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’.”
Satyendra Dubey, an engineer with the National Highways Authority of India, wrote to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee about corruption in a highway project. He described “a great loot of public money” and asked that his name be kept secret. His name became known.
On November 27, 2003, Dubey was killed in Gaya. In March 2010 a court sentenced three men to life imprisonment for the murder.
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.
“You were asked only to bend, but you crawled.” This is how L.K. Advani described the conduct of the Indian press during the Emergency of 1975 to 1977, when the government of Indira Gandhi imposed press censorship. The Quint calls the remark famous. It gives no date or occasion for it.
In a lecture in Wellington in November 1998, Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw told how Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had wanted the army to move into East Pakistan at once in 1971. He said that he refused: “I guarantee you a hundred percent defeat.” If she gave him time, he promised, “I guarantee you a hundred percent victory.” The published text of the lecture is not an exact transcript.
The story is disputed. Introducing an interview by Karan Thapar with Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, author of a book on the 1971 war, The Wire wrote that “the records conclusively disprove the story popularised by Field Marshal Manekshaw.”
In the Yuddha Kanda of the Valmiki Ramayana, Vibhishana advises his brother Ravana, in the presence of the ministers, to return Sita to Rama. Ravana is enraged and dismisses him. The text says that Ravana “sent away Vibhishana, who had spoken honestly.”
Vibhishana goes over to Rama. He explains: “Reviled by him and humiliated as a slave, I, leaving my sons and my wife, have come to take refuge with Rama.”
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.”
ValueNotes, an Indian research firm, gives foreign partners ten tips for doing business with Indians. One of them reads: “In a meeting, we don’t like to contradict the boss, especially if he’s wrong!”
The tip continues: “The flip side is that those in powerful positions expect deference, and consensus.”
In one of the Akbar and Birbal tales, the emperor Akbar praises the brinjal, and his minister Birbal praises it too. Birbal even sings two songs about it. A few days later Akbar finds a brinjal dish tasteless. Birbal now says that the vegetable is unhealthy.
Asked why he changed his mind, Birbal says that he is loyal to the emperor, not to the brinjal. One retelling puts it this way: “I am beholden to you, not to the Brinjal.”
In one of the Akbar and Birbal tales, Emperor Akbar’s pet parrot has died. No courtier dares to tell him, because he has ordered that anyone who brings news of the parrot’s death will be hanged. Birbal goes to the emperor and says: “Jahanpanah, your parrot is neither eating anything, nor drinking anything.”
When Akbar asks whether the parrot is dead, Birbal replies: “I did not say it. You said it.”