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The show begins It is outrageous |
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Cliches rule main parties' manifestos
Well-meaning spirit
A bird’s eye view
A hazy future
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The show begins One
obvious feature of Thursday's polling in 14 states and three union territories, including Chandigarh, is that the voter turnout is higher than in 2009. This is interpreted differently, depending on political loyalty. One conclusion is that it will be a vote for change, which means against the Congress. Another view is people have got a choice this time as the Aam Aadmi Party has fielded new, untried alternative candidates to the traditional options. Yet another interpretation attributes the record-breaking voting to a Modi wave. A high-pitch campaign of the Narendra Modi-led BJP and heated political debates in the media have forced people out of their political seclusion to take a stand. Still another opinion expressed is that voters have come out in large numbers to stop Modi in his tracks. At many places the vote may not be as much for a local candidate as for the leader at the national level, be it Narendra Modi or Arvind Kejriwal. The BJP has made it a presidential election, focusing on one individual. The Congress, however, has tried to keep the spotlight on secularism vs communalism. The Muzaffarnagar riots set the stage for communal polarisation which Amit Shah is exploiting to the hilt. In Delhi and elsewhere a split in the anti-Modi vote will benefit the BJP. AAP has projected itself as a party above caste politics. How many rise above parochial, casteist and other divides to back AAP is anybody's guess. In Haryana political realignment has made the outcome unpredictable. The Congress, which won nine of the 10 seats, is a divided house in the state in addition to facing anti-incumbency. A substantial number of young first-time voters have exercised their franchise, wanting to have a say in the formation of the next government at the Centre. Articulating their concerns and aspirations, political parties are wooing this constituency. People in the Maoist-hit areas of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha braved Naxal threats to vote. Barring stray incidents of violence, the polling for the 91 seats was peaceful. The use of unaccounted money in the elections, however, needs to be curbed more effectively.
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It is outrageous The
death sentence for the crime of rape can be questioned under our democratic norms. But to declare that "Boys make mistakes. They should not be hanged for rape" and support the criminals at a public meeting to win a few votes is not just outrageous, it is unpardonable. Mulayam Singh Yadav is known for his blatant support of patriarchy. But this time, the context he used to give vent to his misogyny was misplaced. The Shakti Mill rapists, two of whom are Muslims, were awarded death for the repeated crime and the heinous manner of committing the crime. All rapists are not shown the gallows, Yadav should know. By supporting criminals, he was trying to win the minority vote in a multi-cornered battle of democracy, but it irked the well-informed electorate. Women's need for dignity and security is undermined by the likes of Yadav and K Sudhakaran, Kerala MP, who has proclaimed that "prostitution is covered under rape". They forget that women have as much the right to vote as men do. And undermining this power could cost them heavily. The same democracy that empowers them to give vent to their ill-informed bias also empowers women to raise their voice against such absurdity. More than 1,00,000 cases of crime against women languish in various courts of our country. According to the National Crimes Records Bureau, only about 10 per cent of the rape cases get reported. The old laws were changed to accommodate such women as shied away from reporting crime due to unfavourable laws. If political representatives, elected to legislate to defend the weak and the
victimised, defend criminals from public platforms, what will be the fate of thousands of victims of acid attacks and gang-rapes, afraid to come out in the open due to the social stigma? Yadav had objected to several features, including stalking being made a criminal offence, in the new laws. That was his democratic right. His utterance in support of rapists is opportunism in bad taste!
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You always admire what you really don't understand. —Blaise Pascal
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WE regret to learn that there is just now a commotion among the good and peaceable Hindu residents of Ambala City. The trouble is over the disappearance of two Hindu students who are believed to have been or are about to be converted into Islam. The age of militancy in religious propaganda is past and nothing is gained by persuading immature boys to change the faith of their fathers. The gain to the proselytizing religion is small because of the age of the lads. But the social and religious ill-feeling it engenders and the disruption it brings are consequences too serious to be comprehended by religious enthusiasts. This Province has other questions to tackle than the conversion of schoolboys, and they require for their solution the sagacity which the two communities can bring. We appeal to our Muslim brethren to advise the enthusiasts to stop the propaganda. The presidential address
THE tenth session of the All-India Kshatriya Conference opened on the 11th April. The President Baba Gurbakhsh Singh Bedi in his address said the present conditions were favourable to progress and every community was holding meetings to ameliorate its lot. It was due to the benign and liberal attitude of Government to whom they were thankful. The Khatris had taken the palm in every department of life, in every branch of learning. The dutiful Rama, the loving Lakshman, the devoted Sita, where could they find their like. Guru Nanak, Guru Tegh Bahadur, Guru Govind Singh were their fore-runners, but for whom the Hindus of all classes would have become extinct. Now it was time to shake off the state of torpor. The sword was no longer required, now they should bring about moral progress.
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Cliches rule main parties' manifestos While
analysts are bending over backwards to extract some meaning out of the manifestos of the two main national parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, in the field of foreign policy, the truth is that their perfunctory and cliché-ridden formulations demonstrate nothing as clearly as the fact that Indian politicians and their parties are becoming more parochial by the day. The irony is that even as the country becomes increasingly integrated into the international system by compulsions of trade and the march of technology and the fate of its diaspora, the narrower is its ken. One among a million examples should clinch the argument. The greatest crisis since the end of the Cold War - the events leading to the Russian annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region - was passed over as a minor occurrence. The United States and the European Union were activating NATO and sending reinforcements to Russia's neighbours to give them reinsurance. Yet the war-like situation featured as footnotes in the Indian media and for much of the electronic media, Ukraine might as well not have existed. Compare this to the days of Jawaharlal Nehru who took as one of his tasks to educate his countrymen and women on the wider world and India's significant place in it. If India was punching well above its weight in the Nehru era, the country today is diminishing its own footprint abroad, despite its affiliation to a plethora of regional and international organisations. Traditionally, only three countries excite Indians: Pakistan, China and Sri Lanka, the last for Tamils in particular. The bloody Partition of the subcontinent and its consequences in the wars the two resulting countries have fought are present in our consciousness. China's humiliation of India in the 1962 border war remains a marker seeded today with a growing trade relationship. The Congress manifesto did not throw up any new ideas in foreign policy and for the BJP it was more important to buttress its macho self-image in relation to neighbourly countries than to spell out its thoughts on dealing with the world. Indeed, the financial papers are more interested in reporting on the world for economic and trade reasons than the general media. What counts for the latter, apart from events in Pakistan, China and Sri Lanka, are the achievements of the Indian diaspora in their new homes and the honours resident Indians bring their country in the wider world. This lack of curiosity and interest in the outer world is in inverse proportion to the exploding numbers that travel outside for business and holidays. The interest of the new travellers is focused either on their narrow business preoccupations or the pleasures of leisure activities. There is little interest in finding out how other countries tick and the problems they face in a contracting world. The business of deciphering the world is left to the academic specialist and practitioners and implementers of foreign policy. Are the problems the country faces and the BJP's efforts to change the national narrative and discourse of such momentous importance that the larger discourse of the international community is of relatively less importance? Meanwhile, the world will not stop while India sorts out its crisis of direction. Merely to re-engage a variant of non-alignment whose time has come and gone is no solution to the country's problems, as the Congress professes. And the BJP's emphasis on domestic matters and its philosophy of Hindutva is no substitute for a well-rounded and thought-out perspective on India's place in the world and how it should position itself. Yet most enunciations of foreign policy from BJP spokesmen are either of the anodyne variety or are restricted to expressing parochial concerns, as for instance in voicing concerns over Banladeshis' illegal migration to India. Many unkind foreigners often accuse Indians of harbouring an imitative instinct, and the BJP seems to give substance to the accusation by pandering to regional proclivities by suggesting that Mr Modi, were he to assume the highest political office in the land, would take chief ministers along with him in pursuing foreign policy goals. Yet the record shows that West Bengal's Mamata Banerjee has thwarted an agreement with Bangladesh because of her parochial interests. And the influence of Tamil Nadu in determining New Delhi policy towards the island has often been a roadblock. India's decision to abstain from a recent critical human rights resolution in Geneva on Sri Lanka is a salutary example of New Delhi placing itself in a position to become an acceptable actor in improving the plight of Sri Lankan Tamils. In essence, the pursuit of a foreign policy is determined by a country's interests in a world nearer home or at large in a given international environment. Important policies in the world are set by the major military and economic powers mediated up to a point by the United Nations. Regional alliances help to an extent but are influenced by the major powers' networks in the shape of military alliances such as NATO or through other regional arrangements. The post-Cold War world led to the diminution of the Russian Federation, the successor to the Soviet Union, the emergence of China as a great power and the relative decline of the United States which remains the most powerful nation on the planet. A middling power such as India has to negotiate in this emerging world in terms of winning friends and influencing people. But a country seemingly obsessed with domestic problems and giving little attention to international issues is in no position to garner the influence it should have in the region and the world. Moreover, it remains a crying shame that the Indian foreign policy establishment has to carry an almost inhuman work load simply because the government has not got round to implementing the decisions taken vastly to expand the Foreign Service. The world will not wait for India to catch up. Whichever government comes to power in mid-May should undertake a crash course to reinvigorate India's foreign policy establishment and spell out a sane foreign policy to enable India to take its rightful place in the world.
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Re-examining tautology “At a certain point talk about 'essence' and 'oneness' and the universal becomes more tautological than inquisitive.” —Christopher Hitchens
Under
the impression of adding information, there are times we end up repeating an idea within the sentence. Referred to as tautology, the word derives from the Greek term "tauto" meaning "the same" and "logos" meaning "word/ idea". Of late, the structure, meaning and status of tautological expressions have aroused the curiosity of grammarians who view them critically. While some tautological expressions are acceptable, many others need to be re-examined, as seen below: 1. Sonali decided to return back the pen drive after downloading the file. The use of "back" with return is a case of semantic redundancy since "return" means giving back. There is no dearth of such examples betraying inept use of language. For instance: Some people may "enter in" late for a seminar and ask us to "repeat again" so as to "reply back". The words "in, again" and "back" are superfluous here. Once aware of the errors, the user can move towards setting them right. 2. In my opinion, I think Mr. Sahi should tender a written apology. As obvious, there is hardly any difference in meaning between "my opinion" and "I think". The user has inadvertently said the same thing twice over. At times, something within us prompts us to accentuate a thought, which eventually proves to be pointless. An Automated Teller Machine (ATM) gets referred to as "ATM Machine" and an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) as "ISBN Number". Here, the words "Machine" and "Number" have been duplicated. In their defence, some grammarians regard "ATM Machine" and "ISBN Number" as stand-alone expressions, though acceptable in spoken English alone. 3. Let us make a new beginning! The word "new" is avoidable since "newness" is intrinsic to "beginning". Many phrases like the one above fall in the grey area of tautology. Despite the added burden of a word or two, they enjoy almost absolute social sanction, much in line with the conventions of English. Within this practice, the teacher is entitled to describing the "weather conditions" in a "classroom situation" and not be conscious of the redundancy of "conditions" and "situation". 4. "You sink your head, you put out your hands all trembling and twined together and you say, Thank you, thank you lady, thank you kind lady." Samuel Beckett The kind of tautology seen above has always been socially favoured. To stress upon an idea with synonyms and with repetition of structures is an important literary device, widely employed by writers. The English language places abundant resources before writers, making it both easy and tempting for them to say the same thing in different ways. The lines above show how Beckett succeeds in communicating intensity of emotion. Many tautological expressions enjoy undisputed social recognition. To mention a few, "bye-bye", "one and only", "free gift" and "terms and conditions". Since language is a social phenomenon, it is valuable to know whether or not a term meets social approval.
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Well-meaning spirit Mazak mazak mein aap to serious ho gaye…not just a dialogue from the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Bhoothnath Returns, but also its intrinsic essence and gist. Indeed, the film that has you both amused and bemused till the interval takes a serious turn soon after. Thus, the drama that begins with a ghost becoming the butt of ridicule among his fellow ghosts as he failed to scare even a kid and is sent back to earth to redeem himself, begins to transform into a significant socio-political statement.
Only its meaningful message couched in a comedy is both its strength and weakness. On the upside here is a narrative that not only stands up against corruption, but also sounds a clarion call for people to exercise their voting rights. Had the film been released a month before, perhaps the Election Commission could have been saved the trouble of beseeching voters to come out and vote. That is not to say that the film is a dreary sermon or a listless documentary. Rather it stops way short of becoming a campaign even though the pace does get tardy in parts.
Among its many highpoints is the monologue the Bhoothnath (Big B) delivers in a ghost nagri. In a scene near the climax, his heartfelt speech drives home the message loud and clear. Indeed, if ghosts have a stake in the welfare of the nation, the onus on living beings can only be greater. Expectedly the well-meaning bhoot is not alone in his lofty mission. Keeping him company is a slum boy Akhrot (Parth Bhalerao), easily the backbone of the film. While in the film he tells you Hindi film mein thodi bahut overacting chalti hai, Parth doesn't strike a single false note. The child actor holds his own even in the presence of Big B who, as always, is effortless in the lead part of a ghost who has the time and inclination to set the Indian political order right. Sure the film belongs to the two of them yet Boman Irani (the bad politician) and Sanjay Mishra (the honest lawyer) in suitable cameos are incredibly competent. So is Usha Jadhav as Akhrot's mother. Dialogue hit toh picture hit … may not apply to this one but dialogues are spot on, incredibly funny and witty. Of course, as one of its delightful songs goes ek film ki ticket mein sau film ka maza: you may not discover here. But the film is certainly a two-in-one experience, as much a children's film as targeted at adults. However, if cinema is only entertainment, entertainment and entertainment in the Bollywood ishtyle with romance and glamour ka tadka, this may not pass muster with you. Otherwise, the film gives you enough meat to chew on. If only the length had been a tad shorter and the narrative packed more fun moments it would have been a delectable fare one could savour over and over again. In the existing form, it certainly calls for biting into at least once.
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A bird’s eye view So, it's fun time again with an infinite variety of winged creatures swarming all over us and lighting up the Amazon rain forest for that's where the macaw family is headed for, to be away from the urban drudgery of Rio de Janeiro, in Rio 2 3D the sequel.
Our family comprises male spix macaw Blu (voice of Jessie Eisenberg), female spix macaw Jewel or Jiju (Anne Hathaway), daughters Carla (Rachel Crowe) and Bea (Amanda Stenbeg) and free-spirited son Tiago (Pierce Gagnon). Eduard (Andy Garcia) is Jewel's crusty old dad who just abhors human beings. Linda (Leslie Mann) is the girl who adopted Blu for 15 years and is now married to Brazilian ornithologist Tulio Monteiro (Rodrigo Santora) and they own the rain forest. But the macaws have a plethora of friends both winged and human. There's Roberto (Bruno Mars), Jijus childhood friend, a yellow canary Nico (Jamie Foxx), Pedro (Will I am) and of course Nigel (Jermaine Clement), the evil and sadistic cockatoo. Not surprisingly these winged creatures are pitted against men and development that is fast destroying the greenery with giant saws et al. Hence the eco-friendly is on (with crusty Eduard chipping in his two cents worth) without being unduly didactic and the viewer is lulled into the right rustic frame of mind. |
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A hazy future Divergent
is a sci-fi entertainer set in futuristic dystopic Chicago (graphically created) where society is divided into factions—Abegnation (selfless), Amity (peaceful), Candour (truthful), Erudite (intelligent) and Dauntless (brave). They are ideally suited to live in harmony but that does not happen. If it did, there would be no film.
Teenager Beatrice 'Trice' Prior (Shailene Woodley) and her brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort) have to undergo tests to determine their aptitude but one can choose whatever group one wants. But it so happens that Trice's falls in several factions, Abegnation, Erudite and Dauntless and is termed Divergent. And since high-priestess Jeannie Matthews (Kate Winslet) truly believes that factions are greater than blood relations, Trice finds herself in big trouble. Her mum Natalie (Ashley Judd) tries to help infiltrating into the 'sealed quarter" but in vain. Her analyst Tori (Maggie Q) tells her to keep her identity a secret as she will be targeted. But the show goes on with tests and aberrations galore. Trice finding herself pursued in open fields with black birds swooping and having to dive in water to escape….and much, much more. But in the process she meets Tobias "Four" Eaton (Theo James) who is initially repulsed by Trice, but later realies her plight and the hatred turns to love. Newcomer Shailene Woodley does very well in the lead role and is ably supported by the handsome Theo James who grows in stature with each frame. Kate Winslet is wasted in a brief cameo but not before reminding one of the iconic blonde Marlene Dietrich and Zoe Kautz's cameo as Christina stands out.
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Om Shanti Om is a romantic-reincarnation film directed and choreographed by Farah Khan. It stars Shahrukh Khan and Hindi debutant Deepika Padukone in the lead roles while Arjun Rampal, Shreyas Talpade, and Kirron Kher feature in supporting roles.
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While
In this election season, the flavour of the film is in sync with the mood of the nation and has election as its leitmotif. The premise, a ghost is egged on to contest elections, is hilarious and would have been ludicrous too; only if it didn't have a sombre and real concern at its core. In a county where "dead" men vote, where tainted and corrupt fight elections, actually the idea of a ghost getting around the rules to file nomination papers isn't really that far-fetched either. 
Now to the nitty-gritty! Director Carlos Saldanha sets the mood with John Powell's peppy music embellished by fetching choreography to set the rain forest aflame with colour. There are also some cute lines like good life, good wife and similar rhymes. The animated characters are expressive without being over-elaborate but the accent is on action with no one dominating centre stage.
The chemistry is vividly captured by director Neil Burger who has a large canvass, thanks to an imaginative but not always coherent screenplay by Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor which keeps the viewer absorbed for most of its 139-minute duration (which is creditable), replete with drama, both physical and psychological.
Saturday April 12
Sunday April 13