Indian Express photographs of the day - Explained

Teachers play football in a field on the occasion of Teacher's Day in Patiala. (PTI)

Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie puts his arms around the Iron Pillar in Qutub Minar in New Delhi. (AP)

Policemen stand guard after buses carrying Sri Lankan pilgrims, were attacked by locals in Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu state, India. Around 184 Sri Lankan pilgrims were mobbed and had to seek refuge in the church they were visiting. (AP)

Students make a floral image of former President Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan on his birth anniversary, celebrated as Teachers day, in Bhubaneswar. (PTI)

Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj with Telangana party leaders at a dharna over Telangana issue at the Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. (PTI)

Former President APJ Abdul Kalam and author Sudheendra Kulkarni at the launch of the latter's book 'Music of the Spinning Wheel' in New Delhi. (PTI)

China's Defence Minister General Liang Guanglie talks with PM Manmohan Singh during their meeting in New Delhi. (Reuters)

School children shield themselves from rain on their way to school in Kolkata. (PTI)

Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on the first day of the session at Delhi Secretariat as BJP MLAs walk out from the assembly, in the Capital. (IE Photo: Praveen Khanna)

BJP student wing ABVP activists hold a 'Chakka Jaam' protest against coal scam in New Delhi. (IE Photo: Vishal Srivastav)

CBI officials outside one of the offices of Abhijeet Group in Defence Colony where it conducted a raid as part of an investigation against five companies, several individuals and officials allegedly involved in the coal scam. (IE Photo: Oinam Anand)

Two ladies Reshma Khan and Lalita Paswan from Malvani, Malad were arrested when they were trying to sell the 45-days-old child, Amruta Zhuber for Rs 1,20,000 at Hotel Lalit, Charkop, Kandevali. (IE Photo: Kevin D'Souza)

Bose DK

Satyendra Nath Bose deserved Nobel

Well he didn't get it. Finito. And he's dead and doesn't care about it any more. Neither does Gandhi.

Stop complaining and go and do something of your own.

Nobody is victimizing you Indians. You are getting in the way of yourself and each other, and YOU KNOW THAT! 

World famous photographs explained

O! My fellow-Indian athlete!

In all my life
I have never heard your name
To all your efforts
Against impossible odds, I hear
I have never given a passing thought
But now that you have
Somehow
Managed a medal
Somewhere
I am flag-wavingly proud of you!

Imagine

Imagine, there is a suicide where the poor wretch horribly mutilates his face with knife and acid, slashing his genitals with kitchen knives and thus bleeding to death.

Imagine the glee of the news-reporters who report this strange case.

Now, imagine all these reporters going back to their homes and committing suicide in the same bizarre manner.

Imagine, the next set of reporters who report this fantastic story.

Imagine, these reporters dying the same night in a similar fashion.

Who would come forward now to report their deaths?

Cocktail - The real story Part 1

Cocktail is the undercover sequel to the undercover flop, Agent Winnowed. W is recalled after his last assignment, a colossal failure where he failed to recover his single-billed-hero career. He enters the Big Office, and M, the elder Mangeshkar didi, is ready to sing to him: “Ai-gent Vinod yeh sunlo, zaraa g***d mein bharlo daali”, at which a portrait of Chacha N is shown weeping in the background. In short, she gives him the shaft.

W begs for another chance and by begging I mean he begs. He tears his shirt, and vocal cords, smears his face with paint, dons a Viking helmet, rolls his eyes and sings “Chheechha leather” on local-trains where M, now disguised as a big O, finally impressed by his penitence, slips in a CD in the elastic of his panty as she brushes past him, deboarding the last local-train. W takes the CD to his laptop and it reveals a hologram where M, now disguised as an SS officer, Satish Shah in uniform, reveals the next assignment. 

-          Welcome, Agent W. Stop shaking your lap, I cannot concentrate when my breasts jiggle. Listen carefully now. Apparently, when the earth was still young, and Hangal only in his middle-age, a giant meteorite fell from space

-          Why space? - W asks.

-          So where would you rather it came from? A latrine? (Continues) Fell from space and landed in a spot.  (Silence.)

-          What spot? - W dared after some time.

-          Well, a rather tricky spot.

-          Trick is my second hyphenated middle name.

-          What’s the first?

-          One.

-          Well, as I said, it’s a rather tricky place. Rather tickly, if you have the fingers for it. Ticky, if you don’t particularly care for hygiene. And of course tinkly, sometimes a dozen times a day, especially on cold rainy days like this.

-          Is it safe?

-          I see your skills remain undiminished. The spot is indeed a safe. A safe in Barclays, London. The collapse of the bank has revealed to us at last its location. We want you to go and retrieve the meteorite.

-          What’s in the meteorite?

-          A tail.

-          Tell it to me.

-          A tail, not a tale. Millions of years ago, we were all reptiles, lizards. (Looks at W) Some of us still even look like them. A few years ago, in a top-secret NASHA operation we captured a hundred intoxicated Neanderthal men captured loitering around Delhi pubs, manning police stations and crying themselves hoarse at Anna’s rallies. You see these men are the proto-men, their brains never evolved beyond that of the reptile. We befuddled their brains with coke -

-          Brown sugar?

-          No, just Coke. Diet Coke. Of course, we put the Mentos in their mouths first. We brainwashed these men that there was this lizard which was the biggest lay and wore real-lly short minis, and let their SUVs loose at the spot we believe lay the fossilized remain of our first reptilian ancestor. The men dug it out in minutes and threw it at the side of the road after raping it for a few days. We had RFID-tagged their SUVs of course, and found the battered remains of our ancestor… but we never found its tail.

-          You think they took it away?

-          No, we believe that the tail was embalmed thousands of years ago and sent in space where it crystallized inside this meteorite. You see this was no ordinary tail. Over successive evolutions, it gradually moved from the posterior to the anterior portion of the body, and became what we now refer to as the most sinful portion of our constitution.

-          King Mojo?

-          Uh-no. The tongue.

-          Oh. Okay, so it became a tongue. What of it? Tomorrow, my nipple might evolve and become a hand…

-          Why a hand?

-           That’s just an example…

-          But why would you want hands there?

-          Well, forget that…

-          Of course, I will! It’s a preposterous idea!

-          No, it isn’t!

-          It is! Tell me one good use of hands on nipples!

-          Well, I believe, they can be put to many uses! When you wake up to the milkman in the morning, you can hold a pan, and still yawn… you can scratch yourself in the nads, and still go balldancing in a tuxedo… while love-making, you can grab at the titties and the bums at one go…

-          Okay, okay! I got it.

-          So the point is, why do we need the first nipple that became the hand?

-          We don’t. We need the first tail that became the tongue.

-          Okay, why do you need that tongue? Besides being curious about it.

-          I am never curious, W. (SS looks as coldly to W as Shah can manage)I know everything.

-          Then why do we need the tail?

-          Because it contains, at its tip, the beginning.

-          And what was there in the beginning?

-          God’s own name.

-          I knew you would get my Muslimness in this!

-          In the beginning, as John Abraham keeps telling us, was the word and that word was lost in the many evil intents we have given to this noble appendage since. The word was God. And God as we know is that single perfect equation that would explain everything.

-          Everything?

-          Everything.

-          Even Shahid Kapoor?

-          I wouldn’t stretch my expectations that far.

-           What’s in it for me then?

-          Well, I would say a rather generous chance to you to prove your mettle again, to stand on your own bloody feet without my paying through the nose for a crowd-puller Khan.

-          I don’t know, I am starting to enjoy these lace panties. How come you never thought of giving me the cover of a transvestite hooker?

-          Because then it wouldn't be a cover, just you. What do you want then, Agent W?

-          Something more.

-          Okay, with the discovery of the lost word, you will have Knowledge.

-          And why would I desire that?

-          ‘Coz knowledge is power.

-          Big deal! My mother owns the censor board. Remember Hum Tum? I already have all the power I need.

-          Faith then.

-          Impossible. I have been in this industry too long now.

-          Okay, okay, I’ll throw in your favourite agent again…

-          Pussy galore!

-          Ay’, lor’. In fact, I'll give you two for the price of half!

-          Gee, I  don’t know. I’m getting typecast with the yuppie stud surrounded by girls. Don’t you have a role more suited for my age?

-          We do actually. Boman’s. Just your age.

-          All right, all right. I’ll do it. What are we going to call this operation then?

-          Well, it all started with some coke (Satish Shah pronounces it as cock, and Saif embarrassedly corrects him) and it would end in our getting the tail. So I was think of calling it, (camera zooms on SS’s pudgy face as he raises a little finger to the side of his mouth) Operation Cocktail.

-          Okay, okay. what happens next?

-          As usual, your next pitstop would be at Q, of course, who would tell you the rest. You will find him at his usual hole.

-          You mean hall.

-          No hole. We had to surrender much of it to the new Metro line and there is only a hole now.

-          I will see him then.

-          Good. This CD would self-destruct itself now.

     Unfortunately, instead of the CD, the laptop, an Intel Atom netbook overheated with this protracted conversation, bursts into flames, badly burning W’s lap.

Itna sannata kyun hai bhai - The real implications

The allure of this article was its promise to reveal to us, at last, the implications of the iconic dialogue that has haunted us for years. Why was it iconic when neither the actor nor the character ever was? The answer must lie in the words themselves.

Disappointingly, the article is another bogey, another Rahul-Vatsiyan mediocrity trying to catch our eyeballs, like the lifting of a eunuch’s skirt with nothing to show underneath. The implication turned out to be, hold your breath, it was “a great example of understanding the value of silence.” 
Ergo, If Hangal stepped out asking “Itnee garmee kyun hai?”, he would have understood the value of heat. Brilliant insight.

And then it informs us in phrases seemingly cut and pasted from an IITian’s tale, that “The drama in the scene was heightened to such a level that the spectators found it easy to cry than to see Rahim's about to happen condition.”

First of all, I have never, never, seen anyone cry for Rahim chacha. In the 70s, moviegoers used to clap when Sachin died.

Secondly, the thing about “about to happen condition” needs to be explained to me again. “Than” what? If you have to murder the language, just murder it please. But don’t hack at the tenuous threads of semantics which bridge this chaotic world to our comprehension.  

Undeterred, I continued in my quest, and examined the implications from all possible dimensions. Here are my thoughts on why Hangal chacha’s iconic phrases were really a statement on his times, 1975.

Itna sannata kyun hai bhai? Wherefore this silence?

Politically -­ The gagging of the press during the emergency

Economically -­ The stagnant licence-raj economy

Sociological ­- The society obdurately ossified in its caste and class divisions, after the collapse of Nehruvian optimism

Technological ­ - The echoing silences in our labs with all the brain-drain

Biological - The departed stirrings under his lungi

Philosophical - If I break this silence with this question and no one speaks yet, did I break the silence?  

Metaphysical ­ - Our essential existential alienation despite the multitudes

Literal ­ - Which bad joke did I just missed?

Psychological -­ Am I going deaf too?

Back to quota raj - followup

As if on cue, the Chinese media sees lessons in the government's handling of the NE exodus affair. 

Note how it justifies the state's intervention in their citizen's private lives : "it's a poor country and its citizens are not emotionally equipped to face rumours spread on the internet."

As the previous post mentioned, this very condescending, and rather self-serving, thinking was at work in our licence raj. The state as the disciplining parent to its teeny-weeny citizens.

There is a serious threat of going the China way if the government has its way. As i said, I believe they are using this affair only to test how far they can take our freedom from us again.

Back to the quota raj

I believe that the real motive of the government’s regular bullying of social media and its repeated threats of cyber-policing, stems from the desire  to wrest again that domineering control over supply of everything, a power it wielded till the 80s.The mai-baaps controlled the taps of everything that went in our paltry civil lives then ­- amount of foreign exchange in our pockets, number of telephones and scooters in the market, communication. After many years of dormancy, this intermediation has come back again in the quota of SMSes we can exchange in a day, the big brother back in control and even large-heartedlyallowing a bigger trickle from 5 to 20 now, after elbowing rudely, without consultation, into this personal space a few days back.

Only a little more than a decade ago, the fastest mode of communication was the telegram which could only be sent via the agency of government. The only telecom provider, maintaining an artificial scarcity for years so that you were just grateful to get a phone in only a couple of years, was run by the government. Private couriers were almost absent, only the government-run postal office. Hence, communication, like production, was always in the fist of the government; it could squeeze it any time, any place it wanted. It believed itself to be magnanimous to grant us the annual rations, like a master would to grant its slaves a petty raise. We were a poor nation, we were told, and the rich, and not the ones in the government, were fleecing the poor, and the only way to contain this was to let the government cite everything as a luxury good it could only release a trickle at a time.

Things changed. We can text and speak directly now, in real time, about anything, with no controlling agent in between. A government like ours doesn’t like that. It likes to be in a position of knowing every twitter, every morsel, that passes under it. It gives it power and control, and an ear in our plotting lives. Remember, our socialism, our ministries like IB whose actual role is to censor and not broadcast, were derived from Stalin’s Russia in the early 50s.  

Capping the number of SMSes following the flight of north-easterns from the big cities was a knee-jerk reaction from a clueless corruption-ridden regime. The reason why people were fleeing was that they do not trust the police to protect them. But improving law enforcement is a long-term thing and, if it ever happens, the process would never begin from the top, for obvious reasons.

Imagine the immeasurable loss to the people by this cap: the commerce which has come to rely heavily on SMSes, the unsent Eid greetings… we cannot even begin to enumerate; we are an SMS-nation now and these malicious SMSes would have made an insignificant % of all the SMSes we exchange.

Two days after the ban, I received an SMS exhorting my patriotism to cooperate and mentioned a threat to national security. Really? There is a civil war engulfing almost the whole eastern part of tuthohe nation and you think the nation was secure all along? In a country of our size and spread, this was a local crisis. Did the action of a few hundred (at best) malevolent rumour-mongers really merit such a large spanner in the affairs of 1.2 BN people? Nobody was texting in concerted riots before, like the ones in ’84. Hell, no one was even punished after them. People panic because they know when they are at the short end of the stick, there is a jungle raj and their attackers will butcher them with the police looking on and then get away.

The world has always been in a ferment and there have been always been violence. It has been contained by containing the perpetrators and not the channels of communication which are open to anyone, criminal or innocent civilian. That would be like banning sex to contain rape. Or like limiting the traffic on highways to contain highwaymen. I am always concerned when a government raises the flag of national security: many a times, the message is that it means to move into my drawing room with all its surveillance gadgetry.

After taking upon itself the authority to determine the threshold of SMSes which do not constitute a threat, what stops this government to now extend it to determine the quotas on the number of kilometers we can drive every day, number of people we can speak to, number of broadband KBs we consume? Isn’t this the same mechanism at work which determined the number of scooters we could have in a year, rather than just letting anyone wanting to own a scooter buy one? The key word is “allow”. We do not have the right to SMS any more: it is a privilege now allowed to us, and of course it needs to be capped to drive home the point.

Hence, I believe this particular crisis has been used by the government to test what it can do to wedge again into our untrammeled freedom to speak, to hear, to exchange words. The blocked twitter accounts of dissenting journalists in the bogey of this security threat, is a taste of things to come, if we surrender our rights so obediently. The first push is usually a test of how far it can get away.

Loaded questions

Besides the fatuity of turning every passing newsbite to a referendum, see how the very question contains, or rather, nudges towards the answer. The elbow being the "really".

Are these evangelo-journalists "really" as righteous as they project themselves to be?