IN THE PAST 12 MONTHS, silver prices have risen by around 150 per cent in rupee terms. If I could sell all my silver, I stand to make a tidy sum. Sadly, it is all on my head. There are two strains in my family—those with the maternal strain get the pepper, and those with the paternal strain get the silver quite early in life. I don’t know how pepper prices have done of late, so it is Advantage Silver for now.
Jokes apart, the silver economy that caters to senior citizens is booming, and THE WEEK Goodfellows Silver Economy Summit in Mumbai took note of this. The Goodfellows describe themselves as “a group of young graduates who have an affection towards the elderly and look forward to creating meaningful bonds with our Grandpals and, as we say, we would do everything that your grandkid would do for you.” So, the cover and the summit go beyond the economy.
While the main article is by Principal Correspondent Pooja Biraia, Senior Subeditor Nitin S.J. Asariparambil looks at senior living spaces and Deputy News Editor Navin J. Antony shares insights from his interviews with Monika Taparia of AasaanWill and migration specialist Dr S. Irudaya Rajan.
Hope you noticed the silver-haired couple on a scooter on the cover. Interestingly enough, we have two two-wheeler articles in this issue. When put side by side, they show how deeply connected two-wheelers are to the Indian way of life and how they have evolved in form and function. Photographer Kritajna Naik K. was in Surajkund, Jharkhand, to visit a vanishing mela attraction—Maut ka Kua, the Well of Death—where bikers do stunts in a 30-foot-deep wooden well.
“The bikes are relics,” Kritajna writes. “Ancient two-strokes that no modern mechanic would dare to touch. Stripped to their bare bones, they are little more than engines on two wheels. Some barely seem to have brakes. The riders know them intimately. ‘Here, your motorcycle is not just a vehicle—it is your life support,’ says Shekhar Tyagi, a seasoned stunt rider.”
In the second article, Nitin examines how the electric two-wheeler market has shifted from breakout growth to cautious consolidation. What adds weight to the comprehensive article is the views of C-suite executives such as Aravind Mani and Vipin George of River Mobility, Vijayanand Samudrala of Amara Raja Advanced Cell Technologies, Vikas Singh of Greaves Electric Mobility and Ravneet Phokela of Ather Energy.
From scooters we go to space, with Principal Correspondent Abhinav Singh covering private players in the space race. Our coverage of the assembly polls continues through Special Correspondent Prema Rajaram in West Bengal, and Senior Assistant Editor Pratul Sharma looks at the politics of turncoats.
In @leisure, Special Correspondent Anjuly Mathai brings you the whimsical and scientific world of the Ig Nobel awards and pegs it on a recent book, Unruly by Upasana Sarraju. Interesting questions are raised in the article.
The writer’s life itself seems fantastic to me. Sarraju quit a stem-cell doctoral programme at the National University of Singapore to do theatre and minor playback singing in Puducherry, before going on to study population genetics of Asian elephants at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and then finally becoming a science writer. For now, that is.
Ever wondered why woodpeckers don’t get a headache despite all that headbanging? Two Ig Nobel laureates solved that for you.