DailyOh! Why Gen Bajwa sweated over Abhinandan, to the row over Gen Zia’s mangoes for Indira

Pollution, you know, is the introduction of harmful materials into the environment. But did you know that polluting the environment could take you to jail for 1,825 days and take away up to Rs 1,00,00,000 from your pocket? Nobody keeps that kind of money in the pocket, you may say. But you must pay, says an ordinance passed by the government which also says a Commission for Air Quality Management should be set up for the National Capital Region (NCR) and areas near NCR in Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. So, for the government, pollution is essentially a problem of the National Capital Region.

Coronavirus, however, the government understands is a pandemic. To address the pandemic in India, PM Narendra Modi said everyone in the country will get the vaccine, not necessarily free, when the vaccine is available. “No one will be left behind.” The risk of leaving people behind in vaccine distribution is that they may come forward to spread the virus.

So, 28,000 cold chain points will store and distribute Covid-19 vaccines to ensure they reach the last point (which is you), the PM has said.

Twitter, meanwhile, has apologised for what it had done. The social media website showed Leh as part of Chinese territory on its location setting. This, when China doesn’t even allow Twitter into its territory.

A question that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey couldn’t answer, however, was asked not by Indian parliamentary committee, but a US Senate Commerce Committee. Republican senators asked Dorsey as to who put him in-charge of what media is allowed to report. Trick question. Since no one put him in-charge, Dorsey had no answer. The committee also questioned CEOs of Facebook and Google along with Twitter. Facebook and Twitter recently limited the online reach of a New York Post story about the family of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

And how exactly does Twitter decide whether to put a warning to a tweet? According to Dorsey, when Twitter senses real-world harm. There must be an assessment of how virtual world has harmed the real world. Part of that assessment has been done by Netflix documentary Social Dilemma (2020).

Our recommendation for today, however, is Beasts of No Nation (2015). The movie is based on a 2005 novel of the same name and revolves around a child soldier.

But why was a grown-up soldier, in fact the head of all soldiers in Pakistan, shaking and perspiring? Because he feared an attack from India. The soldier we are talking about is General Qamar Javed Bajwa. Pakistanis could have dismissed the report as one of India’s boisterous claims that has no base in reality... if only the claim hadn’t been made by a Pakistani himself.

Pakistan Muslim League-N leader Ayaz Sadiq, who is also a member of Pakistan’s Parliament, said that Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had in an important meeting pointed out that if Pakistan did not release IAF pilot Abhinandan Varthaman, India would attack Pakistan “that night by 9 pm”. Varthaman was released on March 1, 2019, nearly 60 hours after his capture on February 27.

The claim has been made by a Pakistani MP while recounting his discussion with minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.#India #Pakistan https://t.co/7h2iKBeOze

— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) October 29, 2020

Recounting what led to the release, Sadiq told Pakistan’s Parliament, “I remember Shah Mahmood Qureshi was in the meeting in which Imran Khan had refused to attend and Chief of Army Staff General Bajwa came into the room, his legs were shaking and he was perspiring.”

Do you know Bajwa may not have been the only Pakistani general to have feared India? It is said even Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq is said have to both respected and feared former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The reason, you know, is the 1971 war.

But are you aware what happened 10 years later between Zia and Indira? An exchange of mangoes. Actually it was no exchange. General Zia gifted a basket of Anwar Rataul mangoes to the Indian PM in the summer of 1981. Now, it is common for leaders to offer such gifts just to keep the goodwill alive. So the mangoes landed at Indira’s doors. And then a controversy erupted.

To explain the controversy, first let us tell you that Rataul is located in UP’s Baghpat district. The aam aadmi of Rataul said the mangoes gifted to the Indian PM were fake. Farmers from Rataul reached the PM and tried to explain that the Rataul mangoes were rooted in India. So how did they reach Zia? The belief is that people who left for Pakistan in 1947 carried a few cuttings of Rataul mangoes and planted them in Multan.

Legend has it that one grafter named it after his father Anwar, and so the variety came to be called Anwar Rataul. To be fair, if the mangoes were presented as Anwar Rataul, then it was no cheating. A charge of cheating could have been made had Zia said these are Rataul mangoes.

And as long as you like the taste, how does it matter where it came from? As they say, aam khao, guthliyon ki chinta mat karo. Indira, we believe, got both Anwar Rataul and Rataul mangoes that year even as people outraged over Zia’s gift.

What is it that people won’t outrage over? In France, an outraged man beheaded a teacher over he showing a caricature of Prophet Mohammad to his class. Then people outraged over what the man did. French President Emmanuel Macron outraged over ‘radical Islam’. Islamic countries such as Pakistan outraged over Macron’s outrage. India has also expressed its outrage over the outrage being meted out to Macron.

We are sure some have even lost sense of what they are outraging over. Recently Akshay Kumar’s movie Laxmmi Bomb met outrage before it met its release date of November 9. Many things about the movie caused outrage against that movie that Akshay playing a trans person named Asif and flaunting a trishul in his hand. The anger on the ground led to the makers dropping the bomb. No, not like a literal bomb. They dropped the word bomb from the title of the movie, which now is just Laxmii.

But France’s outrage has proven so deadly, three people were killed today in a knife attack in a place ironically called Nice. A man, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ beheaded a woman and killed two others inside a church.

Knife attack in #France’s Nice; 2 killed, several injured#Breaking #India https://t.co/rl9Au4smWh

— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) October 29, 2020

It is now difficult to trace how this massive outrage took shape in France, so we will try to track how outrage, the word, took shape. Well, the origin could have been in France itself from the Old French word ou(l)trage. The French word is said to have roots in Latin ‘ultra’, which meant ‘beyond’. Outrage, the Word Of The Day, is said be an action borne out of rage. That, as you would already know, is an action taken when one is out of mind.

Oxford dictionary defines outrage as a strong feeling of shock and anger. Feeling shocked and angry is fine. Acting on it isn’t.

But moving on from outrage, former Gujarat Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel passed away today. He was 92. Patel had tested positive for corona in September.

A third wave of the virus could be surging in Delhi, even as the first and second try to ebb. But Delhi can draw comfort from the fact that even Telangana and Assam saw a second and third wave. How many waves before the virus drowns? As many as can rise before the vaccine is available.

So jab tak dawai nahi, tab tak dhilai nahi.

Stay safe.

We will see you tomorrow.

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