Under her wing

With her mane of white hair her feisty championing of good causes her legendary loyalty to her friends and her dignified demeanor Jaya Bachchan has rightly become the matriarch of the film industry Many years ago Krishna Kapoor Raj Kapoorrsquos graceful wife had occupied the same position someone who could be counted on for being fair above it all and stately at all times And insiders say that the protective arm that she was seen to place around Gauri Khan when they posed for shutterbugson Diwali night outside the Bachchan mansion was no accident The elder superstarrsquos wife has taken the younger under her protective wing and sources speak of a growing friendship and a mutual admiration society between the two thatrsquos blossomed recently u00a0Good to know when genuine friendships cut across the board and blossom in the film industry Jaya Bachchan with Shah Rukh Khan Amitabh Bachchan and Gauri Krishna Kapoor Women in arms gtgt Individually they were two of advertisingrsquos most powerful women legends in their own fields and the mistresses of their own universe and together they constitute a pair of talents so formidable that a whole new collective noun might have to be invented to describe them Lynn de Souza formerly chairman amp CEO Lintas Media Group and Meenakshi Menon who set up Carat India the first media independent in the country and who later launched Spatial Access Solutions had joined forces with two other colleagues earlier this year to launch Social Access the first agency of its kind that works purely to fuel social change ldquoOur vision is to help build a more equitable society with informed and involved participation from key constituents NGOs corporates government and societyrdquo says their mission statement Look at their picture Do you doubt that change is in on the horizon Lynn de Souza with Meenakshi Menon Cadbury house gtgt And even as the country is buzzing about the sale of the iconic Cadbury House to diamond merchant Dilip Lakhi for the staggering amount of Rs 350 crore the man himself appears to be someone with his feet firmly on the ground ldquoI am not celebrating this Cadbury deal in a grand manner because I feel one needs to maintain self control at all timesrdquo said the man who once had the distinction of being the countryrsquos highest tax payer and who hails from a wealthy Sindhi clan The Lakhi insouciance has other facets too a long time neighbour of one of Lakhirsquos brothers in a SoBo building says that the family has been known to live an extremely simple and grounded life for years u00a0ldquoYou would never guess even for once that they are wealthyrdquo says our sourceu00a0Nice Cadbury House Stalking in allegory gtgt And from the talented Peter Griffin poet and Editor at Forbes and not related in any way whatsoever to Peter Loumlwenbraumlu Griffin the main character in the American animated sitcom Family Guy come two gems both about a certain stout and powerful stalker lsquoMadhuri had a little camu00a0That followed wherersquoer shersquod gou00a0Everywhere that Madhuri wentu00a0Sahib was sure to knowrsquo is the first followed by the more florid lsquoIrsquom a little despot u00a0Short and stoutu00a0This is my hashtagu00a0These are my toutsu00a0When your daughterrsquos foilingu00a0Your efforts to keep her in checku00a0Just call Saheb And the ATS will take over by heckrsquo And whereas we were not able to get the poetrsquos explanation about the meter form and inspiration for these delightful allegories suffice it is to say we like Salaam Mumbai Thinking out loud It started as a buzzing of the grapevine Then a flurry of text messages which led to a frenzied surfing for information on the net and on TV Soon social networks were turned to for more sourcingu00a0And by this morning notwithstanding the sparseness of reportage on it in the dailies there was an explosion of news views jeers exclamations back stories condemnations and intense soul searching amongst the media over Tarun Tejpalrsquos sexual assault of a young female reporter at the THINK festival earlier this monthu00a0Loudest were the fears that the media would gloss over the ignominious act committed by one of their own and the demands for more appropriate punishment So how should we in the media especially those of us who have known Tejpal as a colleague and who have attended his Thinkfests respond How do we especially those of us who happen to be women react Are there any words of explanation or remorse or anger that could salve the huge wound of dismay and indignation that the incident has caused For whatever itrsquos worth herersquos my two bits first for those of us who look for the glass half full therersquos a small sliver of hope Three decades ago incidents like these that might have occurred would have been swiftly swept under the carpet or worse still the victim might have been complicit in the crime using it to vault the ladder of successu00a0Today a young woman feels empowered enough to complain fight back and demand justiceu00a0Small cheer but a huge step forward u00a0 Second and this goes to the root of the malaise can someone get to the bottom of why a man any man forces himself onto a woman in the first place Is it a sense of power u00a0Or just malformed emotions Or the feeling that he will get away with it u00a0When we understand the answer to that we can begin the journey to solving the problem As for the media suffice it is to say that this incident has been one of the most damning for its credibility and perhaps one from which it might never recover Overheard I believe it starts with a vivid description of her first night u00a0in Tihar jail and spares no one not the notorious Chandraswami not Ram Jethmalani nor the Delhi socialites who let her down during the Jessica Lal murder investigation A member of the audience at the discussion and soft launch of Bina Ramani39s soontobereleased memoir Bird in a Banyan tree at the Tata LitFest recentlyu00a0