Transcript of my first podcast, S1 E1 (August 29-30, 2020)
वो लोग बहुत ख़ुश-क़िस्मत थे
जो इश्क़ को काम समझते थे
या काम से आशिक़ी करते थे
हम जीते-जी मसरूफ़ रहे
कुछ इश्क़ किया कुछ काम किया
Hello there, this is Kabir Gandhi. Let's talk about the latest in the Rhea Chakraborty-SSR case. Well, Nidhi Razdan has written an article for NDTV in which she has said, “Grief and pain manifests itself differently for different people. One of my closest friends in college lost her father but didn't shed a single tear for two months. She was in shock and guess what, folks, if someone is calm and composed, it doesn't mean they are not in pain.”
Reading Razdan’s article, I was immediately reminded of what the author Malcolm Gladwell calls ‘The Friend’s Fallacy’, or what he otherwise calls the issue of ‘transparency’, in his seminal work, ‘Talking to Strangers’. Gladwell explained with the example of the infamous 2007 Italian case of Amanda Knox in which Amanda Knox, an American student was convicted wrongly for her friend’s murder, only to be acquitted later on the basis of evidence that surfaced later. Amanda stood convicted by a ‘media trial’ of sorts we see in the SSR case, as she just didn’t convey the emotions people expected a person to convey typically soon after knowing of her friend’s murder, again, with eerie similarity to SSR’s case – that she just didn’t look the part! Gladwell surmised that most people commonly believe that the way a complete stranger looks and acts is a reliable clue to the way they feel, and that is where, they buy into the Friends’ Fallacy – Gladwell drew reference to the popular sitcom tv series Friends, in which, most characters played such parts that you could easily figure out from their rather simplistic facial expressions what they were feeling. Gladwell says that when dealing with complete strangers, that is often not the case.
Razdan in her NDTV article went on to ask, “should Rhea have just lapped up the abuse and accusations she is facing from Sushant's family without hitting back? Why must women always bear the cross in a relationship? Indian families seem to think their sons are constantly brainwashed by their wives and girlfriends."
I’ll conclude this topic with the appeal that we must wait and let law take its own course. We all deserve a fair trial, or whatever is left of it, in the current legal system of India. Just imagine if Rhea was your own sister, daughter or a close friend – how would you have felt?
The second topic I wish to talk about is the disturbing news coming from Kashmir valley that dozens of mourners were injured, of whom several received pellet injuries, when police used pellet shotguns on Shia mourners in Srinagar, as reported on Outlook magazine's website. J&K Police said that Shia mourners violated prohibitory orders that barred all religious processions to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus.
I’ll just say that with every such incident, India loses face, or whatever is left of it, before our Kashmiri brothers and sisters. How do you expect Kashmiri Muslims or Indians Muslims in general to make sense of such excessive and unwarranted use of brutal force when several Hindu religious processions at several major temples across India have been allowed by none other than the Supreme Court. Our Supreme Court will do itself and the nation great service if it let the Indian state keep at least a façade of secularism – howsoever, farcical that may be – in its national polity. I found a post on my FB wall that said, “We didn’t see Karbala. We have seen Kashmir” #Moharram 2020. I shared it on my wall too.
Moving to the third, yet inter-related topic, India recorded 78,000+ new cases on August 29 (a day before recording of this podcast), which is the biggest single day jump yet, and a world record that I’m sure most sane Indians (howsoever few they might be remaining in India) would not be proud of. India crossed 35 lakhs total reported cases.
Where did we go wrong?
The answer is
