THE YEAR HAS ONE MORE edition of THE WEEK left. The anniversary issue, dated December 28. And this penultimate issue brings you a cover story which is a year younger than THE WEEK, the Man of the Year special. This year’s spotlight is on Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla. He was interviewed by Principal Correspondent Abhinav Singh and Senior Correspondent Nirmal Jovial, supported by Photo Editor Bhanu Prakash Chandra and Assistant Video Editor Uthara Dinesh.
The article is a fine balance of his journey from Lucknow to space, with snapshots of the personal, including how he courted Kamna. There are also sketches about the love of their life, six-year-old Kiash.
I am sure quite a few of our readers from the armed forces can relate to what Kamna said about waiting for that one call every Sunday from a phone booth near the National Defence Academy. Forces wives will also see themselves in her decision to give up her career in dentistry to follow him from posting to posting, even as far as Moscow in winter.
Elsewhere in this issue, Senior Assistant News Editor Ajish P. Joy takes a relook at the Guantánamo Bay cover we carried in 2013. This was done against the backdrop of US President Donald Trump’s decision to turn it into a holding camp for undocumented immigrants. The American Civil Liberties Union is fighting the move tooth and nail. Very few terror-accused remain in Guantánamo Bay today.
A senior editor of your favourite magazine felt that Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Blackberry-Picking’ describes most years, if not all. The poem begins with a desire for more, whetted by the taste of a ripe blackberry: “…just one, a glossy purple clot/ Among others, red, green, hard as a knot./…its flesh was sweet/Like thickened wine….” And then leaves you with the feeling that you cannot keep memories, relationships or the taste of a blackberry fresh forever. Time will ensure that everything fades.
The editor read the poem for the first time after reading Special Correspondent Anjuly Mathai’s article about Caroline Casey, a blind Irish woman who fell in love with an Indian elephant, Kanchi.
Casey rode Kanchi across the southern states, crossing the Western Ghats. Once, while crossing over to Coorg, Karnataka, from Kannur, Kerala, they spent an unforgettable night in a village. Unforgettable for many reasons. A cobra terrorised Kanchi, and she roused the whole village. And among the people who gathered was a boy who adored Heaney.
Casey was carrying a copy of the Irish poet’s anthology, which contained the boy’s favourite poem—‘Blackberry-Picking’. She read Heaney to the boy and the villagers, by the flickering light of a bonfire. Heaney in the Ghats, by firelight. If that is not magical, then what is?
The editor said that he first read Heaney after former US president Joe Biden kept quoting him. Biden, too, has Irish roots. His favourite lines:
“History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave…
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.”
Time might grind hope down to dust, yes. But time also offers hope, I feel. And, healing.