28 DECEMBER 2020 / 50 www.openthemagazine.com CONTENTS 28 DECEMBER 2020 6 8 14 16 18 20 EDITOR’S NOTE OPEN DIARY INDIAN ACCENTS OPINION WHISPERER OPEN ESSAY By S Prasannarajan By Swapan Dasgupta Hope and happiness A million manufactured By Jayanta Ghosal Science and public trust By Bibek Debroy mutinies By Dipankar Gupta By Minhaz Merchant THE YEAR IN REVIEW 24 30 INVERSATIONS IN THE OUTLIER THE YEAR OF FEAR STATE By MJ Akbar By Siddharth Singh 33 36 40 THE VALLEY OF PARADOXES TERRA INFIRMA COVER UP OR BE DAMNED By Rahul Pandita By Sudeep Paul By Madhavankutty Pillai BEST OF Books PRATAP BHANU MEHTA, SUNIL KHILNANI , WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, JEET THAYIL, SHASHI THAROOR , TCA RAGHAVAN DAVID DAVIDAR, AATISH TASEER, IRA MUKHOTY, MAHESH RAO DIPANKAR GUPTA, SRINATH RAGHAVAN TISHANI DOSHI, TABISH KHAIR, ANITA NAIR 46 NAndINI NAIR 64 EDITOR’S CHOICE 66 SUdeep PAUL 68 SIddHARTH SIngH 70 SHYLASHRI SHANKAR Entertainment 74 RAJEEV MASAND 78 KAVEREE BAMZAI 80 AKHIL SOOD 82 NOT PEOPLE LIKE US The ‘AK’ effect By Rajeev Masand Cover by Saurabh Singh 28 DECEMBER 2020 www.openthemagazine.com 3 OPEN MAIL [email protected] EDITOR S Prasannarajan LETTER OF THE WEEK MANAGING EDITOR PR Ramesh C EXECUTIVE EDITOR Ullekh NP The stereotypes of a father coming home from work, EDITOR-AT-LARGE Siddharth Singh DEPUTY EDITORS Madhavankutty Pillai briefcase in hand, and the mother nervously serving (Mumbai Bureau Chief), him a cup of tea seem set for a change (‘The Newborn Rahul Pandita, Amita Shah, V Shoba (Bangalore), Nandini Nair Dad’, December 21st, 2020). Patriarchal structures, CREATIVE DIRECTOR Rohit Chawla with deep foundations in culture, are not easy to ART DIRECTOR Jyoti K Singh SENIOR EDITORS Sudeep Paul, break. No wonder it took the force of a pandemic for a Lhendup Gyatso Bhutia (Mumbai), societal rethink about the roles of men and women— Moinak Mitra, Nikita Doval AssOCIATE EDITOR Vijay K Soni (Web) inside as well as outside the home. The pause that the ASSISTANT EDITOR Vipul Vivek coronavirus-induced lockdown brought to urban life CHIEF OF GRAPHICS Saurabh Singh forced men to notice properly how gender equations SENIOR DESIGNERS Anup Banerjee, Veer Pal Singh work in daily routines, how households are run, PHOTO EDITOR Raul Irani how children are raised, how women multitask DEPUTY PHOTO EDITOR Ashish Sharma and what struggle it is to combine household chores NATIONAL HEAD-EVENTS AND INITIATIVES with careers. When an icon such as cricketer Virat RAJINI IS COMING Arpita Sachin Ahuja Rajinikanth has finally AVP (ADVERTISING) Kohli announces he is taking time off from his Rashmi Lata Swarup official engagements for his pregnant wife, Anushka found an answer to the GENERAL MANAGERS (ADVERTISING) Uma Srinivasan (South) Sharma, the idea of a new fatherhood gets a cultural question everybody has been endorsement and approval. It gets people thinking, asking for decades now: ‘To NATIONAL HEAD-DISTRIBUTION AND SALES Ajay Gupta makes them question the status quo. Hopefully, the join politics or not to join’ REGIONAL HEADS-CIRCULATION D Charles (South), Melvin George future will see us move away from the ‘boys will be (‘Action! Finally’, December (West), Basab Ghosh (East) boys’ mindset to a fairer, gender-just social order. 21st, 2020). For the last two HEAD-PRODUCTION Maneesh Tyagi Fingers crossed as we hope for the pandemic years especially, he had SENIOR MANAGER (PRE-PRESS) Sharad Tailang to deliver a new ‘Daddy Cool’. been dilly-dallying about MANAGER-MARKETING Sangeeta Kampani jumping in the fray. With Priya Singh CHIEF DESIGNER-MARKETING Jayalalithaa’s untimely Champak Bhattacharjee death, there has been space CFO & HEAD-IT Anil Bisht for the charismatic leader to CHIEF EXECUTIVE & PUBLISHER NEW DADDY COOL and he should be applauded replace her. Kamal Haasan’s Neeraja Chawla The change in the father’s for being around for wife foray into politics has been a All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner role is one aspect of society for Anushka Sharma during non-starter. At 70 and after a is prohibited. which we should be thankful her pregnancy. series of ailments, a reluctant Editor: S Prasannarajan. Printed and published by Neeraja Chawla on behalf to the pandemic which has Bal Govind Rajini will have a hard of the owner, Open Media Network Pvt Ltd. Printed at Thomson Press India Ltd, otherwise hugely disrupted time surviving cutthroat 18-35 Milestone, Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad-121007, (Haryana). our lives this year (‘The Mankind is discovering some electoral politics. There are Published at 4, DDA Commercial Newborn Dad’, December home truths. Rarely seen few successful transitions Complex, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017. 21st, 2020). Despite women in the kitchen till recently, from films to politics. Ph: (011) 48500500; Fax: (011) 48500599 venturing out of their homes men in aprons have become The list of stars biting the To subscribe, WhatsApp ‘openmag’ to 9999800012 or log on to and walking along with men cool now. They are not only dust is long: Chiranjeevi, www.openthemagazine.com or call our Toll Free Number and proving their mettle, we working from home but Govinda, Vijayashanthi, 1800 102 7510 tend to demarcate roles in working at home as well. Pawan Kalyan and Prem or email at: [email protected] the household according to This is a welcome trend. Nazir. Moreover, jumping For alliances, email [email protected] gender. This notion is now Besides, urban couples are into politics without any For advertising, email being forced to change for choosing not to have children groundwork, such as having [email protected] For any other queries/observations, good. Especially in nuclear so that the woman doesn’t a track record for supporting email [email protected] families , men should know have to sacrifice her career. causes or social work, is how to cook, wash or clean, A well-balanced relationship bound to make his journey Disclaimer ‘Open Avenues’ are advertiser-driven marketing etcetera. Why should women where men and women difficult. At his age, he initiatives and Open assumes no responsibility for content and the consequences of using bear all the burden? Virat share the resposnsibilities doesn’t really have a chance products or services advertised in the magazine Kohli would certainly be in the household equally for multiple takes. This will Volume 12 Issue 51 missed for the last three Test will probably encourage be a live performance with For the week 22-28 December 2020 matches in Australia but it’s some such couples to little chance to regret bad Total No. of pages 84 one of the most memorable have children. improvisations. moments in his personal life Ashok Goswami Bholey Bhardwaj 4 28 DECEMBER 2020 “THE NATION IS EVOLVING AND SO ARE YOU" OPEN brings to you, your weekly thought stimulant Pick up and subscribe your copy today Read [ No one makes an argument better than us ] www.openthemagazine.com To subscribe, ‘openmag’ to 9999800012 openthemagazine openthemag Available as an e-magazine for tablets, mobiles and desktops via Magzter EDITOR'S NOTE hen headlines frightened us, dis- tance was a consolation, borders seemed real, and mortality was someone else’s business. The mys- tery of it, the exoticism of it, puz- zled us, but we still chose to be the lucky ones. Then Wuhan explod- ed, in spite of the totalitarian cover- up, in spite of the martyrdom of Wthe whistleblower doctor who was forced to recant. Statistical lies or subservient WHO endorsement or the war on victims could not stop the pathogen’s prog- ress. Blame-it-on-bats was no longer the story. Was it a laboratory accident? That story was not even pursued. By then the coronavirus was everywhere, choosing its hosts at random and defying medicines. A pandemic was upon us. And we were clueless about how to con- tain Covid-19. We sought parallels in history and lit- erature—in the Black Death of the 14th century and in the moral fable of Albert Camus and in the vivid jour- nal of Daniel Defoe. In the end, memory or metaphors could not lessen the fear of the living in a plague year. Knowledge was comfort. The experts, divided in 6 28 DECEMBER 2020 THE YEAR IN REVIEW their measurement of the doom, told us what we ought to magnitude? Did lockdown begin as a panic reaction and end do to remain alive: stay at home; wear the mask; keep social up as an expensive political position? Not sure whether politi- distance…It’s the experts’ intervention, at times with oracular cians will have the honesty and experts the humility to listen. certainty, that curtailed the libertarian instincts of some gov- Most of us have become a little more human and a lot ernments. It was good to see politicians listening to them, and more humble anyway. When knowledge was scarce, we took it was despairing to see how some politicians behaved. They refuge in our own instincts, and in the wisdom of others who were all on display: deniers, pooh-pooh presidents, strong- bothered to stand by us in our isolated hours. We know the men rearmed, sermonisers and custom-made savants…It world has changed, and the pandemic literature the media was, and still is, a time to lead, to control, to take ownership of keep bombarding us with tells us how drastic—and perma- destiny even as the virus raged. Some remained ignorant and nent—is the change. We are the bigger change, each one of arrogant. A nation in fear was what some others, the ‘strong- us a story, still unfolding. When death was an indifferent est’ of them, coveted. Wasn’t the fall of the pandemic presidency the political story of the year? IT IS THAT TIME OF THE YEAR WHEN THE RETURN Indictments are easy, and ideolo- GAZE REWARDS US WITH LESSONS FOR THE gies make them all the more selective.