THE BULK OF this issue is packed with political stories and let me not apologise for that. The general elections churn the political space like no other event. So, if not now, when?
This is not to say that it is all politics. For example, there is Deputy Photo Editor Sanjay Ahlawat’s article on Peter Smetacek and his Butterfly Research Centre in Bhimtal, Uttarakhand. Peter’s father, Frederick Smetacek Sr, came to India in 1939. He made the hill country his home and butterflies his passion.
Even in the political coverage, it is not a dry analysis. THE WEEK was the only publication on the campaign bus when Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy suffered a cut above his left eye at Vijayawada, allegedly from a stone flung at him by someone in the crowd. Special Correspondent Rahul Devulapalli gives a first-person account of his struggle to get on the Volvo bus and what ensued during the journey.
The big-ticket elements in this week’s package are the three interviews with Chief Ministers Siddaramaiah of Karnataka, Pinarayi Vijayan of Kerala and Revanth Reddy of Telangana. All three are combative and optimistic about hobbling the BJP on their turfs. My special thanks to the chief ministers for taking the time out to speak to THE WEEK’s readers through Senior Special Correspondent Prathima Nandakumar, Rahul and Correspondent Nirmal Jovial.
Our reportage by guest writers continues in this issue. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana were covered by senior journalist M. Somasekhar, who analyses how the Telugu-speaking states are similar and dissimilar at the same time. Karnataka was covered by our columnist Anuja Chauhan and it is an engaging read, hilarious in parts. From the burnt earth of Manipur, the Malayala Manorama’s Special Correspondent Javed Parvesh reports on why the general elections are not a priority in the state.
There is a touch of politics in everything, as I once wrote here. Even in the Smetaceks and their eventual love for butterflies. Frederick was from the Sudetenland, a German-speaking enclave in what was then Czechoslovakia. Adolf Hitler had his eyes on the enclave, and a movement there had plans to kill him if he invaded Czechoslovakia. The invasion never happened. On September 30, 1938, Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy signed the Munich Agreement by which the Nazis were allowed to occupy the Sudetenland. The 30 lakh people in the region had no say in this and they called it the Munich Betrayal.
Frederick, I am told, was part of the anti-Nazi movement. He fled the Sudetenland for India after a failed attempt on Hitler. Weary of fighting Nazism, he came to India and fell in love with the fragile beauty of moths and butterflies.
I, interestingly, have a Czech expat connection through my boats. They were built by my friend Joe Nejedly, whose father, Josef Nejedly, moved here from Czechoslovakia and was one of the pioneers of the fibreglass industry in India.
That way, I guess, most people in India have a Czech connection as most of us have used a brand born in the town of Zlín in today’s Czech Republic—Bata.