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The Boy Who Spoke

In the Sabha Parva of the Mahabharata, Draupadi asks the assembly whether she has been lawfully lost at dice. Nobody answers. Vikarna, a younger son of Dhritarashtra, asks why Bhishma, Dhritarashtra and Vidura say nothing, and why Drona and Kripa are silent. “Ye kings, answer ye the question,” he says, in the Ganguli translation. The kings answer him “not one word, good or ill.”

Vikarna then gives his own view: “I regard Draupadi as not won.” Karna answers. “Though but a boy thou speakest in the assembly as if thou wert old,” he says. He tells Dussasana that Vikarna “is but a boy.”

The First Honor

At Yudhishthira’s Rajasuya sacrifice in the Mahabharata, the first honor goes to Krishna. Sisupala, the king of Chedi, objects before the assembled kings. In the Ganguli translation, he names the men who have been passed over. “When Drona is here, how hast thou worshipped him of the Vrishni race?” He goes on through Vyasa, Bhishma, Aswatthaman, Duryodhana, Kripa and Karna.

“How doth he of the Dasarha race, who is not even a king, accept worship before these kings?” he asks. Then Sisupala rises from his seat and leaves the assembly, accompanied by the kings.

Sitting Near

The word upanishad is commonly understood as “sitting near a teacher.” It is built from upa, by, and ni-shad, to sit down. The student sits down beside the teacher to receive what the teacher knows.

Not every reading of the word is about the seat. The Monier-Williams dictionary also gives a traditional explanation: “setting to rest ignorance by revealing the knowledge of the supreme spirit.”

The Seat of Power

Gaddi is the seat of a shop owner or merchant. The Rekhta dictionary also gives its wider meanings, power and the seat of authority. Gaddi par baithna, to sit on the gaddi, means to take the place of a senior or an elder, a pir or a guru.

Bada sahab, the big sahib, is the head of a department. Rekhta’s Urdu entry for bade sahib names the chief officer of a district, and also the senior member of a household.

Second to Take the Oath

On June 9, 2024, Narendra Modi took the oath as prime minister for the third time. His ministers followed him one by one. Rajnath Singh was second. Amit Shah and Nitin Gadkari came next. The Week wrote that J.P. Nadda “was the fifth to be sworn in, thus deciding the pecking order in the new cabinet.”

The Fifth Row

On August 15, 2024, Rahul Gandhi attended the Independence Day ceremony at the Red Fort as Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. He sat behind the Olympic hockey team. Business Today described his seat as being in the second-last row. The Congress said he had been put in the fifth row and called it a sign of pettiness.

According to unnamed sources, the Defence Ministry had given the front rows to Olympic medalists. Business Today noted that the rank of the Leader of the Opposition is equivalent to that of a Cabinet minister.

The Towel on the Chair

In government offices in Uttar Pradesh, a towel on the senior official’s chair is a usual sight. “You won’t find it on any other chair but the one intended for the most important person,” the Hindustan Times wrote in 2017.

On October 7, 2024, J.P. Singh, principal secretary of the parliamentary affairs department of Uttar Pradesh, issued an order on how officials should receive visiting legislators. It noted that “the officials sit on bigger and ‘towelled’ chairs than the one offered to the lawmakers.” If an official has a towel on his chair, ThePrint explained, “the same has to be ensured for the visiting lawmaker.”

Three Calls to Go Around

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’.”

Not in Front of the Boss

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.”