The caller was the
visionary Amar Singh who was the
secretary of Chief Minister Singh.
Singh was moved by The Pioneers
Dalit Millennium supplement that we
had published on January 30, 2000.
The then President KR Narayanan
received the first copy in a simple
ceremony in the Rashtrapati Bhawan.
My friend Avijit Ghosh, a staffer with
The Pioneer had connected me with
the Editor- in-Chief of the newspa-
per, Chandan Mitra. That meeting
had resulted in the birth of the Dalit
Diary the first ever weekly col-
umn in an English language daily
dedicated to Dalit issues and written
by a Dalit.
The first column had appeared
on April 4, 1999. Since then, I have
missed only two Sundays one
when I was in Bhopal, probably in
2000, from where I had faxed my
column; the second page of the fax
was unclear and I could not be con-
tacted because I didnt have a cell-
phone. The second time, I was in
Germany. Due to time-
related confusions, I had
missed the deadline.
The column was an
instant hit amongst the
English speaking Dalits.
That included
Rajashekhar Vundru
a brilliant IAS officer
who went to thank
Chandan Mitra with a
bust of Lord Buddha.
During the conversation,
Chandan Mitra offered
us a 12 page supplement
that would be edited by
some of us. The supple-
ment was to be dedicat-
ed to the Dalit cause. We chose
Vundru as the editor. The supple-
ment was titled DALIT.
Amar Singh read that supple-
ment and showed it to Digvijaya
Singh. In the meeting that followed,
we arrived on a decision to hold a
conference of Dalit intellectuals in
Bhopal and the expenses were borne
by the Madhya Pradesh
Government. The conference came
to be known as the Bhopal
Conference. I was deputed to write a
Dalit agenda keeping in mind the
challenges in the new century. I
wrote the agenda that is known as
The Bhopal Document.
It was in this conference that
Digvijaya Singh launched the slogan
of producing Dalit Crorepatis. The
Bhopal Conference launched a new
Dalit agenda asking the new gen-
eration of Dalits to take up entrepre-
neurship as a career option. Relying
heavily on the American experience
of supplier diversity in Government
and private sectors both, the
Bhopal Conference asked both
sectors to allocate businesses to
Dalits/Adivasis through suppli-
er diversity.
At the concluding moment
of the Conference, Singh
announced that 30 per cent of
all Government procurements
will be done from Dalit/Adivasi
entrepreneurs. Within months,
that announcement became a
policy. In contemporary India,
if there is anything that is new
on the Dalit front, it is Dalit
capitalism and them taking
entrepreneurship as a new
career option. Since the Dalit
Indian Chamber of Commerce and
Industry (DICCI) is born and the
Dalit Venture Capital Fund launched,
the central Government sets aside
four per cent of all Government pur-
chases to Small and Medium
Enterprises (SMES) owned by
Dalits/Adivasis.
The Pioneer has thus, been a
platform where I could launch a new
Dalit agenda. The newspaper has
been my main source of livelihood.
K R Narayanan had said in his
speech on January 25, 2002 about the
Bhopal Declaration:
Indeed in the present economic
system and of the future, it is neces-
sary for the private sector to adopt
social policies that are progressive
and more egalitarian for these
deprived classes to be uplifted from
their state of deprivation and
inequality and given the rights of cit-
izens and civilised human beings.
This is not to ask the private enter-
prise accept socialism, but to do
something like what the Diversity
Bill and the affirmative action that a
capitalist country like the United
States of America has adopted and is
implementing.
Chandan Mitra joined the BJP
but never censored a word unless
there was a grammatical error. Dalit
Diary is a decade and half old, but we
have yet to see a second Chandan
Mitra in the entire country who
could give a column to another
Chandra Bhan Prasad.
My Vote Goes to Chandan
Mitra; if only I was a voter registered
in Hoogly from where he is contest-
ing for a Lok Sabha seat. I wish him
good luck.
DALTDARY
ChAh0RABhAh FRASA0
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Moro oontrovorsios and
oonliots in tho AAP
Jle Government sloulo
concentrate more on oeveloing
tle entrereneursli slills of tle
Scleouleo Castes ano Scleouleo
Jriles ano lel tlem overcome
unemloyment, writes R
VA!YANAJHAN. Ixcerts:
Building
Fatrereae0rs
T|c Ficnccr's La|it Liary is a odium or lhe 0alils lo channelise lheir
asiralions. Chadan Milra has been lhe sole uholder o lhis rivilege
8I I $Z MIIIIh '
Ih 6hIhk
A
Tibetan mastiff puppy has been sold
in China for almost $2 million in
what could be the most
expensive dog sale ever, a
report said. A property
developer paid 12 mil-
lion yuan ($1.9 mil-
lion) for the one-
year-old golden-
haired mastiff at a
luxury pet fair in
the eastern province
of Zhejiang, the
Qianjiang Evening
News reported. They
have lions blood and
are top-of-the-range
mastiff studs, the dogs
breeder Zhang Gengyun
was quoted as telling the
paper, adding that anoth-
er red-haired canine had
sold for 6 million yuan.
Enormous and some-
times ferocious, with
round manes lending
them a passing
resemblance to lions,
Tibetan mastiffs have become a prized
status symbol among Chinas wealthy,
sending prices skyrocketing. The gold-
en-haired animal was 80 centimetres
(31 inches) tall, and weighed 90 kilo-
grams (nearly 200 pounds), Zhang
said, adding that he was sad to sell
the animals. Neither was named
in the report. Pure Tibetan
mastiffs are very rare, just like
our nationally treasured pan-
das, so the prices are so high,
he said. (AFP)
IIIk 8h Ih kE
68E6TIh
A
baby gorilla born in
a rare Caesarian sec-
tion at the San Diego
Zoo last week has
pneumonia and was
treated for a col-
lapsed lung, offi-
cials said on
Tuesday. The 17th
gorilla delivered at
the Southern
California zoo devel-
oped the illness, an inflammation
of the lungs with congestion,
around the time of
her birth, according
to a statement from
the San Diego Zoo
Safari Park. Weve
been working with the
baby all weekend and after
having several days of experience treat-
ing her, its pretty obvious that weve
been dealing with pneumonia, Nadine
Lamberski, associate director of veteri-
nary services at the park, said in a state-
ment.(Reuters)
k 8Tk88 8h Ih W VE k
8k6h 8khWI6h .
A
father stabbed his 15-year-old son
through the heart in a row over a
bacon sandwich. John Lennox, 49, has
been jailed for eight years after knifing
his son Brendon at their family home in
Glasgow when he wasn t fed first. After
stabbing the boy twice, Lennox then
calmly started to repair the television
damaged during the attack. Giving evi-
dence at the High Court in Glasgow, his
son, Brendan said: I got stabbed twice.
When asked by prosecutor Stephen
McCloy: Who did it?, he replied: My
dad. We fought and then I got stabbed.
Asked what instigated
the stabbing, he said:
It was probably
over the bacon.
The court then heard
that his mother, Davina,
was making bacon rolls for her
son, Lennox and their guests before the
feud kicked off. Brendon started shout-
ing and swearing when he was not given
the first bacon roll, he then stormed out
reports the Daily Record. When he
returned, he got into a fight with his
father who found a knife and stabbed
his son twice, once through his heart.
(Mirror)
h8h 8k8Y 6kTkFITE T
I MThE'8 WM8
A
n unborn baby has survived after
being catapulted three metres out of
his mothers womb during a fatal
motorcycle crash that killed his parents.
The accident saw both the baby boys
heavily pregnant mother Wang Zhau,
and his father Mao, being hit by a truck
as they rushed to try and get to hospital
in time. Eye witnesses said that when
the woman was hit by the truck she gave
birth on the spot, police spokesman
Chan Chien said. Others said
that the baby, at a healthy 4.2 kg,
had been thrown out of the
womans belly and had landed
three meters away. What we found
out from her family is that the
woman, a 40-year-old, had gone
into labour at 8:30 AM and her
husband, a 42-year-old man,
decided to take her by
motorbike to the hospital.
Remarkably the baby boy,
named as Xiao Zhao, is said
to be doing well and is
expected to survive having only suffered
minor bruises. (Mirror)
k8TkIIkh8 kFFIY I 8I
Ikhkkh hkhMkh 18
T
wo Australians have applied in vain
for Sri Lankas hangman job after
the island nations last official execution-
er got upset on seeing the gallows for
the first time and quit. Two Australians
have sent emails to one of our depart-
ments saying that they are interested,
Chandrarathna Pallegama, commission-
er general of prisons, told Reuters on
Thursday. One is a system administra-
tor and the other had not mentioned
the job he is doing, he
said. We have not
called the applications,
moreover we do not have
any provisions to recruit
foreigners. Pallegama said
on Tuesday that the last
hangman, who was the third
most qualified among the
176 applicants for the job,
quit after getting upset at
seeing the gallows.
The Indian Ocean island
nation, a predominantly
Buddhist country, has not
carried out an execution
since 1976, despite the fact
that there are at least 405
convicts on death row await-
ing a final ratification. But an
alarming rise in child abuse,
rapes, murders and drug
trafficking since the 25-year
war against Tamil Tiger sepa-
ratists ended in 2009 has
prompted some lawyers and
politicians to push for the
death penalty to be rein-
troduced. (Reuters)
sunday
magazino
itl|tJlitJl |
FAhS 0F ShERL0CK h0LMES C0uL0 S00h
FLAY ThE LE0Eh0ARY 0ETECTvE
ThEMSELvES AS A h0LMES ThEME FARK S
REF0RTE0LY SET T0 0FEh hEAR ThE F0RMER
h0ME 0F AuTh0R SR ARThuR C0hAh 00YLE
H
e enthralled Victorian
England with his unrivalled
skill at cracking cases, based
on astute logical reasoning
and grasp of forensic sci-
ence, not to mention a mastery of dis-
guises and encyclopedic knowledge of
the criminal underclass.
But this detective was not Sherlock
Holmes but a real life investigator,
Jerome Caminada (in pic), who, new
research suggests, helped inspire Sir
Arthur Conan Doyles celebrated hero.
A biography of Caminada out this
month reveals a series of striking similar-
ities between him and the fictional char-
acter, in terms of their unorthodox
methods and character. It also establishes
strong echoes between the real detectives
cases and plot lines used by Doyle.
The author, Angela Buckley, has even
established that Caminadas casework
involved tackling an alluring and talent-
ed criminal, similar to Irene Adler, and
that the detective even had a Moriarty-
like nemesis who plagued him over the
course of several cases until a final, dra-
matic confrontation. Mrs Buckley said:
Caminada became a national figure at
just the time that Sherlock Holmes was
being created. There are so many paral-
lels that it is clear Doyle was using parts
of this real character for his.
The son of an Italian father and Irish
mother, Caminada was based in
Manchester, but was involved in cases
which took him across the country, and
he enjoyed a nationwide profile in the
press, where accounts of his exploits were
widely reported.
Most of his career was spent with
Manchester City Police Force although
he later operated, like Holmes, as a con-
sulting detective.
He emerged to prominence in the
mid 1880s, shortly before Sherlock
Holmes made his debut in A Study in
Scarlet and parallels soon emerged
between the two.
As the fictional character relied on a
network of underworld contacts the
Baker Street Irregulars so Caminada
was known for his extensive web of
informers, whom he would often meet in
the back pew of a church.
These characters helped him build
up an encyclopedic knowledge of the
criminal fraternity, among whom he
would often move in disguise another
tactic in common with Holmes, who is
played, in his most recent reincarnation,
by Benedict Cumberbatch,
Like his fictional counterpart,
Caminada was particularly noted for his
tendency to prowl the streets of the
roughest neighbourhoods alone at night,
fearlessly intervening in any crime he
encountered.
His skill with disguises was so
renowned that on one occasion, while
tracking a group of thieves at the
Grand National dressed as a labourer,
his own chief constable was unable to
recognise him.
Other disguises included as drunken
down and outs, as well as working class
roles. However, he also posed as white
collar professionals, once while bringing
a bogus doctor to justice.
Dubbed the terror to evil doers
and, later the Garibaldi of Detectives,
he was reputed to be able to spot a thief
by the way he walked apparently as a
result of visits he undertook to prisons,
to watch inmates walking around the
yard to familiarise himself with their
appearance and gait.
Over the course of his career, he was
reportedly responsible for the imprison-
ment of 1,225 criminals. His most
famous case and perhaps the one
which most closely resembles a Holmes
story was the apparently baffling
Mystery of the Four-Wheeled Cab.
Two men had taken a horse drawn
cab. On the journey, one leapt out and
the other was found dying inside.
There was no obvious cause of death
and few obvious clues to go on, but
through a series of deductions of which
Holmes himself would be proud,
Caminada eventually identified the cul-
prit as Charles Parton, who had drugged
the other man before getting into the cab,
in an attempt to rob him.
Another notable case involved him
playing a prominent role in the nation-
wide hunt for Fenian terrorists, who were
responsible for a series of explosions
around the country.
Mrs Buckley, a family historian and
trustee of the Society of Genealogists,
identifies Caminadas Moriaty figure
as Bob Horridge, a violent, intelligent
career criminal, with whom he had a
20-year feud, which began when
Caminada arrested him for stealing a
watch, landing him with a sentence of
seven years penal servitude because of
his previous convictions.
This harsh sentence for a relatively
small crime angered Horridge so much
that, as he was sent down, he swore
revenge on the detective.
On his release, Horridges criminal
enterprises grew in size and scope, but he
was usually able to stay one step ahead of
the authorities, often effecting dramatic
escapes.
His spree finally ended after he shot
two police officers. Caminada tracked
him to Liverpool where the detective,
disguised once more, eventually appre-
hended him, after pulling out his
revolver a fraction faster than the crim-
inal. Horridge was convicted of
attempted murder and sentenced to life
imprisonment.
Caminadas Irene Adler was Alicia
Ormonde, an apparently well-educated
woman with an aristocratic background
and expensive tastes, who was actually a
consummate forger and experienced
crook who was wanted across the coun-
try for a string of frauds and thefts.
Caminada tracked her down and
arrested her, but in an echo of
Holmess fascination with Adler the
detective apparently became captivated
by her.
The case took place in 1890, a year
before Adler appeared in A Scandal in
Bohemia.
Caminada who published his
memoirs on retiring died in 1914, the
year the last Holmes book was set.
Other individuals have previously
been put forward as the basis for
Holmes, who first appeared in publica-
tion in 1887 and featured in four novels
and 56 short stories.
Doyle himself said he had taken
inspiration from Dr Joseph Bell, a sur-
geon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh
for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk.
Like Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing
large conclusions from the smallest
observations. Sir Henry Littlejohn, a for-
mer police surgeon, is also cited as an
inspiration for the detective.
However, Mrs Buckley, whose book
is called The Real Sherlock Holmes,
believes that Caminada was used to give
Holmes a better grounding in actual
casework among the criminal fraternity,
inspinspiring his detecting styles.
l| +il] ll|+p|
CULTURE LANE
A
lmost 90 years after JRR
Tolkien translated the 11th-
century poem Beowulf, The
Lord of the Rings author s version of
the epic story is to be published for
the first time in an edition which his
son Christopher Tolkien says sees
his father enter(ing) into the imag-
ined past of the heroes. Telling of
how the Geatish prince Beowulf
comes to the aid of Danish king
Hrogar, slaying the monster
Grendel and his mother before
spoiler alertbeing mortally
wounded by a dragon years later,
Beowulf is is the longest epic poem
in Old English, and is dated to the
early 11th century. It survives in a
single manuscript, housed at the
British Library, and has inspired
countless retellings of the myth
recently and famously by the late
Seamus Heaney, whose translation
won him the Whitbread book of year
award in 1999. Tolkien himself
called the story laden with history,
leading back into l the dark heathen
ages beyond the memory of song,
but not beyond the reach of imagi-
nation, saying that the whole thing
is sombre, tragic, sinister, curiously
real. Although the author completed
his own translation in 1926, he
seems never to have considered its
publication, said Christopher
Tolkien today, announcing the
Tolkien estate s new deal with
HarperCollins to publish Beowulf: A
Translation and Commentary on 22
May. The book, edited by
Christopher Tolkien, will also
include the series of lectures Tolkien
gave at Oxford about the poem in
the 1930s as well as the authors
marvellous tale Sellic Spell said.
M
ultiple movies set in the Game
of Thrones universe could be
coming to the big screen, cre-
ator George RR Martin has revealed.
Speaking at the New York premiere of
season four of the popular fantasy TV
epic, author Martin said the series
might need the bigger budgets provided
to film-makers for its grand finale. He
also hinted at the possibility of movies
based on the Tales of Dunk and Egg, a
trilogy of spin-off novellas set 90 years
before the events on Game of Thrones in
the mythical land of Westeros.
It all depends on how long the main
series runs, Martin told The Hollywood
Reporter. Do we run for seven years?
Do we run for eight? Do we run for 10?
The books get bigger and bigger (in
scope). It might need a feature to tie
things up, something with a feature
budget, like $100 million for two hours.
Those dragons get real big, you know.
Dunk and Eggs adventures, which cen-
tre on a lowly-born knight and a squire
of aristocratic extraction who travels
with him, might be perfect for a series
of standalone movies, Martin suggested.
They could be the basis for (a film),
said the author. I have written these
three stories, and I have about a dozen
more. Wisdom suggests the Dunk and
Egg films might make it to the big
screen first.
T
he team behind the biblical
epic Noah may have been
denied their private meeting
with the Pope, but a delegation from
the film including director
Darren Aronofsky and actor Russell
Crowe managed to engineer an
encounter with Pope Francis by
attending the open-to-all General
Audience, reports Variety. The
General Audience takes place in St
Peters Square, Vatican City at
10.30am, and they are public events
normally attended by thousands,
and which the Pope is driven around
in an open-topped vehicle. No
details were forthcoming as to if
Pope Francis spoke personally to the
Noah delegation. Meeting the Pope
has been seen by producing studio
Paramount as an ideal way to try to
counter the poor advance publicity
among religious communities. These
arose from test screenings that
apparently irritated US evangelical
Christians over its portrayal of
Noahs drunkenness, and sugges-
tions that conservative Muslim
countries could ban the film over
contravening rules on the depiction
of prophets. Meetings with high-
profile public figures have in the
past been seen as a way to boost a
films profile, and in its attempt to
protect the studios $160m invest-
ment, the film-makers may have
been inspired by the Philomena
teams meeting with Pope Francis in
February. However, unwillingness to
be involved in Hollywood marketing
campaigns has seen a wariness in
non-industry figures in hosting
screenings and meetings. The White
House recently announced it would
no longer accommodate official
screeningsincluding proposed
events for 12 Years a Slave and The
Butlerafter reportedly being
bombarded with requests from
film producers.
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O D D L Y E N O U G H
R
acism, the notion that
some races like the White
are inherently superior to
darker skinned and Jewish peo-
ple was acceptable in academic
discourse until the end of World
War II. Following the Nazi hor-
rors and the American Civil
Rights Movement race is now a
dirty word. This does not mean
that racial prejudices have been
eradicated the way polio has
been eradicated. Some writers,
even academics at supposedly
prestigious institutions continue
to produce works advancing
racist positions behind thinly
veiled sophistic arguments while
avoiding overtly racist terms.
The Origins of World
Mythologies is the latest addition
to this dubious genre by a singu-
lar scholar.
Its author, the German-
American linguist Michael
Witzel is better known as a cru-
sader in support of his pet
Aryan invasion (or migration)
myth than any contribution to
Sanskrit or Vedic literature, in
which, he has been shown to be
seriously deficient. (He claims to
have found dialectic changes in
the Rigveda around 1200 BC
soon after the non-existent
Aryan invasion.) More activist
than scholar, he took the lead in
a political campaign to have the
Aryan myth taught as history in
California schools. More recent-
ly, he was involved in the cam-
paign to stop Subramanian
Swamy from teaching econom-
ics at Harvard.
Witzels latest book looks at
world mythologies, going back
100,000 years when the first
anatomically modern humans
were identified in the African
Rift Valley. From there, he
claims to trace two tracks of
mythological development- the
Gondwanian and the Laurasian.
But this is just camouflage, for
his agenda is ultimately racist.
As Tok Thompson of the
University of Southern
California exposes, Witzels
book claims that these represent
two races in the world, distin-
guished by both myth and biol-
ogy.
As seen by Witzel, the
dark-skinned Gondwana are
characterised by lacks and
deficiencies and are labeled
primitive at a lower stage of
development while the noble
Laurasian myths are the only
true creation stories, and the
first complex story, which the
Gondwana never achieved. The
common African origin of
modern humans is acknowl-
edged, but the sting is in the tail:
the dark-skinned Gondwana
never progressed beyond their
primitive stage to catch up with
the noble Laurasians- their
superiors. But this is just cam-
ouflage, for his agenda is ulti-
mately racist. As Tok Thompson
of the University of Southern
California exposes (as do oth-
ers), Witzels book claims that
these represent two races in the
world, distinguished by both
myth and biology.
If supported, the notion of
the superior white and inferior
dark races will be scientifically
validated. This is the real agenda
of the book, but its science is
rubbish. it does not even rise to
the level of pseudo-science.
Mythology is just a camouflage
to push this prejudice that is
simply not worth spending time
over.
Except for the terminology,
its arguments are indistinguish-
able from those of Houston
Chamberlain, Arthur de
Gobineau and other race theo-
rists who provided justification
of the Nazi idea of superior
Aryan race. But their source was
European, more specifically
Teutonic German. They wor-
shipped Teutonic deities like
Thor and Odin, not Vedic ones
like Indra and Varuna. Their
Swastika was also the German
Hakenkreuz (hooked cross)
not the Indian svasti symbol. It
was seen in Germany for the
first time when General Walther
von Luttwitzs notorious Erhardt
Brigade marched into Berlin
from Lithuania in support of the
abortive Kapp Putsch of 1920.
It is unfortunate that Indian
historians have not made a criti-
cal study of this brand of
European myth-making as his-
tory that has distorted Indian
perceptions also. Worse, some
insist that Vedas and Sanskrit
are foreign impositions (like
Islam and Christianity). So we
have to turn to European
authors who have been much
more forthright like Nancy
Stepan and Stefan Arvidsson.
Recently, the Swedish schol-
ar Stefan Arvidsson raised the
question which in effect asked:
Did the end of the Nazi regime
put an end to race based theo-
ries in academia? An examina-
tion of several humanities
departments in the West sug-
gests otherwise. The latest exer-
cise in this attempt to prove the
superiority of one race over oth-
ers is Witzels book.
But why this attachment to
the idea of a superior race long
after science has demolished the
whole notion of race?
Arvidssons answer is: the goal
of these scholars is to show that
there existed a rich German
mythology that could success-
fully compete with classical
Judeo-Christian traditions. It is
hardly surprising that anti-
Semitism came to be tied up
with it. Now anti-Hinduism has
taken its place. It is rare to find
an Indologist in Western acad-
emia who is not also anti-
Hindu, sometimes obsessively
so like Witzel himself. (This
may have something to do with
the fact that Hindu scholars like
this reviewer have been at the
forefront in debunking their
theories.)
Arvidsson also observed:
There is something in the
nature of research (by these
scholars) that makes it especial-
ly prone to ideological abuse-
perhaps something related to
the fact that for the past two
centuries, the majority of schol-
ars who have done research
have considered themselves
descendants of this mythical
race.
It is also part of their identi-
ty. This race was not only myth-
ical, but superior to others- a
fondly held belief that has been
shattered by science and history.
This is what Witzel is really try-
ing to revive and make the offi-
cially sanctioned academic view.
His excursion into world
mythologies is just camouflage.
The real goal is to assert their
racial superiority.
l| |1iW| i + i||i|
+|J |i|u|i+|
R
ama Bijapurkar is a
thought-leader on market
strategy and the quirks of
the Indian consumer. She
makes every one of her
points with relentless,reinforced logic
and earnestness. This book, coming
five years after her well received We
are Like That Only on the same sub-
ject, charts the road ahead in the third
decade after the commencement of
liberal reforms in 1991.
And it, by implication, runs into
a wall. Our infrastructure remains a
major road-block. We have 51 per
cent more cars on the Mumbai roads
with hardly a road added in recent
memory, for example. So guiltless
consumption is hampered by an
abysmal delivery of public goods.
Not to mention the outgrown civic
infrastructure, the filth, the pollution,
the garbage, the faeces that continue
to cause stumbling blocks.
Electricity, water, transportation
etc. are lagging demand as well, in fact
that is more like putting it mildly.
Education and health services run by
the Government are of the poorest
quality still. To do well in India means
not really needing the Government for
living infrastructure.
Bijapurkar suggests that the
Indian consumer is varied within a
never-before world, and therefore a
standardised approach may not work
best. The point is made strenuously
and provokes the reader to wonder
about the truth of it. It is a sad fact
that uniqueness and individuality have
been assaulted, trampled on and
sometimes destroyed outright by the
invaders and conquerors over half a
millennium of history. That we have
such strong flavours of cultural diver-
sity left is a tribute to our resilience
and ability to survive.
Nevertheless, much has changed.
We are influenced, in recent centuries,
mainly by the hybridised, Central
Asian Mughal culture, and the British
that came after them. The British in
particular were determined to deni-
grate ancient Vedic and other culture
as part of their imperialist ethos. Most
British colonials painted it out to be
obscurantist, pagan mumbo jumbo,
and thought it their Christian duty to
supplant it with their ideas and their
language. Since these were ideals
developed by the Enlightenment and
the Renaissance, it didnt do us much
harm, particularly in the context of an
English speaking globalisation today.
This modern education worked for us
to a remarkable extent and eventually
backfired on the Raj because the same
liberal and egalitarian principles bred
into the Independence movement.
Bijapurkar however has not writ-
ten this book in the context of the last
five or seven hundred years. She is
analysing the state of play in the Indian
consumer preferences at the start of
the third decade since liberalisation
and the choices it has thrown up.
We are, she thinks, at the begin-
ning of our consumption boom as
(Gross Domestic Product) GDP levels
grow, and the Indian economy is
poised to become $3 trillion worth
and more. The consequentdiscre-
tionary spend, the impact on choices
and mobility, and the quality of life
will undeniably be like never-before.
She advocates the creation of
niche differentiated brands arguing
that a small percentage of a large
number is large and niches can be
quite big. She also points out that
India will be a $3 trillion economy by
2021. It will then be one of the top five
consumer markets in the world. She
says matching the quality of basic liv-
ing, with the quality of consumer
goods people have is one of the biggest
needs and opportunities in Indias
consumption story of the future. But
at the same time, the quality of basic
living is code for infrastructure. It is
an urgent prerequisite to prevent a
vital mismatch. Meanwhile, Bijapurkar
is crusading here for a rethinking of
classifications of the volume Indian
population into a more sophisticated
matrix than middle class and other.
So better living amenities will not
only spur the GDP but also greater
sophistication in demand. It is not as if
some amenities have not penetrated
into the hinterland along with decent
brands of (Fast-moving Consuming
Goods) FMCG goods, but the density
is less. The influence of satellite televi-
sion and the advertisements it carries
has had an immense impact on
aspirations, brand recall, demand
amongst rich and poor, rural and
urban people alike.
In a never-before way, says
Bijapurkar, India is urbanising around
its small towns and villages demon-
strating urban- buying patterns and
preferences. And census towns are
becoming unofficially urbanised in
addition to the planned efforts.
The key thing for foreign mar-
keters to do is adapt to a high volume
low margin market selling many of the
same aspirational products they sell in
developed markets for lower volumes
and higher margins.
This takes a lot of relearning and
acceptance, because attempts to palm
off inferior branded product on a
exclusively for the Indian market
basis usually meets with stern rejec-
tion by the quality hungry population.
Those, like Mercedes, who began
by launching discontinued old models
in India as appropriate to our road
conditions, promptly lost their place to
first BMW, and then Audi. We may be
Indian but we are not stupid.
sunday
magazino
l|s i
ChL0REh'S LAuREATE MAL0RE BLACKMAh
RECEhTLY T0L0 T| 6LAFLIA| ThAT A L0vE 0F
B00KS "S 0hE 0F ThE 0REATEST 0FTS ThAT CAh BE
FASSE0 00wh T0 0uR ChL0REh", BuT ThAT "SA0LY
T00 MAhY ARE MSSh0 0uT"
Now Dolhi, Maroh 23, 2014
O
nce upon a time, there lived a little boy
in Jammus rugged terrain beside the
Tawi River. Often, at dusk, the strains
of melodies sung by the Dogri shep-
herds would waft across to him. The
lilting tunes stirred a strange yearning in his heart;
the romance of the distant village folks gripped his
imagination. He listened to the symphonies broad-
cast on the radio and grew his interest in different
genres of music. Born to a musician father, he
almost naturally began practising as a vocalist.
Alongside, he was happy playing the tabla and soon
achieved such a prowess that, since the age of eight,
he started accompanying well-known artistes at the
local radio-station that included musicians of the
calibre of Ustad Nisar Hussain Khan, Ustad Abdul
Halid Jaffer Khan, Begum Akhtar and so on, apart
from playing the tabla in a jugalbandi between Pt.
Ravi Shankar and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.
His father brought a complex instrument one
day for his bemused son. Called santoor and con-
taining exactly a hundred strings (and, therefore,
linked with the shata-tantri veena mentioned in the
scriptures), the instrument had been handed down
the generations of folk singers of sufiana kalamfrom
the Kashmir valley as an accompaniment, although
occasionally it was also played solo. The instrument
was to be mounted on a wooden platform that cre-
ated a lot of resonance. The santoor had no ancient
peers. It was neither tata (string instruments),
plucked by fingers like the sarod or sitar; nor susira
(wind instruments) like the flute or shehnai; nor
avanaddha (percussion instruments) covered with
skin like the tabla or mridangam; nor ghana (brass
instruments) like cymbals. It was played with kalam
(mallets) striking the strings, untouched by fingers
and its only counterpart was jal-tarang. The musi-
cian-father had dreamt of extracting classical sap
from the folksy santoor and now ordained his 13
year old offspring to switch from tabla-playing (and
vocal singing) to the santoor.
But, for Shiv Kumar Sharma, to attain the
stature of a maestrobringing the santoor as a
whole-heartedly accepted solo instrument into the
classical music arena needed enormous toil. First
of all, Shivji, as he is universally called, got rid of the
frontal wooden-seat of the santoor and thereby
eliminated the disturbing resonance. Instead, he
placed the instru-
ment on his lap.
Second, he reduced
the total number of
strings from 100 to
91 and used 31
bridges instead of
the traditional 25.
Thus, the modified
santoor was able to
get three clear
octaves and chro-
matic tuning. Third,
he developed a con-
vention of holding
the two mallets
between the trigger
and the middle fin-
gers, as any other way of holding the kalamwould
interfere with the instruments desired tonal quality.
Fourth, since the mallet-strokes were not suitable to
producing meend (glissando or glides) and gamak
(staccato combination of notes), he slid mallets deli-
cately on the strings so that meend or gamak could
be created without touching the strings with his fin-
gers. Finally, since the santoor had no history of
classical music, he composed gats (fixed composi-
tions) of extraordinary beauty: with a melodic and
rhythmic blend.
In this book, the details from Shivjis checkered
career come out as a fascinating revelation. Out of
its three segments, the editors own long-drawn
interview of the master is quite penetrating. The
second piece by Vijay Kichlu, the main force behind
the ITCs redoubtable Sangeet Research Academy in
Kolkata, with his brother Ravi Kichlu, is knowledge-
able for a professional assessment of Shivji, although
its tone of occasional defence of the limitations of
either the musician or of his chosen instrument
seems avoidable. Similarly, in this well-edited and
lavishly-illustrated book, the string of adulatory cer-
tificates from the cognoscenteboth from the
music and the celluloid worldwould appear to be
an unnecessary addition.
Among two significant sidelights, the comment
that Shivjis ragdari (classical composition) is
immaculate and authentic is particularly interesting.
Keeping in view the santoors inherent limitation in
meend and gamak, Shivjis repertoire of ragas in
public has been 25 to 30. Even the choice of ragas of
Bhimsen Joshi has been just 20 or so in public per-
formance. Also, while all the other string, wind, per-
cussion and brass instruments are known in concert
platforms and Bollywood, this hasnt been the case
for the santoor. As the lone crusader, he has been
carrying his cross in both these worlds as a valiant
knight-errant and, in this regard, Manek
Premchands account, Parallel Journey: Composing
for Cinema, makes for the most illuminating read-
ing, offering valuable insight on Shivjis pioneering
work in the filmdom.
l| l+l u|
|u|J|J ||i|
Much has been written
about Mahatma Gandhi and
Martin Luther King Jr, the
social and political origins of
their thoughts have never
been compared. Bidyut
Chakrabarty undergoes the
task.
This book explores the
journeys of 10 young
entrepreneurs, most of
whom started from scratch
and created extraordinary
businesses. They include
Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Deep
Kalra, Ashish Dhawan etc.
MAVERCK MNDS
Anubha Singhania
Bestsellers18, C399
CONFLUENCE OF
THOUGHT
Bidyut Chakrabarty
Oxford University Press, C595
Renowned obstrecian and
gynaecologist Rishma
Dhillon Pai gives a lowdown
on major health issues that
plague us in the 40s; she
offers advice, precautions,
solutions and tips to look
healthy and younger.
Human society is
progressing like never
before. But so is the moral
degradation of its youth.
Rishabh is one such case.
Only one thing redeems
him~his pure and
unadulterated love for Aarti.
UNDESRABLE
Aman
Zorba Publishers, C195
FT AT 40
Rishma Dhillon Pai
Random House, C299
N E W A R R V A L S
This book describes Shiv Kumar
Sharma's reconfiguration of the
santoor to supreme musical
eminence, says Utpal K Banerjee
The aulhor oinls oul wilh relenlless, reinorced logic and earneslness, lhe markel slralegies
as well as lhe quirks o lhe ndian consumer in lhis book, says 0AuTAM MuKhERJEE
Recycleo racism in a new lottle
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0xf0r4 0aIversIty Fress,
F8I0F 80I MF8II08F0
IF M8 & I8 M08I0
F4. Iaa F0rI
8Iy0I 800ks
C1Z50 The book lries lo revive discrediled race lheories in lhe name o comaring mylhologies, says h.S. Rajaram
8FF88FF08F
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C699
You mighl have lo juggle raclical or malerial
mallers or a while, bul il's lruly divine lighl al
lhe end o lhe lunnel. You're eeling vulnerable
al work. Those insecurilies are based urely on
asl exeriences. l's nol worlh lelling lhe
negalives overcome your hoes, because soon
you'll aclually be celebraling a dislincl viclory in
your career. This could be lhe beginning o
osilive evenls. As you come oul o a eriod o
hard work and slrain which has aligued you,
wilh jusl a lillle bil o urlher eorl, lhal ralher
seciic hoe you harbour around inances will
come lrue. This is a deslinygoverned silualion.
The viclory we soke o in your seclor o career
will be lhe osilive end o a hase o dislress.
Iurky number 1, G
Iurky roIour Fink
Iurky day Salurday
8IF8 March 21-April 20
There's money around you lhis week Taurus,
and lhis is very aealing lo our grand Bull. l
also lends lo show lhe Taurean hearl lo know
lhal malerial securily is slable, so lhal lhe hearl
is more oen and loving. There's lravel here or
you loo. For some il will be a shorl journey in
order lo lie u inancial issues. For olhers il's
lravel urely or lhe leasure. Those you love
will also gain rom your love and luck. There will
be a conneclion lo oreign laces or eole in
lhe healing rocess over career evenls in your
lie. An avenue o execled income will need lo
be addressed. There's a slrong conneclion wilh
arlnershis here and il's all osilive. There will
be celebralions beore lhe week is oul.
Iurky number 8, 8
Iurky roIour Furle
Iurky day Monday
I0808 April 21-May 21
Regardless o recenl reason lo celebrale, you
are eeling insecure and sensilive. 0o you
wonder i you're aclually u or lhe job you've
worked lo win? well, you are u lo lhe mark.
This lime involves big change in lhe nalure o
relalionshis around you and lhis will lead lo
your grealer good. You will slill have lo ballle
oosilion, mosl likely wilhin your emolional
lie. This ballle you will win, bul lhis win will
iniliale relalional changes. ullimalely, viclory is
yours on many levels. You need lo ask advice
rom a roessional in inancial managemenl.
when you accel lhe loss o somelhing dear lo
you, il's lhen lhal you will gain on a inancial
level beyond your hoes and dreams.
Iurky number 2, O
Iurky roIour Blue
Iurky day Thursday
6FMI8I May 22-June 21
More money lhan you execled will come your
way. Financial slrenglh will enhance your
emolional slrenglh, assisling you in making
lhe beller decisions. Fasl sorrows concerning
your career will be resolved, acceling a
sacriice o some sorl. Your crealive energy
will low again and you'll ind arlnershis on
oer. A new avenue o sludy will rove lo be
valuable. Aler a eriod o inancial reslriclion
and dislress, we see you reaching a slage o
roserily and conlenlmenl. You will be able
lo sel u new areas o olenlial income which
will lourish in lime. Travel may be a useul.
Take whalever oorlunily you gel lo sludy
wilh exerls in your ield.
Iurky number 2, 8
Iurky roIour Silver
Iurky day Sunday
080F8 June 22-July 22
Recenl evenls involve you in carrying a heavier
burden o labour lhan you'd have chosen, bul il
leads lo grealer roserily and conlenlmenl.
Travel, or a move, is in lhe cards around lhis
lime. Remember lhal whal you're wishing or
where inances are concerned has been seen lo
be realised. n sile o sacriicing an unalalable
source o income, you'll ind lhal you survive
very well. Your ocus lhis week, is aboul being
sirilually mindul whilsl in lhe whirlwind o
evenls, allhough you'll be hysically ralher busy.
Look or signs and synchronisalions around you
wilh your sirilual eye and you'll be guided al
each junclure loward lhal grealer good which is
oening or you.
Iurky number 8, 7
Iurky roIour Black
Iurky day Salurday
I860 Aug 24-Sept 23
unexecled money comes your way and lhis
makes a brighl dierence lo your emolional
slale. Your relalionshis undergo a wonderul
regeneralion loo. You'll be celebraling wilh
loved ones. l would be a good lime lo
conlemlale how your emolional slabilily is lied
lo your assumlions and lo disengage wilh
whal doesn'l serve you. This week will see your
career on an uward siral. A conneclion wilh
oreign shores or a erson wilh slrong oreign
conneclions will be inslrumenlal in your career.
You'll use your incisive and crealive mind lo
maximise advancemenl. Lelling go o old
alliludes and assumlions will bring you
emolional lranquillily.
Iurky number 8, G
Iurky roIour 0reen
Iurky day Tuesday
lI88 Sept 24-Oct 23
Love comes your way and lhal uls you on a alh
which will change your lieslyle quile dramalically.
You'll ind yoursel working hard lo amass much
money, in order lo ollow your hoes and your
hearl. You'll be relly much aware lhal you're
carrying a grealer workload lhan whal is air.
Aroach colleagues and ask lhem lo lake on a
air share o lhe load. Ralher lhan wailing lill you
eel resenlul. This will bring aboul a renewal and
regeneralion in lhe work arena. Bul you will also
have enough money lel lo seed new lans or
allaining sleady income. Your endeavours will
succeed. l's lhe ride and conidence over money
you direclly earn lhal brings you much more lhan
jusl, well, lhe money.
Iurky number 1, G
Iurky roIour Feach
Iurky day Thursday
8008FI0 Oct 24-Nov 22
The hand o desliny governs evenls lhis week
and lhis will bring you emolional
regeneralion. wilh lhe hel o olhers you will
exerience a healing o lhe hearl. There are
eole rom o your shores involved here.
Those lroubles and selbacks lhal maniesl in
your career are lemorary. Your hearlell
hoes are soon lo be realised. Your canny
managemenl will serve you well. you have
real eslale issues, lhey will unold lo your
salisaclion lhis week. The rocess o lelling
go will hel you walk away rom somelhing
(or someone) lhal has held you emolionally
calive. Knowing lhe lrulh is whal will sel
you ree.
Iurky number 1, 4
Iurky roIour Red
Iurky day Friday
008I08 Jan 21-Feb 19
You've had lo make a big decision recenlly
which has lel you eeling very sensilive and
vulnerable. You've losl ailh and assion over
a onceimorlanl area o your lie. The good
news is lhal your amily lie will imrove
immeasurably. Asecls o your career have
losl lheir aeal lo you. This all will soon lil,
as divine juslice uls you inlo a work osilion
lhal lruly ascinales you, healing all ennui.
You'll be laking a mighly chance where
income is concerned. There's neilher greal
gain nor loss as a resull o lhis, bul il will ree
you o anxielies over inancial rovidence.
This release o negalive energy allows or new
crealive and inluilive energies lo lourish.
Iurky number 8, 8
Iurky roIour Shades o blue
Iurky day Sunday
FI80F8 Feb 20-March 20
There will be an allainmenl o grealer delh in a
secial relalionshi. This could well mean a
marriage or engagemenl. For olhers, you'll
simly be celebraling deeer commilmenl lo a
loved one. well, lhere's cerlainly money around
your career lhis week. Travel comes u in
conneclion wilh work, as well as laking a chance
wilh lhe unknown. l will lead lo roserily and
conlenlmenl. You will be wise lo aroach an
exerl in lhe inancial ield in order lo maximise
your inancial advancemenl. You'll ind lhal you
have lhe lime lo connecl more slrongly wilh
nalure. Thal same wisdom will lead you lo
organise your inances lo grealer joy and
malerial securily.
Iurky number 4, 7
Iurky roIour Yellow
Iurky day Thursday
0F8I0088 Dec 24-Jan 20
As you underlake some new aclivilies, lhere will
be a sudden, unexecled backlash rom someone
near lo you. nsecurily or jealousy would be al
lhe rool o il, bul you musl sland slrong and
ollow lhrough wilh your endeavours, regardless
o lhe disrulion. hel rom olhers will bring you
lhrough lo slabilily and success. 0alher your
energies and ideas by giving yoursel eace
lhrough whalever means allracl you. when lhe
lime is righl, you'll have lo ballle or your ideas
and you will win. l's your incisive lanning lhal
brings your inancial silualion lo growlh and
develomenl. There will be a lime when you eel
vulnerable, bul lhis is all leading loward a
delighlul slale o emolional joy and lranquilily.
Iurky number 4, O
Iurky roIour 0range
Iurky day Salurday
lF0 July 23-August 23
For many o you, il's lime lo lel go o a
negalive relalionshi. For olhers, il's lime lo
slale your boundaries and have lhem
resecled. You're going lo emerge inlo a lace
o conlenlmenl and sovereignly over lhe sel.
There is money involved here, bul il could
also come oul o lhe blue. This boon will
allow you lo lake lime oul or yoursel and
exlore wider work hori/ons. There are also
lhose who would like lo relieve you o lhal
moneyrelaled advanlage. As you allain inner
harmony lhis week, il would be wise lo
aroach a roessional in bolh lhe ield o
inancial managemenl and in ersonal
counselling.
Iurky number 8, 5
Iurky roIour Baby ink
Iurky day Tuesday
86III8I08 Nov 23-Dec 23
YOURWEEKAHEAD
MA0hu K0TYA
O
urs is a collective existence
set into an inter-dependent
framework which calls for
complimenting and supplementing
the efforts of each other for our
essential sustenance and growth.
In such an interwoven mechanism,
evidently every individual act,
good or bad, would affect all and
sundry one way or the other.
Added to that is the fact that each
individual is born unique, all com-
ing up with individual specific
mental propensities, often at odds
with each other to make out a dis-
parate world. And so the going
cannot be easy. And yet, we have to
move together overriding all indi-
vidual limitations to ensure a
smooth run of life.
Acknowledging this very
human limitation, the learned
masters of yore emphasised the
need to consecrate every individual
mind right at the childhood stage.
Accordingly, every child was given
a lesson in the concept of Unity in
diversity, that holds the key to the
making and essential sustenance of
our dynamic existence. It thus got
fed into every mind that collective
wellbeing was an essential prereq-
uisite for individual growth and
happiness. With such an orienta-
tion of mind, one would not forget
about ones collective obligations
while attending to individual aspi-
rations.
Equal emphasis was given on
nurturing indwelling potential of
each being so as to come out with
their individual best. Consequently,
not simply individual aspirations
were well served, but there was also
the collective worth and wellbeing.
As a part of the process, inherent
infirmities of each individual were
observed minutely and accordingly
guided to make necessary correc-
tion. The society was thus con-
scious about laying the ground for
harmonious co-existence. And the
training began in the family itself
where one was trained to love and
respect each other, be appreciative
of others sensitivities, and put in
ones own share towards collective
welfare and growth.
All these societal concerns
about our collective obligations
seem to have taken a back seat
since the advent of consumerism
overtaking our drives. First, the
concept of a joint family has given
way to the nuclear family leaving
no scope for a child to have any
exposure to sharing with their peer
groups. Second, in the aspirational
competitive world as on date, each
child is being brought up in a way
that enables him or her to prove
true to the callings of his or her
individual materialistic aspirations
alone. Consequently, day-by-day,
we are turning more and more
individualistic and selfish aspiring
to live on ones own exclusive
terms. We remain particular about
claiming our individual rights, but
would not care for our collective
obligations. In fact, we have
become insensitive to others con-
cerns and sensibilities. Naturally,
when each one begins conducting
in a demanding mode, chaos with-
in the family and society becomes
a natural corollary.
A case in point is that of a lady
who has neither been at peace with
herself nor would allow it to others
in the family. Mindlessly, she
keeps throwing tantrums every
now and then to the discomfort of
all others. The reason, plain and
simple, is that her inherent attitudi-
nal trends were not addressed in
time, assuming that as she grows,
she may learn to behave. Let us
look at her astrological markers
pointing to her inherent mental
traits.
The Sun occupying her
Taurus lagna, a fixed and earthy
sign, read together with mind-sig-
nifier Moon posited in the sign
Gemini, points to a stubborn,
dominant character who wishes
to live on ones own exclusive
terms. The Sun further placed
adverse to debilitated Mars,
Venus, and Neptune, accounts for
her haughty, irritable and quarrel-
some nature, having volatile emo-
tionality. It also makes her an
escapist who lives in her own
dream world. And if anything
happens contrary to her whims
and fancies, she gets so exercised
and emotionally surcharged that
she loses self-control. Her sense of
reasons and judgment then gets
clouded as would Mercury ill-dis-
posed off to mischievous Neptune
imply. What further compounds
her problem is debilitated Mars
locking horns with Neptune. That
points to evidence of inferiority
complex, which, given a trigger
brings to fore her rage that lies
within in seed form. Moon posit-
ed opposite its planet of detri-
ment Saturn points to her nega-
tive mindset, which brings in the
tendency to habitually find fault
with others. Over a period of
time, her habit-tendencies have
got so firmed up in her psyche
that eventually she has turned
schizophrenic calling for immedi-
ate medical attention. Had her
inherent tendencies not been
ignored, she would have been
spared of her suffering and also
those of her kith and kin.
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Addrossing inirmitios
sunday
magazino
lJ|l \
whAT Y0u 0ET BY AChEvh0 Y0uR
00ALS S h0T AS MF0RTAhT AS
whAT Y0u BEC0ME BY AChEvh0
Y0uR 00ALS.
- hEhRY 0Av0 Th0REAu
Now Dolhi, Maroh 23, 2014
We have become insensitive
to others' concerns and
sensibilities. Naturally, when
each one begins conducting
in a demanding mode, chaos
within the family and society
becomes a natural corollary.