There's something about Mary

When we had been asked by the organisers of the lsquoTimes Lit Festrsquo to moderate a discussion with Mary Kom for a live audience at the Mehboob studio we had agreed with alacrity After all how often does one get to interview a real life champion The assignment had meant that we had to undertake a fair amount of research on the sport star as well as read her autobiographyBut nothing had prepared us for Mary Tiny and girlish she had entered the auditorium shyly accompanied by her mother her husband and her newborn son Such was her demeanour that throughout our session with her we had felt protective towards the delicate looking boxing icon whose eyes kept searching the hall for her babyMary Kom PicPTIIt was only once towards the end of our QampA when a female a member of the audience had asked Kom for her views on rape and violence against women that wersquod seen Kom fire ldquoYou hit them backrdquo shersquod said her eyes aflame ldquoUse whatever means you haverdquo shersquod said raising her fists against an imaginary assaulter ldquoscratch with your nails pull their eyesrdquo shersquod said ldquobut always you must fight backrdquoWe thought of this fondly when we heard about her triumph yesterday at the Asian Games lsquoFloat like a butterfly sting like a beersquo might as well have been written for herA bitter pill to swallowOn hearing that on the eve of Modirsquos visit to the US the government had instructed the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority NPPA to withdraw its recent guidelines on price control of 108 drugs used to treat lifethreatening diseases like tuberculosis AIDS diabetes and heart ailments we thought of our friend Padma Bhushan awardee Yusuf Yuku Hamied and how sad he must beYusuf Hamied PICAFPBecause though Hamied heads one of Indiarsquos largest pharmaceutical companies CIPLA and would stand to make even more money out of this decision his whole lifersquos mission has been to champion the cause of cheaper medicine for the afflicted and to ensure that these medicines would be accessible to those who need themldquoI donrsquot want to profit out of peoplersquos misery it is not rightrdquo Hamied had said to us last month when wersquod run into him on our evening constitutional he was anticipating a policy change to coincide with the US visit ldquoTo allow large populations to die because multinational Pharma companies want to profit is shamefulrdquoSo today on hearing that the price of an anticancer tablet has risen from R8500 to R108 lakh our thoughts go out to all the patients of these diseases who might not be able to afford them any more And of course to Yusuf HamiedA man who stands apart from the pack for his principles of humanity In my book not only a true man of medicinebut a hero in the truest sense And now to find out the reason why the price of these medicines was decontrolled Not to make goody with American biz we hopeTerse advisoryldquoFareed Zakaria worked for Newsweek when it was under previous ownership Readers are advised that some of his articles have been the subject of complaints claiming that they contain material that should have been attributed to othersrdquo said the terse advisory in what could be called the last nail in the credibility of Mumbaiborn and raised Fareed Zakaria CNN host and columnist for The Washington PostFareed Zakaria andRajat Gupta PicAFPFor months the media maven had been under a cloud as accusations of plagiarism had mounted However such had been his standing that both the media houses have staunchly defended him Newsweekrsquos biting of the bullet by its unprecedented decision to carry this advisory about its former correspondent and editor is a damning indictmentAfter all Zakaria like McKinseyrsquos Rajat Gupta was the poster boy of the Indian diaspora Meanwhile for Zakariarsquos many friends and fans in Mumbai one can only hope that the accusations hersquos facing are proved untrueStinging riposte to the EconomistldquoThis story is not about defending Modi If it were Dr MM Singh we would have written it toordquo says our friend noted journalist Padma Rao foreign correspondent of the recently launched Swarajya described as lsquothe new magfirst web then printfor right liberals to put an end to chattering discourse from bleeding heart sentimentalist entirely impractical jabberers who call themselves lsquoleft wingrsquo and lsquosecularrsquorsquoNarendra Modi in USA PicPTIShe was referring to the magazinersquos stinging riposte in the form of an editorial on the highly critical column in the Economist that its correspondent Patrick Foulis had written on Modirsquos US sojourn Foulis had amongst other things sneeringly alluded to the Modi wave as lsquoa pain in the assrsquo and referred to India as a lsquocontinentsized embarrassmentrsquoPadma Rao andSandipan DebIn its editorial Swarajya edited by Sandipan Deb had said ldquoForeign correspondents who live in India on Eurostrong salaries exchanging stuffy apartments in say Tunbridge Wells for palatial mansions with gardens and butlers serving them sundowners cannot reconcile themselves to the fact that Manhattan traffic instead of parting for them like the Red Sea for Moses is doing so for a mere IndianrdquoldquoIt was about defending India against tiresomely unresearched slander from a foreign correspondentrdquo said Rao who had contributed to the editorial along with her colleagues Interestingly after the outrage over the lsquopain in the assrsquo reference the Economist had clarified ldquoThe Economist does not consider Mr Modi to be a lsquopain in the assrsquo that epithet is merely how we imagined an uninformed New Yorker might feel about someone who causes a traffic jamrsquo No kidding