The King's Speech & I

Last week I saw a movie that I have been waiting to see for a long time: The King's Speech (http://www.kingsspeech.com). It is a dramatised version of a certain aspect of the life of King Geroge VI: his speech problem.

As the second son of King George V, Prince Albert was not supposed to ascend the throne. That privilege belonged to his elder brother, the Prince of Wales, Edward. On the death of King George V, Prince Edward ascended the throne as King Edward VIII. However, very soon, his love for an American divorcee, Mrs Wallis Simpson, and his desire to marry her resulted in his having to abdicate the throne. As the next in line, Prince Albert had to ascend to the throne and took on the title King George VI.

Prince Albert / King George VI was a most reluctant monarch. And his reluctance did not have to do entirely with him being forced to occupy a position that he thought rightfully belonged to his brother. King George VI's reluctance was also in great measure due to his stammering problem. How could the great British dominions--an empire so large that 'the sun never set'--have a King-Emperor who could not command and/or inspire his subject through his words? How do you proclaim the majesty of a stammering king? How do you maintain the magic of an institution who members do not measure up publicly.

The movie shows the fascinating relationship between Prince Albert--yet to be king--and his speech trainer Lionel Logue. And how they together triumph at the end.

Colin Firth, playing the role of Prince Albert, brings out the rage and frustration of a headstrong man handicapped with a situation that results in public humiliation for him. Just imagine: how would anyone of us feel if thrust in front of a huge crowd of adoring and expectant public, and find that our vocal chords desert us?

I could very well identify with the pain and frustration of the young prince. For, till well past my adulthood, I had a huge stammering problem. The situation was so bad that there was not a single sentence I could speak without stammering. 

Of course I was not born that way; I guess no child does. But I got affected pretty early on. My earliest memories of stammering go back to my Classes IIIrd and IVth. I would get caught up on particular words, and from then on I would freeze. And to stop my embarrassment, I would refuse to speak from then on. Seeing Prince Albert struggle with his vocal chords and the resultant distortions on his face, brought back a flood of memories of my younger days.

It was sometime in my +2 days (classes XIth and XIIth) that I decided to take things into my own hands. Of course we did not have speech therapists in those days; and even if they existed, I did not have any knowledge of their existence. So I decided to train myself in front of the mirror, and my process of recovery began. To say that it wasn't easy is to state the obvious. But it was also extremely frustrating and painful.

The movie shows how Prince Albert's frustrations would turn into violent temper and self-pity. I guess my emotions too weren't different. Today, in retrospect, I can trace, with some degree of certainty, the roots of my temperament: my short fuse and social aloofness. Not that I did not want to open up, I could not. And it has stayed that way.

Today, as a political leader, I speak in front of large audiences; I address public rallies. And at such times do I marvel at the recovery I made. 

As the movie ended and the credits scrolled, I said a silent prayer for all the young men and women affected with a speech handicap, and hoped that they too would recover some day!

  

To move forward, let's share stories

By Prodyut Bora & Hindol Sengupta

Published in the Hindustan Times, 14 August 2013

http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/Columns/To-move-forward-let-s-share-stories/Article1-1107587.aspx

If one were to forget for a moment the ridiculous debate on what price could one have a full meal in Delhi and Mumbai, and also cut through the fog of arguments and counter-arguments by statisticians and economists on the latest poverty figures put out by the Planning Commission, one could accept the larger point that the number of poor people has reduced in the last 10 years.

While we receive the news of poverty reduction, we are also presented with the evidence of general economic slowdown.

In such a scenario, what we need is a wide-ranging debate on how to help the economy to recover.

The media has reduced the entire debate to the personalities of two academic stalwarts — Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati — whose intellectual positions, we are asked to believe, have been defined by their political inclinations and professional rivalry based on, among others, only one among the duo having got the Nobel.

As Vinod Mehta wrote in Outlook, ‘Played across three continents, it has all the gravitas of a Katrina Kaif-Priyanka Chopra Bollywood tiff’.

This begs two questions: First, have we really understood the positions of Sen and Bhagwati, and second, are the solutions to the problems of the Indian economy to be found only in these two polar positions?

Let us take the first. Arvind Panagariya, an economist and professor at Columbia University, has argued in The Economic Times: ‘Two extreme characterisations of the positions of the two sides have emerged.

The first has it that the differences between them are minimal with each side expressing the same ideas in a different language.

The second depicts Bhagwati as advocating solely growth and Sen solely social spending. Both characterisations are plain wrong’. Panagariya has delineated the points of convergence and departure in both positions, and has created immense scope for a nuanced debate. However, without attempting to explore any other possibility, we have simplified it into a growth vs development debate and given readers a binary menu to choose from.

In the second point, our opinion is against middle-of-the-road solution seeking. Take the mid-day meal and the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS).

For every horror story from Bihar or Bloomberg report about a company commissioned to supply food under the ICDS in UP serving rations unfit for consumption, there is Tamil Nadu, where successive chief ministers have competed to increase the number of eggs in mid-day meals; and Madhya Pradesh, which ranks at the top of the best performing states in kitchen construction and procurement in the last six years.

On a recent visit to Ajmer in Rajasthan it was understood that enrolment had gone up from 30 to 293 students in the last two years due to community involvement in preparing and serving hot meals mostly to banjara or gypsy children as a part of the mid-day meal scheme.

It is time we rise above petty point-scoring and create a common pool of ideas shared between states where the success of one can be replicated by the other without bias. Why should Delhi shy away from learning about the wonder that Ahmedabad has done at its river front?

And why should Mumbai shirk Delhi’s example of running a metro?

In any case, economy is too important a topic to be left solely to economists. In a country as large and diverse as India, relying on just data can often be numbing.

In our culture, lessons are best learnt when stories are told. We need to rekindle a culture where the best stories and examples are held forth. We need modern parables, writers who will revive ancient wisdom in a spanking new context. We need laws, the application of laws and stories that explain the magic of that dharma to us.

Today demography is on our side. A young India has seen a country very different from what the older generations experienced. We had a great opportunity to present them a future characterised by hope and positive restlessness. But in the clamour for scoring television screaming points, aren’t we losing out an opportunity to get history on our side?

Prodyut Bora is national executive member, BJP and Hindol Sengupta is the author of The Liberals

The views expressed by the authors are personal

Welcome to Yale

My friend Sanjay Sarma (https://twitter.com/nick_sarma) had been insisting for a long time that I start writing my blog again. I had been resisting it for as long as I could on one pretext or the other. My reasons were many. After a long day of political work, wherein one meets tens of people and is required to change mental track multiple times, there is little inclination and energy left to put pen to paper. Secondly, I am a lazy writer: having written something I hate to re-read it and/or make corrections. Wherein with a newspaper or magazine article one is safe in the knowledge that what one has written would go through the fine combs of an editor's gaze, how does one ensure that one's blog is free of bloomers and typos? Thirdly, one is communicating all the time: SMSes, phone calls, emails, Facebook, Twitter, what have you! So without dipping into what may be referred to as 'intensely private', what material is one left with that could be of sufficient public interest?

Sanjay's answer was: write about your experience at Yale.

This year I had been selected a Yale World Fellow (http://worldfellows.yale.edu/), one of a group of 16 people from around the world found fit to attend what Yale calls 'its signature leadership development programme'. This is the 11th year of the programme and over the years it has indeed picked an eclectic group of people. For instance, click here to see the honorees from India. The programme picks mid-career professionals, mostly in their mid-30s to the early 40s, that have shown both performance and potential. Looking at members of this cohort and earlier ones, I feel humbled to be in such august company.

Anyway, more out of respect for Sanjay's insistence that any creative impulse, I start my blog again. Only God knows how long I would keep at it!

So what of Yale?

I landed at the Newark Liberty International Airport after a 15 hour flight on Saturday morning and was picked-up by a limo sent by the university. I don't know if they do it for all students, but it was nice to be waited upon and not having to look for a taxi in a foreign location. Although Newark is part of the larger New York Metropolitan Area, it is actually in the state of New Jersey. Newark to Yale, New Haven, is almost a 2-hour drive. New Haven is in the state of Connecticut.

The drive from Newark to Yale, New Haven

As I flipped open the introductory docket that Yale had sent with the chauffeur and poured over the maps, one question came to my mind: if a New York Metropolitan Area can have multiple airports servicing it, why can't our Delhi/NCR too have more than one airport? Why do planes have to hover for so long over the Delhi airport waiting to come down, when we could have easily decongested the airspace by building more airports in places like Greater Noida, Sonepat and Meerut? What is logic of having a rule like 'no new airports within 500 kms of an existing one'?

Anyway, the 15-hour flight and my further mental flight of fancy took their toll, and I easily slipped into slumber for the rest of the journey. When I woke up, I was in front of my residence for the next 4 months.

Welcome to Yale!