Sadhana...ke dil abhi bhara nahi..

Raju Korti

Having watched most of her movies, I always believed that there was something surreal about Sadhana's million dollar smile and her eloquent eyes. Her eyes, coy and demure, especially spoke volumes that made the director's job ridiculously easy. But when I saw her in flesh and blood for the first time on the sets of Intequam in 1971, I had to retrace my steps in history to know that this was the Sadhana people swooned over all the sixties. Actually around time that she wasn't a patch on the Sadhana people had idolized in the past and there were many who had started writing her off.
Sadhana, who had had her education in Jai Hind College never went by popular equations or perceptions. She continued as long as she herself realized that people didn't wish to see her on the screen any more given the beatific image she had created in public mind. This trait of hers was in enough evidence even when it came to marrying, when she chose director RK Nayyar  over a highly popular Rajendra Kumar. Nayyar was just making a name in the quick sands of film industry and Rajendra Kumar had made a very popular pair with her in Mere Mehboob (1963), Aarzoo (1965) and Aap Aaye Bahar Aayee (1971).
Sadhana did not wait and hope to be discovered rather she made herself so she couldn't be denied. Within a span of four years she was in the top bracket though there were formidable actresses like Waheeda Rehman, Saira Banu, Nanda and Asha Parekh who had created their own niche. Sadhana's USP was her eyes that did all the acting. She also owned a an angelic smile that made her a breed apart. Little wonder she was acting with top heroes of the times including Dev Anand and Rajendra Kumar.
Just what kind of impact Sadhana made on her audience is evident in popular perception on a handsome Dev Anand serenading with the last word in romanticism "Abhi na jao chhodkar,,," (Rafi-Asha) could not have been as compelling if any other actress was alongside. Hum Dono had not only Dev Anand focusing the camera on himself, it had another share of pie for Nanda whose role was equally challenging. Yet, Sadhana made an impression with just smiles and tears.
She fortified her position with Mere Mehboob which brought her in the top league. Remember a sleepy-eyed Husna whom Rajendra Kumar wakes up through the enchanting notes of Piano and the eternally young voice of Rafi with "Ae husn zara jaag tuzhe ishq jagaaye..". Not without reason, the general belief is Sadhana looked her beautiful best in Mere Mehboob.
While the first half of her life got her name, fame and money, the latter half wasn't so rewarding. Age doesn't spare anyone. In case of Sadhana, it just gave her that little extra time because anything otherwise would have been blatantly unjust to a performer who swept an audience away by just fluttering her eyelids or with that devastating, cherubic smile.
By Intequam, she was downhill and the writing was almost on the wall. Even in Aap Aaye Bahar Aayee , she looked slightly obese and a little over made up and the  make up was failing. To add to her troubles, the marriage with Nayyar was threatening to fall apart. Not mixing her personal life with professional life, she bravely carried on until she made peace with the fact that her reign was over.
At her Santacruz residence, she started living the life of a recluse. Like many other actresses and actors who do not want to be seen by people except in their avtaars as popular peak, she just shut the doors on the society, rarely meeting people, unlike her contemporary Waheeda Rehman who ventures out for social work in her late seventies. I still want to be remembered as an actress who sang "Main to tum sang nain milaa ke haar gayee sajna.." in Manmauji (with Kishore Kumar). To be fair to her, shejust went through the same motions that most film stars not wanting to face people past their prime. As an actress she had her fantasies but she also knew she was a fantasy herself.
As she makes her exit from a profession without any guarantees, she almost seems to say: "I always am in a role, lovely – for you, for them – even for myself. Yeah... Even when I’m alone, I am still in a role – and I myself am the most exacting audience I have ever had.”  But all that her fans can say is "Adhoori aas chhodke, adhoori pyaas chhodke jo tum joagi to kis tarah nabahogi..."

  

Some thoughts on writing a book

Raju Korti
As a tenderfoot writer, I have been advised by many in the past on how to write. The best one that I have learnt is to ignore them and start writing. That little piece of realization helped me glide through my first book which is set to see the light of the day soon. I was also told the hardest part of the exercise was putting one word after another but in another brilliant stroke of enlightenment I found a book writes itself. You are just the hand that puts everything on paper.
As a youngster I often dreamt and yearned to write a book but never followed the passion with the perseverance it called for. I had any number of subjects to choose from. The only hitch was how to lend substantivity and depth to the pledge that I had taken with a commitment that I never failed to flaunt at my friends. They never took me seriously and thought I was speaking through my hat which was justified given my habitual laidback attitude. So it was nothing short of a battle won when I steeled myself to write one although I was overtaken with a series of self-doubts. To make matters worse I chose to write the biography of a man considered a legend in his lifetime.
I was warned by naysayers and cynics. If they felt I was incompetent to handle a personality as titanic as the late Mohammed Rafi given his four-decade career, they weren't off mark. But in the end, like all well meaning friends they kept egging me. I soon found out that writing a book is at once tough and easy. Tough because you need to be assiduous in putting together what are accepted as genuine facts and minute details with no margin for error. Easy because you can visualize it in black and white once they are at your disposal.
There are many biographies on Rafi, all eminently forgettable. That was a rallying point. It propelled me to write faster and piece together a book in three months -- something my friends well conversant with my procrastination were hugely surprised with. More than them I surprised myself. Finding a good publisher to me was more of a fluke than judgment. Talk of dame luck! Since the last month, I am trying to grapple with the idea of having turned an author. So are my friends.
The royalty cheque paid to me by the publisher was more than a lottery to my gloating mind. It spurred my pen with a compelling sense of urgency. The making of the book went through its usual list of travails but finally it was a story of all-is-well-that-ends-well.
More than the sense of achievement what it has done to my limited writing abilities is to plan more books. Why not ride on your luck when kismet is more than willing to take you the distance? So there I am planning two more projects one of which is ready to take off in a few days from now. I hope the same sense of urgency will manifest when I pen down those.
In the early stages of my career, some of my colleagues, better writers than me, never made secret of their ambition to write a book. It is just that my frittering has turned out to be better than theirs. To all those who want to write a book, I have an unsolicited piece of advice.
People are afraid to write books because they fear people will read them and find them worthless. Write as if nobody is going to read and throw your work into the public dustbin. Somebody may find it and consider it a treasure.

Sheen lost? Return the awards!

Raju Korti
To refuse or return awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal. This seems to have been the guiding philosophy of those who returned their Sahitya Akademi Awards protesting the "silence" of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Dadri lynching incident.
For most liberals or conservatives, wake up calls come at the politically opportune times. So you can't really fault the likes of Nayantara Sehgal or Ashok Vajpeyi whose otherwise nagging conscience was in deep slumber when the country's political landscape was smeared with black ink right from the days of partition scripted with bloodshed. Thereafter, riots became just another reason in the long list of sharp divides in the country's polity.
I didn't get into writing to win Akademi Awards. Nor is there even a remote possibility of me winning one in future. Award winners are made of different mettle (or metal?). However, as someone who never won any award, I must make it known that an award would be welcome enough never to be returned. In any case, the main purpose of my writing is to seek a conversation with the audience.
If I ever win a Sahitya Akademi Award the thought of returning it will not be entertained whatever the provocation. It is stupid and disgraceful to return an award that was once supposed to have been accepted with all "humility". If you had a conscience in place, you would actually never accept it in the first place because sooner or later -- to your skewed political thinking -- the award would prick you enough to recompense it. That makes for poor reflection and introspection for those who loudly proclaim their political credentials. To my credit, as I have bore time and again, I do not subscribe to a set agenda or any particular theory. When you embrace a particular line of thought without any consideration for the other, you become a slave to it. They are slaves who dare not be in the right with two or three, least of all liberals.
I believe that those who have returned their awards must not only return the mementoes, they should also return the cash amount with interest. At least that will show some righteousness if not a thinker's conscience. The chest beating media seems to have forgotten to ask this question to Sehgal and Vajpeyi. On their part, they too have cleverly kept mum. That is selective conscience.
I have recently authored a magnum opus which I hope is considered for the Sahitya Akademi Award. There are more in the pipeline. Even before the committee considers me worthy of it, I am prepared to give an undertaking to them that "award once accepted will not be returned under any circumstances".
The Sahitya Akademi is an apolitical organization devoted to the cause of Literature. Both Sehgal, Vajpeyi and their ilk forget that they are not given because someone is pro or anti-establishment. But publicity is far better than an award when the time is convenient. More so when the award had already gathered dust in your drawing rooms for years. Awards don't pay a mortgage.
Having said that I earnestly believe that awards are not the only markers of success. My judgments are not based on them. As a writer, I have my own mental trophies.
For me, it’s not about winning an award. It’s also about not even being nominated. But if and when an award comes, it will be a keepsake and not a weapon.

Of Modi and dictatorship

Raju Korti
Three decades after she received the Sahitya Akademi Award, it has occurred to writer Nayantara Sehgal's perceptive wisdom that the country's plural fabric is getting torn apart. That in all probability is a red herring when you know she makes no bones for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's studied silence on the Dadri lynching incident. Having made her anguish vocal on Modi's "fascist dictatorship" she has decided to return the award.
Whether out of selective amnesia or political expediency, as part of the Nehru family, Sehgal has chosen to overlook that the pluralistic nature of Indian polity was torn apart repeatedly right from the country's partition days to the anti-Sikh riots and the Gujarat riots if you discount the countless fractures it has suffered from time to time. But of course, this blog is not about Sehgal per se. It is how Modi routinely lends himself to extreme worship and extreme revulsion for the same reasons -- whether it is his 56-inch chest or his sartorial sense.
I do not see much change in Modi beyond certain cosmetic protocols since he continues to be obstinate enough not to change from the days I met him as a state leader in the mid-eighties. Calling him stubborn and inflexible might amount to dictatorship if we indulge in semantics. And yet, Modi is not in the same league as Pol Pot of Cambodia, General Pinochet of Chile or the more despotic Idi Amin of Uganda all of whom presided over military juntas. Modi is just a speck in comparison if you make concession for his unbending leanings. But he never hides his self-righteousness anywhichway.
In his spate of tours abroad in recent times, Modi has thrown all protocol to the winds and poked ridicule at his political rivals which of course has been countered in similar measure. Whether a prime minister's foreign visits should be aimed at creating international goodwill and bring investments to the country or use it as a platform to spew venom against his rivals back home is a debate that will never end. Modi is not known to be a protocol fetishist. We all know the protocol. But more powerful than our protocol is our grooming to believe in something more. The Indian Prime Minister seems to have more conviction in the latter, take it or leave it.
Years ago, Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray had stirred a hornet's nest by making out a case for a "benevolent dictatorship." Having officiated over a monolith party for well over four decades, Thackeray sought to create a Teflon-coated dictator who had a vibrant democracy and people's welfare at heart. Thackeray, like many others of his ilk, had little to do with the fact that the difference between democracy and dictatorship is in the former you vote first and take orders later. In the other, you don't have to stand in serpentine queues for voting. Modi's case appears to be that of "I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator."
Without sounding fair or unfair to Modi, let me say this: When Liberty becomes a license, there is a dictatorship at your doorstep. All leaders from Gandhi to Modi have been licentious if you realize what I mean. The gullible have a Hobson's choice.

Butt yours truly!

Raju Korti
Its time singer-actress Jenifer Lopez surrendered all the accolades she has earned for her famed derriere to a man she probably may not know. He has actually stolen it right from under her butt with an impunity that is now so uniquely associated with him.
The former president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) who has just been replaced by Shashank Manohar, an astute administrator with clean record, refuses to bow out. He even makes clear through his actions that he has more grit and determination than any Indian cricketer in recent times. If only they could take a leaf out of his voluminous book! There cannot be a better mascot for his own company India Cements the way he stuck to his position when allegations about his "conflict of interest" flew so thick and fast that even the Supreme Court could not ignore.
Srinivasan is being investigated in multiple scams, including the notorious IPL cricket betting where his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan has been severely indicted for hobnobbing with bookies. Gurunath is cooling his heels behind the bars while Srinivasan celebrates himself as the Chairman of International Cricket Council (ICC) and Managing Director of India Cements. He is also being investigated as a in the corruption involving politician Jagan Mohan Reddy. In March 2014, the apex court ordered him to quit as BCCI president to facilitate investigations into the IPL betting scam.
He did that but not before making light of the court order. It is difficult to believe that as the President of Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, Srinivasan wasn't aware of the "conflict of interest" arising out his franchise the Chennai Super Kings. It is funny how wheels of justice catch up. Srinivasan in all probability will be hounded Manohar whom he replaced in 2011. His long stints with the industry ensured that he remained unruffled in the wake of the media and national outrage that sought his resignation. To his credit or discredit he hung on to his post although various courts asked him step down. Surprisingly, he also got away from being hauled up for contempt of court.
To some people even notoriety is an effective substitute to public fame.
In tune with his characteristic, Srinivasan gave away the Cricket World Cup trophy to the winning Australian team -- which should have been the prerogative of ICC President Mustafa Kamal. Prior to the final, Kamal had stirred a hornet's nest with his statements regarding umpiring in the India-Bangladesh quarterfinals. ICC reportedly had a meeting and decided that Kamal would not be allowed to hand over the trophy. Srinivasan had also expressed his extreme unhappiness over Kamal's comments in the same meeting, causing an embarrassed Kamal to walk out of the final before the match even finished. He later quit his position as the President, and vowed to expose the people behind the "mischievousness".
The Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI), under its new president Shashank Manohar, told the Supreme Court on Monday that it considered divestiture of Chennai Super Kings' shares by former BCCI president and ICC Chairman N. Srinivasan a "sham".

Shortly after the assurance by Manohar to clean up BCCI's image in the next two months, the BCCI did not mince words about its former chief when it told the Supreme Court that Srinivasan is still in a position of conflict and continues to hold commercial interests.
 Having left it to the BCCI this may be the first time the Board has openly distanced itself from  Srinivasan following the severe dent its image suffered during the IPL betting and match-fixing controversy. The other cricket associations are none too enthused about Srinivasan's continued defiance. This time round the battle seems to have reached a decisive phase. But Srinivasan has hung on in a brazen display of intractability. I have words that make for an excellent  quote for him: "I have worked too hard to conquer power. I will not allow anyone to take her away from me."

I am just a journalist. That's it!

The operative word is "bias".

Raju Korti
Having banged my head in the thankless profession of Journalism for almost 35 years I can assure you that many of my ilk consider themselves as superior than thou in their infinite wisdom. That overwhelming feeling never overtook me because I was too inconsequential and much too detached to take sides as is the wont of my professional colleagues. As a struggling rookie I realized pretty soon that there is more enjoyment that comes from being unattached and balanced. In any case I didn't have the gall to be slanted in my writing though I have my personal views.
The immediate provocation for writing this blog is my fellow journalist and friend Mayank Chhaya who I have been reading more than I do myself. In his blog "Of being abused and praised as a journalist" he says how amused he is when people attach motives to his views and writings. Having   gone through this situation any number of times before, I can relate to his blog.
Writes Mayank: "As an independent and politically detached journalist for 33 years, I have been frequently called names. Somehow readers think name-calling is an effective substitute for intelligence and substance. My most intense reaction to name-calling is very mild amusement for about three seconds. I never engage the abusers because it is futile to do so. More often than not they come from a place of deep intellectual dysfunction. They are also on an incompatible level of literacy.
During the pre-internet days, when the distance between the journalist and the reader was fairly wide and often unbridgeable, name-calling existed but not with the kind of crass ferocity that you encounter these days. The internet, propelled by social media, has made abuse and invective convenient, cheap and instant."
I can summon all my professional integrity and vouch that I have never subscribed to any particular "...ism" or "...sophy." It is just not me to be bogged down with ideological baggage that is politically driven or motivated. But try hard as I might, it is virtually impossible to shrug naysayers who will impute motives to whatever you write. Time was when I took such abusers to heart. These days I take them as "hits" much like TV channels who rate themselves on TRPs. It is one great way to retain your sanity or whatever little is left of it.
I have been called a Leftist, Rightist and a Centrist from time to time. There have been times when I wonder whether I have been a "liberal" or "intolerant" whatever those terms mean. I once made a fleeting remark about Modi cutting bureaucrats to size. The knives were out in no time. I became a saffronist and a right winger out to promote BJP agenda. I had made an off the cuff remark about how Sonia Gandhi and Bal Thackeray made for an interesting comparison given that both had shunned political posts. My learned friends on Facebook labeled me as a "Khangressi" and a Congress stooge. The only consolation I could draw from the epithets I received was I had ben catapulted into the league of Kumar Ketkars.
A few years before while dwelling on the Crimean crisis, I attempted an objective study of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a matter of 30 minutes I was an "avowed Commie" in the eyes of the same people who saw the saffron in me. To cut the long story short, they will take swipes at you anyhow -- Right, Left and Centre.
Many of my pro-Kejriwal friends were thrilled to pieces when I wrote that the AAP was welcome phenomenon in the vitiated political scenario that obtains in the country. They clammed all ends up when I called him a "fascist buffoon" after his experiments with Delhi. I have been a "liberal" and "conservative" every now and then that makes me believe that I must be a versatile man of many colors and parts.
Yet, I have managed to have more than a thousand friends in my fold. I am waiting for the day when some "liberal" or "conservative" will actually reward me by unfriending and/or blocking me.
Sometime back, for sheer fun, I wrote : "When someone claims to be a "liberal" or a "conservative", rest assured it is a load of bunkum. They are just masks that fall off at the drop of a hat. We are all "liberals and conservatives" to the extent it suits us." I was slammed by Liberals and Conservatives alike.
Any more name calling? More "hits" are welcome.

For whom my heart beats!

Heart of the matter: Yours Truly with Dr Mukund Deshpande

Raju Korti
I learned long time ago that some people would rather die than forgive. It is a strange truth but forgiveness is a difficult process that doesn't happen overnight. Its an evolution of the heart. I, however, have a more distressing affliction. That of a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind. Usually in the race to supremacy the former wins and that is what brings me to my doctor friends who have contributed -- literally and figuratively -- to my fragile heart beating as normally as it should.
I didn't have a weak heart. I developed one with my supreme negligence and procrastination. Finally, when the pumping station in my chest started protesting severely through unstable beats and labored breathing, I knocked the doors of my brilliant cardiologist friend Dr Mukund Deshpande. One look at my erratic ECG and he told me that there would have to be an angiography the next day. Within minutes of that small process, he announced, "there are far too many blockages. Angioplasty won't do, a coronary bypass is called for." He was kind enough not to tell me that I was on the brink but used measured words to say as much. So there I was in the Intensive Care Unit wondering what fate would befall me. But I wasn't dealing with a friend. I was dealing with someone, who in hindsight, was God's own emissary. I was in a safe pair of hands that had presided over thousands of angioplasties. A few days later, I lay supine as they carried me to the operation theatre for the surgery of my life(time). A bypass is no big deal these days but in my case, I was on tenterhooks with my condition not particularly good.
Convinced, I wouldn't open eyes post-surgery, there was this usual melodrama where my kith and kin shed copious tears and me not showing how scared I was. I even told my family that they must look after my wife in case "anything happened to me". So it was nothing short of a miracle when my eyes opened to survive a "follow on" so generously granted by my friend.
Eight days later I was discharged from the hospital, but I hadn't counted on the roller coaster ride that lay ahead. A few more complications later, I had to be re-hospitalized, confronted by the possibility of a dialysis since the kidney had shut down. Two other doctor friends of mine Dr Suhas Deshpande and Dr Ravindra Bhonsule monitored me almost round the clock. The first miracle didn't turn out to be a fluke and I survived another grueling spell to be hurtled into another. This time, it was breathlessness worse than my pre-surgery period. However, a good head and a good heart make for a formidable combination. I went through another surgical process through which they extracted a jar full of fluid from my debilitated lungs. At that point, providence decided that it had put me through enough tests and I started my way to recovery, albeit slowly. Of course, I am not still fully fit but I am optimistic enough to stare at the prospects of a me sprinting like Dev Anand did while singing "khoya khoya chand" in a few months from now.
You don't really thank your friends for what all that they do for you but I have decided to throw all informality to the winds and thank them profusely for giving me a new lease of life. I know they won't be happy with my proposing a vote of thanks like this on a public forum but as I have borne earlier, I had a weak heart, now I have a weaker one. And tears come from the heart and not the head.
My doctor friends have their head firmly planted on the shoulders. So it was perfectly in tune when one of them messaged me this today, the World Heart Day. "You walk for me one hour everyday and I will run for you forever: Your Heart."
I cannot and don't want to even imagine where I would be today were it not for these childhood pals who have given a heart that beats with joy and gratitude. I am saying this from the bottom of my heart.

Romancing with Dev Anand

Phoolon ke rang se:Dev Anand with Kishore Kumar

Raju Korti
I had my first dekko of the magnetic Dev Anand way back in 1982 when he was at a local theatre for the screening of his film Swami Dada. The owner of the theatre Jawaharlal Munot was his huge fan and made it sure all his films were first released in his theatre. The film, of course bombed at the box office, as it happened with all Dev Anand films in the post Hare Rama Hare Krishna period. But that was of least consequence to this Adonis-like man because people came to watch him first and last, story and direction be damned.
If he was conscious of his iconic status, Dev Anand never showed it but what was always in evidence was he wore his trademark chivalry and charm on his sleeve. Add to those a devastating toothy smile riding on a confident swagger and you had a package you would rarely see in your mundane world. Therefore it wasn't altogether surprising when he found time out from throwing his charisma around and agreed for a hearty tete-a-tete. In the course of that conversation, I realized that he never stalled any of my questions and answered them with a candor refreshingly different from those of his ilk. At the end of it, he smilingly granted his autograph on a picture of his I had kept in my possession for years as a smitten fan. It took some time for me to come to terms with the fact that he had drawn liberally from his irresistible charm to make me feel I was more important than him. A decade later, I found out he did that to everyone fortunate to cross his path.
God knows what he liked about me but he would call me now and then to his milestone Navketan Studios in Mumbai's posh suburban Bandra to spend time talking about this and that over a "sukha bhel" which seemed to be his favourite snack. I would find him smothered and surrounded by a maze of newspapers and magazines, yet his handsome, smiling face would pop out of them and he would get up from his chair to shake hands that seemed to be softer than butter.
Whenever I veered my discussion to his pre-eminent status as one of the trinity along with Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand would dismiss it with his brand stylish nod. He knew generations were in his awe and he didn't have to make a big deal about his suave and urbane looks or demeanor. So the discussion would be about Politics and other social, cultural events. Just how well informed he was came through sharply in his incisive comments draped with a language that seemed to be a fascinating fusion between literature and colloquial. Never personal or prejudiced in his views, he had this unique trait of being frank without hurting anyone. With Dev Anand, diplomacy stood no chance before his charm.
I suspect that he had carefully cultivated the image of a man who never looked behind. Nostalgia got to him as well although he spoke with a sense of detachment. There was regret but no hurt when he spoke of his failures -- as a film-maker or about his love life. (The only exceptions were his disappointment with the failure of English version of Guide made by Tad Daniewlsky and Zeenat Aman). That must have been quite an ask since one yesteryear actress Shakila (of CID-1956) told me that it was impossible to believe that all his leading actresses had not fallen in love with him at some point of time or the other. Obviously, he broke many a heart when he married Kalpana Kartik in a simple and hush hush marriage on the sets of Taxi Driver (1954). Married or not, he kept swooning men and women for decades with a charisma that almost bordered on witchery. Remember that popular fable about how he was asked not to wear a Black suit because women would fall off from their chairs watching him. He was God's chosen one for whom Time had shown the unusual courtesy of standing still.
The only person I found him in awe of was composer SD Burman. More often than not our chats were centered around his music majorly made by Mohammed Rafi and Kishore Kumar. I mention Rafi first since he delivered better compared to Kishore. But Dev Anand was convinced that Kishore went on his lips better and this Burman Dada knew well. On his part, Dada knew how to serve both the aces which prompted Dev Anand to believe that Rafi was good for Ghazals and Kishore better for the lighter ones. Given his conviction, I saw the futility of saying anything otherwise. But on several occasions, I heard him say that "Abhi na jao chhodkar" (Hum Dono-1961) as the last word in romanticism. After all, wasn't he the one who had some stake to knowledge about music because he belted out KL Saigal in company with Sahir Ludhianvi and some others on the Shivaji park "katta" in the early fifties? He once told me in his slightly nasal drawl "I admire two people -- one Paul Muni and the other Dada Muni" (Ashok Kumar).
Among his more notable characteristic was his razor-sharp memory. He surprised everyone by calling people by their first names even when he had met them decades back. He would also remember the dress one wore during his first meeting with him. He never lost his famed reflexes till the end.
For someone who ate very frugally, Dev Anand packed a lot of punch in his speech and verve in his action. "I can survive on one plain sandwich for a couple of days. When you eat less, you think more" he once told me. It was this Spartan eating as also a very disciplined lifestyle that saw him becoming weak towards the end. The flesh failed but never the spirit. At airports, he would lug his suitcases and felt it an affront to use a wheelchair when asked to take one during his last visit to UK from where he never returned. True to his character, he never wanted anyone to see him dead. He took his youthful elixir to his grave.
If you are wondering why I took four years to write a blog on him, the simple answer is I never ever believed he has died. You don't write the obituary of a person who remains alive in your memory.
Today I miss his dry bhel and youthful exuberance like hell. My most enduring memory would be his addressing me as Raju Guide, the character he essayed in Guide (1965).
A non conformist of sorts, Dev Anand knew the terms and conditions of growing old but never agreed with them. He was drunk in love and romance and high on life. A true God of Happiness.
 

The last refuge of the hapless

Aylan Kurdi washed ashore, a wake up call

Raju Korti
It took the death of a three-year-old toddler Aylan Kurdi to shake the collective conscience of the world. The boy with Kurdish ethnic background drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in the thick of the Syrian refugee crisis. It has rightly triggered a debate on how humanity should deal with a crisis of plenty unleashed by wars and ethnic strife.
The situation across Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey is no different with people crossing borders and travelling many kilometers within their own country to find respite from war. As things go, the magnitude of the problem is now truly global as thousands have crossed continents and have ended up in Europe seeking the same respite. By and large it's taken Europe by surprise. Opinions vary on how to deal with the crisis. Some say Europe and the US should step up. Others say the rich Gulf states should use their enormous wealth to help. But international diplomacy and politics are not necessarily guided by compunctions or human conscience.
The trouble is the word "refugee crisis" can be understood in many convenient ways but one can comprehend its true magnitude and seriousness only when one sees the pictures of the Aylan Kurdi kind. Frenzied families swarming a Hungarian train station, their children sleeping on floors and sidewalks, fearing Hungary will intern them in sinister-sounding "camps," Greek tourism towns filling with tents and with humanitarian workers, to accommodate the rickety boats of refugees that arrive daily at the shores have made for disturbing pictures in the Western Media.
If statistics are to be believed, more than 19 million people have been forced to flee their home countries because of war, persecution, and oppression, and everyday an estimated 40,000 plus more join them. Majority of these head for Europe, which is why the crisis there appears most severe.
It appears that there are a couple of laminations to this aggravating situation. The first is more obvious: Overlapping web of wars and crises that has forced millions of people from their homes in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere. By default and perforce, it has bridged their gap  with Europe. And the European nations are at their wit's ends on how the crisis should be looked at.
In the second, there is something more than meets the eye. Western countries with all their wealth, are averse to take a sympathetic view of the situation. In fact, there is a growing anti-refugee politics as peoples of these countries feel insecure over the effects of immigration. So despite well equipped to handle such a crisis, these nations remain preoccupied with vague but long-held ideas about national identity, are driving nativist, populist politics, and thus policies that contribute to the crisis. The biggest driver of the crisis is Syria. Reports say nearly a fifth of Syria's population has fled the country since the war began in 2011. The Bashar al-Assad's regime there has targeted civilians ruthlessly, including with chemical weapons and barrel bombs while the ISIS has subjected Syrians to murder, torture, crucifixion, sexual slavery, and other appalling atrocities. Although majority Syrian refugees have ended up in shoddy camps in neighboring countries, there seems to be a growing realization that they may never get to return to their homeland. That has forced them on a hazardous and unsafe journey to flee to Europe. Syria is not the only one. The crisis in Somalia and Afghanistan is similar though not as acute. Political, sectarian oppression and economic migration have forced the hands of people in a dire situation fraught with deathly consequences.
The Arab Spring was perhaps the biggest spark of the global refugee crisis. The turmoil against Col Gaddafi saw the country erupt into chaos. But refugees and economic migrants didn't hesitate to use the African country as a conduit for cross-Mediterranean journey to Europe. It had a cascading effect as only expected. It led to war in Syria, conflict in Yemen, and eventually, to the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Within Europe, countries like Hungary and Austria have introduced stiff checks to deter the refugees.
As the crisis threatens to spill out of control, it appears the European Union (EU) is either unable or reluctant to deal with it though it must be conceded that there are some technical issues that tie the EU's hands. So far, the only countries to take a moral high ground are Germany, Belgium and Denmark by allowing asylum to the refugees. It conclusively proves that it is not the money factor but the anti-immigration policies that the western countries are more bothered about. With the exception of Germany, each country is trying to push the burden on somebody else, which means nobody is actually trying to handle the crisis, which means the crisis is getting worse all the time.
Circa 1971 during the liberation of Bangladesh when lakhs of refugees spilled over to India to escape the tyranny let loose by Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and India true to its policy of Atithi Devo Bhava (guest is God), accommodated them all in a humanitarian gesture.
So is the refugee crisis a humanitarian one or one that concerns national security? Each country may look at it from its own vantage point but the bottom line remains that it is the last refuge of the hapless.

Some thoughts on cricketers' retirement

The face says it all. Michael Clarke

Raju Korti
While tongues have been wagging aplenty -- for justified reasons -- about the new-found and undue aggression exhibited by the Indian cricketers with the man at helm Virat Kohli leading the brigade from the front, a series of events seems to have gone quietly unnoticed.
Australian wicket-keeper Brad Haddin is the latest to hang up his boots following similar announcements made by erstwhile captain Michael Clarke, Shane Watson and Chris Rogers after their team's dismal showing in the recently concluded Ashes.
If the long-standing Australian view that "they play their cricket the hard way" is taken on face value, it deserves the merit it calls for. More so when you know these are all pugnacious players who wear their cricketing spirit on their sleeve. So it is not altogether surprising they quit when the going is not good before it becomes an unpleasant task for the Australian Cricket Board to axe them. Mind you Chris Rogers has announced retirement despite having a very profitable Ashes series and he could have easily stuck around on that factor alone, his age notwithstanding. But cricketers elsewhere in the world, with the honorable exception of Indians, go without fuss and sometimes even unsung. No benefit matches and no endorsements or perks. In India, the retirement of a player -- if he has had a good record -- is accompanied by a high emotional quotient, mostly anguish and resentment. With the Board of Control for Cricket (BCCI) in India flush with moneybags, cricketers fight shy of  retiring until there is a huge outcry from people who ardently believe that a player's place in the team should not be taken for granted and on past merit alone.
There is a specious concession in the argument that great players should be allowed the liberty to hang around and not pressured until they quit on their own. The Indian cricketers know this very well. So they keep playing until they can extract their last Pound. The fact that Sunil Gavaskar (arguably the world's best opening batsman) and Rahul Dravid quit in their prime are exceptions that only prove the rule. Even Sachin Tendulkar, who was not a shadow of himself in the twilight of his career, was a subject of heated debate whether cricketers like him should be allowed the freedom to go of their own volition.
In a nation where the public frenzy for a cricketer far exceeds the excitement generated by the game, the BCCI with all its power and might, does not have the guts to ask a player to resign for the fear of rubbing people the wrong way. It is typically Indian to make a cricketer larger than life who should go on his own terms. This thinking has more negatives than positives. Remember in the past, there were instances of "No Durrani, no Test, No Bedi, no Test" down to "No Dhoni, no Test". While age was fast catching up with a cavalier Salim Durrani, the otherwise wily Bedi had lost his sting as proved from the hiding he got from the then Pakistani team which had Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad, Asif Iqbal, Majid Khan and Mushtaq Mohammed. Bedi was retired more by the Pakistani players than the Indian Board. In contrast, the dour grafter Geoff Boycott was dropped for "crawling to a double century" against India at Leeds in 1967 while the elegant Ken Barrington was booted out for the torturous Century against New Zealand in 1965. You couldn't have lost the irony that two years later Boycott and Barrington had dominated the Headingley Test with a century partnership remembered more for its eminently forgettable nature. In its wisdom the English Cricket Board (ECB) felt that the game could "not afford to put in the shop window a joyless effort of this sort". Scoring a Test hundred is the highlight of many players' careers; a double-century is an even more cherished landmark. But there are occasions when the score itself is less important than the way the runs are grafted. That the ECB brought in one-feet-in-grave Colin Cowdrey to counter the resurgent Australian team in 1974 was probably an aberration but Cowdrey realized quickly that his reflexes were no longer equipped to tackle the likes of Lillee and Thomson and bowed out. Weigh this against the Kapil Dev case where the selectors helped him to get past then Test record holder Richard Hadlee. Towards the end, the Haryana Hurricane was at best a mild breeze and had to labor hard for the record.
The truth is many cricketers cannot come to terms with life after retirement  having courted huge public adulation and made their riches. I would particularly like to mention the Englishman David Bairstow who committed suicide out of sheer depression, not knowing how he would cope with life after retirement. When more than 800 people attended his funeral, former skipper Ray Illingworth said "If David had known he had so many friends, he wouldn't have done what he did."
Renowned writer David Frith with a research of over thirty years makes a pertinent observation in his compelling book Silence of the Heart: "Is it because cricketers are less capable than footballers or boxers of coming to terms with the void of early middle-age retirement from the thrill of the arena and the close camaraderie of the game?" In the Indian context, the answer is "yes".
Coming back to Haddin, he had to wait until Adam Gilchrist quit but he was already thirty then. It is remarkable how he takes retirement in his stride. ""Once you've lost that will to get up and do the things you need to do to play for Australia, it's time to walk away. I've had a great run and I couldn't be happier with the way I'm leaving the game."
I can't for my life fathom why cricketers dread post-retirement blues when there are other avenues that can still connect them with the game. Many have made as much a name as commentators or administrators as they did as players. The comment by a friend sums it up all: "Finally, it is a sport. It is what the cricketers do to themselves that causes turmoil."

An endless frustration called Whatsapp

Raju Korti
Some people come in your life as blessings, some as lessons! This profound quote  is not a produce from my fertile imagination but a default truth I learnt from my harrowing experiences on Whatsapp. In a nation deep fried in communication advances it is becoming appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. The real problem is not whether technology thinks but whether men do.
The object of my latest vexation is not Whatsapp per se but the blatant, brazen and unabashed use of the medium by and large. Like any other application, it is a double-edged weapon. You either use it or abuse it but as it usually goes, abuse takes precedence.
As someone who was brought into the relentlessly taxing world of Whatsapp with marked reluctance, I qualify myself to be its foremost critic. Having joined any number of groups -- by choice or by compulsion -- I am finding it to my chagrin that the medium is fast becoming a spectacular heap of garbage piled on by a community that seems to be blessed with more than 24 hours a day and patience that deserves a left-handed compliment.
Each time I get a Whatsapp beep on my hapless cell phone, I shudder at the prospect of seeing videos, images, sundry quotes and hearsay stories that do precious little service to my sense of Education, Entertainment and Information. That, despite conceding that all three are open to individual definition in an era where humans are so close and yet so far.
Your headache uploads once you have downloaded the application. It is an open challenge to your sensitivity depending on whether or how much of it you own. It is almost akin to smokers ruining their lives and shortchanging that of the passive smokers whose only fault is to be present at the wrong place, wrong time.
Your day begins with "Good Mornings" and prospers with an assorted images, videos, unsubstantiated "forwards" and a host of quotes that no one apparently seems to be interested in. I have been in active Media for well over 38 years but I am yet to come to terms with the huge amount of communication congestion that suffocates my Whatsapp. You have to open it each time you receive a message because you never know when you would be messaged something important even in the midst of a mindless shindig that bombards you almost round the clock. I have woken up at unearthly hours to find out videos, images or jokes sent by one person to another and your only fault is you happen to be a part of that group. Talk of collateral damage!
The sender is blissfully unaware of the long videos or pictures that test the patience of the receiver. They take ages to download and if you have succeeded at all, your frustration comes out like the hiss of a punctured tyre because you wonder how they concerned you in the first place.In all probability, the jokes transmitted are doing rounds since ages and the blind "forwards" without any authenticity. Sometimes I wonder whether these are the work of a sadistic mind. The biggest joke is people who do this are often seen complaining about the senseless and irrelevant stuff they get on their phone. So they just make sure that they are not the lone sufferers.
I do not want to paint everyone with the same brush. There is a miniscule number that uses the application judiciously and sensibly, desisting from circulating inconsequential and sometimes panic-spreading material. Of course, it needs application and time to produce and generate so much output that comes free of cost anyway and can become public consumption at the press of a button. Technology is so much fun but we have the capacity to drown in our own technology. The fog of information can also drive out the fog of knowledge. Have we become the tools of our tools?
And to rub it in, we have the standard status that says "Hey there, I am using Whatsapp."

Shotgun recoil for the BJP

Raju Korti

Actor-turned politician Shatrughan Sinha is self-taught and doesn't like to be bossed over. Even as he essayed the villain with so much conviction and less so as a hero in his four-decade acting career, the mercurial actor has always sought to send clear signals as to who should be the real hero. Of course, he got away with that bearing in films, but he is finding it difficult for his ethos and a mindset besieged by perpetual bravado that he should be given a short shrift by a party that never stops swearing by "Ram".
To his credit, in his long stint as an actor, Shotgun -- as he is popularly known for his usually incendiary utterances -- carried off his machismo with some distinction but he is fast realizing that there are bigger and far more seasoned villains and heroes in politics. Fans of the celluloid kind and those of the political kind are a different breed altogether. Shatrughan believes that he enjoys the same fanfare in politics that he did as an actor. As a self-righteous politician he couldn't have been farther from the truth.
I have had a few brushes with the actor at the height of his fame in the seventies and later when he became a union minister when he drew bigger applause than the conventional hero. With a certitude that often bordered on impudence and the rave reviews that he earned for bringing a refreshing change to the facsimile image of a villain, Shatrughan seemed to grow larger than life. So much so that even after he graduated to the lead roles, he would advance towards his heroines as if he was about to rape them. It worked in the initial stages of his political career when he chose to align with the Bharatiya Janata Party which thought that in him it had an effective checkmate against the likes of Laloo Prasad and Nitish Kumar. It speaks volumes of the vagaries and expediencies of politics that the same Shatrughan is today flirting with Nitish Kumar and daring the party he chose of his own volition to "punish him".
Shatrughan in never known to mince his words. At the height of his dispute -- for reasons we all know and can believe -- with Amitabh Bachchan, he had the gumption to take the thespian by the horns. Bachchan, as is his wont, never hit back but Shatrughan never lost an opportunity to take swipes at him. His attempts at blurring the lines between reel and real now seem to be coming unstuck at their seams since the BJP doesn't appear to be giving a damn about his defiant posturing. Anyway, at least for now.
Defeating a celebrity like Shekhar Suman and a brazen politician are not the same ballgame.
As the head of Arts and Culture wing of the BJP, one is not sure exactly what Shatrughan has achieved or done to further that cause but the man sure enjoys limelight this way or that way.
I recall in 2003-2004 having given a caption "Mere Apne" to a photograph where he and his contemporary Vinod Khanna flanked then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Both were thrilled to the core with that caption and had sent their appreciation through one of the reporter in charge of our political bureau. At the time, Shatrughan held two portfolios as union minister. That of Health and Family Welfare and Shipping. Political wheels have turned full wheels and today he finds his "political family" (the BJP) estranged and fortunes sinking faster than a villain of a pulp Hindi film.
For all the wisdom he professes to preach, Shatrughan still hasn't learnt the importance of discretion in politics. You cannot spout words of bravado in political life the way you do in films.
The agent provocateur, elected from Bihar's political landscape of Patna has in recent times gone hammer and tongs at the party's bosses and has bitterly criticized government decisions. The fact that he has had one-on-one with BJP rivals Nitish Kumar and Arvind Kejriwal, showered praises on the former and clarified that this should not be construed at switching sides, one doesn't have to be a political pundit to know which way his winds are blowing.
The BJP leaders embarrassed by a man who once claimed to be the "loyal soldier of the party" have caught on to the riot act. Unable to reconcile that Shatrughan defines loyalty by his own standards, the party doesn't want to take precipitate action and queer the scene before the elections in Bihar lest he gets more attention than he actually deserves. Knowing the politician in him, he will sure make the party pay for ignoring his stake to Bihar's chief ministership as if Nitish and Laloo would allow him that privilege.
Shatrughan will be making a cardinal mistake if he thinks he can derive his political ambitions with his audacity. There are few instances in a profession -- where there are no permanent friends or foes -- where someone has got away by holding the banner of revolt. Politicians once thrown out of their respective parties, rarely enjoy the same status in other parties. Narayan Rane is a glowing example.
Whatever the compulsions of the BJP bosses, they are sure coming across as inhibited to rein in this indiscipline. Else, they would have paid him back in the same coin by saying "Khamosh", a word that the actor used so effectively on the screen. 

Milestone or a bad mistake?

Raju Korti

Now for the opposition in Congress

Some of my friends who I suspect read my blogs more out of morbid curiosity than genuine interest, have been wondering why I chose to skip something as peppery as the fallout of Lodha panel verdict on the suspension of two influential IPL teams and dwell on an issue like the US-Iran nuclear deal. The answer is the script in the former has run along predictable lines while the US deal with Iran, waiving off sanctions in lieu of putting an end to its nuclear programme, promises to be a serial with exciting episodes. So here I go.
Despite all the optimism and bonhomie that obtains in the face of the accord between the two countries, I earnestly feel that Washington must hold back some of its overflowing enthusiasm on the deal as "victory of democracy" though one would understand that international maneuverings such as these have to be couched in officialspeak that the international community understands. Its a euphemism for compromise and does injustice to Iran's past record in treachery. Lest it should be misconstrued as cynicism, I feel the US is jumping the proverbial gun and should wait before Iran gets back to its old wicked ways. Only a few dissident groups in the middle eastern country were not so kicked up about the two nuclear facilities that had not been brought to the notice of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations, which by proxy is US' watchdog.
Conceded that the recent outcome has its roots in the back channels opened to Iran by the Obama administration a couple of years back. Also agreed that the current Iranian leader Hassan Rohani, elected around the same time and seen as a reformist was the country's chief interlocutor as far as the nuclear programme was concerned. Rohani had emerged as a glimmer of hope by promising that he would bring Iran out of its international isolation by engaging his government in a constructive dialogue ending years of sanctions imposed by the US. All through the years, Iran had been non-compliant on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), refusing to suspend its fissile-enrichment facilities. The US was driven to desperation watching Iran attempting to acquire a nuclear weapon. The damage was done before it could think of means -- diplomatic or otherwise -- of dismantling an infrastructure that Iran clandestinely set up.
After braving the crippling sanctions for years, Iran has finally wilted into a retreat which could be more tactical than well meant. No country can afford economic doom. There is some wisdom in the American move to wait and watch if Iran sticks to its "good faith" since the latter's record in human rights and instigating terrorism is far too well known to deserve any special mention.
My skepticism arises out of a flimsy but nevertheless a perceptible threat that still holds in the wake of all the positivism of the breakthrough. Iran is not completely stopping its nuclear programme but only reducing it to one-third of its existing facility. Even these many spinning should have the US wary. Besides, the entire deal hinges on the fact that Iran will fall in line and comply with all the terms and conditions before the sanctions ease off. Under the agreement the UN inspectors will have an access to all its nuclear facilities -- declared or otherwise. However, the success of this move will largely depend on how intrusive IAEA will be towards this end. The exact nature of inspection and verification is not very clear at this juncture and the possibility of Iran hoodwinking them cannot be ruled out given its past record in lying and cheating. Little wonder, the deal has more critics than applauders, the most notable being US' old ally Israel. The Jewish lobby, quite influential in US, is not going to be amused at this "diplomatic triumph". The Republicans are rabidly opposed to the idea of any understanding with Iran and sees it as sponsor of designated terrorist outfits like the Hezbollah in Lebanon. The deal has understandably met with stiff resistance from hardliners in Iran.
Perhaps, where the White House has a tactical edge is those opposing the deal have no worthwhile alternatives to suggest. On the ground, most Iranians are keen to see their economy back on rails while majority Americans do not stomach the idea of a war with Iran just because it is pursuing nuclear weapons. The plain truth as it emerges in its present form is the Obama government has only heeded to the call of his countrymen and disguised it as a diplomatic breakthrough.
There are some good auguries if the deal holds through. For one, it will make the region much safer and slow down the dangerous prospect of a arms race between Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. It will also make Iran a lesser irritant in the region's geopolitics. The sooner US realizes that the breakthrough is more of an arms control deal than a friendly hug, the better. The latter can happen if Iran's economy re-integrates with the world and a semblance of trust is established between the West and Tehran.
That still is a distant dream. 

Of pavements and dogs

Raju Korti
Even as a professional singer, Abhijit cannot be credited with finding the right notes all through his scrappy career. So I guess he must be wondering what the hullabaloo is all about after making that profound statement "Kutta road pe soyega to kutte ki maut marega, road garib ke baap ki nahi hai."
Having met the man a a couple of times, I can tell you he wears everything on his sleeve except the craft that he so ardently professes to practice.Abhijit belongs to the fraternity of people who believe they can do nothing wrong even it means gun running or dispatching a few people to their heavenly abode (whatever that means) much before they meet their expiry date. So when actor Salman Khan, the noblest epitome of human existence, ran over some people sleeping on the street under his SUV and subsequently sentenced to a jail term, the film industry predictably spun into a tizzy. Every other sympathizer had stories to tell about his charm, munificence and what have you. The riot of colors was complete with a juvenile electronic media displaying ample proof of its total Bollywoodization. The specious justification for the reckless act was justified on the grounds of a lax justice system, bigger people getting away with bigger crimes and how someone deserved to be condoned when otherwise he had shown a great penchant for helping out people in distress.
Having roamed the streets of Mumbai for years, condemned to perform night shifts as a professional journalist, I can vouch that those who sleep on the pavements/roads sleep far more blissfully than the rich and affluent in the cozy confines of their AC bedrooms. Not a rocket science when you know that most slog like donkeys the whole day.
Abhijit has spoken part truth. If you sleep on the street, you always run the risk of being run over by some spoilt rich brat down with a few pegs. An SUV in the hands of a drunken driver can be as damaging as a terrorist armed with an AK 47. Salman is not the first nor will be the last to be involved in drunken driving cases that call for a culpable homicide charge. But he will always be privileged to have the backing of a brotherhood where money calls all the shots.That's where the case hogs more publicity.
Abhijit may have been insensitive the way he made that brash statement about roads not belonging to the poor but it does ring true. The staggering gap between rich and the poor can manifest in the worst possible ways. Remember Raj Kapoor's 1957 blockbuster Shree 420 where a large group of pavement dwellers make daily nuisance in the night singing and dancing while people living in the vicinity squirm in their beds.
In a city with a population threatening to cross the dubious 1.5 crore mark, more than 5 lakh people sleep on pavements unmindful of the risk of being killed or maimed by cars whizzing past at dangerous speeds. If not anything, it is a crying shame for our urban planners who can never get out of their reverie of seeing Slumbai turned into a Shanghai.Add to that a poorly administered justice system and a diametrically opposite ways of looking at an issue that also has social implications to it.
I suggest the country's planning commission must take a cue from Abhijit's deeply influential statement and set a separate benchmark for cities like Mumbai. Instead of using BPL (Below Poverty Line), they must have People Sleeping on Pavements (PSP) as the guiding yardstick.
That way, at least the poor canines will be spared of being slighted in the films. I feel strongly for the lovable four-legged creatures who inspire more loyalty than their two-legged counterparts.
But you know who is the underdog here.

Rahul Gandhi's meditational recess

Raju Korti

Politics is a 24X7 calling that thrives on personal high and perpetual adrenaline. Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, does not need those qualifications. He has hordes of antiquated Congressmen who will fall over themselves to do his bidding.
The young man who has been a butt of derisive sneers all through his gaffe-ridden tenure, afforded himself an expansive 56-day sabbatical in Yangon, Myanmar when one seriously wonders what could be the propriety of such a break when his party was providing him that perk with its trade-mark sycophancy.
The very idea of Rahul Gandhi seeking a sabbatical is redundant. The son, grandson and great grandson of Indian Prime Ministers had already lost sheen before embarking upon a leave of absence prior to the budget session of the Parliament. The party had handed his detractors in the ruling dispensation enough ammo to hit back and say "Go and find Rahul first" each time it sought to criticize them. After all the brouhaha, it now transpires that the young man whose public appearances are largely limited to clumsily drafted orchestrated speeches, chose the south-east Asian country to find solace in "meditation".
While the Media continues to beat chest on not being able to locate his whereabouts all through the two months, I have been creaking my brains as to why did he have to leave the shores of the country to perform a chore as simple as meditation unless he was living it up there; far from prying eyes and trying to get over the electoral loss of face.
As someone who has practiced infrequent meditation to fight the unending blues of life, I can vouch that there is distraction when there are nagging thoughts and meditation happens only when there are no thoughts and a sense of detachment. Rahul has far too much baggage to have gotten into meditation and if he has still managed to take his mind off the debilitating times that he and his party have gone through, it should really serve him right. The first recipe for contentment is to avoid too lengthy meditation on the past. 56 days is not exactly a short span of time. It is long enough to gloss over all the failures of your life. Quite rightly, baiters in the party have a point when they say he should be more hands-on and lead from the front. And if a section of the party is to be believed, the party is still struggling to make a choice between Rahul and Priyanka. Whatever their leadership caliber, one still cannot see what difference it will make to bring the party out of the quagmire it is stuck in.
Just how much inner enlightenment Rahul has found in his two-month sojourn will become evident when he dons the mantle afresh ahead of the second phase of the budget session. The party should also clarify whether the sabbatical was an exercise in introspection or meditation. In either case, it is in tune with the party's culture of only the Gandhis calling the shots. If Rahul was sulking that some party men were baying for his ouster and chose foreign climes to shrug them off, the meditation and introspection theories go for a toss. Rahul himself hasn't come clean on his sabbatical and to be fair to him, he should be given his right of privacy. That, however, becomes difficult given the circumstances that surround his unexplained break.
Contemplation is the only luxury that costs nothing. Hope Rahul has had that enlightenment in his luxurious sabbatical.
        

Crowing about an uncommon bird

A file grab from wikipedia

Raju Korti
When you have precious little to do with a mind desperately seeking to go into an overdrive, your eyes look for something that you have been seeing ever since you can remember but never actually registered. It is better to have a fair intellect that is well used than a powerful one that is idle.
So in tune with my latest talent for discovering engaging pastimes that don't cost a dime, I have found one that consumes most part of my day wherever I may be. The object of my riveting attention these days are the much reviled, despised crows, especially the ones that flit around and perch themselves on the huge tree that faces my bedroom. It is extremely rare that you get to look at a crow straight in the face, eye-to-eye. But having encountered its X-ray gaze on a numerous occasions, I have come to the unassailable conclusion that much of the revulsion people have for this condemned species of birds is misplaced and unfair. It is actually a sharp, intelligent and quick-on-the-uptake bird that has a canny knack for survival compared to the songbird variety that corners all the admiration.
I am pretty sure that those who look down on crows as intellectually-challenged birds have had a lost childhood and since my adulthood makes for no concession of my kid years, I will recommend crows like I am their hired attorney.
My respect for crows grew when as a growing kid I first read the meandering stories of Pandit Vishnu Sharma's celebrated work Panchatantra where he dedicates one full technique of existentialism and life to the philosophy and intelligence of the crows. In my prime stage of youth, I read writers who often compared the hair colour of beautiful women with that of a Raven.
Wittingly, I became more conscious of the ubiquitous presence of this bird with a petite 7-inch frame and it became a hobby of sorts to try and look at it straight in the eye. It was both knowledge and revelation that it had many feathers in its smooth pate visible only to the discerning like me.
Mark Twain took my esteem for crows to the next higher level although his famed eulogy has frills of derision to it. I will reproduce his words to allow you to draw your own conclusions:

"In the course of his evolutionary promotions, his sublime march toward ultimate perfection, he has been a gambler, a low comedian, a dissolute priest, a fussy woman, a blackguard, a scoffer, a liar, a thief, a spy, an informer, a trading politician, a swindler, a professional hypocrite, a patriot for cash, a reformer, a lecturer, a lawyer, a conspirator, a rebel, a loyalist, a democrat,, a practitioner and propagator of irreverence, a meddler, an intruder, a busybody, an infidel, and a wallower in sin for the mere love of it. He does not know what care is, he does not know what sorrow is, he does not know what remorse is, his life is one long thundering ecstasy of happiness, and will go to his death untroubled, knowing that he will soon turn up again as an author or something, and be even more intolerable capable and comfortable than he was ever before."

Quite a hefty package that! Twain has actually used "he" in place of "it", which to my understanding is an indirect admission of the crow's ability to stand heads and shoulders above the man with the love-hate traits that he so profoundly describes. And mind you, the icing on the cake comes when you realize that it is the Indian crow, not the American crow that Twain is at pains to labour over. You can decide finally which is the variety that eats the crow. In my kindergarten days I learnt it through a simple but lasting legend of a thirsty crow who stumbles upon a pot of water at its bottom. Unable to draw water, "he" puts pebbles to make the water level rise and then quench his thirst. There cannot be a better example of wit and brevity than this justified fable:

Ek kawwa pyaasa tha, ghade mein thoda paani tha
Kawwa laaya kankar, paani aaya oopar
Kawwe ne piya paani, khatam ho gayi kahaani.

For those who are vocal in their discrimination of the two poor cousins koyal and the crow -- there is little to discriminate on the colour of their skin -- the latter has a range of cawing vocalization. After hours of careful observation I have found out that "he" flies with a minimal movement of the wings and caws hoarsely with the throat puffed, head bowed and tail dipping. Ornithologists may not have been able to decipher "his"calls and postures, but I am sure "he" has an equally derisive thing to say to the man: Kawwa ban ne ki koshish mat karo (Don't try to be smart like me).
Just one word. If your head is reeling after reading this great piece of literature, please pop a Crowcin. 

From Cricket to Ashes: Richie Benaud, OBE

Small screen, large persona: Richie Benaud

Raju Korti
If there is one regret that I will consciously carry to my grave it is of not being able to meet the legendary Richie Benaud. My heart-burn gets only accentuated when I realize that I had the privilege to meet and hold a cart-wheeling conversation with the most articulate of commentators from the BBC Test Match Special and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). John Arlott, Brian Johnston, Christopher Martin Jenkins, Don Mosley, Henry Blofeld, Alan Mcgilvray, Freddie Truman, Trevor Bailey and Richie Benaud were the kind broadcasters who could keep listeners spellbound on the radio with a free-flowing narrative that would conjure up vivid pictures of the actual Test match in progress. That kind of thrall and photographic description doesn't obtain today even with a large screen and given the garrulous breed of commentators today who spout a lot without conveying much.
Now that Richie has died at 84 peacefully in sleep, the world of cricket commentary has lost its sardonic wit and eloquence. I have only faint memories of the man since he hung up boots in 1964 when I was barely eight years old with an elementary understanding that there was a ball that meant to be hit with a willow. That was a different era with players of a different caliber and mindset. It was cricket in those days!
Truman, Bailey and Benaud were experts who could analyze the game with a clinical precision a seasoned physician would have envied. Truman was blunt and brutal who often sautéed his comments with a giggle to match. Bailey was so crisp, it would be a lesson in editing. With him, all words were carefully measured and weighed before they got the Bailey Status. Richie's words carried the seasoning of a dry, laconic humor without being prosaic. But of course, his legacy extends far beyond the microphone. He was also an exceptional all-round cricketer and one of Australia's finest captains. Splitting his time between Australia and England, he became the face of cricket in both countries for more than four decades, his trademark cream jacket becoming as synonymous with the sport as leather and willow. When asked to sum up his commentary style, he said his mantra was: "If you can add to what's on the screen then do it, otherwise shut up." There is a lesson for all those commentators, especially in India for whom commentating is mostly describing the field position and reading out the score-card.
Arlott, Johnston and Jenkins who were in a class of their own, often said they always looked up to Richie because he was peerless with the mike. In that sense, Richie had the satire of Arlott, the wit of Johnston and the free-flowing recountal of a Mcgilvray and yet, he was a class apart. He had this unique ability to introduce a high emotion quotient without being too temperamental about it. It was only a Richie who could comment with a non-chalant, blank face, "So Glenn Mcgrath is out on two, 98 short of his hundred when a Truman would have said the same thing with a worst giggle.
Quiet and authoritative, Richie's pun with words and knack of coining a memorable phrase made him a popular subject for affectionate mimicry among cricket fans in England and Down Under. His signature greeting of "Morning Everyone" became a household refrain, while his delicious delivery of the word "marvelous" seemed to make everything seem well with the world. Only he could pronounce "s" like "sh" and sound it so stylish. Talk of gift of the gab! He had patented the art of turning one-liners into cricketing folklores. It came through so breviloquently when after dashing his car into a brick wall in 2013 he said with his trademark wit, "I am more worried about the car than my own health."
I do not believe that Richie had anything left to prove, but it rankles to know that a man who left an indelible impression on the game should have departed in such an unsung manner. Tributes and accolades will keep pouring over the next few days, though for the man who was perhaps the most influential cricketer and cricket personality since the Second World War.
I will say this for him: His was the voice of conscience in a sport tainted by politics and driven by self-interest. Richie Benaud was so Australian and yet, arguably the most justifiable mascot of Cricket. There will never be another Benaud.
 

An extravagance called mobile phone

Raju Korti

As someone who is always high on grandiose ideas but always cash-strapped to execute them, let me assure you in my limited wisdom that there cannot be a cheaper indulgence than to observe people. It is the most under-rated pleasures of life muzzled and overtaken by worldly pleasures that money buys you.
Observing people, their demeanor, disposition, body language, mannerisms and speech can be as exciting and entertaining as it can get. It is not as if you eavesdrop on them or enjoy being privy to something that should actually remain in the domain of their personal privacy but when pastime comes to you merely on your natural instincts to keep your eyes and ears open, why shoo it away?
One such frolic comes from a breed that cannot live without its cell phones. In a country where cell phones have become a sort of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), you will find people engaged with their contraptions in trains, buses, assorted public places, offices, homes and even toilets. Over the years, this breed has given me some of my finest moments of fun and pain. It is as if cell phones are their life line. I have detected a sense a deprivation in people whenever they misplace, lose or leave their cell phone behind (at home). This feeling of being dispossessed stands out particularly  when you realize that some 15 years ago the cell phone was more of a status symbol with only the well-heeled being able to shell out Rs 20 per minute per call. I come from a generation when even a landline was a luxury. It was with a sense of trepidation and awkwardness that we had to knock at the doors of someone who had a phone and allow us to make a call. Some were gracious enough and some acceded, reminding us with a stern face that we must leave Re 1 for the call made. Those were the days when communication was better despite less interaction. Today, it is no big deal to see two persons talking to each other in a local train in the same compartment, jostling against a milling crowd.
I once saw a man in a Gents First Class compartment of a local train speaking fast and furious to someone for more than an hour -- from Borivali to Churchgate -- reeling out a complex maze of calculations. Each time he spoke, he would hold his mobile phone close to his mouth and the minute he was done with, he would put it to his ears. He was an atrocity even by Mumbai's standards. When he finally got down at the last station, a visibly enraged co-passenger said to me: "Some people turn the compartment into an office. No discipline at all." I just nodded dumbly, having withstood the ordeal of that utterly uninspiring conversation of which I couldn't make head or tail. But not all such conversations can be dim-witted.
On one occasion I saw a man in his mid-thirties who just giggled and guffawed on his cell all the way for the same length between Borivali and Churchgate. Obviously the man at the other end must have been blessed with a terrific sense of humor. He was still giggling when he disappeared from my sight after getting down the train. As a journalist, I realized one could communicate without a single word.
Apparently I have the natural skills to court such people. One late night while travelling between Colaba and Dadar in a bus, I had a 50+ man sitting next to me and explaining -- of all the people -- his sister-in-law how he had downed five pegs and was still in his senses. I could make out that because he kept addressing the person at the other end as "Bhabhi". From the way the conversation went I could realize his sister-in-law was both outraged and worried with his drinking adventure. But the man airily allayed her fears saying that he was a gentleman in comparison at a time when people drank through the whole night and finally passed out on some footpath or a gutter. As I glanced around, I could see everyone in the bus was partaking the vicarious pleasure of that fabulous piece of conversation.
Most people are oblivious two persons can't see each other while conversing but they are all a flurry of gesticulations and show of temper. In one case, a man seemed to be having a normal  conversation on his phone when he suddenly blew his top. The person at the end had probably blown his fuse. Getting up from his seat violently, he burst into a series of  obscenities, raising his fist. For a minute he looked he was going to beat the living daylights out of someone. His rage was punctured by an elderly man who just patted him gently and asked him to calm down.
By far the best sight I was treated to was in a public loo. The man spoke animatedly, balancing his cell phone in his left hand and you-know-what in the other. After he had relieved himself, he walked out -- still talking -- zipping up his pants in full public glare. And then the number of times you see jaywalkers crossing busy through fares, talking with phone in one hand and warding off honking vehicles with the wave of the other. The streets belong to them, so run over them at your own risk! 
The first thing many people do when they settle down -- wherever they are -- is to whip out their cell phone and start fiddling with it, sometimes as early as five in the morning. While it could be a fair allowance for someone to check out for messages, quite a few get hooked on to games with weird sounds. These are the ones who are in a state of nirvana, for, they are blissfully unaware of what's going on around them engrossed as they are in playing games. You keep looking askance at them only to realize they are not even aware of your presence. There are only a very few who talk in voice not to disturb others and keep their conversation to the necessary minimum while there are also exhibitionists who will talk loudly enough to bare their entire horoscope. It is actually more by design than default.
I have two cell phones, the combined bill for whom works out less than Rs 500 a month. My friends can't figure out in the world how I manage to keep myself in check when they work up a bill upwards of Rs 2000 with just one instrument.
India is the second-largest mobile phone user with over 900 million users in the world. It accounted for over 10% of the world’s online population, according to a statistics issued by the Ministry of Telecommunications. No surprise that where people cannot have a proper bowel movement unless they carry their cell phones to the toilet.
I remember what Ghulam Nabi Azad, then a Congress minister, had said in a speech: "Our major policy objective is to reposition the mobile phone from a mere communication device to an instrument of empowerment." That objective has certainly been achieved.

Putin's machismo and the spectre of a war

Sabre rattling or more?

Raju Korti
For a self-proclaimed "trouble-maker", Russian President Vladimir Putin has flirted with trouble long enough to have actually fallen in love with it. His remarkable stint with the KGB and subsequent years in Politics have honed his talent in the craft with a carefully cultivated image of masculinity that Putin revels in underplaying.
In tune with that machismo image, the Russian President -- as is his won't -- has now issued a threat to the Americans without mincing words. "Try taking away Crimea away from us and we shall treat you to a nuclear war," Putin said with a nonchalance which to me, sits pretty compatibly on his deadpan face.
The Crimean Peninsula is a chunk of land mass to the south of Ukraine, now in the eye of an international political storm that involves two key players Russia and the United States. It became an autonomous Republic of Crimea within an independent Ukraine early 1991. Sovereignty and control of the peninsula got mired in a territorial dispute between Russia and Ukraine with Russia signing a treaty of accession last year and absorbing it into the Russian Federation. That accession fell foul of Ukraine and most of the international community. In some ways, this development to many was reminiscent of Kashmir's accession with India.
Putin's "meddling" in the affairs of the neighboring countries hasn't gone down well with the NATO countries led by the Commissioner of World Police, the United States. His role in Cold War, oil deadlock and Syrian crisis, to name a few, certainly shook the American self-arrogated right to dabble in world affairs. That doesn't come as a surprise at all.
From tagging dangerous animals to stopping wildfires, to playing half-naked with guns on vacation, Putin may not be among the most popular guys in the world, but he sure makes the world sit up and take notice. Even the ultimate pennant of masculinity Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't draw the kind of interest he does. Little wonder then the Americans try to demonize him and blink each time Putin rides rough shod and cocks a snook at their perceived superiority. The Americans are watching with gaping eyes as Mr Intrigue has now directly threatened to nuke them in case they harbored any ideas of meddling in Ukraine.
The Americans have by now very well realized that the authoritarian leader who didn't stop at "eliminating" his adversaries back home and who brazenly withstood allegations of a rigged election, couldn't care less if his country was eventually suspended from G8 for annexing Crimea.
The Ukrainian crisis was, of course, compounded by a trigger from within. Putin just took a cue from the exiled Ukrainian President who sought Russian military intervention to quell the revolution that threatened to rip it apart. The Americans watched helplessly as Putin managed to get an authorization from the Parliament to deploy troops in the region and gain a complete toehold in the Crimean Peninsula. In a referendum, considered bogus by the West, an overwhelming 90% plus voters demanded that they secede from Ukraine. If the Russians were hurt by the economic sanctions imposed upon them, they didn't show it. The Russian move to grant political asylum to Edward Snowden (who leaked classified information from the NSA) rubbed more salt on the wounds.
Under Putin, Russia's ties with NATO and the US were even more tumultuous. From a cautious beginning, Putin first supported the US war on terror where many saw a new strategic partnership building. All such hopes were quickly razed to dust when the US extended NATO's presence to Russian borders and the two nations relapsed into their old ways of scratching each other's backs.
Putin has made it clear that the NATO encroachment in the region by supplying weapons against pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine will invite a nuclear backlash. A potentially dangerous situation.
I would like to make parallel case studies here. Former US ambassador to India Daniel Patrick Moynihan had once described Kashmir as the world's most dangerous place on the premise of not entirely unfounded fears that it could trigger of nuclear conflict any time. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has worded it differently by saying that "For the West, the demonization of Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one." Kashmir and Ukraine are evenly poised in terms of world peace or the absence of it. In Kashmir there are players with unsound mind while in Ukraine there are players who know what entails. As insanity keeps unfolding, both sit on a bomb and pretend it will only keep ticking.