Let him sweep clean!

Sketch courtesy my DNA ex-colleague Bhagvan Das.

Raju Korti
Writing on political affairs, more so as someone from the mainstream media, always comes with its attendant risks. For one and willy nilly, you run the inevitable prospect of being labeled as a stooge of some party or carrying out propaganda for some leader. Given the scenario that obtains in the Media these days, that is not an entirely unfounded fear. So a disclaimer here would well be in order.
Let me summon all my professional integrity and say on oath that I have never carried the burden of a political affiliation. In my more than three-decade career I have been witness to enough murky political dealings to turn me into an irretrievable cynic. My revulsion for politics stems from my considered belief that expediency and convenience are two sides of the same political coin. When these become over-riding factors, honesty is the first casualty.
The precise reason why I am laboring over this sincere disclaimer is my friends -- for right or wrong reasons -- are sharply divided on their political credo. In fact, I suspect this political divide has also dented their personal relationships to an extent but that will not reflect in their exterior.
It is therefore with some trepidation that I am venturing to make some pertinent observations about this new phenomenon called Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) led by the feisty Arvind Kejriwal. It is not my case here as a political commentator but as a citizen who would like to -- in all fairness -- keep his irrevocable cynicism on the hold. At least until such time as AK and Co will hurtle me back into its throes with the kind of politics we all have become inured to.
From cracking IIT to UPSC and now the Delhi chief minister's office in one shot, AK managed to achieved too much in too little time. Its not as if the anti-corruption plank is new in India's electoral politics, but AK made it a part of national consciousness although he had a blow-hot-blow-cold relationship going with his self-proclaimed and battle-weary mentor Anna Hazare. The latter chose to keep away from politics while AK reconciled to the fact that a change in system could be brought about only if one became a part of it. But that is not germane to the points that I raise here.
I believe it was wise thinking on AK's part to take up the office after initial damned-if-we-do-damned-if-we-don't dithering. If the AAP refused to take charge, it would be criticized for running away from a responsibility. If they leaned on Congress, they would still be rapped on their knuckles for aligning the very corrupt they sought to dislodge. Thanks to a fractured mandate AK was put on the razor's edge. With BJP refusing to form the government, AK had a Hobson's choice. Neither AK nor Congress had the numbers to form a government on their own steam but AK shook hands with the Congress fully seized of the latter's penchant to pull down the governments they propped up in the past. "Aam aadmi ka haath Congress ke saath" was the derisive refrain. However, AK shrewdly calculated that in that eventuality the Congress would do itself more harm than it would do to the AAP although one  wonders if Congress is at all left with any reputation to damage it any further.
Well begun may be half done but AK has a tough road ahead. While he deserves all the concessions as a first timer, he also needs to rein the populism that he looks to succumb to in the euphoria that obtains in his favor. The Congress to a huge extent and the BJP to some have had their chance at governance. So let's not be outrightly dismissive of a party that has promised clean administration. In an era of coalition politics the ruling dispensation exerts only in doing a balancing act to keep its allies in good humor. So AK needs to be given some length of the rope before knives are out in the event of its failure. For AK's and people's sake, let's hope that prospect will not throw up.
My good projection of AK, however, comes with a dark lining. Ever since he took charge as Delhi's Chief Minister, AK seems to be in a tearing hurry to fulfill the promises his party has made in its manifesto. Howsoever he may try to rationalize that here lurks the danger of succumbing to populism.
AK began with the transfers of some bureaucrats which happen both for political as well as administrative reasons. However, for the moment AK needs to be given the benefit of doubt that these were not meant to have a pliant bureaucracy around him. He also discarded the red beacons that our public representatives flaunt as status symbols -- a move that gels with the ideals the party claims to espouse.
AK might be on the button as far as providing free water and reducing power tariff are concerned but these moves carry populist overtones. While the utility and compulsion of those could be argued for and against, he must bide his time before he implements them. The first he has already fulfilled and it has got him a few brownie points too, but the second is a little far-fetched.
The Delhi electricity regulator is none too happy with the move and argues the government has no right to interfere with the power tariff which is set as per the law and with due diligence. How does the AAP propose to downscale the tariff beyond a point as 70% of Delhi's power comes from outside and there is no control over the cost of power? Power companies already have accumulated losses amounting to Rs 1100 crore and if AK falls to rhetorical politics, the debate over grant of subsidies will be back on center-stage. Not a smart economic agenda.
Politics is a laboratory for bizarre and strange experiments. Having been vocal on weeding out  corruption from the country's vitals, one hopes for AK's sake he does not land into the anti-communalism quagmire. By hobnobbing with the likes Teesta Setalwad the AAP can only be its own destroyer. Being a part of the country's babudom, AK will do well to realize how the political class uses bureaucracy to further its own ends. If he falls into the same rut, his party will be the biggest misnomer and disillusionment of its time.
While these words of caution and restraint precede AK's tenure, he also gives us some pre-emptive hope. Said he: "We do not know how long our relationship with the Congress would last. We were a movement and as a political party we are in a nascent age. We do not have past experience but we have the will. We are here to honor all our commitments made during the election campaign. For instance, an immediate helpline to report corruption and appointing honest bureaucrats will be started forthwith. All change is not comfortable but when it is for larger good it has to be done. And we will. Beginning with doing away of VIP culture! We are not taking any big bungalows, pilot cars, PSOs or escorts. Security will only be threat-perception based. We are here to challenge the status quo of which the aam aadmi is disgusted."
If the BJP wants to checkmate the AAP, it must desist from making outlandish claims like the one my friend Nitin Gadkari made the other day. While accusing that the AAP-Congress deal was brokered by an industrialist, Gadkari forgot he himself played the broker on a numerous occasions to keep his party's alliance with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. But then you can't blame Gadkari. Most politicians suffer from amnesia and believe that people too are afflicted by the same malady.
It is too early to write an AAP score-card with the party's gambits. Its subjects -- the very aam aadmis -- will give their verdict. If nothing else, democracy will march on.

Disclaimer: The writer doesn't have any political leanings. The views expressed in this blog are not his but those of the aam aadmi.
 

Rehne do chhodo, jaane do yaar....

Raju Korti
The summary dismissal of the two-man judicial commission's report on the Adarsh scam that indicts many politicians -- including three Congress chief ministers -- can be summarily described as " Sarkari Dabangaai" because "brazen and shameless" have been used once too often to convey the actual meaning.

In its considered legislative supremacy, the Maharashtra government has rejected the report of the panel headed by retired high court judge JA Patil which nailed several politicians for "blatant violations" of statutory provisions. Among these are three former chief ministers -- Vilasrao Deshmukh who is no more, Sushilkumar Shinde now the Union Home Minister and Ashok Chavan who reluctantly put in his papers in the aftermath. Thanks to the diplomatic standoff with the US, Devyani Khobragade, who is alleged to have a stake in the society, also needs a honorable mention. For the uninitiated, the Adarsh Housing Society is a cooperative society in the plush locales of South Mumbai. The origin of the scam dates back to February 2002 when a request was made to the Chief Minister to allot land for the construction of a housing complex for "the welfare of serving and retired personnel of Defence Services." Over a period of ten years, top politicians, bureaucrats and military officers proceeded to bend several rules and perpetrate various acts of omissions and commissions to have the building constructed and then get themselves allotted flats in the premier property at artificially lowered prices. A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) to the President in 2011 said : "The episode of Adarsh Coop Housing Society reveals how a group of select officials, placed in key posts, could subvert rules and regulations in order to grab prime government land -- a public property -- for personal benefit."
With the media firing on all cylinders in the scam and the heat getting to the government, the files relating to the society were conveniently lost in a mysterious blaze in Mantralaya, the government's seat of power. Although the chronology of events in the murky story have the trappings of a taut thriller, here is why it is "non news" to a dyed-in-the-wool journalist like me.
*The state government -- from the safe platform of the legislature -- shot down the report without thinking it necessary to owe the people any explanation. So what's new? This is not the first time a report has been trashed or kept in a cold storage. Nor will it be the last.
*Never mind it was the state government that instituted the judicial commission under the Commissions of Enquiry Act of 1952. So what's new? Who is bothered with a toothless commission whose findings are purely recommendatory? What interest is it -- if any -- whether such reports have been accepted in toto or in part in the past?
*The Patil Commision described the scam as a "bad precedent" which reflects "greed, nepotism and favoritism" by those associated with it. So what's new? A politician is yet to be born who isn't greedy and doesn't indulge in nepotism or favoritism.
*According to the report, Adarsh society enjoyed political patronage of Vilasrao Deshmukh, Sushilkumar Shinde, Ashok Chavan, former revenue minister Shivajirao Nilangekar Patil, former urban development minister Sunil Tatkare and former minister with the same portfolio Rajesh Tope. So what's new? Honesty and integrity are not the virtues  people would associate with them. Recall how unceremoniously Nilangekar Patil quit after it was proved in the court that he had (mis)used his position as the CM to get extra marks for his daughter pursuing a degree in Medicine. Tatkare and Tope haven't exactly given a glowing account of themselves in public probity during their ministerial tenures. Being a minister and an elected leader is a license-and-shield for any wrongdoing.
*Ashok Chavan was the only chief minister charge-sheeted in the scam by the CBI but the Governor K Sankaranarayanan refused sanction to the investigative agency to prosecute him a few days ago. So what's new? The charge that gubernatorial offices are home to political machinations is not new either. The government believes in a singular motto: Government for the government, by the government and of the government, people be damned! Yet, the incumbent Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan airily announced that the decision to reject the findings of the commission "was taken by the Cabinet in the interest of the people." He, of course, left it to the collective wisdom of the people to guess how the decision was in the larger interest of the people.
*Those who angled for flats in the Adarsh Society are not Congressmen or their kin alone. The BJP and the NCP were also at it and some got them through benami deals. So what's new? Benami deals don't have to be declared to the Election Commission or to the people.
*The interim report was submitted to the government on April 13, 2002 and the Action Taken Report was tabled on the floors of the House on April 17, 2012. What action (taken) and against whom? It is almost as if the government is saying "Hamara action nahi lena ye bhi ek action hai." So what's new?
*The names of those in the government figure in a scam. The government announces a judicial panel to probe it. The panel names the wrongdoers to the government. The government dismisses the panel report without assigning any reason. It happens only in India. So what's new? 

Exemplary or exceptional?

Raju Korti

In the midst of a row

Those who cannot stop gushing forth on the uncharacteristically aggressive stand taken by a traditionally incompetent government on the "humiliation" meted out to Devyani Khobragade,  the deputy consul general at the Indian Consulate in New York, seem to have missed out on a crucial element in the controversy.
The Indian diplomat was arrested in full public glare and later released last week in connection with an allegedly 'fradulent' visa application for her housekeeper and babysitter. Even as a heated war of words erupted over whether Ms Khobragade was entitled to diplomatic immunity, the Indian government went through its standard operating procedure of lodging a "strong protest" -- until someone shrewd in the ruling dispensation realized that here was a strong political lever to shore up its fledgling image.
By all accounts, the Congress, whose fate seems to be sealed in the general elections slated for June 2014, couldn't have found a better platform to do so. In a surprise show of "self respect" and "dignity", the government, which has never had a track record of reacting strongly to any international outrage, decided to get even and took a series of swift measures to pay the United States back in the same coin.
Humiliation of international diplomats is not a new phenomenon. When relations between two countries sour to a nadir, the consulates are usually the first to get the boot. In this case, however, the government, whose response to any international row hardly travels beyond some diplomatic gibberish, decided in all its new found wisdom that it was time to stand up and be counted.
Riding on a massive public support for an apparently justified cause, the "fuming government" did the unthinkable. It asked the US embassy in New Delhi to submit the entire list of their Indian employees along with their salary details and work profiles. The preferred treatment given to American diplomats and visiting dignitaries at Indian airports was withdrawn as also other privileges relating to their security, retaining only what was “legally allowed”. The consular staff was ordered to immediately surrender the ID cards given by the Indian government. And the most ultimate insult which hits the Americans where it hurts most: withdrawal of duty exemption of alcohol import. In short, the status of the Americans who are not diplomats but work in consulates would be reduced to 'diplomats' but work in consulates would just be treated as ordinary expats.
While conceding that the Indian government's tit-for-tat reaction is unprecedented, it hasn't sunk into most people that this kind of bravado and bluster was nowhere to be seen even when its sworn arch enemies across the border were perpetrating one audacious outrage after another on the Indian soil. Despite a large number of people getting killed periodically, the Indian response remained confined to "strong protests" and "warnings" that were never translated into action. But the arrest of a diplomat for a violation not so grave, propelled the government into an overdrive as if it was in a hurry to sever all ties with the United States.
One suspects this has something to do with the country's home minister Sushilkumar Shinde being close to retired IAS officer Uttam Khobragade, Devyani's father. The Dalit card has been effectively internationalized in a show of righteous indignation and strong patriotism to a people fed on an impotent government. A specious and rhetorical master-stroke that will elicit just the kind of popular support that the tottering government needs so badly at this juncture.
Prima facie the government's reciprocal deserves to be hailed but the politics of vested interests takes the sheen off it. The nickel drops when you know that in the past the Indian government has hardly taken a belligerent stand on contentious international issues. This sudden show of spunk and solidarity is one-off and has to be read between the lines.
Till then appreciation needs to be couched in reservations.

Face saving 'grace'

Introspection ?

Raju Korti
Elections will come and elections will go. Puny Davids will make short work of towering Goliaths. Expedient politics will throw up strange bedfellows and 'new orders' will surface with every battle of the ballot. Yet, some things (will) never change.
I am referring to the regulation-speak political parties indulge in after the elections in the name of political post mortem. It is a script that reads like a pulp film of the self-chastising losers and self-aggrandizing winners -- and forgotten in no time.
After her party's shattering defeat, it was left to poor (!) Sonia Gandhi to "gracefully accept the public mandate" since all her garrulous and we-can-do-no-wrong generals had no other option but to beat a retreat from public exposure.
Said Sonia: "We accept people's verdict, but we shall deeply introspect what went wrong." There cannot be anything more hallucinatory than this -- the chairperson of the party that has had over forty- year crack at the country's governance unable to figure out what threw the dispensation out of power. For that matter every party that loses at the hustings promises to "deeply introspect" -- a promise that wears out in thin air like many other tall ones made in their manifestoes.
Even a teenager with a modicum of political understanding knows the kind of credibility the country's parties have -- granted the concession they do. One wonders what exactly do political leaders do when they "deeply introspect" because the sins of commissions and omissions are repeated when they return to power.
On the flip side, the winning party is too flush to temper its victory with the realization that its elevation to power has come about by default -- technically termed as "anti-incumbency factor". Accepting defeat or victory gracefully is not a virtue you would associate with our power-drunk parties.
Even as the Congress -- pipped in the manner it has been -- is trying to muster the courage to come to grips with its  rout, the rival BJP has gotten into its usual act of holier-than-thou. The "deep introspection" that it had promised in the post "India Shining" and "Feel Good"  elections that it so surprisingly lost, was consigned to the dustbin of history in no time. Now that it dreams of sweeping the general elections in 2014 as an "inevitable writing on the wall", its leaders are nursing grandiose delusions that they won on own their own steam. It doesn't seem to have occurred to the party of intellectuals that the Congress did so badly that people had to perforce look for the other option except in Delhi where the AAP broom worked better than a vacuum cleaner. But what can you expect when Arun Jaitley says with his characteristic arrogance "Let's see how this type (AAP) of arrangement lasts." Political parties in India steadfastly refuse to accept that a loss or victory is of their own doing.
Although handed the reins by default, the BJP would do well to shrug off its usual grandstanding and learn lessons from its shock defeat in the post-NDA era. What kind of "introspection" the party did after that is anyone's guess. Probably the same as what the Congress did (or did not) when the country's electorate slammed them in the post-emergency period. "Deep introspection" is a sham that doesn't cut ice with people even in an age when voters are lured with goodies and appeased on caste, election cards.
Take my word. In the run up to the 2014 elections, it will be back to Square One with these solemn utterances replaced by the usual bluster, bravado, allegations, counter-allegations, mud slinging, character assassination and cheap barbs. Political parties in India just cannot resist the temptation to score brownie points and get to accept the fact that they are better off at facing the people with a clean slate rather than paint their rivals black.
Politics will remain the first and last resort of the scoundrels. The story will continue at the cost of the people who can do precious little except to live on hope. 

Too good to be true!

Agree or disagree?

Raju Korti
Inspirational quotes, or wisdom quotes as they are sometimes called, are like astrological predictions. I suspect people connect with them mostly when they have experienced something to that effect. The surmise gets strong when one is on a social networking site like Facebook which is usually swamped by such quotes.
One does not have to be a social scientist to realize that the emotional quotient of most people on social networking sites is remarkably high. Wisdom quotes not only serve to soothe an agitated mind, they also save one's time of laboring over the right words to express their feelings. Little wonder, they draw a positive response from similarly affected people. No better antidote for a stifled or convulsed mind! But for many others like me, they are a case of too good to be true.
As a middle school student, I recall our class teacher had made it mandatory upon us to write at least one wisdom quote (suvichaar) as part of the institution's rigorous regimen to inculcate good values. It was all to the good but to our perfunctory minds this entailed the onerous work of scouring books from the library to find them. Unlike today when students blatantly resort to cut-paste, there was no internet then but they were also the days when your book rack was thought to be weighty because of a Dale Carnegie and similar writers who turned motivation into a profit-making and bestselling venture.
Getting wisdom quotes in such large numbers every day was a daunting task and also a needless one as most of us sincerely believed that the bones in our back would start creaking by the time we were through with the home-work. The teachers were strict and there was no question of defying or poking fun at them, something that comes to most students easily these days.
For us this was a desperate situation brooking desperate measures. However, a few of us were cerebral and enterprising enough to find a solution that wasn't exactly very honest one but it worked and how! True to the dictum that necessity is the mother of invention, some of us decided to turn great thinkers all by ourselves. The transition happened overnight.
While walking our way back home from the school, we all gnawed our brains to cook up some of the most brainy quotes that our fertile imagination led us to. Such was the profundity and depth of these quotes that the originals paled in comparison. What it did among other things was to spawn a whole community of us thinkers who spoke and wrote in a manner that would have given Albert Camus and Ayn Rand a few blushes. The pats earned from our unsuspecting teachers was taken with a relief that also poked our compunction, but then how did it really matter? A good thought was a good thought was a good thought. The school's own logo swore by the Rigveda philosophy of "Let noble thoughts come to us from all sides." Good thoughts were not the exclusive preserve of only some select greats!
There is no clear evidence or research on how much influence motivational quotes have on humanity, but without taking away anything from the well meaning people who post such quotes on FB, the fact is the academics of its age-old wisdom has been overpowered by its sentimental value. You can rest assured a wisdom quote is not just a chastening experience shared by a few affected souls but also a "feel good" factor and a cosmetic value in articulation.
Here is a sample example: A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.I have had many thrown at me though I am not too sure whether I have tasted success at any point of time in life. Conventional wisdom tells me why throw bricks at anyone in the first place?
Wisdom becomes redundant if all people behaved and spoke wisely. Doesn't that deserve to be a motivational quote?

From its own portal(s)!

The cover says it all

Raju Korti
In 2010, Newsweek named Tehelka's Managing Editor Shoma Chaudhury as "150 women who shake the world." That honour, I am afraid, has been pinched right from under her nose by the man who has so sanctimoniously claimed to have pioneered new precedents in journalism.
Let me say this upfront and it is not in hindsight. I was never charmed by the name Tehelka. It seemed to promise the kind of sensationalism that the Media of today euphemistically terms as "investigative journalism". The high profile Tarun Tejpal lived up to that reputation but while making a promising start, he eventually succumbed to the guiles of public titillation. From the awkward spot of bother that he finds himself in at the moment, he also seems to have caved in to the indiscretion that he thought was in private domain.
Instant deification and instant denigration come easily in a country with a usually mercurial mindset. Heroes fall by the wayside within no time of their stardom. The temptation to sit on judgment on someone's moral character may perhaps be the easiest thing to do, but Tejpal has not allowed this luxury to his critics. In a much expansive statement befitting the stature of a noble man, he has passed a verdict on his own culpability as "bad lapse of judgment". It also speaks volumes of the delusions of grandeur he suffers from the hallowed -- now hollowed -- portals he sermonizes from.
After his abortive adventure in an elevator, Tejpal predictably got holier than though.
"The last few days have been most testing, and I squarely take the blame for this... A bad lapse of judgment, an awful misreading of the situation, have led to an unfortunate incident that rails against all we believe in and fight for. I have already unconditionally apologized for my misconduct to the concerned journalist, but I feel impelled to atone further."
"I feel atonement cannot be just words. I must do the penance that lacerates me. I am therefore offering to recuse myself from the editorship of Tehelka, and from the Tehelka office, for the next six months."
These lines, coming from an assertive man, are befuddling to say the least. Lapse of a judgment might be an aberration allowed to all human beings but when Tejpal calls it an "unfortunate" incident, one gets the unmistakable feeling that he is giving a clean chit to himself when the job should have been left to the Law. Sexual harassment does not happen unfortunately. It is a willful and deliberate act committed by an individual harboring notions of unconquerable supremacy. Given the clout that he wielded from his vantage point, the argument of a "bad lapse of judgment" leading to an "unfortunate" incident is not tenable by any stretch of human compassion.
There is an element of inadvertent humor in Tejpal's claim that he "misread" the situation. It is almost as if he is trying to justify the act as -- at best or worst -- ill timed. But then, sensitivity is not in the scheme of things when "Tehelka" is the leit motif. The name seemed to give the institution a license to expose wrongdoings with any available stick to beat. It plumbed new depths by providing prostitutes to army officers to expose the black sheep in uniform with a specious "ends justify the means". Bolstered by those subscribing to this Robinhood-ish philosophy, it probably did not occur to its overzealous, over-patriotic minds that the modus operandi was not in sync with healthy journalism.
In an obvious attempt to throw a blanket on his guilt, he speaks of the need to “do the penance that lacerates me.” In those tempered words lies a message: It was just an aberration and not a crime. My  relinquishing the office for six months should be an atonement enough.
In his unbounded wisdom, Tejpal has forgotten the Indian Penal Code that hands down punishment for sexual misconduct. Much, in a manner of speaking, "I am my own judge because I am Tarun Tejpal. I set my own standards at redemption."
The timing of the lid blown off this scandal is even more appalling. It comes at a time when Tejpal makes an international toast of himself with his purported authority in raising issues involving moral turpitude.
At the moment it is not clear how the young woman is coping with the lacerations inflicted by Tejpal and now sought to be mollified with words couched in reparation. It is besides the point how she responds to Tejpal's grandiose penance but the law certainly has a duty to do even if it concerns the high an mighty founder of a magazine embroidered in lurid and pulp.
 

Retired but not tired!

Raju Korti

Sketch courtesy my DNA colleague Bhagvan Das

"When Sachin Tendulkar travelled to Pakistan to face one of the finest bowling attacks ever assembled in cricket, Michael Schumaker was yet to race a F1 car, Lance Armstrong had never  been to the Tour de France, Diego Maradona was still the captain of a world champion Argentina team and Pete Sampras had never won a Grand Slam. When Tendulkar embarked on a glorious career taming Imran and Company, Roger Federer was a name unheard of, Lionel Messi was in his nappies, Usain Bolt was an unknown kid in the Jamaican backwaters. The Berlin Wall was still intact, USSR was one big, big country, Dr Manmohan Singh was yet to "open the Nehruvian economy. It seems while Time was having toll on every individual on the face of this planet, it excused one man. Time stands frozen in front of Sachin Tendulkar. We have had champions, we have had legends, but we have never had another Sachin Tendulkar and we never will."
Time magazine

It was end 1989 when I was about to lose my cherished bachelorhood at the altar of a martyrdom (read marriage) when the baby-faced, curly-haired Sachin Tendulkar walked into the Indian Test team facing a prospect -- which to use a mild word, was "daunting".
Immediately after, cricketing circles were abuzz -- and for right reasons -- that the young man's very first tour to the hostile and inimical Pakistan would be baptism by fire. No one gave the boy, barely out of his puffy teens, an outside chance to survive the onslaught of the likes of Imran Khan, Wasin Akram and Waqar Younis. A few weeks later, the famed fast bowling trio was eating out of its hands as the "sacrificial lamb" whacked them all over the park. The Phenomenon had arrived.
It is not my case to incommode you with all the tiresome statistics and records that the man tucked under his ebullient hat for 24 years and 200 Tests. But I have vivid memories of a crestfallen Wasim Akram sporting an apologetic smile each time his rocket-like bouncer was hooked with ferocity and ruthlessness and Waqar's helpless demeanour as his shoe-crushers were merrily crashed straight past him with the heavy bat that many thought the 16-year-old boy wouldn't be able to even lift. As my fellow journalist friend Mayank Chhaya says: "The straight drive defines the very aesthetics of cricket. Throughout his 24 years as a cricketer Sachin Tendulkar defined the very aesthetics of the straight drive. Tendulkar’s straight drive is a work of art and needs to be forever installed in a great museum."
Sachin presented a new face of Indian batting when most batsmen from the sub continent fought shy of standing up to the short-pitched stuff with the notable exception of Sunil Gavaskar and Mohinder Amarnath. Sachin didn't stonewall them to dig in. He smote them brutally and took the shine off the ball with an array of breath-taking copybook and unorthodox shots. After the first of his hundred hundreds, they just kept coming with spectacular regularity. So much so that counting those hundreds became a merely academic exercise. In fact, he gave the coveted landmark tinges of mediocrity. A century from his blade was a given and the man hardly missed his dates with them.
Comparisons, unfair though, hardly distracted Sachin for, he had everything else that his contemporaries didn't. While making life miserable for bowlers all over the world, he also didn't give a minute's respite to statisticians who had to fill their pens with ink to keep pace with the runs that he kept plundering. Every team was humbled in its own backyard, whatever the nature of pitch.
One does not occupy a space in people's hearts with just exploits. Even as accolades, money and awards kept falling in his kitty, Sachin exhibited one aspect of his character that many either lose or divorce when fame and recognition come their way.
On a few occasions that I caught up with the man, he had this uncanny ability -- off the field -- to underplay himself. He was, of course, difficult to get through to, but when one did, he was humble and genial to a fault. Never ever carrying the burden of the reputation he had to guard all the time. Having followed his enviably long career until today when a beholden Indian Government honoured him with the Bharat Ratna, I suspect that Sachin, apart from honing his batting skills, also practiced the fine art of displaying a self-effacing demeanour. You might have seen even a normally unruffled Rahul Dravid sporting a frown but never so with Sachin. He was stoic and took bad decisions and publicity with a face as straight as his bat. Recall the manner in which he conducted himself following the Monkeygate. While the other players in that controversy -- Matt Hayden and Ponting huffed and puffed, Sachin stood firm in rebutting them with a dignity that some of our new generation players like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma need to imbibe. The pangs of an unfair decision were dropped by the wayside during his nocturnal car rides on the streets of Bandra. Sign of a man who had his head firmly on his shoulders.
At the cost of sounding a little uncharitable, I dare say that this was a Sachin Tendulkar who marketed his humility exceedingly well, never wearing his achievements on his sleeves. It sent the right signals to a legion of fans who had already conferred the status of a demi-god on his durable shoulders. At the other end of the spectrum, there were also the discerning few who saw an unending greed in the fellow as his coffers kept swelling to make him the richest sportsperson in the country -- and maybe among the world.
True, in the last four years, Sachin was a mere shadow of himself that many of us were privileged to watch in his prime. His batting had become laboured and runs were grafted rather than being plundered as was his won't. Criticism was becoming increasingly strident that he stuck to his place in the team at the cost of languishing new talent and as someone who was believed to be too big for the BCCI's boots. No one had the guts to tell him that it was time for a "safe passage" unlike the legendary Sunil Gavaskar who hung up his boots in his prime. With Sachin there was no question of "Why not" instead of "why" because these were norms applicable to only lesser mortals. That, however, was a tactical blunder condoned  in lieu of all those majestic years that Sachin became an integral and inseparable part of the country's psyche. And although Sachin divided the country on the issue of his retirement, it was his charisma that ensured "all is well that ends well."
As a fitting tribute to the maestro, I suggest that his playing longevity be acknowledged by the benchmark of counting cricketing years in terms of "After Tendulkar (AT) and Before Tendulkar (BT). Just as they do for other mortals in terms of AD and BC.
What say?

Don of the Night!

Raju Korti
“Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line of fire just below the horizon, brushfire or a burning city. Maybe night falls because it’s heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes. Wool blanket.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale    

All that is dark is not bleak!
As Nature marches on relentlessly -- taking its own course -- and the fatigued day recedes and relapses into a quiescent night, idyll takes over. Its the time you can hear grass grow and flowers bloom, their heady fragrant blende permeating the ambience. Nocturnal bliss is fortified by the gentle zephyr that regains its lost chastity and Hope revives in the dreamless strut to another dawn.
Somewhere in the midst of this seamless advance, creativity takes over. Living daylights beaten, inventive finesse begins to grapple with meandering thoughts to give them a semblance of substance.
The silence is deafening but also lends itself to profundity for the Evil and Sinless. The line between sinister and benevolence gets shrouded enough to be seductive. For, nights are also made for torture, reflection and savouring solitude. A Dostoyevski comes up with "The darker the night, the brighter the stars." The eyes, closed or open, make the difference. The Bronte-ian reverie lights up with “I love the silent hour of night, for blissful dreams may then arise, revealing to my charmed sight what may not bless my waking eyes.” "If melancholy are the sounds on a winter night", it is the possibility of darkness that makes the day so bright. Nature is a great leveler. Isn't the sky is very much in place during the night as it is during the day?
Down on Earth, insomniacs scramble to make a virtue out of sleeplessness. For those retiring early, the night is a short, passing sojourn for yet another day of bedlam. The battle between Peace and Strife is also a game of hide and seek of a few hours of clockwork. But the periodic sounds of crickets and gnats set to the background music of the Dark make for a more harmonious sonata.
 And your enlightened soul realizes sleep is but a luxury that you cannot afford.
The Longfellow Effect:
“And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
and silently steal away.” 
stands out visible and stark in the blindness around.
Night might be a time of rigor, but it is also one of mercy. Many truths manifest in the Dark so what if the Moon gets coffined by the clouds. The world courts respite in the night. Trees, mountains, fields, and faces are released from the prison of shape and the burden of exposure. Each thing creeps back into its own nature within the shelter of the dark. Darkness is the ancient womb. Night-time is womb-time. The souls break free and come out to play. The darkness absolves everything; the struggle for identity and impression falls away.
Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day!

PS: Don't exercise too much over this gibberish. The allure of the esoteric can be irresistible at times. 

Manna that happened to music!

Raju Korti
The irony couldn't have come through more resonatingly to someone who swamped the pages of Facebook with an incessant stream of glowing tributes all through the day. While paens were being sung to Hindi cinema's arguably most accomplished classical singer, there were hardly 75 mourners at Manna Dey's funeral in Bengaluru.

Sketch courtesy my DNA colleague Bhagwan Das

Life strung cruelest of ironies for Manna Da all through his almost five-decade career, but the gentleman to a fault that he was, he always remained grounded and had the grace to place even some of his less illustrious contemporaries notches above himself.
Composer Jaidev once said that when Manna sang in a classical strain, no other singer could come anywhere close to him and that probably also meant the almighty Mohammed Rafi who more often than not managed to steal a march over the former many times.
Comparisons are odious, yet they happen -- wittingly or unwittingly. Both Manna and Rafi could match each other note for note and competition always invariably brought the best out of the two legends. It is just that though classically more tuned than Rafi, Manna couldn't make himself as flexible as Rafi did in terms of word throw, mood creation and fitting the protagonist's persona.
Yet clash when they did -- vocally of course -- it would be a veritable feast for the Kansens. Take for instance Meri Surat Teri Aankhen (1963) when Dada Burman got Manna Da to evocate an intense tear-jerker like "Poocho na kaise maine rain bitayee" and summoned Rafi's vocals in "Tere bin soone nain hamaare" on the same blind Ashok Kumar. And when you knew how finicky Dada Burman could be about his choice of singers, all you could do was to bask in those melodies without getting into a harangue on who sang better or which song made a deeper impact. In all fairness to Manna Da, he did edge past Rafi.
The supreme irony here is for all his strong classical repertoire, Manna Da could never create any equations. Mukesh was the considered voice of Chaplinsque tramp Raj Kapoor, Talat Mehmood the voice of Tragedy King Dilip Kumar and with the advent of Baiju Baawra in 1952, Rafi the universal donor. Hemant Kumar filled in the blanks.
If Manna Da managed to get a sneak preview of the RK camp, it was more by default than design. Remember, Raj Kapoor wouldn't settle for anyone else except Mukesh in those days. However, both Talat Mehmood and Mukesh -- given their handsome looks -- were bitten by the acting bug. So when Mukesh agreed to do Mashooqa in 1953, RK seethed for reasons that could be well understood from his point of view. That was when Shankar of Shankar-Jaikishen chipped in and reasoned out with Raj Kapoor that Manna Da could be an ideal foil. To the latter's credit, he grabbed the opportunity with all his vocal versatility and made his presence felt in the RK camp via Aawaara, Chori Chori, Shri 420, Parvarish.
Just as when one would have thought Manna Da had become an integral part of the RK apparatus, came in another irony. Having recorded "Zindagi khaab hai" with Salil Da for the Karlovy Vary winner Jaagte Raho, Manna Da had the mortification of seeing the more vibrant Mukesh version on Raj Kapoor's lips. The RK-Mukesh equation was rewritten.
Paradoxes kept punctuating Manna Da's musical sojourn. Shankar (Jaikishen), who wore a different identity when they performed outside the RK banner, plumped for Rafi's vocals like most other composers of that time. And mind you, between the two, Shankar was more steeped in classical music and logically therefore should have rooted for Manna Da. But then Rafi threw up different vistas for different heroes with a range and versatility that Hindi cinema had hitherto not seen and probably will never see. Asked why he preferred Rafi over Manna Da, this is what Shankar said without mincing words:
"There was no easing out of Manna. It was just that Rafi had greater clarity of expression, better enunciation, better diction. Language was never a bar to Rafi's sense of expression, whereas with Manna there could be at times be problems in this direction. Why, to this day, certain top singers in our midst have this problem with language and diction which affect their clarity of expression. Rafi's soz no singer could match. His voice had aatma", it was "Bhagwan ki den. There will not be another singer like Rafi."
The wheels of irony turned a full circle when Manna Da, in a freewheeling chat heaped praises on the same SJ years later saying they were the only composers who thought his voice was hero material unlike many composers of that time who used him fleetingly on the lead actors and more on comedians and character actors. Although that did rankle him, he never made a public issue out of it and kept acknowledging gracefully that he could never beat Rafi except when they pitched their kites against each other in the skies of Mumbai's suburban Bandra. Ironically, in the recording room Manna Da manfully took on Pt Bhimsen Joshi in Ketki Gulab Juhi champak ban phoole in Basant Bahar and Rafi in Tu hai mera prem devta (Kalpana).
The same SJ who put Rafi on the higher pedestal, could do precious little but to put him and Manna Da on an even keel when they were saddled with a theme as musically encouraging as Basant Bahar. Manna Da's one "Bhay bhanjana vandana sun hamaari" had the potential to confront Rafi's two bhajans "Badi der bhayi kab loge khabar mori Ram" and "Duniya na bhaaye mohe ab to bula le". What's more, he overtook the famed Rafi oeuvre to sing the romantic "Nain mile chain kahaan" for the poker-faced hero Bharat Bhushan.
Never the one to rest on his laurels or blow his trumpet, Manna Da always acknowledged Rafi's superiority. I will quote him verbatim: "He was an academy. A university on his own. He was self-taught and his voice always had that something extra that made even trained classical singers not to take him lightly in the recording room. You never knew when he would steal a march over you."
This lavish praise also was tinged with an irony when you knew that Rafi said he was always overawed at the way Manna Da could raise his vocals to the highest level without compromising on the sanctity of the "sur". Perhaps both understood each other well. Right from the time when as an impressionable youngster raring to go, Manna Da saw with chagrin the song his uncle KC Dey had composed went to Rafi from right under his nose. The same Manna Da who had the humility and candour to accept -- in his own words -- that Rafi did a much better job than what he could have done.
In the quick sands of film industry, where equations are made and destroyed at the altar of commercial and vested interests, Manna Da carried no baggage. And that was his strength. While most people lauded Rafi's 180-degree scale that could take on a comedian or a hero, few realized that Manna Da too did that with similar distinction. Manna Da was, simply put, a class apart. 
A thoroughly simple man at heart, Manna Da let his classically sublime vocals do all the talking, never once getting into the rat race. Not that he did not have his share of refrains, but he held them to himself. Even in death.
The time you feel lonely is the time you need to be by yourself. Manna Da exemplified that irony. That someone who could negotiate the trickiest of classical notes with the kind of practiced ease that he did, it was another of those ironies of his life that he had to sing "Sur na saje kya gaoon main..."

Jab tak hai samose mein aloo...

Holding forth!

Raju Korti
Politicians are generally a pedigreed breed. They have an innate talent to carve out a win-win situation for themselves no matter what. No one can be a better mascot for this dictum than the country's court jester Lalu Prasad Yadav; now serving a five-year sentence in jail for lightening the burden of the state coffers by Rs 37 crore in what has come to be known as the Fodder Scam.
To profile and chronicle Lalu's legendary antics of 36 years on the political and personal canvas can be as challenging as it can get but the immediate provocation here is the man who has traditionally treated Bihar as his personal fiefdom, will now teach the inmates of the jail "Political Science and Management". Knowing Lalu's understanding of the two subjects, you can safely assume that a Lalu inside the jail is as much a menace as he is out of it.
According to Jail Superintendent Virendra Kumar, "Due to his age, health and political status, we can not make him do hard work. I will request him to teach the jailed criminals. It would be nice if he teaches Political Science and Management."
A simplistic view would be Lalu being qualified for the job. With a degree in Political Science and having delivered lectures in management at the Harvard Business School and the IIM, Ahmedabad during his stint as the Union railway minister, Lalu sure fits the bill. It also begs the question what kind of politics and management is he going to teach: The one in the text books or the one that he has practiced all through his caste-based, manipulative career in the predominantly poor cowland.
Around 3,000 inmates, both convicted and under-trials, are lodged in the jail of which around 200 are preparing for intermediate examinations, 100 for graduation and 50 for post-graduation. If you recall what a hit he was when he delivered those speeches, you also have the dreadful prospect of looking at around 400 potential Lalus on the political horizon. In this "lofty" exercise of disbursing political wisdom, Lalu will also be paid Rs 25 per day! It speaks volumes of the political acumen of a man who after being pulled down as the chief minister ruled the state with a "surrogate" -- his wife Rabri Devi.
There is home-brewn story about Lalu's inventiveness and craft but it sits pretty on the shoulders of the man. Once an expert Japanese delegation told Lalu that given the opportunity they would turn Bihar into Japan in five years. At this the irrepressible Lalu -- one hand struggling to put his dhoti in place and the other fiddling with the flock of hair popping out of his ears -- is reputed to have replied with a disarming smile "You give me Japan and I will turn it into Bihar in one week."
Having cornered him during the 2005 general elections for a few fleeting minutes in Mumbai, I found out that behind his laconic humour lay an extremely shrewd politician who first harnessed the patently casteYadavs and after the Bhagalpur violence, the Muslims of the state. He conceded to me that one prime reason he was pitchforked into national politics in 1977 was because of the constant bickering in the Janata Dal government and its subsequent fall. The fragmentation following the flop Janata government show served as a catalyst for Lalu who went from strength to strength. His penchant for the theatrics and rustic humour -- rightly or wrongly -- endeared him to the masses. A stupid section of the Media helped his cause by portraying him as some kind of a clown and further contributing to his popularity levels. This rise and rise was punctuated by cleverly orchestrated personal and political capers that became parts of folklore. The Lalu charisma thrived on political rigmaroles of casteism, communalism, nepotism and rank opportunism.
In all that glorification, few read between the lines. For instance, as railway minister, he banned plastic cups and introduced earthen cups to "generate more employment in rural areas." His late night visits to Patna railway station for surprise inspections were interpreted as the work of a conscientious leader. The Media wrote reams of praise for the Rs 250 billion "turn-around" by loss-making Indian Railways when other PSUs were being bled white by those in power.. His work in Railway Ministry was introduced as a case study by the IIM. But this was a case of silver lining with clouds. It was alleged that the turn-around was a "cosmetic exercise" managed through fudging of accounts. There were also allegations that he misused his position as the railway minister to help his kin get land.
After the heady climb, nemesis caught up with him in keeping with the Murphy's Law. Although done in by the Rs 37 crore fodder scam, he also had the audacity to order a probe into it. Forced to resign, Lalu left but not before handing over the state's reins to his uninitiated wife Rabri. The entire sequence of events thereafter could have given any bestseller a run for its money.
Lalu, however, continued to operate like a sovereign and got away with a tomfoolery that might have attracted worst criticism but the Media played ball. Recall how he and Ram Vilas Paswan used a Osama bin Laden look-alike while campaigning during the 2005 elections to woo Muslim voters. The state ruled by him and his wife became a family and feudal concern. Little wonder, it looked down the barrel on every social and economic parameter. With no law -- and therefore no order -- kidnappings became a cottage industry and private armies that ran parallel administration mushroomed.
Looked against this backdrop of intrigue and maneuverings, you can surmise how the Lalu coaching classes will work in the jail. The Lalu mutation could be a challenge even genetic scientists may not be able to cope with.
You can take a leader out of a Lalu but not a Lalu out of a leader! For, Lalus are born, not made.
 

*ing wifey in a lead role!

Only an apologetic smile to sport after being "beaten".

Raju Korti
Regardless of whether it shows on my CV or not, the one faculty that I have always been at pains to let all and sundry know is my interminable and unflagging pursuit for anything that is cerebral. How much of those efforts consummate to fruition is, of course, quite another story. At the far end of the spectrum is my better half whose interests and quests come with a very short shelf life. To my friends, it is a quirk of nature that two diverse personalities with diametrically opposite interests survive and cohabit under the same roof for years with a commitment that appears woefully out of place.
So even as Your's Truly is trying to explore and make sense of the esoteric of Nature on National Geographic or Discovery Science, the spouse is gleefully hooked onto the sinister machinations of the frothy Saas-Bahu soaps or onto the lurid gossip doing the rounds of tinsel town. Yet, in our case it is twain East and West meeting just because they find the same address.
Take for instance fan magazines. They never held any charm for me and I am charitable towards them only to the extent of flicking idly through their pages. But the minister at home prevailed upon my vulnerable sensitivities to subscribe to a few.
In my wife’s eyes, I am an insensate soul who can only sport a stony face or at best a contrived smile when it comes to watching the present-day celebrity faces. Nothing shakes her steadfast opinion that I am out of tune and sync with times. She isn’t far from the truth.
My admirations are reserved for the mature veterans – a blood-shot-eyed Devdas-ish Dilip Kumar, a Chaplinsque now-he-cries-now-he-smiles Raj Kapoor and the urbane and stylish Dev Anand. I remain smitten by the impish charm of Madhubala, the cherubic allure of Nutan and more often than not go into a harangue on the acting prowess of Waheeda Rehman and Meena Kumari.
Far removed from these "antiquated priorities" of mine, my wife is more into the robust Khans, Roshans and Kapoors. Her metaphor: Johnny Walker is history, Johny Lever is contemporary. Raj Kapoor is a relic of the past and Ranbir Kapoor a token of the present. In other words, the stage is always set for a long collision course.
Once an argument is triggered -- which is almost at the drop of a hat -- it usually rages on until she wins it mostly because of her strident decibels. The saving grace (!) is the four walls of the house are the only ones to be privy to these spats. When it comes to watching films on the telly, she grabs the remote with a swiftness Jonty Rhodes would marvel while I manage to beat her at this game like Bangladesh manages to beat India in cricket.
A blast from the past: At the sight of Hrithik she went weak in the knees while Shah Rukh made her swoon like an infatuated teeny bopper. Her eyes almost popped out at Madhuri Dikshit's "500-watt smile" and Sridevi's "sensuous gyrations". But then as I said these were all passing fads.
So Anil Kapoor was in and out of her mind in no time while Akshay Kumar was just a passing phase – by her standards of course. Salman was beginning to make inroads when his indiscretion in Rajasthan made him fall from grace. Shah Rukh enjoyed the longest innings before Mr Rippling Muscles Hrithik made short work of him. Poor Hrithik lost his exalted status to Ranbir Kapoor who thankfully doesn't know who might be breathing down his neck!
Back to the present: She always has a specious justification for her rapidly changing pre-eminent statuses -- that she lives with the times. It is her oblique way of telling me that I am stuck in the same old, rusted groove.
Every so often the argument takes on the hue of Old versus New and all my feeble rejoinders are conveniently dismissed as misplaced cynicism. It is in vain that I try to reason out my case on Style versus Substance. We don't think we can ever reach the finer points of film appreciation as I get knocked out in the round robin league itself.
Wisdom coming from long experience, I have wised up to her idiosyncrasies. The subscriptions to the glossies may have brought the noise levels down but I can also sense an argument when there is one. When you are dealing with a starry Knight, you can only get check-mated.
Check out the picture accompanying this piece and you will get the photo. 

Primitive and dangerous

Raju Korti
As a thumb rule, prudence and probity are the last virtues any right thinking citizen will dare associate with the political outfits of this country. Any faint glimmer of hope, therefore, extinguishes when politics of expediency and vote bank swamp a state that prides itself on its literacy and Marxist values.
In God's own country of Kerala, the Oomen Chandy-led UDFGovernment --which enjoys an unequivocal support of the Congress -- found itself in hot waters following an issue that assumes sensitivity only because of the community involved.
The trigger for the tumult was a concerted decision of nine frontline Muslim organizations who in their communal wisdom decided to knock the Supreme Court doors for reducing the marriageable age of Muslim girls from the present mandatory 18. As could only be expected the organizations did not provide any plausible rationale for this motivated step.

To early for marriage

The first reaction of most political parties across the spectrum was to rally in a rare show of solidarity and vociferously oppose this absurd and sadistic move. However, one suspects, this conscience-stricken show was more for the benefit of a perceptive and discerning electorate and given the chance the masks could drop depending on the way the political pendulum swung. The animated debate and free-for-all that followed left few surprised about what ran beneath the exterior.
The Chief Minister calculatedly chose to sit on the fence before he committed himself into giving a stock statement that Law would take its own course. The surprise was CPI (M) took sometime to gather its wits and when it did, it laid the blame squarely on Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) dubbing it as the Villain of the Piece. The bigger surprise was the posturing of the Leader of the Opposition V S Achuthanandan a man never known to mince words. "It is best not to mention the culture of the IUML which would prefer the marriageable age of Muslim girls to be 14 and not even 16."
A cornered Congress the self-proclaimed Messiahs of the Muslims in the country, decided to make a virtue out this odd conjunction. While falling in line in a pathetic display of its lust for power, it condemned the decision of the organizations and felt that it wasn't a good augury for the community when it was trying hard to come into the mainstream.
With every political party adopting a holier-than-thou attitude, the IUML, the second biggest ally of the government, directed all its top leaders to exercise utmost caution because it would be tough to wriggle out from a tight position. Realising the way winds were blowing, some IUML leaders beat a tactical retreat and washed their hands of the matter.
One doesn't have to be a political pundit to understand this unusual show of unity. Last month the media played up the case of a 17-year-old Muslim girl from Kozhikode who was divorced within 17 days of marriage by her husband -- a UAE national. In all the righteous noises, the larger issue seemed to take a backseat. No one thought about the implications behind such a move rife with political, religious and sexual overtones. More obviously no party wanted to get on the wrong side of a community that has traditionally served as their catalyst and conduit to power.
Perplexing was the inexplicable silence of the most clamorous of women's organisations. Obviously they did not want to join the issue given the argument that this was an internal matter of that community. Is a girl equipped to handle the physical and mental rigours of a marriage at 14 or 16? Should that be allowed to please a male-centric community which seeks to extract its political pound of flesh on its minority status? The ramifications are far too many to be debated here for matters of brevity but certainly not beyond comprehension.
The organizations in question did go into a shell after the widespread protests, but the issue one believes, won't be swept under the carpet so easily. It has ominous portents for a country that never stops to harp on its secular credentials. That is if there are any.
It is an irony that a Yusuf Malala is born in Pakistan!

Truth in Black and White

Raju Korti

Dark and Beautiful: Nina Davuluri

In the run up to the pivotal issue here is an apocryphal story that I read in my childhood. In his supreme wisdom and fairness (!) God had "blessed" every human being with a fair skin. On an impulse, one day he decided to find out for himself who worshipped Him truly. In a large cooking pot that had boiling oil in it, he asked each one to jump in it if they sincerely loved him. Those who loved him did so without thinking of the consequences and turned dark because of the boiling oil. The others weren't true in their love for Him and dithered. So they remained fair. Actually, God hadn't intended anyone to die in that test. It was his way of finding out who genuinely loved him.
The story with all its loftiness, it occurred to me much later, was meant to appease and comfort dark people like me who nursed a green-eyed monster against the fair-skinned. The conviction that my ebony skin was a distinct disadvantage only grew with age and contrary to the concocted story, I never lost an opportunity to crib to God about the unfair deal that He had meted out to me. All those well meant and grand lectures about inner beauty being the real beauty did nothing to shake my deep-rooted diffidence.
A few movies and Mills and Boon tripe later, my sensibilities were overtaken and how! I suddenly realized that the hero had to be invariably always tall, dark and handsome and make the "fair sex" swoon if you ignore the male chauvinism that came through. The unimpeachable evidence came when an extremely fair and good looking young thing took fancy to me in my college days not because of my dark skin but inspite of it. The credit of course went to all those painstakingly earned good grades and I felt like a snake who had shed its superficial skin and was suddenly proud of its reptilian cool. The brooding, tentative and wilted Me gave way to a spunky new man with a matching body language. By fluke or by design I happened to bump into people -- mostly women -- who told me that their fancies rather lay with dark men. For the first time, I felt no trepidation walking into a photo studio.
I was also aware that the dark tribe was euphemistically called dusky or wheat-complexioned though it beat me how such a poor consolation tactic worked. It began to sink in when the Time magazine did an in-depth story "Black Power", citing how the Dark were standing up to be counted and adding feathers to the American cap. My metamorphosis was complete at that point. The dark race was like a rubber ball. The harder it dashed to the ground, the higher it rose.
The wheel of wisdom turned a full circle, I seriously suspected that there was little weight, let alone any justification in the racial prejudice. If that were so, the South Africans wouldn't have courted  Mandela as President after reducing a good part of his life to a rubble in the confines of a gaol. For that matter, nor would have supermodels like Heidi Klum chosen to marry a black hunk like Seal. Lest you get wrong signals, it is not my case here to pontificate on individual choices but to dispel misgivings on the hype that surrounds the colour of the skin.
Nina Davuluri, the first woman of Indian extraction to win America's national crown further altered the complexion of this social discourse. Far from being a front-runner for the Miss America crown with no preliminary wins or early scholarships, the chocolate coloured 24-year-old hogged little attention from the make-or-mar Media in the run up to the pageant's dying hours.
The knee-jerk reactions deluging the social networking sites to her unexpected but resounding victory showed that racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage -- the notion that an individual's intellect and character are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.
It is another story that the feisty girl was unfazed by the racial slurs hurled at her and returned the favour in kind by riposting that she was an American first and foremost.
Behind all that racial bias is a raging, jaundiced fret. And that brings to me to the cooked up story I related to you at the outset. Racism isn't born. It is taught.

A banter for investment!

Raju Korti
For someone who is perennially short of money and keeps digging deep in his pockets to fish out greens in the fond hope of finding a few, I am amused no ends when I get inundated by unsolicited calls asking me if I have any investment plans to make.
On an average I receive at least three to four calls every day from investment firms, insurance companies and sundry banks asking to know if I wanted to invest my hard(ly)-earned money in their grandiose schemes that send me into a tizzy thinking of the lakhs I would have made upon their maturity.
Of course, initially the calls would infuriate when a man or a woman at the other end would be condescendingly polite and address me formally by first name or the surname with an honourable "Sir" as a prefix. Far from being pleased with this needless Knighthood, I would dismiss them brusquely and grope for my poor vocabulary of expletives after hanging up on them.
They all spoke with a familiarity that made me wonder if I was their long-lost friend. Their cultivated accents, put-on earnestness and pushy manners bounced off me. All that persuasive marketing would be reduced to a defensive bluster once I confronted them with an uncomfortable "From where did you get or who gave you my number?" The call that began on a benign note a Bishop would have envied, would end abruptly and me gloating over the discomfiture of the voice at the other end.
The callers, however, invariably succeeded in making me take a stock of my ever dwindling finances. A quick look at my bank balance would show that I had just about enough to scrape me through with an occasional and modest indulgence. In other words, I didn't have a hope in hell of investing if you also knew that I didn't have a job that could pay me a decent, regular income. I understood what it meant to lead a hand-to-mouth existence especially when the hand was weak enough to feed a big mouth -- literally, of course. The question of returns did not arise when there was no investment in the first place.
I have absolutely no clue what made these companies call me up -- unless they were dialling people randomly -- since (hopefully) they had no means to know about my financial health. It began to dawn upon me that it was precisely for this reason that these pesky calls started sounding more appealing to my cash-starved senses. Two reasons over-rode my feeling of anger and desperation. One, the vicarious pleasure of being thought of as a potential investor when I was anything but that and two, the more frivolous element of having some lighter moments at the expense of a searching and insistent caller.
There were times when callers sounded clairvoyant with their tempting bait: "Sir do you need a personal loan?" and I had to fend hard to save my fledgling sanity to seek one given that the calls sounded godsend at the time.  
Later, when any such call came, I would summon all my intrepidity acquired from years of experience in the Media and tell them that "I did have some investment plans and that I would get back to them soon." The decorous "Thank You" that followed told me that neither of us had fooled each other. On other occasions, I would engage the callers in academic questions that took the conversation actually to nowhere. At the end of it, anywhichways, I remained as un-invested as before and with no hope of being any better in future.
Perhaps my best was a few years back when I collected lots of credit cards that were on free offer. The curious, strange looks that people around threw at me when I opened my card-heavy wallet to shell out coins to pay for a cutting chai, brought cheers to me. I wondered how many had caught on to the fact that here was a man who had no credit at all and was incapable of attracting any either. For that matter, if anyone could have even imagined that most of those credit cards had run out of their expiry dates. I wallowed in the feeling that I could make the mare go without any substantial savings.
Money isn't everything in life and yet, money talks. And how!.
"He that cannot pay, let him pray" goes a saying. I cannot pay but I do pray that one day I shall go laughing all the way to the bank while investments bring in handsome returns.
Are the pesky callers listening? 

Khan't be Don(e)!

Raju Korti
Speaking white lies and throwing dust in the eyes of the international community without even a pinch of conscience is an art honed and fine-tuned by the Pakistani establishment. It has gone on an overdrive once again in a script that has been played out before. Not surprisingly, the central character of the plot is Dawood Ibrahim.
Pakistan's feverish alacrity in trying to clear the non-existent mist on India's most wanted criminal each time the two countries are headed towards the negotiating table has all the trappings of a best-seller. Expectedly therefore, with the prime ministers of the two countries set for talks next month, Pakistan is getting its act together on the fugitive gangster.
While conceding Dawood's  presence on its soil for the first time, Shahryar Khan, Sharif's special envoy for improving relations with India, said ""Dawood was in Pakistan but I believe he was chased out of Pakistan. If he is in Pakistan, he should be hounded and arrested. We cannot allow such gangsters to operate from the country."
Khan's pre-emptive statement is pregnant with contradictions. He did not exercise himself with the likelihood of being asked why Dawood was not "hounded and arrested" when he was enjoying life king size in Karachi. Nor did he worry his head that someone from the Indian government would question him why Dawood was "chased out" instead of being arrested and if he was "chased out" to which country. It is not surprising that Khan carries such airy confidence. Indian authorities are not known to be comfortable asking questions on Dawood .
Interestingly, Khan was speaking to reporters at a pre-launch event organised by the Indian Journalists' Association for his latest book Cricket Cauldron: 'The Turbulent Politics of Sport in Pakistan' in London. "I think he is in the UAE. The Nawaz Sharif government is very much in favour of taking action against criminals who not only affect Pakistan but also any other country, whether it is India or Afghanistan or wherever. We cannot allow criminals to flourish in the country. If they come to us, we will take action. That is why I think he (Dawood) has left Pakistan." Apparently, no Indian reporter countered him when he was bullshitting them.
So what was Khan's surmise of Dawood holed up in UAE based on? Who chased him out? Pakistani police, the troops or the ISI? If he was chased out how does anyone not know where exactly? If the syndicate mastermind was wallowing in luxuries in his Karachi residence, why wasn't he "hounded and arrested" all these years? Is Khan obliquely trying to wash his hands off and point fingers at the army-ISI regime? The answers are as obvious as the questions are interesting.
Remember how during the Agra Summit, Gen Pervez Musharraf was apprehensive and guarded when asked about the presence of Dawood in Pakistan. His cultivated smile turned into a deep frown  when LK Advani, then home minister in the NDA alliance government, handed over to him a list of 20 India's wanted. To the crafty Musharraf, Dawood was a "chhota tactic" in the scheme of talks.
It would continue to suit the Indian viewpoint that Khan is playing the same shot with a cross bat. In Pakistan, Pakistanis oppose only Pakistanis. On Indians, they have one voice.
The l'affaire Dawood will run its course for how long is anybody's guess. But I suggest Khan write another book and title it "The Turbulent Sport of Politics in Pakistan."

They can keep talking..

Raju Korti

It is appalling how the country's prime minister routinely lends himself to public ridicule each time he tries to open his tongue-tied mouth. It is therefore only natural that the nation speculates what to expect -- if any -- when he confabulates with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif during the New York summit scheduled for coming September.

One cannot but lose sight of the sheer concurrence when you realize that apprehensions and assumptions are equally rife on the other side. Both Sharif and Singh are beset with domestic problems peculiar to their country, most of them of their own making. There is a growing sense of trepidation that the bilateral meet will end up as inconclusive as it has during the long history of previous ones because there is no convergence on key issues including Kashmir.

Kick-starting talks!

There is this rhetorical grandstanding on either side each time a summit is planned. Even as the run up to talks is muddied with trouble from across the LoC, Islamabad keeps trumpeting that the perpetrators are not state players while Delhi dithers with diplomatic gibberish. Yet, the charade called peace talks goes on. It doesn't fool anyone anymore.

The gunning down of five Indian soldiers is yet another attempt at subverting talks that will anyways not fructify. If the ministry of external affairs is to be taken on its face value, "the prime minister has things on his mind about Pakistan and a long-term view to deal with it."  There is a supreme contradiction in this. The statement begs two elementary questions: Given his predilection, does the PM have any mind on the issue and if so, what are those long-term measures that he wants people to believe. I am afraid, you can't read more into it than some steam-letting. The country's leadership has long back run out of ideas on how to deal with the hydra-headed monster.

Someone with an extreme sense of optimism in the MEA feels that Sharif will be able to wrest the reins from the Army and bring a semblance of sanity and respect to the negotiating table. It can be only a diplomat's dream interpretation to say that if the killing of the soldiers is a Pakistan army operation then it’s not only a message to New Delhi but also to Islamabad to give up the pretense on holding peace talks.

Given the way he was ousted in the pre-Kargil machinations, Sharif will have to constantly alert to the Taliban sword hanging over his head although a section of the extremists have been a little more amenable for his comfort. The only soothing factor for the thrice PM is he is a Punjabi and the Army has a sizeable number of Punjabis in its fold. Former Army chief Pervez Musharraf knew this well and played his gambit by cleverly drawing a wedge between him (Sharif) and the Army through a bloodless coup.

Singh, on the other hand, has displayed the kind debility that has now come to be acknowledged as the defining characteristic of the Indian standpoint. Political puppetry is not so amusing when you know that you are dealing with an insidious Pakistan, its inherent instability and unpredictable actors. So far, Singh has given no signals that he has any concrete idea on how he is going to stand up to Pakistan's bullying. Why indulge in an exercise whose results have always been abject failures? Take it. The upcoming meet, even if it happens with all the reprisals along the LoC, will have nothing to show up except some sabre rattling and righteous noises. The country needs a prime minister and a defence minister whose body language must send clear signals that the country is ready to call Pakistan's bluff. This is, however, only a pipedream, knowing how the Indian establishment has been wary of taking on Pakistan at their own game. The pitch is far too queered with the two countries, one of whom apart from usual needling, keeps reminding us that its one hand is always on the nuclear button.

Pakistan has made a virtue of its rogue state standing. It knows it has nothing to lose with its economy too in doldrums as against the Indians who cannot run the risk of being marauded by a neighbor with a "Hum to doobenge sanam lekin tumko bhi le doobenge" philosophy.

So much as we keep railing about a weak-kneed leadership, it makes some sense to engage Pakistan in talks and hope that while the pretense continues, it takes the singular credit of destroying all by itself one day. 

An unending game!

Pic for representational purposes only

Raju Korti
Perhaps the most dicey and flaky aspect to any politician is you will never know from which platform he chooses to air his views. Invariably, when his bluster ends up ruffling feathers, he seeks refuge in the sheepish to 'clarify' that they were his personal views and not those of the political umbrella that he holds over his head. It is a strategy that often works whenever he throws discretion to winds.
Chief Minister Omar Abdulla who is carrying the family's considered belief that it is the sole repository of Kashmiri interests, has made public his intense displeasure over all rounder Parvez Rasool not being given a chance in the recent one-day series against Zimbabwe. "Did you really have to take him all the way to Zimbabwe to demoralize him? Wouldn't it have been cheaper to just do it at home?" Omar said in a sarcastic tweet after Rasool was not included in the last game against the minnows. As if on cue, Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor also expressed disappointment over Rasool not making it to the playing eleven in the final game of the series. "Bizarre selection. Could easily have rested Jadeja and Raina for Rasool and Rahane. What's the point leading 4-0 if you can't give every member of the touring team a chance to play at least once by reshuffling the deck now?"
In a country where majority people prefer to watch Indians losing a game of cricket than winning in any other form of sport, any references to contexts are redundant when it comes to know how the likes of Abdullahs and Tharoors are connected with the country's sport-scape.
This is not to suggest that politicians are not entitled to their views on sport. Nor is there any attempt to stir up a debate on whether sport and politics mix. It is a subject that has been chewed to cud. The point to be pondered over here is whether whoever are at the helm of the sporting bodies are competent and clean enough to administer them by keeping their personal and political interests scrupulously out of the game?
Recall IPL Commissioner Rajeev Shukla's pompous, clique-ridden PR speech during a game when he was patting himself on the back (by proxy) over how smoothly the tournament was conducted and its phenomenal popularity. A few days later the IPL and its managers were grappling to cope with the brickbats thrown at them from all quarters when the match-fixing skeletons started tumbling out. A few years before, "Pune Strongman" Suresh Kalmadi, who couldn't hide his smug expressions behind his thick beard, fell into disgrace in what even a child knows as Commonwealth Games Scam.
Even as he was handling ministerial portfolios, Sharad Pawar never made any secret of his grubstake in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA). One doesn't know whether Laloo Prasad Yadav even held a bat or ball in his life, but he had a field day holding the reins of Bihar Cricket Association. Most people came to know only recently that BJP leader Arun Jaitley had started involving himself more in the murky affairs of the Delhi Cricket Association than in his own chosen profession of legal practice. In many cricket associations, if the battle lines are not drawn between politicians and the players, they exist between players themselves on the basis of their political affiliations. How do you identify an administrator? By his sporting capacities or his administering abilities? And finally, what exactly is politics in sport? Is it the entry of politicians or the political mindset? How do you read someone like, say, Kirti Azad who has been a sportsperson initially and forayed into politics later? Ditto with cricketer Chetan Chauhan. It is a tough and tricky call.
Remember, how in 1971 even a respected cricketer like Vijay Merchant as the Chairman of Selectors, threw his casting vote in favour of Ajit Wadekar to  pull down Nawab of Pataudi as the Indian captain. And then we had the regional cricket associations and their honchos pushing their own players into the Indian team. It threw up the question whether players should be selected on the basis of regional representation or solely on their playing merit. Time was when of the eleven playing the Indian team, almost ten would be from Mumbai and the 11th would be Venkataraghvan.
Politics in sport is per se not about politicians trying to capture sports bodies through coups and political machinations. It is also the backroom game players play. It could also take on the hue of a  captain arguing for a particular player to be included or kept out of the team. Politics is rife between the players too and it often gets exposed in public domain obliquely. The other games are not free from this malady either. Cricket perhaps gets center-stage because of the high financial and political stakes. All is rarely well with our Hockey, Soccer, Table Tennis and other sports bodies who often become turfs to settle some of the worst personal and political battles.
What our sporting bodies need are a clean regimen and a cleaner administration that will not succumb to the lucre of money and petty politics. It is irrelevant where it comes from. The moot point is can or will it be possible when those who are supposed to hold the steering arrogate to themselves the status of a sovereign?
Internationally, even bodies like the IOC, UEFA, and FIFA have had questionable regimes. Politics and sport are abiding companions. Although the host city of the 1936 Berlin Olympics was decided before Hitler came to power, there is no denying that the Nazis used the Olympics to promote their evil ideas.
Sport does not take place in a social vacuum. It will admit poisons of many different flavours and intensities. What happened in Boston was at the most terrifying limit of the spectrum. But over the past months we have also seen cricket revisit its corruption trauma and a vile regression in English football fans.
If sport, on and off the field, serves as a microcosm of social challenges and behaviour, then it can only profess innocence by refusing guilt. And that's why it's ludicrous to say that sport and politics don't mix. They have no choice. After all, there is no denying that there is a political dimension to everything.
With due apologies for twisting Leon Trotsky, the Russian Marxist revolutionary's quote "You may not be interested in war but war is interested in you." Read politics in place of war and the case rests.