The art of timing

SALT, GARLIC, GREEN CHILIES and mustard oil. That was former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad’s famous marinade for carp hooked from ponds in his village, Phulwaria. The day’s catch would be slow-cooked over a fire made of dried cow dung pats, Lalu told THE WEEK in 2009.

 

Cooking was such a passion for him that he once missed an official meeting in Puri, Odisha. He was there on vacation with the family, but had set up a few meetings on the side. If he had attended the meeting, who would have tended to the simmering pans of pomfrets and prawns, he quipped.

 

In the kitchen and in politics, timing and the mix matter. And very few knew it better than Lalu. He knew when to take a dish off the fire and the perfect sequence of adding ingredients into an election campaign. Now, 35-year-old Tejashwi Yadav is trying to replicate his father’s recipe in Battleground Bihar. Hence, this week’s cover.

 

Tejashwi’s interview to THE WEEK’s Senior Assistant Editor Pratul Sharma was his first after being named chief minister candidate of the grand alliance. He said his promise of one government job for every family is no sham and he would ensure no one from Bihar would need to migrate. Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary told Pratul that Lalu had only talked about social justice, but never delivered it. The Bihar assembly polls are an interesting one, by all accounts.

 

Senior Special Correspondent Kanu Sarda looks at the commissions that follow every stampede or similar incident. Nothing concrete has come out of the reports, she says, and even if commissions make recommendations, they are rarely implemented. Her article is pegged to the recent Karur stampede in Tamil Nadu. “Until these commissions serve as genuine instruments of accountability, the only things that will change are the names of the tragedies,” she writes.

 

In @leisure, our US contributor Lavina Melwani captures the life of Sundaram Tagore, the great-grandnephew of Rabindranath Tagore. Special Correspondent Anjuly Mathai writes about imagining Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge dialogues in the pre-subtitle era. She has watched DDLJ at least 20 times, and Senior Assistant News Editor Ajish P. Joy at least 100 times. Chief Subeditor Anirudh Madhavan made a pilgrimage to Maratha Mandir last month; he was four years old when the movie was released there.

 

Now, on to some harder feelings. It was in Siachen that Senior Assistant Editor Sanjib Kr Baruah first watched the Indian Army’s new assault rifle, the AK-203. In this issue, he says that it illustrates a change in the Indian military’s operational doctrine.

 

A couple of issues back, I wrote here about flags with weapons. Yes, there are a few of them, but only one sports a Kalashnikov. It is a country that seldom makes the headlines here, but it has been in the news in India for the past few weeks. Mozambique. It shares the Indian Ocean rim with us. Capital is Maputo; currency, the metical. As of today’s rates, a metical is worth Rs1.38.

 

Sanjib’s article on the AK-203 carries a poignant marker for us. It has the last photographs taken by our long-time contributor from Lucknow, Pawan Kumar. He walked into the pages of THE WEEK when Ajay Uprety represented us in Uttar Pradesh, and continued to support his successor, Senior Special Correspondent Puja Awasthi. Pawan passed away on Saturday, October 25.

 

In her obit for theweek.in, Puja wrote that he was all set to host a grand first birthday celebration for his grandson, Yug, on October 27. With just two days to go, he left forever wearing the outfit he had bought for Yug’s party. Thank you for the support over the years, dear Pawan. It is THE WEEK’s honour to publish your last byline.

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