O P I N I O N S

THIS ABOVE ALL
Shift to presidential form of democracy
Every five years we should elect a President and let him or her form the Cabinet from the ablest men and women available in the country, whether or not they are members of the legislature.
Khushwant Singh
YOU must often wonder if we deserve to have the sort of parliamentary democracy that we have manufactured for ourselves. Ambitious politicians spend crores of rupees to make their way to the Lok Sabha. Then they indulge in all sorts of gimmickry to see that it does not work. They assemble in the House, take oaths to perform duties expected of them and then do their best not to let it function.

Touchstones
Classicist who would string in the new
Pandit Ravi Shankar brought a brilliant fusion between the two irreconcilable streams of North Indian and Carnatic music with ease and experimented with a harmonious blending of the two.
Ira Pande
ON Thursday morning, as I surfed through the Internet for home news, the first item I read struck me dumb. Pandit Ravi Shankar had passed away in San Diego at the age of 92. He was frail and old but somehow death and Panditji were uncomfortable partners and an old Beatles line came clearly back to me: ‘And my sitar gently weeps....’

GROUND ZERO
Bhai, Behen and Baba factor in the Modi roadshow
The superstardom notwithstanding, there is growing criticism that Modi is very much a one-man show and his dictatorial style has his own party wary of him.
Raj Chengappa
The whirring sound of an approaching helicopter galvanises the crowd in Himatnagar, Gujarat, which had been waiting patiently for Chief Minister Narendra Modi to arrive. No other speaker can hold their attention until the helicopter lands and Modi, a saffron scarf slung carelessly across his neck, strides onto the podium. He is greeted by a roar from the gathering and a standing ovation.

THIS ABOVE ALL
Shift to presidential form of democracy
Every five years we should elect a President and let him or her form the Cabinet from the ablest men and women available in the country, whether or not they are members of the legislature.
Khushwant Singh

YOU must often wonder if we deserve to have the sort of parliamentary democracy that we have manufactured for ourselves. Ambitious politicians spend crores of rupees to make their way to the Lok Sabha. Then they indulge in all sorts of gimmickry to see that it does not work. They assemble in the House, take oaths to perform duties expected of them and then do their best not to let it function.

Hundreds of crores of rupees go down the parliamentary drain with nothing achieved. Can we do anything to stop this waste of time and money without compromising our commitment to democracy? I believe we can and have suggested a solution earlier in this column. I repeat what I wrote before. All we have to do is to switch over from the British form of parliamentary democracy to the French or American form of presidential democracy. Every five years we should elect a President and let him or her form his or her Cabinet from the ablest men and women available in the country, whether or not they are members of the legislature.

Every year or so, they should face a vote of confidence and quit if they fail to carry a majority with them. It requires will to change for the better. I don’t think we have the will.

Erudite Gujral

I join Inder Gujral’s family and friends in mourning his death. Although he did not make a great Prime Minister and had a very short tenure as one, he was a gentleman of great erudition. He was not a mob orator shouting “Jai Hind” at the end of his oration; he was as polished a speaker as any I have heard. Whenever I had occasion to hear him speak, I carried my notebook with me because his speeches were full of appropriately witty Urdu couplets. One I have often quoted runs as follows:

“Haq accha haq kay liye koee aur marey to aur accha,/ Tum bhee koi sarmad ho,/ Jo soolee per charroh?/ khamosh raho (Truth is great, if someone else does for it, it is better, are you some martyr who was on gallows hung? Hold your tongue.)

Footnote: I would like to add a short footnote to the obituary I have written even if it is regarded to be in bad taste. I was disappointed to note Inder Gujral’s relations decided to cremate his body in the traditional manner with lots of wood. An electric crematorium was available and should have been used.

Cannot deceive death

Montaigue, the 16th century French essayist believed that, since we cannot defeat death, the best form of counter-attack is to have it constantly in mind. You should have the taste of death in your mouth and its name on your tongue. To anticipate death in this way is to release yourself from its servitude. Further, if you teach someone how to die, then you teach him how to live. Such constant death-awareness does not make him melancholy, rather, it renders him prone to fanciful dreaming, to reverie. He hopes that death will take its final house-call when he is in the middle of doing something ordinary.

(Courtesy: Prof RP Chaddha, Chandigarh)

Matter of size

“Penis size is a competition which is at the core manhood”, Morten Fabricus of Singlesex.dk told a press conference in Copenhagen. “It’s the most important thing for a man. There are so many unhappy men out there, who think you have to have a giant penis, but it is not normal to have a huge one, and that’s why we started this competition. The rules are simple. Send in a photo of your private parts in ‘rigid’ mode, alongside a tape measure of course, and the man with the shortest measurement will win an iPhone. “So far we have received seven images, which are posted on our website, but more are tickling in, and we hope our competition will give people the courage to post more images anonymously. The man with the smallest organ will win, but women will also crown a winner based on votes from the site’s female members. It’s incredible how the media has frightened people away from showing themselves as they are. Everything has to be bigger and bigger and bigger. But now the time has come to celebrate the smallest member”.

(Courtesy: Private Eye, London)

No safety valve

Santa: I have heard that using condom is very safe.

Banta: Not at all. I had used it. But still my girlfriend’s husband beat me up.

(Contributed by Vinay Asawa, Howrah)

Touchstones
Classicist who would string in the new
Pandit Ravi Shankar brought a brilliant fusion between the two irreconcilable streams of North Indian and Carnatic music with ease and experimented with a harmonious blending of the two.
Ira Pande

ON Thursday morning, as I surfed through the Internet for home news, the first item I read struck me dumb. Pandit Ravi Shankar had passed away in San Diego at the age of 92. He was frail and old but somehow death and Panditji were uncomfortable partners and an old Beatles line came clearly back to me: ‘And my sitar gently weeps....’

What can one write in praise of an artist who was not just a true inheritor of the music of his guru but took it to scintillating heights? Pandit Ravi Shankar was that rare genius who reigned unchallenged for almost a century over the musical world. He often incited unkind remarks about his friendship with the Beatles and was even accused of selling a spiritual legacy to pot-heads, but all that was rubbish and we know it.

On the other hand, if anything, he introduced the majesty and gravity of Indian classical music to ears that had never before heard the music of the spheres. Yehudi Menuhin, Andre Previn, Pablo Casals and our own Zubin Mehta were his ardent admirers and considered playing with him as one of the most elevating experiences of their careers. What made him a true Renaissance man was his ability to create new traditions: although he was a strict classicist, he was ever open to the richness and variety of other musical traditions. This is why he brought a brilliant fusion between the two irreconcilable streams of North Indian and Carnatic music with such ease and experimented with a harmonious blending of the two. Several new ragas were born and are now so much a part of our daily musical lexicon that one wonders why this marvellous fusion took so long to happen.

In my childhood, when radio was all we had as access to music, there was a programme called 'Vadya-Vrind'. These were short instrumental compositions played by the AIR orchestra and most of the compositions were by Pandit Ravi Shankar. I wonder whether AIR would consider bringing out a CD of the best of them. Remember the soaring notes of his opening anthem ‘Swagatam’ composed for the Asian Games? Even after all these years, I can clearly recall the tune, which is more than anyone can say of the anthem composed for the Commonwealth Games by AR Rahman.

His personal life was as colourful as his musical one and he has written many books where he freely talks about his many affairs and personal life. However, there is one dark spot that has always bothered me about Panditji. And that was his relationship with his first wife, Annapurna Devi, the only daughter of his beloved guru, Baba Alauddin Khan. Annapurna Devi, who many considered Baba Alauddin Khan’s true shishya and the best of his students (Ali Akbar Khan, the legendary sarod player was her brother), disappeared from public life and never played for anyone except her students. Hari Prasad Chaurasia (who calls her his guru mata) believes that she is the best teacher a musician can hope for. Legend has it that Baba made her promise that she would never play on the stage so that her husband, Ravi Shankar, and her brother, Ali Akbar, would never be overshadowed and also that he made her switch her playing hand, making her left-handed to give her an added handicap. All her life, she never broke that vow.

Her most beloved child, born out of Ravi Shankar and her brief marriage, she believes was deliberately whiled away from her by Ravi babu because he felt threatened and then introduced to a reckless Western life, only to die tragically young of a drug overdose. She never forgave her ex-husband for this loss and a few years ago, Roli Books brought out a biography of her, which spelt this bitter truth in detail. She still lives alone in Mumbai, teaches her students only in the dead of night and never steps out of her home. There is a gothic tale there for anyone who wants to explore it.

Aside from that one dark area, there is nothing to challenge the life and times of Panditji. His charming smile, his unmistakable charisma and his divine music will live on for a long, long time. May his daughters take his legacy forward.

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India, here I come!