I THINK I HAVE cut out much more than what is appearing on this page. How could I not, when the pot has been boiling over all week? On the eve of this letter going to press, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, hit the headlines after the Union government notified it. So, I thought that could be the focus. And, now the Haryana cabinet led by Manohar Lal Khattar has resigned and speculation is rife about what is coming. By the time I finished writing this letter, Nayab Singh Saini was confirmed as Khattar’s successor. This brings me to the actual topic—the election season. The pot is on the boil because the Lok Sabha elections are at hand.
THE WEEK is flagging off its coverage of the elections in this issue. We decided to look at some of the battleground states with fresh eyes, and that is why the main article from Jammu and Kashmir is by Zafar Choudhary, bolstered by Senior Special Correspondent Tariq Bhat’s excellent interview with National Conference leader Omar Abdullah. Omar is candid in the interview, especially about Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar leaving the INDIA bloc and what the former J&K chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said about the Abdullahs and Article 370.
The election coverage is not all Kashmir, of course. There is Senior Correspondent Rahul Devulapalli’s take on the tumult in Andhra Pradesh, and on the resurgence of the Telugu Desam Party. Special Correspondent Mohit Sharma writes about the dynamics of the Congress-Aam Aadmi Party alliance in Delhi. And, Senior Special Correspondent Pratul Sharma shares his insights on how the National Democratic Alliance is reaching out to new allies.
The cover, though, is about actor Vicky Kaushal, who is fresh in our minds for bringing Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw alive on the silver screen. One of my senior editors said that he watched Sam Bahadur only after Swami Sukhabodhananda, a disciple of Swami Chinmayananda and founder of the Prasanna Trust, encouraged him to. He was holding back because he felt that the field marshal was inimitable. But Swami Sukhabodhananda felt that the movie was as cinematically close as it could be to the real deal, and that is an endorsement that Kaushal should be proud of. Principal Correspondent Pooja Biraia Jaiswal has done an excellent interview with Kaushal, in addition to the comprehensive cover story.
One of my favourite articles in this issue is the one on India’s AWACS programme which weaves in the role of prime ministers from Indira Gandhi to H.D. Deve Gowda and Narendra Modi in keeping alive India’s dream of having an eye in the sky. Senior Special Correspondent Sanjib Kr Baruah and Resident Editor R. Prasannan have together produced a gem, which I liked for the writing and the information it contains.
With Oppenheimer sweeping the Oscars, Special Correspondent Anjuly Mathai’s article on Kai Bird is timely. Bird co-wrote J. Robert Oppenheimer’s biography, which inspired the movie. Anjuly’s reference to Oppenheimer drawing too close to the sun and being scorched by the heat of what he discovered brings me to Senior Special Correspondent Prathima Nandakumar’s interview with Dr Nicola Fox, associate administrator, NASA Science Mission Directorate.
Fox was in Bengaluru for the NISAR project on which NASA is in collaboration with ISRO. Among the wondrous things she shared with Prathima is the conundrum: Why is the sun’s atmosphere 300 times hotter than the surface of the sun? “That does not make sense—if you walk away from a campfire, it gets colder; it does not get hotter. But if you move away from the sun, it gets much, much hotter.”
At least we know when the election results will be out, and the poll heat will dissipate after that. But who knows when the sun’s mysteries would be cracked?