In November 2008 terrorists attacked the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai. Employees of the hotel were among those killed. Their families “were entitled to receive full salary” until the date of the employee’s retirement, The Week reported.
Ratan Tata, then chairman of the Tata group, “visited his injured employees at hospitals and wholeheartedly embraced those who lost kith and kin to the violence.” He also “ensured the children of his late employees received a good education.”
On May 22, 2010, Air India Express Flight 812 crashed while landing at Mangalore. The Court of Inquiry found that the captain continued an unstable approach “despite three calls from the First Officer (H S Ahluwalia) to ‘go around’.” The first call was a question: “Go around?” The last was: “Go around captain…We don’t have runway left.”
The first officer did not take over the controls. The report noted “ambiguity in various instructions empowering the ‘copilot’ to initiate a ‘go around’.”
Chhota munh badi baat : a small mouth, big words. The Rekhta dictionary gives its Hindi meanings as speaking above one’s ability, claiming more than one has been encouraged to, and badon ke samne dhrishtata dikhana, showing impudence in front of elders.
Gustakhi maaf : “pardon (my) rudeness, excuse me,” in Rekhta’s definition. Rekhta notes that the related phrase gustakhi muaf ho is used as an aside when someone says something impolite or unwelcome.
On January 12, 2018, four judges of the Supreme Court, Justices J. Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, M.B. Lokur and Kurien Joseph, held a press conference about the Chief Justice, Dipak Misra. “Unless this institution is preserved democracy will not survive in this country,” they said. Chelameswar called the step “extraordinary in the history of any nation.”
They had first gone to the Chief Justice himself: “We met the CJI with a specific request which unfortunately couldn’t convince him that we were right.” Soli Sorabjee said: “I’m very upset about this, I wish the four Supreme Court judges hadn’t done this.”
In the Sabha Parva of the Mahabharata, Duryodhana visits the new palace of the Pandavas and falls into a pool. “Beholding the plight of Duryodhana, the mighty Bhima and Arjuna and both the twins, all laughed aloud.” Duryodhana tells his uncle Shakuni about the laughter. The dice game follows.
In many popular retellings, it is Draupadi who laughs and says that the son of a blind man is blind, andhe ka putra andha. The Ganguli translation of the Mahabharata does not include her line.
Naak kat jaana: to have one’s nose cut. The Rekhta dictionary gives its meanings in Hindi: to be disgraced, to be humiliated, to lose one’s honor.
Ghar ki baat: a matter of the home. Rekhta gives “secret of home” and “personal matter.”
In August 2020 a group of senior Congress leaders, later called the G-23, wrote to the party president Sonia Gandhi about the state of the party. The letter reached the media. According to Newslaundry, this “had several leaders expressing displeasure about letting such an internal matter play out in the media.”
At the Congress Working Committee on August 24, Rahul Gandhi said, as Business Standard reported: “it is the CWC where we discuss our differences and put out our thoughts, not the media.” Kapil Sibal tweeted: “Rahul Gandhi says ‘we are colluding with BJP’.” The party denied that Rahul Gandhi had said this, and Sibal deleted the tweet.
In September 2005 the Indian cricket coach Greg Chappell sent an email about the captain, Sourav Ganguly, to the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. It reportedly said that Ganguly was not “physically or mentally” fit to lead the team. The email reached the media.
Chappell said: “I sent a private and confidential e-mail to the president of BCCI. It did not remain confidential though I would have preferred it to have remained so.”
At a board meeting on October 24, 2016, Tata Sons removed Cyrus Mistry as its chairman. His email to the board, written on October 25, reached the media the next day. In it he criticized decisions linked to Ratan Tata, including the Nano car, and said he was “shocked beyond words.”
Tata Sons replied on October 27. It called the email “unsubstantiated claims and malicious allegations” and objected that it had been released “in an unseemly and undignified manner.”
In December 2015 the police superintendent of Dhanbad, Rakesh Bansal, asked for a transfer. According to The Tribune, two days earlier he “was humiliated and scolded by the chief minister at Dhanbad airport.” The chief minister of Jharkhand was Raghubar Das. The officer was reported to be upset by the chief minister’s “public humiliation.”