Mayank Chhaya Daily

A gratuitous post about Thomas Friedman

There is a pecking order in the media and I am not too far from the bottom. I would place myself a rung above the bottom, a spot where the muck and penury do brush against one’s buttocks ever so often.

The only good thing about being at the bottom of the totem pole is that you have the luxury of being able to take shots at those higher up. Before this description gets any more labored, let me come to the point.

The India Ink blog of The New York Times today features some readers’ questions and op-ed columnist Thomas Friedman’s answers. In certain quarters, Friedman is a much reviled figure for his worldview. Those who belong to these quarters seem to forget that he is just a columnist trying to make sense out of global trends. He is undeserving of the kind of contumelies which are often heaped on him. By that I mean he does not matter so much as to deserve contumelies.

One of the questions that Friedman has been asked comes from a reader named Venkat from New Jersey. He asks who bears the social cost of globalization and whether it should be regulated.

Friedman answers: “The first thing you need to understand about globalization is that it is everything and its opposite. So it is take it with one hand and give it with another hand.

On the one hand it is automating more things faster. On the other hand I met with young Indian entrepreneurs who are leveraging the cloud, open-source tools and very small amounts of capital, and are able to invent companies that can complete globally like never before.

So, who is the exploiter and who is the exploitee in this system? If horses could vote, there never would have been cars.”

It is the reference to horses that caught my eye. Friedman makes a great point about horses. After all, which animal does not love being ridden rough shod, harnessed, saddled, blindered, reined in and even whipped? I can see how the global equine population would have seriously mourned the loss of their primacy as a means of transport for humans if they had the capacity to feel such emotions.

As an aside, I wonder whether Alexander or Chengiz Khan driving a Hummer or a Land Rover while conquering the world would have made equally compelling figures.

If Friedman is reviled by some, he is also equally celebrated and gushed over by many for what they think is his unique way to explain a world in ferment. One such explanation that has come to define him is the idea that the world is flat. Although not his original construct, it is now associated with him. His 2004 book ‘The World is Flat’ remains one of his career’s highlights. So it is inevitable that he gets asked questions about it. He is indeed asked by a reader who wants to know if the world is still flat.

Friedman replies, “I wrote the “World Is Flat” in 2004. I have to confess, I now realize the book was wrong. The world is so much flatter than I thought.”

In response to another question about globalization he says, “First let me make a general response: I did not invent globalization. I promise you. I just wrote about it.

I wrote about the upsides and the downsides. I didn’t start it and I can’t stop it. I have my own problems with it.”

I cite these two responses to illustrate how an op-ed columnist, who has been virtually canonized in certain quarters, tends to unselfconsciously believe in his own myth.

When he says he was wrong about the world being flat because it is flatter than he thought, you might think he is recognizing the limits of his prognostications. What he is actually saying is that he was so right even when he was not fully right. So imagine how right he would be when is fully right!

On the point about his not having invented globalization, what’s the point of that? Who thinks he did? Also, who thinks he can stop it?

Note to self: As I reflect on today’s post, its gratuitousness (except the point about horses) becomes uncomfortably obvious. But then having come this far into my daily blog, it seems such a waste not to go through with it.

Some obvious reasons why god is male

‘Primal’ by Mayank Chhaya

Here is why god is manifestly male.

* Look around the universe. He couldn’t be content with just one of everything. One sun/star, one solar system, one galaxy. He had to have hundreds of billions of each and,of course, control none.

* The universe is going in every direction. He has no clue where to go and considers it infra dig to ask for directions. It is a good thing that the universe is largely empty.

* He loves to start fires and set off explosions. Just go to any corner of the universe. Things are always burning and exploding. Of course, he has no idea how to douse the fires. He is a pyromaniac who believes that fires will eventually burn out.

* He just flings things. A case in point? The meteorite that crashed and burned over Russia the other day. I have it on unimpeachable authority that he had hurled that meteorite at a celestial dog which was barking too much but missed it by a few light years.

* Contrary to Einstein's assertion, he is not subtle and is so obviously malicious.

* He is obsessed with size. Proof? The universe.

* What he does is mostly meaningless. Proof? The universe.

* He respects no boundaries. Proof? The universe.

* He is loud and attention-seeking. Proof? The universe.

* He has lost the plot? Proof? Black holes.

* He is disastrous at accounting. Ask him for an inventory of things in the universe. The numbers vary so wildly.

* He is forgetful. He left the sun burning even as the planets were playing around it.

* He never responds when called for help because he is so busy starting new fires and setting off new explosions.

Against all these enormous odds, here is the clinching proof that god is female.

* She is profoundly and eternally inscrutable. Her clues are so cryptic that her clues need clues.

Disclaimer: I have no personal beliefs. My mind is a void that holds nothing.

Note: In case you have not noticed, this my short attempt at something that resembles humor.

CNN mines ratings gold in a soiled ship

Not the actual Carnival ship ‘Triumph’ (Illustration: Mayank Chhaya)

Other than asteroid 2012 DA14 ruffling up Anderson Cooper’s impeccable hair, nothing could have distracted CNN from its saturated coverage of the stranded Carnival cruise ship ‘Triumph’.  They saw ratings gold in the soiled ship and mined it.

Solicitous CNN anchors, including and especially Erin Burnett, were at hand to tell about the cruise ship floating in its own muck. Passengers were portrayed as epic heroes at sea of yore. Chris Cuomo even took note of the fact that one stranded passenger was craving “greasy food.” Martin Savidge along with Burnett looked suitably empathetic. All in all, an empathetic time was had by all.

Savidge savaged his own reputation when he labored to compare the passengers’ plight with what happened during the hurricane Katrina.

"The isolation factor you described, this is the same sort of thing that many people who went through Katrina in New Orleans -- those that were left behind -- they never heard anything either," he said. "I imagine it's something very similar."

Passenger Rob Kenny, however, had the sense to say this to Savidge: "Yeah, but let's put that in perspective. Katrina was a major devastation. We're on a freakin' cruise ship, and we're out just having a good time ... two different things, you know? Two different things."

I am sure passengers were greatly discomfited by the Triumph crippled by a fire in the engine room, causing it to go adrift at sea for a few days. But in CNN’s telling it sounded as if passengers overflowed as much with heroism as the ship did with excrement. It became clear to me rather quickly that CNN under its new boss Jeffery Zucker had decided to really run with the story.

Media reports suggest that the gamble paid off as CNN’s ratings went up significantly. It averaged 632,000 viewers at any given time and 1.03 million between 8 and 11 p.m., representing a jump of 50 percent and 62 percent respectively, according to The New York Times’ Brian Stelter in the Media Decoder column.

The incongruity of passengers on board a reasonably luxurious ship, armed with all modern amenities, being shown as tragic heroes braving their plight was fully lost on CNN anchors. These were not people held against their will and being transported in chains to unknown shores where a harrowing life awaited them. The anchors acted as telephone operators and connected passengers with their anxious relatives waiting ashore. As has been pointed out elsewhere the whole purpose of going on a cruise is to get away from the shore-bound preoccupations which I suppose include being in touch with friends and family.

I must say I did feel a sneaking admiration for the anchors being compelled by the 24/7 broadcast media-information machine to feign a deep interest in a story which probably deserved a half hour at best. But then they have all, of their own volition, chosen this job.

In fairness, those of us who deride CNN for such embarrassingly excessive coverage willfully overlook the fact that in the end it is a commercial enterprise fueled by ratings. In such a business model news become news because people like to watch it, although a viewership of one million is pretty pathetic. I think more fans show up at Amitabh Bachchan’s residence in Mumbai every day even when he is not home. (Literary exaggeration).

For me personally, it feels just right that CNN should be doing what it did on the cruise coverage at a time when I am reading Evelyn Waugh’s media satire ‘Scoop.’

P.S.: I think anchors need to relearn the meaning of the word anchor. Their job is to ensure that the news ship remains steady when anchored.

Scoop

Normally, I do not check my mailbox (real postal one and not email box) at 7 in the evening because I have already collected the day’s mail by mid afternoon. Last evening, I made an exception as a ruse to actually check out why there was an unknown car parked along my curbside.

I opened the mailbox with no expectations of finding any mail. However, there was a packet inside. From the contours I could tell that it was a book. I stood in my driveway, tearing off the wrapper with the same urgency that horny couples in Hollywood movies display while removing their clothes, shoes and undergarments near a half open door to their apartment. Why is it always that urgent? About that, some other time.

All through my opening the packet I kept looking at the driver’s seat of the car to make sure there was no one with headphones and laptop tapping into the goings on inside my house. It turned out the car belonged to a visitor to my next door neighbors. The book turned out to be the all time classic ‘Scoop’ by the redoubtable Evelyn Waugh. I knew instantly that my friend, Dr. Charles Langs was feeling generous again.

I have seen ‘Scoop’, the TV movie adaptation a couple of times, but have never read the book before. So it is just as well that Charles felt generous, for the fourth time, and gifted it to me. Thank you, Charles.

‘Scoop’ has existed in my consciousness as a book for a long time, almost since I became a journalist in 1981-82. It is only now that I am getting to read it. As of this morning William Boot, a hinterlands correspondent, is being prepared by his newspaper Daily Beast to be sent to a fictional country called Ishmaelia, which is about to slip into the grip of a civil war.

Sometimes sitting in Naperville I do feel somewhat like Boot in reverse. Boot went from the hinterlands to war reporting. I went from reporting insurgencies, riots, politics, economics, culture, crime to sedate suburbanism where strange cars parked along one’s curbside turn out to be visitors next door on Valentine’s Day. I was secretly hoping that someone was actually monitoring me from that car.

As media satires go Waugh’s ‘Scoop’ is regarded as the benchmark. The London Times Literary Supplement called it “Amusingly unkind.” It is amusing how all daily newspapers have some versions of the caricatures portrayed in ‘Scoop’, including the one of William Boot. For instance, I used to know a version of the Beast’s foreign editor, Mr. Salter, during my stay in Bombay. In this case he was a city editor of sorts, who very much like Mr. Salter, had perfected the art  abject servility towards his proprietor. In Mr. Salter’s case his two preferred responses to Lord Copper, the proprietor of Megalopolitan Newspaper Corporation, are "Definitely, Lord Copper" and 'Up to a point, Lord Copper." The clever nebulousness of the responses helps Mr. Salter navigate any exchange with Lord Copper. In the case of the city editor, he went a step further and altogether eliminated the need to say anything at all. Instead, he would open his mouth ever so slightly, as if anything the proprietor had to say was worthy of consternation, and vigorously nod sideways in response to anything that the proprietor actually said.

Even though I know the story, reading ‘Scoop’ the way Waugh wrote it promises to be great fun.

Today, an occasional self appraisal

Let today be one of those rare days of brutally honest self appraisal.

After more than 1700 posts on this blog, this much is clear to me. No one, with the greatly honorable exceptions of Dr. Charles Langs of New York and Julie Desai Vakharia of Ahmedabad, really seems to read it with more than a transient interest. Of course, there are some other reasonably regular readers but I am sure it is hard for them to make a habit of it.

A lot of it has to do with the way I write. There is an underlying tone of mockery. There is probably a tone of smugness too; of someone who has a masquerade of humility. My self-effacement is too sheer and short to fully cover the uglier features of my vulgar narcissism. There is an element of exhibitionism in the way I jump themes ranging from the trite and popular to the dense and profound.

It is as if I am always asking “Are you sure you want to read this?” even as I am desperately seeking you to read it.

I don’t quite see myself as a polymath or polyhistor but rather someone who craftily conceals his many intellectual shortcomings. I am someone who is able to frequently rearrange or make over my essentially thin knowledge base. In the real estate business it is called staging. Let’s just say that I am able to stage well from time to time. My sets are sham like Hollywood. There is nothing behind them other than an obscenely large number of two-by-fours. As long as you don’t make the mistake of looking behind the façade you would pass unscathed through this blog.

After my first 1000 or so posts I had said this. “I can say with complete certainty that a majority of my visitors end up here out of pure serendipity. It is somewhat like Columbus looking for India and instead landing in America. It is thrilling to know that essentially it is a bad sense of navigation that leads many here.

It is obvious to me that almost no one reads this blog as a matter of routine. Most of them are brought here by a series of algorithmic coincidences while searching for something entirely tangential.  Some months ago there was one from India looking for “sex with hot Indian bhabhi.” I know I am a journalist but a pimp? Really?! Is it that close? And yet I soldier on.

In a burst of literary inspiration I had once described my blog thus: Think of what you get here as an assortment of bhajias or pakodas of the kind Indian restaurants in the US describe on their menus as fritters made with gram flour. They may be tasty while you eat them but they cause a lot of bile afterwards. And they have no nutritional value whatsoever.”

This blog is mostly an aspiring writer’s laboratory. Like most laboratories it has that unfinished feel to it. It is always an experiment in progress. There will always be broken beakers, burnt-out test tubes, smashed pipettes and even putrid stenches. I might chance upon a great discovery some day. If not, I will have had tremendous fun messing around with chemicals.

Surajkund: The warm pastoral embrace of India

Surajkund Crafts Mela, (All photographs are by Sunil Arora)

If you happen to be in Delhi in early February, mark your calendar for the annual Surajkund Crafts Mela. India’s resplendent crafts come alive together during this festival. 

Throughout my decade in Delhi Surajkund was a mandatory stop because it warped my frenzied world of daily journalism. This year the festival has been brought alive for me my dear friend Sunil Arora through his photographs on Facebook. There is natural bonhomie and conviviality in the air at Surjkund, helped in no small measure by the gentle remnants of a retreating Delhi winter.

It is common for visitors to break into an impromptu jig or two the way this pretty woman in the picture below does. More than anything else Surajkund offers a warm pastoral embrace. It can lull you into thinking that your life is one brilliantly colored cavalcade. Of course, stepping out of the festival complex is rude enough to destroy any glow that you might still be wearing.

Artisans from across India show up at Surajkund with many of them handcrafting their wares right there in front of you. I used to be lighter by a few thousand rupees after my Surajkund visits. There is something in the ambience at Surajkund at this time of year which makes you susceptible to handcrafted pleasures. It is amazing how quickly you realize on emerging from the complex that a lot of what you bought was not really needed but temporarily wanted. Take for instance this clay image of a sleeping Buddha. I am pretty sure I would have bought it. Or even the clay figurines below that.

 

Of course, Surajkund is not just about strikingly colorful inanimate clay objects. Check out this picture by Sunil. It is one of those faces that would prompt you to say, “Life is alright.”

Or even these women, for that matter. I suppose embellishing is oneself is one way to clear life of drudgeries.

If nothing else, you can become what this man has in the picture below and mock whatever you may be up against.

So, so like that. Thank you, Sunil Arora.

Let’s all duck 2012 DA14 this Friday

Not an actual asteroid. My rendering. (Excuse the fact that it looks a bit like a potato crossed with SpongeBob)

The flyby this Friday of asteroid 2012 DA14 will be close enough in cosmic terms for the earth to duck. The 150-feet wide asteroid will fly past within 17,200 miles (27,680 kilometers) of the earth, the closest an object of this size has come.

It is closer than the communications satellites which orbit at 22,200 miles (35,800 kms) and, among other things, direct your GPS devices. Asteroids do not need GPS devices. They just hurtle through space and if in the process they end up crashing into something, so be it.

NASA has said there is no prospect of the asteroid crashing into us despite its close orbit because its trajectory is clear. Nevertheless I have bought a crash helmet in case 2012 DA14 has it in for me individually. One can never tell with these rogue space objects and the grudges they hold.

Among the not-so-distant possibilities being considered by scientists is using such asteroids as convenient steppingstones to easier space travel. Think of them of as free celestial taxis that no one seems to hail so far. They do not need any fuel and manage to travel entirely because of natural gravitational and orbital forces. Landing a craft on such objects is not considered a fantastic task by any means.

Asteroids are like breadcrumbs remaining from the formation of planets and other bodies. You may also think of them as hangers-on or extras on a movie set where there are other more established stars who swagger around with a sense of defined destiny. Asteroids are mostly minor bodies which are harmless but can occasionally have a great nuisance value, particularly when they crash.

According to NASA, this particular asteroid was discovered last February by astronomers at the La Sagra Sky Survey program in southern Spain. The last flyby was fairly distant, seven times the distance to the moon (average 384,400 kms).  This asteroid takes 368 days to orbit around the sun, almost as long as the earth. However, this flyby will change that. “This year's is the closest approach, and is the closest the asteroid will come for at least three decades. But this encounter will shorten 2012 DA14's orbital period to about 317 days,” NASA says.

“This passage of 2012 DA14 by Earth is a record close approach for a known object of this size. A few other known asteroids have flown by Earth even closer, but those asteroids were smaller. On average, we expect an object of this size to get this close to Earth about once every 40 years. An actual Earth collision by an object of this size would be expected much less frequently, about once every 1,200 years, on average,” it says.

Once you consider these numbers you begin to understand how everything in life is a matter of chance in a broad sense of the term. One struggles to make things orderly within that randomness. When 2012 DA14 returns next year I may have become a best-selling author with cash oozing out of shoe soles or I could be dead or in penury being humiliated on sidewalks or an obscure journalist with fractured earnings. Who the hell knows?

The Grammys, Katy Perry and dress code

My sketch of Katy Perry at the Grammys last night (My as in Mayank Chhaya)

Ryan Seacrest’s height demands an extraordinary resolve of him not to directly look at female celebrities’ bosoms.

No matter how much he stretches himself his face is almost always in perfect sync with a majority of his female interviewees’ breasts.I think that is the only real challenge in his life. Otherwise, everything else is a never-ending red carpet for him.

I do not as a rule watch the Grammys with any degree of interest but I made it a point to watch the red carpet coverage yesterday because of a dress code memo issued by CBS. The memo read: “Please be sure that buttocks and female breasts are adequately covered. Thong type costumes are problematic. Please avoid exposing bare fleshy under curves of the buttocks and buttock crack. Bare sides or under curvature of the breasts is also problematic. Please avoid sheer see-through clothing that could possibly expose female breast nipples. Please be sure the genital region is adequately covered so that there is no visible “puffy” bare skin exposure.”

Once you get past the unabashedly sexist nature of the memo you do find some unintended humor in it. This barely hidden sexist memo was almost entirely meant for female celebrities. I do not recollect male celebrities generally showing off “bare fleshy under curves” or “bare sides or under curvature of the breasts.” Incidentally, bare sides would be what we in dignified TMZ circles call sideboob. Sideboob has been in vogue lately because they have a different kind of allure. There are male celebrities with manboobs but there are few uglier sights in human experience than manboobs.

By and large celebrities seemed to respect the dress code which was probably designed for the Swat Valley edition of the Grammys. Speaking of that I thought there might be at least one celebrity who would have the sense of humor to show up in a designer burqa. I suppose no one wanted to offend Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the off chance that he was monitoring the Grammys. (By the way the Swat Valley is in Pakistan and has many Taliban types while Ahmadinejad is the president of Iran. I am too smart to mix up the two). Jokes aside it is unintentionally funny how in trying to enforce standards of decency CBS had to use words such as buttocks, buttocks crack, genital region with no visible puffy bare skin exposure. I don’t quite know what they mean by puffy.

My interpretation of the memo was that the female legs and midriff were exempt from the dress code. Hence Jennifer Lopez did not feel inhibited to show the full length of her right leg. Beyoncé played it so safe that she showed up in sharply cut slacks. It strikes me that the same CBS bosses had no problem with Beyoncé’s attire during the Super Bowl halftime performance. I am pretty sure it would not have met the standards of dress code at the Grammys.

Coming back to Katy Perry, I had to draw a sketch of her dress because I had no right to use her actual photograph. Under the circumstances I think I have done a passable job in almost nailing the color of her figure-hugging dress. Not being a generously bosomed woman I have no firsthand experience of what it means to show skin publicly. However, it is safe to presume that it must feel good to know that you are making men awkward in that they have to fight so hard not to look there.

The response to female breasts is primal and oftentimes it is not necessarily lust-driven. One way to deal with Perry was the way Ellen DeGeneres did by directly peering at them. Ellen could do it and make it look humorous for several reasons but mainly because she is Ellen. However, when you consider that she is gay and was with her wife Portia de Rossi I don’t think her mock/real act was any less creepy than it would have been had a man standing with his wife done that. The fact that Ellen is friends with Katy, coupled with the fact that she is a comic, did mitigate her act. It is a sheer line that divides the creepy from the comic.

As for Seacrest he was the one who made a reference to his height and the bosoms of his female interviewees.

No present, only perpetual past and no future,only nascent present

Venus in transit against the Sun (Illustration: Mayank Chhaya)

Does it strike you that everything in the universe is always communicating through its past and never its present? All phenomena that we experience are dated.

There is no real real time contact among objects considering that the time lag between any two object is considerable. Take for example, an object so predominant in our daily experience as the Sun. Considering that light from the Sun takes eight minutes to reach us here on the Earth, it means it is already dated information even if it so by just eight minutes.

As you begin to look beyond the interplanetary and into the intergalactic the distances become so vast that they no longer make sense on the human scale. If you don’t believe me check this out. At its closest the Venus is about 40 million kilometers from the Earth. Because of the elliptical orbits of the planets interplanetary distances vary extraordinarily. For instance, at its farthest the Venus is 261 million kilometers.Other than saying that it is extremely far, we cannot really sensibly comprehend how far.

Now consider Proxima Centauri, the star nearest to us. It is 40 trillion kilometers from us. To give you some measure of how far that is 40 trillion kilometers is 40 million million kilometers. Not that we can realistically grasp that either. So the nearest planet and the nearest star are separated from us by an incomprehensible magnitude. 

It takes light, therefore information and data, 4.24 years to reach us from Proxima Centauri. That would be light traveling for over four years at the speed of 300,000 kilometers a second to arrive here. In other words, the information reaching us is nearly four and a quarter years old, even from the nearest star. Therefore, what we are looking at is Proxima Centauri as it was that long ago. If we want to know whether in the interregnum it got married, divorced, underwent a tummy tuck, won an Oscar, or simply turned into a red dwarf we have to wait nearly four and quarter years. What this means is that we are forever trapped in our universe’s past exchanging stale information.

One way to get around this problem of enormous datedness is to collectively agree that our past is in fact jointly our present and our present will be our joint future. I use our in a cosmic and not an earthly sense. All that we can do is together decide that the present is when we see it and not when it might have actually happened in relation to a particular event or an object.

Of course, we can also resign to the fact that there is no real present but perpetual past and there is no real future but nascent present. Moments are taking birth and perishing all the time. Our immediate anthropic present will never reconcile or converge with that of even our nearest planetary neighbor, the moon because of the time lag, albeit miniscule in this particular case.

For all practical purposes it does not really matter that we are never up-to-date about the universe because we have to live with what appears before us. If Proxima Centauri was atomized at this present Earth moment, what material difference would it make to us in the way we process that information four and a quarter years into the future? For you and I Proxima Centauri will appear to have disintegrated only in June of 2017. It will be real present for us when we experience it then even though for the star it would be its past.

There are two kinds of present, one that is real present as experienced by the object in question and the other as experienced by those away from it. This time lag exists even on our own planet but it is so small that as human we cannot perceive it.

One way to respond to the post today is to ask me if I forgot to take my medicine. The more mature way would be to ponder yourself. It is not my intention to freak you out but to merely remind you that the concept of past, present and future is so strange at the scale of the universe. Perhaps the idea of a multiverse is supposed to mean that every object in the universe is a multiverse in and of itself in so much as their timelines never really converge.

So next time you have an argument with someone simply say this: “Let’s just say that we are on different timelines. Our present do not seem to converge.” Or try saying, “Your light has not yet reached me. It is the time lag and not us.”

When it comes to anyone other than oneself, we can all only hope for the bare minimum timeline convergence.Friendships and romances develop during that timeline convergence.

Is it any wonder then that only you genuinely know and converge with yourself? This is what Oscar Wilde called a lifelong romance.

Note to self: Call Walgreens for your prescription.

The politics of two hangings in India

India’s Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde (Picture: Lok Sabha biography)

I do not recall any other home (interior) minister in India who expedited two high profile and politically charged hangings in the first six of his tenure in office the way Sushil Kumar Shinde has done.

Not that it is a badge of honor but it is certainly indicative of a man asserting his image as someone decisive. For Shinde the politician it is a fortuitous coming together of circumstances that after taking over as India’s home minister In August, 2012, he had on his desk the death sentence files related to two terrorist convicts.

The first was Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving gunman out of the 10 involved in the November 26, 2008 Mumbai terror carnage. Shinde dispensed with his hanging on November 21, 2012, barely within four months of his taking office. The operation was carried out with rare secrecy.

Shinde has now followed that up with another, equally secretive hanging of Afzal Guru, one of the key plotters behind the 2001 terrorist attack on India’s parliament. In both cases the bodies were buried within the prison, premises , Kasab in the Yarwada Jail in Pune and Guru in the Tihar Jail, Delhi.

I knew Shinde reasonably well early on in his career as a politician in Bombay and found him to be unencumbered by subtlety and nuance in the matter of enforcing the law of the land. As a former policeman, Shinde does tend to view these matters as acting on what is on the statute books without getting too much into the moral debate surrounding it. I had asked him once how his former career in the police informed his career as a politician. He had said something to the effect that in the police it is generally about taking decisions on the spot and he carried that mindset into politics as well.

I see some parallels between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party in America and the Congress Party, to which Shinde belongs, and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Democrats had long been seen/projected as being soft appeasers, almost bleeding hearts, when it came to national security issues,while the Republicans were seen/projected as take-no-prisoners hawks on national security. That image has radically changed under President Barack Obama whose weapon of choice is the much dreaded drone. In India, the Congress Party has long been seen as wimpy appeasers of minorities always ready to compromise for a vote or two. The BJP on the other is seen/projected as chest thumping patriots who happily stomp on political toes when it comes to national security. These are reputations/perceptions and not necessarily rooted in reality.

With the two hangings, which by some genuine twist involved two Muslim men, Shinde has not only challenged his party’s reputation as political trucklers but in the process may have earned some points for himself. Hanging Afzal Guru had for long been the BJP’s talking point which Shinde has abruptly taken off the table. It is not my case that the two hangings were carried out with an eye on the 2014 parliamentary elections, which may see the BJP project an unabashed hawk like Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as their prime ministerial candidate. However, the hangings can only help counter any likely BJP assertions that the Congress is soft on national security issues.

In both cases, the mercy petitions by Kasab and Guru were promptly rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee, a lifelong insider to the Congress Party before he rose to the non-political office of the president. The optics of a party which cleared two hangings in rapid succession can only be useful politically even if the Congress chooses not to exploit them openly.

In a sense the BJP’s dilemma is somewhat akin to the Republican Party’s because it has been out-hawked on two signature hangings. Being a politician Shinde could not have been unaware of the fact that there was nothing to be lost politically, and perhaps everything to be gained, by hanging Kasab,a Pakistani citizen who was part of perhaps the most audacious terrorist attack of its kind. In so far as Guru was concerned he too was seen as an outlier to the larger constituency of Muslim vote politics which the Congress Party has for decades benefited from.

The calculus in both hangings was rather straightforward because neither had any significant downside. It would not surprise me to know that at his personal level Shinde merely saw it as a law and order issue like a policeman and took the logical decision on the spot. At the same time though he has spent too many years in politics not to know its obvious benefits.