The Nobel and Other Awards

This is a reflective piece-don't say I didn't warn you!

Some people get awards-others don't. Does not usually mean that the others are not worthy. If I remember this right, Dharmendra never got a best actor award. But we enjoyed his acting in many films- Sholay, Chupke Chupke and Satyakaam, to cite just three.

Mahatma Gandhi did not win a Nobel, while lesser mortals got it. Murakami has not yet got one, and given the controversy about the Academy, this year is unlikely for him too. Point is, awards or no awards, every one of us may be contributing in our own way to something good. Award-givers are human, and can't possibly be right in selection all the time.

From a different angle, artists may get love and affection from their fans, which is bigger than other awards (for them) and helps sustain some of them for long periods.

Nothing against awards-many of my students have got them regularly, and I am proud of them. But I am also proud of those who did not get the awards, but are good at anything they do-or, are simply sensible human beings.

Bhopal- Film Review

This is the new film about Bhopal and Union Carbide. It is worth a watch, if only to commiserate with the victims of what must rank as one of the biggest man-made calamities we have ever seen. Not that it is the only one- we have ourselves to blame for nuclear disasters, racial and gender-based crimes, riots based on caste and religion, and lots more.

But then, a lot of issues are raised in this film, that make you think. One is urbanisation after the fact- of industrialisation. The city 'caught up' with us, says the CEO of Union Carbide, to a journalist. May be true too. But why the factory did not move once that happened is still a question. The work provided by the plant seems like it was badly needed by people around it, so they did not want the plant shut down.

Where we should draw the line between industrialisation/jobs and life-threatening consequences, ironically, from the same 'life-giver', is something we can't answer easily.

Other issues that come up are our casual attitude to safety, and flouting of best practices by MNCs when they operate in a third-world country.

The recent speeches by Malala and Satyarthi at their Nobel ceremony come to mind. She asked, "Why is it so easy to build a tank, but tough to build a school?" Satyarthi stood up for children's rights and made light of his hard work of several years, while exhorting the world at large to wake up. Will we? How do we?