Kusum Choppra

Feminists have, all along,  demanded an level playing field and fought against ‘victim’ labels.   Have tables been turned, with raucous baying against the rapacious desire of Indian media’s Christian Grey (from  Fifty Shades of Grey, for whom elevators were a favorite hotspot)?    Don’t get me wrong.  I have been labeled a ‘feminist’ as I write usually for women, by women and of women.   During earlier rapes cases that outraged all of us, I pleaded repeatedly for public exposure of rapists – which happened in the Nirbhay case --   and for all of us to move away from that dratted “Mera Raja Beta” syndrome, to teach boys to respect women from babyhood. A stage comes when one has to wonder what it’s all about?   Hard on the heels of those gory gang rapes, TV channels blared the hounding of a woman by state agencies for their ‘Saheb’. Then L’affaire Tejpal took center stage!  To shoo ‘Saheb’ and his lady i...

In the old days, there used to be War Correspondent courses for journalists. I don’t know if they still have them. Perhaps such need to be reinforced and made absolutely compulsory for our loquacious TV commentators.  These ‘journalists’ fall over each other to make revelations of what is happening on the front, hoping to later claim credit for having sparked off another Indo-Pak war …... complete with hectoring of the Armed forces and the administration  on how they should handle situations that they have been trained for, cocksure in their belief that they and they alone know how any and every situation should be handled!!  Obviously opposition leaders cannot afford to be left behind  in hectoring and making absurd demands which, if anything, exhibit how far from reality they actually are. This morning’s Indian Express Op-ed page (August 13, 2013) carries a very very rationale argument “A Competitive Pseudo-Patriotism”  by Rtd. Lieutenant General ...

  www.facebook.com/kusum.chopppra ?s around couples ….. “Palaces have a strange virus. They echo, quite maliciously, the unspoken word.” The author of a book that recounts a unique relationship in an ancient tale in poetry format, that is highly evocative and passionate, questing and loving, acknowledged his wife in the writing of the long, long poem during long winter evenings.  Twenty years down the line, the same author lives up to his bureaucratic biases to bring out learned tomes, dry as dust on assorted suggestions for policy change.   There is no mention of the wife any more.  What does that hint of the relationship two decades on? Couples, especially long lived ones, do evoke unspoken queries in our times with its rising sensitivity to man-woman relationships at all levels.  Question marks often surround senior couples seen in public parks and gatherings: Is that eternally smiling grandma faking it? Or that smirking hubbie? ...

“The analogy of the car and the dog makes the riot sound like an accident when it was as much a designer event as Modi’s career …….” This sentence made its way into the consciousness like few others have in recent times, for a simple reason --  the realization  that kudos is due to a professional for actually facing reality, when seasoned writers seem to have been taken in by rhetoric not backed by reality. Or perhaps ……. ? Recent weeks have seen a … call it, trumpeted campaign, media overhype, infotainment,  adverpleading  or whatever new name may be coined for what passes for the long playing comments seen on news and edit pages. Is India doomed to be drowned in media hype?  Or are, hopefully, our masses wide awake and able to read between the lines?  Especially our newly minted young voters?   Is history all that old a lesson to be so easily forgotten? Since Time Immemorial, writers, poets, bards have been paid to sing paeans ...

Many years ago, I wrote a piece titled “Are we raising a generation paupers?” In that I had argued that with all the proposals being made for investments in insurances of all sorts, SIPs, mutual funds, housing, luxury vehicles, savings for children’s education and marriages   plus the enticements of clubs and holidays etc etc,  how much did  the ordinary middle class  family have left to actually live on after all those putaways? This morning a wealth management CEO told readers that he put 20,000/- a month in two SIPS since she was born, for his  daughter’s graduation and post graduation. And then another for her marriage. Now if you are putting away thirty grand a month in three SIPs for your presumably only kid, how much must you earn to maintain the lifestyle while bringing her up, clubs, holidays, jewelry for the wife plus health insurance and life insurance and other investments, plus purchase of properties and cars? Suppose another kid came...

Was medical insurance brought to India only to fatten the already fat insurance moneybag, or to provide some relief from soaring medical costs to the general populace? Let’s face it: the profit margins are cannot be the only considerations in medical insurance. The American example is a recent good one. Here we have a classic fat-cat situation with medical insurance companies planning to elbow out senior citizens from medical cover from their offspring’s policies, without offering any suitable package that will benefit the seniors with a reasonably priced cover.   Are they so unaware of ground realities that they do not know that the majority of those covered belong to a generation when retirement planning was virtually unheard of?  Those generations earned and spent it all on a house, if possible and the education of their children that they may live better than them.  Whatever little was saved was spent on higher education and marriages. A tiny majority qualifie...

A few days ago, the newspapers carried statements of SEBI and private banks’ head honchos declaim against RBI rate cut in absence of other government hand outs.   What, one wonders, was the purpose of private banks if they can operate only with government handouts?   What happens to their much lauded ‘private’ status then? Banks, entrepreneurs, economic intellectuals et all rail against the food bill that promises food in the belly of India’s poor.   Instead of those lakhs, they argue in favor of diverting that money to industrialists’ coffers, purportedly to speed up development via industrial growth, claiming that will raise India up faster. The Question is: against a handout of x lakh crores, what guarantee is there of creation of at least y thousand jobs?   In recent times, the import of state of art technology means less than c hundred jobs, generally limited to the upper middle and upper classes? What are these chappies afraid of?   Actuall...

Going back to my roots seems to have become a thing of now. First it was my book BEYOND DIAMOND RINGS which revisited my matriarchal Sindhi roots and the evolution of Sindhi women since the Partition, although I was born post partition. Suddenly last week, I found myself wearing what would a today version of the traditional dress of my grandmothers “paro chadar”.   Their paro was a full skirt, could be poplin, bosky, silk, satin, velvet , whatever; topped with a kurti, the length of which was obviously dictated by fashion. The whole would be topped by a chadar, sindhi adaption of the odhni or the muslim ‘chador’ that all enveloping cover all. Once again, that could be plain white fabric, poplin or mull, net or silk, depending on the ocasison, the time and circumstances etc.   jewelry was obviously a must. My adaption was a cotton printed skirt made from the salwar fabric of a salwar kameez set.   And my kurti was a T shirt to match. Odhni dispensed with in...

Does it sound like a totally preposterous comparison: of the BJP to the Mughals?    But there it is, the BJP has just done what the Mughals did centuries ago. Once past their prime, the Mughals oversaw the demise of Hindustan, first losing the south and letting administration slide. In our times, the BJP rose swiftly to take Delhi and spread its wings across the country. Slowly those wings lost wind; its southern bastion, Karnataka took the sting out of the BJP’s neta-speak, rather raving and ranting about corruption and scams. Now Karnataka has firmly rejected the BJP, actually opting for the ‘scam prone’ Congress instead.    One wonders: was it a mere coincidence that all the scams crept out of the woodwork while BJP was facing voter rejection?    Were the BJP years all that scam free or it is mere Congressi forebearance that has kept those worms inside the wood work still? The BJP mughals have not only lost the south first in their retreat ...

When the government announced a scheme aimed at putting cash into BPL hands for two square meals a day, a cacophony of learned corporate intellectuals pontificated over the evil of such hand outs to the poor. Better, it was argued, to give that money to entrepreneurs and industrialists to set up units to provide jobs, instead of food protection. Many wondered whether that might not be a more effective way of taking the country forward.   But then how many businessmen actually use their own money to start business? And are the numbers of jobs created worth the number of crores from public money in the banks?   Also does industry really run on its own? The answer is a big NO, as evident from the enunciations of banking heavyweights from the private sector, the head honchos of the private banks who consider themselves a cut above nationalized banks and of SEBI, the bastion of those with investable surpluses. On May 3 rd , 2013, the Reserve Bank of Ind...

IS HE GUILTY? The question is a very simple one: is Sanjay Dutt guilty of accumulating an arsenal of illegally acquired arms?  If yes, he needs to go through the sentence handed down.  and not all the caterwauling  of  the film fraternity and its producers should change that. At the time of signing those contracts that total over 500 crores, it was Sanjay's duty to warn them of the impending judgement. If he did not, should that let him off the hook?  Then why not so many others, with more or less equal claims of innocence who also have young or elderly dependents, most without the money to fall back on that Sanjay's family has. All of us have grown with this man's story.  As a teenager, ladla beta of one of the best known and respected couples on the social scene, both of them MPs, Sanjay repeatedly let down his family with his tyrsts with drugs. The family always rallied round to help wash them out of his system and ease his return into the Bollywo...

interesting sidelight at the Woman rising event at Gujarat Vidyapith, ahmedabad on thursday. tells us a lot about both male and female attitudes. as the crowd broke up into garba circles, a young woman invited a young man she obviously knew well to garba in her circle. he indicated the backpack he was carrying around. when she pleaded, he promptly slipped the pack off his bag and handed it to her and started to dance, leaving her struggling to place it on her back before getting back into the circle!! if she could do garba with back pack, why not him? these are the attitudes that need to be changed, both the young women and the young men, right? Jai Ho

interesting sidelight at the Woman rising event at Gujarat Vidyapith, ahmedabad on thursday. tells us a lot about both male and female attitudes. as the crowd broke up into garba circles, a young woman invited a young man she obviously knew well to garba in her circle. he indicated the backpack he was carrying around. when she pleaded, he promptly slipped the pack off his bag and handed it to her and started to dance, leaving her struggling to place it on her back before getting back into the circle!! if she could do garba with back pack, why not him? these are the attitudes that need to be changed, both the young women and the young men, right? Jai Ho

Last week at the Jaipur Literature Festival, I met up with my former paper, Rajasthan Patrika and a little piece was done on Mastani, how it came about and the role of Mastani in the politics of those times and in Baji Rao's life. Plus inevitable questions about JLF. Wonderful to see young people so cued in on national interests and issues and asking such perceptive questions which has some of the panelists stumped too!! O ne thing came thru loud and clear. here we are all full of the development happening in Gujarat and how far we have come. JLF was a national festival with plenty of international analysts as well expounding on national issues, political, social, economic and literary. Sadly we gujjus dont figure anywhere. in development they talked of UP and Bihar racing ahead. literary and politically, gujarat drew a blank. sad but true. L

The Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) 2013   presents a modern manthan, of ideas and ideals, opinions, books, fashions, what have you.   With six issues being taken up per hour from 10 am to 7 pm, the choice is incredible, whether one wants to just hang out with a cup of tea or coffee or any of the other delicious eats on offer, watching the latest in winter wear on display   or partake of more serious offerings in any of the panel discussions. In one of his less controversial statements, Ashish Nandy pointed out   India’s   four favorites:   films, sports, crime and politics. All were present at Jaipur, so footfalls were obviously heavy.   It was during the same discussion, after Tehelka’s Tarun tejpal offered a different view of corruption that Ashish let fly.   When Tejpal suggested that the ‘corruption’ be looked at as a way of means of equalizing equity, offering a pick me up to the have nots,   Ashish Nandy let fly his missile ab...