POLITICAL NEWS IS THE LIFEBLOOD of a newsmagazine, and May 4 had that blood pumping. This cover was born out of the upsets that rocked the country from Kolkata to Chennai to Thiruvananthapuram. Guwahati and Puducherry went the predicted way, more or less.
Senior Assistant Editor Pratul Sharma looks at the four larger states, the takeaways from the polls, and what these victories mean for the Lok Sabha elections. He explains how the BJP wooed the Trinamool Congress’s voter base, and why Tamil Nadu turned away from the DMK despite economic growth and welfare policies.
Principal Correspondent Nirmal Jovial interviewed Kerala opposition leader V.D. Satheesan, who spearheaded the fight against an entrenched CPI(M) government. Special Correspondent Prema Rajaram interviewed the BJP’s Dilip Ghosh, the party’s former president in West Bengal.
There is much more to this issue than politics. Despite the election heat, Prema writes about Kolkata’s graffiti culture and some of the people who power it. Deputy Photo Editor Amey Mansabdar was in Rajahmundry to visit Ratnam Pen Works. I have mentioned in this space earlier that owners of Ratnam pens range from Mahatma Gandhi to former German chancellor Angela Merkel, who got it as a gift from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. One pen that came through Amey has been deposited in the Malayala Manorama Archives in Kottayam.
In Untold Stories, Special Correspondent Anjuly Mathai looks at the autobiography of Zoramthanga, former guerrilla fighter turned chief minister of Mizoram. It was interesting to read that the name his uncle gave him at birth proved prophetic. Zoram for Mizoram; thanga means “famous”.
What is in a name or a letter? A lot, according to the article written by our contributor in Ukraine, Mridula Ghosh. We know the city as Chernobyl, from the Russian transliteration. She spells it as Chornobyl, the Ukrainian way. In the article, Ghosh looks at how the USSR concealed the truth about the nuclear disaster that happened in the city 40 years ago—on April 26, 1986.
Against the backdrop of a horrific nuclear disaster, is a letter in a proper noun that important? The Associated Press, for example, continues to spell it the Russian way.
Ukrainska Pravda puts it in context, and I am inclined to agree: “Using the Ukrainian transliteration is a matter of voice, history, and whose perspective remains at the centre of international attention—and through which lens we view the largest nuclear disaster of the 20th century.”
It happened in Ukraine, and we should view it from a Ukrainian perspective. Spellings included.
This issue also pays tribute to the inimitable Raghu Rai, through the eyes of his son Nitin Rai. It is moving to read his account of the time when photojournalists were attacked by the karsevaks in Ayodhya. Father and son were there to cover the developments for their respective organisations. A police officer hid Nitin in a hut. Without knowing this, Raghu Rai went from hospital to hospital, looking for him among the injured and the dead.
At that moment, Raghu ceased to be that legendary photojournalist who had looked many a disaster in the eye. He was another father hoping not to find his son in the places where he was looking.