In through Rajiv, out through Rahul!

Raju Korti

In my more than three decades in Journalism, I happened to bump into the suave and urbane Jayanthi Natarajan only once when she was Minister of State for Coal, Civil Aviation and Parliamentary Affairs in 1997. Then, my interaction with her was mostly from the sidelines as a bystander at a press conference.
In the light of the new soap opera being played out on the Congress turf, I can now relate to a crucial but un-noticed link that instantly makes you realize there is something more than amiss in her claim that she was "forced to blow up Modi snoopgate" by a party that was thriving on "lies and suffocation".
Now Jayanthi is a lawyer by profession and politician by choice. So there is every reason why her frustrated outbursts on the party she willingly prospered in, should be taken more than on face value. Jayanthi's wavering conscience had poked her similarly when she chose to break away from the Congress over the functioning of then prime minister P V Narasimha Rao. She had joined old guard GK Moopanar, of whom one heard mostly as an "Observer" visiting dissidence-hit Congress-ruled states to perform fire-fighting operations. The TMC in its new found hatred for the Congress had embraced the DMK.
Quite easily among the more articulate faces among the party's spokesmen, it is not clear when exactly Jayanthi realized that the party was back to its "lies and suffocation" mode. Since Sonia Gandhi was the one who found her to be intelligible enough to be the party spokesperson and Rahul was the one who had "vilified, humiliated and sidelined" her, it can be deduced that she was well aware that "lies and suffocation" were nothing new in a party where sycophancy and loyalty were the only merits.
There is nothing incredulous about Jayanthi's contention that there was too much interference during her tenure as Union Minister of State for Forests and Environment. Political meddling is routine at ministerial levels. What is incredible is for someone as feisty as Jayanthi Natarajan -- who stood up to the party's bosses and had replaced Jairam Ramesh -- should have endured it for so long. Her qualification as a lawyer and the craft inherited through political lineage are inconsistent with her submissive posturing during the time she was encumbered by the subterfuge in the party.
That Jayanthi has enough political wisdom to deflect Rahul's maneuver is evident the way she has portrayed the issue. With allegations of overruling the Forests Advisory Committee (FAC) and handing out big ticket contracts doing the rounds during her tenure, it is believed that the former minister would soon be confronting a probe. The party's damage-control machinery has, as usual, put up a ham-handed defense of the latest fiasco. “It should be clear to one and all that at whose instance she wrote the letter are the ones who coined the phrase Jayanthi Tax. It is also clear that the pressure exerted from the same people is the reason why she has written this letter now,” said Abhishek Singhvi, whose briefings are seldom taken seriously.
While theories will abound in the next few days, here is my summary observation of the whole episode: Jayanthi Natarajan has been a lawyer by profession and politician by choice. That she was "forced to blow up Modi's snoopgate" by a party that thrives on "lies and suffocation" is a stunning example of self-indictment.

My friend Obama!

Obama's sketch courtesy friend Bhagvan Das

Raju Korti
You stumble upon friends in the most unlikeliest of people and dubitable of situations. After grappling with an irritable medical condition for years, I have found one in my adversity. In few minutes of enlightenment I have concluded that under the circumstances my best and abiding friend is -- justifiably or unjustifiably -- the world's most powerful man.
Thanks to garrulous Media, I found the common chord that binds us two at the extreme ends of the spectrum. United States' first Afro-American President who dropped down on the Indian soil barely twenty-four hours back suffers from the same disorder that my fragile body has been enduring for some time now.
So it was with a first-hand feeling of natural trepidation and second-hand feeling of certified glee that I discovered Obama is discomforted by the same Acid Reflux that has made my battered body its second home.
It is not my case here to burden you with the usual drivel about the roller coaster relations between New Delhi and Washington or Obama's palpable interests in investing India or his country's geopolitical compulsions. Nor do I wish to underline the subservient predilections of the Indian government in dealing with a nation that never stops labeling itself as the greatest democracy in the world.
My immediate concern was the probable predicament on the American President while some of the choicest dishes were laid out for the consumption of his brittle digestive system. For those who do not know, Acid Reflux is a condition where the food gulped down has a nasty habit of navigating back to the throat, resulting in hyper acidity and a feeling of nausea.
I do not know whether Obama battled a feeling a bile or of a drooling saliva when his gastronomic preferences were so robustly challenged with a range of epicurean delights. Though not a word was uttered about Kashmir as hotbed of world terrorism, the Valley made its presence felt through Galauti Kebabs, Mustard Fish, Saunfia Fish Tikka, Chicken Korma, Roasted Leg of Lamb with only a semblance of western involvement in Broccoli and Walnut Soup.
In my new-found love for Obama I wondered how could the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with his self-proclaimed 70 mm vision lose the sight of the emphatic advisory that the American President would not touch anything that was even remotely spicy. Quite likely Modi forgot in his overenthusiasm to break the protocol and reach out to him right at the tarmac that a patently Gujarati menu would have served the august guest's revolting stomach better. As someone who has been braving Acid Reflux with more pills than food, I should have been the natural choice to decide the right menu for the American President.
Hugs and protocol smiles are not known to cure Acid Reflux. As first step towards restoring a balance between the American interests in the world and Indian interests that percolate to only immediate neighborhood of South, West and South-East Asia, I suggest a tummy-to-tummy meeting between Obama and me. It will, if nothing, help restore the digestive system of the US, and I dare say this on the basis that my Acid Reflux is far more senior than that of Obama. The Americans have already showed perceptible improvement with their Communist neighbor Cuba. I can bring down the American acidity to a manageable extent.
Modi just needs to give me one chance. Obama will be guaranteed go back with an ear to ear smile and will give me a warmer frontal hug than he did to Modi. Acidity brought us together. Sweetness will do us apart.

Havana Cigars for the Americans!

Raju Korti

A file grab of Late Fidel Castro in his younger days

After glaring at their feisty and stubborn Communist nation for fifty long years, the Americans have finally blinked. US-Cuba relations have remained frozen since the early 1960s when the former severed diplomatic relations and clamped a trade embargo after Cuba's revolution.
It will be a little infantile at this stage to describe this unfolding as a thawing phase. Cuban President Raul Castro -- who took over from big brother Fidel Castro -- has conceded nothing and has in fact predicated that Havana would not change its political system. At the moment there are no clear indications from Washington on the diplomatic handle it might employ in bringing the Cubans around but a status quoist Castro has kept his countrymen's feet firmly on the ground asserting that unless the key issue of economic embargo was addressed, there was nothing more to read in the development than some symbolism.
In a calibrated response, Castro straddled his couched cynicism with a word of praise for President Obama for his deviant step in attempting to reverse decades of hostilities between the two countries. By confirming that he would attend the summit of the Americas in Panama, he potentially paved the way for a face-to-face meeting with the US President -- a prospect unimaginable until a year ago.
Having experimented with Socialism better than China and Russia, Castro will not compromise on Socialist principles. "In the same way that we have never demanded that the United States change its political system, we will demand respect for ours," Castro stated, even as he patted himself on the back for standing up to the "long and difficult struggle" brought about by the economic sanctions.
As an inimical neighbor, who understands America better than Castro? Through decades, the Cubans have watched American foreign policy chameleon though contradictions and convenience. Seen through that prism, the Cubans are going to take a lot of convincing that Obama has gone beyond political rhetoric that "Washington's approach towards its neighbor was outdated."
The moves by the White House to review the designation of Cuba as state sponsor of terrorism and promise to initiate efforts to life 54-year old embargo cannot be entirely dismissed as expedient politics, although one can surmise what brings about this sudden change of heart. The US couldn't care less whether Cuba reverts to Capitalism from Socialism. One suspects, and not without reason, that this meltdown is the pre-eminent concern about Putin angling to revive Russia-Cuba friendship that would render the American embargo redundant. Back home, demographics do not favor the perpetuation of a policy that young Americans feel has outlived its utility. The striking irony is the prospect of the Russian-Cuban proximity raises the same specter of Cold War that Obama quoted in the context of domestic compulsions.
According to a US Census Bureau data, there are 1.8 million Cuban Americans living in US and over 80% of them are potential voters. Demography also matters for understanding the timing of such a move from the Cuban perspective. For example, Cuban leadership will soon get younger. The Castros are octogenarians and President Raúl Castro had declared that he would step down when his term ends in 2018. The Castros therefore needed a plan to hand power off to a new generation.
In any case the ball is in Obama's court. He is sure to meet with some stiff opposition from own Congressmen, some of whom are already threatening to block the normalization of ties thanks to the  unpleasant history that loom large especially the fact that Fidel Castro and his guerilla army defeated the US-backed Cuban government of Fulgencio Batista and then rubbed salt on the injury by nationalizing US business without compensation.
There are of course many factors at play in US-Cuba relations, but for both countries demographic exigencies have thrown open incentives for a historic correction.

Killed in a "Gentleman's Game"

Phil Hughes collapsing after being hit by Abott bouncer

Raju Korti
The death of promising Aussie cricketer Phil Hughes after being felled by a short-pitched delivery from Sean Abbot in a domestic match should make all people who claim to have a passion for this game -- touted as Gentleman's Game -- sit up and take notice of the needlessly fierce competition completely smothering the fun in the sport.
There is every reason to believe that Phil, just 25 and in contention for a Test recall for the series against Indians now in Down Under, has fallen not to a bouncer but to this vicious facet of a game which has degenerated with the obscene amount of money rampaged on cricketers for whom nationalism is only an offshoot of their flourishing bank balances.
Presumably, my refrain will find several specious arguments, one being bouncers are part of the game and are a perfectly licit and accepted weapon in the armory of a fast bowler. That contention, however is not without a semantic riposte in where does one draw the line in gamesmanship when it comes to competition.
Way back in 1962, I vividly recall how Nari Contractor was knocked down by a vicious bouncer from Charlie Griffith, considered by many, including West Indians themselves, as more dangerous than his counterpart Wesley Hall. Of course, the Indians were warned and Contractor couldn't escape his share of culpability of misjudging it and taking the blow bang on his head. Even as a child who was fixated on the game like most at that age do, I had joked that Griffith didn't have to bowl at that destructive speed to get the Indians out since the Indians were never comfortable playing the fast stuff anyway. Contractor survived an emergency surgery and lived to tell the tale of how a penitent Griffith shed copious tears by his side till the time he was in hospital. That remorse was never seen in action though as Griffith butchered the Indians like he was in an abattoir.
Fourteen years later in 1976, the Indian batsmen of the likes of Sunil Gavaskar, Mohinder Amarnath, Gundappa Vishwanath and Anshuman Gaekwad touring the same West Indies were not exactly lambs to slaughter. If anything, these names were reverentially mentioned as the best players of fast bowling. But Gavaskar recalls in his book how in that Kingston Test, speedsters like Michael Holding and Wayne Daniel were egged on a by primitive spectators to the call of "Kill him maan" and "Tear off his head maan". Even the rival skipper Clive Lloyd, clearly rattled by the Indian response, was believed to have asked his bowlers to aim at the Indians instead of the stumps. A brave Anshuman Gaekwad had actually bared his black-and-blue chest to show how manfully he had taken on all that marauding stuff. It was not a game, it was hostility and bloodshed to put it mildly.
It was so Calypso in character when a sports magazine had put Holding, Roberts, Garner  and Croft on its cover and had described them as Dogs of War. Croft was later thrown out after he threatened an umpire with a stump. He was deadly anyway.
If you thought that the game had turned cruelly competitive in the days of Holding, Roberts and Lillee, Thomson, please go back in time to the late thirties when Douglas Jardine gave a new euphemism to gamesmanship by coining the word "Bodyline." The underlying message was clear. When you couldn't get run machines like Bradman out, you always had the superior option of aiming at his body -- stumps be damned -- because that would get him out for the whole of the series.
Not everybody is a Roy Fredericks. As was the won't in those days, the 1975-76 series between mighty West Indians and equally mighty Aussies was preceded by a war of words and just how ferocious the game had become, got clear from the word go. In a bluster and bravado so peculiar to most fast bowlers, Thomson had claimed that he would smash Fredericks' skull with the very first delivery that would be the fastest bouncer. Fredericks, amused by that braggadocio, said he would dispatch it for a six come what may. Both kept their promises but the series which West Indies lost 5-1, showed barbarity was becoming the name of the game -- all in the name of intense competition.
If this way of testing a batsman's skill could be rationalized for Fredericks, how does one do it for a tailender like Ewen Chatfield who was almost killed by a short-pitched delivery from Peter Lever? It is an irony of sorts that the Kiwi fast bowler, a hopeless Number 11 batsman by his own admission, feels for Abbot and hopes the guilt doesn't weigh on his mind in future. Implicit in this apparent sportsman's spirit is the acceptance of a dangerous attitude that has crept into the game. Fast bowlers the world over seem to believe that with a batsman wearing a helmet, he has every license to aim at his head. Hughes was not a tailender and was wearing a protective gear. Gavaskar is often commended for having played the best of fast bowling without ever wearing a helmet, and rightly so, but the Hughes incident should make us believe that he was lucky to have gotten away without being harmed because players with even the best technique can falter at times and that one mistake could be fatal.
The move by Cricket Australia to organize counseling -- whatever that involves or means --for its players is a proverbial case of putting the cart before the horse. It also raises a tricky question whether players will (care to) remember the counseling in the heat of the moment and if they do so, whether it will inhibit them from playing with their inbred attitude. There will be arguments for and against. I am inclined to believe that self counseling is always the best and if the game is played like a sport, it retains its old world charm.
During that epoch-making series against West Indies skippered by Sir Garfield Sobers in 1971, Captain Ajit Wadekar had said that "good batsmen are never afraid of good bowlers." The question, rhetorical though, is how good is good enough.
                

To whom it may concern!

Pic representational

Raju Korti
For someone whose writing in recent times is born out of un-gainful unemployment, I can vouch for the fact that writing an "open letter" is the work of a super-unemployed mind. Utterly disengaged as I have been, it has never occurred to my idle senses to write one so far but being on the threshold of attaining the super-unemployed status (my own coinage, of course), I intend to do so soon. The targets of my affection or disaffection would not be the Obamas, Modis, Bhuttos or celebrity stars of the Sunny Leone kinds. They would be those who have the time, patience and the self-elevating mind to write "open letters."
There is a certain self-deceptive charm and accredited advantage about writing "open letters." They are read by all and sundry except those they are addressed to. The reason is not far to seek. The people at the receiving end of "open letters" don't live in the same world as lesser mortals do. So there is never any fear of reprisal, backlash or retaliation even if the piece goes viral on a social networking site. And the proverbial icing on the cake comes with the smug feeling that you wrote your piece of mind to a person in public domain.
My sudden interest in the issue stems out of the recent "open letters" written to Bilawal Bhutto who has understandably roused a section of super-patriotic Indians with his outburst that he would take all of Kashmir from India. He followed it up with a threat to hack the Facebook account of Mark Zuckerberg, no less. The second threat had me more worried since a threat to Facebook would mean a threat to my existence, or whatever silly little has remained of it since that is where I place my blog links.
My first brush with an "open letter" came thanks to literary critic William Hazlitt whose letter to his son was a chapter in school English. At the time, I didn't understand the head or tail of what he wrote, nor his provocation to write. All I could gather from the tone and tenor of that letter was the exaggerated sense of counseling in it that probably must have bounced off his son, presuming of course, he read it. Today, I must be almost as old as Hazlitt must have been then minus that highly embroidered and overstated wisdom.
Now that I am grappling with the temptation to shoot off "open letters" to all those who write them, I am also bracing up to be chewed out for the misdemeanor. Sample this first paragraph:

To All Open Letter Writers
First of all, a 'Hello'. I have never met you before, nor do I wish to bump into you in future, but I have been reading a lot of your "open letters" lately. I want you to know that I do understand, if not appreciate, why you write open letters and I sympathize with your motives. I'm saying that because all "open letters" begin with this false sense of intimacy and the bogus claim that the writer really wants the best for the person he or she is addressing.

This sample, if anything, will tell you that I can make a Chetan Bhagat look like an apprentice in blending speed and lack of substance. I am told all anonymous letters are despicable, but you just have to put some etiquette in them. They become "open letters."





    

From China with love

Pic courtesy pmindia.gov.in

Raju Korti
If there is one thing that you got to give it to the ruthlessly pushy Chinese, it is their clear perceptions in not mixing bilateral trade with security issues. So even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi carries forward his investment caravan by hosting the incumbent President Xi Jinping with Khaman Dhokla and Won Ton soup for the starters, there is a reasonable sense of optimism that the country's creaking infrastructure will get a much needed boost from this new-found engagement.
Naysayers will, of course, be quick to harp on China's past record in treachery as also its meager investments post-2000 but much water has flown under the bridge since the visits of President Jiang Zemin and President Hu Jintao where diplomacy had taken precedence over bilateral trade. One should not be surprised if Jinping has come with a baggage that aims at arresting the growing trade deficit against India. Modi actually deserves a pat for making it implicitly clear to Beijing that the only mutually beneficial option was trade investment rather than tariff concessions. While investment per se may not be a conduit for bringing down the trade deficit, it could help the country's manufacturing sector through imports from China.
I have few doubts that given his astute Gujarati business mind it is not beyond Modi's ken to put investment from Japan and China on a fast track mechanism while subtly impressing upon the Chinese leader the Gandhian ethos that flows off the tranquil Sabarmati.
To me, Modi's three summits with three of the world's most powerful leaders in Tokyo, New Delhi and Washington will provide some impetus to the dormant diplomacy in the Manmohan Singh's decade. Obviously, Modi is nursing a two-pronged approach. One, shoring up the economy to achieve an annual growth rate of 8% and two -- and also the more obvious -- that will see him firmly in the saddle. The investments from China, United States, Japan, Germany will be a concrete step in that direction but one needs to look beyond the apparent to realize that Modi's meetings with Xi and Barrack Obama within a fortnight's span have been smartly timed. If the feelers from Beijing are to be interpreted correctly, China is not investing in just India but also in the new Prime Minister by confabulating with him in the land of his roots.
Although both the countries have done well to keep contentious issues relating to the border and Tibet by the wayside, Modi will have some political balancing to do and his handling of the Xi and Obama visits are certain to come in for close scrutiny and comparison. Dealing with the Americans, I suspect, won't be as easier given the hiccups that accrue between the two countries besides Modi's battered ego in the wake of denial of a visa. Modi isn't a person who is likely to forget that kind of slight. But then it will also be a chastening experience of sorts for the American President to entertain a no-visa politician to a dinner-table-Prime Minister. Speaks volumes about what massive public mandate can do to the relationship between two countries. From all available indications, the past seems to have been buried and Modi might pass the US test with Washington acknowledging his innocence in the 2002 riots although there remains a sizeable number of critics who are not prepared to give him a clean chit.
Reports emanating from the American capital suggest that the Obama administration is all geared up to welcome Modi since the argument now is the denial of visa was more of an ethical issue than a political one. The winds have blown favorably with the Japanese and the Chinese. Xi, who also happens to be the General Secretary of the powerful Communist Party, is being accompanied by over 40 media persons. It is but some indication of the significance the Chinese attach to this visit when you take into account the state-controlled Media there.
There are friction points as well. Business back home is not going to take in kindly if the Prime Minister opens umbrella industries like retail and banking. That could open a Pandora's box that might injure some of the economic advantage that he seeks to garner. As for Amdavadis, they would not mind a few traffic restrictions as long as the China Development Bank offers loans at lower rates.
A point in passing. The business sense that I am trying to put forth over here is patently Gujarati. Modi happens to be incidental to that cause.

Morning sickness!

Raju Korti
I detect a voyeuristic streak in film journalists when they free-wheel their fertile imagination on whether an actress is in the family way. The latest to get caught in this speculative web is Rani Mukherji who is believed to be sporting a baby bump before or after her marriage with film-maker Aditya Chopra.
Pregnancy or the rumors about it are an integral part of most film stories. In the seventies you often saw the father informing the daughter of her pregnancy with the clichéd "Beti, tum ek bachche ki maa banne waali ho" and the daughter would look shocked beyond her wits because the motherhood was often the consequence of some misfired love affair. At the time, we thought it must be some miracle of Science that the father would know about his daughter's pregnancy while she herself did not. This inadvertent humor would be followed by a gut-wrenching song about her life of shame and ignominy ahead.
From Kajol to Shilpa Shetty and Aishwarya Rai to Rani, every actress has gone through this gestation period of chewing and conjecturing by the Media until the next round of intense guesstimates begin on what would be the probable name of the new arrival.
Shutterbugs, of course, have a field day trying to click the celebrity from different angles, trying to produce some photographic evidence of the pregnancy while the latter is supposed to hide it worse than a state-kept secret. Everyone partakes of this hypothesizing because its not their baby anyway.
Earlier, the celebrities would occasionally add grist to the rumour mills by making vague and ambiguous statements but now the Media does its own diagnosis. In Rani's case, the grapevine was fertilized by her request for help while climbing the stairs and her co-star Madhuri Dixit lending her a helping hand on the sets of Jhalak Dikhla Jaa.There is a strong reason to speculate (!) that Madhuri's gracious gesture was born out of similar predicament she went through in her years of pregnancy. I say years because the Media is known to spend a couple of years "expecting" the child and a year "confirming" the pregnancy before the new born actually descends on the scene. That's carrying the contemplation to its test-tube gestation!
Some embedded journalist also concluded that Rani arrived on the sets of the show late because she had an appointment with the doctor and she had a mild bout with Flu. So the next time a celebrity visits a doctor with Flu -- before or after marriage -- the signals are clear: The stork is about to visit.
Rani herself added to this pregnant pause by saying she "expects soon." When asked if she was looking to start a family, she said "that is why I and Aditya Chopra are married." That clarification -- unless it was a subtle barb -- makes sense in an age when even children understand the repercussions of a pregnancy before marriage but gossip mongers interpret it as her "grand confession." It absolves them from the charge of prying into her personal life.
A celebrity's pregnancy, real or purported, is an opportunity for the Media to "educate" us on the "afterglow and radiance" evidenced on her beautiful face. Wonder where all the feminists go into hiding when they read this; as "afterglow and radiance" are not known to have spared lesser mortals as well. I remember actress Jessica Simpson as saying that "People always say that pregnant women have a glow. And I say it’s because you’re sweating to death."
If you ask me, a woman doesn't get pregnant to give employment to doctors or media persons. Giving birth is an ecstatic jubilant experience not available to males. It is a woman's ultimate creative experience of a lifetime.