She's funny like that

Indian husbands worship their mothers because they have seen cows being worshiped throughout their growing years!!

Twinkle Khanna writes so beautifully that you read her words slowly, relishing them, enjoying them and rolling over them till a radiant smile gets imprinted on your face. Her control of language and her choice of words display an exceptional poise for a prose writer, making you wonder why she spent those forgettable years in the film industry. By her own admission, that part of her life has long been boxed away. Good for us! 

Else, the writer in her would not have been discovered, which shines like a twinkling star with this debut book. Her astute observations do not spare anybody, be it the babbling rickshaw-wallah or the man of the house, or be it the stubborn canine or the eccentric mothers. Holding multiple portfolios – a home maker, an interior decorator, a star’s wife and a valued daughter-in-law – and still being able to amuse herself is a curious case of taking life as it comes, one day at a time. And she has allowed her self-deprecating wits to get the better of her. 

She lets you feel relaxed as she takes on some of the compelling concerns of most daughter-in-laws. Far from being mama’s boys, says she, Indian husbands worship their mothers because they have seen cows being worshipped all over. For her, nothing is more sacred in life than ‘laughter’ and nothing is free in life except ‘bad advice’. Yet, she avoids being preachy as she goes about discovering the amusing aspects of everyday existence. 

Mrs. Funnybones is an exercise in self-discovery nonetheless. It is unlike most run-of-the-mill-humor stuff as it is intelligently laced with nuggets of reflections on life-matters. Reflecting on the suicide by two teenagers, the author wonders if we ever try to teach our children that it is okay to fail in life. Isn’t life just like flying kite? Sometimes it flies effortlessly, and sometimes it is tough to keep it afloat. Life is all about waiting for the wind to change in your favor and once it does, don’t let it go. 

Twinkle Khanna

And, once the wind blew with an offer for her to start writing, she didn’t let go. What Ms Khanna has produced out of her newspaper columns is an effortless writing at its best. She lets lose her funny bones, generating humor in every conversation and pulling humor out from each incident. From sexy Kim Kardashian to six-pack Hrithik Roshan, from Pliny the Elder to Plato the Mathematician, there is room for everyone in her breezy narrative. She thinks there is nothing more challenging than to look at life upside down, perhaps the only way we can ease past the blinking screens we have created around us. 

Twinkle comes out as an intelligent critic too, taking a shot at our deeply ingrained perception around rituals. Talking about the annual torturous fast for women, called Karva Chauth, that is performed in order to magically lengthen the life of their other halves, she wonders if female of its species does it for the tortoise who without doubt outlives all of us. And more often than not, it is the women who have longer lifespan! 

But women are often at the receiving end of men’s follies! For being asked to open the top button of her husband’s jeans as he walked down the ramp – as part of the advertising gimmick – she was served a police notice for indecent behaviour in public. She wonders why opening a single top button became the crime of the century, when scores of men publicly unbutton or unzip to pull out their dangling bits to irrigate all kinds of walls on offer. Hypocrisy gets a perfect kick on the ass, as she doesn’t leave anything for another day. 

One hopes that Mrs. Funnybones is a work-in-progress, with more to tumble out of it. 

Mrs Funnybones
by Twinkle Khanna
Penguin, New Delhi
Extent: 235, Price: Rs. 299 

This review was first published in the Deccan Herald, September 27, 2015

Genie out of the bottle

Drone-led covert war against terrorism is loaded with hitherto unheard social and political implications

                                 
With wars increasingly being fought between states and non-state actors, weapons armed with artificial intelligence have replaced erstwhile indiscriminate bombings with targeted killings. Fought with armed drones that target holed-up insurgents, precision bombing may have given asymmetric battlefield advantage to the state actor, notably the US; the political and psychological implications of secret drone warfare are far more complex. Backed by published literature, recorded interviews and onsite visits, Chris Woods, a former BBC staffer, has produced a definitive account on multiple implications of the covert war against terrorism which, President Bush thought was perfect in bringing ‘Sudden Justice’ to its enemies.

Such justice system is not without its hidden costs, though. The claim that the ‘find, fix and finish’ nature of the targeted drone warfare saves civilian lives is grossly misplaced. For fear of legal and political retribution such casualties are often under-reported, however, not without inflicting collateral damage on military and public installations. In one such counter-offensive in May 2011, the Taliban assault had killed 16 people on the Mehran naval base (used for launching drones) in Karachi inflicting damages worth $200 million in a single day. Each counter-offensive leaves a clear message -heavy dependence on drone strikes will experience lethal blowback.     

In his eye-opening narrative, the author contends that tactical disregard for noncombatant deaths could prove doubly dangerous as terrorist and militant groups are fast acquiring technology to build their own drones, challenging the United States’ monopolistic claim as judge, jury and executioner in unmanned warfare against non-state actors. Not without reason a group of scientists, led by Stephen Hawking, have recently argued against misplaced faith in weaponised artificial intelligence. Since cost of reproducing autonomous weapons is not prohibitive, it will set an inevitable arms-race that will be impossible to reverse, and the proverbial genie will be well and truly out of the bottle. 

As the world heads towards the third revolution in warfare – after gunpowder and nuclear weapons - the nature of killing has transformed to unravel a host of ethical and legal concerns. Killing men on the ground by assuming their guilt and denying them criminal trial could hardly ever be justified. The United Nations has routinely described covert drone strikes as extrajudicial killings, even though Washington insists that it (the UN) had no jurisdiction over the matter. However, Washington’s arrogance will be under test when several other countries would gain access to their own armed drones.   

As drone strikes move war out from on-field combat to on-screen maneuvers, its ripples are felt by those who are engaged in grueling working hours witnessing virtual horrors of the actual warfare thousands of miles away. Woods says that a six-month stint in Afghanistan for manned crews could be as long as three years for those in heavily guarded war-rooms in Nevada or New Mexico. Being exposed to horrifying images of killing causes psychological pain and suffering on military personal which psychologists describe as ‘Prolonged Virtual Combat Stress’. This stress is beginning to take a heavy toll on those who are repeatedly exposed to the horrors of remotely piloted combat. 

Sudden Justice offers detailed insights on the technological revolution leading to asymmetrical warfare; the stories of precision bombings; the inconsistent value of local spies; the development of countermeasures by the militant groups; and the legal and moral implications of coveted drone warfare. Researched over a period of 30 months under a grant from the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Woods has written as much about the development of drone technology as about the human dimensions of this evolving form of warfare. 

Ever since armed drones made their debut in 2001, the respective US Presidents have cited secret air war as their greatest achievement. However, the question that needs to be asked is whether the secret drone wars in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have lessened terrorist activity – or instead have achieved the opposite. 

Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars
by Chris Woods
Hurst & Company, UK
Extent: 386, Price: £20

This review was first published in Deccan Herald on September 12, 2015.