How YouTube Changed The World - 1 File Download

SHYAM BENEGAL ON STUDENT PROTESTS

PAGE 98

THE POWER OF GRATITUDE PAGE 78

HUMOUR SPECIAL: DUMB CRIMINALSUnbelievable tales of bad judgement

and plain stupidity PAGE 72

CLASSIC BONUS READ THE CASE OF THE ROLEX MURDER

PAGE 138

How YouTube Changed The World

This online phenomenon is increasingly ruling our lives PAGE 62

APRIL2016

FOR SALE IN INDIA AND NEPAL ONLY

readersdigest.co.in

`100

THE ART OF GOOD DECISION-MAKING............ 43

LAUGHTER, THE BEST MEDICINE..................... 86

FIGHT BACK LUNG CANCER................................ 88

DRAMA: LION ATTACK!...................................... 104

ENRICH YOUR WORD POWER........................... 159

Cover Story 62 HOW YOUTUBE CHANGED

THE WORLD An online phenomenon that’s increasingly ruling our lives. SIMON HEMELRYK WITH

ARUSHI SHARMA

72 WORLD’S DUMBEST CRIMINALS It didn’t take a master sleuth to catch them. BRUCE GRIERSON

78 THE POWER OF GRATITUDEHow saying “thank you” can make you happier. LISA FIELDS

88 FIGHTING LUNG CANCER A changing approach and new treatments are bringing hope. KATHAKOLI DASGUPTA &

ANITA BARTHOLOMEW

94 SOUNDS LIKE Words that put the whizz bang into our language. DONYALE HARRISON

98 ALTERNATE VISION Shyam Benegal on what keeps him going at 81. SNIGDHA HASAN

Drama in Real Life 104 LION ATTACK!

Bonding with Africa’s biggest cats nearly cost this teen her life. LIA GRAINGER

READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 5

ContentsAPRIL 2016

114 WHO IS UNINDIAN? What does it take to be anti-national? DAMAYANTI DATTA

120 FINDING THE SILVER LINING How one woman changed her destiny. PRATHYASHA GEORGE

124 HALLOWED HALLS Churches as architectural marvels. CORNELIA KUMFERT

130 MY SECRET VENICE A well-known journalist acts as tour guide in this iconic city. JOHN HOOPER

Book Bonus 138 THE CASE OF THE

ROLEX MURDERAn investigation into a drowning begins with a watch. BILL SCHILLER

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6 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

Vol. 57 | No. 4APRIL 2016

12 Editor’s Note 14 Over to You

READER FAVOURITES

18 Life’s Like That

34 Good News

36 Medical News

38 Humour in Uniform

40 Points to Ponder

55 Shocking Notes

61 It Happens Only in India

86 Laughter, the Best Medicine

123 As Kids See It

158 Brain Teasers

159 Word Power

163 Studio

164 Quotable Quotes

VOICES & VIEWS

My First Job 28 Compassionate Care

How one heart surgeon’s first job made him a philanthropist. DR DEVI SHETTY

Words of Lasting Interest 30 Marriage of True Minds Remembering Shakespeare on

his 400th death anniversary through his sonnet on love. SHORMISHTHA PANJA

Department of Wit 32 The Food Lover’s Diet

For guaranteed happiness (not necessarily a slimmer waist), try this out. ANNE ROUMANOFF

Finish This Sentence 42 I break into a laugh

when...

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Everyday Heroes 22 Help for the Homeless

These humanitarians offer innovative solutions for a better world and future. ALYSSA JUNG,

BRANDON SPECKTOR,

BETH DREHER & MICHELE

WOJCIECHOWSKI

P. | 28


Vol. 57 | No. 4APRIL 2016

Total number of pages in this issue of Reader’s Digest, including covers: 166

ART OF LIVING

43 The Choice Is Yours CHANTAL TRANCHEMONTAGNE

Health 46 First Aid for Your Voice

Money 50 Good Money Habits GAURAV MASHRUWALA

Travel 52 In the Southern Hills

KALYANI PRASHER

Beauty 56 The No-Fuss Guide to

Anti-Ageing DR REKHA SHETH

Family 58 The Morning Report

DONALD E. HUNTON

Fitness 60 A Lifesaving At-Home

Check-Up JESSICA CASSITY

ILLUSTRATION: Sameer Kulavoor.COVER DESIGN: Sadhana Moolchandani

WHO KNEW?

156 13 Things Gyms Won’t Tell You BY MICH ELLE CROUCH WITH

N ISHA VARMA

161 Entertainment OU R TOP P ICKS OF

TH E MONTH

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Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie Chief Executive Officer Ashish Bagga Group Editorial Director Raj Chengappa

© 2016 Trusted Media Brands, Inc. (Reader’s Digest editorial material). © 2016 Living Media India Ltd. (Living Media editorial material). All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction in any manner, in whole or part, in English or other languages, is prohibited. Published & Printed by Ashish Bagga on behalf of Living Media India Limited. Editor: Sanghamitra Chakraborty (responsible for selection of news). Printed at Thomson Press India Limited, 18-35 Milestone, Delhi-Mathura Road, Faridabad 121 007 (Haryana) and at A9, Industrial Complex, Maraimalai Nagar, District Kancheepuram 603 209 (Tamil Nadu). Published at K9, Connaught Circus, New Delhi 110 001.

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VOL. 57 NO. 4 APRIL 2016

Editor Sanghamitra Chakraborty Deputy Editor Sunalini Mathew Senior Research Editor Mamta Sharma Features Editor Snigdha Hasan Senior Features Writer Arushi Sharma

Editorial Coordinator Ruchi Lodha

Art Director Sadhana Moolchandani Senior Designer Keshav Kapil

Editor’s NoteYou Are The World

AS I WRITE TO YOU, my son is struggling with a sleeping bag—the filling is out and all over him and he has no idea how to fold it back in, neatly. My early-

teens boy is off on a school trip, and is doing his own packing. I offer to help, but he stops me: “Chill, Ma. Let me figure this out.” I step back: ouch, he would rather look up a YouTube tutorial than have his mother potter around.

I was amused at how I’d started sulking about something I now do routinely myself. My recent search history on YouTube shows I learnt how to use a new coffee maker, picked up a great recipe of haleem from a Pakistani woman and watched puppies being trained for my own pet. I routinely catch up on TV news that I may have missed, an old Kishore Kumar hit or a Louis CK comedy that makes me smile, before I turn in for the day.

It’s amazing, how the simple idea of uploading your personal videos on the internet has caught on and changed the way we work, play and live. I’m particularly fascinated, as a journalist, by the way YouTube has led the march of user-generated content on the internet for over a decade, democratized information and empowered audiences. Deciding the hierarchy of news is no longer the preserve of editors alone: the power has devolved to the audience. This is most significant in a world where free speech can be muzzled, human rights threatened and news manipulated by authoritarian regimes.

How YouTube Changed the World (p 62), our cover story, is a celebration of people power. From spreading social messages to providing entertainment, from being a powerful educational tool to building global communities, it is a reminder of the enormous influence this platform has.

To celebrate the first day of April, we have for you a humour special on Dumb Criminals (p 72) that you shouldn’t miss. Also, read The Power of Gratitude (p 78)— it will make you believe in a ‘thank you’ more than ever; it certainly reaffirmed my faith in it. What better place to let you know that you, dear reader, inspire us to make the Digest what it is?

So, thank you! Send an email to [email protected]


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FINANCIAL REGIMEThere is no dearth of laws to curb the generation and circulation of black money [Can the New Law Flush Out Black Money?]. It is the lack of proper execution that is the problem. The solution is three-pronged. Political will comes first, followed by transparency of the system, and awareness amongst people and their participation. ARVIND PRAKASH VERMA, All ahab a d


Over to YouFEEDBACK ON OUR FEBRUARY ISSUE

Life insurance, though not an invest-ment but a necessity, provident fund, postal savings certificates and medi-cal insurance were some common options for savings when I was in service [What’s Your Plan?]. The fore-sighted invested in housing. But it was impossible to imagine the extent of inflation and devaluation of the rupee over the years. Fixed pensions from private companies, as opposed to regularly revised government ones, are a pittance now. Everyone must plan for the future to maintain a minimum standard of living, keep-ing their family commitments in mind. D.B.N. MURTHY, B e n g a l u r u

FB GIMMICK An internet user enjoys the freedom of access to a zillion sources of infor-mation [Quickipedia]. Facebook’s Free Basics service that seeks to pro-

vide free access to a few selected websites, is contrary to the spirit of this freedom. That this facility will be of great help to a huge section of India’s population, who cannot afford to be online, does not redeem the ini-tiative. The concept smacks of con-trol. VIKAS KUMAR SINGH, Ara r i a , B i h a r

FLYING BLUES Many of us wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between Grenada and Granada [The Case of the Ticket Mix-up]. If Gamson can prove that he had booked his tickets with airport codes, he must be reimbursed. Even if he can’t, he deserves compensation because it is the airline’s fault for not mentioning the country’s name on the ticket. But Gamson was lucky to be mistakenly flown to a Caribbean country. Hopefully, he made the most of it. HIMA JARIWALA, v i a e m a i l


O V E R T O YO U

After enjoying the solatium offered by the airlines, Gamson has no locus standi to claim further relief. He can’t have his cake and eat it too. AYYASSERI

RAVEENDRANATH, Ara n m u l a , Ke ra l a

Private players should remember that it is their customers who let them earn profits, and such experi-ences would tarnish their image, as word travels. SAHIL, v i a e m a i l

TESTING TIMESExamination stress can be fatal if not managed well [Bust Exam Stress]. It is a trying time for parents when their children appear for exams that impact their careers and lives. It’s also the time when children’s bodies undergo changes and they experience mood swings. They need support from their parents to adjust to all of this. RAMACHANDRAN NAIR, Mu s c at , O m a n

Over two decades of teaching has made me realize that parents, more than children, need to understand that marks and ranks are not every-thing. There are plenty of examples of successful people who did not fare well in academics.

SHREEPRAKASH SHARMA, Biraul i , Bihar

PRECIOUS TIME Being an army officer, I can’t visit my parents as often as I wish to [The Gift Money Can’t Buy]. Every time I go home I find them a little older, a little unwell, managing life and relatives,

missing my brother and me, wishing that I would be married. We hold down our jobs, but miss out on fam-ily that makes life worth living. MAJOR NEHA, Ne w D e l h i

ADEQUATE SHUT-EYE In India, sleep deprivation as a condi-tion is not as well-recognized as it should be [Sounding the Alarm on Sleep]. Most celebrities romanticize the attribute of working through the night. Working overtime is an Indian phenomenon, with the BPO culture adding to the owls amongst our work-force. Besides, youngsters believe it’s fun staying up at night. What’s dis-turbing is that parents often take their young children to late-night movies. CHANDRIKA R. KRISHNAN, B e n g a l u r u

Write in at [email protected]. The best letters discuss RD articles, offer criticism, share ideas and experiences. Please include your phone number and postal address.

I prided myself on relocating to my home town to take care of my aged mother, and doing everything I could to make sure she is taken care of. But I now realize that I haven’t been giving her what she needs the most—my company. I will now spend some time talking to her every day—about the people she loved and things she enjoyed doing. SHEILA THAYYIL, K a n n u r, Ke ra l a

WRITE & WIN!


➸

Life’s Like That

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“After a few more years of complaining I think I may change my life.”

I WAS UPSET and sent my boyfriend a text saying, “How could you cheat on me?” I got a text back immediately in reply from my dad. I texted back and said, “Sorry, Dad—that message was meant for Ben.”

Back came another text from Dad. “On a totally unrelated issue, have you seen my rifle anywhere?”

He’s always been a protective father!SHELAGH CLARKSON

AS THE HOSTESS at the casino buffet showed me to my table, I asked her to keep an eye out for my husband, who would be joining me momentarily. I started to describe him: “He has grey hair, wears glasses, has a potbelly...”

She stopped me there. “Honey,” she said, “today is senior day. They all look like that.” ROSALIE DARIA


Reader’s Digest will pay for your funny anecdote or photo in any of our jokes sections. Post it to the editorial address, or email: [email protected]

L I F E ’ S L I K E T H AT

MY HUSBAND WAS fraught after a tough day at work, so I decided to take him and our three kids out for a meal to help him relax.

He was still feeling irritable when we arrived at the restaurant, so when the waiter approached and asked, “Would sir like a table?” he snapped, replying, “No thanks, we’ll eat off the floor...carpet for five, please.”

I don’t know who was more em-barrassed—the waiter or me!

CAROLINE ALDEN

AT MY SISTER’S place of work, a shoplifter was caught stealing a bot-tle of whisky. He was interrogated and the manager of the store gave him a severe telling off. He told him that if he bought the bottle he’d let him off this time, and mentioned the price of the whisky.

The shoplifter cheekily replied, “That’s more than I was intending to spend. Can you show me a cheaper bottle?” LOIS JONES

NIHILISTIC PASSWORD SECURITY QUESTIONS■ At what age did your childhood pet run away?■ What was the name of your favou-rite unpaid internship?■ In what city did you first experi-ence ennui?■ On what street did you lose your childlike sense of wonder?■ When did you stop trying?

mcsweeneys.net

ANYONE KNOW A TUTOR?

Are you of the opinion your chil-dren are acing school? Well, check out some of their test answers.

Q: Use the word congenial in a sentence. A: When you leave the gravy out too long, it congenials.

Q: The first thing Queen Elizabeth II did upon ascending the throne was to … A: Sit down.

Q: Write a sentence containing a double negative. A: Mike is ugly and he smells.

Q: Name two plays by Shakespeare. A: Romeo and Juliet

Q: On what grounds was Aaron Burr tried for treason? A: New York

Q: Write about the importance of animals in Of Mice and Men. A: The mice are very important—without them, you’d have only the men.

Q: Use the word doldrums in a sentence. A: I cannot play the doldrums.

From F in Exams: Complete Failure Edition by Richard Benson (Chronicle Books)

X

“We want to reach people

where they are,” says Doniece

Sandoval.


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Helping the Homeless

her four decommissioned buses that she then had remodelled with $75,000 she’d raised on a crowdfund-ing website. Each bus connects to a fire hydrant for water, which is heated by large batteries on board. Waste water is drained into city sewers.

The first bus hit the road in July 2014; a second one rolled out in early 2015. Doniece plans to put the other two buses elsewhere in the Bay Area and imagines expanding the programme internationally.

Those in need of a shower, sign up for a 15-minute time slot at a local homeless shelter, and Lava Mae provides towels, shampoo, soap and a new pair of socks.

“No matter how clean you try to stay on the street, you’re going to be grimy,” said Silas Borden, a military veteran who showers weekly on a Lava Mae bus in the Mission neigh-bourhood. “And I want to wash it off.”

Says Doniece, “It’s a humbling experience to see people come off the bus so grateful for something that should be a natural human right.”

ALYSSA JUNG, WITH MICHELE WOJCIECHOWSKI

AN OLD BLUE BUS pulls up to a wellness centre in downtown San Francisco, US, and a small crowd forms. Young and old, men and women are waiting to board for their turn to bathe. This city bus has been modified as a sanitation station with two private bathrooms, each includ-ing a shower, toilet, sink and chang-ing area. The brainchild of Doniece Sandoval, a former public relations executive, Lava Mae (a play on the Spanish for “wash me”) provides up to 500 showers a week for the thou-sands of homeless people who sleep on the streets in this city.

“We reconnect people with their dignity,” says Doniece.

Two years ago, Doniece overheard a homeless woman on a San Fran-cisco sidewalk say that she’d never be clean. “That made me wonder what her opportunities were to actually get clean,” says Doniece. She learnt that San Francisco had only eight public shower facilities. “I thought, If you can put food on wheels, why not showers?” she says.

Doniece persuaded the city to give

“We reconnect people with their dignity”Doniece Sandoval



E V E R Y D AY H E R O E S

to feed 20 people in line at a New York City homeless shelter that had run out of food.

Robert, who had taken a job as an analyst at J.P. Morgan, devoted his spare time to creating a network of New York City restaurants, from mom-and-pop delis to large chains like Starbucks and Panera Bread, that agreed to donate food, and he enlisted volunteers to make food deliveries to homeless shelters. After RLC received national press attention, homeless shelters and soup kitchens in Portland, Oregon, Washington, DC and other cities reached out to Robert for partnership advice. To date, RLC has distributed more than 1,13,400 kilos of food in 12 cities around the US.

Only a year into his finance job, Robert gave up his six-figure salary to focus on RLC. “I compared one hour of impact at J.P. Morgan to one hour at RLC, and the difference was just tremendous,” he says. He’s now the group’s only full- time employee.

“One shelter recently told us that our donations allow them to provide entire dinners for more than 300 people, three nights a week,” Robert says. “Things like that make me glad I quit my job.”

BRANDON SPECKTOR

AS AN ELEMENTARY school student in New York City, Robert Lee would stare in disbelief at his class-mates throwing away half-eaten sandwiches after lunch. His Korean immigrant parents had taught him and his older brother not to waste food. “They said it was bad karma,” says Robert, 24.

While studying finance and accounting at New York University, Robert remembered this lesson and joined Two Birds One Stone, a food-rescue club on campus that delivered, five days a week, uneaten pasta, vegetables and other leftovers from the dining hall to nearby homeless shelters.

When Robert and fellow club member Louisa Chen entered a college entrepreneurship contest, they proposed a slightly different idea for a food-rescue non-profit group: their programme wouldn’t have a donation minimum (meaning they would gladly pick up one bag of leftover bagels or a single pot of soup), would operate seven days a week, and would be staffed entirely by volunteers.

Their idea won the competition. With the $1,000 prize, they founded Rescuing Leftover Cuisine (RLC) in July 2013. In just the first few weeks, Robert’s team delivered a donation of enough spaghetti and meatballs

“They said it was bad karma” Robert Lee

“This group saves shelters thousands of dollars,” says Robert Lee.


“I want to give people a chance without judging

them,” says Veronika Scott.


R E A D E R S D I G E S T. C O . I N


operating funds and insulating mate-rial. To date, the Empowerment Plan has produced more than 10,000 coats and distributed them in 30 states, Canada, and elsewhere abroad.The group employs about 20 people—mostly single mothers, some of whom have served time or worked as prostitutes—and pays them more than Michigan’s mini-mum wage. “We don’t require a GED test [high-school equivalent diploma] or even previous employ-ment,” Veronika says. “We’re looking for people who are motivated.” The Empowerment Plan provides free GED and financial-literacy classes and offers micro-loans to those who qualify. Nearly all the employees eventually move into permanent housing, and some go on to jobs in the auto industry and construction.

Veronika has refined the coat’s design by switching to an outer layer of lightweight polyethylene that resists air, wind and water and an in-ner layer of synthetic fabric that stores body heat. Her latest innova-tion is to make the bottom of the sleeping bag removable.

Still, Veronika is less focused on the coats than on the workers who make them. “At the end of the day,” she says, “[the coat] is a vehicle for us to employ people.”

BETH DREHER, WITH MICHELE WOJCIECHOWSKI

WHEN VERONIKA SCOTT was a student at the College for Creative Studies in her native city of Detroit, US, she received an assignment to “design to fill a need.” She dreamt up an idea for insulated overcoats that would double as sleeping bags, made 25 of them, and handed them out to people living in makeshift shelters on a rundown city playground. While her efforts were greeted mostly with enthusiasm from those braving De-troit’s brutal winters, one woman voiced dissent. “We don’t need coats; we need jobs,” she told Veronika. Then she had her second inspiration.

Veronika, now 26, found an expert to teach two homeless women to sew and hired them to assemble the coats. She paid them with donations she received through her blog. At first, the coats were constructed in a homeless shelter’s utility closet. “The top of the coat would hit one wall, and the bottom would be out the door,” says Veronika.

After graduating from college in 2012, she moved the shop into an old downtown warehouse for socially conscious businesses and founded the Empowerment Plan, a non-profit organization. Clothing manufacturer Carhartt donated several old indus-trial sewing machines and reams of fabric and zippers. General Motors and other companies chipped in

“Design to fill a need” Veronika Scott

I WAS JUST BACK from studying and training in England in 1989, when I was offered a job at BM Birla Heart Research Centre, in Kolkata (then Calcutta) as the chief cardiac surgeon. It was one of the first stand-alone cardiac hospitals in the country, and I was in my early 30s.

In England, I had trained with the National Health Service (NHS), where if a patient needed an operation, you went ahead and did it. You looked at the angiogram, and if you needed to, you operated. Everyone knew what their jobs were. Here, I needed to spend upto an hour convincing the family about a heart operation. In those days, it was like a death warrant. Now, it’s the opposite, with an hour-long discussion telling people why they don’t need a surgery or stent!

We encountered the most basic issues then. There was no concept of disposable gloves. Gloves were washed and hung out on a line! There was nothing like a radiopaque marker—the instrument is particularly helpful to know that you hadn’t left a swab inside a patient after an operation. There was also no concept of cardiac post-operative care. These seem like trivial matters, but it was a nightmare—literally like coming from Heathrow to Howrah. So I brought four British nurses from Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London. They stayed for three

Compassionate CareBY DEVI SHETTY AS TOLD TO SUNALINI MATHEW

DR DEVI SHETTY, the renowned heart surgeon, runs one of the world’s largest low-cost heart hospitals, Narayana Hrudayalaya, in Bengaluru.


VIEWSVOICES

My First Job

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years and worked with me. When I walked into Birla, I

walked into an empty building, as the first doctor. Soon, I learnt the art of management. The Birlas were excellent employers, and though I was young, they involved me in the business of running the hospital. We had a daily profit-and-loss account, even though it was a trust hospital. I learnt that done on a daily basis, this is like a diagnostic tool; done at the end of the month, it could be like a post-mortem.

I learnt how big business houses worked: they identified talented, skilled people, and allowed them to function and build. After all, your hospital’s reputation is based on the doctors’ skills and ability to provide patient care—unless you make your doctors, or at least the senior ones, a part of the financial decision, they will never know if a solution is affordable or not. I used to see over 100 patients a day, and I realized that heart surgery needed to be made affordable. It has laid the foundation for the work I do now.

I understood how to think big, to go beyond your own hospital and look at the national and global picture. Exposure is important: for instance, I had the opportunity to interact with our African facility. It’s very important that in your first job, you work for someone who thinks big.

But I was also humbled. One day

I got a call asking for a home visit. I said I didn’t do them, but the caller told me that if I visited, my life would be transformed. Since I didn’t have much to do at that moment, I went. My life did change—the sick person was Mother Teresa. She taught me the power of simplicity and compassion. We often think that the greatest power is one of brute force, but you can conquer the world with kindness. It doesn’t need language; it is universal.


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Dr Devi Shetty treasures what his first job taught him.

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SINCE THIS SONNET is seen amongst the most abiding expressions of true love, it would come as a surprise, then, that it was addressed to a young man, rather than Shakespeare’s lady love. It is a part of the series of sonnets that Shakespeare wrote to Mr W.H., “the onlie

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Marriage of True Minds

We commemorate The Bard’s 400th death anniversary with this iconic verse

Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), England’s greatest playwright, has been immortalized by works such as this.

WORDS OF LASTING INTEREST

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove:O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;It is the star to every wandering bark,Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error, and upon me prov’d, I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

ABOUT THIS SONNET By Shormishtha Panja


proclamation of the steadfastness of love. The sonnet also throws up the usual tropes of Petrarchism (the Italian Renaissance poet Petrarch being the father of the sonnet)—the comparison of the lover to a “bark” or ship lost at sea. We have the legal language of the opening lines and the clever couplets that close every Shakespearean sonnet and which often seem to bring an abrupt and artificial sense of closure.

begetter” of the sonnets, as the dedication puts it. Critics believe W.H. is either Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton or William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke.

It seems W.H. may have been Shakespeare’s patron and viewed by the Bard as his social superior. For the Elizabethan sonneteers, love was not merely love, as Arthur Marotti puts it, but linked to social prestige and patronage. For Shakespeare, the provincial young man from Warwickshire, trying to make his fortune in London in the not-so-respectable profession of the theatre, a patron among the nobility would have been vital.

Shakespeare’s sonnets are sur-prisingly autobiographical for a man who seldom revealed himself in his plays. They are replete with contrary currents of self-abnegation and self-proclamation, of faith in the strength of love, along with a lasting impression of its weakness. Sonnet 116 is no exception.

The beautiful image in the lines, “Love’s not Time’s fool…” brings alive Father Time’s scythe. It seems like it encircles, as if in an embrace, before chopping off the signs of youth—rosy lips and cheeks. And like so many fragile spring blooms, these are said to be gathered only to be cut off by the mower.

Shakespeare often uses words in more senses than one. We see dark undertones in an otherwise strong IN

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Shormishtha Panja is a professor of English and Director, Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi. She has recently edited the books Shakespeare and Class and Shakespeare and the Art of Lying. She has been the President of the Shakespeare Society of India.

DEPARTMENT OF WIT


Food Lover’s DietBY ANNE ROUMANOFF

DEAR READERS, I’d like to share exclusively with you the secrets of my food lover’s springtime diet, refined and perfected through losing and regaining hundreds of kilos.

1) Stop saying, “I shouldn’t” when you swallow something yummy. There’s not a God of calories constantly on watch who’ll bombard your thighs with cellulite the instant you tuck into that gooey chocolate cake. So please, when you fall for a box of macaroons and/or a bar of milk chocolate and/or a cheese plate, enjoy them!

2) Avoid eating all these treats at the same meal. One lapse a week is okay, three lapses a minute are not.

3) Don’t tell anyone you’re on a diet. You’ll be showered with demotivating comments like:

“Again!”, “What regime are you following this time?” “I never diet, it doesn’t help in the least” (from a size 8). “But you’re fine as you are” (from a size 18).

4) Never order French fries in restaurants. Instead, pinch them from your neighbour’s plate. After a while he’ll protest and you’ll be obliged to stop.

5) If you suffer apnoea after running five metres, and just hearing the word “sport” gives you

aches and pains, try to walk for a few minutes a day. Plain old shank’s pony is better

than any sport.

6) Don’t forget to smile. As the proverb I’ve just made up goes: a joyful woman at ease with her spare tyre is more attractive than a depressed bag of bones.

ANNE

ROUMANOFF

is a well-known French humorist. She lives in Paris.

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SOME POSITIVE STORIES THAT CAME OUR WAY

Good NewsBY TIM HULSE


gees to the city, and projects such as Naprushkina’s are doing just that. “There should be an initiative like this in every neighbourhood,” she says. “There has to be an interest in getting to know people who are arriving. If not, you’re going to create a parallel society.”

France acts on food wasteENVIRONMENT Some seven million of the estimated 89 million tonnes of food thrown away each year in the EU is binned in France. But now pioneering legislation means France “will become the leading country in Europe to combat its waste” as per National Assembly MP Guillaume Garot. Rather than simply discard unsold food, supermarkets must now donate items to charity—or recycle them as animal feed or compost.

Another of the new French mea-sures stipulates that “doggy bags”

Berliners help refugeesSOCIETY “When you’re new here, it’s very difficult to begin without contacts,” says Belarus-born artist and activist Marina Naprushkina. She is talking about the plight of ref-ugees and asylum seekers in Berlin, where she now lives. Two years ago, she confronted the issue after a shelter opened near her home. “There weren’t any activities for the children,” she says.

She began by giving weekly art classes. From such small beginnings, Naprushkina’s initiative has grown into the Neue Nachbarschaft (New Neighbourhood) community centre, where more than 400 refugees and asylum seekers can practise their German, share food and drink and get to know each other.

Mayor Michael Müller has called on Berliners to help the government welcome the more than 70,000 refu-

“However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.”

Stephen Hawking , th e ore tical physicist and c o sm olo g ist


SOURCES: Refugees: The Christian Science Monitor, 17 December 2015. Food: The Telegraph, 27 December 2015, 3 January 2016. Solar power: The Times of India, 5 March 2016; The Indian Express, 23 February 2016. Heroes: thebetterindia.com

GREEN HEROESIn Mumbai, where a patch of

green is as difficult to spot as a patch of the open sky, the

Vrindavan Garden in the MIDC colony in suburban Andheri,

comes as a verdant relief. “The municipality is supposed

to maintain the garden, but nothing was happening,” says P. Sriganesh, a resident. The

people of the locality approached the authorities and proposed maintaining the plot.

Once the go-ahead came in 2006, the one-acre plus land

was nurtured with the botanical and landscaping knowledge of the initiators. Today, it boasts

undulating lawns and a variety of trees, complete with vermi-

compost pits, a football ground and a play area.

Even though the residents had to hand back the garden to the

authorities recently, they continue to be involved in its

maintenance.

must now be made available in res-taurants that serve more than 180 meals a day. The better-designed, chic bags may encourage a culture of taking leftovers home.

Bengaluru taps solar power ENERGY The humble auto-rickshaw has played its part well in India’s transition towards cleaner energy. First came the shift from diesel and petrol-consuming versions to the ubiquitous yellow and green ones, which run on CNG. And now the little three-wheeler could go solar if a pilot project launched in Bengaluru last month proves feasible. The zero emission ‘ElecRic’—a regular auto converted to a solar-powered one—can run for 110 km on a full battery charge of five hours. RJMS EV, a Bengaluru-based private manufacturer of electric vehicles and components, owns the patent for ElecRic and has priced it at `2 lakh.

Umesh Chandra, one of the com-pany’s directors, has suggested that the government provide charging points near metro stations and pub-lic offices to facilitate accessibility as well as last-mile connectivity.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan parlia-ment recently became the first in the world to completely run on solar power. The parliament’s solar panels will even generate some surplus power, which will be directed to the national grid. IM

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NEWS FROM THE

World of MedicineBY KELSEY KLOSS


Early Signs of Heart TroubleThere may be telltale symptoms the month before a sudden cardiac arrest. In a new Annals of Internal Medicine study, researchers tracked 840 patients who experienced cardiac arrest (an electrical malfunction of the heart). Upto 50 per cent of men and 53 per cent of women experi-enced warning signs, such as chest pain and shortness of breath, in the weeks before. More than nine in ten patients reported symptoms resur-facing 24 hours before the cardiac arrest—but only 19 per cent called a medical emergency number.

Green Light to Shower After Surgery Doctors typically advise against getting surgical wounds wet to prevent infection until stitches are removed, which can take days or weeks. In a new study, researchers recruited 444 patients with low-risk surgical wounds. Half showered 48 hours after surgery, and the other half waited two weeks. There was no difference in infection risk, but patients who were able to shower were happier with their care. Early water exposure may be safe for most patients, but always check with your doctor.

Sugar-Free Drinks May Hurt TeethSwapping sweet drinks for the sugar-free kind can still damage your

pearly whites. Australian researchers tested 23 soft

drinks and sports drinks on healthy, extracted human

molars. All beverages caused erosion of dental enamel

(most beverages eroded it 30 to 50 per cent). Any drink with a low

pH (meaning it is acidic) can cause harm, even if it has no sugar. Check T

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most common in adult children who claimed to be closer to their mothers than their siblings were. Sibling rivalry may play a role (a mother’s attention may not nullify negative attention from jealous siblings), or favourites may be likelier to care for an ageing mother, which can take an emotional toll.

Working Out May Cause Alcohol CravingsPennsylvania State University researchers recruited 150 adults to complete daily diaries on physical activity and alcohol consumption. Regardless of age and gender, active folks consistently drank more than their couch potato peers. People who exercise may look to further a post- workout high or reward themselves for exercising with alcohol.

Mental Trick to Stop Craving Junk FoodNegative messages about unhealthy food may make you crave it more. In an Arizona State University study, researchers gave dieters either positive or negative messages about sugary snacks. Participants then watched a video while eating cookies. Those who received the negative message ate 39 per cent more cookies than the positive-message group. If you’re trying to diet, think about the pros of healthy food rather than the cons of junk food.

for acidic additives, especially citric and phosphoric acid.

What Happy People Value Most Cherishing time is the secret to contentment, according to a new Social Psychological and Personality Science report. Researchers analyzed nearly 4,700 participants who were given real-life examples, such as whether they’d prefer an expensive apartment with a short commute or a less pricey apartment with a long commute. More than half prioritized time, linked to greater happiness, over money.

Antibiotic Resistance: a Growing Threat The effects of medicine-resistant infections may soon pose a larger risk than cancer. Annual deaths caused by drug resistance are estimated to increase from 7,00,000 in 2015 to about ten million in 2050, according to Review on Antimicrobial Resistance. The world’s population is taking more antibiotics, rendering the drugs less effective, and drug companies are producing fewer new antibiotics.

Downside of BeingMom’s FavouriteWere you the golden child? It may not make you happy. Purdue University and Iowa State University researchers found that depressive symptoms were


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Humour in UniformHumour in Uniform


“You can’t fool me by wearing our uniform; I can see you’re on the other side.”

THE MILITARY has a long, proud tra-dition of pranking recruits. Here are some favourites from rallypoint.com: n Instructed a soldier in the mess hall to look for left-handed spatulas. n Sent a recruit to medical-supplies office in search of fallopian tubes. n Had a new guy conduct a “boom test” on a howitzer by yelling “Boom!” down the tube in order to ‘calibrate’ it.n Ordered a soldier to bring back a large can of dehydrated water (in

fact, the sergeant just wanted an empty water can).

WE WERE INSPECTING several lots of grenades. While everyone was concentrating on the task at hand, I held up a spare pin and asked, “Has anyone seen my grenade?”

SMSGT. DAN POWELL, from rallypoint.com

Points to Ponder


THE OPPOSITE of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.

ELIE WIESEL, h u m a n i t a r i a n , in U.S. News & World Report

[MY MOTHER] would say to me, “It’s so easy to say yes, but never be afraid to say no.” If you work hard enough and you’re good at what you do, an opportunity is never the last chance. It’s just a sign you’re on the right path. Don’t rush into anything.

LITTLE SIMZ,

ra p p e r, in The Red Bulletin

HOW UNFORTUNATE would be a nation which has only obedient, conformist minds as its youth—youth who fight only for placements with fat pay packets; who are ready to turn into cogs and wheels of the machinery, which turns profit for a few and crushes the rest of humanity.

APOORVANAND, p r o f e s s o r o f Hi n d i at t h e

Un i v e r s i t y o f D e l h i , in The Indian Express

YOU KNOW WHEN you actually get good at sports? When you’re having fun and being creative. When you’re being a kid. When you don’t even realize you’re getting better, that’s when you’re getting better. If you’re not engaged in what you’re doing,

WITTY WISDOM

The best time to re-evaluate your life is when the online video you’re watching is buffering. @APARNAPKIN (APARNA NANCHERLA), comedian

Never trust a man wearing more than 0 necklaces. @AUDIPENNY (AUDREY FARNSWORTH), c o m e d i a n

I read the internet so much, I feel like I’m like on page a million of the worst book ever. AZIZ ANSARI, comedian, in a stand-up routine


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...The only magic that happens in this world happens on the stage. Films take you captive, they feed you everything on a plate, the legerdemain they create transports you into a state where you may as well be dreaming, but theatre takes you into a world where your imagination is stimulated, your judgement is unimpaired, and thus your enjoyment heightened. NASEERUDDIN SHAH, actor,

in his autobiography And Then One Day

it’s as helpful as taking the trash out. It’s just another chore.

PATRICK O’SULLIVAN, r e t i r e d N H L p l a y e r,

in The Players’ Tribune

REREADING the same book produces new insights because the reader is a different person. Indeed, a good book is very much like a mirror: The glass is the same year after year, but the reflection in it changes over time.

CHRISTOPHER B. NELSON, p r e s i d e n t o f S t . Jo h n’s C o l l e g e ,

in The Wall Street Journal

IF YOU LOOK at recent history, the real crunch happens in societies which have fared well for a bit, and

then plateaued out. If that society has a lot of young people and if you don’t have institutional capacity or will to deal with their demands, you are in for social upheaval.

SUNIL KHILNANI, au t h o r o f t h e b o o k Th e Id e a o f In d i a ,

in an interview to the BBC

TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of competition and cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.

HOWARD ZINN, h i s t o r i a n , in his book

A Power Governments Cannot Suppress


I break into a laugh when…

..I make a move to

push a glass sliding door.

ATIYA JIVRAJ, Hyderab ad

FINISH THIS SENTENCE

...I have my

specs on and go

searching for them!

PARIMITA LODHA, Ahmedab ad

...I am tickled. ASWANT KAUR ASHI Tarn Taran, Punjab

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...our politicians

promise voters the moon at election

rallies. NEELAM NAYYAR PARIHAR,

Ludhiana

...I watch

Laurel and Hardy clips.

JAMMI VENKATA RAMANA, Chennai

..I see people doing

laughter yoga

in the park. SURESH KUMAR,

Madurai

of LIVINGART

The Choice Is Yours BY CHANTAL TRANCHEMONTAGNE

LIFE LESSON

Big decisions don’t have to be overwhelming; it’s all in how you frame the answers



T H E C H O I C E I S YO U R S

WHEN CONFRONTED with a difficult decision, we can be like deer caught in the headlights: dazed and unable to choose a direction. Should you start your own company or stay in your current job? Pick investment A over investment B? Opt for this course of medical treatment or that one? The answer isn’t always obvious, and the fear of making a dis astrous move can send anxiety levels skyrocketing or allow paralysis to set in.

Despite these pitfalls, actual empowerment is possible—it’s a matter of shifting our mindset. Here are some steps to feeling liberated in the quest to find answers.

Step 1: Take It Easy“Most of the paralysis in decision-making comes from assuming the world has the right answer and we’re just too stupid to figure it out,” says Ruth Chang, a philosopher at Rutgers University in New Jersey, US.

Not so, she insists. Chang studies the process of making hard choices and has outlined a new framework for those tough calls. According to her thinking, in truly complex situations, there is no right answer and no one option better than another. “So when we face hard choices,” she says, “we shouldn’t tear our hair out trying to figure out which alternative is better.”

If you need further incentive to ease up on yourself, consider a 2012

study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The authors found that anxiety clouds your judgment and makes you more likely to seek outside counsel and act on bad advice.

Step 2: Do the Grunt WorkWhile less-demanding decision-making is your goal, you still have some heavy lifting to do. There has been a surge of insight into the field of emotional/instinctual/intuitive decision-making, yet you should still start at the beginning: with the facts. Chang argues that studying the alternatives, making pros and cons lists and working out the hypotheticals is important and unavoidable. However, if you’ve studied all the options and a clear decision doesn’t rise to the top, don’t get stuck. Move on to the next step.

Step 3: Dig DeepMontreal-based certified life coach Erica Diamond knows that finding the answers to life’s truly tough ques-tions requires a one-two punch.

“We often think that decision-making is all logic,” she says. “But the best decisions are made with a combination of intellect and instinct. Good strategists collect information based on these two things until they feel they can make a good decision.”

In research released in 2014 by Time Inc.’s Fortune Knowledge Group and global advertising firm


Gyro, 62 per cent of executives admitted to relying on gut feeling and other unquantifiable factors, while upto 65 per cent said that subjective elements influenced their choices.

“Any big decisions can’t be made in a vacuum of analytics,” said Chris-toph Becker, Gyro’s CEO, in an inter-view after the study was released. “It’s underscored by a rational structure, but emotion has to lead.”

Step 4: Distinguish YourselfIn going through the exercise of listing the facts, pondering the possibilities and letting sentiments play a part in decision-making, remember that hard choices are an opportun ity. “When we pick between options that are on par, we can do something remarkable: we can put our very selves behind an option. And what we put our agency behind really does define what matters to us and who we are,” says Chang. “You

might say that we become the auth-ors of our own lives.”

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, would agree. In a commencement speech he gave to Princeton’s graduating class of 2010, he echoed Chang’s philosophy, outlining why we should view decision-making as empowering. “When you are 80 years old and, in a quiet moment of reflection, narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.”

THE GADGET

Do you want to try a totally 21st-century method of decision-making? Turn to somethingpop.com for answers about where to work, live and invest. Created by financial-tech whiz kid Ben Gimpert, the web tool allows you to plug in and assign a weighted percentage to your priorities, like vacation time, pay and office environment. A quick analysis of the numbers and—bam—the choice is made.

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Struggling to be heard? It may not be their hearing—but your volume

WHEN I ENTER a family reunion, relatives crank up their hearing aids. At parties, I’m often asked to repeat myself to the point of just smiling and giving up. This scares me because my mother’s puny voice eventually became so small that phone calls were torturous, then impossible.

While hearing and vision issues are prominent in many discussions of ageing, there’s often silence on how our voices age. “You may begin to see this change when you enter your 50s,” says Dr K.K. Handa, director and head of department of ENT and head-neck surgery at Medanta-The Medicity, Gurgaon. In fact, several people have difficulty speaking that is serious enough to be diagnosed as a voice disorder, with their pitches and volume dropping. Problems can start with retirement, at menopause, or even at a younger age in those

who’ve used certain medications over a prolonged period (blood thinners, for instance) or have a

medical condition (like thyroid). Professionals who overuse

their vocal systems because their jobs require constant chatter, or speaking in a noisy setting, are prone too. Fortunately, there are ways—from easy maintenance tips to surgical fixes—that can help you avoid ‘sounding old’ or losing the ability to make yourself heard.

Too Hoarse to Talk

Relentless, high-volume talking is a part

of the job for call-centre employees, lawyers and teachers. According to a French study published in BioMed Central, one in two female teachers reported voice disorders, compared to one in four males. Self-described ‘talker’ Kaysi Hamilton, 39, a maths

BY SUSAN INCE

First Aid for Your Voice


teacher, rarely gets a break from speaking throughout the school day. When Hamilton, from Texas, became hoarse in April one year, she thought it was just allergies. As Hamilton powered through her workdays, she couldn’t raise her pitch, at times her voice would drop out entirely, and her neck muscles were so tense that swallowing became difficult; she felt as if she were choking. She counted the days until summer break, but things didn’t improve.

“If your voice doesn’t recover over a week, or even a season like summer, there’s likely a permanent voice problem that needs fixing, such as nerve damage or a growth on the vocal folds,” says Ingo Titze, PhD, director of the National Center for Voice and Speech in Utah, US.

A few months later, in July, Hamilton consulted ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialists. They saw a pea-size polyp (a swelling in the vocal cord’s mucous membrane) dangling like a water balloon from one of her vocal cords. Polyps can occur with long-term exposure to irritants such as cigarette smoke and chemical fumes, as well as because of chronic allergies and excessive voice use. Hamilton’s doctor, Ted Mau, MD, director of the voice centre at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, recom-mends that patients start with voice therapy to learn better habits, even if surgery to remove the polyp will almost certainly be needed.

VOICE-CHANGING MEDICAL CONDITIONS

Temporary hoarseness is normal when you get a cold (infection causes your vocal cords to swell, interfering with their normal vibration). Allergy and sinus problems can create a postnasal drip that irritates vocal cords. Many allergy pills also dry out vocal cords, so ask about using alternative meds, sinus washes, and medications to thin mucus (such as those used with plenty of water). Don’t clear your throat to get rid of phlegm (this bangs the vocal cords together and is a harmful habit). Another common vocal cord irritant is gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) that reaches the throat. GERD medication or lifestyle changes (such as avoiding foods that cause heartburn) may be all it takes to feel better. In rare cases, voice changes can be the first sign of a vocal cord cancer or a symptom of a neurological problem such as Parkinson’s disease. Don’t ignore a voice change that lasts more than three weeks. While an exam will check for these conditions, it’s likely that changes in your once-youthful voice will turn out to be owing—at least in part—to your speaking habits or ageing.


vocal apparatus was videotaped through a scope while he performed various vocal exercises.

The diagnosis: vocal fold atrophy, or presbyphonia. Vocal folds can weaken with age, especially after menopause in women or when the vocal muscles aren’t used enough; Lyon, for example, had begun talking far less since his retirement several years earlier. During speech, vocal folds vibrate, rapidly touching and separating as air pushes through. As muscles lose volume, strength and coordination, it takes more effort for the folds to close—and sometimes, as atrophy gets worse, they can’t. The result is a softer, less resonant voice that requires far more effort to make audible. “Presbyphonia is a double whammy because it occurs at the same time that friends may have age-related hearing changes,” says Edie Hapner, director of speech language pathology at the Emory Voice Center.

With Hapner, Lyon did a series of exercises called PhoRTE (pronounced “forte,” like music instruction in Italian to play loudly or strongly). Modelled after strength training with older adults in sports medicine and physical therapy, the exercises start at about 50 per cent of maximum effort, gradually building up in intensity. At home, Lyon practised in two 15-minute sessions a day, energeti-cally sustaining a vowel sound, gliding up and down his pitch range, calling out simple sentences in a loud voice,

Hamilton’s therapy focused on massaging and relaxing her tense throat and neck muscles. She learnt techniques to make more use of natural cavities in the head to create volume without overusing the throat. One common exercise: blowing raspberries (as babies do, trilling your lips to a brruh sound). Another involves singing through a straw (through a range of pitches or a favourite tune).

After surgery to remove her polyp, and a tricky seven days of absolutely no talking, Hamilton responded to additional vocal exercises. Within weeks, her vocal cords were working properly. She’s more careful now, drinking plenty of water and taking voice breaks during the day.

Too Quiet to Be HeardBruce Lyon, 74, thought his wife, Kathie, should have her hearing checked. He suspected she wasn’t paying attention when she’d ask “What did you say?” multiple times every day. But after his adult chil-dren repeatedly complained and even his grandson pointed out his very soft voice, Lyon acknowledged that the problem was his.

“It was a struggle to project enough to be heard, especially at restaurants or places with background noise,” says Lyon, a retired university administrator in Georgia, US. His ENT doctor referred him to the Emory Voice Center, where Lyon’s

F I R S T A I D F O R YO U R V O I C E


and using a respiratory resistance device to strengthen his breath.

It worked. “The change was gradual, but within a couple of months, we weren’t asking him to repeat himself,” says Kathie. Like any type of muscle conditioning, how-ever, the maximum improvement lasts only with continued practice.

Lyon’s voice problems were considered mild to moderate, but in some people, bowing of the vocal folds is so extreme that even with vocal therapy they won’t touch. “We can inject a filler to augment the vocal cords. Some fillers use the

same material used to fill facial wrinkles,” says Elizabeth Guardiani, MD, an assistant professor of otorhinolaryngology and head and neck surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, US.

As for me, a chat with a voice spe-cialist indicated nothing particularly abnormal. I am determined to drink more water and use my voice more—enunciating with French-language CDs or singing in the car. If that doesn’t improve things, I’ll consult a pro. Lyon says he wishes he’d gone for help three years earlier.

—WITH INPUTS BY SUNALINI MATHEW

DOS AND DON’TS FOR A HEALTHIER VOICE

DO: Drink plenty of water, especially if you take medication. Drugs dry out the moist mucous layer that protects your vocal cords. Avoid large amounts of coffee, caffeinated drinks, as well as alcohol, which can dehydrate you.

DON’T: Yell. Screaming can lead to bumps or calluses on the vocal folds, so move closer or find another way to get

someone’s attention. Some teachers use amplification headsets, like those worn by fitness instructors.

DO: Sing. Trained singers generally sound much younger, longer than people who don’t sing. If singing isn’t your thing, read aloud every day to keep your vocal muscles working.

DON’T: Go low. Vocal fry—the raspy, Kim

Kardashian–like speech pattern increasingly popular among teens (both boys and girls)— may set them up for voice problems later because the vocal muscles don’t get exercised at the full range of pitch.

DO: Find your natural speaking resonance. Say “mmm-hmm.” That’s a good indica-tor of where your most comfortable resonance will be.



MONEY

BY GAURAV MASHRUWALA

IT’S THE RIGHT TIME for a new year resolution or two, from a financial planning point of view. Look at them as a promise to yourself, a promise that needs to be honoured. Most resolutions are made in euphoria—when you get an increment, or after reading a self-help book. The charm dies down, and so does the enthusiasm. Here are some tips that will help you stay the course all year through.

Take baby steps. The other day a colleague walked up to me and said, “I have decided to wake up at 6:30 a.m., starting tomorrow.” I asked when she usually woke up. “At 8:30,” came the reply. Two hours is a tall order. After a few days I asked her how she was progressing. Her disheartened smile said it all. I suggested that she set her alarm for 5 minutes before her regular time. “That’s too simple,” she

said. If she had considered pushing the clock by 5 minutes every 10 days, she’d reach her 6:30 a.m. goal in eight months—that’s a lifelong benefit. Get the drift? Now simply replace time with savings.

Tell apart a resolution and a habit. We make resolutions with a conscious mind, habits are cultivated so that eventually they are dealt with by our subconscious mind; and they stick. So don’t be in a rush to invest your money. Go with a systematic investment plan (SIP) of a mutual fund or start a recurring deposit (RD). A client did just this: he started with `5,000 per month, and because he did not feel the pinch, he wished to increase it. We suggested he up the amount by 10 per cent every year. If you want to inculcate this habit in your child too, ask him to put `100 in a post-office or bank RD. As human

Good Money Habits

Useful tips to make your plans in the new financial year sustainable


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beings, we want to progress. Once a habit is formed, we want to move ahead and will most probably increase the investment amount without any prodding.

Get your family’s buy-in. It’s a good idea to involve your family in your financial plan. If your daughter knows that she can only eat out one weekend a month because you’re putting money away for a European trip in 2017, she will be much more cooperative and feel she is a part of the decision. Plus, you’re inculcating a habit that will stand her in good stead in the years to come.

Give your goals a meaning. Link your investment to a particular financial goal; your commitment to it will be stronger. Instead of opening an RD for a random period, think of

a goal before you make the decision. A client had an SIP in equity funds, but she seemed directionless about the investment—it was just there. Once we suggested that she link it to her daughter’s education fund, she immediately wished to increase the amount she was investing. When you name your investment, the goal takes on a greater meaning.

Plan in advance. Earmark any incoming funds for a purpose. For instance, if you know you will get a Diwali bonus of `1 lakh, call it the “Renovation Bonus” if you’d like to do up your house, for instance. If you know this well in advance, you are less likely to buy an expensive mobile phone on an impulse.

Gaurav Mashruwala is a Mumbai-based financial planner, and the author of Yogic Wealth: The Wealth that Gives Bliss!


TRAVEL

Ananthagiri Hills, TelanganaTake a break from the clutter and crowd of Hyderabad and head to the salubrious climes of Ananthagiri. It lies cocooned in the Eastern Ghats. Ananthagiri is made for a laidback break as you kick off your shoes, lie in your hammock and watch the River Musi, a tributary of the Krishna, flow through the undulating landscape. When you want to get active, the tropical semi-evergreen forests covering the hills are teeming with flora and fauna (including pythons and monitor lizards). The Anantha Padmanabha Swamy Temple, with Lord Vishnu as its main deity, is located within the forest and is a good excursion. Think of it as a feast for the eyes and balm for the soul.Get there: Roughly 90 km from Hyderabad

Stay: The GrassWalk Jungle Camp is a good stay option; thegrasswalk.com

Chikkamagaluru, KarnatakaSpend a quiet, relaxed time in Chikkamagaluru, in the Baba Budan Hills in the Western Ghats, reacquainting yourself with nature and sipping on some of India’s finest coffees. One of the largest producers of coffee in the country, this is where you can stay within a plantation and start your day with a brew grown right where you are. Take plantation tours, go berry-picking, attend coffee-making sessions or simply enjoy the abundant greenery and stunning views. If you love flowers, you can spend time spotting the over 300 varieties that grow around the hills here, or visit the Nehru Rose Garden, where the amphitheatre often hosts cultural events.

BY KALYANI PRASHER

In the Southern Hills

Look out for these lesser-known destinations this summer


Get there: Roughly 250 km from Bengaluru Stay: The Serai Resort, a luxury prop-erty; theserai.in/resorts-chikmagalur; Silent Valley Resort, an eco-hotel; greenplanetresorts.com

Athirapally, KeralaNestling in the verdant Sholayar range, this nook of Kerala remains largely crowd-free. The biggest attrac-tion here is the magnificent Athira-pally Waterfall, a wide cascade, almost as wide as an ocean. The waterfall is at its mightiest after the monsoon, which is also the best time to visit. If you like nature, this is an ideal base for you to plan little treks into the jungle, listen to the wind rus-tle through the trees and the waterfall thundering down in the distance—it will be an experience you’ll cherish.

Get there: Roughly 80 km from KochiStay: Rainforest, a lovely boutique hotel; rainforest.in; Kandamkulathy Ayursoukhyam Ayurvedic Resort, if you want to get an ayurvedic treatment along with your holiday; ayursoukhyam.com

Valparai, Tamil NaduThe most memorable thing about your Valparai holiday will be the drive up to it: 40 hairpin bends up the Anamalai Hills, in the Western Ghats, afford fabulous views of the dams below. (All the bends are numbered to aid anyone who cannot be bothered to keep count!) Once you’re there, misty mountain highs and tea gardens unroll in front of your eyes, an unbelievably beautiful landscape filled with acres of manicured greens. Stay at a tea estate bungalow, enjoy IN

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fine tea and let your mind, body and soul relax. It’s elephant country, so you’re sure to catch more than a glimpse of them.Get there: Roughly 100 km from Coimbatore Stay: A vintage bungalow with limited rooms within the tea estate; sinnadorai.com. Or choose a homestay to suit your budget at valparaitourism.com/homes.php

Yercaud, Tamil NaduA hill station near Salem that offers panoramic views of the Servarayan Hills and the Eastern Ghats. The most striking feature, however, is the lake in the middle of the woods, a great excursion with a packed picnic. In fact, it seems Yercaud means the ‘lake forest’ (yeri is lake and kaadu is forest, in Tamil), and this beautiful geographic feature gives the place its very name. Yercaud is well known for its citrus fruits, particularly oranges, and you can walk among dense and cool orange groves here. They say the temperature never goes beyond 30 degrees here—so get there before global warming does.

MUST-TRY LOCAL FOOD & DRINK

FILTER COFFEE: Not just at your hotel but all along the highways, especially in Tamil Nadu, you will find potti kadais (small shops) with big signs advertising filter coffee. We suggest you stop at the Only Coffee outlets on the GST Road (NH 45), and try the strong and sweet ‘metre coffee’, that’s poured out from one receptacle to the other, with a flourish. SET DOSAS: Spongy and fluffy, enjoy a ‘set’ or stack of these hot off the tawa on any roadside eatery in Tamil Nadu or Kerala.

Get there: 200 km from Coimbatore, or 170 km from TiruchirapalliStay: The Regent Hill Side Resort, a green stay option; enjoyyercaud.com or GRT Nature Trails, a luxury stay; grthotels.com/yercaud

RIDDLE ME THIS … QUESTION: The man who made it doesn’t want it. The man who bought

it doesn’t need it. The man who needs it doesn’t know it. What is it?

ANSWER: A coffin.

I N T H E S O U T H E R N H I L L S

Shocking NotesFROM ALL OVER

HOBBYISTS


AUTOGRAPHSBig deal—a lot of people collect auto-

graphs. What sets Paul Schmelzer’s collection apart is that he asks celebrities to sign his

name. Yes, he goes up to the rich and famous

and says, “May I have my autograph?” Seventy celebrities have signed Paul Schmelzer, including

Yoko Ono and the voice of Homer Simpson, actor Dan Castella-neta. Robert Redford and James Brown got confused and signed their own names. Source: signifier-signed.blogspot.com

QUOTESGreg Packer’s goal in life is to be the most quoted person on earth. So far, the 51-year-old retired highway maintenance worker has been quoted by media outlets nearly a thousand times. Somehow he has finagled his way in front of a camera to speak on topics such as the Iraq War and the first iPhone, neither of which he knew much about. He has been quoted so often that the Associ-ated Press warned its reporters about using him in any more articles.

Source: The New Yorker

TRAFFIC CONESDavid Morgan’s collection is the envy of all Department of Transportation group-ies. Since 1986, the 72-year-old Brit has gath-ered 500 traffic cones, including one he says is from Malaysia. “Some people probably think it’s dull,” he told the Daily Mirror. “If I go to parties and tell people I’m a cone collector, they quickly move on.” Source: mirror.co.uk

FREE-TRIAL ITEMSEver wondered if those dubious-looking tummy trimmers, hair grow-ers and fat-melting belts staring at you from newspaper classifieds, tele-shopping TV channels and pop-up windows, have any takers? Looks like Sandeep Pillai can’t get enough of them—not for their quality, but for their free trial-and-return policy. Since the 1980s, when he was a student in New Delhi, Pillai has been ordering these items, using and returning them just in time. The free trial is what matters; what he doesn’t/can’t use gets passed on to friends. Source: The TribuneIL

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BEAUTY

BY DR REKHA SHETH

A LADY ONCE WALKED into my clinic, complaining that she felt older than her 42 years. Her face was dull, her skin mildly patchy, and she was a bit overweight. A couple of questions later, I realized what she needed first was an anti-ageing lifestyle: eating right, exercising every day and staying stress-free and happy. Once we took care of the basics, we were able to help her with targeted treatments. Beauty treatments and products have made great strides over the years, but there’s only so much they can do.

As a dermatologist, I see signs of ageing in women in their 20s and 30s. It is not just hormones that play havoc with the skin, a combination of other factors, both internal and external (pollution, for instance), can damage it. Try this basic, easy-

to-follow skincare regime for a healthy complexion.

Follow the CTM (cleaning, toning moisturizing) regime religiously. Cleansing, sun-protection and use of a moisturizer with anti-ageing ingredients, are the most important steps. Your skin needs to be cleansed at least twice a day. An alcohol-free toner helps close pores. Use a moisturizer to keep your skin hydrated through the day.

Carry along a sunscreen. Use a broad-spectrum sunscreen (with UVA and UVB blockers) that has a minimum of SPF 30. A sunscreen from a reputed brand may cost between `500 to `2,500. Buy a small pack and carry it with you to reapply it as often as you can.

The No-Fuss Guide to Anti-Ageing

Cut through the promises that lotions and potions offer, to look and feel your age


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Pick moisturizers and day creams with ‘active ingredients’. Look for antioxidants, both vitamins and botanicals, on the label. Amongst the vitamins, A, C, E, niacinamide, co-enzyme Q10 (CoQ10) and idebenone (a synthetic derivative of CoQ10) are the ones to pick. Look for lycopene, green tea, grape seed, pomegranate and soya bean extracts if you prefer botanical products; they help rejuvenate your skin. Choose a hydrating moisturizer that is appropriate for your skin type, whether dry, combination or oily.

Say yes to serums and night creams. If you are in your 20s or 30s look for antioxidants; if you are in your late 30s and 40s look for retinol, peptides, plus vitamin C. As you reach your 50s, use a concentrated serum/night cream which is hydrating. Remember, the older you are, the drier your skin gets. Don’t fear technology. Your skin doc may recommend certain treatments. There are new safe, no-risk procedures available, but know that they must be performed by a dermatologist, not a helper at a beauty parlour. These include specialized facials, LED photomodulation, IPL (Intense Pulsed Light), skin polishes, skin peels, neuromodulators, fillers, lasers and a wide range of skin-tightening methods. Combined with a healthy lifestyle, they will help your skin stay youthful and glowing.

Dr Rekha Sheth is a cosmetic dermatologist in Mumbai and is founder-president, Cosmetology Society of India.

ADAPTED FROM PREVENTION INDIA. © 2015 LIVING MEDIA INDIA LIMITED.

THE AGE-OLD PROBLEM When I turned two, I was really anxious

because I’d doubled my age in a year. I thought, If this keeps up, by

the time I’m six, I’ll be 90. STEVEN WRIGHT


FAMILY

The Morning Report

WHEN MY mother passed away a few years ago, my octogenarian father was left alone in the large house they had shared for 50 years. Without her to watch out for him, he worried about who would find him and help if “something happened.”

My sister and I live in other states, so we hit on the idea that Dad could send us an email every morning when he awoke. Thus was born the Morning Report.

He’s usually up by the crack of dawn, and his half a dozen or so sentences are waiting in my inbox

when I wake up, despite the two-hour time difference. If there’s no email, I call him, or my sister does, to make sure everything is fine. (Sometimes he’s having computer problems or decided to sleep in.) The reports have become more than a daily check, though: They’re a diary of sorts, a planning tool, a catalyst for more extended conversations, and a source of insight into his life.

Through them, Dad tells us about his daily routines. He might be head-ing to the grocery store for bananas,

BY DONALD E. HUNTON FROM THE BOSTON GLOBE

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going to his cardiac-rehab exercise class, or having lunch with friends. I find the repetitive cycle of his activities—current-events discussion group on Tuesday nights, Rotary Club on Wednesday afternoons, and coffee with friends after church on Sunday morning—reassuring.

Sometimes he slips in cryptic teasers. For example, recently he told us, “I’ve climbed halfway up Mount Washington!” Given his age and distance from New Hampshire, such a hike was unlikely. I was befuddled for a day or two until he reminded me he was working on a hooked rug with a scene of the mountain.

Each email closes with “All my love, Dad.” When my mother was alive, that sentiment was normally reserved for her. Now that she is gone, he shares those feelings and his experiences with us. For me, what started as a simple security measure has spawned a deeper closeness.

I’m grateful my father is still able to manage his computer and the internet. I know the day will come when he’ll no longer be able to write the reports, and we’ll have to find other ways to keep tabs on one another. But until then, they are our way of knowing that another normal day has begun.

COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR, FROM THE BOSTON GLOBE (MAY 24, 2015), COPYRIGHT © 2015 BY DONALD E. HUNTON.

IDK*, FBI

The FBI released an 83-page glossary of Twitter shorthand that agents might encounter. If these entries are any indication, someone at the Bureau had way too much time on his hands.

■■ BOGSAT (“bunch of guys sitting around talking”)

■■ IITYWTMWYBMAD (“if I tell you what this means, will you buy me a drink?”)

■■ SHCOON (“shoot hot coffee out of nose”)

■■ WYLABOCTGWTR (“would you like a bowl of cream to go with that remark?”)

■■ BTDTGTTSAWIO (“been there, done that, got the T-shirt, and wore it out”)

muckrock.com

*I don’t know


FITNESS

2 TOUCH YOUR TOES

Sit with your spine straight, then lean forwards and try to touch your toes. Not even close? You might be at risk for cardio-vascular problems. By using this test, University of North Texas researchers found that inflexible folks had less-elastic arteries than those who were more lithe. Stiff arteries mean the heart has to work harder, raising the risk of heart attack or stroke. IL

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These simple moves can reveal hidden problems to ask your doc about

A Lifesaving At-Home Check-Up

1 BALANCE ON ONE LEG

Hold for up to 60 sec-onds. If you wobble early, you may be at higher risk for brain decline. In a Japanese study, 30 per cent of older adults who could balance for only 20 seconds or less, had microbleeds in the brain, an early indication of risk for stroke or dementia. These mi-crobleeds can affect balance, memory and decision-making.

3 SITTING TO STANDING

Time how long it takes to lift and lower yourself from a chair 10 times as fast as you can. Middle-aged adults who did 10 reps in 21 seconds or fewer, were less likely to die over the next 13 years than those who took longer. The test requires muscle strength, balance and cardiorespiratory fitness; being slow may indicate an underlying disease before symptoms arise.

BY JESSICA CASSITY


IF YOU THINK the scanning you and your belongings go through is tough, relax. At least the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), that guards the Delhi Airport, isn’t investigating your love lives. The force has now been put in charge of keeping a watch on relationships among the airport staff after several spouses complained about the staff ’s affairs with colleagues. This has resulted in lots of CCTV surveillance, a broken relationship and transfers. And we complain about taking off our shoes.

S u b m i t t e d b y PRIYA MEHTA, Ne w D e l h i ; Source: hindustantimes.com

A LADDU, CREATED during the last Ganesh festival in Tapeswaram, Andhra Pradesh, has set a Guinness world record for the world’s largest sweetmeat. It weighs well over 8,000 kilos so we can only hope the contest wasn’t close. The laddu has set this Guinness record five years running. The sweet shop’s next goal: to create a 500-kg kova (sweet) for Maharashtra’s Sai Baba temple. S u b m i t t e d b y MEETA AGARWAL, Ko l k at a ;

Source: ndtv.com

IT HAPPENS

No no, there’s an inter-college

debate happening

today.

Only in India

Samit Basu &

Raju Epuri

Reader’s Digest will pay for contributions to this column. Post your suggestions with the source to the editorial address, or email: [email protected]

Why is the Republic Day

parade happening

now?


COVER STORY


AN UNASSUMING YOUNG MAN stands in front of some elephants at the San Diego zoo. “Um, the whole thing about these guys is they have really, really, re-ally long trunks,” he rambles self-consciously into the camera. “And that’s pretty much all there is to say.”It’s hard to believe that when this banal clip was up-loaded to a new website called YouTube on 23 April 2005, it would launch a world-changing phenomenon.The young man was YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, a native of East Germany, who, along with

BY SIMON HEMELRYK WITH ARUSHI SHARMA

Whether it’s music videos, lectures, silly stunts, or just funny cats, this online phenomenon is

increasingly ruling our lives

HOWYOUTUBECHANGED

THEWORLD

ILLUSTRATION BY SAMEER KULAVOOR


H O W YO U T U B E C H A N G E D T H E W O R L D

co-founders Steve Chen, originally from Taipei, and Chad Hurley from the US, saw a hole in the internet for a service that allowed people to share personal videos easily. It caught on spectacularly and within a year was showing 25 million videos a day. Eleven years on, more than a billion users visit the site every month, watching six billion hours of video, with 100 hours of film uploaded to the site every minute. In India alone, YouTube gets more than 60 million unique users a month and watch time has been growing at 80 per cent, year on year.

The billions of vid-eos now on the site, uploaded by everyone from homemakers to multinational corpora-tions, range from cute cats to speeches from w o r l d l e a d e r s— a n d almost everything in between. And, from its mumbling beginnings, YouTube has fundamentally changed much of how we work, rest and play.

Moreover, with over 400 million in-ternet users in the country [of which over 300 million access it via their mobiles] and six million new mobile internet users being added every month, India is seeing a phenomenal growth in online video consumption. With more than half of YouTube’s

views coming from mobile devices, in 2014 the platform went further and launched ‘YouTube Offline’. This is a feature offered in only 14 other coun-tries, that allows users to watch their favourite videos, even when there is no usable network connection, by downloading it via mobile data or a

Wi-Fi network. By launching an offline experience, You-Tube has managed to move past the challenges of data connection, speed and cost, so consumers can enjoy a smooth, buffer-free version

of the platform.

Show BusinessYouTube has allowed n u m e r o u s a m a t e u r music reviewers, ani-mators, f i lmmakers, teenage lifestyle advis-ers and others to make films that get seen by a wide audience.

“TV and film used to just be pushed out to a

passive audience,” says Don Tapscott, author of books like Digital Economy and Grown Up Digital. “Now everyone can become involved in the creation of culture.”

But YouTube has also created a lucrative alternative entertainment industry. It’s now far more watched than any TV network, and its Part-ners Program gives video creators a share of the four-billion-euro adver-

Eleven years on, more than one billion users visit the site each month, watching six

billion hours of video.



tising revenue earned by the website each year, according to how many views they’ve had. Thousands now make a living through everything from amateur cookery advice to comedy shorts.

For instance, the popular stand-up comedy team AIB, who initially started with podcasts, only gained fame when they launched their You-Tube channel in 2013; last year, they debuted on India’s Richest Celebrities 100 list by Forbes, ahead of celebrities like Rajnikanth, Irrfan Khan and An-urag Kashyap, and even teamed up with Hotstar to host and produce a news satire show “On Air with AIB” on the Star network.

Bollywood has recognized the power of this platform too: big ban-ners have started investing heavily, promoting films. Nearly every up-coming film has a YouTube page for the official trailer, behind-the-scenes footage and interactive videos with the cast and crew. Film director Sujoy Ghosh, known for Kahaani, decided to release his short film Ahalya on YouTube, rather than go the commer-cial route. It went on to become one of the most-watched videos of 2015, with more than 5.5 million views.

Actors like Alia Bhat and Irrfan Khan have released videos on You-Tube, in collaboration with AIB, to reveal a different side to themselves. Similarly, before the release of Barfi, its makers launched an interactive video campaign on YouTube. We see

Ranbir Kapoor introducing the view-ers to his character Barfi and sharing funny anecdotes about him. The in-teractive app [inbuilt in the video] al-lowed viewers to ask Barfi for advice, change his mood, show them how to dance and impress a girl, and so on.

From top to bottom: Psy’s “Gangnam Style”; AIB and Alia Bhat’s “Genius of the Year”; Sofia Ashraf’s “Kodaikanal Won’t.”

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Where once they had to slog around the entertainment circuit or go to drama school, people break into the tradi-tional media and entertain-ment industries through You-Tube too—Canadian pop star Justin Bieber being the most famous example.

It used to be up to TV executives and profes-sional reviewers as to who would get enough exposure to become a star. Says industry ana-lyst John Blossom, au-thor of Content Nation: Surviving and Thriv-ing As Social Media Changes Our Work, Our Lives, and Our Future, “On YouTube, the pub-lic does the work of making things hot.” Korean singer Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” for instance, went to No.1 in 30 countries, thanks largely to becom-ing a YouTube cult—with two billion views and counting—and is now the most-watched video on YouTube.

PoliticsYouTube has provided a great plat-form for the ‘common man’ to expose government wrongdoing and mobi-lize political change—particularly in countries where free speech is limited.Syrian rebels have used it to spread awareness of their uprising against President Assad. Russian punk band

Pussy Riot screened their Fe b r u a r y 2 0 1 2 p r o t e s t against President Putin in a Moscow church through YouTube. And footage of the first January 2011 demon-strations in Tahrir Square,

Cairo, were on the site, galvanizing support for the removal of Hosni Mubarak, well before the mainstream media cottoned on.

Of course, YouTube gives wide exposure to controversial or less savoury political views, too, such as extremist propaganda, be it from members of ISIS or Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif

making the case, direct to a Western audience in November 2013, for his country to be allowed nuclear power.

But YouTube has almost certainly been more of a force for good than ill, helping, for instance, highlight Afri-can farming projects that need help or the 2014 Ice Bucket Challenge, which raised well over a $100 million for the US’s Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Association. In India last year, Sofia Ashraf, a 27-year-old singer, used YouTube to spread a viral rap video (to the beat of Nicki Minaj’s ‘An-aconda’) calling out “Unilever’s failure to clean up mercury contamination and compensate workers affected

The more we see of different

places and cultures, as

filmed by locals themselves, the less remote and

alien they become.



by its thermometer factory in Kodai-kanal” that was shut down years ago. Last month, the company announced compensation for its workers after 15 years, when former employees, ex-posed to the toxic mercury, petitioned before the court. Along with the work-ers’ campaign, the video may have helped create awareness for the cause.

The Indian government has also turned to YouTube: some of our min-istries today have a YouTube chan-nel, including PM Modi, who also has an official channel, PMO India, that documents his travels, meetings and speeches, among other things. Re-cently, finance minister Arun Jaitley took to it when his ministry launched a new YouTube channel, in an at-tempt to appeal to younger audiences ahead of this year’s union budget. The first video showed Jaitley stirring a pot of halwa ahead of the “halwa ceremony,” a quirky pre-budget ritual.

Shrinking the WorldFrom gentle videos of domestic life on Pitcairn Island [in the southern Pacific region] to a rescue video of a Siachen soldier trapped under 10 me-tres of snow after an avalanche, closer to home, YouTube shows us far more of the planet than documentaries and magazine supplements ever could. The more we see of different places and cultures, as filmed by the locals themselves, the less remote and alien they become, often challenging our assumptions. Footage of the poor-

WHAT’S INDIA WATCHING?

The videos that get the most hits in India are associated with comedy, beauty and fitness, cooking and technology tutorials, along with videos for kids. “Regional language content has also picked up a lot of pace,” adds a YouTube India spokesperson. “And music and Bollywood content and TV shows are evergreen, and continue to be extremely popular on YouTube in India.” Moreover, with the rise of comedy groups like TVF and AIB, Indian YouTube has seen a surge of creators who are now using the platform to express themselves and create content that’s not only engaging, but is shaping popular culture. Here are the top trending YouTube videos from 2015:

1. “Every Bollywood Party Song,” by AIB featuring Irrfan Khan

2. A Chhota Bheem episode called “Chhota Bheem aur Krishna Jodi No. #1”

3. The 500th episode of popular TV show Crime Patrol

4. “Honest Weddings” by AIB

5. A spoof of the film PK by Shudh Desi Endings



but-contented residents of a close-knit Arctic hamlet might make us rethink what’s important in life, for instance. But the change can be potentially even more profound.

“I met a 14-year-old goat herder in Kenya, who had a solar mobile device that allowed her to post and watch vid-eos on YouTube,” says Tapscott. “She didn’t have water, or electrical power, she was pregnant, married to some guy who bought her for 180 goats, but she was also part of a global media experience. Imagine the kind of cog-nitive dissonance that YouTube might bring to her. Imagine the disruption.”

EducationYouTube has thousands of free t u t o r i a l s u p l o a d e d by h e l p f u l amateurs and companies that show you how to do almost anything. It also provides a platform for more highbrow learning. The TED talks, for instance, are lectures by experts on everything from tribes in the Amazon to fractal mathematics. The not-for-profit Khan Academy, meanwhile, combines online learning aids and puzzles with micro lectures on subjects including maths, economics, healthcare and astronomy. With the help of YouTube, it has delivered 400 million lessons to

YouTube serves as a great platform to put a brand, product or service in front of millions of potential viewers, with the click of a button. Here are some tips on how you can become a successful ‘YouTuber.’

1. First, create your free Google account. If you’re starting a YouTube channel for your business, set it up from scratch, using a unique and non-personal email address. That way someone else from your organization

can run the channel without you having to disclose your personal Google account information. But remember, only one YouTube channel can be associated with each Google account.

2. Since there’s no specialized business account or YouTube channel for businesses, customize the channel’s settings so it best caters to your audience and showcases your business, its image and your videos.

3. Make sure you upload a photo or logo, and in the “About” section, add a short description, add links (which lets you decide whether or not to show how many views your channel has), and add channels to highlight partners, different departments, or individual employees. If you don’t know of any other YouTube channels you want to feature, you can leave this section blank and update it after you’re better acquainted with the platform.

START YOUR OWN CHANNEL



schools everywhere from rich British suburbs to villages in India, struggling against poverty. Scientists have even shared their new discoveries on YouTube. Carnegie Mellon University PhD student Johnny Chung Lee received several million plays of a video he posted in 2008 showing how a Nintendo Wii controller could transform a normal TV screen into a virtual-reality display.

Changing Our Minds“YouTube is improving our memories,” says Tapscott. “It’s a visual record of a huge amount of what’s happening or

has happened in the world, and it’s available to everybody.”

You can now have a strong memory of a family party you didn’t even attend thanks to YouTube footage, for instance. You can revisit obscure regional news stories you had long forgotten about. You can watch old footage of a favourite pop song from the ’80s, or writers and entertainers who have passed on years ago. YouTube has given us a far deeper, clearer sense of the past than we’d get from just being told about it, in history books or TV documentaries.

4. The video manager helps you manage all your content. There are also some unique features found on this page: n The ability to live-stream a life event n A place to go to create video playlists n A tab to access your search history n A tab that shows you all of the videos you’ve liked

5. The first video you upload should be a trailer for your channel. Depending on your industry or focus of your channel, the initial trailer can be a general look at what your

company, product or service is all about, or can be more specific or an unusual video to convey the details of the channel.

6. Like any other online community, YouTube needs to be maintained and managed. As your presence continues to build, it’s important to constantly engage with your target audience and also, find people who are dissatisfied with your brand, and address their issues.

7. YouTube also has a formidable analytics suite. You can use this data to help decide

what content you want to produce and use key factors like audience demographics, playback locations, devices watched from and audience retention, to better tailor your videos.

8. Finally, don’t forget to link your channel with your other social networking accounts such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Remember that more platforms mean more views and more exposure.

Sources: mashable.com, sproutsocial.com, entrepreneur.com



The World of BusinessYouTube has profoundly changed marketing, says Blossom. “It’s almost essential for a company or product to have a compelling YouTube presence.” The website is an excellent vehicle for ads, but its comments sections also give firms instant feedback a b o u t h o w a p ro d u c t i s being perceived, and they may change their marketing accordingly.

B u t Yo u T u b e i s a l s o under mining companies’ ability to determine how their products are perceived. Video bloggers, who review everything from the latest gadgets to restaurants, now hold a huge amount of power, w i t h m a n y h a v i n g mil l ions of viewers. Firms have to woo them with free gifts, advertise next to their videos and sometimes take drastic PR action to counteract their criticism. A 2009 upload by Canadian musician Dave Carroll criticizing United Airlines for breaking his guitar may have helped wipe 157 million euros off the company’s share value, and prompted the firm to change its customer-service policy.

In India too, companies are part-nering with YouTube for a wider reach with ads that serve a dual purpose: promote their brand and convey a so-

cial message. These tend to be longer, get promoted through viewer shares, and stay memorable. Ariel, the laun-dry detergent brand, launched a pow-erful new ad campaign that takes on traditional patriarchy and focuses on one of the challenges faced by women

all over the world: balanc-ing the demands of raising a family, along with main-taining a successful career. Similarly, popular jewellery brand Tanishq featured a dusky mother getting re-married, shattering many

s t e re o t y p e s i n o n e sweep. Indian cloth-ing company, Anouk, too stirred the waters with an ad featuring a lesbian couple, chal-lenging the traditional, socially conservative outlook and choosing to align itself with a pro-gressive message.

Reporting the NewsA 2012 study by a US think tank, the Pew Research Center, found that YouTube has become the worldwide platform for viewing news. The most searched term on the website was news-related, in five of the 15 months analyzed. Most news events on Indian television are available on YouTube for viewers to revisit and verify for them-selves. We tend to turn to YouTube for most things we have missed watching

Citizen journalism is

now a powerful force: 39 per cent of the

most-watched videos come

from the public.



live or catching on TV—from speeches made in our Parliament to John Oli-ver’s take-down of Donald Trump.

It turns out, 39 per cent of the most-watched videos came from members of the public, rather than news or-ganizations, revealing how YouTube has made citizen video journalism a powerful force. Amateur recordings have been the first, most revealing or often the only footage to emerge from several major events, including the Nepal earthquake and Saddam Hus-sein’s execution. Recently, the events around student protests and govern-ment action on them were shared and discussed widely.

It is YouTube and its users that frequently set the news agenda now, says Blossom—determining the lat-est, most important event in the world that most people want to see footage of—rather than editors or TV produc-ers. “Major media outlets must follow in YouTube’s footsteps to gain some portion of people’s attention as events unfold,” he says.

Building CommunitiesYouTube has created thousands of new communities: how-to videos form a large part of these, whether

they are based around beauty, fit-ness, cooking or kids’ content—the fastest-growing areas, according to a YouTube spokesperson. So whether you’re wondering how to make your favourite butter chicken, or tie your newborn baby’s diaper or fix your iPhone’s blank screen, YouTube has an ‘expert’ for you.

Another good example is video-game players, says British author and internet psychologist Graham Jones. Fans of a particular game will produce films showing their hints and tricks, others will leave comments saying why they love the game, and so people all over the world will start bonding over a shared interest. The same can happen with everything from football tutorials to footage of obscure Indi-pop songs from the ’90s.

Of course, viewer comments beneath YouTube videos often do just the opp osite of bui lding new, enriching relationships, being nasty, sarcastic or threatening. But, says Jones, research has found that far more people leave positive comments online than unpleasant ones, so one could argue that YouTube helps bring people together by showing that, “Most of us are actually quite nice.”

THE THINGS WE WEATHER When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what the storm’s all about. HARUKI MURAKAMI


HUMOUR SPECIAL

M UMBAI RESIDENT Altaf Qureshi had just made off with the handbag of a lady he’d spotted dozing in a railway ticket counter queue. Now

the proud owner of the booty—a cell phone, necklace and some cash—he only thought it polite to answer his newly-acquired phone when it rang.

Unbelievable tales of bad judgement, timing and just plain stupidity

WORLD’S DUMBEST CRIMINALS

BY SNIGDHA HASAN AND BRUCE GRIERSON


W O R L D ’ S D U M B E S T C R I M I N A L S

Publicity Hounds

ONCE YOU SET UP a business, marketing it is only obvious. A gang of three professional shooters in Allahabad decided to build their profile with a blitzkrieg of publicity: they actually circulated smiling, gun-toting photographs of themselves in the crime world and to further substantiate their expertise, CVs of their felonious deeds were added to their publicity campaign.

The ingenious modus operandi came to light when the police busted the gang. The trio—Ajay Yadav, Rakesh Kumar and Neeraj Singh—said the portfolio helped establish their credentials with prospective clients.

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Hit, Run, Repeat

A 21-YEAR-OLD—with his girlfriend and another friend in the car—had driven no more than a couple of hundred metres before crashing into a n SU V. Th e you ng ma n f ro m Innsbruck, Austria, was clearly in a pickle. It was 7 a.m. on an October morning last year, and he and his friends had spent the entire night in a local tavern, and now he faced both dr unk-dr iving and hit-and-r un charges. Thinking quickly—or as quickly as his fuzzy brain allowed—he decided he had to hide the car.

He carefully shepherded the lame-duck vehicle down the road to a

At the other end was the lady Qureshi had robbed, and she made an enticing offer: “Keep everything else, just return my documents,” she said. “I’ll pay you `1,000.”

The genius master criminal couldn’t believe his luck. All set to rake in some more cash, he reached the designated spot—only to find some plain-clothes cops waiting. The police sent off the lady with well-deserved praise and took Qureshi into custody. Source: ndtv.com

Supermarket Hero

A 23-YEAR-OLD man in a super-market checkout line in Stuttgart, Ger-many, was about to pay for two cans of cola when a couple of the store’s employees confronted him. They had seen him shoplift. The man bolted. But as he ran, grocery items he had shoved down his trousers slipped out of a pant leg. He tripped on them and fell sprawling to the ground, where staffers detained him for the police.

The Perfect Alibi

THOUGH HE PLEADED innocent, LaDondrell Montgomery of Houston, Texas, was slapped with a life sen-tence for armed robbery. But shortly after the trial, his lawyer dug up evidence that would exonerate the man, something Montgomery knew but had completely forgotten: he’d happened to be locked up in jail at the time of the robbery. Source: ABC News IL

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Dear Diary

DURING A ROUTINE security check, the local crime branch officials of Ahmedabad rounded up Deven-dra Singh, alias Devanand, when he couldn’t produce documents for the motorbike he was riding. When the suspicious-looking 23-year-old was frisked, out came a diary that belonged to the owner of a motor-winding unit in the neighbouring town of Bavla. The unit, along with three other plants, had been burgled a week ago and copper wires worth `42,000 had been missing.

A raid at Singh’s home yielded another diary, and this one had the details of his other shenanigans—15 robberies, where the spoils ranged from oil and ghee to two-wheelers and a tractor.

nearby backyard. But just as he pulled in he realized something important: the yard was the parking lot for the local police station. He tried to beat a retreat before anyone noticed, but crashed into another car. Good news: it was not a police cruiser. Bad news: it was the private car of a police officer. This time, when the young man tried to drive away, his car broke down. Police were on the scene—almost immediately.

Spurious Persuasion

A CALIFORNIA WOMAN facing nearly five years in prison for forging drug prescriptions brought to court a doctor’s note that suggested her case be postponed for medical reasons. Her request was rejected—the note was a forgery. Source: Yahoo News

W O R L D ’ S D U M B E S T C R I M I N A L S

What’s worse is that Singh is the son of a retired armyman who had come to work as a security guard in Gujarat. While he left for his village, the son stayed on to chronicle his escapades.

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Market Loss

THOUGH PRETTY MUCH everyone knows everyone in his Polish home-town of Okonek, with a popula-tion of about 4,000, with its quaint clock tower and small police station, 22-year-old Pawel P. didn’t recognize the man he approached in the super-market parking lot this past October.

“Hey dude,” Pawel said brightly: “Wanna buy some weed?” The man loading his groceries paused. This must be a joke, he thought. Who would sell drugs to an off-duty police officer? But as he realized the young man was on the level, the officer played along. He agreed to purchase some mari-juana but claimed not to have the cash on him. He asked the young man to hold tight while he called some buddies to come bring the funds.

The buddies, when they showed up, were, of course, other policemen. Pawel faces up to three years in prison for drug possession and trafficking.

Read It or Weep TWO WANNABE CROOKS’ inatten-tion became their undoing in the Dutch town of Enschede. The two men broke into a jewellery store last July and cleaned out every single piece of merchandise in the shop win-dow. But they failed to notice a sign that read: “All rings and other pieces on display are models only.”

In the end it didn’t matter, as neighbours heard breaking glass and alerted the authorities. Police arrested one suspect at the scene: the second managed to flee but was arrested a few months later.

Bedtime Story AFTER RANSACKING an under- renovation house in West Bengal’s




Madhyamgram, a thief got exhausted and wrapped up for the day. Imagine the horror of the lady of the house, when the following morning, she shook her daughter to wake her up and a stranger emerged from beneath the blanket—sporting the daughter’s pullover! A warm blanket on a cold winter night, it seemed, had out-weighed the treasure he’d spent hours looking for.

Fighting a hangover, the man couldn’t recollect how he’d landed up there and tried to flee. But the ma-sons kept him from escaping until the police arrived. Source: oneindia.com

Self-Reliance

PHILOME CESAR, from Bethle-hem in the US, decided to represent himself in court against charges of robbery. But his legal skills were on par with his larceny skills. During the trial, he asked a witness to describe the robber’s voice. The response: “He sounded like you.” Ironically, the jury’s decision sounded a lot like “guilty.” Source: mcall.com

Crime Speaks for Itself MUMBAI’S SUBURBAN RAILWAY premises were Nandu Tayade’s favourite haunt, until the Government Railway Police caught him. Having committed several thefts, Tayade’s most recent haul was of `1.12 lakh he’d stolen from a lady in the queue

at the booking office. During interrogation, Tayade

pretended that he was deaf and dumb in a bid to seek clemency. When he wrote down the name of his village in Jalgaon district, the police took him on a trip home. He continued to pretend before his wife and children that he could neither hear nor speak, but when the police approached his neighbours, they gave him away. Tayade confessed to his crime later. Source: dnaindia.com

Out of the Frying Pan…

WHEN A CHAIN SNATCHER was caught in Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh, he first tried to pull off a tear-jerker, saying he stole for the treatment of his ailing mother. When he still ended up at the rural police station, he contin-ued with his pleas from behind bars. And when that didn’t help either, he had a brainwave.

He asked the sentry guard if he could use the loo. When he didn’t re-turn for a long time, the guard smelt a rat. He went to check the backyard, only to see the thief atop a tall tree. Now it was the guard’s turn to coax the thief who was in no mood to lis-ten. Off he jumped to the other side, letting out a victory cry.

The thief, however, had to come back to the police station within minutes—he had fallen inside an adjoining jail compound. Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.comW

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LAST YEAR, I FELT COMPELLED to bake brownies for complete strangers to say thank you.

I’d had to call the emergency because I found my partner unconscious on the floor. Within minutes, a police car and ambulance arrived, filled with first responders who whisked my partner away to the emergency room, where he received the critical care that he needed. IL

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How saying “thank you” can have positive effects on your health

and the well-being of others

PowerGratitude

The

of

BY LISA FIELDS



T H E P O W E R O F G R AT I T U D E

A Good-For-You SentimentWhen you feel thankful for things you’ve received or something that’s happened, that’s gratitude. It ’s impossible to feel it in a vacuum; others are always responsible, whether they’re loved ones, strangers or a higher power. “Gratitude is how you relate to others, when you see yourself in connection with things larger than

yourself,” Ruch says.Today, many people

don’t stop to appreciate what they have, much less express gratitude. The instant-gratification lifestyle we lead may be to blame.

“With commercial a n d s o c i a l m e d i a , everything is speeding the younger generation to make them feel that they are the centre of

the universe,” says Tamiko Zablith, founder of the London-based etiquette consulting firm Minding Manners. “If it’s all about them, why thank others?”

Why not thank others? Studies have shown that people who express gratitude increase their happiness levels, lower their blood pressure levels, get better quality sleep, improve their relationships, experience a positive impact on their depression levels and are less affected by pain. And gratitude’s positive effects are long-lasting. Canadian researchers found that people who wrote thank-

A week later, still marvelling at the impact of a handful of strangers, I wrote thank-you notes to those help-ful first responders and baked for them. It was a small gesture with a big impact. When I dropped off still-warm brownies at the police station and firehouse, they thanked me for delivering gifts. Thanking me? All I’d done was bake; they’d saved a life.

I drove away feeling light and happy, partly because I’d done a good deed, but mostly because I was amazed that there are selfless people who do life-saving work and ex-pect nothing in return.

Later, I realized that my natural high had been more than what it seemed. Research shows that sharing thoughts of gratitude and performing acts of kindness can boost your mood and have other health benefits.

“We know from studies in the liter-ature that gratitude does have a good impact on happiness, that it increases life satisfaction,” says Willibald Ruch, a psychology professor at the Univer-sity of Zurich who does research on the effects of character strengths like gratitude and humour. “It’s among the top five predictors of happiness.”

You can make positive changes in your own life by choosing to embrace gratitude. Here’s how:



you letters or performed good deeds for a mere six-week period were able to improve their mental health, reduce their bodily pain, feel more energetic and accomplish more daily tasks for up to six months.

Because gratitude is a relatively new field of study, researchers are still trying to identify its cause-and-effect relationship with various health gains.

“We know that people who have higher levels of gratitude also report sleeping better, but we don’t really

know why,” says Alex Wood, professor of psychology and director of the Behavioural Science Centre at the University of Stirling in Scotland. “Is gratitude leading to better sleep? Is sleep leading to more gratitude? Or could it be some third variable that leads to both gratitude and improved sleep?” Perhaps all of the above.

Gratitude can benefit people during all stages of life. Swedish researchers have found that people aged 77 to 90 who choose to be thankful for what they have, are less likely to dwell upon the chances that they may grow frail.

“When they can’t change some-thing, they choose gratitude and focus on what’s good: walking on their own legs, still being alive and living by

themselves,” says study author Helena Hörder, a researcher at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. “Maybe it’s some kind of confidence that you can cope with this and focus on the right things.”

Making Someone Else’s DayWhat about gratitude recipients? Research has confirmed that people who receive messages of thanks or acts of kindness experience positive emotions when they’re singled out.

“Those are happy surprises—you’re not expecting coffee or for someone to hold the door open for you,” says Jo-Ann Tsang, associate professor of psychology at Baylor University in Texas, who does gratitude research. “You’re more likely to feel grateful if you receive help that’s unexpected. It’s different if a doorman holds the door than a stranger, because that’s not their [the latter’s] job.”

When someone is the recipient of unexpected kindness or gratitude, he’s more likely to return the favour or pay kindness forward. One study found that when someone is thanked, it more than doubles his chances of being helpful again, likely because he enjoys feeling socially valued.

Gratitude is how you relate to others, when you see yourself in connection with things larger than yourself.


T H E P O W E R O F G R AT I T U D E

Zablith likes the reaction she gets when she rewards a stranger who holds the door open for her at Starbucks with his rightful place in line in front of her. “The look on his face is shock,’” Zablith says. “He’ll be nicer to the cashier, the next person he sees at work. There’s a trickle-down effect.”

The give-and-take of gratitude can also deepen relationships. Studies show that when your partner regularly expresses gratitude, making you feel appreciated, you’re more likely to return appreciative, grateful feelings

and stay committed to each other. One study found that sharing gratitude with a partner makes you feel more responsible for his well-being and more satisfied with the relationship.

“You feel closer to the other person, and they feel closer to you,” Tsang says. “That creates an upward spiral.”

Developing the Sense If you aren’t particularly grateful, you can learn to be. People who are instructed to keep gratitude journals, in which they write down three positive things that happen to them each day, cultivate gratitude over time.

“People at the beginning have

some difficulty with what good things happened,” Ruch says. “But if every evening you write them down, you experience those things more intensively. Gradually, your brain gets trained into a more appreciative mode, so the sense to be grateful increases.

“Even when our training is over, people still continue with this exercise, because they find it so rewarding. People enjoy looking up what happened a few weeks ago. It becomes a book of nice memories,” he adds.

Samuel Coster from St. Louis, US,

began keeping a regular gratitude journal three years ago. When he was diagnosed with lymphoma a year later, it helped carry him through his illness.

“Gratitude training certainly came to my aid during the dark times,” Coster says. “Did I get cancer? Yep. Did I also get to hang out with my family way more, gain a greater appreciation for life and get a few cool scars? Yep. And that’s the part I focus on.” Expressing Gratitude When you share grateful thoughts with the person whom you’re thankful for, everyone benefits. And the effects will last longer than you’d expect :

If you share grateful thoughts with the person who helped you, it has the potential to bring you two closer together.



Researchers found that people who write thank-you notes to people whom they haven’t properly thanked may boost their happiness levels and improve interpersonal relationships for up to six months.

“If you keep gratitude to yourself in a journal, it will make you happier, but if you share it with the person who helped you, it has the potential to bring you two closer together,” Tsang says.

John Kralik of California actually experienced this first-hand. He’d been feeling depressed and discouraged whenever he took account of his life: He’d been divorced twice. He wasn’t as close with his children as he wanted to be. His law practice wasn’t earning money despite the gruelling hours he devoted to work. At a particularly low point, he remembered his grandfather telling him, decades earlier, about the importance of gratitude. He decided to write 365 thank-you notes over 365 days, hoping for a positive change.

Immediately, he noticed his attitude and situation begin to improve. At the end of the year he wrote a memoir about his experience, A Simple Act of Gratitude: How Learning to Say Thank You Changed My Life.

“I didn’t need a scientific study to know that if you are grateful to people and if you learn how to accept gratitude well from other people, your life will be enriched,” Kralik says. “The first effects are that you realize that you have a much better life than you thought.”

I’d experienced such positive feelings after writing thank-you notes to those first responders, I decided to try again. This time, inspired by Kralik, I chose someone from my past whom I’d never thanked before: The high school English teacher who had encouraged my writing more than any other teacher I’d ever had. I hadn’t seen him in 25 years, so I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to locate him, but I did. He’s in his 80s, living in a warm retirement town.

I spent an evening honing my letter, thanking him for the guidance and support that he’d given me years earlier. I may never hear back from him, but that isn’t the point. By taking time to put into words the impact that my teacher had on my life and my career, I became infinitely more grateful and appreciative of what I’ve achieved in life, and I’ve been riding that burst of positivity for weeks.

WHY AM I PRESIDENT OF THE ENTITLED CLUB?

Well, for one, I deserve it.

@HOME_HALFWAY


TWO MEN Tom and Frank, had loved cricket more than anything, their entire lives. One day, Tom says to Frank, “If you die before me, promise me you’ll come back and tell me if there’s cricket in Heaven.”

Frank agrees and makes Tom promise the same thing. About a week later, Tom dies.

One night, Frank wakes up to someone calling his name. Scared, he asks, “Who’s there?”

LaughterTHE BEST MEDICINE

Suddenly Tom appears and says, “Hi Frank. I’m speaking from Heaven. I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news first: there’s cricket in heaven!”

Frank gets very excited, and then asks, “What’s the bad news?”

Tom looks at him grimly and says, “I looked at the line-up for tomorrow and you’re opening the batting.” From the internet IL

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A WOMAN NOTICED her husband standing on the bathroom scale, suck-ing in his stomach. “Ha! That’s not going to help,” she said.

“Sure, it does,” he said. “It’s the only way I can see the numbers.”

THERE IS NOTHING more awkward than the moment you realize you’re getting a double-cheek kiss.

@MICHMARKOWITZ

A FEW MONTHS AGO, Hamas“arrested” a dolphin for being anIsraeli spy. Readers of Reasonmagazine came up with titles forthe film this action might inspire:■ Orcapussy■ Free Schmuelly■ Goldflipper■ The Porpoise-Driven Life■ Dolphinfidel

DID YOU HEAR the one about the kid who started a business tying shoe-laces on the playground? It was a knot-for-profit. ANDREW FERGUSON

MR JONES GOES to his local barber for a shave. While he’s being foamed, he mentions how difficult it is to shave fully around the cheeks.

“I have the solution,” the barber re-plies. “Place this small wooden ball between the cheeks and the gum to puff the skin out.”

The man has the closest shave he’s had for years. “But what if I swallow the ball?” he asks.

“Oh, just bring it back tomorrow. Everyone else does.” JOSEPH STOKOE

PETE AND LARRY hadn’t seen each other in many years. Now they were having a long talk, trying to fill the gap of those years by telling each other about their lives. Finally, Pete invited Larry to visit him at his new flat. “I’ve got a wife and three kids and I’d love for you to visit,” he said.

“Great. Where do you live?”“Here’s the address,” says Pete. “There’s plenty of parking behind

the flat. Park and come around to the front door, kick it open with your foot, go to the lift and press the button with your left elbow, then enter!

When you reach the sixth floor, go down the corridor until you see my name on the door. Then press the door with your right elbow and I’ll let you in.”

“Good. But what’s all this business of kicking the front door open and pressing buttons with my elbows?”

Says Pete, “Well, surely you’re not coming empty-handed?”

From the internet

A GRASSHOPPER walks into a bar.The bartender says, “Hey, we have

a drink named after you.”The grasshopper says, “Really? You

have a drink named Steve?”


W hen Anil Sharma* (now 55), started smoking at 22, he never imagined that he was putting himself in danger. He continued

to smoke, up to a packet or more a day. The thought of quitting never occured to him. Things changed in 2012, when Sharma developed a cough that refused to go away. P

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: ©

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FightingLung

Cancer

A changing approach and new treatments bring hope to thousands

BY KATHAKOLI DASGUPTA AND ANITA BARTHOLOMEW


*Name changed on request


F I G H T I N G L U N G C A N C E R

When home remedies and cough syrups didn’t help, his daughter took him for a check-up. After a chest X-ray, he was diagnosed with tubercu-losis and put on anti-tubercular treat-ment (ATT). But he saw blood in his sputum in a month. The family pan-icked and went for a second opinion. A CT scan showed lesions; a biopsy confirmed the terrifying diagnosis.

“In India, where tuberculosis is rampant, it is common to find a lung cancer patient being put on ATT. I find about 30 per cent of lung cancer cases are misdiagnosed. The symptoms are similar: a persistent cough, hoarse-ness, wheezing, shortness of breath, sputum streaked with blood, weight loss and chest pain,” says Sharma’s oncologist, Dr Ullas Batra, consultant medical oncologist at Delhi’s Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre. ATT takes up to nine months, and the cancer may develop to an advanced stage. Luckily for Sharma, it was still localized, which helped improve his odds greatly.

What the Stats Show“According to the WHO, globally,

71 per cent of all lung cancer deaths are attributable to tobacco use (smok-ing and smokeless). In India, around 32 per cent of cancer deaths in men and 6 per cent in women between 30 and 69 years are caused by smoking,” says Dr Manu Raj Mathur, a scientist at Delhi’s Public Health Foundation of India, and a core team member of

THE STAGES OF LUNG CANCER

STAGE IEarly, isolated in the lung where it

originated, has not spread. The five-year survival rate is the highest when

detected at this early stage and is about 70 per cent.

STAGE IIHas spread but not extensively,

usually to nearby lymph nodes and to membranes between the lungs or

surrounding the heart. The five-year survival is between 45-60 per cent.

STAGE IIIThe cancer that has advanced further, and has now spread to lymph nodes on the same side of the chest as the

affected lung, as well as other parts of the body. Survival rate: between 10

and 25 per cent.

STAGE IVMay have spread to both lungs, into the chest and throughout the body,

possibly affecting bones and organs, such as the brain or liver.

Understandably, the survival stats drop to about 13 per cent. Small-cell

lung cancer accounts for about 15 per cent of all lung cancers. It spreads

quickly and is likely to be advanced by the time it is diagnosed. It is

grouped as ‘limited and extended stages’. In the former, five-year

survival ranges between 10 and 13 per cent; with extended stage disease it is

just about 2 per cent. With inputs from Dr Neelesh Reddy, consultant medical oncologist, Columbia Asia, Bengaluru

and Dr P.K. Das



Project STEPS (Strengthening Tobacco Control Efforts through Innovative Partnerships and Strategies).

“People who smoke cigarettes are 15 to 30 times more likely to get lung cancer or die from it than people who do not,” says Dr Rajeev Bedi, direc-tor, Medical Oncology, Fortis Cancer Institute, Mohali. Even smoking oc-casionally increases the risk of lung cancer. The longer a person smokes and the more cigarettes smoked each day, the higher the risk.

Smoking is HarmfulEach puff of cigarette contains a mixture of thousands of compounds, i n c l u d i n g m o re t ha n 6 0 w e l l -established carcinogens. Many of these carcinogens damage our DNA, including key genes that protect us against cancer. Certain other chemicals interfere with pathways for repairing damaged DNA. This makes it even more likely that damaged cells will eventually turn cancerous. “The damage to the DNA hampers the regulated growth of cells, causing them to proliferate, leading to the formation of tumours in the body,” explains Mathur.

Every cigarette you smoke can damage the DNA in lung cells. But it’s the build-up of damage in the same cell that can lead to cancer. According to research published in the journal Nature, for every 15 cigarettes smoked, there’s a DNA change, which could cause a cell to become cancerous.

Passive smoking is dangerous too. “Non-smokers who live with a smoker and inhale second-hand smoke, in-crease their risk of lung cancer by 20 to 30 per cent,” Mathur adds. “A meta-

analysis reported 27 per cent higher risk of lung cancer among never-smoking women exposed to spousal ETS (environmental tobacco smoke) c o mpa re d w i t h n e ve r-s m o ki ng women not exposed to spousal ETS.”

Although smoking causes the vast majority of lung malignancies, there are other risk factors. “These include exposure to certain substances, including asbestos, arsenic, radon and diesel fumes,” says Dr P.K. Das, senior consultant, Oncology, Indra-prastha Apollo Hospitals, New Delhi. Genes are more often to blame when the illness strikes young people, says Dr Rafael Rosell of the Catalan Insti-

SMOKERS ARE 15 TO 30 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO GET LUNG CANCER OR DIE

FROM IT THAN NON-SMOKERS.


F I G H T I N G L U N G C A N C E R

tute of Oncology, Barcelona. Genes help determine which treatments work best for each individual.

Detecting it EarlyDetecting cancer early, before it’s had a chance to spread, gives individuals the best chance of long-term survival. There’s been a push to screen for early signs with annual low-dose CT scans

for those at an increased risk. Doc-tors in India are not in favour of this: it’s not just the cost, but the worry of a large number of false positives. “Because the incidence of tubercu-losis is very high in our country, such a screening will lead to a detection of a large number of nodules which may not be malignant and in turn warrant unnecessary biopsies,” says

Shisha is fruity and flavourful; surely the odd puff can’t harm? According to the WHO, a one-hour shisha session can be as harmful as smoking 100 cigarettes. A cigarette smoker takes between eight and twelve puffs, inhaling 0.5 to 0.6 litres of smoke. But during an hour-long shisha session smokers may take up to 200 drags, ranging from 0.15 to 1 litre of smoke each.

Should we be wary of e-cigarettes? These are battery-operated products designed to deliver nicotine, flavour and other chemicals. They turn chemicals, including highly

addictive nicotine, into an aerosol that is inhaled by the user. According to the US Lung Cancer Association, in initial lab tests conducted in 2009, the FDA found detectable levels of toxic cancer-causing chemicals—including an ingredient used in antifreeze—in two leading brands of e-cigarettes. Furthermore, a 2014 study found that the aerosol from e-cigarettes with a higher voltage level contains more formaldehyde, another carcinogen. Flavours in e-cigarettes, including gummy bears, fruit punch, peach, licorice, also cause concern as they are used to target

kids. Besides, it is not known whether the flavouring agents are safe to inhale.

Do the alarming levels of air pollution contribute to the risk?Yes. A 2013 assessment by WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded that outdoor air pollution is carcinogenic, with particulate matter most closely associated with increased cancer incidence. Safe levels for PM according to the WHO’s air quality guidelines are 20 μg/m3 (annual mean) for PM10. The level in Delhi was 286 in 2014, said the WHO.

—With inputs from Dr Manu Mathur

NIGGLING QUESTIONS ON OUR MINDS



Center, Florida. If this shows that a cancer is being fuelled by particular growth factors, targeted drugs can block the cancer cell from accessing its ‘fuel’ source. And that sometimes “results in dramatic responses,” says Haura. He points out, though, that these drugs aren’t cures, as cancers eventually develop resistance to these and other drugs. New drugs, tailored to the mutating cancer, can in some cases replace the ones it has devel-oped resistance to. These are designed to behave like a super-charged version of your body’s own immune defences.

One of the most promising discov-eries in the history of lung cancer is a new cancer vaccine called CimaVax, developed in Cuba and soon to be tested on patients in the US and Eu-rope. But rather than wait for a vac-cine, improve your odds of not getting lung cancer right now. If you smoke, stop. And though your risk won’t drop to levels of someone who has never smoked, within ten years of giving up smoking the risk of dying from lung cancer drops by half.

Sharma was diagnosed at Stage II, but did not undergo a surgery. His tu-mour was shrunk using radiotherapy. Then a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy was used to kill stray cancer cells. All this over four months with resting periods, explains Batra. Sharma quit smoking the day he was diagnosed and has been cancer-free since his treatment (three and a half years now).

Dr Raj K. Shrimali, consultant radia-tion oncologist, Tata Medical Center, Kolkata. Instead, they stress on the need to spread awareness about the condition, and its prevention.

The choice of treatment depends on the stage and type of malignancy. Surgery is a good option for people whose cancers are detected early (Stage I or II). However, if the cancer is metastatic [it spreads to other parts of the body] surgery might not always be the best therapy. But there are numerous treatments today that can prolong life even in people with more advanced cancers.

Treatment Options“Standard chemotherapy drugs and radiation can slow a tumour’s growth, shrink them and kill cancer cells,” says Bedi. “These therapies are often used post surgery to mop up any malignancy that might have been missed. And these are also typi-cally the first line of treatments used for more advanced tumours when surgery isn’t feasible.”

Now, precision or personalized chemotherapy, also known as tar-geted therapy, is changing the way we think about cancer. Just like nor-mal cells, cancer cells need “growth factors”—hormones, proteins and other substances that occur naturally in our bodies—in order to thrive. “We do a genetic analysis of tumour tis-sues,” says Dr Eric Haura, a physi-cian-scientist at the Moffitt Cancer


They’re the words that put the whizz bang into our language BY DONYALE HARRISON

WHEN I WAS MUCH YOUNGER, onomatopoeia was one of my favour-ite words. I loved the fact that a word that means “words that sound like natural sounds” is itself so compli-cated that practically no one could guess its meaning, let alone spelling. If I’m being honest, I had a hard time even saying the wretched thing.

But, like most children, I was a keen user of onomatopoeia: cars

went vrooom; dogs went ruff ruff; wa-ter splish splash. And the joy of those words remains, even though I might nowadays aim for the sophistication of a susurrus (whistling or rustling) or tintinnabulation (ringing or tinkling).

There’s nothing overly mysteri-ous about onomatopoeic words. For the most part they describe actual sounds, from the quack of a duck to the whoosh of deadlines flying by.

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plosion that goes pop is probably just a lid left on in the microwave, while one that goes bang is more likely to be at least errant fireworks. A boom will certainly do real damage and missiles whizzing past are definitely bad news. The sounds themselves indicate the severity of the blast.

This quality of self-explanatoriness can even work across language bar-riers. I had no idea what the Italian word for mosquito was, but when I saw a Roman look crossly at his arm and mutter “Zanzara!” it needed no translation app.

However, despite the fact that we’re mostly hearing the same sounds, there are some remarkable interna-tional onomatopoeic quirks. Some sounds have surprising universality. Variants on shhh and hahahaha com-monly convey shushing or laughter in dozens of languages.

In others, we have only minor dif-ferences: the French plic ploc is in fact much better than English drip drop for a leaking tap, while the German plitsch platsch suggests you should really call the plumber sooner rather than later.

But others are wildly different. Illus-trator James Chapman has a wonderful website (www.chapmangamo.tumblr.com) where he shows how different languages represent different onomat-opoeic words. One of my favourites is of cats: purr in English becomes ronron in French, nurr in Estonian, schnurr in German and goro goro in Japanese.

Many of them are very old words: quack, baa, moo and miaow, popped up in the Renaissance; susurrus and tintinnabulation both come from the Latin; while whoosh is newer as things only got that fast in the 19th century, and it took till the 1960s for engines to warrant a vroom.

Sometimes words become less onomatopoeic the longer they hang around: bleet used to be pronounced bleat, with a long vowel, which sounds much more like the sound a sheep actually makes.

In the same way, new words pop up as the language finds a need for them; like zhuzh, the last-minute fancying up of an outfit that was introduced into the language by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (more than a decade ago: I feel old!), or bah-bow, the tonal impersonation of a wrong answer buzzer that apparently began on an American quiz show before spreading to every teenager I know.

There’s a reason onomatopoeic words are so popular: you don’t re-ally need to know their meaning in order to understand them. The first time you heard someone described as frumpy, the word itself gave you a sense of lumpy tiredness. Whereas the same person described as sleekit or schmick would clearly have invested in a haircut and new set of clothes, not to mention a shoe polish.

Onomatopoeia allows you to give a finer tone to the quality you are dis-cussing than standard English. An ex-



There are two possible explana-tions: either the cats have regional accents, or we’re listening to them through different sets of expectations. Now the first proposition isn’t wholly ridiculous. Songbirds are known to have regional song variants, as do whales, and some research suggests that domesticated animals take on aspects of the accents of the humans around them. I’ve patted cats around the world and there are definite cultural trends in their mannerisms.

But The Guardian’s Gary Nunn, who wrote a brilliant article on this topic titled “Why do pigs oink in Eng-lish, boo boo in Japanese and nöff nöff in Swedish?” summed up the broader scientific argument with “it isn’t pigs that are multilingual, it’s us.” Apparently we hear animals and other sounds through the aural “lens” of our own language.

One fact that quickly stands out in international comparisons is the un-usualness of Japanese onomatopoeia. It is the only language in which a cat’s miaow does not start with an M, rather, they say nyan nyan. Similarly, it is alone in having no Z or S sound in the word for bee noises: Japanese bees say boon boon.

It’s no casual difference. Japanese has not one, but three types of on-omatopoeia: giseigo, which are the sounds of living things; giongo, which are the sounds of inanimate objects; and gitaigo, which is for words that mimic qualities like businesslike or

SAY IT LIKE THIS

Some apparently random onomatopoeias make far more sense when pronounced with the right accent.

Ronron: French for a cat’s purr, it has a rolled R, a soft O and barely there N.Nöff nöff: Swedish for a pig’s oink, it’s pronounced with a nasal vowel, like the French neuf (9).Hamba: Bengali for moo. There’s no special pronunciation: cows in Bangladesh just seem a bit more cosmopolitan than others round the world, which mostly moo.

quickly. Unlike English, where this class of words is often used in a less formal manner, Japanese uses them in a wider variety of contexts and more commonly. Alas, it would require a far better grasp of linguistics (and Japa-nese) than mine to extrapolate from this to nyaning cats, but it is a good excuse to slip in that the gitaigo word for annoyed is mukamuka, which is clearly splendid and worth sneaking into English.

So the next time you find yourself lost for words and resort to, “She was all growl growl and he was all nyah nyah,” don’t bemoan your inability to remem-ber adjectives. Celebrate the fact that your onomatopoeia is connecting you with a worldwide audience! Except, possibly, the Japanese.

Shyam Benegal on the debates in our campuses and beyond, and the issues highlighted by his films

BY SNIGDHA HASAN

VisionAlternate


I STRUGGLE TO conceal the surprise in my voice when Shyam Benegal returns my call. In a film industry where being endlessly elusive is par for the course, this veteran filmmaker stands out as much for his path-breaking cinema as for his refined, self-effacing manner.

The 81-year-old filmmaker’s oeuvre is as diverse as it is impressive: with more than 26 feature films, 65 documentaries, and about 35 feature length/documentar y f i lms and television serials, Benegal looms over Indian cinema after more than 50 years as a director. He is amongst the most respected public intellectuals of our times.

He emerged as a major voice in the new Indian cinema of the ’70s with Ankur. Since then, his massive body of work has explored important social issues—such as caste, gender, livelihoods, freedom, communalism

and the idea of India—and earned him several National Film Awards under various categories, the Padma Shri, the Padma Bhushan as well as the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for lifetime achievement. He has served as chairman of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) twice and was recently appointed by the government to head a committee to address the problems of film certification and censorship. Benegal has contributed richly in unshackling cinema—and indeed our public sphere—from censorship and making it a free space for creativity and expression.

As universities around the country boil over with protests around student rights and the nation debates ques-tions of identity and freedom of ex-pression, as thinkers and activists ex-press concern over the government’s methods and approach towards edu-cation, Reader’s Digest spoke to the Y

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erudite filmmaker to understand how he sizes up the current situation—from FTII to JNU and beyond.

I meet Benegal at his South Mumbai office, lined with books and film post-ers, where he unscrambles the noise around—drawing from his exhaustive reading, research and understanding of India.

As someone who’s worked with the students of the FTII, what is your take on the current state in Pune?They’ve already found a way out. The students have gone back to class. The chairman has taken charge and will meet them. My views on this have been very clear. The chairman shouldn’t expect the students to come and meet him; he should go and meet the students. After all, one mustn’t forget that the FTII students aren’t children—they’re fully formed and developed individuals who come with educational degrees from universities. They will not go on strike simply for the sake of it. The reasons need to be examined. And how would one know the reasons, if one does not do it with empathy? The management cannot look at its own students as opponents.

We have seen student protests in other campuses, post the FTII agitation. How do you see them, and the role of a university in society? It is a space for learning, questioning, debating—going through the entire

spectrum of human experience. Protests are part of that. So is discussion and argument. Once you come out of the university, you are in the everyday world. The Constitution sets out the social parameters of our life. The university has to be a space that allows one to look beyond those parameters. It’s a space for intellectual ferment and untrammelled imagination, not one to be invaded as it was, both in the case of the Hyderabad University and JNU, by the police or anybody else.

I don’t think the government was right in either case because there was no reason to make it seem as though students were enemies of the state. The government can look at the world in a particular way, but within the university you should be able to explore, argue, take positions. Unfortunately, this was not allowed to happen—whether it relates to caste prejudice, which caused Rohith Vemula to commit suicide, or lawyers beating up students and accusing them of anti-national activity.

There is an ongoing debate on intolerance. How do you look at it?Intolerance raises its head in India’s public discourse from time to time, largely because it constitutes the faultline between communities. This is frequently exploited by politicians to consolidate community votes for their own benefit. This doesn’t mean Indians are by nature intolerant. If



we were, we wouldn’t have been able to live at peace with ourselves or our neighbours—who are far more diverse than in any other country in the world.

Tolerance and intolerance are wrong words to use. The problem is one of inclusion. Indians, by and large, have this dexterous ability to exclude and include at the same time. How we exclude people outside of our caste or religion, but as a country we embrace all our diversities!

Many of your films were made during the time of active student politics. Are student movements making a comeback?I wouldn’t be able to say anything about that, but there are t i m e s w h e n c e r-tain events create a fear in the minds o f a l o t o f you ng people that authoritarian forces a re re a r i n g t h e i r h e a d a g a i n . This is a real fear because we’ve had a phase of authoritarianism a few decades ago.

Coming back to films, what is your idea of censorship?I am heading a committee formed by the government to look into

the problems of censorship. It is far too premature for me to comment at present as it is work in progress. We are asking fundamental questions. We have got a fair amount of feedback from the public, from NGOs concerned with women and children, and from the entire film industry

of the country. We are collating all of it now to identify the problems that need to be tackled.

Over the years, you have engaged with Indian cinema in various capacities.Filmmaking has many dimensions. Apart from the creative as-pect—conceptualiz-ing, writing, direction, production, editing—one is concerned with the world of cinema itself and its place in society, our country and the world at large.

You cannot escape this engagement at a larger level.

Unlike writing a book, filmmaking is not a solitary process. It starts off by being a social activity because you are already working with other people.

How did you start making films?My father was a still photographer. He had a photo studio and would make

Manthan was financed by the

Gujarat Cooperative Milk

Marketing Federation.


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short, silent 16-mm films on his chil-dren—we were 10 of us. These films served as after-dinner entertainment for guests, and our comments made for the soundtrack. So cinema is what we grew up with and since it con-cerned us directly, we were hooked.

You made your first film at age 12. The camera was always there and summer holidays provided ample op-portunity for filming. All our cousins would come down, and classical sing-ing and dancing filled the air. One time, Guru Dutt, a cousin (he was a dancer with renowned choreographer Uday Shankar’s troupe before he went on to become a filmmaker and actor in Bombay) came to our home for the summer vacation and frequently per-formed on the terrace in the evenings.

From our home in Trimulgherry (in the Secunderabad cantonment) the army’s Garrison cinema was a stone’s throw away. My brother and I had befriended the projectionist. The cinema had two or three changes of programme a week. This allowed us to watch both foreign and Indian films every week. This exposure to the rest of the world helped a great deal in creating my world view.

Was your career in the advertising industry a stepping stone?I did my MA in economics, but teaching did not seem like a par-ticularly good option. So I moved to Bombay looking for work. I gave up

the thought of assisting Guru Dutt because I had my own ideas for the kind of films I wanted to make. I got a job as a copywriter, but within months, my agency discovered my interest in cinema and I was put in the film de-partment. I started making ad films in a big way for the next 12 years until I became a full-time filmmaker.

I was making documentaries for the Films Division [of India] on the side, and attempting to find an investor for feature films. Then one day, one of our distributors, Mohan Bijlani, asked me why I wasn’t making feature films. I said I would if he would produce them and that’s how Ankur was made. I never looked back since.

You have explored interesting models of financing your films.The stories I wished to develop had relevance for the communities about whom the films were made. This motivated them to contribute to their making a crowd-funding model that I followed for some of those films. For Antarnaad, [based on a socio-religious movement in Maharashtra] people donated small sums of money over a large geographical area. Susman [about the struggle of rural handloom weavers against mechanization] was partly financed by weavers’ cooperatives. Manthan, too, was financed by [5,00,000 members of] the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd.



You’ve made films on various social issues. To what extent have they been addressed?Not altogether. India is a very large and complex country—a subconti-nent, in fact. Its diversity is enormous and we live in many different centu-ries at the same time. The diversities are not just horizontal, but vertical. It is not easy to address them adequately.

Cinematically, has poverty been swept under the carpet?Present-day cinema probably reflects the fact that poverty has at least been tackled economically in India. Visitations of famine year after year, in one or another part of the country was common, but not any more. Over the last several decades, the number of people living below the poverty line has come down, yet not completely eliminated.

Gandhi and Nehru have been an important part of your work. Are they being rendered irrelevant? Everybody has a place in history and when you talk of history, there is no such thing as irrelevance. They both came at a particular time in the coun-

try’s history and played their part ex-tremely well. They set us on a path, which has defined our course as an independent nation. Gandhiji gave us the weapon of satyagraha and his life was his message. He chose non-vio-lence to free us from the British and our colonized minds. Nehru could see the complexities of India as a nation.

His books reflect this so well. Perhaps, some of his ideas have less relevance today. After all, we are all crea-tures of our own time.

What are the subjects that are currently drawing your attention?A mini-series on all the wars India has fought in the 20th century. It looks at World Wars I and II, and after 1947, the conjoined twins [India and Pakistan] fighting each other. We are a ver y fascinating

people. It’s just not possible to be bored if you are in the subcontinent.

What keeps you going?Life is a one-way street; one has to keep going. First, you define the work for yourself and remain committed to it. Once there is total commitment, the work in turn begins to define you.

Nehru could see the complexities

of India as a nation; the books he wrote reflect

it so well.

98 | MARCH 2016 | READER’S DIGEST104 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

Lauren Fagen wanted nothing more than to bond with Africa’s big cats—

that wish nearly cost the teen her life

BY LIA GRAINGERPHOTOGRAPHY BY MAUDE CHAUVIN

LIONATTACK!

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LAUREN FAGEN woke early on 1 July 2013, the African sun still low in the sky. The petite 18-year-old had arr ived as a

volunteer at the Moholoholo Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre in north-east South Africa two weeks earlier to spend time with the animals she’d loved from afar since childhood. Born and raised in Mont real, Canada, she had always been fascinated by wild cats, and there was one that interested her above all: the lion.

W H E N FAG E N WA S L I T T L E , her parents were reluctant to have a pet, so instead she would spend time at the homes of friends with dogs and cats, cuddling and caring for them. In June 2013, three months before she was set to begin her much-anticipated undergraduate degree at McGill University, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she hadn’t fully explored her connection with animals.

She brought up the issue with her mother, Alana Isrealoff, and through an online search they discovered Moholoholo. Fagen was thrilled when her mom said she could use a portion of her education fund to spend four weeks at the centre.

The teenager had never travelled abroad alone before. A month later, she climbed out of a small plane that delivered her to the town of Hoedspruit, South Africa, and gazed out at the expansive plains.

AT THE CENTRE, Fagen marvelled at the range of wildlife. There were cheetahs, leopards, rhinos, hippos, hyenas, lions. She quickly learnt her daily routine, making her rounds to deliver breakfast to the creatures under her care: honey badgers, wild dogs and vultures.

When Fagen had time off, she would sit next to her favourite cheetah’s enclosure and press her hand flat against the chain-link fence so the animal could lick her palm. Some coordinators admonished her for this, but Fagen claims that other staff at the centre permitted the activity, which gave her the sort of intimate interaction with wildlife she had always craved. “From my perspective, so long as one of the coordinators had approved it, I was not taking any risks,” says Fagen.

In accordance with the centre’s policies, volunteers had to sign a document acknowledging they would be working with dangerous animals, and they were warned by coordinators not to go near cages without supervision.

During her time at Moholoholo, Fagen would write in her journal, “It’s hard not to be able to cuddle with any animals at the centre, despite being surrounded by them.”

On the morning of 1 July, she finished her early rounds and headed to the clinic, where 20 or so volunteers had gathered to receive the afternoon tasks that needed to be done that day. Coordinator Jan Last announced they



would be cleaning the feeding cages of the big cats.

“Who wants lions?” Last asked the group.

Fagen’s hand immediately shot up. “Me!” she exclaimed.

Last laughed. Fagen had not been shy about her desire to interact with the centre’s wild-cat population.

The teen grabbed a mop and a bucket and headed off.

THE LARGE-CARNIVORE enclosures consisted of feeding cages attached to main living areas. These cages—completely sealed with gates—allowed staff to feed the animals without coming into direct contact with them. Food was placed in the cage, and when the worker had safely exited, a gate was opened to allow the animal access to its meal.

The lions were kept in adjoining enclosures, and their feeding areas stood in a spaced-out row connected by a walkway. Fagen made her way to the end of the row and found herself alone outside one of the cages.

It was small, about three metres long and a metre and a half wide. She filled a bucket with water and sloshed it over the concrete floor. The cage’s low corrugated metal ceiling forced Fagen to crouch as she pushed the mop back and forth.

She squatted to get better leverage, and when she looked up, she froze. On the other side of the enclosure’s chain-link fence, not a metre from her,

a lion named Duma was rubbing his body against the fence.

Fagen was struck by the animal’s immense beauty.

This is it, she thought. The most memorable moment of my trip.

When she turned around, she saw another volunteer, Mariana Aranha, a 23-year-old biology student from São Paulo, Brazil, who had come to see if Fagen needed any help.

“That’s cute, but it’s not really safe,” Aranha recalls having warned Fagen, when she saw her close to the lion.

(For her part, Fagen has no memory of this warning.) She then took a picture of Fagen and Duma. “I can send it to you later.”

Fagen smiled and thanked Aranha for the photograph and said she didn’t need any help. She went back to cleaning while Aranha walked off.

Once alone, Fagen remembers noticing with alarm that Duma had moved. Instead of sitting behind the tightly woven fence, he was now be-hind the cage’s gate made of metal bars spaced several centimetres apart.

IT’S HARD NOT TO BE ABLE TO CUDDLE WITH ANY ANIMALS AT THE

CENTRE, DESPITE BEING SURROUNDED BY THEM.


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As Fagen watched, Duma slipped his paws through the bars and laid them down on the ground, extending his claws as he did so. The lion stared directly at Fagen.

Feeling her stomach lurch, she backed away and turned to continue her scrubbing.

Suddenly, she recalls, she found herself flipped violently onto her back. What happened? she thought. Did I trip?

She quickly realized what had occurred: Duma had reached through the bars and, with claws extended,

grasped her right leg, pulling it hard through the cage’s metal bars to past her knee.

RATHER THAN FEAR FOR her life, Fagen’s first thought was of how much trouble a lion attack would cause the centre. No one has to know about this, she thought. I’ll just pull my leg back.

That’s when Duma, his long yellow mane framing open jaws, clamped down on her right thigh.

It took Fagen a moment to identify the intense shrieks she was hearing as her own.

Seconds later, Aranha and another volunteer appeared in the entrance-way. They stared in shock at Duma, snarling over Fagen’s bloodied leg, then ran to get help.

Alone again, Fagen was horrified to see that her left leg had now also been pulled through the bars up to her lower thigh.

She felt no pain but knew that wouldn’t last long. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to look at Duma, gnawing on her right leg.

You can still save your left leg, Fagen told herself.

She leaned for ward, grabbed her left thigh above her knee and pulled. Excruciating pain shot up from her knee joint. She couldn’t get her knee back through the bars—it was stuck.

Fagen fell back on the wet ground and stared up at the ceiling of the feeding cage.

She was trapped.Then the teen had an idea. Forcing

her knee joint through the bars might mean breaking her leg, but that seemed a far better option than the alternative.

Break your own leg or die, Fagen thought quickly.

She reached down and again grabbed her thigh, barely covered by her now tattered and bloodied sweatpants. She focused her strength

FAGEN FELL BACK ON THE WET GROUND

AND STARED UP AT THE CEILING OF THE

FEEDING CAGE. SHE WAS TRAPPED.



and pulled, her knee joint straining against the viselike bars.

It was no use at all. Fagen stopped pulling, and her vision began to narrow into a black tunnel.

AT THE END OF the darkness, a face suddenly appeared. It was Last, the park’s volunteer coordinator, and with him was 24-year-old Natalie Bennett, a veterinary nurse from Surrey, England.

Rushing into the cage with Last, Bennett was shocked by what she saw: on the other side of the bars, a female lion named Tree, attracted by the

commotion, had joined Duma in the attack, biting at Fagen’s left leg as Duma chewed on the right. Last took hold of Fagen and pulled hard, but to no avail.

Bennett and Last grabbed brooms and brushes and began prodding and hitting the lions. After what felt like forever, the animals finally released Fagen’s legs.

Last grasped her again. With one yank, he managed to free Fagen from the bars of the cage. Delirious, she held up her hands, examining the ring on her index finger. It was caked in red.C

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Is that my blood? she wondered, then began to scream.

The lions nearby continued to pace and snarl, aggravated by the wailing. Last pulled Fagen out of the cage and laid her down on the grass.

Bennett surveyed Fagen’s injuries. She’d seen terrible animal wounds before, but nothing this serious. Fagen’s left knee was deeply gouged. Both legs were covered in teeth marks, and a 15-square-centimetre flap of flesh on the inside of her right thigh was hanging open, and bleeding. With the help of another park employee, Bennett bandaged the wounds.

Meanwhile, Fagen flailed as the two women worked to save her. They had to move quickly—swarming ants, attracted by the blood, were crawling around Fagen, trying to penetrate her deep cuts.

“Why does it tickle?” she yelled.“It’s nothing,” Bennett replied,

brushing the insects away and cover-ing the openings with gauze.

An ambulance had been called, but the first emergency responder to

arrive was a paramedic named Giles Becker. He leaped from the hospital SUV and ran to Fagen, where he tried to calm her. He then injected her with painkillers and gently loaded her onto a gurney [a wheeled stretcher] in the vehicle.

Bennett hopped in, and as they drove to meet the hospital ambulance, Fagen fought unconsciousness. “I’m so tired,” she moaned deliriously, her eyes fluttering shut.

“Lauren, you have to stay awake until we reach the ambulance,” said Bennett, taking her hand. “Your life depends on it.”

It was another hour until Fagen was transferred to the ambulance, which sped towards the hospital in Nelspruit, the closest town equipped to deal with substantial injuries. Two hours later, Fagen’s painkillers had all but worn off, and she was nearly hysterical with pain, as a medical team rolled her into the ER, where a nurse administered anaesthesia.

WHEN SHE AWOKE hours later, Fagen learnt her right tibia was broken, the ligaments of her left knee were torn, and there were lacerations to her tendons. Her inner-thigh muscles were, according to her attending doctor, “ripped apart.” She was really lucky to be alive. Had the rescue taken any longer, the lions would likely have hit a major artery.

News of the attack spread quickly around the world, with reports stating

FAGEN DENIES TRYING TO KISS DUMA AND BELIEVES THAT SHE

SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN LEFT ALONE TO CLEAN A

LION’S FEEDING CAGE.


that Fagen was trying to ‘kiss’ Duma when he pulled her through the bars. In court documents, the claim that Fagen had made physical contact with the lion would become part of Moholoholo’s owner’s defence in the lawsuit Fagen filed against him for close to $8,00,000 (the case has yet to go to court). The owner’s plea also states that Fagen violated the safety rules and was at fault for getting too close to the lion.

Fagen adamantly denies trying to kiss Duma and believes that she shouldn’t have been left alone to clean a lion’s feeding cage when the bars were wide enough for the animal to fit his paws. A volunteer observed that the centre added additional bars to Duma’s cage shortly after the incident had occurred. In press reports the

founder of Moholoholo said it was the first attack in its 20-year existence. (Moholoholo’s owner, on the advice of his lawyer, refused requests to comment on this story.)

Fagen’s mother arrived in South Africa three days after the attack to help her daughter through her recovery. It would be several weeks until Fagen was strong enough to travel home.

But before she did, Fagen went back to the centre one last time to see Duma and Tree. Reporters had been asking Fagen if she could forgive the lions for what they had done to her.

Gazing through the fence at the two enormous cats peacefully lounging on the dusty grass in South Africa, Fagen thought to herself, There’s nothing to forgive. I’ve always understood that animals are wild.


USELESS (BUT INTERESTING) FACTS

n Alaska is simultaneously the most northern, the most western, and

the most eastern state in the US.

n One trillion seconds is about 32,000 years.

n Women have been found to blink more often than men.

n Honey never spoils. You can eat 32,000-year-old honey.

n For every human on Earth there are approximately 1.6 million ants.

The total weight of all those ants is approximately the same as the

total weight of all the humans on Earth. Buzzfeed.com


THE HR MANAGER of an automobile manufacturing company confronted an employee for being habitually late by claiming that, “The company could have manufactured five extra cars in the time wasted by your late arrival.”

To which the employee quipped, “But the additional cars would mean worse traffic, and I’d be here even later!” R.S. RAGHAVAN, B e n g a l u r u

JUST BEFORE the final exam in my college finance class, a less-than stellar student approached me.

“Can you tell me what grade I would need to get on the exam to pass the course?” he asked.

I gave him the bad news. “The exam is worth 100 points. You would need 113 points to earn a D.”

“OK,” he said. “And how many points would I need to get a C?” AIMEE PRAWITZ

HERE’S A workplace culture shock: New York Times writer Amy Chozick describes what it was like to work for a fashion magazine: “A girl gets on (the elevator) with a Birkin bag, and

ALL IN

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“I’m sick and tired of your micromanaging.”


her friend goes, ‘Oh, my God, I love your bag. Is that new?’ And she goes, ‘No, I got it, like, a week ago.’” cosmopolitan.com

CONFERENCE CALLS are great if you want to hear 15 people say “What?” from the bottom of a well. @BAZECRAZE

I GOT an odd-job man in. He was useless. I gave him a list of eight things to do and he only did numbers one, three, five and seven.

COMEDIAN STEPHEN GRANT

A WOMAN called our airline customer service desk asking if she could take her dog on board.“Sure,” I said, “as long as you provide your own kennel.” I further explained that the kennel needed to be large enough for the dog to stand up, sit down, turn around, and roll over.

The customer was flummoxed: “I’ll never be able to teach him all of that by tomorrow!” gcfl.net

JOB INTERVIEWER: You wrote here that your biggest weakness is not knowing what ‘irony’ means.Me: Ironic, isn’t it? Is it? I don’t know... @DAVID8HUGHES

CLIENT: “We need you to log in to the YouTube and make all our company videos viral.” clientsfromhell.net

THAT’S A BAD SIGNSeen on a New York subway poster:“Se habla Español/Russian” (Spanish is spoken here/Russian). AARON FERNANDO, v i a t h e i n t e r n e t

Spotted on a restaurant’s website:“Glutton-free menu available.” EMILY PAYNE, v i a t h e i n t e r n e t

Read on a pharmacy marquee: “Wesell beer and wine! We can flavouryour child’s prescription!” Consumer Reports

POINT TAKENn No one ever says, “Boy, that ‘I Have a Dream’ speech could have been a lot better if Martin Luther King Jr. had used PowerPoint.”n The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t invent PowerPoint. n There’s no “I” in “team,” but there is one in “PowerPoint,” so you should make it yourself. meetingboy.com

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BY DAMAYANTI DATTA


Who Is UNIndian?

What does it take to be anti-national, legally?

W H O O R W H A T I S A N T I -NATIONAL? This is a question that has been at the centre of an urgent nation-wide debate. On 9 February, a group of students from Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) had allegedly raised anti-India slogans to mark the anniversary of the controversial execution of Afzal Guru, an accused in the 2001 terrorist attack on Parliament. On 13 February, Kanhaiya Kumar, the JNU students’ union president accused of sedition, was arrested. On 23 February, JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhatt a cha r ya, a l s o a c cu s e d o f sedition, ‘surrendered’ before the Delhi Police at midnight. They denied they had done anything wrong and added a telling comment : “These people are telling us about patriotism.”

But, what exactly is that statute—

Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code—that had its origins in a 146-year-old legislation, that defines who or what is un-Indian today? “Whoever, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visual representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the Government established by law in India, shall be punished...” Considered an “offence against the State”, sedition can even condemn one to a lifetime behind bars.

A COLONIAL HANGOVER“I feel that the time has come when we may advantageously concert measures and prepare a policy to exclude effectually seditious agitation.” It was August 1909, and


Lord Minto, Viceroy of India, was cooling off at his summer palace in Shimla and mulling over “measures to be taken for the suppression of sedition.” The archived Records of the Government of India, Foreign Department Serial No. 178, says he sent out letters to 24 princely states seeking “mutual cooperation against

a common danger”: “disaffected people” who dared criticize the British government in India.

Over a 100 years later, the word ‘sedition’ is still doing the rounds in an elected democracy, where citizens provide legitimacy to public policies and laws. A remnant of the age-old English common law, it was A

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introduced by the British in 1870. “As colonial rulers, they felt the need to ‘criminalize’ the disaffection of the colonized towards a government by force,” says legal scholar N.R. Madhava Menon. “But its continuance in free India is incongruous.” In a democracy, everyone has the right to disapprove of a government and seek its removal in the next election, without resorting to violence, he explains. The term sedition bumps up against the right to free expression and speech enshrined in the preamble and Article 19(1)(a) of the Indian Constitution.

CHILLING EFFECTMost modern constitutional democ-racies around the world have either abolished or let the provisions of sedition fall into disuse. The law of sedition was abolished in the UK in 2009 for not reflecting the values of constitutional democracies. Former colony New Zealand got rid of the law in 2007, for offending democratic val-ues and becoming a tool to silence po-litical opposition. In the US, the courts consistently criticize the “chilling effect” of the sedition law on free speech and afford wide protection to political speech. Failure to prevent sedition is also punishable there. In Australia, the law remains in the criminal codes.

In India, however, the vagueness of language, the voluminous legisla-tive history and conflicts in judicial interpretation have allowed succes-

sive governments to use it with im-punity. Legal search engine Indian Kanoon throws up hundreds of ref-erences for “sedition.” If in the pre-Independence cases, the overwhelm-ing rationale was “undermining the British government in India”, as in the three sedition trials of freedom-fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1897, 1908 and 1916, in independent India the judiciary has slapped sedition cases for inciting people to violence. Over the years, grounds for the sedition charge have widened: “for exceeding the limits of legitimate criticism;” “ha-bitually publishing seditious matter;” “mocking the Constitution;” “offences against the State;” or spreading “ha-tred,” “contempt,” and “disaffection”.

Yet the judiciary has routinely granted acquittals in sedition cases too. In 1942 (Niharendu Dutt Majum-dar vs King Emperor), the Calcutta High Court set aside a case where the appellant was arrested for his speech that the government had not taken any steps to stop communal distur-bances during the Dhaka riots: “…to describe it as an act of sedition is to do it too great [an] honour.” In 1962, the Supreme Court held (Kedar Nath Singh vs State of Bihar), “A citizen has a right to say or write whatever he likes about the Government, or its mea-sures, by way of criticism or comment, so long as he does not incite people to violence...” In 1995, (Balwant Singh and Anr vs State of Punjab), the Su-preme Court refused to punish two



men for raising slogans of ‘Khalistan Zindabad’ in a crowded area outside a cinema hall the day Indira Gandhi was assassinated: “Raising of some lonesome slogans, a couple of times by two individuals, without anything more, did not constitute any threat to the Government of India…”

POLITICOS Vs SUPREMOSNot surprisingly, sedition has turned out to be a great arena of judiciary-executive friction, especially in the new millennium. While the mandate of the courts has been to uphold freedom of speech and expression, successive governments have used sedition laws as a deadly weapon to stifle criticism and gag opponents. In 2003, Vishva Hindu Parishad leader Pravin Togadia was slapped with sedition by a Congress-run Rajasthan government for defying its ban on tridents, while in 2005 the Congress government in Punjab and Haryana filed an FIR against Simranjit Singh Mann, president of the Shiromani Akali Dal-Amritsar, for raising pro-Khalistan slogans in the Golden Temple complex on the 21st anniversary of Operation Blue Star. In 2006, Manoj Shinde, editor of Surat Saamna, a Gujarati newspaper, was charged with sedition for using “abusive words” in an editorial against then chief minister Narendra Modi.

A classic case is physician and rights activist, Dr Binayak Sen, who was convicted of sedition in 2010 on

the allegation that he “couriered” Naxalite letters. Did it have anything to do with his vocal criticism of the Chhattisgarh government’s vigilante outfit Salwa Judum? He got bail in April 2011, and the Supreme Court bench observed: “He may be a sym-pathizer, but this does not make him guilty of sedition.”

Who will have the last word on the JNU row? The executive or the judi-ciary? To senior advocate K.T.S. Tulsi, “Youngsters raising slogans and en-gaging in intellectual radicalism can-not be called sedition.” Where is the evidence to show they resorted to violence, posed a security threat to the state or had the intention of overthrow-ing the government, he asks. “I will be surprised if the charges stick.” P

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The new face of patriotism.


W H O I S U N I N D I A N ?

Rebel REPORT A history of some famous Indian sedition cases

1891

THE FIRST TRIALJogendra Chandra Bose criticized the government in an editorial of Bangobasi newspaper. Prosecution dropped the charges after he tendered an apology.

1897, 1908, 1916

THREE TRIALS OF BAL GANGADHAR TILAKFaced sedition charges thrice for “undermining the British govern-ment in India.” The second time, he spent six years in jail.

1922

TRIAL OF GANDHICharged for his writings in Young India. At the trial, he said, “I am here, therefore to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is deliber-ate crime, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.” Sentenced to six years in jail.

1934

KAMAL KRISHNA SIRCAR Vs THE EMPERORCharged for condemning Communist Party ban and sup-porting the Russian Bolsheviks. The Calcutta HC commented: “It is really absurd to say speeches of this kind amount to sedition.”

2005

SIMRANJIT SINGH MANN CASEPresident of the Shiromani Akali Dal, Amritsar, was arrested for raising pro-Khalistan slogans at the Golden Temple on the 21st anniversary of Operation Blue Star. The court held that raising slogans at a public meeting “is not sedition.”

2006

MANOJ SHINDE, EDITOR, SURAT SAAMNAFor using “abusive words” against chief minister Narendra Modi in an editorial and alleging administrative failure in tackling the Surat floods.

DR BINAYAK SEN, RAIPUR, CHHATTISGARHWas convicted for alleg-edly helping courier messages to Maoist lead-ership. Was sentenced to life imprisonment and granted bail later.

2010

ARUNDHATI ROY, S.A.R. Geelani, Varavara Rao, Shuddabrata Sengupta et al booked for their “anti-India” speech titled “Azadi: The Only Way.”

2012

ASEEM TRIVEDIKanpur cartoonist arrested for mock-ing Constitution. Did not apply for bail until charge was dropped. Bombay HC slammed police for his arrest on “frivolous grounds.”

ADAPTED FROM INDIA TODAY (7 MARCH, 2016). © 2016 LIVING MEDIA INDIA LIMITED.



1907

SEDITION OF LALA LAJPAT RAIWas deported to Mandalay in Burma for “open sedition” without a trial. However, he was allowed to return after a few months when Lord Minto decided that there was insufficient evidence to hold him for subversion.

BANDE MATRAM Aurobindo Ghose was arrested for “habitually publishing seditious matter” in Bande Matram newspaper, but was acquitted.

1942

NIHARENDU DUTT MAJUMDAR Vs KING EMPERORFor his speech that the Bengal government hadn’t taken any steps to stop communal dis-turbances during the Dhaka riots. Was later acquitted.

1962

KEDAR NATH SINGH Vs STATE OF BIHARCharged for seditious speech. SC held: “A citizen has a right to say what he likes about the government, or its measures, by way of criticism, as long as he does not incite violence.”

ALAVI Vs STATE OF KERALAWhere the court held that sloganeering, criticizing Parliament or the judicial setup did not amount to ‘sedition.’

1982

1995

BALWANT SINGH AND ANR Vs STATE OF PUNJABThey had raised slogans of ‘Khalistan Zindabad’ outside a cinema hall the day Indira Gandhi was assassinated. But their conviction was set aside by the Supreme Court.

2003

PRAVIN TOGADIA, VHP ACTIVISTSlapped with sedition by Rajasthan government for defying the prohibitory orders and ban on distribution of tridents; also faced a charge under Section 121-A of IPC (waging war or attempting anti-national activity).

HARDIK PATEL The 22-year-old quota agitation leader from Gujarat was booked by the police under charges of allegedly instigating a youth to kill policemen instead of committing suicide.

2015

ARUN JAITLEY Was charged for an article he wrote reacting to the Supreme Court verdict on the National Judicial Appointments Commission. The Allahabad High Court quashed the charges.

2016

From a patient of depression to a therapist—the story of a young woman who’s not afraid to speak up

Finding the SILVER LINING

THE AUTUMN OF 2002 was unlike any other. Instead of preparing for my new academic year, I was packing up my life in the US to move back to India. I was 12 then and Philadelphia was my world—with my school, friends, and all the other anchors of childhood. Although I was uncertain about the decision, a part of me was looking forward to the move.

My parents had promised me that we would be happy in India. The seventh grade, however, proved to be the beginning of my tumultuous school life. The sultry Pathanamthitta weather and the overall culture shock aside, language was a problem as, back then, not many children in Kerala spoke English. My accent didn’t help either and was a constant subject of mockery. Coming from an interactive model of learning, I found little scope for communication. By the end of the academic year, I had changed three schools and switched from an ICSE

syllabus to the state board curriculum and then finally to CBSE.

Still unsettled, I would often refuse to go to school and weep bitterly un-til my parents gave in and let me stay at home for the day. With not one friend to help me sail through it all, I tried hard to shut school out of my life and began to miss many classes. Finally, the teachers suggested that I seek psychological counselling, which didn’t seem like a good idea to me. My parents were also hesitant because of the stigma attached to it. They didn’t want their little girl to get labelled, and waited for time to set things right.

But when school continued to make me as miserable as ever, my parents decided that it was indeed time I saw a psychologist. I didn’t disagree. After all, here was my chance to miss an-other day of school.

The psychologist was a young lady in her late twenties. She welcomed me with a pleasant smile and asked, “How


BY PRATHYASHA GEORGE AS TOLD TO SNIGDHA HASAN

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are you feeling today?” I looked away and said nothing. The psychologist was inexperienced and didn’t know how to handle a difficult case like mine either. She tried to establish a rapport with me, but I remained defensive throughout. After about half an hour, I was starting to lose my patience. Since my reluctance to go to school was the theme of the session, the only words I uttered at the clinic were, “I am ready to go to school,” just so she would let me go. I never saw her again.

Years went by and my life was now beset with despondency. I knew I was different from other people and it was getting difficult to have me around at home too. My parents still thought it was a phase I’d grow out of, but I was deeply wounded. I kept to myself and spent nights crying into my pillow. Things only got worse af-

ter I completed my graduation. I was always a bright student, but I had grown aimless. My parents’ patience had begun to wear thin and one day, after my results were out, things came to a head. They told me to get a job, or share once and for all what my plan for the future was, or, leave the house. A bachelor’s degree in philosophy didn’t prove to be very helpful professionally, so that only added to my confusion. This seemed like the last straw and I slashed my wrist. It was a desperate cry for help. I couldn’t go on any longer.

When good sense prevailed, I told my parents I needed help and they were happy to take me to a psychia-trist. I remember bursting into tears in the doctor’s office. This was very dif-ferent from my first experience with a therapist. The psychiatrist was an elderly man with silver-grey hair. He


Prathyasha, at home in Thiruvanan- thapuram.

looked at me patiently, waiting for me to start talking. For the first time in my life, I opened up to someone, and it felt good. I was diagnosed with depression—and later with bipolar disorder—and prescribed medication.

Things started to change dramati-cally for the better. I had never felt this alive or so close to my true self. What had been brushed aside all these years as mood swings, stubbornness and a difficult personality, began to fall into place. Nothing was irreparable, after all. The medicines were working mir-acles and I wondered why I had been holding myself back.

With a fresh perspective on life, I had to decide what to do with it. Noth-ing felt more right than studying psy-chology. At first, it was just an attempt to understand myself better. But later I realized that there are a lot of people, like me, who needed help. I was deter-mined to know more about my illness.

I completed my masters with a university rank. Soon, I started work-ing with a psychotherapist myself. It felt different sitting on the other side of the table. I would see a part of my-self in every patient I interacted with.

Once, a girl who had moved to Kerala from Dubai, came to see me, when I briefly worked as a counsellor at an architecture college in Thiruvanan-thapuram. She was finding it difficult to adjust to the new environment. So when I comforted her saying that things do get better and gave her my example, we both knew that it was not an empty promise.

What I considered a curse is indeed a blessing. It helped shape my choice of career, and, more importantly, em-pathize with my patients. My new-found self renewed my zest for life. And now that I knew my calling, I couldn’t waste another moment. I cleared the National Eligibility Test two years ago, and at 24, became an assistant pro-fessor of psychology at Farook Col-lege, under the University of Calicut. Teaching was wonderful, but I realized I wasn’t done with learning. So now I am back in Thiruvananthapuram, preparing for the entrance exam for MPhil in clinical psychology at the renowned NIMHANS in Bengaluru.

It’s been a long journey from being a patient to a therapist. My parents have been on this roller coaster with me and nothing makes them happier than seeing their daughter’s indepen-dence and achievements. Bouts of de-pression remain a part of my life, and at times, slacken its pace. But today, I know how to manage them without letting them eclipse what’s good. I’ve learnt that there is always hope, even when you can’t see the silver lining.


F I N D I N G T H E S I LV E R L I N I N G

Things started to change. I had never felt this alive or so close to my true self.


I’D TAKEN my children to visit their aunt in Guernsey, and we were to be joined by my other sister and her children. On the morning they arrived, my sister and I were excited.

“The eagle has landed!” I said as their plane touched down. I had a lot of explaining to do when I overheard my son telling his cousins, “When your plane got in, Mummy said, ‘The evils have landed.’ ” ABIGAIL WATKINS

THE LOVELIEST PRESENT I’d ever received was a box from my son Cal, which appeared empty.

I peered inside and, puzzled, asked him if he’d forgotten to put something in it.

He exclaimed, “But Mummy, it’s full of kisses I blew into it!”

I just had to hug him and say sorry. It made my day! VANESSA SMITH

MY YOUNG SON and his cousin were watching a video of a peacock screaming, and got into an argument about whether it was crying or not.

As the peacock proceeded to unfurl its magnificent tail, my nephew yelled, “Oh no! It burst!”

SAMIKSHA SHARMA, Ne w D e l h i

MY FIVE-YEAR-OLD granddaughter, Ashika, recently started learning about continents, oceans and the concept of a globe.

The other day, when she tripped and fell on the globe, her first ques-tion was, “Did I cause an earth-quake?” K.G. SUBRAMANIAM, B e n g a l u r u

As Kids See ItIN

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THEY HAVE BEEN BUILDING the Sagrada Família for 133 years and counting. It is expected to take yet another 11 years before the work on Spain’s most famous, and seemingly permanent, building site is finally completed. This hasn’t stopped the monumental church in the heart of Barcelona from becoming a magnet for tourists. The fantasy basilica, largely the brainchild of architect Antoni Gaudí, is visited by around three million people every year.

Great architecture, unusual locations, fascinating history—these churches are all truly unique


H A L L O W E D H A L L S



THE CHURCH in the Swiss monastery village of Cazis looks as if it has been carved from solid stone. In reality it is the product of an extravagant and clever architectural design. No less than 108 wooden elements were layered with shotcrete to create this unique place of worship. A particular highlight is the building’s windows, which are designed to create special lighting effects at different times of the day.

THIS UNDERGROUND salt church is dedicated to Saint Barbara, the patron saint of miners. The extraordinary place of worship lies 240 metres below the surface of the Romanian town of Târgu Ocna. The church’s spacious interior chamber, chandelier, bishop’s chair, cross and numerous other religious objects are all carved entirely from salt.

IT IS ALMOST impossible not to be dazzled by the vivid colours of Saint Basil’s Cathedral on Moscow’s Red Square, despite this garish Russian landmark’s alleged gruesome history. Built in the 16th century during the rule of Ivan the Terrible, legend has it that this famously cruel czar was so thoroughly pleased with the end result, he had the architects blinded to prevent them from creating anything as beautiful ever again.


C O M E B A C K C I T Y

ABOUT 2,700 METRES above sea level, in the Columbian town of Zipaquirá, worshippers wishing to attend mass have to journey deep underground into a disused salt mine. Visitors can walk the 14 Stations of the Cross at depths of up to 180 metres. The star attraction, however, is the 120-metre-long cathedral with a 16-metre-high cross at its end, a breathtaking view even for the non-religious.

THE “JERUSALEM of Ethiopia” is situated in Lalibela, a small town in the north of the country. This is the location of no fewer than eleven monolithic churches, each of them hewn from a single block of stone and connected to the others by an ingenious network of tunnels. Probably the most famous among them is the Church of Saint George, a huge building in the shape of a cross that was carved out of the bedrock from the top down in the 13th century.

TRINITY CHURCH on King George Island is one of the remotest churches in the world—it is located in Antarctica! The small wooden church was built in 2004 on the grounds of Russia’s Bellingshausen research station and has been defying the unrelenting elements ever since. The 15-metre-high wooden structure can accommodate up to 30 people.


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VERY TIME I VISIT VENICE ITS BEAUTY HITS ME afresh. But what I love about this great city is that its sunny, gilded splendour carries with it a subtle hint of melancholy. You have the Grand Canal, made famous by Canoletto, with its exquisite palaces and jade-green waters, to be sure. But this is also a city built on shifting sands amid treacherous tides; a place of mists and ghosts. And for the curious-minded, it is also a city of surprises and mysteries.

secretVenıce

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It’s one of the most visited cities on the planet. But there’s so much the tourists miss. Our tour guide: John Hooper

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Intriguing turbaned figures watch over the diners in Venice’s Campo dei Mori.


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Like any visitor arriving at Venice’s bustling Santa Lucia railway station, I set off to explore the city following signs to the Rialto. Had this been my first time here, I would have then fol-lowed further signs taking you from the Rialto to the glories of St Mark’s Square, the Doges’ palace, the Bridge of Sighs and the waterside Riva degli Schiavoni with its breathtaking views across the lagoon.

But today I’m intent on enjoying some of Venice’s less obvious attrac-tions. So, once across the Ponte delle Guglie, as tourists disappear into the first of a string of lanes packed with souvenir stores, I turn left. Beyond the fishmonger’s stall on the fondamenta (the Venetians’ word for a paved quay-side), I enter another world.

The sestiere, or district, of Cannare-gio (1, on the map overleaf) is where more than a third of Venice’s citizens live. It is where they do their shop-ping, where they stop to gossip and where they walk their dogs—although this city is uniquely unsuited to dog

ownership, Venetians are, somewhat perversely, passionate dog lovers.

Cannaregio is also a place of sur-prises. Slip into the second narrow lane on the right and you are in the Ghetto (2), an area where the Jews were forced to live back in the early 16th century during the old Venetian Republic.

Further down the lane, I glance up and spot a plaque on the wall that warns Jews against vilifying Christianity “on pain of the rope, jail, the galleys and the whip.” The Ghetto draws some tourists and even has a few gift shops selling everything from menorahs—nine-armed candle holders used on the festival of Hanukkah—to wine stoppers made of coloured glass produced in the lagoon on the island of Murano.

But beyond the Rio della Misericor-dia—the ironically named Canal of Mercy that runs by the Ghetto—lies an even quieter area where tourist gondolas rarely venture and where the loudest sound for much of the year is the squabbling of gulls.

I AM LO OKING FOR HIDDEN treasure. The few who chance upon the 14th-century church of Sant’Alvise (3) probably don’t spare it a second glance. But in the presbytery and tucked away to one side of the altar are three works by the great 18th-century Rococo painter, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

Sant’Alvise is engagingly idiosyn-cratic. The artists who painted the

Everyday life in Cannaregio.



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ceiling used drastic foreshortening to create the impression of pillars soaring through the roof to heaven. But something went awry. So, unless you stand right in the middle of the church, the pillars on the other side all tilt in the wrong direction.

At the back of the church is a set of rather crudely painted tempera panels depicting scenes from the Old Testa-ment. One detail is striking: a tasselled canopy over a potentate of some kind. It is so wholly un-European that it could only have been painted by someone who had seen an original brought from the East.

More than any of the states that

made up Italy before its unification i n t h e 1 9 t h c e nt u r y , Ve n i c e —independent for over a thousand years—looked east : to the Levant, Persia and far beyond. Arab and other eastern influences seeped into everything from their architecture to their jewellery.

R e t r a c i n g m y s t e p s t o t h e Fondamenta della Sensa, I walk east to the little Campo dei Mori (4), or Moors’ Square, so called because of three sculpted, robed and turbaned figures who stand in niches set into the walls. Weatherbeaten now—they have lost their original noses—the “Moors” are a mystery. The most

John Hooper leaves the crowds

behind.

M Y S E C R E T V E N I C E


which they belong, with no regard to the lane or canal they look onto.

AFTER A REVIVING ESPRESSO macchiato, I catch the number 12 to the pretty island of Burano (6), where the houses are painted in every colour of the rainbow, and then a number 9 to the island of Torcello (7) and a step back in time.

Torcello is all but uninhabited these days. But there are some restaurants for visitors along the brick path that leads away from the vaporetto stop. A chill wind is blowing. Gulls screech. I decide it’s time for lunch and duck into the cosy Osteria al Ponte del Diavolo for a plate of steaming pasta: spaghetti al nero di seppie (spaghetti with cuttlefish ink), Venice’s most tra-ditional dish. Delicious.

For most people, Venice is the col-lection of islands, centred on the Ri-alto, that seem to form one big island in the shape of a fish. But the term also encompasses the other islands in the Venetian lagoon, and there was a time when Torcello was the most populous and important of them all; when it was Venice.

After the collapse of the Roman empire in the w est, G er manic tribespeople poured into the Italian peninsula, prompting wave after wave of refugees to flee for their lives into the lagoon. The largest number settled on Torcello, becoming subjects of the only remaining “Roman” empire—that of the east, with its capital at

common explanation is that they depict three brothers, traders in silk and spices, who came to Venice in the 12th century as refugees from their homeland of Morea, an old name for Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula. But, if that is the case, why did they wear oriental clothes? And why is there a fourth “Moor” around the corner next to the house of Cannaregio’s most famous son, the late Renaissance painter, Tintoretto?

The artist’s real name, which was only recently discovered, is another echo of Venice’s trading links with the east. His surname was Comin, which means cumin.

Nearby, Tintoretto’s g igantic depictions of the Last Judgement and the Worship of the Golden Calf, soar over 15 metres to the vaulted ceiling of the Madonna dell’Orto (5). On my way to admire them, crossing the Rio della Madonna dell’Orto, I glance back at the façade of the grand house the brothers from Morea are said to have built for themselves. What I see only deepens the mystery of its earliest occupants: a bas-relief of a man with a camel.

Behind the church of the Madonna dell’Orto, there is a vaporetto (water bus) stop. I need the 4.2 to get to Fondamenta Nove. “We do our best to confuse outsiders,” jokes a local as we wait on the pontoon. Not only do some of the vaporetto routes have decimal points, but houses are numbered according to the sestiere to



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tified by the pasta—I head for the top. In the belfry, I find myself alone. In a silence broken only by the whistling wind, I look out undisturbed over Tor-cello with its fields and vegetable plots laced by streams and linked by rickety wooden bridges. It’s not so very dif-ferent from how the place must have looked back in the 7th century.

I AM STAYING ON THE GIUDECCA (8) , the long, eel-shaped island slithering under the belly of the “fish.” Outside the tourist season, it belongs to the Venetians even more

Constantinople or Byzantium. So when, in 639, the inhabitants of

Torcello built themselves a cathedral, and even in 1008 when the existing ba-silica was erected, much of the decora-tion was of a kind associated with the eastern Christian churches. No photo-graph can do justice to the sheer scale of its towering mosaics: of the Virgin and Child behind the altar and of the Last Judgement on the rear wall.

For several years, the bell tower of what is now the Basilica di Santa Ma-ria Assunta was closed for repairs. But it was reopened in 2014, and so—for-

VENICE AND ISLANDS

Explore the lesser-known, numbered haunts to discover a secret Venice.

A H O L E I N T H E H E A R T O F E U R O P E


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sparkling Prosecco wine with a dash of soda) to go with the nuts and olives the barman sets out for me.

Next day, I have time to kill. I want to visit the island of San Lazzaro de-gli Armeni, but it can only be reached by a vaporetto that leaves just once a day: at 3:10 p.m. So first I decide to make for the part of Venice where the Bienniale, the city’s international contemporary art exhibition, is held. In the gardens nearby, there is a mag-nificent 19th century greenhouse, the Serra dei Giardini (9), nowadays part-garden nursery and part-café-restau-rant. It is the ideal place for a leisurely mid-morning coffee.

I continue my tour, reaching a square hung with washing in the al-leyways off Via Garibaldi. Here I come across a large shrine created from one side of a house. It has lace curtains and, inside, amid the pots of flowers,

than Cannaregio: here you find the homes of the city’s postal workers and garbage collectors, the people who steer its fire launches and wash the tourists’ linen.

But it is also in the early stages of becoming Venice’s alternative quarter. Several art galleries sit along the quay that faces the main island of Venice. One of them is holding an opening party. From inside, comes laughter and the chinking of glasses.

A little way along, I discover Gen-erator, a hostel carved out of an old grain store. The bar, with its smart but quirky retro decor would not look out of place in one of the trendier quarters of Berlin. Just the spot for an aperitivo before dinner. I settle for a Venetian favourite, an Aperol spritz (Aperol and

Colourfully painted houses are a trademark of the island of Burano.



AT 3:10 P.M. PRECISELY, THE number 20 vaporetto casts off for the final leg of my journey, to the fabled island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni (10). Once a leper colony, it was put at the disposal of an order of Arme-nian Catholic monks who fled when the Turks seized their monastery in Morea. That was in 1717.

The monastery’s museum today is a treasure house for anyone with a taste for the exotic. It houses artefacts from the lost civilisation of Urartu, a manu-script written in the extinct language of Ge’ez and a sword belonging the last ruler of the half-forgotten Arme-nian kingdom of Cilicia.

At the end of my visit, standing in the church with its bright turquoise ceiling and mosaics, I ask the black-bearded monk who has showed me around where he was from.

“Kessab in Syria,” he says. “It was once part of the kingdom of Cilicia.”

Then he shakes his head.“Today is a very sad day for me,” he says. “It is a year since jihadis took Kessab and drove out its Christian population. They sacked the city and desecrated the cemetery.” Venice still picks up dis-tant echoes from the east.

John Hooper is the Italy correspondent for The Economist and author of The Italians.

an icon—again, that lingering Byzan-tine influence—of the Madonna.

It gives me an idea. I catch the vaporetto towards Saint Mark’s, but get off after a couple of stops.

A couple of hundred metres away, beyond the Pensione Wildner where the 19th-century American novelist Henry James finished The Portrait of a Lady, is Calle de la Pietà. I doubt if more than one visitor in a thousand notices the slot for offerings under the little bas-relief of the Virgin and Child.

Even fewer notice the wooden seg-ment jutting out above the green door. It looks as if it might belong to an early revolving door. As indeed it does: the rest of the structure, inside the Hotel Metropole, houses a cash register. But once it had a sadder purpose. It was a foundling wheel—a device in which mothers could leave their unwanted babies to be brought up by nuns.

Further down the lane you get to what was—and, to some extent, still is—Venice’s Greek quarter. After various twists and turns, I reach another bridge and, opening a gate on the left, walk beside the Rio dei Greci to the Orthodox church of San Giorgio. Next door is a museum of icons, the oldest of which date from the 15th century and were rescued from Constantinople.

WAGER OF THE BEAST?

The sum of all the numbers on a roulette wheel is 666. Mental Floss

CLASSIC BONUS READ

The Case of the Rolex MurderA routine investigation into a drowning leads police through a complex web of swindles, double and triple identities —and finally, to a cold-blooded killer

BY BILL SCHILLER FROM A HAND IN THE WATER


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T H E C A S E O F T H E R O L E X M U R D E R

EARLY SUNDAY MORNING, 28 JULY 1996, fisherman John Copik and his son, Craig, left their home port in Brixham, Devon, on England’s south coast, aboard the trawler Malkerry. Once at sea, they let a long trawling net out behind them.

After about two hours the men hauled up the net. Finding few fish, they released it again. Another check a few hours later showed that things hadn’t improved. They let the net out a third time and turned for home.

About 3 p.m., less than 10 kilometres from shore, Copik called to his son, “Let’s haul ’em in, mate!” As the net emerged from the water, Copik could see that their luck had changed. It was loaded with fish, with one especially large one trapped inside. Probably a porpoise, the father thought.

As the net drew closer, however, Copik felt a chill run through him. A human face stared back at him, the mouth slightly ajar.

In an autopsy, injuries were duly noted: a crack on the back of the skull; a well-defined bruise on the left hip; some minor lacerations on the chest and back, possibly caused by the body being dragged along the sea floor.

None of these injuries was serious enough to have killed the man, the senior pathologist concluded. The blow to the head might have been sustained accidentally, perhaps as the deceased fell into the water. But the fact that the lungs were laden with sea-water, led the pathologist to make his pronouncement: death by drowning.

The question that remained unanswered: who was he?

Father and son heaved the net on board and Copik radioed the Coast Guard. As the Malkerry sailed into port, a police car waited at the dock.

Detective Constable Ian Clenahan, a young officer who had just been posted to the region, bent over to have a look at the body. The dead man was fully dressed and had a large gash on the back of his head. On his right wrist was a stainless steel Rolex Oyster watch showing the time and date—11:35, 22 July. There was no identification on the body, just one possible identifying mark: a tattoo of what looked to be five stars on the back of the man’s right hand.



TIME WILL TELLDays went by, yet the police were no closer to making an identification. Then on 31 July, a friend suggested to the coroner’s officer, Robin Little, that since every Rolex comes with a serial number, perhaps the company might help. Little dialled Rolex’s UK office, about 290 kilometres away in Bexley, Kent, and explained the situation to one of its employees, who confirmed

that each Rolex made has a serial number inscribed on its casing. Thus a record of every servicing to a watch could be obtained through Rolex’s central registry.

Little slipped the watch out of its plastic bag and flipped it over. He could see no number.

“It’s on the shoulder of the casing, just where the bracelet joins the case,” he was told. “You can’t see it without taking the pins out and removing the bracelet.”

And so, with a small needle, Little nudged one and then the other pin out, and carefully removed the bracelet. There, inscribed on the side of the watch, was number 1544402.

According to the Rolex records, the watch had been serviced twice in the 1980s, both times by an authorized dealer in Harrogate.

Following a call to the watch dealer, Clenahan asked the local police to confirm a name: Ronald Joseph Platt, born 22 March 1945. National and personal records allowed them to track the victim from Harrogate to 100 Beardsley Drive, in Chelmsford,

Essex, a little over 400 kilometres east of where the body was found.

Armed with this, Clenahan asked the Chelmsford police to research the victim. There, Sergeant Peter Redman came up with a useful piece of information: Platt’s landlord still had the name and cell-phone number of a reference Platt had provided when he’d moved in six months earlier. It was a Mr David Davis.

Redman gave the cel l-phone number to Clenahan. The detective dialled: “Is that David Davis?”

“Yes, it is.”“David Davis, who acted as a

reference for a Ronald Platt, who leased a flat in Chelmsford?”

THE MAN HAD DIED BY DROWNING, THE PATHOLOGIST SAID. THE UNANSWERED QUESTION: WHO WAS HE?



Also, he said that Platt had done a stint in the army.

All interesting material, Clena-han thought. With a little more luck, he might be able to close the file on this case. He especially wanted to wrap it up now that a new detective chief inspector (DCI) for Devon and Cornwall, Phil Sincock, had arrived.

IDENTITY CRISISSincock had come to his post with impeccable credentials. In 1990, he had taken on a murder case that had gone unsolved for 10 years—and conclusively pinned it on a criminal already doing time for kidnapping. So far, however, it appeared that his detective skills would not be needed for the Platt case. It was being treated as an accident and was coming along well. Army dental records had confirmed Platt’s identity. Then the police managed to track down one of the victim’s brothers, Brian.

The dead man was most definitely Ronald, the brother said. He explained that the tattoo on the right hand was not a five-pointed star, but a maple leaf. His brother had been raised in Canada and loved the country.

Brian gave them more useful information: Ron had had a girlfriend, Elaine Boyes. They had been together off and on for more than 12 years, but three years earlier, in 1993, they had broken up.

By this point the investigation had extended into October. It had

“Yes. Who is this?”“Constable Ian Clenahan , Mr Davis.

There’s been an accident at sea and a body has been found. We believe it may be your friend Mr Platt.”

“Oh, my God! Are they absolutely certain?”

“Apparently,” Clenahan said. “Could you go to the station in Chelmsford and tell us a little bit about him?”

“Of course.”On 22 August, a six-foot-one,

dapper man with a dark beard walked into the Chelmsford station. He had an oval face, a strong chin and shining brown eyes. He identified himself as David Davis.

Sergeant Redman, a fr iendly, round-faced plain-clothes detective, welcomed his visitor.

He knew Ronald Joseph Platt, Davis said. “I’ve known him for a couple of years. He’s a friend. Kindred spirit, really. But I understood he’d left for France to set up a business there.”

“When did you last see him?”“June, I believe.” “Did he leave an address?”“No. But I was anticipating hearing

from him.” Davis added that before Platt left, he had his mail redirected to Davis’s address, Little London Farm.

While Davis was still there, Redman called Clenahan and passed the phone to Davis, who told the detective constable that Platt had two brothers. He was not sure where they lived, but he did know that the dead man’s mother was living in High Wycombe.



been two-and-a-half months since the corpse was found. At long last it seemed it was nearly time to lay Platt’s body, and the file, to rest.

Just one question remained: how had Platt ended up at the bottom of the sea?

Since David Davis seemed to have been the dead man’s only friend, Clenahan wanted to talk to him one more time. The detective had trouble reaching Davis on his cell phone, so he called Sergeant Redman, his

colleague in Chelmsford, for another favour: could he go out to Davis’s house and ask him to call the Devon and Cornwall police department?

On 14 October, Redman, in civilian clothes, drove to Little London Lane. There, he found four houses. Two had signs on their gates, but neither one said Little London Farm, the name of Davis’s house. That left the other two.

The o dds are 50-50, thought Redman. When he went to one of the houses and knocked, an older gentleman answered the door.

“Sorry to bother you, sir, but is this Little London Farm?”

“This is Little London House,” the man said. “That,” he said, stepping out onto the porch and pointing next door, “is Little London Farm.”

“Thank you very much,” Redman said, and began to walk away. Then it struck him that he’d better make sure. He turned around. “That is where Mr David Davis lives, isn’t it?”

“Dear boy,” the elderly man replied, “you’re mistaken again. There’s no Mr Davis who lives there. That is where Ronald Platt lives.”

Redman was stunned. “Ronald Platt?”

“Yes. With his wife, Noël. And their two children.”

“May I ask what this Mr Platt looks like? I may have the wrong address.”

“Oh, he’s about 50. An American chap. Outgoing, friendly, dark hair, beard. A retired banker from New York. He spends a lot of time on his boat down in Devon.”

It was a precise description of Davis, Redman realized. He had to get back to the station and make an urgent call. As he heard Clenahan answer, Redman said, “Something’s up.”

“DEAR BOY,” THE ELDERLY MAN REPLIED. “THERE’S NO MR DAVIS WHO LIVES THERE. THAT IS WHERE RONALD PLATT LIVES.”



and other detectives. He ordered them to put Little London Farm and its resi-dents under a microscope; get hold of local government records, banking records, and itemized telephone bills.

Clenahan tracked down Platt’s former girlfriend Elaine Boyes in Harrogate and made an appointment to meet with her.

Wearing glasses and dressed rather conservatively, she seemed genial and quite trusting.

Clenahan had brought a photo-graph of the dead man’s hand, the one with the maple-leaf tattoo.

Yes, a shaken Boyes said, it was Ron. The police had notified a David

Davis too, Clenahan told her.“How long has he known?” she

asked.“A couple of months now.”The woman froze. She said she had

spoken to Davis only about a week before and had asked about Platt. All Davis had said was that he had seen him off to France.

Boyes went on to tell Clenahan about her life with Ron Platt, and how the two of them had come to befriend David Davis. It had begun in the summer of 1990. She was then a 31-year-old receptionist at Henry Spencer and Sons Fine Art Auctioneers in Harrogate, a posh Victorian spa town, a little over 360 kilometres north of London.

One day a man walked in and asked to see some paintings. Just then the phone rang. Boyes answered it, fielded

FATEFUL ENCOUNTERClenahan listened to the sergeant’s report, then went to Sincock’s office.

“That Davis fellow who’s helped us out with the Platt case,” Clenahan began, “the man who said he was the dead man’s friend. He’s been living under Platt’s name.” And one more damning detail: Davis had a boat down in Devon somewhere.

The Platt case was now no longer a low priority. The next day the DCI convened a meeting with Clenahan A

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The police were sure David Davis was a liar, but was he capable of murder?



other calls, and handled queries from colleagues, every now and then giving a nodding smile to the patiently wait-ing visitor. “At last,” Boyes said. “How can I help you?”

“I’ve been watching you,” the man replied. “You’ve got people traipsing through here, the phone’s ringing, and you treat everyone so well. I could use someone like you.”

“I beg your pardon?”“I’m planning on starting up a

little fine-arts and antiques company myself. I’m over here quite a bit now, and I’ll be moving permanently from America soon. I’d pay you well, you could travel, we could even take some courses together down at Sotheby’s in London.

“You don’t even know me.”“David Davis,” he said, extending

his hand, bowing slightly and smiling as he did so.

“Elaine Boyes,” she replied, shaking hands. “But this is ridiculous. I can’t even think about changing jobs, Mr Davis. I’ve promised my boyfriend we’ll move to Canada. He grew up there, and all he ever talks about

is going back. We’re planning on heading over as soon as we have the money.”

“Elaine,” said Davis, “I could offer you enough money so that within a year’s time, you could both fly off.”

Boyes agreed to think about it. When Davis saw her again in Febru-ary, he met her boyfriend, Ron Platt. Boyes decided to accept Davis’s offer.

In April, Elaine Boyes became special assistant and secretary of

Cavendish Corp., Davis’s new art-and-antiques venture. She was her boss’s sole legal representative, with the power to open bank accounts, and deposit and withdraw money on his behalf.

Around that time Davis told her about the ‘tragedy’ of his first mar-riage and how his ex-wife, back home in the United States, was pursuing him for alimony. His response had been to move to London. One daughter, Noël, had chosen to come with him. For that reason it was vital, Davis told Boyes, that his name never appear on documents of any kind. Security and secrecy were crucial.

“I COULD USE SOMEONE LIKE YOU,” THE MAN SAID. “I’M PLANNING ON STARTING A FINE-ARTS AND ANTIQUES COMPANY.”



mail. She’d give it to Davis, and he’d have her transfer some of that money back into Cavendish’s accounts.

Then unexpectedly, late in 1992, Davis told Boyes that the loans he’d given her for the purchase of her apartment had to be called in. He cited “cash-flow problems.” The couple listed their apartment for sale. A few weeks later, Davis told Platt he could no longer pay the rent on his shop. Platt would have to go it alone.

On Christmas Day, 1992, Davis

invited Boyes and Platt to dinner at his house and presented them with a card in which he had written: “Two air tickets to Canada. Valid until the end of February.”

“It’s time you and Elaine seized the dream, Ron,” he said. The couple thanked Davis profusely, although Boyes later persuaded him to give her a return ticket, just in case.

Davis had one last favour to ask. Since he would have to operate Cavendish Corp. all alone and would need to access his money, could Boyes and Platt make rubber-stamp copies of their signatures?

“I’M GOING HOME”Elaine Boyes had a strong incentive to follow Davis’s instructions to the let-ter. He not only paid her 50 per cent more than she had made at Spencer’s but also arranged for her and Platt to buy a stylish two-bedroom apartment. “Mr D,” as Platt called him, had put up nearly $1,00,000 for the purchase.

Davis and Platt were about the same age and had become friends. Davis rented premises for Platt and set him up in his own television-and-video

repair business. He had even lent Platt $23,000 for start-up costs.

As for the work Boyes had to do, it was hardly onerous, she explained to Clenahan. Davis would send her off to France, Italy or Switzerland, to look at an antique sale or some properties and, while she was there, deposit cash in accounts she set up in her own name, as secretary of Cavendish Corp. It was all part of Davis’s alimony-avoidance strategy.

Throughout 1991 and 1992 every-thing went smoothly. Boyes would return home from a trip, and a week later a deposit slip would arrive by

IN HIS LETTER, PLATT WROTE HE WAS RETURNING TO ENGLAND. HE HAD BEEN TRYING TO LIVE ON ODD JOBS AND WAS FED UP.



His request didn’t seem unreason-able. Both complied. On 11 February 1993, Boyes signed over a power of attorney to Davis, so that he could finish up the sale of the apartment. The document gave him the right, she recalled, “to deposit money, to draw money, to sign my name, to receive mail on my behalf, generally to act in relation to my personal affairs in all respects as I myself do.”

Davis, ever the smooth talker, convinced Platt to also leave him copies of his birth certificate and driver’s licence.

On the evening of 22 February 1993, there was a farewell dinner for the couple before they left for Canada. At one point, Ron Platt announced, “By this time tomorrow I’ll be home.”

DARK AND COLDFor Boyes, Calgary in February was a harsh introduction to a new country. The city was not at all the wide-open, friendly frontier town of Platt’s child-hood memories. It seemed dark and cold now.

Neither Boyes nor Platt had jobs lined up, so they were forced to look for cheap housing. They found a little basement apartment. At night they lay awake and listened to the rumble of trucks on the Trans-Canada Highway, just a few streets away.

Platt began to brood and grow morose. Boyes was glad she had insisted on a return ticket to England. That summer, Boyes flew to England

for her sister’s wedding. When she met Davis at her sister’s wedding, she announced that she wasn’t going back to Canada.

“But what about Ron?” Davis inquired. “He needs your support, Elaine. I think you should give him a second chance,” Davis said, gently.

Boyes would not be moved.In March 1995, Davis received a

letter. On opening it, he read the news: Ronald Joseph Platt was returning to England. He had been trying to live on odd jobs and was fed up.

When Platt came back that spring, Davis found him a job just outside High Wycombe, so Platt would be near his mother. When he lost that job, he announced he wanted to move to Chelmsford to be closer to Davis. Six months later he was dead.

ARREST AND DISCOVERYBy the end of October 1996, Phil Sincock and his team had gathered a fair amount of incriminating material regarding David Davis. They had various pieces of paper bearing Ron Platt’s authentic signature, some of which didn’t match the ones that had been handled by Davis.

Sincock felt that if he could get into that house on Little London Lane, he would very likely find a treasure-trove of material. To get at it, he planned a raid on Davis’s house for 31 October.

On the day before, Clenahan obtained Davis’s cell-phone records. They showed conclusively that he



“Good morning, Mr Davis. Do you remember me? It was Sergeant Peter Redman.

“Yes, of course. What’s this all about?”

“I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Ronald Joseph Platt.” Then he cautioned Davis about his rights.

At the station, police found on their suspect, the birth certificate of David W. Davis, a credit card in the name of R.J. Platt, health-club and museum

cards in David Davis’s name, as well as business cards for a James J. Hilton, 146 Avenue William Favre, Geneva. Another identity.

Might there be others? Sincock wondered. Who was this man they had taken into custody?

Back at Little London Farm, Noël Davis was also told she was under arrest. At the police station, her pockets and bags were emptied. Out came documents in Elaine Boyes’s name: a phone bill, cheque book, credit cards and a National Health Service card. She also had a man’s wallet, which contained Ronald Platt’s

had made numerous calls from Devon between 7 and 23 July, placing him squarely in the area where Platt’s body was recovered, and around the time Platt had died.

Police had what they believed was a murder suspect. The next step was to gather evidence that would stand up in court.

Early on the morning of 31 October, police cars moved into position around Little London Farm. At 10 a.m., as police waited for a signal

to charge the house, a taxi turned into Little London Lane. David Davis was sitting in the front seat.

Two police cars quickly fell into line behind the taxi. Flashing lights came on, then one of the police cars surged forward, motioning the taxi driver to pull over.

A policeman walked up alongside it and shouted at Davis, “Get out of the car!”

Davis slid out, hands up. Two officers quickly frisked him and snapped on a pair of handcuffs. Then into the group of policemen walked a figure in plain clothes.

FLASHING LIGHTS CAME ON, THEN ONE OF THE POLICE CARS SURGED FORWARD, MOTIONING THE TAXI TO PULL OVER.



birth certificate, driver’s licence, bankcards and various other papers.

At first Noël stuck stubbornly to what was clearly a well-rehearsed script: she was from Long Island, and her husband, David, had been a friend of her father’s. The police questioned her again and again. Finally, she told them this: David Davis was in fact her father.

After Platt and Boyes had left for Canada, Noël explained, she and her father assumed the couple’s identities. The Davises moved to Devon.

As for the real Ronald Platt, Noel said, she hadn’t seen him since they ate Christmas dinner together in 1995. She had no idea that he had been in Devon during July. In fact, she had no idea that he was dead—until now.

MOUNTING EVIDENCESincock had his people working around the clock. He had Davis’s fingerprints sent to the US authorities via Interpol to see whether he was wanted there. His sailboat, Lady Jane, was impounded for forensic testing. The police pored over his personal phone records.

As Phil Sincock had suspected, Little London Farm was laden with intriguing material. The man of the house was a pack rat. Seemingly every piece of paper that ever passed through David Davis’s hands had been kept : bank documents, legal documents—even old train tickets.

Oddly, nothing appeared to go

back beyond six years. And yet, the details kept building. There was a receipt dated 8 July, for the purchase of a number of items at a sporting-goods store called Sport Nautique. On it was a notation for a ten-pound anchor. The police didn’t know what significance the receipt actually had, but they filed it with the mountain of other documents.

Davis hired Elaine Boyes and helped her and Platt buy a stylish apartment.



fact, tracked the fisherman down. “I gave the anchor to my girlfriend,” Meredith said. “She and her mother, Patricia Johnson, put it in a rummage sale, I think.”

When the officers knocked on Patricia Johnson’s door, she confirmed she had put the anchor in a sale, but it hadn’t sold. When she fetched it, it fit the description of the one Davis had

By 3 November, investigators had gathered enough evidence to warrant Davis’s continued detention. Noël was released. On 4 November, David Davis was formally charged with the murder of Ronald Joseph Platt.

Meanwhile, the investigation, now involving up to 70 officers, continued. More digging and clues that turned up, took the police to other locations. At a place called Solutions in Therapy, where Davis was a therapeutic-counsell ing partner, police found five gold bars stashed away in the office; at Genstar Storage they found more cash and gold, and a Global Positioning System (GPS), for navigation; at Chelmsford Storage, they turned up suitcases fi l led with some of Ronald Platt’s personal belongings.

Sincock sent his detectives to interview John Copik. Again the fisherman went over everything that had happened on 28 July 1996.

This time Copik recalled that after the police took the body away, another fisherman, Derek Meredith, had spotted an anchor tangled in Copik’s nets. It was small, less than a metre long, with a rather sinister plow-shaped blade.

“Do you want it?” Meredith asked.“You’re welcome to it,” Copik said.Detectives, intrigued by this new

The one man Ronald Platt (pictured) trusted most took his identity.



bought on 8 July, at Sport Nautique.Forensic experts dusted Davis’s

sailboat, Lady Jane, for fingerprints, and painstakingly searched for evidence. Incredibly, there was not a single print to be found.

Eventually it dawned on the police to check the Sport Nautique shopping bag that had been found aboard the boat. There they found the finger-prints of Ronald Joseph Platt.

And blood as well. There were three microscopic drops discovered on the

rolled-up sails, and on cushions they found a small bit of hair and scalp, which tests showed as being similar to Platt’s.

Police examined the GPS unit taken from Genstar Storage. The manufacturer explained to them that that particular model stored the precise time and the last navigational reference point registered when it was shut off. When investigators downloaded the data, the last time and date recorded was 8:59 p.m., 20 July 1996, the approximate date of Platt’s death. It placed Davis’s boat about six and a half kilometres from

where Copik netted the body.There was still no evidence linking

Davis himself to that place on that day—until Noël Davis recalled that on July 20, her father announced he was heading out to sea alone.

On the only other occasion when Davis had gone sailing on his own, Noël said, he had returned by 6 p.m. But on that day, Noël prepared din-ner, then cuddled up in front of the television. By 8:59 p.m., Davis still wasn’t back.

At that precise time, 4 kilometres from the Devon coast, a hand switched off Lady Jane’s GPS. It was exactly 15 minutes before sunset. In that light, from that distance, a sailor no longer needed the GPS. He could see his way to shore. It was well after dark when Davis came home.

On 25 November, another autopsy of Platt’s defrosting corpse was done. Something new appeared: a bruise on the left leg, just above the knee.

With the body stretched out on the examining table, a 4.5 kilo zinc-plated anchor, similar to the one retrieved from Patricia Johnson’s house, was

EXPERTS DUSTED DAVIS’S SAILBOAT FOR FINGERPRINTS. INCREDIBLY, THERE WAS NOT A SINGLE PRINT TO BE FOUND.



brought in and laid out along Platt’s left side. The two bruises—the new one and the one previously noted on his left hip—matched the contours of the anchor.

Investigators noted that roughly 28 cm from the belt buckle were several marks on the leather that contained zinc, of the kind used to plate the anchor. This evidence supported the theory that someone inserted the anchor under Platt’s belt to keep his body submerged. The circumstantial evidence against Davis was mounting.

WHO IS DAVID DAVIS?But Sincock was still puzzled about something else. He was certain David Walliss Davis, as Davis insisted he was formally called, was not his real name. The police had run a search and discovered only one David Walliss Davis. He had been born in Britain, and he had left as a child for parts unknown—in 1949.

So who was this man—who claimed to have been born in England; who said he was an English-literature graduate from the University of

Edinburgh; who professed to have been a banker in the United States, Switzerland and England before retiring to become a psychiatrist?

None of his stories checked out.S i n c o c k h a d a s s i g n e d t w o

detectives to review every scrap of paper retrieved from Little London Farm. The police then prepared an information circular on Davis with his photo and fingerprints. They passed it to Interpol. On Friday, 22 November, the National Criminal Intelligence Service office in London received a message from Interpol in Switzerland.

They said that David W. Davis looked like someone on Interpol’s most-wanted list, a Canadian-born swindler named Albert Johnson Walker.

In Devon, they celebrated. It looked like they had caught a really big fish.

The murder investigation pressed on. As the police soon confirmed, Davis was indeed Walker, a Canadian financier from Paris, Ontario, who had fled his home country six years earlier, taking with him his 15-year-old daughter, Sheena—a.k.a. Noël Davis—and millions of dollars’ worth

INTERPOL SAID DAVIS LOOKED VERY MUCH LIKE SOMEONE ON ITS MOST-WANTED LIST. IN DEVON, THEY CELEBRATED.



of his clients’ money. The same money Elaine Boyes had unwittingly helped launder.

In all, police estimated Walker had actually swindled more than $2 million from his ‘clients’. He had transferred close to $7,00,000 to vari-ous European accounts, from which he took out as much as $4,75,000 in gold, in British pounds, and even in French and Swiss francs.

As for the real David W. Davis? Police learnt he was living in Canada and had once g one to Walker

for help with a bank-loan application. In the process Davis had cunningly talked him into handing over his birth certificate.

On 9 December 1996, the suspect was remanded into custody under his real n a m e —A l b e r t Jo h n s o n Walker.

DAMNING TESTIMONYBy now the evidence against him was over whelming. There was an array of wit-nesses who said they had seen Walker with Platt in bars and hotels in Devon as late as 10 July.

These reports were in stark contrast to Sheena Walker’s statement to the police that her father had told her he had last seen Platt off to France in June, and supported the theory that Walker was plotting something—the murder of Ronald Platt.

Walker had needed a new identity. The David Davis cover he was using would only stretch so far. He had Davis’s birth certificate and nothing else. Ronald Platt had become his key to an entirely new life. Once Platt returned to England, all was at risk.

Noël’s mother and sister with her photo. She was 15 when Davis fled with her.



personable and, except for the handcuffs, charming.

The prosecution painted a picture of him as a calculating man who induced Platt to go to Canada, then stole his identity. When Platt could not make a go of it and returned to England, Walker, a wanted man, saw that his new cover might be exposed. So he decided on murder.

He bought an anchor, took Platt out to sea, knocked him unconscious, fixed the anchor to his body and

heaved him overboard. But he made two key mistakes: he left the watch on Platt’s wrist, and he unknowingly registered the date, time and place of his movement on the GPS.

Walker’s defence team argued that the prosecution didn’t have enough solid evidence. Without an eyewitness, they said, it could not be proved that Platt had been murdered. His death might well have been a suicide.

Furthermore, there was no absolute proof that the anchor retrieved by Patricia Johnson was the same one that was pulled up in John Copik’s net. Nor was there any proof that

Walker knew his meeting with Platt had to remain a secret. Thus, Sheena’s testimony could be the prosecution’s most potent weapon.

Alone in his prison cell, Albert Walker must have realized the danger. On Sunday, 2 February 1997, he telephoned his daughter, who had now returned to her mother’s house in Canada, asking her to change her testimony to say that she knew that Ron had been in Devon with him.

Not long afterwards, Sheena made

her own transatlantic call—to the Devon and Cornwall police, informing them that her father had called her from prison and ordered her to change her testimony.

It was an explosive accusation. Phil Sincock realized that if allowed into the court record, it could be a real trial clincher.

On 24 March, at a pre-trial hearing to determine if there was enough evidence, Walker strode into the courtroom with all the bearing of a trial lawyer. He wore a dark suit, blue shirt and tie. His natural-grey hair was neatly trimmed. He looked

WALKER STRODE INTO THE COURTROOM. HE LOOKED PERSONABLE, AND, EXCEPT FOR THE HANDCUFFS, CHARMING.



A HAND IN THE WATER: THE MANY LIES OF ALBERT WALKER © 1998 BY BILL SCHILLER IS PUBLISHED BY HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS LTD. HARPERCOLLINS.CA.

the anchor was the one Walker had bought on 8 July 1996. The manufacturer had made thousands, and the retrieved anchor could have been any one of them.

More important, the defence said, the prosecution could not prove that Platt was on Walker’s boat on the day that the alleged murder supposedly took place, or that Walker himself was there that day at all.

The defence argued that even the date and time of death could not be determined satisfactorily. Although the watch had stopped at 11:35, it was not clear whether it was a.m. or p.m.

According to the government’s own evidence, the last time anyone had seen Platt and Walker together was 10 July. Death by drowning was estimated to have occurred approximately 10 days later.

The judge, however, was not convinced by the defence’s arguments. “It is my considered view,” he said, “that there is sufficient evidence to commit the case to the Crown court.”

The trial was set for 22 June 1998. The evidence was simply

overwhelming. Walker could not account for the whereabouts of the anchor that he had purchased on 8 July; he could not explain why the GPS reading from the Lady Jane showed the date, time and place that it did and how he had come to be using Platt’s driver’s licence, his birth certificate, his bank accounts. Finally, he had no plausible explanation for where he was on the night of 20 July.

Added to all this was Sheena Walker’s painful testimony about the call from prison, exposing her father for what he was: a supreme ma n i pu l at o r cap ab l e o f d o i ng absolutely anything to save his skin, including telling his own daughter to twist the truth.

O n 6 Ju l y 1 9 9 8 , Wa l k e r w a s pronounced guilty and began serving a l i fe s entence at Long Lar t in maximum-security prison in England. In 2005 he was transferred to Canada to stand trial on fraud charges. Convicted on those counts, Walker is serving that sentence in a British Columbia prison.

DASHBOARD APOLOGY They say it’s the thought that counts—

unless you’re left with this note and a damaged car. “Hi. My name is

‘Jim’. I accidentally hit your car and someone saw me so I’m pretending

to write down my details. SORRY. Jim.” Facebook


KNEWWHO

1 We count on you not to show up. About 25-30 per cent of people

who start an exercise programme quit within six months. If more members started coming regularly, it would be chaos in here. Here’s a tip to help you stick with it: start slow. People who quit typically push themselves too hard at first and get discouraged.

2 You can usually beat the membership fee down. And if

you’re not a regular gym person,

BY MICHELLE CROUCH WITH NISHA VARMA

maybe you should go for the day-by-day pay option. Sometimes it can be more economical in the long run.

3 The way many of you use the treadmills is totally wrong. Hold-

ing on for balance is okay, but some people support almost all their body weight on their arms. That’s unsafe—and it prevents you from burning as many calories. If you can’t manage to loosen your grip, try slowing down.

4 What’s hot right now? Functional fitness, or doing exercises that

help you in everyday life, which is

13 Things Gyms Won’t Tell You

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9 Want us to offer a class at a different time? That’s great.

But we won’t create a new class just because one person asks; we need about 12 people to come regularly to make it work. Get a group of co-workers or friends who are interested, and request it together.

10 Members can be unbelievably territorial. Once, I was

teaching a spin class when two people came in late and saw other members on their reserved bikes. They started yelling and pulling the people off. It was like a scene out of a movie.

11 You know those towels we pro-vide? They’re not there for dec-

oration. Please don’t forget to wipe yourself, especially if you sweat ex-cessively. Always use a towel on weight benches, avoid touching your face and wash your hands immedi-ately after your workout.

12 Some trainers only pay atten-tion to those who give them an

extra payment or gifts. Avoid falling into that trap.

13 Gyms don’t always reveal the qualifications of their trainers

upfront. Ask for details.

Sources: Tom Holland, MS, CSCS, former gym owner and author of Beat the Gym; Tiffany Richards, former employee at a fitness chain; Charlie Sims, owner of a CrossFit gym in Louisville, Kentucky; Jim Thornton, MA, ATC, CES, president of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association; and economist Stefano DellaVigna, who studied gym users for three years.

important for older adults hoping to prevent injury. That means fewer exercises like leg extensions, a move-ment you likely will never do outside the gym, and more multi-joint, full-body exercises (like squats) that strengthen you for real-life activities, like lifting heavy boxes.

5 Be wary of products and banned substances being promoted.

Gyms and trainers get a huge cut on the sales. They could also be harmful!

6 Enjoy the free personal-training session when you join. But if

your trainer shows you complex exercises and doesn’t write anything down, it might be the management’s orders. The goal: to make exercise seem complicated, so you go through with buying training sessions.

7 Patience, people! TV ads may give you the idea that you can lose

10 kilos and transform your body in a few weeks, but unless you’re spending eight hours a day in the gym, that’s just not reality. Stick with us for three months, and you will see a no-ticeable difference in your physique.

8 Beware the smoothie station. Some smoothies pack as many

as 500 calories, which may negate the workout you just did. Plus, we sell those products at a big markup. You can save money—and calories—by making them at home.

Brain Teasers


ACROSS01 Inflate (a balloon) (4, 2)05 Draw in liquid through

a straw (4)08 Cause of a baby’s

sore bottom (5, 4)09 Football official (3)11 Puts a stop to (4)12 Material used as

floor covering (8)14 Beaten players (6)16 Put your trust in (4, 2)18 Colour of sailors’

uniforms (4, 4)19 White graceful bird (4)22 Man’s best friend (3)23 Judo expert (5, 4)24 In a lazy manner (4)25 Uncover, reveal (6) ANSWERSAcross: 1 Blow up 5 Suck 8 Nappy rash 9 Ref 11 Ends 12 Linoleum 14 Losers 16 Rely on 18 Navy blue 19 Swan 22 Dog 23 Black belt 24 Idly 25 ExposeDown: 2 Loped 3 Ways 4 Placid 5 Schooled 6 Carvery 7 Underlined 10 Femininity 13 Probably 15 Savaged 17 Humane 20 Weeks 21 Skip

DOWN02 Ran with easy

strides (5) 3 Methods (4) 4 Calm, peaceful (6) 5 Trained, taught (8) 6 Restaurant where

meat is sliced in front of you (7)

7 Drew attention to (words in a text) (10)

10 Womanly quality (10)13 In all likelihood (8)15 Badly bitten

(by an animal) (7)17 Kind, merciful (6)20 Periods of

seven days (5)21 Jump with a rope (4)

2 3 4 5 6

7

8 10

11 12

15

17

14 16

13

1

18 19 20

21

22 23

24 25

9


IT PAYS TO ENRICH YOUR

Word Power

BY SAMANTHA RIDEOUT

“X” and “Z” are among the shortest chapters in an English dictionary. Without peeking into yours, try to define the following

words that start with these two rarely used letters

1. xanthic A: gummy. B: yellowish. C: calming.

2. zeitgeist A: game-changing event. B: harmless ghost. C: spirit of the times.

3. xenon A: chemical element with atomic number 54. B: planet Jupiter’s red spot. C: bull monster from ancient Greek mythology.

4. xiphoid A: plotted on a graph. B: sword-shaped. C: notched.

5. xilinous pertaining to A: luxury. B: infinity. C: cotton.

6. zephyr A: pleasantly bitter taste. B: light breeze. C: inoffensive comedian.

7. zygote A: fertilized egg. B: dormant virus. C: cheekbone.

8. xeric A: disillusioned. B: dry. C: concerned with appearances.

9. zoolatry A: study of animals. B: worship of animals. C: care of animals.

10. zymology science of A: muscles. B: welding. C: fermentation.

11. zealot A: tax dodger. B: arsonist. C: extreme partisan.

12. xenial A: forgetful. B: hospitable. C: resourceful.

13. zonk A: stun, as with a blow. B: trip and fall. C: squabble loudly.

14. Zoilus A: unnecessarily harsh critic. B: greedy capitalist. C: misleading public speaker.

15. xyloid A: silly. B: tinny. C: woody.

W O R D P O W E R

1. xanthic—[B] yellowish. Not a fan of white wedding dresses, Ana settled on a gown with a xanthic tint.

2. zeitgeist—[C] spirit of the times. Amitabh Bachchan, in Deewar was praised for capturing the zeitgeist of the 1970s.

3. xenon—[A] chemical element with atomic number 54. Xenon gas is used as a general anaesthetic because it’s fast-acting and non-toxic.

4. xiphoid—[B] sword-shaped. Gladiolus plants are known for their xiphoid leaves and vase-worthy blossoms.

5. xilinous—[C] pertaining to cotton. After the air conditioning broke down, Angad wished his suit were made of a more breathable, xilinous fabric.

6. zephyr—[B] light breeze. A zephyr animated the laundry on the line, creating a picture-perfect springtime scene.

7. zygote—[A] fertilized egg. In vitro fertilization involves creating a zygote outside the human body.

8. xeric—[B] dry. Trees from England don’t tend to thrive in the xeric climate of Arizona.

9. zoolatry—[B] worship of animals. Meera teasingly accused her boy-

friend of zoolatry after watching him fawn over his cat.

10. zymology—[C] science of fermentation. Before refrigerators, zymology offered a way to preserve food and drink.

11. zealot—[C] extreme partisan. Despite the similarities between the two parties’ platforms, zealots on both sides opposed a coalition.

12. xenial—[B] hospitable. The mayor implored the suspicious townspeople to adopt a more xenial attitude towards tourists.

13. zonk—[A] stun, as with a blow. Seeing that Batman was distracted by an overturned school bus, the Penguin snuck up and zonked him with an umbrella.

14. Zoilus—[A] unnecessarily harsh critic. Apart from a few pre-dictably scathing reviews from known Zoiluses, Bahadur’s novel was well-received.

15. xyloid—[C] woody. Harish’s homemade wine had a xyloid taste from the grape stems he had forgotten to filter out.

Answers

VOCABULARY RATINGS7–10: fair11–12: good13–15: excellent


April isn’t the cruellest month as far as films are concerned at all—one we can’t wait to see is the live action/CGI adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book with an all-star cast that includes Bill Murray, Idris Elba, Scarlett Johansson, Lupita Nyong’o, Ben Kingsley and Christopher Walken. Also, TV comedy heroes Key and Peele have made a film, Keanu, which might be brilliant, given the quality of their show. On the Bollywood front, the big April film is SRK’s Fan, which features the star in a double role—as himself and as his own psychotic superfan.

Films

Entertainment

The show we’re most looking forward to in April is another one starring a desi girl. No, not Priyanka Chopra, who hopefully will take some time off after winning hearts at the Oscars, but Mindy Kaling, whose hit show The Mindy Project is back after a four-month hiatus for the second half of Season 4. Also premiering in April is a new season of The Odd Couple, starring (and produced by) Matthew Perry from Friends, along with comedian Thomas Lennon; the show is an updated adaptation of a 1965 Neil Simon play.

Television

OUR BEST PICKS OF THE MONTH


Movie of the Month

For cricket fans still fresh from the excitement of the World T20 tournament, the ninth season of the IPL kicks off on 9 April. But this month has more in store for other sports fans as well—the Chinese F1 Grand Prix is on 17 April, while the Champions League quarters and semis should give football fans plenty to cheer about—the first legs of semifinals will take place on April 26-27. The EPL’s FA Cup will also be on in full steam.

Sports


A must-read this month is Sunil Khilnani’s Incarnations, which explores the lives of 50 remarkable Indians, from the Buddha to Emperor Akbar, to business tycoon Dhirubhai Ambani, and how they’ve helped shape the world’s largest democracy. Another interesting book out this month is We Indians by none other than Khushwant Singh, who dissects different aspects of the Indian character, from our attitude towards sex and religion to our views on corruption and the English language.

BOOKS

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Legendary artist Syed Haider Raza’s oeuvre has been as fascinating as his life. His childhood, spent amidst the lush forests of Madhya Pradesh, inspired his expressionist landscapes. At 25, he co-founded the Bombay Progressive

Artists’ Group. In France, where he lived for years, he began to represent French landscapes geometrically. Then came the pure geometric figures.

“The bindu is the best known mystical symbol that Raza invokes in his art,” says poet, cultural theorist and curator Ranjit Hoskote. “It is the focal universal source from which all energy radiates, and into which it is

absorbed, in cyclic rhythm. Raza’s paintings portray a universe born from the tension between entropy and regeneration.” To celebrate Raza’s 94th

birthday in February, Mumbai’s Art Musings gallery released a book last month. It chronicles his works with them since his return to India in 2011.

HAI ABHI KUCH AUR, FROM THE NIRANTAR SERIES, BY S.H. RAZA,

ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 100 X 100 CM, 2015


When is the best time to start up? Yesterday! But, today, is not too bad a choice either!

ARUN MUTHUKUMAR, ent repren eur

Not sure which is harder on a relationship: sharing a dresser for three years or sharing an iPhone charger for one day.

RHEA BUTCHER, c om e di an

Life is always going to be stranger than

fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and

life doesn’t. NEIL GAIMAN, author

IND

IAP

ICT

UR

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VISUALIZING...THINGS ARE ALWAYS

CREATED TWICE. FIRST IN THE

WORKSHOP OF THE MIND AND THEN, ONLY

THEN, IN REALITY. SHARMILA NICOLLET,

golfer

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A HERO AND A COWARD IS ONE STEP SIDEWAYS.

A soul that shines out of sheer simplicity is the one everyone’s drawn to. DIKSHA LALWANI, yoga te a ch er


Universities are the

laboratories of thought.

…if a technology doesn’t actually help us socially understand each other better, it isn’t going to catch on and succeed.

MARK ZUCKERBERG, ent repren eur

SERGIUS STEPNIAK, revolut i oni st an d

wr iter

GENE HACKMAN, actor

Quotable Quotes

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