HOW CAN ONE NOT WEEP after reading Souri Raju’s statement? The fifth-generation gravedigger and state secretary of the graveyard workers’ association in Karnataka told Senior Special Correspondent Prathima Nandakumar, “We grew up eating rice sprinkled on cemeteries and have come to realise that we carry nothing with us when we leave this world.”
In that statement, he unintentionally points a finger at policy makers, and you and me, dear reader. He did credit providence and the goodwill of grief-stricken families, but his crediting God and charity in a democracy also says a lot about our system, does it not? Stories like Raju’s abound in this week’s cover story put together by Prathima, Senior Special Correspondents Lakshmi Subramanian and Puja Awasthi, and Special Correspondent Rahul Devulapalli. Once you read the articles, you cannot remain unmoved, dear reader.
On the political front, Senior Correspondent Nirmal Jovial writes from Madurai, against the backdrop of the recently concluded party congress of the CPI(M)—its 24th. With former Kerala education minister M.A. Baby being elected the party’s general secretary and with the party being in power only in Kerala, there is a feeling that the state unit’s shadow will loom large on the national party.
Polit Bureau member Mohammed Salim told THE WEEK that the Kerala CPI(M) rolling out the red carpet for private investors had to be seen as “creative application of left alternatives” and M.V. Govindan, the party’s Kerala secretary, said that “the party does not see the Kerala government as a Marxist alternative, but as a democratic alternative”. As always, journalists will have a tough time interpreting the Left’s statements, but these are interesting times for Left watchers.
We have also taken note of the All India Congress Committee session in Ahmedabad, the first in Gujarat since the 1961 Bhavnagar session. Correspondent Badar Bashir explains the significance of the meeting in the land of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel.
There is a detailed report by Senior Special Correspondent Kanu Sarda on the BJP’s push for legal uniformity in the light of the Waqf (Amendment) Act. It is bolstered with interviews with Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs and Minority Affairs Kiren Rijiju and AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi, MP. Chief of Bureau, Delhi, Namrata Biji Ahuja interviewed both.
And then Special Correspondent Anjuly Mathai takes you on a trip into the world of celebs and their hobbies. For example, Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee spoke to her about food—the cooking, the eating, the memories and the economics of it. Be her guest, take a bite of the story and stay back with us to enjoy the meal.
In closing, let me go back to the cover and share a story from my father’s library of experiences. He grew up in verdant Kuttanad, where the land’s natural beauty hid many sins. In the absence of formal facilities, our family supported the lone teacher at the local school, where students sat on the floor of the classroom.
When my father joined school, the teacher provided him with a bench. He did it unasked and, perhaps, out of a misplaced sense of gratitude. As a child, my father did not realise that the bench represented a privilege which far outstripped the simple furniture.
Through the grapevine, my grandmother came to know about this concession and stormed into the classroom. She pulled my father off the bench and tossed it out into the schoolyard.
Quite certainly, my father would have been thunderstruck by what happened that afternoon and he would have been sad, too. No one asked him before putting him on the bench; no one asked him before pulling him off, either. The incident finds a mention in his autobiography, and the admiration for his mother’s action shines through.
Sometimes, I feel we do not deserve our wise and saintly mothers, dear reader. How much did they teach us without teaching us?