Reader_s_Digest_India_-_April_2016

`100
APRIL
2016
How YouTube
Changed The World
This online phenomenon is increasingly
ruling our lives PAGE 62
SHYAM BENEGAL ON STUDENT
PROTESTS
PAGE 98
THE POWER OF GRATITUDE
PAGE 78
HUMOUR SPECIAL: DUMB CRIMINALS
Unbelievable tales of bad judgement
and plain stupidity
PAGE 72
CLASSIC BONUS READ
THE CASE OF THE ROLEX MURDER
PAGE 138
THE ART OF GOOD DECISION-MAKING............ 43
LAUGHTER, THE BEST MEDICINE..................... 86
FIGHT BACK LUNG CANCER................................ 88
DRAMA: LION ATTACK!...................................... 104
ENRICH YOUR WORD POWER........................... 159
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Contents
APRIL 2016
P. | 88
Cover Story
62 HOW YOUTUBE CHANGED
THE WORLD
An online phenomenon that’s
increasingly ruling our lives.
SIMON HEMELRYK WITH
ARUSHI SHARMA
PHOTO: © CORBIS
72 WORLD’S DUMBEST
CRIMINALS
It didn’t take a master sleuth to
catch them. BRUCE GRIERSON
78 THE POWER OF GRATITUDE
How saying “thank you” can make
you happier. LISA FIELDS
88 FIGHTING LUNG CANCER
A changing approach and new
treatments are bringing hope.
KATHAKOLI DASGUPTA &
ANITA BARTHOLOMEW
94 SOUNDS LIKE
Words that put the whizz bang into
our language. DONYALE HARRISON
98 ALTERNATE VISION
Shyam Benegal on what keeps him
going at 81. SNIGDHA HASAN
Drama in Real Life
104 LION ATTACK!
Bonding with Africa’s biggest
cats nearly cost this teen her life.
LIA GRAINGER
114 WHO IS UNINDIAN?
What does it take to be antinational?
DAMAYANTI DATTA
120 FINDING THE SILVER
LINING
How one woman changed her
destiny. PRATHYASHA GEORGE
124 HALLOWED HALLS
Churches as architectural
marvels. CORNELIA KUMFERT
130 MY SECRET VENICE
A well-known journalist acts as
tour guide in this iconic city.
JOHN HOOPER
Book Bonus
138 THE CASE OF THE
ROLEX MURDER
An investigation into a
drowning begins with a watch.
BILL SCHILLER
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 5

Vol. 57 | No. 4
APRIL 2016
12 Editor’s Note 14 Over to You
Everyday Heroes
22 Help for the Homeless
These humanitarians offer
innovative solutions for a better
world and future.
ALYSSA JUNG,
BRANDON SPECKTOR,
BETH DREHER & MICHELE
WOJCIECHOWSKI
VOICES & VIEWS
P. | 28
READER FAVOURITES
18 Life’s Like That
34 Good News
36 Medical News
38 Humour in Uniform
40 Points to Ponder
55 Shocking Notes
61 It Happens Only in India
86 Laughter, the Best Medicine
123 As Kids See It
158 Brain Teasers
159 Word Power
163 Studio
164 Quotable Quotes
My First Job
28 Compassionate Care
How one heart surgeon’s
first job made him a
philanthropist.
DR DEVI SHETTY
Words of Lasting Interest
30 Marriage of True Minds
Remembering Shakespeare on
his 400th death anniversary
through his sonnet on love.
SHORMISHTHA PANJA
Department of Wit
32 The Food Lover’s Diet
For guaranteed happiness
(not necessarily a slimmer
waist), try this out.
ANNE ROUMANOFF
Finish This Sentence
42 I break into a laugh
when...
➸
NILOTPAL BARUAH
6 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

Vol. 57 | No. 4
APRIL 2016
WHO KNEW?
156 13 Things Gyms Won’t
Tell You
BY MICHELLE CROUCH WITH
NISHA VARMA
P. | 60
161 Entertainment
OUR TOP PICKS OF
THE MONTH
ART OF LIVING
43 The Choice Is Yours
CHANTAL TRANCHEMONTAGNE
Health
46 First Aid for Your Voice
Money
50 Good Money Habits
GAURAV MASHRUWALA
Travel
52 In the Southern Hills
KALYANI PRASHER
Beauty
56 The No-Fuss Guide to
Anti-Ageing DR REKHA SHETH
Family
58 The Morning Report
DONALD E. HUNTON
Fitness
60 A Lifesaving At-Home
Check-Up JESSICA CASSITY
P. | 161
Total number of pages in this issue of
Reader’s Digest, including covers: 166
ILLUSTRATION: Sameer Kulavoor.
COVER DESIGN:
Sadhana Moolchandani
CHRIS PHILPOT
8 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

VOL. 57 NO. 4
APRIL 2016
Editor Sanghamitra Chakraborty
Deputy Editor Sunalini Mathew
Senior Research Editor Mamta Sharma
Features Editor Snigdha Hasan
Senior Features Writer Arushi Sharma
Editorial Coordinator Ruchi Lodha
Art Director Sadhana Moolchandani
Senior Designer Keshav Kapil
IMPACT (ADVERTISING)
Group Business Head Manoj Sharma
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Published in 46 editions and 17 languages,
Reader’s Digest is the world’s largest-selling
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10 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

Editor’s Note
You Are The World
AS I WRITE TO YOU, my son is struggling with a
sleeping bag—the filling is out and all over him and he
has no idea how to fold it back in, neatly. My earlyteens
boy is off on a school trip, and is doing his own
packing. I offer to help, but he stops me: “Chill, Ma. Let me
figure this out.” I step back: ouch, he would rather look up a
YouTube tutorial than have his mother potter around.
I was amused at how I’d started sulking about something I
now do routinely myself. My recent search history on YouTube shows I learnt
how to use a new coffee maker, picked up a great recipe of haleem from a
Pakistani woman and watched puppies being trained for my own pet. I routinely
catch up on TV news that I may have missed, an old Kishore Kumar hit or a
Louis CK comedy that makes me smile, before I turn in for the day.
It’s amazing, how the simple idea of uploading your personal videos on the
internet has caught on and changed the way we work, play and live. I’m
particularly fascinated, as a journalist, by the way YouTube has led the march of
user-generated content on the internet for over a decade, democratized
information and empowered audiences. Deciding the hierarchy of news is no
longer the preserve of editors alone: the power has devolved to the audience.
This is most significant in a world where free speech can be muzzled, human
rights threatened and news manipulated by authoritarian regimes.
How YouTube Changed the World (p 62), our cover story, is a celebration of
people power. From spreading social messages to providing entertainment, from
being a powerful educational tool to building global communities, it is a
reminder of the enormous influence this platform has.
To celebrate the first day of April, we have for you a humour special on Dumb
Criminals (p 72) that you shouldn’t miss. Also, read The Power of Gratitude
(p 78)— it will make you believe in a ‘thank you’ more than ever; it certainly
reaffirmed my faith in it. What better place to let you know that you, dear reader,
inspire us to make the Digest what it is?
So, thank you!
Send an email to
editor.india@rd.com
PHOTOGRAPH BY ANAND GOGOI.
HAIR & MAKE-UP BY ROLIKA PRAKASH
12 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

Over to You
FEEDBACK ON OUR FEBRUARY ISSUE
FINANCIAL REGIME
There is no dearth of laws to curb the generation and
circulation of black money [Can the New Law Flush
Out Black Money?]. It is the lack of proper execution
that is the problem. The solution is three-pronged.
Political will comes first, followed by transparency
of the system, and awareness amongst people and
their participation.
ARVIND PRAKASH VERMA, Allahabad
Life insurance, though not an investment
but a necessity, provident fund,
postal savings certificates and medical
insurance were some common
options for savings when I was in
service [What’s Your Plan?]. The foresighted
invested in housing. But it
was impossible to imagine the extent
of inflation and devaluation of the
rupee over the years. Fixed pensions
from private companies, as opposed
to regularly revised government
ones, are a pittance now. Everyone
must plan for the future to maintain
a minimum standard of living, keeping
their family commitments in
mind.
D.B.N. MURTHY, Bengaluru
FB GIMMICK
An internet user enjoys the freedom
of access to a zillion sources of information
[Quickipedia]. Facebook’s
Free Basics service that seeks to provide
free access to a few selected
websites, is contrary to the spirit of
this freedom. That this facility will be
of great help to a huge section of
India’s population, who cannot afford
to be online, does not redeem the initiative.
The concept smacks of control.
VIKAS KUMAR SINGH, Araria, Bihar
FLYING BLUES
Many of us wouldn’t be able to tell
the difference between Grenada and
Granada [The Case of the Ticket
Mix-up]. If Gamson can prove that he
had booked his tickets with airport
codes, he must be reimbursed. Even
if he can’t, he deserves compensation
because it is the airline’s fault for not
mentioning the country’s name on
the ticket. But Gamson was lucky to
be mistakenly flown to a Caribbean
country. Hopefully, he made the
most of it. HIMA JARIWALA, via email
14 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

OVER TO YOU
After enjoying the solatium offered by
the airlines, Gamson has no locus
standi to claim further relief. He can’t
have his cake and eat it too. AYYASSERI
RAVEENDRANATH, Aranmula, Kerala
Private players should remember
that it is their customers who let
them earn profits, and such experiences
would tarnish their image, as
word travels.
SAHIL, via email
TESTING TIMES
Examination stress can be fatal if not
managed well [Bust Exam Stress]. It is
a trying time for parents when their
children appear for exams that impact
their careers and lives. It’s also the
time when children’s bodies undergo
changes and they experience mood
swings. They need support from their
parents to adjust to all of this.
RAMACHANDRAN NAIR, Muscat, Oman
Over two decades of teaching has
made me realize that parents, more
than children, need to understand
that marks and ranks are not everything.
There are plenty of examples
of successful people who did not fare
well in academics.
SHREEPRAKASH SHARMA, Birauli, Bihar
PRECIOUS TIME
Being an army officer, I can’t visit my
parents as often as I wish to [The Gift
Money Can’t Buy]. Every time I go
home I find them a little older, a little
unwell, managing life and relatives,
missing my brother and me, wishing
that I would be married. We hold
down our jobs, but miss out on family
that makes life worth living.
MAJOR NEHA, New Delhi
ADEQUATE SHUT-EYE
In India, sleep deprivation as a condition
is not as well-recognized as it
should be [Sounding the Alarm on
Sleep]. Most celebrities romanticize
the attribute of working through the
night. Working overtime is an Indian
phenomenon, with the BPO culture
adding to the owls amongst our workforce.
Besides, youngsters believe it’s
fun staying up at night. What’s disturbing
is that parents often take their
young children to late-night movies.
CHANDRIKA R. KRISHNAN, Bengaluru
WRITE
&
WIN!
I prided myself on relocating
to my home town to take care
of my aged mother, and doing
everything I could to make sure
she is taken care of. But I now
realize that I haven’t been giving
her what she needs the most—my
company. I will now spend some
time talking to her every day—
about the people she loved and
things she enjoyed doing.
SHEILA THAYYIL, Kannur, Kerala
Write in at editor.india@rd.com. The
best letters discuss RD articles,
offer criticism, share ideas and
experiences. Please include your phone
number and postal address.
16 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

Life’s Like That
“After a few more years of complaining I think I may change my life.”
I WAS UPSET and sent my boyfriend
a text saying, “How could you cheat
on me?” I got a text back immediately
in reply from my dad. I texted back
and said, “Sorry, Dad—that message
was meant for Ben.”
Back came another text from Dad.
“On a totally unrelated issue, have you
seen my rifle anywhere?”
He’s always been a protective father!
SHELAGH CLARKSON
AS THE HOSTESS at the casino
buffet showed me to my table, I asked
her to keep an eye out for my
husband, who would be joining me
momentarily. I started to describe
him: “He has grey hair, wears
glasses, has a potbelly...”
She stopped me there. “Honey,”
she said, “today is senior day. They
all look like that.”
ROSALIE DARIA
➸
INDIAPICTURE
18 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

LIFE’S LIKE THAT
MY HUSBAND WAS fraught after a
tough day at work, so I decided to
take him and our three kids out for a
meal to help him relax.
He was still feeling irritable when
we arrived at the restaurant, so when
the waiter approached and asked,
“Would sir like a table?” he snapped,
replying, “No thanks, we’ll eat off the
floor...carpet for five, please.”
I don’t know who was more embarrassed—the
waiter or me!
CAROLINE ALDEN
AT MY SISTER’S place of work, a
shoplifter was caught stealing a bottle
of whisky. He was interrogated
and the manager of the store gave
him a severe telling off. He told him
that if he bought the bottle he’d let
him off this time, and mentioned the
price of the whisky.
The shoplifter cheekily replied,
“That’s more than I was intending
to spend. Can you show me a
cheaper bottle?”
LOIS JONES
NIHILISTIC PASSWORD SECURITY
QUESTIONS
■ At what age did your childhood pet
run away?
■ What was the name of your favourite
unpaid internship?
■ In what city did you first experience
ennui?
■ On what street did you lose your
childlike sense of wonder?
■ When did you stop trying?
mcsweeneys.net
X
ANYONE KNOW A TUTOR?
Are you of the opinion your children
are acing school? Well, check
out some of their test answers.
Q: Use the word congenial in
a sentence.
A: When you leave the gravy out
too long, it congenials.
Q: The first thing Queen
Elizabeth II did upon ascending
the throne was to …
A: Sit down.
Q: Write a sentence containing
a double negative.
A: Mike is ugly and he smells.
Q: Name two plays by
Shakespeare.
A: Romeo and Juliet
Q: On what grounds was Aaron
Burr tried for treason?
A: New York
Q: Write about the importance
of animals in Of Mice and Men.
A: The mice are very important—
without them, you’d have only
the men.
Q: Use the word doldrums in
a sentence.
A: I cannot play the doldrums.
From F in Exams: Complete Failure Edition by
Richard Benson (Chronicle Books)
Reader’s Digest will pay for your funny
anecdote or photo in any of our jokes
sections. Post it to the editorial address,
or email: editor.india@rd.com
20 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

EVERYDAY
HEROES
“We want to
reach people
where they are,”
says Doniece
Sandoval.
22 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

Helping the Homeless
“We reconnect people with their dignity”
Doniece Sandoval
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MIKE MCGREGOR
AN OLD BLUE BUS pulls up to
a wellness centre in downtown San
Francisco, US, and a small crowd
forms. Young and old, men and
women are waiting to board for their
turn to bathe. This city bus has been
modified as a sanitation station with
two private bathrooms, each including
a shower, toilet, sink and changing
area. The brainchild of Doniece
Sandoval, a former public relations
executive, Lava Mae (a play on the
Spanish for “wash me”) provides up
to 500 showers a week for the thousands
of homeless people who sleep
on the streets in this city.
“We reconnect people with their
dignity,” says Doniece.
Two years ago, Doniece overheard
a homeless woman on a San Francisco
sidewalk say that she’d never
be clean. “That made me wonder
what her opportunities were to
actually get clean,” says Doniece. She
learnt that San Francisco had only
eight public shower facilities. “I
thought, If you can put food on
wheels, why not showers?” she says.
Doniece persuaded the city to give
her four decommissioned buses that
she then had remodelled with
$75,000 she’d raised on a crowdfunding
website. Each bus connects to a
fire hydrant for water, which is heated
by large batteries on board. Waste
water is drained into city sewers.
The first bus hit the road in July
2014; a second one rolled out in early
2015. Doniece plans to put the other
two buses elsewhere in the Bay Area
and imagines expanding the programme
internationally.
Those in need of a shower, sign
up for a 15-minute time slot at a
local homeless shelter, and Lava Mae
provides towels, shampoo, soap and
a new pair of socks.
“No matter how clean you try to
stay on the street, you’re going to be
grimy,” said Silas Borden, a military
veteran who showers weekly on a
Lava Mae bus in the Mission neighbourhood.
“And I want to wash it off.”
Says Doniece, “It’s a humbling
experience to see people come off
the bus so grateful for something that
should be a natural human right.”
ALYSSA JUNG, WITH MICHELE WOJCIECHOWSKI
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 23

EVERYDAY HEROES
“They said it was bad karma”
Robert Lee
AS AN ELEMENTARY school
student in New York City, Robert Lee
would stare in disbelief at his classmates
throwing away half-eaten
sandwiches after lunch. His Korean
immigrant parents had taught him
and his older brother not to waste
food. “They said it was bad karma,”
says Robert, 24.
While studying finance and
accounting at New York University,
Robert remembered this lesson and
joined Two Birds One Stone, a
food-rescue club on campus that
delivered, five days a week, uneaten
pasta, vegetables and other leftovers
from the dining hall to nearby
homeless shelters.
When Robert and fellow club
member Louisa Chen entered a
college entrepreneurship contest,
they proposed a slightly different
idea for a food-rescue non-profit
group: their programme wouldn’t
have a donation minimum (meaning
they would gladly pick up one bag
of leftover bagels or a single pot of
soup), would operate seven days a
week, and would be staffed entirely
by volunteers.
Their idea won the competition.
With the $1,000 prize, they founded
Rescuing Leftover Cuisine (RLC) in
July 2013. In just the first few weeks,
Robert’s team delivered a donation
of enough spaghetti and meatballs
to feed 20 people in line at a
New York City homeless shelter
that had run out of food.
Robert, who had taken a job as
an analyst at J.P. Morgan, devoted
his spare time to creating a network
of New York City restaurants, from
mom-and-pop delis to large chains
like Starbucks and Panera Bread,
that agreed to donate food, and he
enlisted volunteers to make food
deliveries to homeless shelters.
After RLC received national press
attention, homeless shelters and
soup kitchens in Portland, Oregon,
Washington, DC and other
cities reached out to Robert for
partnership advice. To date, RLC has
distributed more than 1,13,400
kilos of food in 12 cities around
the US.
Only a year into his finance job,
Robert gave up his six-figure salary
to focus on RLC. “I compared one
hour of impact at J.P. Morgan to
one hour at RLC, and the difference
was just tremendous,” he says.
He’s now the group’s only fulltime
employee.
“One shelter recently told us
that our donations allow them to
provide entire dinners for more
than 300 people, three nights a
week,” Robert says. “Things like
that make me glad I quit my job.”
BRANDON SPECKTOR
24 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

“This group
saves shelters
thousands of
dollars,” says
Robert Lee.
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 25

26 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST
“I want to give
people a chance
without judging
them,” says
Veronika Scott.

“Design to fill a need”
Veronika Scott
WHEN VERONIKA SCOTT was
a student at the College for Creative
Studies in her native city of Detroit,
US, she received an assignment to
“design to fill a need.” She dreamt up
an idea for insulated overcoats that
would double as sleeping bags, made
25 of them, and handed them out to
people living in makeshift shelters
on a rundown city playground. While
her efforts were greeted mostly with
enthusiasm from those braving Detroit’s
brutal winters, one woman
voiced dissent. “We don’t need coats;
we need jobs,” she told Veronika.
Then she had her second inspiration.
Veronika, now 26, found an expert
to teach two homeless women to
sew and hired them to assemble the
coats. She paid them with donations
she received through her blog. At
first, the coats were constructed in
a homeless shelter’s utility closet.
“The top of the coat would hit one
wall, and the bottom would be out
the door,” says Veronika.
After graduating from college in
2012, she moved the shop into an
old downtown warehouse for socially
conscious businesses and founded
the Empowerment Plan, a non-profit
organization. Clothing manufacturer
Carhartt donated several old industrial
sewing machines and reams of
fabric and zippers. General Motors
and other companies chipped in
READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
operating funds and insulating material.
To date, the Empowerment Plan
has produced more than 10,000 coats
and distributed them in 30 states,
Canada, and elsewhere abroad.
The group employs about 20
people—mostly single mothers,
some of whom have served time
or worked as prostitutes—and pays
them more than Michigan’s minimum
wage. “We don’t require a
GED test [high-school equivalent
diploma] or even previous employment,”
Veronika says. “We’re looking
for people who are motivated.” The
Empowerment Plan provides free
GED and financial-literacy classes
and offers micro-loans to those who
qualify. Nearly all the employees
eventually move into permanent
housing, and some go on to jobs in
the auto industry and construction.
Veronika has refined the coat’s
design by switching to an outer layer
of lightweight polyethylene that
resists air, wind and water and an inner
layer of synthetic fabric that
stores body heat. Her latest innovation
is to make the bottom of the
sleeping bag removable.
Still, Veronika is less focused on
the coats than on the workers who
make them. “At the end of the day,”
she says, “[the coat] is a vehicle for
us to employ people.”
BETH DREHER, WITH MICHELE WOJCIECHOWSKI
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 27

VOICES
VIEWS
My First Job
Compassionate Care
BY DEVI SHETTY
AS TOLD TO SUNALINI MATHEW
DR DEVI SHETTY,
the renowned heart
surgeon, runs one
of the world’s
largest low-cost
heart hospitals,
Narayana
Hrudayalaya,
in Bengaluru.
I WAS JUST BACK from studying and training in
England in 1989, when I was offered a job at BM Birla Heart
Research Centre, in Kolkata (then Calcutta) as the chief
cardiac surgeon. It was one of the first stand-alone cardiac
hospitals in the country, and I was in my early 30s.
In England, I had trained with the National Health
Service (NHS), where if a patient needed an operation,
you went ahead and did it. You looked at the angiogram,
and if you needed to, you operated. Everyone knew what
their jobs were. Here, I needed to spend upto an hour
convincing the family about a heart operation. In those
days, it was like a death warrant. Now, it’s the opposite,
with an hour-long discussion telling people why they don’t
need a surgery or stent!
We encountered the most basic issues then. There was
no concept of disposable gloves. Gloves were washed and
hung out on a line! There was nothing like a radiopaque
marker—the instrument is particularly helpful to know that
you hadn’t left a swab inside a patient after an operation.
There was also no concept of cardiac post-operative care.
These seem like trivial matters, but it was a nightmare—
literally like coming from Heathrow to Howrah. So I
brought four British nurses from Guy’s and
St Thomas’ Hospital in London. They stayed for three
ILLUSTRATION BY KESHAV KAPIL
28 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

NILOTPAL BARUAH
years and worked with me.
When I walked into Birla, I
walked into an empty building, as
the first doctor. Soon, I learnt the
art of management. The Birlas were
excellent employers, and though I
was young, they involved me in the
business of running the hospital. We
had a daily profit-and-loss account,
even though it was a trust hospital. I
learnt that done on a daily basis, this
is like a diagnostic tool; done at the
end of the month, it could be like a
post-mortem.
I learnt how big business houses
worked: they identified talented,
skilled people, and allowed them to
function and build. After all, your
hospital’s reputation is based on the
doctors’ skills and ability to provide
patient care—unless you make your
doctors, or at least the senior ones,
a part of the financial decision,
they will never know if a solution is
affordable or not. I used to see over
100 patients a day, and I realized that
heart surgery needed to be made
affordable. It has laid the foundation
for the work I do now.
I understood how to think big,
to go beyond your own hospital
and look at the national and global
picture. Exposure is important: for
instance, I had the opportunity to
interact with our African facility.
It’s very important that in your
first job, you work for someone
who thinks big.
But I was also humbled. One day
Dr Devi Shetty
treasures what
his first job
taught him.
I got a call asking for a home visit. I
said I didn’t do them, but the caller
told me that if I visited, my life would
be transformed. Since I didn’t have
much to do at that moment, I went.
My life did change—the sick person
was Mother Teresa. She taught
me the power of simplicity and
compassion. We often think that the
greatest power is one of brute force,
but you can conquer the world with
kindness. It doesn’t need language;
it is universal.
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 29

WORDS OF LASTING INTEREST
We commemorate The Bard’s 400th
death anniversary with this iconic verse
Marriage of True Minds
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Shakespeare
(1564 - 1616),
England’s
greatest
playwright, has
been
immortalized
by works such
as this.
SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
ABOUT THIS SONNET
By Shormishtha Panja
SINCE THIS SONNET is seen amongst the most
abiding expressions of true love, it would come as a
surprise, then, that it was addressed to a young man, rather
than Shakespeare’s lady love. It is a part of the series of
sonnets that Shakespeare wrote to Mr W.H., “the onlie
ILLUSTRATION: KESHAV KAPIL
30 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

INDIAPICTURE
begetter” of the sonnets, as the
dedication puts it. Critics believe
W.H. is either Henry Wriothesley,
Earl of Southampton or William
Herbert, Earl of Pembroke.
It seems W.H. may have been
Shakespeare’s patron and viewed
by the Bard as his social superior.
For the Elizabethan sonneteers,
love was not merely love, as Arthur
Marotti puts it, but linked to
social prestige and patronage. For
Shakespeare, the provincial young
man from Warwickshire, trying to
make his fortune in London in the
not-so-respectable profession of
the theatre, a patron among the
nobility would have been vital.
Shakespeare’s sonnets are surprisingly
autobiographical for a
man who seldom revealed himself
in his plays. They are replete with
contrary currents of self-abnegation
and self-proclamation, of faith in the
strength of love, along with a lasting
impression of its weakness. Sonnet
116 is no exception.
The beautiful image in the lines,
“Love’s not Time’s fool…” brings
alive Father Time’s scythe. It seems
like it encircles, as if in an embrace,
before chopping off the signs of
youth—rosy lips and cheeks. And
like so many fragile spring blooms,
these are said to be gathered only to
be cut off by the mower.
Shakespeare often uses words in
more senses than one. We see dark
undertones in an otherwise strong
proclamation of the steadfastness of
love. The sonnet also throws up the
usual tropes of Petrarchism (the
Italian Renaissance poet Petrarch
being the father of the sonnet)—the
comparison of the lover to a “bark”
or ship lost at sea. We have the legal
language of the opening lines and
the clever couplets that close every
Shakespearean sonnet and which
often seem to bring an abrupt and
artificial sense of closure.
Shormishtha Panja is a professor of
English and Director, Institute of Lifelong
Learning, University of Delhi. She has
recently edited the books Shakespeare
and Class and Shakespeare and the Art of
Lying. She has been the President of the
Shakespeare Society of India.
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 31

DEPARTMENT OF WIT
Food Lover’s Diet
BY ANNE ROUMANOFF
ANNE
ROUMANOFF
is a wellknown
French
humorist.
She lives in
Paris.
DEAR READERS, I’d like to share exclusively with you
the secrets of my food lover’s springtime diet, refined and
perfected through losing and regaining hundreds of kilos.
1) Stop saying, “I shouldn’t” when you swallow something
yummy. There’s not a God of calories constantly on watch
who’ll bombard your thighs with cellulite the instant you
tuck into that gooey chocolate cake. So please, when you fall
for a box of macaroons and/or a bar of milk chocolate and/
or a cheese plate, enjoy them!
2) Avoid eating all these treats at the same meal. One lapse a
week is okay, three lapses a minute are not.
3) Don’t tell anyone you’re on a diet. You’ll be showered
with demotivating comments like:
“Again!”, “What regime are you following this time?”
“I never diet, it doesn’t help in the least” (from a size 8).
“But you’re fine as you are” (from a size 18).
4) Never order French fries in restaurants. Instead, pinch
them from your neighbour’s plate. After a while he’ll
protest and you’ll be obliged to stop.
5) If you suffer apnoea after running five metres,
and just hearing the word “sport” gives you
aches and pains, try to walk for a few minutes
a day. Plain old shank’s pony is better
than any sport.
6) Don’t forget to smile. As the proverb
I’ve just made up goes: a joyful woman
at ease with her spare tyre is more
attractive than a depressed bag of bones.
INDIAPICTURE; ANNE’S ILLUSTRATION: KESHAV KAPIL
32 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

SOME POSITIVE STORIES THAT CAME OUR WAY
Good News
Berliners help refugees
SOCIETY “When you’re new here,
it’s very difficult to begin without
contacts,” says Belarus-born artist
and activist Marina Naprushkina.
She is talking about the plight of refugees
and asylum seekers in Berlin,
where she now lives. Two years ago,
she confronted the issue after a
shelter opened near her home.
“There weren’t any activities for
the children,” she says.
She began by giving weekly art
classes. From such small beginnings,
Naprushkina’s initiative has grown
into the Neue Nachbarschaft (New
Neighbourhood) community centre,
where more than 400 refugees and
asylum seekers can practise their
German, share food and drink and
get to know each other.
Mayor Michael Müller has called
on Berliners to help the government
welcome the more than 70,000 refu-
BY TIM HULSE
gees to the city, and projects such as
Naprushkina’s are doing just that.
“There should be an initiative like
this in every neighbourhood,” she
says. “There has to be an interest
in getting to know people who are
arriving. If not, you’re going to create
a parallel society.”
France acts on food waste
ENVIRONMENT Some seven million
of the estimated 89 million tonnes of
food thrown away each year in the
EU is binned in France. But now
pioneering legislation means France
“will become the leading country in
Europe to combat its waste” as per
National Assembly MP Guillaume
Garot. Rather than simply discard
unsold food, supermarkets must now
donate items to charity—or recycle
them as animal feed or compost.
Another of the new French measures
stipulates that “doggy bags”
“However difficult life may seem, there is always
something you can do and succeed at.”
Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist and cosmologist
34 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

must now be made available in restaurants
that serve more than 180
meals a day. The better-designed,
chic bags may encourage a culture
of taking leftovers home.
IMAGE COURTESY: THE BETTER INDIA
Bengaluru taps solar power
ENERGY The humble autorickshaw
has played its part well in
India’s transition towards cleaner
energy. First came the shift from
diesel and petrol-consuming
versions to the ubiquitous yellow
and green ones, which run on CNG.
And now the little three-wheeler
could go solar if a pilot project
launched in Bengaluru last month
proves feasible. The zero emission
‘ElecRic’—a regular auto converted
to a solar-powered one—can run for
110 km on a full battery charge of
five hours. RJMS EV, a Bengalurubased
private manufacturer of
electric vehicles and components,
owns the patent for ElecRic and has
priced it at `2 lakh.
Umesh Chandra, one of the company’s
directors, has suggested that
the government provide charging
points near metro stations and public
offices to facilitate accessibility
as well as last-mile connectivity.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan parliament
recently became the first in
the world to completely run on
solar power. The parliament’s solar
panels will even generate some
surplus power, which will be
directed to the national grid.
GREEN HEROES
In Mumbai, where a patch of
green is as difficult to spot as a
patch of the open sky, the
Vrindavan Garden in the MIDC
colony in suburban Andheri,
comes as a verdant relief.
“The municipality is supposed
to maintain the garden, but
nothing was happening,” says
P. Sriganesh, a resident. The
people of the locality
approached the authorities and
proposed maintaining the plot.
Once the go-ahead came in
2006, the one-acre plus land
was nurtured with the botanical
and landscaping knowledge of
the initiators. Today, it boasts
undulating lawns and a variety
of trees, complete with vermicompost
pits, a football ground
and a play area.
Even though the residents had
to hand back the garden to the
authorities recently, they
continue to be involved in its
maintenance.
SOURCES: Refugees: The Christian Science Monitor,
17 December 2015. Food: The Telegraph, 27 December
2015, 3 January 2016. Solar power: The Times of India, 5
March 2016; The Indian Express, 23 February 2016. Heroes:
thebetterindia.com
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 35

NEWS FROM THE
World of Medicine
Early Signs of Heart Trouble
There may be telltale symptoms the
month before a sudden cardiac
arrest. In a new Annals of Internal
Medicine study, researchers tracked
840 patients who experienced cardiac
arrest (an electrical malfunction of
the heart). Upto 50 per cent of men
and 53 per cent of women experienced
warning signs, such as chest
pain and shortness of breath, in the
weeks before. More than nine in ten
patients reported symptoms resurfacing
24 hours before the cardiac
arrest—but only 19 per cent called a
medical emergency number.
BY KELSEY KLOSS
Green Light to Shower
After Surgery
Doctors typically advise against
getting surgical wounds wet to
prevent infection until stitches are
removed, which can take days or
weeks. In a new study, researchers
recruited 444 patients with low-risk
surgical wounds. Half showered
48 hours after surgery, and the other
half waited two weeks. There was
no difference in infection risk, but
patients who were able to shower
were happier with their care. Early
water exposure may be safe for
most patients, but always check
with your doctor.
Sugar-Free Drinks May
Hurt Teeth
Swapping sweet drinks for the sugarfree
kind can still damage your
pearly whites. Australian
researchers tested 23 soft
drinks and sports drinks on
healthy, extracted human
molars. All beverages caused
erosion of dental enamel
(most beverages eroded it 30 to
50 per cent). Any drink with a low
pH (meaning it is acidic) can cause
harm, even if it has no sugar. Check
THE VOORHES
36 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

for acidic additives, especially citric
and phosphoric acid.
What Happy People
Value Most
Cherishing time is the secret to
contentment, according to a new
Social Psychological and Personality
Science report. Researchers analyzed
nearly 4,700 participants who were
given real-life examples, such as
whether they’d prefer an expensive
apartment with a short commute or a
less pricey apartment with a long
commute. More than half prioritized
time, linked to greater happiness,
over money.
Antibiotic Resistance:
a Growing Threat
The effects of medicine-resistant
infections may soon pose a larger
risk than cancer. Annual deaths
caused by drug resistance are
estimated to increase from 7,00,000
in 2015 to about ten million in 2050,
according to Review on Antimicrobial
Resistance. The world’s population is
taking more antibiotics, rendering
the drugs less effective, and drug
companies are producing fewer
new antibiotics.
Downside of Being
Mom’s Favourite
Were you the golden child? It may not
make you happy. Purdue University
and Iowa State University researchers
found that depressive symptoms were
most common in adult children who
claimed to be closer to their mothers
than their siblings were. Sibling
rivalry may play a role (a mother’s
attention may not nullify negative
attention from jealous siblings), or
favourites may be likelier to care for
an ageing mother, which can take an
emotional toll.
Working Out May Cause
Alcohol Cravings
Pennsylvania State University
researchers recruited 150 adults to
complete daily diaries on physical
activity and alcohol consumption.
Regardless of age and gender, active
folks consistently drank more than
their couch potato peers. People who
exercise may look to further a postworkout
high or reward themselves
for exercising with alcohol.
Mental Trick to Stop
Craving Junk Food
Negative messages about unhealthy
food may make you crave it more.
In an Arizona State University study,
researchers gave dieters either
positive or negative messages about
sugary snacks. Participants then
watched a video while eating
cookies. Those who received the
negative message ate 39 per cent
more cookies than the positivemessage
group. If you’re trying
to diet, think about the pros of
healthy food rather than the cons
of junk food.
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 37

Humour in Uniform
“You can’t fool me by wearing our uniform; I can see you’re on the other side.”
THE MILITARY has a long, proud tradition
of pranking recruits. Here are
some favourites from rallypoint.com:
n Instructed a soldier in the mess
hall to look for left-handed spatulas.
n Sent a recruit to medical-supplies
office in search of fallopian tubes.
n Had a new guy conduct a “boom
test” on a howitzer by yelling
“Boom!” down the tube in order
to ‘calibrate’ it.
n Ordered a soldier to bring back
a large can of dehydrated water (in
fact, the sergeant just wanted an
empty water can).
WE WERE INSPECTING several lots
of grenades. While everyone was
concentrating on the task at hand,
I held up a spare pin and asked, “Has
anyone seen my grenade?”
SMSGT. DAN POWELL, from rallypoint.com
Reader’s Digest will pay for your funny
anecdote or photo in any of our jokes
sections. Post it to the editorial address,
or email: editor.india@rd.com
RAJU
38 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

Points to Ponder
THE OPPOSITE of love is not hate,
it’s indifference. The opposite of art
is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The
opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s
indifference. And the opposite of life
is not death, it’s indifference.
ELIE WIESEL,
humanitarian, in U.S. News & World Report
[MY MOTHER] would say to me,
“It’s so easy to say yes, but never be
afraid to say no.” If you work hard
enough and you’re good at what you
do, an opportunity is never the last
chance. It’s just a sign you’re on the
right path. Don’t rush into anything.
LITTLE SIMZ,
rapper, in The Red Bulletin
HOW UNFORTUNATE would be a
nation which has only obedient,
conformist minds as its youth—youth
who fight only for placements with
fat pay packets; who are ready to
turn into cogs and wheels of the
machinery, which turns profit for a
few and crushes the rest of humanity.
APOORVANAND,
professor of Hindi at the
University of Delhi, in The Indian Express
YOU KNOW WHEN you actually get
good at sports? When you’re having
fun and being creative. When you’re
being a kid. When you don’t even
realize you’re getting better, that’s
when you’re getting better. If you’re
not engaged in what you’re doing,
WITTY WISDOM
The best time to re-evaluate your life is when the online video you’re
watching is buffering.
@APARNAPKIN (APARNA NANCHERLA), comedian
Never trust a man wearing more than 0 necklaces.
@AUDIPENNY (AUDREY FARNSWORTH), comedian
I read the internet so much, I feel like I’m like on page a million of the
worst book ever.
AZIZ ANSARI, comedian, in a stand-up routine
40 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

...The only magic that happens
in this world happens on the
stage. Films take you captive,
they feed you everything on
a plate, the legerdemain they
create transports you into a
state where you may as well
be dreaming, but theatre takes
you into a world where your
imagination is stimulated,
your judgement is unimpaired,
and thus your enjoyment
heightened. NASEERUDDIN SHAH, actor,
in his autobiography And Then One Day
it’s as helpful as taking the trash out.
It’s just another chore.
PATRICK O’SULLIVAN,
retired NHL player,
in The Players’ Tribune
then plateaued out. If that society has
a lot of young people and if you don’t
have institutional capacity or will to
deal with their demands, you are in
for social upheaval.
ILLUSTRATION: KESHAV KAPIL
REREADING the same book produces
new insights because the reader is a
different person. Indeed, a good
book is very much like a mirror:
The glass is the same year after
year, but the reflection in it changes
over time.
CHRISTOPHER B. NELSON,
president of St. John’s College,
in The Wall Street Journal
IF YOU LOOK at recent history, the
real crunch happens in societies
which have fared well for a bit, and
SUNIL KHILNANI,
author of the book The Idea of India,
in an interview to the BBC
TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not
just foolishly romantic. It is based
on the fact that human history is a
history not only of competition and
cruelty but also of compassion,
sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we
choose to emphasize in this complex
history will determine our lives.
HOWARD ZINN,
historian, in his book
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 41

FINISH THIS SENTENCE
I break into a laugh when…
..I see people
doing
laughter
yoga
in the park.
SURESH KUMAR,
Madurai
...I am tickled.
ASWANT KAUR ASHI
Tarn Taran, Punjab
..I make a move to
push a glass
sliding door.
ATIYA JIVRAJ, Hyderabad
...our politicians
promise voters
the moon at election
rallies.
NEELAM NAYYAR PARIHAR,
Ludhiana
...I watch
Laurel and Hardy
clips.
JAMMI VENKATA RAMANA, Chennai
42 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST
...I have my
specs on
and go
searching
for them!
PARIMITA LODHA,
Ahmedabad
INDIAPICTURE

ART
of LIVING
LIFE LESSON
Big decisions don’t have to be overwhelming;
it’s all in how you frame the answers
The Choice Is Yours
BY CHANTAL TRANCHEMONTAGNE
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 43

THE CHOICE IS YOURS
WHEN CONFRONTED with a
difficult decision, we can be like deer
caught in the headlights: dazed and
unable to choose a direction. Should
you start your own company or stay
in your current job? Pick investment
A over investment B? Opt for this
course of medical treatment or that
one? The answer isn’t always
obvious, and the fear of making a
dis astrous move can send anxiety
levels skyrocketing or allow paralysis
to set in.
Despite these pitfalls, actual
empowerment is possible—it’s a
matter of shifting our mindset. Here
are some steps to feeling liberated in
the quest to find answers.
Step 1: Take It Easy
“Most of the paralysis in decisionmaking
comes from assuming the
world has the right answer and we’re
just too stupid to figure it out,” says
Ruth Chang, a philosopher at Rutgers
University in New Jersey, US.
Not so, she insists. Chang studies
the process of making hard choices
and has outlined a new framework
for those tough calls. According to
her thinking, in truly complex
situations, there is no right answer
and no one option better than
another. “So when we face hard
choices,” she says, “we shouldn’t tear
our hair out trying to figure out
which alternative is better.”
If you need further incentive to
ease up on yourself, consider a 2012
study published in the Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology.
The authors found that anxiety
clouds your judgment and makes
you more likely to seek outside
counsel and act on bad advice.
Step 2: Do the Grunt Work
While less-demanding decisionmaking
is your goal, you still have
some heavy lifting to do. There has
been a surge of insight into the field
of emotional/instinctual/intuitive
decision-making, yet you should still
start at the beginning: with the facts.
Chang argues that studying the
alternatives, making pros and cons
lists and working out the
hypotheticals is important and
unavoidable. However, if you’ve
studied all the options and a clear
decision doesn’t rise to the top, don’t
get stuck. Move on to the next step.
Step 3: Dig Deep
Montreal-based certified life coach
Erica Diamond knows that finding
the answers to life’s truly tough questions
requires a one-two punch.
“We often think that decisionmaking
is all logic,” she says. “But the
best decisions are made with a
combination of intellect and instinct.
Good strategists collect information
based on these two things until they
feel they can make a good decision.”
In research released in 2014 by
Time Inc.’s Fortune Knowledge
Group and global advertising firm
44 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
ALL IMAGES: INDIAPICTURE
Gyro, 62 per cent of executives
admitted to relying on gut feeling and
other unquantifiable factors, while
upto 65 per cent said that subjective
elements influenced their choices.
“Any big decisions can’t be made in
a vacuum of analytics,” said Christoph
Becker, Gyro’s CEO, in an interview
after the study was released. “It’s
underscored by a rational structure,
but emotion has to lead.”
Step 4: Distinguish Yourself
In going through the exercise of
listing the facts, pondering the
possibilities and letting sentiments
play a part in decision-making,
remember that hard choices are an
opportun ity. “When we pick between
options that are on par, we can do
something remarkable: we can put
our very selves behind an option.
And what we put our agency behind
really does define what matters to us
and who we are,” says Chang. “You
might say that we become the authors
of our own lives.”
Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of
Amazon, would agree. In a
commencement speech he gave to
Princeton’s graduating class of 2010,
he echoed Chang’s philosophy,
outlining why we should view
decision-making as empowering.
“When you are 80 years old and, in a
quiet moment of reflection, narrating
for only yourself the most personal
version of your life story, the telling
that will be most compact and
meaningful will be the series of
choices you have made. In the end,
we are our choices. Build yourself a
great story.”
THE GADGET
Do you want to try a totally
21st-century method of
decision-making? Turn to
somethingpop.com for
answers about where to
work, live and invest. Created
by financial-tech whiz kid
Ben Gimpert, the web tool
allows you to plug in and
assign a weighted
percentage to your priorities,
like vacation time, pay and
office environment. A quick
analysis of the numbers and—
bam—the choice is made.
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 45

HEALTH
Struggling to be heard? It may not be their hearing—but your volume
First Aid for Your Voice
BY SUSAN INCE
WHEN I ENTER a family
reunion, relatives crank up
their hearing aids. At parties,
I’m often asked to repeat
myself to the point of just
smiling and giving up. This
scares me because my
mother’s puny voice
eventually became so small
that phone calls were
torturous, then impossible.
While hearing and vision
issues are prominent in many
discussions of ageing, there’s
often silence on how our
voices age. “You may begin
to see this change when
you enter your 50s,” says
Dr K.K. Handa, director
and head of department
of ENT and head-neck
surgery at Medanta-The
Medicity, Gurgaon. In fact, several
people have difficulty speaking that
is serious enough to be diagnosed as
a voice disorder, with their pitches
and volume dropping. Problems can
start with retirement, at menopause,
or even at a younger age in those
who’ve used certain medications
over a prolonged period (blood
thinners, for instance) or have a
medical condition (like thyroid).
Professionals who overuse
their vocal systems because
their jobs require constant
chatter, or speaking in a
noisy setting, are prone
too. Fortunately, there
are ways—from easy
maintenance tips to
surgical fixes—that can
help you avoid
‘sounding old’ or
losing the ability to
make yourself heard.
Too Hoarse
to Talk
Relentless, highvolume
talking is a part
of the job for call-centre employees,
lawyers and teachers. According to a
French study published in BioMed
Central, one in two female teachers
reported voice disorders, compared
to one in four males. Self-described
‘talker’ Kaysi Hamilton, 39, a maths
DAN SAELINGER/TRUNK ARCHIVE
46 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

teacher, rarely gets a break from
speaking throughout the school day.
When Hamilton, from Texas, became
hoarse in April one year, she thought
it was just allergies. As Hamilton
powered through her workdays, she
couldn’t raise her pitch, at times her
voice would drop out entirely, and
her neck muscles were so tense that
swallowing became difficult; she felt
as if she were choking. She counted
the days until summer break, but
things didn’t improve.
“If your voice doesn’t recover
over a week, or even a season like
summer, there’s likely a permanent
voice problem that needs fixing, such
as nerve damage or a growth on the
vocal folds,” says Ingo Titze, PhD,
director of the National Center for
Voice and Speech in Utah, US.
A few months later, in July, Hamilton
consulted ear, nose and throat (ENT)
specialists. They saw a pea-size
polyp (a swelling in the vocal cord’s
mucous membrane) dangling like
a water balloon from one of her vocal
cords. Polyps can occur with longterm
exposure to irritants such as
cigarette smoke and chemical fumes,
as well as because of chronic allergies
and excessive voice use. Hamilton’s
doctor, Ted Mau, MD, director of the
voice centre at the University of Texas
Southwestern Medical Center, recommends
that patients start with voice
therapy to learn better habits, even if
surgery to remove the polyp will
almost certainly be needed.
VOICE-CHANGING
MEDICAL CONDITIONS
Temporary hoarseness is normal
when you get a cold (infection
causes your vocal cords to swell,
interfering with their normal
vibration). Allergy and sinus
problems can create a postnasal
drip that irritates vocal cords.
Many allergy pills also dry out
vocal cords, so ask about using
alternative meds, sinus washes,
and medications to thin mucus
(such as those used with plenty
of water). Don’t clear your
throat to get rid of phlegm (this
bangs the vocal cords together
and is a harmful habit). Another
common vocal cord irritant is
gastroesophageal reflux disease
(GERD) that reaches the throat.
GERD medication or lifestyle
changes (such as avoiding foods
that cause heartburn) may be
all it takes to feel better. In rare
cases, voice changes can be the
first sign of a vocal cord cancer
or a symptom of a neurological
problem such as Parkinson’s
disease. Don’t ignore a voice
change that lasts more than
three weeks. While an exam will
check for these conditions, it’s
likely that changes in your onceyouthful
voice will turn out to be
owing—at least in part—to your
speaking habits or ageing.
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 47

FIRST AID FOR YOUR VOICE
Hamilton’s therapy focused on
massaging and relaxing her tense
throat and neck muscles. She learnt
techniques to make more use of
natural cavities in the head to create
volume without overusing the throat.
One common exercise: blowing
raspberries (as babies do, trilling your
lips to a brruh sound). Another
involves singing through a straw
(through a range of pitches or a
favourite tune).
After surgery to remove her polyp,
and a tricky seven days of absolutely
no talking, Hamilton responded to
additional vocal exercises. Within
weeks, her vocal cords were working
properly. She’s more careful now,
drinking plenty of water and taking
voice breaks during the day.
Too Quiet to Be Heard
Bruce Lyon, 74, thought his wife,
Kathie, should have her hearing
checked. He suspected she wasn’t
paying attention when she’d ask
“What did you say?” multiple times
every day. But after his adult children
repeatedly complained and
even his grandson pointed out his
very soft voice, Lyon acknowledged
that the problem was his.
“It was a struggle to project enough
to be heard, especially at restaurants
or places with background noise,”
says Lyon, a retired university
administrator in Georgia, US. His
ENT doctor referred him to the
Emory Voice Center, where Lyon’s
vocal apparatus was videotaped
through a scope while he performed
various vocal exercises.
The diagnosis: vocal fold atrophy,
or presbyphonia. Vocal folds can
weaken with age, especially after
menopause in women or when the
vocal muscles aren’t used enough;
Lyon, for example, had begun talking
far less since his retirement several
years earlier. During speech, vocal
folds vibrate, rapidly touching and
separating as air pushes through. As
muscles lose volume, strength and
coordination, it takes more effort for
the folds to close—and sometimes,
as atrophy gets worse, they can’t. The
result is a softer, less resonant voice
that requires far more effort to make
audible. “Presbyphonia is a double
whammy because it occurs at the
same time that friends may have agerelated
hearing changes,” says Edie
Hapner, director of speech language
pathology at the Emory Voice Center.
With Hapner, Lyon did a series of
exercises called PhoRTE (pronounced
“forte,” like music instruction in
Italian to play loudly or strongly).
Modelled after strength training with
older adults in sports medicine and
physical therapy, the exercises start at
about 50 per cent of maximum effort,
gradually building up in intensity.
At home, Lyon practised in two
15-minute sessions a day, energetically
sustaining a vowel sound, gliding
up and down his pitch range, calling
out simple sentences in a loud voice,
48 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
DOS AND DON’TS FOR A HEALTHIER VOICE
DO: Drink plenty of
water, especially if
you take medication.
Drugs dry out the
moist mucous layer
that protects your
vocal cords. Avoid
large amounts of
coffee, caffeinated
drinks, as well as
alcohol, which can
dehydrate you.
DON’T: Yell.
Screaming can lead to
bumps or calluses on
the vocal folds, so
move closer or find
another way to get
someone’s attention.
Some teachers use
amplification
headsets, like those
worn by fitness
instructors.
DO: Sing. Trained
singers generally
sound much younger,
longer than people
who don’t sing. If
singing isn’t your thing,
read aloud every day
to keep your vocal
muscles working.
DON’T: Go low. Vocal
fry—the raspy, Kim
Kardashian–like
speech pattern
increasingly popular
among teens (both
boys and girls)—
may set them up for
voice problems later
because the vocal
muscles don’t get
exercised at the full
range of pitch.
DO: Find your natural
speaking resonance.
Say “mmm-hmm.”
That’s a good indicator
of where your
most comfortable
resonance will be.
and using a respiratory resistance
device to strengthen his breath.
It worked. “The change was
gradual, but within a couple of
months, we weren’t asking him to
repeat himself,” says Kathie. Like any
type of muscle conditioning, however,
the maximum improvement
lasts only with continued practice.
Lyon’s voice problems were
considered mild to moderate, but in
some people, bowing of the vocal
folds is so extreme that even with
vocal therapy they won’t touch.
“We can inject a filler to augment the
vocal cords. Some fillers use the
same material used to fill facial
wrinkles,” says Elizabeth Guardiani,
MD, an assistant professor of
otorhinolaryngology and head and
neck surgery at the University of
Maryland School of Medicine, US.
As for me, a chat with a voice specialist
indicated nothing particularly
abnormal. I am determined to drink
more water and use my voice more—
enunciating with French-language
CDs or singing in the car. If that
doesn’t improve things, I’ll consult a
pro. Lyon says he wishes he’d gone
for help three years earlier.
—WITH INPUTS BY SUNALINI MATHEW
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 49

MONEY
Useful tips to make your plans in the
new financial year sustainable
Good Money Habits
BY GAURAV MASHRUWALA
IT’S THE RIGHT TIME for a new
year resolution or two, from a
financial planning point of view.
Look at them as a promise to
yourself, a promise that needs to be
honoured. Most resolutions are
made in euphoria—when you get an
increment, or after reading a selfhelp
book. The charm dies down,
and so does the enthusiasm. Here
are some tips that will help you stay
the course all year through.
Take baby steps.
The other day a colleague walked up
to me and said, “I have decided to
wake up at 6:30 a.m., starting
tomorrow.” I asked when she usually
woke up. “At 8:30,” came the reply.
Two hours is a tall order. After a few
days I asked her how she was
progressing. Her disheartened smile
said it all. I suggested that she set her
alarm for 5 minutes before her
regular time. “That’s too simple,” she
said. If she had considered pushing
the clock by 5 minutes every 10 days,
she’d reach her 6:30 a.m. goal in
eight months—that’s a lifelong
benefit. Get the drift? Now simply
replace time with savings.
Tell apart a resolution
and a habit.
We make resolutions with a
conscious mind, habits are cultivated
so that eventually they are dealt with
by our subconscious mind; and they
stick. So don’t be in a rush to invest
your money. Go with a systematic
investment plan (SIP) of a mutual
fund or start a recurring deposit
(RD). A client did just this: he started
with `5,000 per month, and because
he did not feel the pinch, he wished
to increase it. We suggested he up
the amount by 10 per cent every year.
If you want to inculcate this habit in
your child too, ask him to put `100 in
a post-office or bank RD. As human
50 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

INDIAPICTURE
beings, we want to progress. Once a
habit is formed, we want to move
ahead and will most probably
increase the investment amount
without any prodding.
Get your family’s buy-in.
It’s a good idea to involve your
family in your financial plan. If
your daughter knows that she can
only eat out one weekend a month
because you’re putting money away
for a European trip in 2017, she will
be much more cooperative and feel
she is a part of the decision. Plus,
you’re inculcating a habit that will
stand her in good stead in the
years to come.
Give your goals a meaning.
Link your investment to a particular
financial goal; your commitment to it
will be stronger. Instead of opening
an RD for a random period, think of
a goal before you make the decision.
A client had an SIP in equity funds,
but she seemed directionless about
the investment—it was just there.
Once we suggested that she link it to
her daughter’s education fund, she
immediately wished to increase the
amount she was investing. When
you name your investment, the goal
takes on a greater meaning.
Plan in advance.
Earmark any incoming funds for a
purpose. For instance, if you know
you will get a Diwali bonus of
`1 lakh, call it the “Renovation
Bonus” if you’d like to do up your
house, for instance. If you know this
well in advance, you are less likely
to buy an expensive mobile phone
on an impulse.
Gaurav Mashruwala is a Mumbai-based
financial planner, and the author of Yogic
Wealth: The Wealth that Gives Bliss!
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 51

TRAVEL
Look out for these lesser-known
destinations this summer
In the Southern Hills
BY KALYANI PRASHER
Ananthagiri Hills,
Telangana
Take a break from the clutter and
crowd of Hyderabad and head to the
salubrious climes of Ananthagiri. It
lies cocooned in the Eastern Ghats.
Ananthagiri is made for a laidback
break as you kick off your shoes, lie in
your hammock and watch the River
Musi, a tributary of the Krishna, flow
through the undulating landscape.
When you want to get active, the
tropical semi-evergreen forests
covering the hills are teeming with
flora and fauna (including pythons
and monitor lizards). The
Anantha Padmanabha Swamy
Temple, with Lord Vishnu as its
main deity, is located within the
forest and is a good excursion. Think
of it as a feast for the eyes and balm
for the soul.
Get there: Roughly 90 km from
Hyderabad
Stay: The GrassWalk Jungle Camp is a
good stay option; thegrasswalk.com
Chikkamagaluru,
Karnataka
Spend a quiet, relaxed time in
Chikkamagaluru, in the Baba Budan
Hills in the Western Ghats,
reacquainting yourself with nature
and sipping on some of India’s finest
coffees. One of the largest producers
of coffee in the country, this is where
you can stay within a plantation and
start your day with a brew grown right
where you are. Take plantation tours,
go berry-picking, attend coffeemaking
sessions or simply enjoy the
abundant greenery and stunning
views. If you love flowers, you can
spend time spotting the over 300
varieties that grow around the hills
here, or visit the Nehru Rose Garden,
where the amphitheatre often hosts
cultural events.
52 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

INDIAPICTURE
Get there: Roughly 250 km from
Bengaluru
Stay: The Serai Resort, a luxury property;
theserai.in/resorts-chikmagalur;
Silent Valley Resort, an eco-hotel;
greenplanetresorts.com
Athirapally, Kerala
Nestling in the verdant Sholayar
range, this nook of Kerala remains
largely crowd-free. The biggest attraction
here is the magnificent Athirapally
Waterfall, a wide cascade,
almost as wide as an ocean. The
waterfall is at its mightiest after the
monsoon, which is also the best time
to visit. If you like nature, this is an
ideal base for you to plan little treks
into the jungle, listen to the wind rustle
through the trees and the waterfall
thundering down in the distance—it
will be an experience you’ll cherish.
Get there: Roughly 80 km from Kochi
Stay: Rainforest, a lovely boutique
hotel; rainforest.in; Kandamkulathy
Ayursoukhyam Ayurvedic Resort, if
you want to get an ayurvedic
treatment along with your holiday;
ayursoukhyam.com
Valparai, Tamil Nadu
The most memorable thing about
your Valparai holiday will be the drive
up to it: 40 hairpin bends up the
Anamalai Hills, in the Western Ghats,
afford fabulous views of the dams
below. (All the bends are numbered to
aid anyone who cannot be bothered
to keep count!) Once you’re there,
misty mountain highs and tea
gardens unroll in front of your eyes,
an unbelievably beautiful landscape
filled with acres of manicured greens.
Stay at a tea estate bungalow, enjoy
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 53

IN THE SOUTHERN HILLS
fine tea and let your mind, body and
soul relax. It’s elephant country, so
you’re sure to catch more than a
glimpse of them.
Get there: Roughly 100 km from
Coimbatore
Stay: A vintage bungalow with
limited rooms within the tea estate;
sinnadorai.com. Or choose a
homestay to suit your budget at
valparaitourism.com/homes.php
Yercaud, Tamil Nadu
A hill station near Salem that offers
panoramic views of the Servarayan
Hills and the Eastern Ghats. The most
striking feature, however, is the lake
in the middle of the woods, a great
excursion with a packed picnic. In
fact, it seems Yercaud means the ‘lake
forest’ (yeri is lake and kaadu is forest,
in Tamil), and this beautiful
geographic feature gives the place its
very name. Yercaud is well known for
its citrus fruits, particularly oranges,
and you can walk among dense and
cool orange groves here. They say the
temperature never goes beyond 30
degrees here—so get there before
global warming does.
MUST-TRY LOCAL
FOOD & DRINK
FILTER COFFEE: Not just at your
hotel but all along the highways,
especially in Tamil Nadu, you will
find potti kadais (small shops) with
big signs advertising filter coffee.
We suggest you stop at the Only
Coffee outlets on the GST Road (NH
45), and try the strong and sweet
‘metre coffee’, that’s poured out
from one receptacle to the other,
with a flourish.
SET DOSAS: Spongy and fluffy,
enjoy a ‘set’ or stack of these hot off
the tawa on any roadside eatery in
Tamil Nadu or Kerala.
Get there: 200 km from Coimbatore,
or 170 km from Tiruchirapalli
Stay: The Regent Hill Side Resort, a
green stay option; enjoyyercaud.com
or GRT Nature Trails, a luxury stay;
grthotels.com/yercaud
RIDDLE ME THIS …
QUESTION: The man who made it doesn’t want it. The man who bought
it doesn’t need it. The man who needs it doesn’t know it. What is it?
ANSWER: A coffin.
INDIAPICTURE
54 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

Shocking Notes
FROM ALL OVER
HOBBYISTS
ILLUSTRATION BY NICK DAUPHIN
TRAFFIC CONES
David Morgan’s
collection is the envy
of all Department of
Transportation groupies.
Since 1986, the
72-year-old Brit has gathered
500 traffic cones,
including one he says is
from Malaysia. “Some
people probably think it’s
dull,” he told the Daily
Mirror. “If I go to parties
and tell people I’m a cone collector,
they quickly move on.” Source: mirror.co.uk
FREE-TRIAL ITEMS
Ever wondered if those dubiouslooking
tummy trimmers, hair growers
and fat-melting belts staring at
you from newspaper classifieds, teleshopping
TV channels and pop-up
windows, have any takers? Looks like
Sandeep Pillai can’t get enough of
them—not for their quality, but for
their free trial-and-return policy.
Since the 1980s, when he was a
student in New Delhi, Pillai has
been ordering these items, using
and returning them just in time.
The free trial is what matters; what
he doesn’t/can’t use gets passed on
to friends.
Source: The Tribune
AUTOGRAPHS
Big deal—a lot of people collect autographs.
What sets Paul
Schmelzer’s collection
apart is that he asks
celebrities to sign his
name. Yes, he goes up
to the rich and famous
and says, “May I have my
autograph?” Seventy
celebrities have signed
Paul Schmelzer, including
Yoko Ono and the voice of
Homer Simpson, actor Dan Castellaneta.
Robert Redford and James
Brown got confused and signed their
own names. Source: signifier-signed.blogspot.com
QUOTES
Greg Packer’s goal in life is to be the
most quoted person on earth. So far,
the 51-year-old retired highway
maintenance worker has been
quoted by media outlets nearly a
thousand times. Somehow he has
finagled his way in front of a camera
to speak on topics such as the Iraq
War and the first iPhone, neither of
which he knew much about. He has
been quoted so often that the Associated
Press warned its reporters about
using him in any more articles.
Source: The New Yorker
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 55

BEAUTY
Cut through the promises that lotions and potions
offer, to look and feel your age
The No-Fuss Guide
to Anti-Ageing
BY DR REKHA SHETH
A LADY ONCE WALKED into
my clinic, complaining that she felt
older than her 42 years. Her face was
dull, her skin mildly patchy, and she
was a bit overweight. A couple of
questions later, I realized what she
needed first was an anti-ageing
lifestyle: eating right, exercising
every day and staying stress-free
and happy. Once we took care of the
basics, we were able to help her with
targeted treatments. Beauty
treatments and products have made
great strides over the years, but
there’s only so much they can do.
As a dermatologist, I see signs of
ageing in women in their 20s and
30s. It is not just hormones that play
havoc with the skin, a combination
of other factors, both internal and
external (pollution, for instance),
can damage it. Try this basic, easyto-follow
skincare regime for a
healthy complexion.
Follow the CTM (cleaning, toning
moisturizing) regime religiously.
Cleansing, sun-protection and use of
a moisturizer with anti-ageing
ingredients, are the most important
steps. Your skin needs to be cleansed
at least twice a day. An alcohol-free
toner helps close pores. Use a
moisturizer to keep your skin
hydrated through the day.
Carry along a sunscreen. Use a
broad-spectrum sunscreen (with
UVA and UVB blockers) that has a
minimum of SPF 30. A sunscreen
from a reputed brand may cost
between `500 to `2,500. Buy a small
pack and carry it with you to reapply
it as often as you can.
56 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

Say yes to serums and night
creams. If you are in your 20s or 30s
look for antioxidants; if you are in
your late 30s and 40s look for retinol,
peptides, plus vitamin C. As you
reach your 50s, use a concentrated
serum/night cream which is
hydrating. Remember, the older you
are, the drier your skin gets.
Pick moisturizers and day creams
with ‘active ingredients’. Look for
antioxidants, both vitamins and
botanicals, on the label. Amongst the
vitamins, A, C, E, niacinamide,
co-enzyme Q10 (CoQ10) and
idebenone (a synthetic derivative of
CoQ10) are the ones to pick. Look for
lycopene, green tea, grape seed,
pomegranate and soya bean extracts
if you prefer botanical products; they
help rejuvenate your skin. Choose
a hydrating moisturizer that is
appropriate for your skin type,
whether dry, combination or oily.
Don’t fear technology. Your skin
doc may recommend certain
treatments. There are new safe, norisk
procedures available, but know
that they must be performed by a
dermatologist, not a helper at a
beauty parlour. These include
specialized facials, LED
photomodulation, IPL (Intense
Pulsed Light), skin polishes, skin
peels, neuromodulators, fillers, lasers
and a wide range of skin-tightening
methods. Combined with a healthy
lifestyle, they will help your skin stay
youthful and glowing.
Dr Rekha Sheth is a cosmetic
dermatologist in Mumbai and is founderpresident,
Cosmetology Society of India.
ADAPTED FROM PREVENTION INDIA. © 2015 LIVING MEDIA INDIA LIMITED.
INDIAPICTURE
THE AGE-OLD PROBLEM When I turned two, I was really anxious
because I’d doubled my age in a year. I thought, If this keeps up, by
the time I’m six, I’ll be 90.
STEVEN WRIGHT
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 57

FAMILY
The Morning Report
BY DONALD E. HUNTON FROM THE BOSTON GLOBE
WHEN MY mother passed away
a few years ago, my octogenarian
father was left alone in the large
house they had shared for 50 years.
Without her to watch out for him, he
worried about who would find him
and help if “something happened.”
My sister and I live in other states,
so we hit on the idea that Dad could
send us an email every morning
when he awoke. Thus was born the
Morning Report.
He’s usually up by the crack of
dawn, and his half a dozen or so
sentences are waiting in my inbox
when I wake up, despite the twohour
time difference. If there’s no
email, I call him, or my sister does, to
make sure everything is fine.
(Sometimes he’s having computer
problems or decided to sleep in.)
The reports have become more than
a daily check, though: They’re a
diary of sorts, a planning tool, a
catalyst for more extended
conversations, and a source of
insight into his life.
Through them, Dad tells us about
his daily routines. He might be heading
to the grocery store for bananas,
GRACIA LAM
58 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

going to his cardiac-rehab exercise
class, or having lunch with friends.
I find the repetitive cycle of his
activities—current-events discussion
group on Tuesday nights, Rotary
Club on Wednesday afternoons, and
coffee with friends after church on
Sunday morning—reassuring.
Sometimes he slips in cryptic
teasers. For example, recently he told
us, “I’ve climbed halfway up Mount
Washington!” Given his age and
distance from New Hampshire, such
a hike was unlikely. I was befuddled
for a day or two until he reminded
me he was working on a hooked rug
with a scene of the mountain.
Each email closes with “All my
love, Dad.” When my mother was
alive, that sentiment was normally
reserved for her. Now that she is
gone, he shares those feelings and his
experiences with us. For me, what
started as a simple security measure
has spawned a deeper closeness.
I’m grateful my father is still able
to manage his computer and the
internet. I know the day will come
when he’ll no longer be able to write
the reports, and we’ll have to find
other ways to keep tabs on one
another. But until then, they are our
way of knowing that another normal
day has begun.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR, FROM THE BOSTON GLOBE (MAY 24, 2015), COPYRIGHT © 2015 BY DONALD E. HUNTON.
IDK*, FBI
The FBI released an 83-page glossary of Twitter shorthand
that agents might encounter. If these entries are any indication,
someone at the Bureau had way too much time on his hands.
■■
BOGSAT (“bunch of guys sitting around talking”)
■■
IITYWTMWYBMAD (“if I tell you what this means,
will you buy me a drink?”)
■■
SHCOON (“shoot hot coffee out of nose”)
■■
WYLABOCTGWTR (“would you like a bowl of
cream to go with that remark?”)
■■
BTDTGTTSAWIO (“been there, done that,
got the T-shirt, and wore it out”)
muckrock.com
*I don’t know
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 59

FITNESS
These simple moves can reveal hidden
problems to ask your doc about
A Lifesaving At-Home Check-Up
BY JESSICA CASSITY
1
BALANCE ON
ONE LEG
Hold for up to 60 seconds.
If you wobble
early, you may be at
higher risk for brain
decline. In a Japanese
study, 30 per cent
of older adults who
could balance for
only 20 seconds or
less, had microbleeds
in the brain, an
early indication
of risk for stroke or
dementia. These microbleeds
can affect
balance, memory and
decision-making.
2
TOUCH YOUR
TOES
Sit with your spine
straight, then lean
forwards and try to
touch your toes. Not
even close? You might
be at risk for cardiovascular
problems. By
using this test,
University of North
Texas researchers found
that inflexible folks had
less-elastic arteries than
those who were more
lithe. Stiff arteries mean
the heart has to work
harder, raising the risk
of heart attack or stroke.
3
SITTING TO
STANDING
Time how long it takes
to lift and lower yourself
from a chair 10 times as
fast as you can. Middleaged
adults who did 10
reps in 21 seconds or
fewer, were less likely to
die over the next 13
years than those who
took longer. The test
requires muscle
strength, balance and
cardiorespiratory
fitness; being slow may
indicate an underlying
disease before
symptoms arise.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHRIS PHILPOT
60 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

IT HAPPENS
Only in India
No no, there’s
an inter-college
debate
happening
today.
Why is the
Republic Day
parade
happening
now?
Samit Basu &
Raju Epuri
IF YOU THINK the scanning you and
your belongings go through is tough,
relax. At least the Central Industrial
Security Force (CISF), that guards
the Delhi Airport, isn’t investigating
your love lives. The force has now
been put in charge of keeping a
watch on relationships among the
airport staff after several spouses
complained about the staff’s affairs
with colleagues. This has resulted in
lots of CCTV surveillance, a broken
relationship and transfers. And we
complain about taking off our shoes.
Submitted by PRIYA MEHTA, New Delhi;
Source: hindustantimes.com
A LADDU, CREATED during the last
Ganesh festival in Tapeswaram,
Andhra Pradesh, has set a Guinness
world record for the world’s largest
sweetmeat. It weighs well over 8,000
kilos so we can only hope the contest
wasn’t close. The laddu has set this
Guinness record five years running.
The sweet shop’s next goal: to create a
500-kg kova (sweet) for Maharashtra’s
Sai Baba temple.
Submitted by MEETA AGARWAL, Kolkata;
Source: ndtv.com
Reader’s Digest will pay for contributions
to this column. Post your suggestions
with the source to the editorial address,
or email: editor.india@rd.com
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 61

COVER STORY
62 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

Whether it’s music videos,
lectures, silly stunts, or just funny
cats, this online phenomenon is
increasingly ruling our lives
HOW
YOUTUBE
CHANGED
THE
WORLD
BY SIMON HEMELRYK
WITH ARUSHI SHARMA
ILLUSTRATION BY SAMEER KULAVOOR
AN UNASSUMING YOUNG MAN stands in front of
some elephants at the San Diego zoo. “Um, the whole
thing about these guys is they have really, really, really
long trunks,” he rambles self-consciously into the
camera. “And that’s pretty much all there is to say.”
It’s hard to believe that when this banal clip was uploaded
to a new website called YouTube on 23 April
2005, it would launch a world-changing phenomenon.
The young man was YouTube co-founder Jawed
Karim, a native of East Germany, who, along with
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HOW YOU TUBE CHANGED THE WORLD
co-founders Steve Chen, originally
from Taipei, and Chad Hurley from
the US, saw a hole in the internet
for a service that allowed people
to share personal videos easily. It
caught on spectacularly and within
a year was showing 25 million videos
a day. Eleven years on, more than a
billion users visit the site every
month, watching six billion
hours of video, with 100 hours
of film uploaded to the site
every minute. In India alone,
YouTube gets more than 60
million unique users a month
and watch time has
been growing at 80 per
cent, year on year.
The billions of videos
now on the site,
uploaded by everyone
from homemakers to
multinational corporations,
range from cute
cats to speeches from
world leaders—and
almost everything in
between. And, from its
mumbling beginnings, YouTube has
fundamentally changed much of how
we work, rest and play.
Moreover, with over 400 million internet
users in the country [of which
over 300 million access it via their
mobiles] and six million new mobile
internet users being added every
month, India is seeing a phenomenal
growth in online video consumption.
With more than half of YouTube’s
Eleven years on,
more than one
billion users
visit the site
each month,
watching six
billion hours of
video.
views coming from mobile devices,
in 2014 the platform went further and
launched ‘YouTube Offline’. This is a
feature offered in only 14 other countries,
that allows users to watch their
favourite videos, even when there is
no usable network connection, by
downloading it via mobile data or a
Wi-Fi network. By launching
an offline experience, You-
Tube has managed to move
past the challenges of data
connection, speed and cost,
so consumers can enjoy a
smooth, buffer-free version
of the platform.
Show Business
YouTube has allowed
numerous amateur
music reviewers, animators,
filmmakers,
teenage lifestyle advisers
and others to make
films that get seen by a
wide audience.
“TV and film used to
just be pushed out to a
passive audience,” says Don Tapscott,
author of books like Digital Economy
and Grown Up Digital. “Now everyone
can become involved in the creation
of culture.”
But YouTube has also created a
lucrative alternative entertainment
industry. It’s now far more watched
than any TV network, and its Partners
Program gives video creators a
share of the four-billion-euro adver-
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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY KESHAV KAPIL
tising revenue earned by the website
each year, according to how many
views they’ve had. Thousands now
make a living through everything
from amateur cookery advice to
comedy shorts.
For instance, the popular standup
comedy team AIB, who initially
started with podcasts, only gained
fame when they launched their You-
Tube channel in 2013; last year, they
debuted on India’s Richest Celebrities
100 list by Forbes, ahead of celebrities
like Rajnikanth, Irrfan Khan and Anurag
Kashyap, and even teamed up
with Hotstar to host and produce a
news satire show “On Air with AIB”
on the Star network.
Bollywood has recognized the
power of this platform too: big banners
have started investing heavily,
promoting films. Nearly every upcoming
film has a YouTube page for
the official trailer, behind-the-scenes
footage and interactive videos with
the cast and crew. Film director Sujoy
Ghosh, known for Kahaani, decided
to release his short film Ahalya on
YouTube, rather than go the commercial
route. It went on to become one of
the most-watched videos of 2015, with
more than 5.5 million views.
Actors like Alia Bhat and Irrfan
Khan have released videos on You-
Tube, in collaboration with AIB, to
reveal a different side to themselves.
Similarly, before the release of Barfi,
its makers launched an interactive
video campaign on YouTube. We see
From top to bottom: Psy’s “Gangnam
Style”; AIB and Alia Bhat’s “Genius of the
Year”; Sofia Ashraf’s “Kodaikanal Won’t.”
Ranbir Kapoor introducing the viewers
to his character Barfi and sharing
funny anecdotes about him. The interactive
app [inbuilt in the video] allowed
viewers to ask Barfi for advice,
change his mood, show them how to
dance and impress a girl, and so on.
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HOW YOU TUBE CHANGED THE WORLD
Where once they had to slog
around the entertainment
circuit or go to drama school,
people break into the traditional
media and entertainment
industries through You-
Tube too—Canadian pop star
Justin Bieber being the
most famous example.
It used to be up to TV
executives and professional
reviewers as to
who would get enough
exposure to become a
star. Says industry analyst
John Blossom, author
of Content Nation:
Surviving and Thriving
As Social Media
Changes Our Work, Our
Lives, and Our Future,
“On YouTube, the public
does the work of making things
hot.” Korean singer Psy’s “Gangnam
Style,” for instance, went to No.1 in 30
countries, thanks largely to becoming
a YouTube cult—with two billion
views and counting—and is now the
most-watched video on YouTube.
Politics
YouTube has provided a great platform
for the ‘common man’ to expose
government wrongdoing and mobilize
political change—particularly in
countries where free speech is limited.
Syrian rebels have used it to spread
awareness of their uprising against
President Assad. Russian punk band
The more we
see of different
places and
cultures, as
filmed by locals
themselves, the
less remote and
alien they
become.
Pussy Riot screened their
February 2012 protest
against President Putin in
a Moscow church through
YouTube. And footage of the
first January 2011 demonstrations
in Tahrir Square,
Cairo, were on the site,
galvanizing support for
the removal of Hosni
Mubarak, well before
the mainstream media
cottoned on.
Of course, YouTube
gives wide exposure
to controversial or less
savoury political views,
too, such as extremist
propaganda, be it from
members of ISIS or
Iran’s foreign minister
Mohammad Javad Zarif
making the case, direct to a Western
audience in November 2013, for his
country to be allowed nuclear power.
But YouTube has almost certainly
been more of a force for good than ill,
helping, for instance, highlight African
farming projects that need help or
the 2014 Ice Bucket Challenge, which
raised well over a $100 million for the
US’s Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
(ALS) Association. In India last year,
Sofia Ashraf, a 27-year-old singer,
used YouTube to spread a viral rap
video (to the beat of Nicki Minaj’s ‘Anaconda’)
calling out “Unilever’s failure
to clean up mercury contamination
and compensate workers affected
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by its thermometer factory in Kodaikanal”
that was shut down years ago.
Last month, the company announced
compensation for its workers after 15
years, when former employees, exposed
to the toxic mercury, petitioned
before the court. Along with the workers’
campaign, the video may have
helped create awareness for the cause.
The Indian government has also
turned to YouTube: some of our ministries
today have a YouTube channel,
including PM Modi, who also has
an official channel, PMO India, that
documents his travels, meetings and
speeches, among other things. Recently,
finance minister Arun Jaitley
took to it when his ministry launched
a new YouTube channel, in an attempt
to appeal to younger audiences
ahead of this year’s union budget.
The first video showed Jaitley stirring
a pot of halwa ahead of the “halwa
ceremony,” a quirky pre-budget ritual.
Shrinking the World
From gentle videos of domestic life
on Pitcairn Island [in the southern
Pacific region] to a rescue video of a
Siachen soldier trapped under 10 metres
of snow after an avalanche, closer
to home, YouTube shows us far more
of the planet than documentaries and
magazine supplements ever could.
The more we see of different places
and cultures, as filmed by the locals
themselves, the less remote and alien
they become, often challenging our
assumptions. Footage of the poor-
WHAT’S INDIA
WATCHING?
The videos that get the most hits in
India are associated with comedy,
beauty and fitness, cooking and
technology tutorials, along with
videos for kids. “Regional language
content has also picked up a lot of
pace,” adds a YouTube India
spokesperson. “And music and
Bollywood content and TV shows
are evergreen, and continue to be
extremely popular on YouTube in
India.” Moreover, with the rise of
comedy groups like TVF and AIB,
Indian YouTube has seen a surge of
creators who are now using the
platform to express themselves and
create content that’s not only
engaging, but is shaping popular
culture. Here are the top trending
YouTube videos from 2015:
1. “Every Bollywood Party Song,” by
AIB featuring Irrfan Khan
2. A Chhota Bheem episode called
“Chhota Bheem aur Krishna Jodi
No. #1”
3. The 500th episode of popular TV
show Crime Patrol
4. “Honest Weddings” by AIB
5. A spoof of the film PK by Shudh
Desi Endings
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HOW YOU TUBE CHANGED THE WORLD
but-contented residents of a close-knit
Arctic hamlet might make us rethink
what’s important in life, for instance.
But the change can be potentially even
more profound.
“I met a 14-year-old goat herder in
Kenya, who had a solar mobile device
that allowed her to post and watch videos
on YouTube,” says Tapscott. “She
didn’t have water, or electrical power,
she was pregnant, married to some
guy who bought her for 180 goats, but
she was also part of a global media
experience. Imagine the kind of cognitive
dissonance that YouTube might
bring to her. Imagine the disruption.”
Education
YouTube has thousands of free
tutorials uploaded by helpful
amateurs and companies that show
you how to do almost anything. It also
provides a platform for more highbrow
learning. The TED talks, for instance,
are lectures by experts on everything
from tribes in the Amazon to fractal
mathematics. The not-for-profit Khan
Academy, meanwhile, combines
online learning aids and puzzles with
micro lectures on subjects including
maths, economics, healthcare and
astronomy. With the help of YouTube,
it has delivered 400 million lessons to
START YOUR OWN CHANNEL
YouTube serves as a
great platform to put a
brand, product or
service in front of
millions of potential
viewers, with the click
of a button. Here are
some tips on how you
can become a
successful ‘YouTuber.’
1. First, create your free
Google account. If
you’re starting a
YouTube channel for
your business, set it up
from scratch, using a
unique and nonpersonal
email address.
That way someone else
from your organization
can run the channel
without you having
to disclose your
personal Google
account information.
But remember, only
one YouTube channel
can be associated
with each Google
account.
2. Since there’s no
specialized business
account or YouTube
channel for businesses,
customize the channel’s
settings so it best
caters to your audience
and showcases your
business, its image and
your videos.
3. Make sure you
upload a photo or logo,
and in the “About”
section, add a short
description, add links
(which lets you decide
whether or not to show
how many views your
channel has), and add
channels to highlight
partners, different
departments, or
individual employees. If
you don’t know of any
other YouTube
channels you want to
feature, you can leave
this section blank and
update it after you’re
better acquainted with
the platform.
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READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
schools everywhere from rich British
suburbs to villages in India, struggling
against poverty. Scientists have even
shared their new discoveries on
YouTube. Carnegie Mellon University
PhD student Johnny Chung Lee
received several million plays of a
video he posted in 2008 showing
how a Nintendo Wii controller could
transform a normal TV screen into a
virtual-reality display.
Changing Our Minds
“YouTube is improving our memories,”
says Tapscott. “It’s a visual record of a
huge amount of what’s happening or
has happened in the world, and it’s
available to everybody.”
You can now have a strong
memory of a family party you didn’t
even attend thanks to YouTube
footage, for instance. You can revisit
obscure regional news stories you
had long forgotten about. You can
watch old footage of a favourite
pop song from the ’80s, or writers
and entertainers who have passed
on years ago. YouTube has given
us a far deeper, clearer sense of the
past than we’d get from just being
told about it, in history books or TV
documentaries.
4. The video manager
helps you manage all
your content. There are
also some unique
features found on this
page:
n The ability to livestream
a life event
n A place to go to
create video playlists
n A tab to access your
search history
n A tab that shows you
all of the videos you’ve
liked
5. The first video you
upload should be a
trailer for your channel.
Depending on your
industry or focus of
your channel, the initial
trailer can be a general
look at what your
company, product or
service is all about, or
can be more specific or
an unusual video to
convey the details of
the channel.
6. Like any other online
community, YouTube
needs to be maintained
and managed. As your
presence continues to
build, it’s important to
constantly engage with
your target audience
and also, find people
who are dissatisfied
with your brand, and
address their issues.
7. YouTube also has a
formidable analytics
suite. You can use this
data to help decide
what content you want
to produce and use key
factors like audience
demographics,
playback locations,
devices watched from
and audience retention,
to better tailor your
videos.
8. Finally, don’t forget
to link your channel
with your other social
networking accounts
such as Facebook,
Twitter and Google+.
Remember that more
platforms mean more
views and more
exposure.
Sources: mashable.com,
sproutsocial.com,
entrepreneur.com
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HOW YOU TUBE CHANGED THE WORLD
The World of Business
YouTube has profoundly changed
marketing, says Blossom. “It’s almost
essential for a company or product to
have a compelling YouTube presence.”
The website is an excellent vehicle for
ads, but its comments sections also
give firms instant feedback
about how a product is
being perceived, and they
may change their marketing
accordingly.
But YouTube is also
undermining companies’
ability to determine how their
products are perceived.
Citizen
journalism is
now a powerful
force: 39 per
cent of the
most-watched
videos come
from the public.
Video bloggers, who
review everything from
the latest gadgets to
restaurants, now hold a
huge amount of power,
with many having
millions of viewers.
Firms have to woo them
with free gifts, advertise
next to their videos
and sometimes take
drastic PR action to counteract their
criticism. A 2009 upload by Canadian
musician Dave Carroll criticizing
United Airlines for breaking his guitar
may have helped wipe 157 million
euros off the company’s share value,
and prompted the firm to change its
customer-service policy.
In India too, companies are partnering
with YouTube for a wider reach
with ads that serve a dual purpose:
promote their brand and convey a social
message. These tend to be longer,
get promoted through viewer shares,
and stay memorable. Ariel, the laundry
detergent brand, launched a powerful
new ad campaign that takes on
traditional patriarchy and focuses on
one of the challenges faced by women
all over the world: balancing
the demands of raising
a family, along with maintaining
a successful career.
Similarly, popular jewellery
brand Tanishq featured a
dusky mother getting remarried,
shattering many
stereotypes in one
sweep. Indian clothing
company, Anouk,
too stirred the waters
with an ad featuring a
lesbian couple, challenging
the traditional,
socially conservative
outlook and choosing
to align itself with a progressive
message.
Reporting the News
A 2012 study by a US think tank, the
Pew Research Center, found that
YouTube has become the worldwide
platform for viewing news. The most
searched term on the website was
news-related, in five of the 15 months
analyzed. Most news events on Indian
television are available on YouTube for
viewers to revisit and verify for themselves.
We tend to turn to YouTube for
most things we have missed watching
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READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
live or catching on TV—from speeches
made in our Parliament to John Oliver’s
take-down of Donald Trump.
It turns out, 39 per cent of the mostwatched
videos came from members
of the public, rather than news organizations,
revealing how YouTube
has made citizen video journalism a
powerful force. Amateur recordings
have been the first, most revealing or
often the only footage to emerge from
several major events, including the
Nepal earthquake and Saddam Hussein’s
execution. Recently, the events
around student protests and government
action on them were shared and
discussed widely.
It is YouTube and its users that
frequently set the news agenda now,
says Blossom—determining the latest,
most important event in the world
that most people want to see footage
of—rather than editors or TV producers.
“Major media outlets must follow
in YouTube’s footsteps to gain some
portion of people’s attention as events
unfold,” he says.
Building Communities
YouTube has created thousands of
new communities: how-to videos
form a large part of these, whether
they are based around beauty, fitness,
cooking or kids’ content—the
fastest-growing areas, according to a
YouTube spokesperson. So whether
you’re wondering how to make your
favourite butter chicken, or tie your
newborn baby’s diaper or fix your
iPhone’s blank screen, YouTube has
an ‘expert’ for you.
Another good example is videogame
players, says British author and
internet psychologist Graham Jones.
Fans of a particular game will produce
films showing their hints and tricks,
others will leave comments saying
why they love the game, and so people
all over the world will start bonding
over a shared interest. The same can
happen with everything from football
tutorials to footage of obscure Indipop
songs from the ’90s.
Of course, viewer comments
beneath YouTube videos often do just
the opposite of building new,
enriching relationships, being nasty,
sarcastic or threatening. But, says
Jones, research has found that far
more people leave positive comments
online than unpleasant ones, so one
could argue that YouTube helps bring
people together by showing that,
“Most of us are actually quite nice.”
THE THINGS WE WEATHER When you come out of the
storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what
the storm’s all about.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 71

HUMOUR SPECIAL
Unbelievable tales of bad judgement,
timing and just plain stupidity
WORLD’S
DUMBEST
CRIMINALS
BY SNIGDHA HASAN AND BRUCE GRIERSON
MUMBAI RESIDENT Altaf Qureshi had just
made off with the handbag of a lady he’d spotted
dozing in a railway ticket counter queue. Now
the proud owner of the booty—a cell phone, necklace and
some cash—he only thought it polite to answer his newlyacquired
phone when it rang.
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WORLD’S DUMBEST CRIMINALS
At the other end was the lady
Qureshi had robbed, and she made an
enticing offer: “Keep everything else,
just return my documents,” she said.
“I’ll pay you `1,000.”
The genius master criminal couldn’t
believe his luck. All set to rake in some
more cash, he reached the designated
spot—only to find some plain-clothes
cops waiting. The police sent off the
lady with well-deserved praise and
took Qureshi into custody. Source: ndtv.com
Supermarket Hero
A 23-YEAR-OLD man in a supermarket
checkout line in Stuttgart, Germany,
was about to pay for two cans
of cola when a couple of the store’s
employees confronted him. They had
seen him shoplift. The man bolted.
But as he ran, grocery items he had
shoved down his trousers slipped out
of a pant leg. He tripped on them and
fell sprawling to the ground, where
staffers detained him for the police.
The Perfect Alibi
THOUGH HE PLEADED innocent,
LaDondrell Montgomery of Houston,
Texas, was slapped with a life sentence
for armed robbery. But shortly
after the trial, his lawyer dug up
evidence that would exonerate the
man, something Montgomery knew
but had completely forgotten: he’d
happened to be locked up in jail at the
time of the robbery. Source: ABC News
Publicity Hounds
ONCE YOU SET UP a business,
marketing it is only obvious. A gang
of three professional shooters in
Allahabad decided to build their
profile with a blitzkrieg of publicity:
they actually circulated smiling, guntoting
photographs of themselves
in the crime world and to further
substantiate their expertise, CVs of
their felonious deeds were added to
their publicity campaign.
The ingenious modus operandi
came to light when the police busted
the gang. The trio—Ajay Yadav,
Rakesh Kumar and Neeraj Singh—said
the portfolio helped establish their
credentials with prospective clients.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
Hit, Run, Repeat
A 21-YEAR-OLD—with his girlfriend
and another friend in the car—had
driven no more than a couple of
hundred metres before crashing into
an SUV. The young man from
Innsbruck, Austria, was clearly in a
pickle. It was 7 a.m. on an October
morning last year, and he and his
friends had spent the entire night in a
local tavern, and now he faced both
drunk-driving and hit-and-run
charges. Thinking quickly—or as
quickly as his fuzzy brain allowed—he
decided he had to hide the car.
He carefully shepherded the lameduck
vehicle down the road to a
ILLUSTRATIONS BY LUC MELANSON
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READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
nearby backyard. But just as he pulled
in he realized something important:
the yard was the parking lot for the
local police station. He tried to beat
a retreat before anyone noticed, but
crashed into another car. Good news:
it was not a police cruiser. Bad news: it
was the private car of a police officer.
This time, when the young man tried
to drive away, his car broke down.
Police were on the scene—almost
immediately.
Spurious Persuasion
A CALIFORNIA WOMAN facing
nearly five years in prison for forging
drug prescriptions brought to court a
doctor’s note that suggested her case
be postponed for medical reasons.
Her request was rejected—the note
was a forgery.
Source: Yahoo News
Dear Diary
DURING A ROUTINE security check,
the local crime branch officials of
Ahmedabad rounded up Devendra
Singh, alias Devanand, when
he couldn’t produce documents for
the motorbike he was riding. When
the suspicious-looking 23-year-old
was frisked, out came a diary that
belonged to the owner of a motorwinding
unit in the neighbouring
town of Bavla. The unit, along with
three other plants, had been burgled
a week ago and copper wires worth
`42,000 had been missing.
A raid at Singh’s home yielded
another diary, and this one had the
details of his other shenanigans—15
robberies, where the spoils ranged
from oil and ghee to two-wheelers and
a tractor.
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WORLD’S DUMBEST CRIMINALS
What’s worse is that Singh is the son
of a retired armyman who had come
to work as a security guard in Gujarat.
While he left for his village, the son
stayed on to chronicle his escapades.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
Market Loss
THOUGH PRETTY MUCH everyone
knows everyone in his Polish hometown
of Okonek, with a population
of about 4,000, with its quaint
clock tower and small police station,
22-year-old Pawel P. didn’t recognize
the man he approached in the supermarket
parking lot this past October.
“Hey dude,” Pawel said brightly:
“Wanna buy some weed?” The man
loading his groceries paused. This
must be a joke, he thought. Who would
sell drugs to an off-duty police officer?
But as he realized the young man was
on the level, the officer played along.
He agreed to purchase some marijuana
but claimed not to have the
cash on him. He asked the young man
to hold tight while he called some
buddies to come bring the funds.
The buddies, when they showed
up, were, of course, other policemen.
Pawel faces up to three years in prison
for drug possession and trafficking.
Read It or Weep
TWO WANNABE CROOKS’ inattention
became their undoing in the
Dutch town of Enschede. The two
men broke into a jewellery store last
July and cleaned out every single
piece of merchandise in the shop window.
But they failed to notice a sign
that read: “All rings and other pieces
on display are models only.”
In the end it didn’t matter, as
neighbours heard breaking glass and
alerted the authorities. Police arrested
one suspect at the scene: the second
managed to flee but was arrested a
few months later.
Bedtime Story
AFTER RANSACKING an underrenovation
house in West Bengal’s
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READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
WITH INPUTS FROM READER’S DIGEST. US
Madhyamgram, a thief got exhausted
and wrapped up for the day. Imagine
the horror of the lady of the house,
when the following morning, she
shook her daughter to wake her up
and a stranger emerged from beneath
the blanket—sporting the daughter’s
pullover! A warm blanket on a cold
winter night, it seemed, had outweighed
the treasure he’d spent hours
looking for.
Fighting a hangover, the man
couldn’t recollect how he’d landed
up there and tried to flee. But the masons
kept him from escaping until the
police arrived.
Source: oneindia.com
Self-Reliance
PHILOME CESAR, from Bethlehem
in the US, decided to represent
himself in court against charges of
robbery. But his legal skills were on
par with his larceny skills. During the
trial, he asked a witness to describe
the robber’s voice. The response:
“He sounded like you.” Ironically,
the jury’s decision sounded a lot
like “guilty.”
Source: mcall.com
Crime Speaks for Itself
MUMBAI’S SUBURBAN RAILWAY
premises were Nandu Tayade’s
favourite haunt, until the Government
Railway Police caught him. Having
committed several thefts, Tayade’s
most recent haul was of `1.12 lakh
he’d stolen from a lady in the queue
at the booking office.
During interrogation, Tayade
pretended that he was deaf and dumb
in a bid to seek clemency. When
he wrote down the name of his village
in Jalgaon district, the police took
him on a trip home. He continued to
pretend before his wife and children
that he could neither hear nor speak,
but when the police approached his
neighbours, they gave him away.
Tayade confessed to his crime later.
Source: dnaindia.com
Out of the Frying Pan…
WHEN A CHAIN SNATCHER was
caught in Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh,
he first tried to pull off a tear-jerker,
saying he stole for the treatment of his
ailing mother. When he still ended up
at the rural police station, he continued
with his pleas from behind bars.
And when that didn’t help either, he
had a brainwave.
He asked the sentry guard if he
could use the loo. When he didn’t return
for a long time, the guard smelt
a rat. He went to check the backyard,
only to see the thief atop a tall tree.
Now it was the guard’s turn to coax
the thief who was in no mood to listen.
Off he jumped to the other side,
letting out a victory cry.
The thief, however, had to come
back to the police station within
minutes—he had fallen inside an
adjoining jail compound.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 77

How saying “thank you” can
have positive effects on your health
and the well-being of others
The
Power
of
Gratitude
BY LISA FIELDS
LAST YEAR, I FELT COMPELLED to bake brownies
for complete strangers to say thank you.
I’d had to call the emergency because I found
my partner unconscious on the floor. Within
minutes, a police car and ambulance arrived,
filled with first responders who whisked my
partner away to the emergency room, where he
received the critical care that he needed.
ILLUSTRATION BY KEITH NEGLEY
78 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 79

THE POWER OF GRATITUDE
A week later, still marvelling at the
impact of a handful of strangers, I
wrote thank-you notes to those helpful
first responders and baked for
them. It was a small gesture with a
big impact. When I dropped off stillwarm
brownies at the police station
and firehouse, they thanked me for
delivering gifts. Thanking me? All I’d
done was bake; they’d saved a life.
I drove away feeling
light and happy, partly
because I’d done a
good deed, but mostly
because I was amazed
that there are selfless
people who do lifesaving
work and expect
nothing in return.
Later, I realized that
my natural high had
been more than what
it seemed. Research
shows that sharing
thoughts of gratitude and performing
acts of kindness can boost your mood
and have other health benefits.
“We know from studies in the literature
that gratitude does have a good
impact on happiness, that it increases
life satisfaction,” says Willibald Ruch,
a psychology professor at the University
of Zurich who does research on
the effects of character strengths like
gratitude and humour. “It’s among
the top five predictors of happiness.”
You can make positive changes in
your own life by choosing to embrace
gratitude. Here’s how:
A Good-For-You Sentiment
When you feel thankful for things
you’ve received or something that’s
happened, that’s gratitude. It’s
impossible to feel it in a vacuum;
others are always responsible, whether
they’re loved ones, strangers or a
higher power. “Gratitude is how you
relate to others, when you see yourself
in connection with things larger than
yourself,” Ruch says.
Today, many people
don’t stop to appreciate
what they have, much
less express gratitude.
The instant-gratification
lifestyle we lead may be
to blame.
“With commercial
and social media,
everything is speeding
the younger generation
to make them feel that
they are the centre of
the universe,” says Tamiko Zablith,
founder of the London-based etiquette
consulting firm Minding Manners. “If
it’s all about them, why thank others?”
Why not thank others? Studies
have shown that people who express
gratitude increase their happiness
levels, lower their blood pressure
levels, get better quality sleep, improve
their relationships, experience a
positive impact on their depression
levels and are less affected by pain.
And gratitude’s positive effects are
long-lasting. Canadian researchers
found that people who wrote thank-
80 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
you letters or performed good deeds
for a mere six-week period were able
to improve their mental health, reduce
their bodily pain, feel more energetic
and accomplish more daily tasks for
up to six months.
Because gratitude is a relatively
new field of study, researchers are still
trying to identify its cause-and-effect
relationship with various health gains.
“We know that people who have
higher levels of gratitude also report
sleeping better, but we don’t really
themselves,” says study author Helena
Hörder, a researcher at the University
of Gothenburg in Sweden. “Maybe
it’s some kind of confidence that you
can cope with this and focus on the
right things.”
Making Someone Else’s Day
What about gratitude recipients?
Research has confirmed that people
who receive messages of thanks or
acts of kindness experience positive
emotions when they’re singled out.
Gratitude is how you relate to others, when you see
yourself in connection with things larger than yourself.
know why,” says Alex Wood, professor
of psychology and director of the
Behavioural Science Centre at the
University of Stirling in Scotland. “Is
gratitude leading to better sleep? Is
sleep leading to more gratitude? Or
could it be some third variable that
leads to both gratitude and improved
sleep?” Perhaps all of the above.
Gratitude can benefit people during
all stages of life. Swedish researchers
have found that people aged 77 to 90
who choose to be thankful for what
they have, are less likely to dwell upon
the chances that they may grow frail.
“When they can’t change something,
they choose gratitude and
focus on what’s good: walking on their
own legs, still being alive and living by
“Those are happy surprises—you’re
not expecting coffee or for someone
to hold the door open for you,” says
Jo-Ann Tsang, associate professor of
psychology at Baylor University in
Texas, who does gratitude research.
“You’re more likely to feel grateful if
you receive help that’s unexpected.
It’s different if a doorman holds the
door than a stranger, because that’s
not their [the latter’s] job.”
When someone is the recipient of
unexpected kindness or gratitude,
he’s more likely to return the favour
or pay kindness forward. One study
found that when someone is thanked,
it more than doubles his chances of
being helpful again, likely because he
enjoys feeling socially valued.
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THE POWER OF GRATITUDE
Zablith likes the reaction she
gets when she rewards a stranger
who holds the door open for her at
Starbucks with his rightful place in line
in front of her. “The look on his face
is shock,’” Zablith says. “He’ll be nicer
to the cashier, the next person he sees
at work. There’s a trickle-down effect.”
The give-and-take of gratitude can
also deepen relationships. Studies
show that when your partner regularly
expresses gratitude, making you feel
appreciated, you’re more likely to
return appreciative, grateful feelings
some difficulty with what good
things happened,” Ruch says. “But if
every evening you write them down,
you experience those things more
intensively. Gradually, your brain gets
trained into a more appreciative mode,
so the sense to be grateful increases.
“Even when our training is over,
people still continue with this exercise,
because they find it so rewarding.
People enjoy looking up what
happened a few weeks ago. It becomes
a book of nice memories,” he adds.
Samuel Coster from St. Louis, US,
If you share grateful thoughts with the person who helped
you, it has the potential to bring you two closer together.
and stay committed to each other.
One study found that sharing gratitude
with a partner makes you feel more
responsible for his well-being and
more satisfied with the relationship.
“You feel closer to the other person,
and they feel closer to you,” Tsang says.
“That creates an upward spiral.”
Developing the Sense
If you aren’t particularly grateful,
you can learn to be. People who are
instructed to keep gratitude journals,
in which they write down three
positive things that happen to them
each day, cultivate gratitude over time.
“People at the beginning have
began keeping a regular gratitude
journal three years ago. When he was
diagnosed with lymphoma a year later,
it helped carry him through his illness.
“Gratitude training certainly came to
my aid during the dark times,” Coster
says. “Did I get cancer? Yep. Did I also
get to hang out with my family way
more, gain a greater appreciation for
life and get a few cool scars? Yep. And
that’s the part I focus on.”
Expressing Gratitude
When you share grateful thoughts with
the person whom you’re thankful for,
everyone benefits. And the effects
will last longer than you’d expect:
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READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
Researchers found that people who
write thank-you notes to people
whom they haven’t properly thanked
may boost their happiness levels and
improve interpersonal relationships
for up to six months.
“If you keep gratitude to yourself
in a journal, it will make you happier,
but if you share it with the person
who helped you, it has the potential
to bring you two closer together,”
Tsang says.
John Kralik of California actually
experienced this first-hand. He’d been
feeling depressed and discouraged
whenever he took account of his life:
He’d been divorced twice. He wasn’t as
close with his children as he wanted
to be. His law practice wasn’t earning
money despite the gruelling hours he
devoted to work. At a particularly low
point, he remembered his grandfather
telling him, decades earlier, about the
importance of gratitude. He decided
to write 365 thank-you notes over 365
days, hoping for a positive change.
Immediately, he noticed his attitude
and situation begin to improve. At the
end of the year he wrote a memoir
about his experience, A Simple Act of
Gratitude: How Learning to Say Thank
You Changed My Life.
“I didn’t need a scientific study
to know that if you are grateful to
people and if you learn how to accept
gratitude well from other people,
your life will be enriched,” Kralik says.
“The first effects are that you realize
that you have a much better life than
you thought.”
I’d experienced such positive
feelings after writing thank-you notes
to those first responders, I decided
to try again. This time, inspired by
Kralik, I chose someone from my
past whom I’d never thanked before:
The high school English teacher who
had encouraged my writing more than
any other teacher I’d ever had. I hadn’t
seen him in 25 years, so I wasn’t sure
if I’d be able to locate him, but I did.
He’s in his 80s, living in a warm
retirement town.
I spent an evening honing my letter,
thanking him for the guidance and
support that he’d given me years
earlier. I may never hear back from
him, but that isn’t the point. By taking
time to put into words the impact that
my teacher had on my life and my
career, I became infinitely more
grateful and appreciative of what I’ve
achieved in life, and I’ve been riding
that burst of positivity for weeks.
WHY AM I PRESIDENT OF THE ENTITLED CLUB?
Well, for one, I deserve it.
@HOME_HALFWAY
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 85

Laughter
THE BEST MEDICINE
TWO MEN Tom and Frank, had
loved cricket more than anything,
their entire lives. One day, Tom says
to Frank, “If you die before me,
promise me you’ll come back and
tell me if there’s cricket in Heaven.”
Frank agrees and makes Tom
promise the same thing. About a
week later, Tom dies.
One night, Frank wakes up to
someone calling his name. Scared,
he asks, “Who’s there?”
Suddenly Tom appears and says,
“Hi Frank. I’m speaking from
Heaven. I’ve got some good news
and some bad news. The good
news first: there’s cricket
in heaven!”
Frank gets very excited, and then
asks, “What’s the bad news?”
Tom looks at him grimly and
says, “I looked at the line-up for
tomorrow and you’re opening
the batting.”
From the internet
ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE SHIELL
86 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

A WOMAN NOTICED her husband
standing on the bathroom scale, sucking
in his stomach. “Ha! That’s not
going to help,” she said.
“Sure, it does,” he said. “It’s the only
way I can see the numbers.”
THERE IS NOTHING more awkward
than the moment you realize you’re
getting a double-cheek kiss.
@MICHMARKOWITZ
A FEW MONTHS AGO, Hamas
“arrested” a dolphin for being an
Israeli spy. Readers of Reason
magazine came up with titles for
the film this action might inspire:
■ Orcapussy
■ Free Schmuelly
■ Goldflipper
■ The Porpoise-Driven Life
■ Dolphinfidel
DID YOU HEAR the one about the kid
who started a business tying shoelaces
on the playground? It was a
knot-for-profit. ANDREW FERGUSON
MR JONES GOES to his local barber
for a shave. While he’s being foamed,
he mentions how difficult it is to
shave fully around the cheeks.
“I have the solution,” the barber replies.
“Place this small wooden ball
between the cheeks and the gum to
puff the skin out.”
The man has the closest shave he’s
had for years. “But what if I swallow
the ball?” he asks.
“Oh, just bring it back tomorrow.
Everyone else does.” JOSEPH STOKOE
PETE AND LARRY hadn’t seen each
other in many years. Now they were
having a long talk, trying to fill the
gap of those years by telling each
other about their lives. Finally, Pete
invited Larry to visit him at his new
flat. “I’ve got a wife and three kids
and I’d love for you to visit,” he said.
“Great. Where do you live?”
“Here’s the address,” says Pete.
“There’s plenty of parking behind
the flat. Park and come around to the
front door, kick it open with your foot,
go to the lift and press the button
with your left elbow, then enter!
When you reach the sixth floor, go
down the corridor until you see my
name on the door. Then press the
door with your right elbow and I’ll let
you in.”
“Good. But what’s all this business
of kicking the front door open and
pressing buttons with my elbows?”
Says Pete, “Well, surely you’re
not coming empty-handed?”
From the internet
A GRASSHOPPER walks into a bar.
The bartender says, “Hey, we have
a drink named after you.”
The grasshopper says, “Really? You
have a drink named Steve?”
Reader’s Digest will pay for your funny
anecdote or photo in any of our jokes
sections. Post it to the editorial address,
or email: editor.india@rd.com
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 87

A changing approach and new treatments
bring hope to thousands
Fighting
Lung
Cancer
BY KATHAKOLI DASGUPTA
AND ANITA BARTHOLOMEW
When Anil Sharma* (now 55),
started smoking at 22, he never
imagined that he was putting
himself in danger. He continued
to smoke, up to a packet or more a day. The
thought of quitting never occured to him. Things
changed in 2012, when Sharma developed a
cough that refused to go away.
PHOTO: © CORBIS
88 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST
*Name changed on request

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FIGHTING LUNG CANCER
When home remedies and cough
syrups didn’t help, his daughter took
him for a check-up. After a chest
X-ray, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis
and put on anti-tubercular treatment
(ATT). But he saw blood in his
sputum in a month. The family panicked
and went for a second opinion.
A CT scan showed lesions; a biopsy
confirmed the terrifying diagnosis.
“In India, where tuberculosis is
rampant, it is common to find a lung
cancer patient being put on ATT. I find
about 30 per cent of lung cancer cases
are misdiagnosed. The symptoms are
similar: a persistent cough, hoarseness,
wheezing, shortness of breath,
sputum streaked with blood, weight
loss and chest pain,” says Sharma’s
oncologist, Dr Ullas Batra, consultant
medical oncologist at Delhi’s Rajiv
Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research
Centre. ATT takes up to nine months,
and the cancer may develop to an
advanced stage. Luckily for Sharma,
it was still localized, which helped
improve his odds greatly.
What the Stats Show
“According to the WHO, globally,
71 per cent of all lung cancer deaths
are attributable to tobacco use (smoking
and smokeless). In India, around
32 per cent of cancer deaths in men
and 6 per cent in women between 30
and 69 years are caused by smoking,”
says Dr Manu Raj Mathur, a scientist
at Delhi’s Public Health Foundation
of India, and a core team member of
THE STAGES OF
LUNG CANCER
STAGE I
Early, isolated in the lung where it
originated, has not spread. The fiveyear
survival rate is the highest when
detected at this early stage and is
about 70 per cent.
STAGE II
Has spread but not extensively,
usually to nearby lymph nodes and to
membranes between the lungs or
surrounding the heart. The five-year
survival is between 45-60 per cent.
STAGE III
The cancer that has advanced further,
and has now spread to lymph nodes
on the same side of the chest as the
affected lung, as well as other parts of
the body. Survival rate: between 10
and 25 per cent.
STAGE IV
May have spread to both lungs, into
the chest and throughout the body,
possibly affecting bones and organs,
such as the brain or liver.
Understandably, the survival stats
drop to about 13 per cent. Small-cell
lung cancer accounts for about 15 per
cent of all lung cancers. It spreads
quickly and is likely to be advanced
by the time it is diagnosed. It is
grouped as ‘limited and extended
stages’. In the former, five-year
survival ranges between 10 and 13 per
cent; with extended stage disease it is
just about 2 per cent.
With inputs from Dr Neelesh Reddy, consultant
medical oncologist, Columbia Asia, Bengaluru
and Dr P.K. Das
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READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
Project STEPS (Strengthening Tobacco
Control Efforts through Innovative
Partnerships and Strategies).
“People who smoke cigarettes are
15 to 30 times more likely to get lung
cancer or die from it than people who
do not,” says Dr Rajeev Bedi, director,
Medical Oncology, Fortis Cancer
Institute, Mohali. Even smoking occasionally
increases the risk of lung
cancer. The longer a person smokes
and the more cigarettes smoked each
day, the higher the risk.
SMOKERS ARE 15 TO 30 TIMES MORE
LIKELY TO GET LUNG CANCER OR DIE
FROM IT THAN NON-SMOKERS.
Smoking is Harmful
Each puff of cigarette contains a
mixture of thousands of compounds,
including more than 60 wellestablished
carcinogens. Many of
these carcinogens damage our DNA,
including key genes that protect
us against cancer. Certain other
chemicals interfere with pathways for
repairing damaged DNA. This makes
it even more likely that damaged
cells will eventually turn cancerous.
“The damage to the DNA hampers
the regulated growth of cells, causing
them to proliferate, leading to the
formation of tumours in the body,”
explains Mathur.
Every cigarette you smoke can
damage the DNA in lung cells. But it’s
the build-up of damage in the same
cell that can lead to cancer. According
to research published in the journal
Nature, for every 15 cigarettes smoked,
there’s a DNA change, which could
cause a cell to become cancerous.
Passive smoking is dangerous too.
“Non-smokers who live with a smoker
and inhale second-hand smoke, increase
their risk of lung cancer by 20
to 30 per cent,” Mathur adds. “A metaanalysis
reported 27 per cent higher
risk of lung cancer among neversmoking
women exposed to spousal
ETS (environmental tobacco smoke)
compared with never-smoking
women not exposed to spousal ETS.”
Although smoking causes the
vast majority of lung malignancies,
there are other risk factors. “These
include exposure to certain substances,
including asbestos, arsenic, radon
and diesel fumes,” says Dr P.K. Das,
senior consultant, Oncology, Indraprastha
Apollo Hospitals, New Delhi.
Genes are more often to blame when
the illness strikes young people, says
Dr Rafael Rosell of the Catalan Insti-
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 91

FIGHTING LUNG CANCER
tute of Oncology, Barcelona. Genes
help determine which treatments
work best for each individual.
Detecting it Early
Detecting cancer early, before it’s had
a chance to spread, gives individuals
the best chance of long-term survival.
There’s been a push to screen for early
signs with annual low-dose CT scans
for those at an increased risk. Doctors
in India are not in favour of this:
it’s not just the cost, but the worry
of a large number of false positives.
“Because the incidence of tuberculosis
is very high in our country, such
a screening will lead to a detection
of a large number of nodules which
may not be malignant and in turn
warrant unnecessary biopsies,” says
NIGGLING QUESTIONS ON OUR MINDS
Shisha is fruity and
flavourful; surely the
odd puff can’t harm?
According to the WHO,
a one-hour shisha
session can be as
harmful as smoking
100 cigarettes. A
cigarette smoker takes
between eight and
twelve puffs, inhaling
0.5 to 0.6 litres of
smoke. But during an
hour-long shisha
session smokers may
take up to 200 drags,
ranging from 0.15 to
1 litre of smoke each.
Should we be wary of
e-cigarettes?
These are batteryoperated
products
designed to deliver
nicotine, flavour and
other chemicals. They
turn chemicals,
including highly
addictive nicotine, into
an aerosol that is
inhaled by the user.
According to the US
Lung Cancer
Association, in initial
lab tests conducted in
2009, the FDA found
detectable levels of
toxic cancer-causing
chemicals—including
an ingredient used in
antifreeze—in two
leading brands of
e-cigarettes.
Furthermore, a 2014
study found that the
aerosol from
e-cigarettes with a
higher voltage level
contains more
formaldehyde, another
carcinogen. Flavours in
e-cigarettes, including
gummy bears, fruit
punch, peach, licorice,
also cause concern as
they are used to target
kids. Besides, it is not
known whether the
flavouring agents are
safe to inhale.
Do the alarming levels
of air pollution
contribute to the risk?
Yes. A 2013 assessment
by WHO’s International
Agency for Research
on Cancer (IARC)
concluded that
outdoor air pollution is
carcinogenic, with
particulate matter most
closely associated with
increased cancer
incidence. Safe levels
for PM according to the
WHO’s air quality
guidelines are 20 μg/
m3 (annual mean) for
PM 10 . The level in Delhi
was 286 in 2014, said
the WHO.
—With inputs from
Dr Manu Mathur
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READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
Dr Raj K. Shrimali, consultant radiation
oncologist, Tata Medical Center,
Kolkata. Instead, they stress on the
need to spread awareness about the
condition, and its prevention.
The choice of treatment depends
on the stage and type of malignancy.
Surgery is a good option for people
whose cancers are detected early
(Stage I or II). However, if the cancer
is metastatic [it spreads to other parts
of the body] surgery might not always
be the best therapy. But there are
numerous treatments today that can
prolong life even in people with more
advanced cancers.
Treatment Options
“Standard chemotherapy drugs
and radiation can slow a tumour’s
growth, shrink them and kill cancer
cells,” says Bedi. “These therapies
are often used post surgery to mop
up any malignancy that might have
been missed. And these are also typically
the first line of treatments used
for more advanced tumours when
surgery isn’t feasible.”
Now, precision or personalized
chemotherapy, also known as targeted
therapy, is changing the way
we think about cancer. Just like normal
cells, cancer cells need “growth
factors”—hormones, proteins and
other substances that occur naturally
in our bodies—in order to thrive. “We
do a genetic analysis of tumour tissues,”
says Dr Eric Haura, a physician-scientist
at the Moffitt Cancer
Center, Florida. If this shows that a
cancer is being fuelled by particular
growth factors, targeted drugs can
block the cancer cell from accessing
its ‘fuel’ source. And that sometimes
“results in dramatic responses,” says
Haura. He points out, though, that
these drugs aren’t cures, as cancers
eventually develop resistance to these
and other drugs. New drugs, tailored
to the mutating cancer, can in some
cases replace the ones it has developed
resistance to. These are designed
to behave like a super-charged version
of your body’s own immune defences.
One of the most promising discoveries
in the history of lung cancer is a
new cancer vaccine called CimaVax,
developed in Cuba and soon to be
tested on patients in the US and Europe.
But rather than wait for a vaccine,
improve your odds of not getting
lung cancer right now. If you smoke,
stop. And though your risk won’t drop
to levels of someone who has never
smoked, within ten years of giving up
smoking the risk of dying from lung
cancer drops by half.
Sharma was diagnosed at Stage II,
but did not undergo a surgery. His tumour
was shrunk using radiotherapy.
Then a combination of chemotherapy
and radiotherapy was used to kill stray
cancer cells. All this over four months
with resting periods, explains Batra.
Sharma quit smoking the day he was
diagnosed and has been cancer-free
since his treatment (three and a half
years now).
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 93

They’re the words that put the whizz bang
into our language
BY DONYALE HARRISON
Like
Sounds
WHEN I WAS MUCH YOUNGER,
onomatopoeia was one of my favourite
words. I loved the fact that a word
that means “words that sound like
natural sounds” is itself so complicated
that practically no one could
guess its meaning, let alone spelling.
If I’m being honest, I had a hard time
even saying the wretched thing.
But, like most children, I was a
keen user of onomatopoeia: cars
went vrooom; dogs went ruff ruff; water
splish splash. And the joy of those
words remains, even though I might
nowadays aim for the sophistication
of a susurrus (whistling or rustling) or
tintinnabulation (ringing or tinkling).
There’s nothing overly mysterious
about onomatopoeic words. For
the most part they describe actual
sounds, from the quack of a duck to
the whoosh of deadlines flying by.
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SOUNDS LIKE
Many of them are very old words:
quack, baa, moo and miaow, popped
up in the Renaissance; susurrus and
tintinnabulation both come from the
Latin; while whoosh is newer as things
only got that fast in the 19th century,
and it took till the 1960s for engines to
warrant a vroom.
Sometimes words become less
onomatopoeic the longer they hang
around: bleet used to be pronounced
bleat, with a long vowel, which sounds
much more like the sound a sheep
actually makes.
In the same way, new words pop up
as the language finds a need for them;
like zhuzh, the last-minute fancying
up of an outfit that was introduced
into the language by Queer Eye for
the Straight Guy (more than a decade
ago: I feel old!), or bah-bow, the tonal
impersonation of a wrong answer
buzzer that apparently began on an
American quiz show before spreading
to every teenager I know.
There’s a reason onomatopoeic
words are so popular: you don’t really
need to know their meaning in
order to understand them. The first
time you heard someone described
as frumpy, the word itself gave you a
sense of lumpy tiredness. Whereas the
same person described as sleekit or
schmick would clearly have invested
in a haircut and new set of clothes,
not to mention a shoe polish.
Onomatopoeia allows you to give a
finer tone to the quality you are discussing
than standard English. An ex-
plosion that goes pop is probably just
a lid left on in the microwave, while
one that goes bang is more likely to be
at least errant fireworks. A boom will
certainly do real damage and missiles
whizzing past are definitely bad news.
The sounds themselves indicate the
severity of the blast.
This quality of self-explanatoriness
can even work across language barriers.
I had no idea what the Italian
word for mosquito was, but when I
saw a Roman look crossly at his arm
and mutter “Zanzara!” it needed no
translation app.
However, despite the fact that we’re
mostly hearing the same sounds,
there are some remarkable international
onomatopoeic quirks. Some
sounds have surprising universality.
Variants on shhh and hahahaha commonly
convey shushing or laughter in
dozens of languages.
In others, we have only minor differences:
the French plic ploc is in fact
much better than English drip drop
for a leaking tap, while the German
plitsch platsch suggests you should
really call the plumber sooner rather
than later.
But others are wildly different. Illustrator
James Chapman has a wonderful
website (www.chapmangamo.tumblr.
com) where he shows how different
languages represent different onomatopoeic
words. One of my favourites is
of cats: purr in English becomes ronron
in French, nurr in Estonian, schnurr in
German and goro goro in Japanese.
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There are two possible explanations:
either the cats have regional
accents, or we’re listening to them
through different sets of expectations.
Now the first proposition isn’t wholly
ridiculous. Songbirds are known to
have regional song variants, as do
whales, and some research suggests
that domesticated animals take on
aspects of the accents of the humans
around them. I’ve patted cats around
the world and there are definite
cultural trends in their mannerisms.
But The Guardian’s Gary Nunn,
who wrote a brilliant article on this
topic titled “Why do pigs oink in English,
boo boo in Japanese and nöff
nöff in Swedish?” summed up the
broader scientific argument with “it
isn’t pigs that are multilingual, it’s
us.” Apparently we hear animals and
other sounds through the aural “lens”
of our own language.
One fact that quickly stands out in
international comparisons is the unusualness
of Japanese onomatopoeia.
It is the only language in which a
cat’s miaow does not start with an M,
rather, they say nyan nyan. Similarly,
it is alone in having no Z or S sound in
the word for bee noises: Japanese bees
say boon boon.
It’s no casual difference. Japanese
has not one, but three types of onomatopoeia:
giseigo, which are the
sounds of living things; giongo, which
are the sounds of inanimate objects;
and gitaigo, which is for words that
mimic qualities like businesslike or
SAY IT LIKE THIS
Some apparently random
onomatopoeias make far more
sense when pronounced with
the right accent.
Ronron: French for a cat’s purr, it
has a rolled R, a soft O and barely
there N.
Nöff nöff: Swedish for a pig’s
oink, it’s pronounced with a nasal
vowel, like the French neuf (9).
Hamba: Bengali for moo. There’s
no special pronunciation: cows in
Bangladesh just seem a bit more
cosmopolitan than others round
the world, which mostly moo.
quickly. Unlike English, where this
class of words is often used in a less
formal manner, Japanese uses them in
a wider variety of contexts and more
commonly. Alas, it would require a far
better grasp of linguistics (and Japanese)
than mine to extrapolate from
this to nyaning cats, but it is a good
excuse to slip in that the gitaigo word
for annoyed is mukamuka, which is
clearly splendid and worth sneaking
into English.
So the next time you find yourself
lost for words and resort to, “She was all
growl growl and he was all nyah nyah,”
don’t bemoan your inability to remember
adjectives. Celebrate the fact that
your onomatopoeia is connecting you
with a worldwide audience! Except,
possibly, the Japanese.
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 97

Shyam Benegal on the debates in our campuses and
beyond, and the issues highlighted by his films
Alternate
Vision
BY SNIGDHA HASAN
I STRUGGLE TO conceal the surprise
in my voice when Shyam Benegal
returns my call. In a film industry
where being endlessly elusive is par
for the course, this veteran filmmaker
stands out as much for his pathbreaking
cinema as for his refined,
self-effacing manner.
The 81-year-old filmmaker’s oeuvre
is as diverse as it is impressive:
with more than 26 feature films, 65
documentaries, and about 35 feature
length/documentary films and
television serials, Benegal looms over
Indian cinema after more than 50
years as a director. He is amongst the
most respected public intellectuals of
our times.
He emerged as a major voice in
the new Indian cinema of the ’70s
with Ankur. Since then, his massive
body of work has explored important
social issues—such as caste, gender,
livelihoods, freedom, communalism
and the idea of India—and earned
him several National Film Awards
under various categories, the Padma
Shri, the Padma Bhushan as well
as the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for
lifetime achievement. He has served
as chairman of the Film and Television
Institute of India (FTII) twice and was
recently appointed by the government
to head a committee to address the
problems of film certification and
censorship. Benegal has contributed
richly in unshackling cinema—and
indeed our public sphere—from
censorship and making it a free space
for creativity and expression.
As universities around the country
boil over with protests around student
rights and the nation debates questions
of identity and freedom of expression,
as thinkers and activists express
concern over the government’s
methods and approach towards education,
Reader’s Digest spoke to the
YOGEN SHAH
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ALTERNATE VISION
erudite filmmaker to understand how
he sizes up the current situation—
from FTII to JNU and beyond.
I meet Benegal at his South Mumbai
office, lined with books and film posters,
where he unscrambles the noise
around—drawing from his exhaustive
reading, research and understanding
of India.
As someone who’s worked with the
students of the FTII, what is your
take on the current state in Pune?
They’ve already found a way out. The
students have gone back to class.
The chairman has taken charge and
will meet them. My views on this
have been very clear. The chairman
shouldn’t expect the students to
come and meet him; he should go
and meet the students. After all, one
mustn’t forget that the FTII students
aren’t children—they’re fully formed
and developed individuals who
come with educational degrees
from universities. They will not
go on strike simply for the sake of it.
The reasons need to be examined.
And how would one know the reasons,
if one does not do it with empathy?
The management cannot look at its
own students as opponents.
We have seen student protests in
other campuses, post the FTII
agitation. How do you see them, and
the role of a university in society?
It is a space for learning, questioning,
debating—going through the entire
spectrum of human experience.
Protests are part of that. So is
discussion and argument. Once
you come out of the university,
you are in the everyday world. The
Constitution sets out the social
parameters of our life. The university
has to be a space that allows one to
look beyond those parameters. It’s
a space for intellectual ferment and
untrammelled imagination, not one to
be invaded as it was, both in the case
of the Hyderabad University and JNU,
by the police or anybody else.
I don’t think the government was
right in either case because there
was no reason to make it seem as
though students were enemies of
the state. The government can look
at the world in a particular way, but
within the university you should be
able to explore, argue, take positions.
Unfortunately, this was not allowed
to happen—whether it relates to
caste prejudice, which caused Rohith
Vemula to commit suicide, or lawyers
beating up students and accusing
them of anti-national activity.
There is an ongoing debate on
intolerance. How do you look at it?
Intolerance raises its head in India’s
public discourse from time to time,
largely because it constitutes the
faultline between communities. This
is frequently exploited by politicians
to consolidate community votes for
their own benefit. This doesn’t mean
Indians are by nature intolerant. If
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we were, we wouldn’t have been able
to live at peace with ourselves or our
neighbours—who are far more diverse
than in any other country in the world.
Tolerance and intolerance are
wrong words to use. The problem
is one of inclusion. Indians, by and
large, have this dexterous ability to
exclude and include
at the same time. How
we exclude people
outside of our caste
or religion, but as a
country we embrace
all our diversities!
Many of your films
were made during
the time of active
student politics. Are
student movements
making a comeback?
I wouldn’t be able
to say anything about
that, but there are
times when certain
events create
a fear in the minds
of a lot of young
people that authoritarian forces
are rearing their head again.
This is a real fear because we’ve
had a phase of authoritarianism a few
decades ago.
Coming back to films, what is your
idea of censorship?
I am heading a committee formed
by the government to look into
Manthan was
financed by the
Gujarat
Cooperative Milk
Marketing
Federation.
the problems of censorship. It is far
too premature for me to comment at
present as it is work in progress. We
are asking fundamental questions.
We have got a fair amount of
feedback from the public, from NGOs
concerned with women and children,
and from the entire film industry
of the country. We
are collating all of it
now to identify the
problems that need to
be tackled.
Over the years, you
have engaged with
Indian cinema in
various capacities.
Filmmaking has many
dimensions. Apart
from the creative aspect—conceptualizing,
writing, direction,
production, editing—
one is concerned with
the world of cinema
itself and its place in
society, our country
and the world at large.
You cannot escape this engagement at
a larger level.
Unlike writing a book, filmmaking
is not a solitary process. It starts off by
being a social activity because you are
already working with other people.
How did you start making films?
My father was a still photographer. He
had a photo studio and would make
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ALTERNATE VISION
short, silent 16-mm films on his children—we
were 10 of us. These films
served as after-dinner entertainment
for guests, and our comments made
for the soundtrack. So cinema is what
we grew up with and since it concerned
us directly, we were hooked.
You made your first film at age 12.
The camera was always there and
summer holidays provided ample opportunity
for filming. All our cousins
would come down, and classical singing
and dancing filled the air. One
time, Guru Dutt, a cousin (he was a
dancer with renowned choreographer
Uday Shankar’s troupe before he went
on to become a filmmaker and actor
in Bombay) came to our home for the
summer vacation and frequently performed
on the terrace in the evenings.
From our home in Trimulgherry
(in the Secunderabad cantonment)
the army’s Garrison cinema was a
stone’s throw away. My brother and
I had befriended the projectionist.
The cinema had two or three changes
of programme a week. This allowed
us to watch both foreign and Indian
films every week. This exposure to the
rest of the world helped a great deal in
creating my world view.
Was your career in the advertising
industry a stepping stone?
I did my MA in economics, but
teaching did not seem like a particularly
good option. So I moved to
Bombay looking for work. I gave up
the thought of assisting Guru Dutt
because I had my own ideas for the
kind of films I wanted to make. I got a
job as a copywriter, but within months,
my agency discovered my interest in
cinema and I was put in the film department.
I started making ad films in
a big way for the next 12 years until I
became a full-time filmmaker.
I was making documentaries for the
Films Division [of India] on the side,
and attempting to find an investor for
feature films. Then one day, one of
our distributors, Mohan Bijlani, asked
me why I wasn’t making feature films.
I said I would if he would produce
them and that’s how Ankur was made.
I never looked back since.
You have explored interesting
models of financing your films.
The stories I wished to develop
had relevance for the communities
about whom the films were made.
This motivated them to contribute
to their making a crowd-funding
model that I followed for some of
those films. For Antarnaad, [based
on a socio-religious movement
in Maharashtra] people donated
small sums of money over a large
geographical area. Susman [about
the struggle of rural handloom
weavers against mechanization]
was partly financed by weavers’
cooperatives. Manthan, too, was
financed by [5,00,000 members of] the
Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing
Federation Ltd.
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You’ve made films on various social
issues. To what extent have they been
addressed?
Not altogether. India is a very large
and complex country—a subcontinent,
in fact. Its diversity is enormous
and we live in many different centuries
at the same time. The diversities
are not just horizontal, but vertical. It
is not easy to address
them adequately.
Cinematically, has
poverty been swept
under the carpet?
Present-day cinema
probably reflects the
fact that poverty has
at least been tackled
economically in India.
Visitations of famine
year after year, in one
or another part of the
country was common,
but not any more.
Over the last several
decades, the number
of people living below
the poverty line has
come down, yet not
completely eliminated.
Nehru could see
the complexities
of India as a
nation; the books
he wrote reflect
it so well.
Gandhi and Nehru have been an
important part of your work. Are
they being rendered irrelevant?
Everybody has a place in history and
when you talk of history, there is no
such thing as irrelevance. They both
came at a particular time in the country’s
history and played their part extremely
well. They set us on a path,
which has defined our course as an
independent nation. Gandhiji gave us
the weapon of satyagraha and his life
was his message. He chose non-violence
to free us from the British and
our colonized minds. Nehru could see
the complexities of India as a nation.
His books reflect this
so well. Perhaps, some
of his ideas have less
relevance today. After
all, we are all creatures
of our own time.
What are the subjects
that are currently
drawing your
attention?
A mini-series on all
the wars India has
fought in the 20th
century. It looks at
World Wars I and II,
and after 1947, the
conjoined twins [India
and Pakistan] fighting
each other. We are
a very fascinating
people. It’s just not possible to be
bored if you are in the subcontinent.
What keeps you going?
Life is a one-way street; one has to keep
going. First, you define the work
for yourself and remain committed to it.
Once there is total commitment, the work
in turn begins to define you.
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DRAMA IN REAL LIFE
Lauren Fagen wanted nothing more than
to bond with Africa’s big cats—
that wish nearly cost the teen her life
LION
ATTACK!
BY LIA GRAINGER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MAUDE CHAUVIN
ISTOCKPHOTO
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LION ATTACK
LAUREN FAGEN woke
early on 1 July 2013, the
African sun still low in the
sky. The petite 18-yearold
had arrived as a
volunteer at the Moholoholo Wildlife
Rehabilitation Centre in north-east
South Africa two weeks earlier to spend
time with the animals she’d loved from
afar since childhood. Born and raised
in Mont real, Canada, she had always
been fascinated by wild cats, and there
was one that interested her above all:
the lion.
WHEN FAGEN WAS LITTLE, her
parents were reluctant to have a pet,
so instead she would spend time at
the homes of friends with dogs and
cats, cuddling and caring for them. In
June 2013, three months before she
was set to begin her much-anticipated
undergraduate degree at McGill
University, she still couldn’t shake the
feeling that she hadn’t fully explored
her connection with animals.
She brought up the issue with her
mother, Alana Isrealoff, and through
an online search they discovered
Moholoholo. Fagen was thrilled when
her mom said she could use a portion
of her education fund to spend four
weeks at the centre.
The teenager had never travelled
abroad alone before. A month later,
she climbed out of a small plane
that delivered her to the town of
Hoedspruit, South Africa, and gazed
out at the expansive plains.
AT THE CENTRE, Fagen marvelled
at the range of wildlife. There were
cheetahs, leopards, rhinos, hippos,
hyenas, lions. She quickly learnt her
daily routine, making her rounds
to deliver breakfast to the creatures
under her care: honey badgers, wild
dogs and vultures.
When Fagen had time off, she would
sit next to her favourite cheetah’s
enclosure and press her hand flat
against the chain-link fence so the
animal could lick her palm. Some
coordinators admonished her for this,
but Fagen claims that other staff at the
centre permitted the activity, which
gave her the sort of intimate interaction
with wildlife she had always craved.
“From my perspective, so long as one
of the coordinators had approved it, I
was not taking any risks,” says Fagen.
In accordance with the centre’s
policies, volunteers had to sign
a document acknowledging they
would be working with dangerous
animals, and they were warned by
coordinators not to go near cages
without supervision.
During her time at Moholoholo,
Fagen would write in her journal, “It’s
hard not to be able to cuddle with any
animals at the centre, despite being
surrounded by them.”
On the morning of 1 July, she
finished her early rounds and headed
to the clinic, where 20 or so volunteers
had gathered to receive the afternoon
tasks that needed to be done that day.
Coordinator Jan Last announced they
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would be cleaning the feeding cages
of the big cats.
“Who wants lions?” Last asked
the group.
Fagen’s hand immediately shot up.
“Me!” she exclaimed.
Last laughed. Fagen had not been
shy about her desire to interact with
the centre’s wild-cat population.
The teen grabbed a mop and a
bucket and headed off.
THE LARGE-CARNIVORE enclosures
consisted of feeding cages attached
to main living areas. These cages—
completely sealed with gates—
allowed staff to feed the animals
without coming into direct contact
with them. Food was placed in the
cage, and when the worker had safely
exited, a gate was opened to allow the
animal access to its meal.
The lions were kept in adjoining
enclosures, and their feeding areas
stood in a spaced-out row connected
by a walkway. Fagen made her way to
the end of the row and found herself
alone outside one of the cages.
It was small, about three metres
long and a metre and a half wide. She
filled a bucket with water and sloshed
it over the concrete floor. The cage’s
low corrugated metal ceiling forced
Fagen to crouch as she pushed the
mop back and forth.
She squatted to get better leverage,
and when she looked up, she froze.
On the other side of the enclosure’s
chain-link fence, not a metre from her,
a lion named Duma was rubbing his
body against the fence.
Fagen was struck by the animal’s
immense beauty.
This is it, she thought. The most
memorable moment of my trip.
When she turned around, she saw
another volunteer, Mariana Aranha, a
23-year-old biology student from São
Paulo, Brazil, who had come to see if
Fagen needed any help.
“That’s cute, but it’s not really safe,”
Aranha recalls having warned Fagen,
when she saw her close to the lion.
IT’S HARD NOT TO BE
ABLE TO CUDDLE WITH
ANY ANIMALS AT THE
CENTRE, DESPITE BEING
SURROUNDED BY THEM.
(For her part, Fagen has no memory of
this warning.) She then took a picture
of Fagen and Duma. “I can send it to
you later.”
Fagen smiled and thanked Aranha
for the photograph and said she didn’t
need any help. She went back to
cleaning while Aranha walked off.
Once alone, Fagen remembers
noticing with alarm that Duma had
moved. Instead of sitting behind the
tightly woven fence, he was now behind
the cage’s gate made of metal
bars spaced several centimetres apart.
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LION ATTACK
As Fagen watched, Duma slipped his
paws through the bars and laid them
down on the ground, extending his
claws as he did so. The lion stared
directly at Fagen.
Feeling her stomach lurch, she
backed away and turned to continue
her scrubbing.
Suddenly, she recalls, she found
herself flipped violently onto her
back. What happened? she thought.
Did I trip?
She quickly realized what had
occurred: Duma had reached through
the bars and, with claws extended,
FAGEN FELL BACK
ON THE WET GROUND
AND STARED UP AT
THE CEILING OF THE
FEEDING CAGE.
SHE WAS TRAPPED.
grasped her right leg, pulling it hard
through the cage’s metal bars to past
her knee.
RATHER THAN FEAR FOR her life,
Fagen’s first thought was of how much
trouble a lion attack would cause the
centre. No one has to know about this,
she thought. I’ll just pull my leg back.
That’s when Duma, his long yellow
mane framing open jaws, clamped
down on her right thigh.
It took Fagen a moment to identify
the intense shrieks she was hearing as
her own.
Seconds later, Aranha and another
volunteer appeared in the entranceway.
They stared in shock at Duma,
snarling over Fagen’s bloodied leg,
then ran to get help.
Alone again, Fagen was horrified
to see that her left leg had now also
been pulled through the bars up to
her lower thigh.
She felt no pain but knew that
wouldn’t last long. She gritted her
teeth and forced herself to look at
Duma, gnawing on her right leg.
You can still save your left leg,
Fagen told herself.
She leaned forward, grabbed
her left thigh above her knee and
pulled. Excruciating pain shot up
from her knee joint. She couldn’t get
her knee back through the bars—it
was stuck.
Fagen fell back on the wet ground
and stared up at the ceiling of the
feeding cage.
She was trapped.
Then the teen had an idea. Forcing
her knee joint through the bars
might mean breaking her leg, but
that seemed a far better option than
the alternative.
Break your own leg or die, Fagen
thought quickly.
She reached down and again
grabbed her thigh, barely covered
by her now tattered and bloodied
sweatpants. She focused her strength
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COURTESY OF LAUREN FAGEN
and pulled, her knee joint straining
against the viselike bars.
It was no use at all. Fagen stopped
pulling, and her vision began to
narrow into a black tunnel.
AT THE END OF the darkness, a face
suddenly appeared. It was Last, the
park’s volunteer coordinator, and with
him was 24-year-old Natalie Bennett, a
veterinary nurse from Surrey, England.
Rushing into the cage with Last,
Bennett was shocked by what she saw:
on the other side of the bars, a female
lion named Tree, attracted by the
commotion, had joined Duma in the
attack, biting at Fagen’s left leg as Duma
chewed on the right. Last took hold of
Fagen and pulled hard, but to no avail.
Bennett and Last grabbed brooms
and brushes and began prodding and
hitting the lions. After what felt like
forever, the animals finally released
Fagen’s legs.
Last grasped her again. With one
yank, he managed to free Fagen
from the bars of the cage. Delirious,
she held up her hands, examining the
ring on her index finger. It was caked
in red.
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LION ATTACK
Is that my blood? she wondered,
then began to scream.
The lions nearby continued to pace
and snarl, aggravated by the wailing.
Last pulled Fagen out of the cage and
laid her down on the grass.
Bennett surveyed Fagen’s injuries.
She’d seen terrible animal wounds
before, but nothing this serious.
Fagen’s left knee was deeply gouged.
Both legs were covered in teeth marks,
and a 15-square-centimetre flap of
flesh on the inside of her right thigh
was hanging open, and bleeding. With
the help of another park employee,
Bennett bandaged the wounds.
FAGEN DENIES TRYING
TO KISS DUMA AND
BELIEVES THAT SHE
SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN
LEFT ALONE TO CLEAN A
LION’S FEEDING CAGE.
Meanwhile, Fagen flailed as the
two women worked to save her. They
had to move quickly—swarming ants,
attracted by the blood, were crawling
around Fagen, trying to penetrate her
deep cuts.
“Why does it tickle?” she yelled.
“It’s nothing,” Bennett replied,
brushing the insects away and covering
the openings with gauze.
An ambulance had been called,
but the first emergency responder to
arrive was a paramedic named Giles
Becker. He leaped from the hospital
SUV and ran to Fagen, where he tried
to calm her. He then injected her with
painkillers and gently loaded her
onto a gurney [a wheeled stretcher] in
the vehicle.
Bennett hopped in, and as they
drove to meet the hospital ambulance,
Fagen fought unconsciousness. “I’m
so tired,” she moaned deliriously, her
eyes fluttering shut.
“Lauren, you have to stay awake
until we reach the ambulance,” said
Bennett, taking her hand. “Your life
depends on it.”
It was another hour until Fagen
was transferred to the ambulance,
which sped towards the hospital in
Nelspruit, the closest town equipped
to deal with substantial injuries. Two
hours later, Fagen’s painkillers had
all but worn off, and she was nearly
hysterical with pain, as a medical
team rolled her into the ER, where a
nurse administered anaesthesia.
WHEN SHE AWOKE hours later, Fagen
learnt her right tibia was broken, the
ligaments of her left knee were torn,
and there were lacerations to her
tendons. Her inner-thigh muscles
were, according to her attending
doctor, “ripped apart.” She was really
lucky to be alive. Had the rescue taken
any longer, the lions would likely have
hit a major artery.
News of the attack spread quickly
around the world, with reports stating
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that Fagen was trying to ‘kiss’ Duma
when he pulled her through the bars.
In court documents, the claim that
Fagen had made physical contact
with the lion would become part of
Moholoholo’s owner’s defence in the
lawsuit Fagen filed against him for
close to $8,00,000 (the case has yet
to go to court). The owner’s plea also
states that Fagen violated the safety
rules and was at fault for getting too
close to the lion.
Fagen adamantly denies trying
to kiss Duma and believes that she
shouldn’t have been left alone to clean
a lion’s feeding cage when the bars
were wide enough for the animal to
fit his paws. A volunteer observed that
the centre added additional bars to
Duma’s cage shortly after the incident
had occurred. In press reports the
founder of Moholoholo said it was
the first attack in its 20-year existence.
(Moholoholo’s owner, on the advice
of his lawyer, refused requests to
comment on this story.)
Fagen’s mother arrived in South
Africa three days after the attack to help
her daughter through her recovery. It
would be several weeks until Fagen
was strong enough to travel home.
But before she did, Fagen went
back to the centre one last time to see
Duma and Tree. Reporters had been
asking Fagen if she could forgive the
lions for what they had done to her.
Gazing through the fence at the two
enormous cats peacefully lounging on
the dusty grass in South Africa, Fagen
thought to herself, There’s nothing to
forgive. I’ve always understood that
animals are wild.
USELESS (BUT INTERESTING) FACTS
n Alaska is simultaneously the most northern, the most western, and
the most eastern state in the US.
n One trillion seconds is about 32,000 years.
n Women have been found to blink more often than men.
n Honey never spoils. You can eat 32,000-year-old honey.
n For every human on Earth there are approximately 1.6 million ants.
The total weight of all those ants is approximately the same as the
total weight of all the humans on Earth.
Buzzfeed.com
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 111

ALL IN
A Day’s Work
“I’m sick and tired of your micromanaging.”
THE HR MANAGER of an automobile
manufacturing company confronted
an employee for being habitually late
by claiming that, “The company
could have manufactured five
extra cars in the time wasted by
your late arrival.”
To which the employee quipped,
“But the additional cars would
mean worse traffic, and I’d be here
even later!” R.S. RAGHAVAN, Bengaluru
JUST BEFORE the final exam in my
college finance class, a less-than
stellar student approached me.
“Can you tell me what grade I
would need to get on the exam to
pass the course?” he asked.
I gave him the bad news. “The
exam is worth 100 points. You would
need 113 points to earn a D.”
“OK,” he said. “And how many
points would I need to get a C?”
AIMEE PRAWITZ
HERE’S A workplace culture shock:
New York Times writer Amy Chozick
describes what it was like to work for
a fashion magazine: “A girl gets on
(the elevator) with a Birkin bag, and
SUSAN CAMILLERI KONAR
112 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

her friend goes, ‘Oh, my God,
I love your bag. Is that new?’
And she goes, ‘No, I got it, like, a
week ago.’”
cosmopolitan.com
DETAILED LABELLING
BUZZFEED.COM
CONFERENCE CALLS are great
if you want to hear 15 people say
“What?” from the bottom of a well.
@BAZECRAZE
I GOT an odd-job man in. He was
useless. I gave him a list of eight
things to do and he only did
numbers one, three, five and seven.
COMEDIAN STEPHEN GRANT
A WOMAN called our airline
customer service desk asking if she
could take her dog on board.
“Sure,” I said, “as long as you
provide your own kennel.” I further
explained that the kennel needed
to be large enough for the dog to
stand up, sit down, turn around,
and roll over.
The customer was flummoxed: “I’ll
never be able to teach him all of that
by tomorrow!”
gcfl.net
JOB INTERVIEWER: You wrote
here that your biggest weakness is
not knowing what ‘irony’ means.
Me: Ironic, isn’t it? Is it? I don’t
know...
@DAVID8HUGHES
CLIENT: “We need you to log in to
the YouTube and make all our
company videos viral.”
clientsfromhell.net
THAT’S A BAD SIGN
Seen on a New York subway poster:
“Se habla Español/Russian”
(Spanish is spoken here/Russian).
AARON FERNANDO, via the internet
Spotted on a restaurant’s website:
“Glutton-free menu available.”
EMILY PAYNE, via the internet
Read on a pharmacy marquee: “We
sell beer and wine! We can flavour
your child’s prescription!”
Consumer Reports
POINT TAKEN
n No one ever says, “Boy, that ‘I Have
a Dream’ speech could have been a
lot better if Martin Luther King Jr.
had used PowerPoint.”
n The greatest trick the devil ever
pulled was convincing the world he
didn’t invent PowerPoint.
n There’s no “I” in “team,” but there
is one in “PowerPoint,” so you
should make it yourself. meetingboy.com
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 113

Who Is
UNIndian?
What does it take to be anti-national, legally?
BY DAMAYANTI DATTA
WHO OR WHAT IS ANTI-
NATIONAL? This is a question that
has been at the centre of an urgent
nation-wide debate. On 9 February,
a group of students from Delhi’s
Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)
had allegedly raised anti-India
slogans to mark the anniversary of
the controversial execution of Afzal
Guru, an accused in the 2001 terrorist
attack on Parliament. On 13 February,
Kanhaiya Kumar, the JNU students’
union president accused of sedition,
was arrested. On 23 February, JNU
students Umar Khalid and Anirban
Bhattacharya, also accused of
sedition, ‘surrendered’ before the
Delhi Police at midnight. They denied
they had done anything wrong and
added a telling comment: “These
people are telling us about patriotism.”
But, what exactly is that statute—
Section 124-A of the Indian Penal
Code—that had its origins in a
146-year-old legislation, that defines
who or what is un-Indian today?
“Whoever, by words, either spoken
or written, or by signs, or by visual
representation, or otherwise, brings
or attempts to bring into hatred or
contempt, or excites or attempts
to excite disaffection towards the
Government established by law in
India, shall be punished...” Considered
an “offence against the State”, sedition
can even condemn one to a lifetime
behind bars.
A COLONIAL HANGOVER
“I feel that the time has come when
we may advantageously concert
measures and prepare a policy
to exclude effectually seditious
agitation.” It was August 1909, and
114 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

ALAMY
Lord Minto, Viceroy of India, was
cooling off at his summer palace in
Shimla and mulling over “measures
to be taken for the suppression of
sedition.” The archived Records of
the Government of India, Foreign
Department Serial No. 178, says he
sent out letters to 24 princely states
seeking “mutual cooperation against
a common danger”: “disaffected
people” who dared criticize the British
government in India.
Over a 100 years later, the word
‘sedition’ is still doing the rounds
in an elected democracy, where
citizens provide legitimacy to public
policies and laws. A remnant of the
age-old English common law, it was
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 115

WHO IS UNINDIAN?
introduced by the British in 1870. “As
colonial rulers, they felt the need to
‘criminalize’ the disaffection of the
colonized towards a government by
force,” says legal scholar N.R. Madhava
Menon. “But its continuance in free
India is incongruous.” In a democracy,
everyone has the right to disapprove
of a government and seek its removal
in the next election, without resorting
to violence, he explains. The term
sedition bumps up against the right to
free expression and speech enshrined
in the preamble and Article 19(1)(a) of
the Indian Constitution.
CHILLING EFFECT
Most modern constitutional democracies
around the world have either
abolished or let the provisions of
sedition fall into disuse. The law of
sedition was abolished in the UK in
2009 for not reflecting the values of
constitutional democracies. Former
colony New Zealand got rid of the law
in 2007, for offending democratic values
and becoming a tool to silence political
opposition. In the US, the courts
consistently criticize the “chilling
effect” of the sedition law on free
speech and afford wide protection to
political speech. Failure to prevent
sedition is also punishable there.
In Australia, the law remains in the
criminal codes.
In India, however, the vagueness
of language, the voluminous legislative
history and conflicts in judicial
interpretation have allowed successive
governments to use it with impunity.
Legal search engine Indian
Kanoon throws up hundreds of references
for “sedition.” If in the pre-
Independence cases, the overwhelming
rationale was “undermining the
British government in India”, as in the
three sedition trials of freedom-fighter
Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1897, 1908
and 1916, in independent India the
judiciary has slapped sedition cases
for inciting people to violence. Over
the years, grounds for the sedition
charge have widened: “for exceeding
the limits of legitimate criticism;” “habitually
publishing seditious matter;”
“mocking the Constitution;” “offences
against the State;” or spreading “hatred,”
“contempt,” and “disaffection”.
Yet the judiciary has routinely
granted acquittals in sedition cases
too. In 1942 (Niharendu Dutt Majumdar
vs King Emperor), the Calcutta
High Court set aside a case where the
appellant was arrested for his speech
that the government had not taken
any steps to stop communal disturbances
during the Dhaka riots: “…to
describe it as an act of sedition is to
do it too great [an] honour.” In 1962,
the Supreme Court held (Kedar Nath
Singh vs State of Bihar), “A citizen has
a right to say or write whatever he likes
about the Government, or its measures,
by way of criticism or comment,
so long as he does not incite people
to violence...” In 1995, (Balwant Singh
and Anr vs State of Punjab), the Supreme
Court refused to punish two
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READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
PARVEEN NEGI/MAIL TODAY
men for raising slogans of ‘Khalistan
Zindabad’ in a crowded area outside
a cinema hall the day Indira Gandhi
was assassinated: “Raising of some
lonesome slogans, a couple of times
by two individuals, without anything
more, did not constitute any threat to
the Government of India…”
POLITICOS Vs SUPREMOS
Not surprisingly, sedition has turned
out to be a great arena of judiciaryexecutive
friction, especially in the
new millennium. While the mandate
of the courts has been to uphold
freedom of speech and expression,
successive governments have used
sedition laws as a deadly weapon to
stifle criticism and gag opponents.
In 2003, Vishva Hindu Parishad
leader Pravin Togadia was slapped
with sedition by a Congress-run
Rajasthan government for defying
its ban on tridents, while in 2005
the Congress government in Punjab
and Haryana filed an FIR against
Simranjit Singh Mann, president of
the Shiromani Akali Dal-Amritsar,
for raising pro-Khalistan slogans in
the Golden Temple complex on the
21st anniversary of Operation Blue
Star. In 2006, Manoj Shinde, editor of
Surat Saamna, a Gujarati newspaper,
was charged with sedition for using
“abusive words” in an editorial against
then chief minister Narendra Modi.
A classic case is physician and
rights activist, Dr Binayak Sen, who
was convicted of sedition in 2010 on
The new face
of patriotism.
the allegation that he “couriered”
Naxalite letters. Did it have anything
to do with his vocal criticism of the
Chhattisgarh government’s vigilante
outfit Salwa Judum? He got bail in
April 2011, and the Supreme Court
bench observed: “He may be a sympathizer,
but this does not make him
guilty of sedition.”
Who will have the last word on the
JNU row? The executive or the judiciary?
To senior advocate K.T.S. Tulsi,
“Youngsters raising slogans and engaging
in intellectual radicalism cannot
be called sedition.” Where is the
evidence to show they resorted to
violence, posed a security threat to the
state or had the intention of overthrowing
the government, he asks. “I will be
surprised if the charges stick.”
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 117

WHO IS UNINDIAN?
Rebel REPORT
A history of some famous Indian sedition cases
1891
THE FIRST TRIAL
Jogendra Chandra Bose
criticized the government in an
editorial of Bangobasi newspaper.
Prosecution dropped the charges
after he tendered an apology.
1897, 1908, 1916
THREE TRIALS OF BAL
GANGADHAR TILAK
Faced sedition charges thrice for
“undermining the British government
in India.” The second time,
he spent six years in jail.
1922
TRIAL OF GANDHI
Charged for his writings in Young India. At
the trial, he said, “I am here, therefore to
invite and submit cheerfully to the
highest penalty that can be inflicted
upon me for what in law is deliberate
crime, and what appears to me
to be the highest duty of a citizen.”
Sentenced to six years in jail.
KAMAL KRISHNA SIRCAR Vs
THE EMPEROR
Charged for condemning
Communist Party ban and supporting
the Russian Bolsheviks.
The Calcutta HC commented: “It
is really absurd to say speeches of
this kind amount to sedition.”
1934
MANOJ SHINDE, EDITOR,
SURAT SAAMNA
For using “abusive words”
against chief minister Narendra
Modi in an editorial and alleging
administrative failure in tackling
the Surat floods.
2006
SIMRANJIT SINGH MANN CASE
President of the Shiromani Akali
Dal, Amritsar, was arrested for
raising pro-Khalistan slogans at
the Golden Temple on the 21st
anniversary of Operation Blue Star.
The court held that raising slogans at a
public meeting “is not sedition.”
2005
DR BINAYAK SEN,
RAIPUR, CHHATTISGARH
Was convicted for allegedly
helping courier
messages to Maoist leadership.
Was sentenced
to life imprisonment and
granted bail later.
ARUNDHATI ROY, S.A.R.
Geelani, Varavara Rao,
Shuddabrata Sengupta
et al booked for
their “anti-India”
speech titled
“Azadi: The
Only Way.”
ASEEM TRIVEDI
Kanpur cartoonist
arrested for mocking
Constitution. Did not
apply for bail until charge
was dropped. Bombay HC
slammed police for his arrest
on “frivolous grounds.”
118 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST
2010
2012
ADAPTED FROM INDIA TODAY (7 MARCH, 2016). © 2016 LIVING MEDIA INDIA LIMITED.

READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
1907
SEDITION OF LALA LAJPAT RAI
Was deported to Mandalay in Burma for “open
sedition” without a trial. However, he was
allowed to return after a few months when
Lord Minto decided that there was insufficient
evidence to hold him for subversion.
BANDE MATRAM
Aurobindo Ghose was
arrested for “habitually
publishing seditious matter”
in Bande Matram newspaper,
but was acquitted.
NIHARENDU DUTT
MAJUMDAR Vs KING
EMPEROR
For his speech that the Bengal
government hadn’t taken any
steps to stop communal disturbances
during the Dhaka
riots. Was later acquitted.
1942
KEDAR NATH SINGH Vs
STATE OF BIHAR
Charged for seditious speech.
SC held: “A citizen has a right
to say what he likes about the
government, or its measures,
by way of criticism, as long as
he does not incite violence.”
1962
ALAVI Vs STATE
OF KERALA
Where the court held
that sloganeering,
criticizing Parliament
or the judicial setup
did not amount
to ‘sedition.’
1982
PRAVIN TOGADIA,
VHP ACTIVIST
Slapped with sedition by
Rajasthan government for
defying the prohibitory orders
and ban on distribution of tridents; also faced
a charge under Section 121-A of IPC (waging
war or attempting anti-national activity).
2003
BALWANT SINGH AND ANR Vs
STATE OF PUNJAB
They had raised slogans of
‘Khalistan Zindabad’ outside
a cinema hall the day Indira
Gandhi was assassinated. But
their conviction was set aside by
the Supreme Court.
1995
HARDIK PATEL
The 22-year-old quota agitation leader
from Gujarat was booked by the police
under charges of allegedly
instigating a youth to kill
policemen instead of
committing
suicide.
2015
ARUN JAITLEY
Was charged for an article
he wrote reacting to the
Supreme Court verdict on
the National Judicial
Appointments Commission.
The Allahabad High Court
quashed the charges.
2016
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 119

Finding the
SILVER LINING
From a patient of depression to a therapist—the story
of a young woman who’s not afraid to speak up
BY PRATHYASHA GEORGE
AS TOLD TO SNIGDHA HASAN
THE AUTUMN OF 2002 was unlike any
other. Instead of preparing for my new
academic year, I was packing up my
life in the US to move back to India. I
was 12 then and Philadelphia was my
world—with my school, friends, and
all the other anchors of childhood.
Although I was uncertain about
the decision, a part of me was looking
forward to the move.
My parents had promised me that
we would be happy in India. The
seventh grade, however, proved to
be the beginning of my tumultuous
school life. The sultry Pathanamthitta
weather and the overall culture shock
aside, language was a problem as,
back then, not many children in Kerala
spoke English. My accent didn’t help
either and was a constant subject of
mockery. Coming from an interactive
model of learning, I found little scope
for communication. By the end of the
academic year, I had changed three
schools and switched from an ICSE
syllabus to the state board curriculum
and then finally to CBSE.
Still unsettled, I would often refuse
to go to school and weep bitterly until
my parents gave in and let me stay
at home for the day. With not one
friend to help me sail through it all,
I tried hard to shut school out of my
life and began to miss many classes.
Finally, the teachers suggested that I
seek psychological counselling, which
didn’t seem like a good idea to me. My
parents were also hesitant because of
the stigma attached to it. They didn’t
want their little girl to get labelled, and
waited for time to set things right.
But when school continued to make
me as miserable as ever, my parents
decided that it was indeed time I saw
a psychologist. I didn’t disagree. After
all, here was my chance to miss another
day of school.
The psychologist was a young lady
in her late twenties. She welcomed me
with a pleasant smile and asked, “How
120 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

Prathyasha,
at home in
Thiruvananthapuram.
C. SHANKAR
are you feeling today?” I looked away
and said nothing. The psychologist
was inexperienced and didn’t know
how to handle a difficult case like mine
either. She tried to establish a rapport
with me, but I remained defensive
throughout. After about half an hour, I
was starting to lose my patience. Since
my reluctance to go to school was the
theme of the session, the only words I
uttered at the clinic were, “I am ready
to go to school,” just so she would let
me go. I never saw her again.
Years went by and my life was now
beset with despondency. I knew I
was different from other people and
it was getting difficult to have me
around at home too. My parents still
thought it was a phase I’d grow out
of, but I was deeply wounded. I kept
to myself and spent nights crying into
my pillow. Things only got worse after
I completed my graduation. I was
always a bright student, but I had
grown aimless. My parents’ patience
had begun to wear thin and one day,
after my results were out, things came
to a head. They told me to get a job, or
share once and for all what my plan for
the future was, or, leave the house. A
bachelor’s degree in philosophy didn’t
prove to be very helpful professionally,
so that only added to my confusion.
This seemed like the last straw and I
slashed my wrist. It was a desperate cry
for help. I couldn’t go on any longer.
When good sense prevailed, I told
my parents I needed help and they
were happy to take me to a psychiatrist.
I remember bursting into tears in
the doctor’s office. This was very different
from my first experience with
a therapist. The psychiatrist was an
elderly man with silver-grey hair. He
READER’S READER’S DIGEST DIGEST | NOVEMBER | APRIL 2015 2016 | 121

FINDING THE SILVER LINING
looked at me patiently, waiting for
me to start talking. For the first time
in my life, I opened up to someone,
and it felt good. I was diagnosed with
depression—and later with bipolar
disorder—and prescribed medication.
Things started to change dramatically
for the better. I had never felt this
alive or so close to my true self. What
had been brushed aside all these years
as mood swings, stubbornness and a
difficult personality, began to fall into
place. Nothing was irreparable, after
all. The medicines were working miracles
and I wondered why I had been
holding myself back.
Things started to change.
I had never felt this alive
or so close to my true self.
With a fresh perspective on life, I
had to decide what to do with it. Nothing
felt more right than studying psychology.
At first, it was just an attempt
to understand myself better. But later
I realized that there are a lot of people,
like me, who needed help. I was determined
to know more about my illness.
I completed my masters with a
university rank. Soon, I started working
with a psychotherapist myself. It
felt different sitting on the other side
of the table. I would see a part of myself
in every patient I interacted with.
Once, a girl who had moved to Kerala
from Dubai, came to see me, when I
briefly worked as a counsellor at an
architecture college in Thiruvananthapuram.
She was finding it difficult
to adjust to the new environment.
So when I comforted her saying that
things do get better and gave her my
example, we both knew that it was not
an empty promise.
What I considered a curse is indeed
a blessing. It helped shape my choice
of career, and, more importantly, empathize
with my patients. My newfound
self renewed my zest for life. And
now that I knew my calling, I couldn’t
waste another moment. I cleared the
National Eligibility Test two years ago,
and at 24, became an assistant professor
of psychology at Farook College,
under the University of Calicut.
Teaching was wonderful, but I realized
I wasn’t done with learning. So now I
am back in Thiruvananthapuram,
preparing for the entrance exam for
MPhil in clinical psychology at the
renowned NIMHANS in Bengaluru.
It’s been a long journey from being
a patient to a therapist. My parents
have been on this roller coaster with
me and nothing makes them happier
than seeing their daughter’s independence
and achievements. Bouts of depression
remain a part of my life, and
at times, slacken its pace. But today, I
know how to manage them without
letting them eclipse what’s good. I’ve
learnt that there is always hope, even
when you can’t see the silver lining.
122 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

As Kids See It
“With a chauffer like my Dad, why would anyone want to learn to drive?
INDIAPICTURE/ ARUSHI SHARMA
I’D TAKEN my children to visit their
aunt in Guernsey, and we were to be
joined by my other sister and her
children. On the morning they
arrived, my sister and I were excited.
“The eagle has landed!” I said as
their plane touched down. I had a lot
of explaining to do when I overheard
my son telling his cousins, “When
your plane got in, Mummy said, ‘The
evils have landed.’ ” ABIGAIL WATKINS
THE LOVELIEST PRESENT I’d ever
received was a box from my son Cal,
which appeared empty.
I peered inside and, puzzled,
asked him if he’d forgotten to put
something in it.
He exclaimed, “But Mummy, it’s
full of kisses I blew into it!”
I just had to hug him and say
sorry. It made my day! VANESSA SMITH
MY YOUNG SON and his cousin were
watching a video of a peacock
screaming, and got into an argument
about whether it was crying or not.
As the peacock proceeded to
unfurl its magnificent tail, my nephew
yelled, “Oh no! It burst!”
SAMIKSHA SHARMA, New Delhi
MY FIVE-YEAR-OLD granddaughter,
Ashika, recently started learning
about continents, oceans and the
concept of a globe.
The other day, when she tripped
and fell on the globe, her first question
was, “Did I cause an earthquake?”
K.G. SUBRAMANIAM, Bengaluru
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 123

Great architecture, unusual locations,
fascinating history—these churches are
all truly unique
Hallowed
Halls
BY CORNELIA KUMFERT
THEY HAVE BEEN BUILDING the Sagrada
Família for 133 years and counting. It is
expected to take yet another 11 years
before the work on Spain’s most famous,
and seemingly permanent, building site
is finally completed. This hasn’t stopped
the monumental church in the heart of
Barcelona from becoming a magnet
for tourists. The fantasy basilica,
largely the brainchild of architect
Antoni Gaudí, is visited by around
three million people every year.
PHOTO: © TRAVEL PICTURES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
124 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 125

HALLOWED HALLS
126 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
THE CHURCH in the Swiss
monastery village of Cazis
looks as if it has been carved
from solid stone. In reality it is
the product of an extravagant
and clever architectural design.
No less than 108 wooden
elements were layered with
shotcrete to create this unique
place of worship. A particular
highlight is the building’s
windows, which are designed
to create special lighting
effects at different times of
the day.
THIS UNDERGROUND salt
church is dedicated to Saint
Barbara, the patron saint of
miners. The extraordinary place
of worship lies 240 metres
below the surface of the
Romanian town of Târgu Ocna.
The church’s spacious interior
chamber, chandelier, bishop’s
chair, cross and numerous
other religious objects are all
carved entirely from salt.
IT IS ALMOST impossible
not to be dazzled by the vivid
colours of Saint Basil’s
Cathedral on Moscow’s Red
Square, despite this garish
Russian landmark’s alleged
gruesome history. Built in the
16th century during the rule of
Ivan the Terrible, legend has it
that this famously cruel czar
was so thoroughly pleased with
the end result, he had the
architects blinded to prevent
them from creating anything as
beautiful ever again.
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 127

COMEBACK CITY
ABOUT 2,700 METRES
above sea level, in the
Columbian town of Zipaquirá,
worshippers wishing to attend
mass have to journey deep
underground into a disused salt
mine. Visitors can walk the 14
Stations of the Cross at depths
of up to 180 metres. The star
attraction, however, is the
120-metre-long cathedral with a
16-metre-high cross at its end, a
breathtaking view even for the
non-religious.
THE “JERUSALEM of
Ethiopia” is situated in Lalibela, a
small town in the north of the
country. This is the location of
no fewer than eleven monolithic
churches, each of them hewn
from a single block of stone and
connected to the others by an
ingenious network of tunnels.
Probably the most famous
among them is the Church of
Saint George, a huge building in
the shape of a cross that was
carved out of the bedrock from
the top down in the 13th century.
TRINITY CHURCH on King
George Island is one of the
remotest churches in the
world—it is located in
Antarctica! The small wooden
church was built in 2004 on
the grounds of Russia’s
Bellingshausen research station
and has been defying the
unrelenting elements ever since.
The 15-metre-high wooden
structure can accommodate
up to 30 people.
PHOTOS: © ALAMY; (OBEN RECHTS) © GETTY IMAGES
128 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 129

My
secret
Venıce
It’s one of the most visited cities on the
planet. But there’s so much the tourists
miss. Our tour guide: John Hooper
EVERY TIME I VISIT VENICE ITS BEAUTY HITS ME
afresh. But what I love about this great city is that its
sunny, gilded splendour carries with it a subtle hint of
melancholy. You have the Grand Canal, made famous
by Canoletto, with its exquisite palaces and jade-green
waters, to be sure. But this is also a city built on shifting
sands amid treacherous tides; a place of mists and
ghosts. And for the curious-minded, it is also a city of
surprises and mysteries.
130 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

GUIDO BAVIERA/SIME/4 CORNERS IMAGES
Intriguing turbaned
figures watch over
the diners in Venice’s
Campo dei Mori.
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 131

MY SECRET VENICE
Like any visitor arriving at Venice’s
bustling Santa Lucia railway station,
I set off to explore the city following
signs to the Rialto. Had this been my
first time here, I would have then followed
further signs taking you from
the Rialto to the glories of St Mark’s
Square, the Doges’ palace, the Bridge
of Sighs and the waterside Riva degli
Schiavoni with its breathtaking views
across the lagoon.
But today I’m intent on enjoying
some of Venice’s less obvious attractions.
So, once across the Ponte delle
Guglie, as tourists disappear into the
first of a string of lanes packed with
souvenir stores, I turn left. Beyond the
fishmonger’s stall on the fondamenta
(the Venetians’ word for a paved quayside),
I enter another world.
The sestiere, or district, of Cannaregio
(1, on the map overleaf) is where
more than a third of Venice’s citizens
live. It is where they do their shopping,
where they stop to gossip and
where they walk their dogs—although
this city is uniquely unsuited to dog
ownership, Venetians are, somewhat
perversely, passionate dog lovers.
Cannaregio is also a place of surprises.
Slip into the second narrow lane
on the right and you are in the Ghetto
(2), an area where the Jews were forced
to live back in the early 16th century
during the old Venetian Republic.
Further down the lane, I glance
up and spot a plaque on the wall
that warns Jews against vilifying
Christianity “on pain of the rope, jail,
the galleys and the whip.” The Ghetto
draws some tourists and even has
a few gift shops selling everything
from menorahs—nine-armed candle
holders used on the festival of
Hanukkah—to wine stoppers made of
coloured glass produced in the lagoon
on the island of Murano.
But beyond the Rio della Misericordia—the
ironically named Canal of
Mercy that runs by the Ghetto—lies
an even quieter area where tourist
gondolas rarely venture and where the
loudest sound for much of the year is
the squabbling of gulls.
Everyday life
in Cannaregio.
I AM LOOKING FOR HIDDEN
treasure. The few who chance upon
the 14th-century church of Sant’Alvise
(3) probably don’t spare it a second
glance. But in the presbytery and
tucked away to one side of the altar
are three works by the great 18thcentury
Rococo painter, Giovanni
Battista Tiepolo.
Sant’Alvise is engagingly idiosyncratic.
The artists who painted the
FRANCESCO LASTRUCCI
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John Hooper
leaves the crowds
behind.
PHOTOGRAPHED BY COLIN DUTTON
ceiling used drastic foreshortening
to create the impression of pillars
soaring through the roof to heaven.
But something went awry. So, unless
you stand right in the middle of the
church, the pillars on the other side
all tilt in the wrong direction.
At the back of the church is a set of
rather crudely painted tempera panels
depicting scenes from the Old Testament.
One detail is striking: a tasselled
canopy over a potentate of some
kind. It is so wholly un-European that
it could only have been painted by
someone who had seen an original
brought from the East.
More than any of the states that
made up Italy before its unification
in the 19th century, Venice—
independent for over a thousand
years—looked east: to the Levant,
Persia and far beyond. Arab and
other eastern influences seeped into
everything from their architecture to
their jewellery.
Retracing my steps to the
Fondamenta della Sensa, I walk east
to the little Campo dei Mori (4), or
Moors’ Square, so called because of
three sculpted, robed and turbaned
figures who stand in niches set into
the walls. Weatherbeaten now—they
have lost their original noses—the
“Moors” are a mystery. The most
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MY SECRET VENICE
common explanation is that they
depict three brothers, traders in silk
and spices, who came to Venice in the
12th century as refugees from their
homeland of Morea, an old name for
Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula. But,
if that is the case, why did they wear
oriental clothes? And why is there a
fourth “Moor” around the corner next
to the house of Cannaregio’s most
famous son, the late Renaissance
painter, Tintoretto?
The artist’s real name, which was
only recently discovered, is another
echo of Venice’s trading links with the
east. His surname was Comin, which
means cumin.
Nearby, Tintoretto’s gigantic
depictions of the Last Judgement and
the Worship of the Golden Calf, soar
over 15 metres to the vaulted ceiling
of the Madonna dell’Orto (5). On my
way to admire them, crossing the Rio
della Madonna dell’Orto, I glance
back at the façade of the grand house
the brothers from Morea are said
to have built for themselves. What I
see only deepens the mystery of its
earliest occupants: a bas-relief of a
man with a camel.
Behind the church of the Madonna
dell’Orto, there is a vaporetto (water
bus) stop. I need the 4.2 to get to
Fondamenta Nove. “We do our best
to confuse outsiders,” jokes a local
as we wait on the pontoon. Not only
do some of the vaporetto routes
have decimal points, but houses are
numbered according to the sestiere to
which they belong, with no regard to
the lane or canal they look onto.
AFTER A REVIVING ESPRESSO
macchiato, I catch the number 12 to
the pretty island of Burano (6), where
the houses are painted in every colour
of the rainbow, and then a number 9
to the island of Torcello (7) and a step
back in time.
Torcello is all but uninhabited these
days. But there are some restaurants
for visitors along the brick path that
leads away from the vaporetto stop. A
chill wind is blowing. Gulls screech.
I decide it’s time for lunch and duck
into the cosy Osteria al Ponte del
Diavolo for a plate of steaming pasta:
spaghetti al nero di seppie (spaghetti
with cuttlefish ink), Venice’s most traditional
dish. Delicious.
For most people, Venice is the collection
of islands, centred on the Rialto,
that seem to form one big island
in the shape of a fish. But the term
also encompasses the other islands
in the Venetian lagoon, and there was
a time when Torcello was the most
populous and important of them all;
when it was Venice.
After the collapse of the Roman
empire in the west, Germanic
tribespeople poured into the Italian
peninsula, prompting wave after wave
of refugees to flee for their lives into
the lagoon. The largest number settled
on Torcello, becoming subjects of the
only remaining “Roman” empire—
that of the east, with its capital at
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VENICE AND ISLANDS
READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
Explore the lesser-known, numbered haunts to discover a secret Venice.
MAP BY MIKE HALL/ILLUSTRATIONWEB.COM
Constantinople or Byzantium.
So when, in 639, the inhabitants of
Torcello built themselves a cathedral,
and even in 1008 when the existing basilica
was erected, much of the decoration
was of a kind associated with the
eastern Christian churches. No photograph
can do justice to the sheer scale
of its towering mosaics: of the Virgin
and Child behind the altar and of the
Last Judgement on the rear wall.
For several years, the bell tower of
what is now the Basilica di Santa Maria
Assunta was closed for repairs. But
it was reopened in 2014, and so—for-
tified by the pasta—I head for the top.
In the belfry, I find myself alone. In a
silence broken only by the whistling
wind, I look out undisturbed over Torcello
with its fields and vegetable plots
laced by streams and linked by rickety
wooden bridges. It’s not so very different
from how the place must have
looked back in the 7th century.
I AM STAYING ON THE GIUDECCA
(8), the long, eel-shaped island
slithering under the belly of the
“fish.” Outside the tourist season, it
belongs to the Venetians even more
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A HOLE IN THE HEART OF EUROPE
Colourfully painted houses are a
trademark of the island of Burano.
than Cannaregio: here you find the
homes of the city’s postal workers
and garbage collectors, the people
who steer its fire launches and wash
the tourists’ linen.
But it is also in the early stages of
becoming Venice’s alternative quarter.
Several art galleries sit along the quay
that faces the main island of Venice.
One of them is holding an opening
party. From inside, comes laughter
and the chinking of glasses.
A little way along, I discover Generator,
a hostel carved out of an old
grain store. The bar, with its smart but
quirky retro decor would not look out
of place in one of the trendier quarters
of Berlin. Just the spot for an aperitivo
before dinner. I settle for a Venetian
favourite, an Aperol spritz (Aperol and
sparkling Prosecco wine with a dash
of soda) to go with the nuts and olives
the barman sets out for me.
Next day, I have time to kill. I want
to visit the island of San Lazzaro degli
Armeni, but it can only be reached
by a vaporetto that leaves just once
a day: at 3:10 p.m. So first I decide
to make for the part of Venice where
the Bienniale, the city’s international
contemporary art exhibition, is held.
In the gardens nearby, there is a magnificent
19th century greenhouse, the
Serra dei Giardini (9), nowadays partgarden
nursery and part-café-restaurant.
It is the ideal place for a leisurely
mid-morning coffee.
I continue my tour, reaching a
square hung with washing in the alleyways
off Via Garibaldi. Here I come
across a large shrine created from one
side of a house. It has lace curtains
and, inside, amid the pots of flowers,
SANDRO SANTIOLI/SIME/4 CORNERS IMAGES
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an icon—again, that lingering Byzantine
influence—of the Madonna.
It gives me an idea. I catch the
vaporetto towards Saint Mark’s, but
get off after a couple of stops.
A couple of hundred metres away,
beyond the Pensione Wildner where
the 19th-century American novelist
Henry James finished The Portrait of
a Lady, is Calle de la Pietà. I doubt if
more than one visitor in a thousand
notices the slot for offerings under the
little bas-relief of the Virgin and Child.
Even fewer notice the wooden segment
jutting out above the green door.
It looks as if it might belong to an early
revolving door. As indeed it does: the
rest of the structure, inside the Hotel
Metropole, houses a cash register. But
once it had a sadder purpose. It was
a foundling wheel—a device in which
mothers could leave their unwanted
babies to be brought up by nuns.
Further down the lane you get
to what was—and, to some extent,
still is—Venice’s Greek quarter. After
various twists and turns, I reach
another bridge and, opening a gate
on the left, walk beside the Rio dei
Greci to the Orthodox church of San
Giorgio. Next door is a museum of
icons, the oldest of which date from
the 15th century and were rescued
from Constantinople.
AT 3:10 P.M. PRECISELY, THE
number 20 vaporetto casts off for the
final leg of my journey, to the fabled
island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni
(10). Once a leper colony, it was put
at the disposal of an order of Armenian
Catholic monks who fled when
the Turks seized their monastery in
Morea. That was in 1717.
The monastery’s museum today is a
treasure house for anyone with a taste
for the exotic. It houses artefacts from
the lost civilisation of Urartu, a manuscript
written in the extinct language
of Ge’ez and a sword belonging the
last ruler of the half-forgotten Armenian
kingdom of Cilicia.
At the end of my visit, standing in
the church with its bright turquoise
ceiling and mosaics, I ask the blackbearded
monk who has showed me
around where he was from.
“Kessab in Syria,” he says. “It was
once part of the kingdom of Cilicia.”
Then he shakes his head.“Today is a
very sad day for me,” he says. “It is a
year since jihadis took Kessab and
drove out its Christian population.
They sacked the city and desecrated
the cemetery.” Venice still picks up distant
echoes from the east.
John Hooper is the Italy correspondent for
The Economist and author of The Italians.
WAGER OF THE BEAST?
The sum of all the numbers on a roulette wheel is 666.
Mental Floss
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 137

CLASSIC BONUS READ
The Case
of the
Rolex Murder
A routine investigation into a drowning leads police
through a complex web of swindles, double and triple
identities —and finally, to a cold-blooded killer
BY BILL SCHILLER FROM A HAND IN THE WATER
138 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

ILLUSTRATION BY STEVEN P. HUGHES
FIRST PUBLISHED IN
READER’S DIGEST
DECEMBER 1999
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THE CASE OF THE ROLEX MURDER
EARLY SUNDAY MORNING, 28 JULY 1996, fisherman John
Copik and his son, Craig, left their home port in
Brixham, Devon, on England’s south coast, aboard the
trawler Malkerry. Once at sea, they let a long trawling
net out behind them.
After about two hours the men hauled up the net. Finding few
fish, they released it again. Another check a few hours later showed
that things hadn’t improved. They let the net out a third time and
turned for home.
About 3 p.m., less than 10 kilometres from shore, Copik called to
his son, “Let’s haul ’em in, mate!” As the net emerged from the
water, Copik could see that their luck had changed. It was loaded
with fish, with one especially large one trapped inside. Probably a
porpoise, the father thought.
As the net drew closer, however, Copik felt a chill run through
him. A human face stared back at him, the mouth slightly ajar.
Father and son heaved the net on
board and Copik radioed the Coast
Guard. As the Malkerry sailed into
port, a police car waited at the dock.
Detective Constable Ian Clenahan,
a young officer who had just been
posted to the region, bent over to
have a look at the body. The dead
man was fully dressed and had a large
gash on the back of his head. On his
right wrist was a stainless steel Rolex
Oyster watch showing the time and
date—11:35, 22 July. There was no
identification on the body, just one
possible identifying mark: a tattoo of
what looked to be five stars on the
back of the man’s right hand.
In an autopsy, injuries were duly
noted: a crack on the back of the skull;
a well-defined bruise on the left hip;
some minor lacerations on the chest
and back, possibly caused by the body
being dragged along the sea floor.
None of these injuries was serious
enough to have killed the man, the
senior pathologist concluded. The
blow to the head might have been
sustained accidentally, perhaps as the
deceased fell into the water. But the
fact that the lungs were laden with seawater,
led the pathologist to make his
pronouncement: death by drowning.
The question that remained unanswered:
who was he?
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READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
TIME WILL TELL
Days went by, yet the police were no
closer to making an identification.
Then on 31 July, a friend suggested to
the coroner’s officer, Robin Little, that
since every Rolex comes with a serial
number, perhaps the company might
help. Little dialled Rolex’s UK office,
about 290 kilometres away in Bexley,
Kent, and explained the situation to
one of its employees, who confirmed
According to the Rolex records, the
watch had been serviced twice in the
1980s, both times by an authorized
dealer in Harrogate.
Following a call to the watch dealer,
Clenahan asked the local police to
confirm a name: Ronald Joseph Platt,
born 22 March 1945. National and
personal records allowed them to
track the victim from Harrogate to
100 Beardsley Drive, in Chelmsford,
THE MAN HAD DIED BY
DROWNING, THE PATHOLOGIST
SAID. THE UNANSWERED
QUESTION: WHO WAS HE?
that each Rolex made has a serial
number inscribed on its casing. Thus
a record of every servicing to a watch
could be obtained through Rolex’s
central registry.
Little slipped the watch out of its
plastic bag and flipped it over. He
could see no number.
“It’s on the shoulder of the casing,
just where the bracelet joins the case,”
he was told. “You can’t see it without
taking the pins out and removing the
bracelet.”
And so, with a small needle, Little
nudged one and then the other
pin out, and carefully removed the
bracelet. There, inscribed on the side
of the watch, was number 1544402.
Essex, a little over 400 kilometres east
of where the body was found.
Armed with this, Clenahan asked
the Chelmsford police to research the
victim. There, Sergeant Peter Redman
came up with a useful piece of
information: Platt’s landlord still had
the name and cell-phone number of
a reference Platt had provided when
he’d moved in six months earlier. It
was a Mr David Davis.
Redman gave the cell-phone
number to Clenahan. The detective
dialled: “Is that David Davis?”
“Yes, it is.”
“David Davis, who acted as a
reference for a Ronald Platt, who
leased a flat in Chelmsford?”
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THE CASE OF THE ROLEX MURDER
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Constable Ian Clenahan , Mr Davis.
There’s been an accident at sea and a
body has been found. We believe it
may be your friend Mr Platt.”
“Oh, my God! Are they absolutely
certain?”
“Apparently,” Clenahan said. “Could
you go to the station in Chelmsford
and tell us a little bit about him?”
“Of course.”
On 22 August, a six-foot-one,
dapper man with a dark beard walked
into the Chelmsford station. He had
an oval face, a strong chin and shining
brown eyes. He identified himself as
David Davis.
Sergeant Redman, a friendly,
round-faced plain-clothes detective,
welcomed his visitor.
He knew Ronald Joseph Platt, Davis
said. “I’ve known him for a couple of
years. He’s a friend. Kindred spirit,
really. But I understood he’d left for
France to set up a business there.”
“When did you last see him?”
“June, I believe.”
“Did he leave an address?”
“No. But I was anticipating hearing
from him.” Davis added that before
Platt left, he had his mail redirected to
Davis’s address, Little London Farm.
While Davis was still there, Redman
called Clenahan and passed the
phone to Davis, who told the detective
constable that Platt had two brothers.
He was not sure where they lived,
but he did know that the dead man’s
mother was living in High Wycombe.
Also, he said that Platt had done a
stint in the army.
All interesting material, Clenahan
thought. With a little more luck,
he might be able to close the file on
this case. He especially wanted to
wrap it up now that a new detective
chief inspector (DCI) for Devon and
Cornwall, Phil Sincock, had arrived.
IDENTITY CRISIS
Sincock had come to his post with
impeccable credentials. In 1990, he
had taken on a murder case that had
gone unsolved for 10 years—and
conclusively pinned it on a criminal
already doing time for kidnapping.
So far, however, it appeared that his
detective skills would not be needed
for the Platt case. It was being treated
as an accident and was coming
along well. Army dental records had
confirmed Platt’s identity. Then the
police managed to track down one of
the victim’s brothers, Brian.
The dead man was most definitely
Ronald, the brother said. He explained
that the tattoo on the right hand was
not a five-pointed star, but a maple
leaf. His brother had been raised in
Canada and loved the country.
Brian gave them more useful
information: Ron had had a girlfriend,
Elaine Boyes. They had been together
off and on for more than 12 years, but
three years earlier, in 1993, they had
broken up.
By this point the investigation
had extended into October. It had
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been two-and-a-half months since
the corpse was found. At long last it
seemed it was nearly time to lay Platt’s
body, and the file, to rest.
Just one question remained: how
had Platt ended up at the bottom
of the sea?
Since David Davis seemed to have
been the dead man’s only friend,
Clenahan wanted to talk to him one
more time. The detective had trouble
reaching Davis on his cell phone,
so he called Sergeant Redman, his
“This is Little London House,” the
man said. “That,” he said, stepping
out onto the porch and pointing next
door, “is Little London Farm.”
“Thank you very much,” Redman
said, and began to walk away. Then it
struck him that he’d better make sure.
He turned around. “That is where
Mr David Davis lives, isn’t it?”
“Dear boy,” the elderly man replied,
“you’re mistaken again. There’s no
Mr Davis who lives there. That is
where Ronald Platt lives.”
“DEAR BOY,” THE ELDERLY MAN
REPLIED. “THERE’S NO MR DAVIS
WHO LIVES THERE. THAT IS
WHERE RONALD PLATT LIVES.”
colleague in Chelmsford, for another
favour: could he go out to Davis’s
house and ask him to call the Devon
and Cornwall police department?
On 14 October, Redman, in civilian
clothes, drove to Little London Lane.
There, he found four houses. Two had
signs on their gates, but neither one
said Little London Farm, the name of
Davis’s house. That left the other two.
The odds are 50-50, thought
Redman. When he went to one of
the houses and knocked, an older
gentleman answered the door.
“Sorry to bother you, sir, but is this
Little London Farm?”
Redman was stunned. “Ronald
Platt?”
“Yes. With his wife, Noël. And their
two children.”
“May I ask what this Mr Platt looks
like? I may have the wrong address.”
“Oh, he’s about 50. An American
chap. Outgoing, friendly, dark hair,
beard. A retired banker from New
York. He spends a lot of time on his
boat down in Devon.”
It was a precise description of Davis,
Redman realized. He had to get back
to the station and make an urgent
call. As he heard Clenahan answer,
Redman said, “Something’s up.”
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THE CASE OF THE ROLEX MURDER
The police were sure David Davis was
a liar, but was he capable of murder?
FATEFUL ENCOUNTER
Clenahan listened to the sergeant’s
report, then went to Sincock’s office.
“That Davis fellow who’s helped
us out with the Platt case,” Clenahan
began, “the man who said he was the
dead man’s friend. He’s been living
under Platt’s name.” And one more
damning detail: Davis had a boat
down in Devon somewhere.
The Platt case was now no longer
a low priority. The next day the DCI
convened a meeting with Clenahan
and other detectives. He ordered them
to put Little London Farm and its residents
under a microscope; get hold of
local government records, banking
records, and itemized telephone bills.
Clenahan tracked down Platt’s
former girlfriend Elaine Boyes in
Harrogate and made an appointment
to meet with her.
Wearing glasses and dressed rather
conservatively, she seemed genial and
quite trusting.
Clenahan had brought a photograph
of the dead man’s hand, the one
with the maple-leaf tattoo.
Yes, a shaken Boyes said, it was Ron.
The police had notified a David
Davis too, Clenahan told her.
“How long has he known?” she
asked.
“A couple of months now.”
The woman froze. She said she had
spoken to Davis only about a week
before and had asked about Platt. All
Davis had said was that he had seen
him off to France.
Boyes went on to tell Clenahan
about her life with Ron Platt, and
how the two of them had come to
befriend David Davis. It had begun
in the summer of 1990. She was
then a 31-year-old receptionist at
Henry Spencer and Sons Fine Art
Auctioneers in Harrogate, a posh
Victorian spa town, a little over 360
kilometres north of London.
One day a man walked in and asked
to see some paintings. Just then the
phone rang. Boyes answered it, fielded
ALL PHOTOS COURTESY HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS
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READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
other calls, and handled queries from
colleagues, every now and then giving
a nodding smile to the patiently waiting
visitor. “At last,” Boyes said. “How
can I help you?”
“I’ve been watching you,” the man
replied. “You’ve got people traipsing
through here, the phone’s ringing, and
you treat everyone so well. I could use
someone like you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m planning on starting up a
is going back. We’re planning on
heading over as soon as we have
the money.”
“Elaine,” said Davis, “I could offer
you enough money so that within a
year’s time, you could both fly off.”
Boyes agreed to think about it.
When Davis saw her again in February,
he met her boyfriend, Ron Platt.
Boyes decided to accept Davis’s offer.
In April, Elaine Boyes became
special assistant and secretary of
“I COULD USE SOMEONE LIKE YOU,”
THE MAN SAID. “I’M PLANNING
ON STARTING A FINE-ARTS
AND ANTIQUES COMPANY.”
little fine-arts and antiques company
myself. I’m over here quite a bit now,
and I’ll be moving permanently from
America soon. I’d pay you well, you
could travel, we could even take some
courses together down at Sotheby’s
in London.
“You don’t even know me.”
“David Davis,” he said, extending
his hand, bowing slightly and smiling
as he did so.
“Elaine Boyes,” she replied, shaking
hands. “But this is ridiculous. I can’t
even think about changing jobs,
Mr Davis. I’ve promised my boyfriend
we’ll move to Canada. He grew up
there, and all he ever talks about
Cavendish Corp., Davis’s new artand-antiques
venture. She was her
boss’s sole legal representative, with
the power to open bank accounts,
and deposit and withdraw money on
his behalf.
Around that time Davis told her
about the ‘tragedy’ of his first marriage
and how his ex-wife, back home
in the United States, was pursuing him
for alimony. His response had been
to move to London. One daughter,
Noël, had chosen to come with him.
For that reason it was vital, Davis told
Boyes, that his name never appear on
documents of any kind. Security and
secrecy were crucial.
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THE CASE OF THE ROLEX MURDER
“I’M GOING HOME”
Elaine Boyes had a strong incentive to
follow Davis’s instructions to the letter.
He not only paid her 50 per cent
more than she had made at Spencer’s
but also arranged for her and Platt to
buy a stylish two-bedroom apartment.
“Mr D,” as Platt called him, had put up
nearly $1,00,000 for the purchase.
Davis and Platt were about the same
age and had become friends. Davis
rented premises for Platt and set him
up in his own television-and-video
mail. She’d give it to Davis, and he’d
have her transfer some of that money
back into Cavendish’s accounts.
Then unexpectedly, late in 1992,
Davis told Boyes that the loans he’d
given her for the purchase of her
apartment had to be called in. He
cited “cash-flow problems.” The
couple listed their apartment for sale.
A few weeks later, Davis told Platt he
could no longer pay the rent on his
shop. Platt would have to go it alone.
On Christmas Day, 1992, Davis
IN HIS LETTER, PLATT WROTE HE
WAS RETURNING TO ENGLAND.
HE HAD BEEN TRYING TO LIVE
ON ODD JOBS AND WAS FED UP.
repair business. He had even lent Platt
$23,000 for start-up costs.
As for the work Boyes had to do, it
was hardly onerous, she explained to
Clenahan. Davis would send her off to
France, Italy or Switzerland, to look at
an antique sale or some properties
and, while she was there, deposit
cash in accounts she set up in her own
name, as secretary of Cavendish Corp.
It was all part of Davis’s alimonyavoidance
strategy.
Throughout 1991 and 1992 everything
went smoothly. Boyes would
return home from a trip, and a week
later a deposit slip would arrive by
invited Boyes and Platt to dinner at
his house and presented them with a
card in which he had written: “Two air
tickets to Canada. Valid until the end
of February.”
“It’s time you and Elaine seized
the dream, Ron,” he said. The couple
thanked Davis profusely, although
Boyes later persuaded him to give her
a return ticket, just in case.
Davis had one last favour to ask.
Since he would have to operate
Cavendish Corp. all alone and would
need to access his money, could
Boyes and Platt make rubber-stamp
copies of their signatures?
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His request didn’t seem unreasonable.
Both complied. On 11 February
1993, Boyes signed over a power of
attorney to Davis, so that he could
finish up the sale of the apartment.
The document gave him the right, she
recalled, “to deposit money, to draw
money, to sign my name, to receive
mail on my behalf, generally to act in
relation to my personal affairs in all
respects as I myself do.”
Davis, ever the smooth talker,
convinced Platt to also leave him
copies of his birth certificate and
driver’s licence.
On the evening of 22 February 1993,
there was a farewell dinner for the
couple before they left for Canada. At
one point, Ron Platt announced, “By
this time tomorrow I’ll be home.”
DARK AND COLD
For Boyes, Calgary in February was a
harsh introduction to a new country.
The city was not at all the wide-open,
friendly frontier town of Platt’s childhood
memories. It seemed dark and
cold now.
Neither Boyes nor Platt had jobs
lined up, so they were forced to look
for cheap housing. They found a little
basement apartment. At night they lay
awake and listened to the rumble of
trucks on the Trans-Canada Highway,
just a few streets away.
Platt began to brood and grow
morose. Boyes was glad she had
insisted on a return ticket to England.
That summer, Boyes flew to England
for her sister’s wedding. When she
met Davis at her sister’s wedding, she
announced that she wasn’t going back
to Canada.
“But what about Ron?” Davis
inquired. “He needs your support,
Elaine. I think you should give him a
second chance,” Davis said, gently.
Boyes would not be moved.
In March 1995, Davis received a
letter. On opening it, he read the news:
Ronald Joseph Platt was returning to
England. He had been trying to live on
odd jobs and was fed up.
When Platt came back that spring,
Davis found him a job just outside
High Wycombe, so Platt would be
near his mother. When he lost that
job, he announced he wanted to move
to Chelmsford to be closer to Davis.
Six months later he was dead.
ARREST AND DISCOVERY
By the end of October 1996, Phil
Sincock and his team had gathered a
fair amount of incriminating material
regarding David Davis. They had
various pieces of paper bearing Ron
Platt’s authentic signature, some of
which didn’t match the ones that had
been handled by Davis.
Sincock felt that if he could get into
that house on Little London Lane, he
would very likely find a treasure-trove
of material. To get at it, he planned a
raid on Davis’s house for 31 October.
On the day before, Clenahan
obtained Davis’s cell-phone records.
They showed conclusively that he
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THE CASE OF THE ROLEX MURDER
had made numerous calls from Devon
between 7 and 23 July, placing him
squarely in the area where Platt’s body
was recovered, and around the time
Platt had died.
Police had what they believed was
a murder suspect. The next step was
to gather evidence that would stand
up in court.
Early on the morning of 31 October,
police cars moved into position
around Little London Farm. At
10 a.m., as police waited for a signal
“Good morning, Mr Davis. Do you
remember me? It was Sergeant Peter
Redman.
“Yes, of course. What’s this all
about?”
“I am arresting you on suspicion of
the murder of Ronald Joseph Platt.”
Then he cautioned Davis about
his rights.
At the station, police found on their
suspect, the birth certificate of David
W. Davis, a credit card in the name of
R.J. Platt, health-club and museum
FLASHING LIGHTS CAME ON,
THEN ONE OF THE POLICE CARS
SURGED FORWARD, MOTIONING
THE TAXI TO PULL OVER.
to charge the house, a taxi turned into
Little London Lane. David Davis was
sitting in the front seat.
Two police cars quickly fell into line
behind the taxi. Flashing lights came
on, then one of the police cars surged
forward, motioning the taxi driver to
pull over.
A policeman walked up alongside
it and shouted at Davis, “Get out of
the car!”
Davis slid out, hands up. Two
officers quickly frisked him and
snapped on a pair of handcuffs. Then
into the group of policemen walked a
figure in plain clothes.
cards in David Davis’s name, as well
as business cards for a James J. Hilton,
146 Avenue William Favre, Geneva.
Another identity.
Might there be others? Sincock
wondered. Who was this man they
had taken into custody?
Back at Little London Farm, Noël
Davis was also told she was under
arrest. At the police station, her
pockets and bags were emptied. Out
came documents in Elaine Boyes’s
name: a phone bill, cheque book,
credit cards and a National Health
Service card. She also had a man’s
wallet, which contained Ronald Platt’s
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birth certificate, driver’s licence,
bankcards and various other papers.
At first Noël stuck stubbornly to
what was clearly a well-rehearsed
script: she was from Long Island, and
her husband, David, had been a friend
of her father’s. The police questioned
her again and again. Finally, she told
them this: David Davis was in fact
her father.
After Platt and Boyes had left for
Canada, Noël explained, she and her
father assumed the couple’s identities.
The Davises moved to Devon.
As for the real Ronald Platt, Noel
said, she hadn’t seen him since they
ate Christmas dinner together in 1995.
She had no idea that he had been in
Devon during July. In fact, she had no
idea that he was dead—until now.
MOUNTING EVIDENCE
Sincock had his people working
around the clock. He had Davis’s
fingerprints sent to the US authorities
via Interpol to see whether he was
wanted there. His sailboat, Lady Jane,
was impounded for forensic testing.
The police pored over his personal
phone records.
As Phil Sincock had suspected,
Little London Farm was laden with
intriguing material. The man of the
house was a pack rat. Seemingly
every piece of paper that ever passed
through David Davis’s hands had
been kept: bank documents, legal
documents—even old train tickets.
Oddly, nothing appeared to go
Davis hired Elaine Boyes and helped
her and Platt buy a stylish apartment.
back beyond six years. And yet, the
details kept building. There was a
receipt dated 8 July, for the purchase
of a number of items at a sportinggoods
store called Sport Nautique.
On it was a notation for a ten-pound
anchor. The police didn’t know what
significance the receipt actually had,
but they filed it with the mountain of
other documents.
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THE CASE OF THE ROLEX MURDER
By 3 November, investigators
had gathered enough evidence
to warrant Davis’s continued
detention. Noël was released.
On 4 November, David Davis
was formally charged with the
murder of Ronald Joseph Platt.
Meanwhile, the investigation,
now involving up to 70 officers,
continued. More digging and
clues that turned up, took
the police to other locations.
At a place called Solutions
in Therapy, where Davis was
a therapeutic-counselling
partner, police found five
gold bars stashed away in
the office; at Genstar Storage
they found more cash and
gold, and a Global Positioning
System (GPS), for navigation;
at Chelmsford Storage, they
turned up suitcases filled
with some of Ronald Platt’s
personal belongings.
Sincock sent his detectives to
interview John Copik. Again the
fisherman went over everything that
had happened on 28 July 1996.
This time Copik recalled that
after the police took the body away,
another fisherman, Derek Meredith,
had spotted an anchor tangled in
Copik’s nets. It was small, less than
a metre long, with a rather sinister
plow-shaped blade.
“Do you want it?” Meredith asked.
“You’re welcome to it,” Copik said.
Detectives, intrigued by this new
The one man Ronald Platt (pictured)
trusted most took his identity.
fact, tracked the fisherman down.
“I gave the anchor to my girlfriend,”
Meredith said. “She and her mother,
Patricia Johnson, put it in a rummage
sale, I think.”
When the officers knocked on
Patricia Johnson’s door, she confirmed
she had put the anchor in a sale, but it
hadn’t sold. When she fetched it, it fit
the description of the one Davis had
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READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
bought on 8 July, at Sport Nautique.
Forensic experts dusted Davis’s
sailboat, Lady Jane, for fingerprints,
and painstakingly searched for
evidence. Incredibly, there was not a
single print to be found.
Eventually it dawned on the police
to check the Sport Nautique shopping
bag that had been found aboard the
boat. There they found the fingerprints
of Ronald Joseph Platt.
And blood as well. There were three
microscopic drops discovered on the
where Copik netted the body.
There was still no evidence linking
Davis himself to that place on that
day—until Noël Davis recalled that
on July 20, her father announced he
was heading out to sea alone.
On the only other occasion when
Davis had gone sailing on his own,
Noël said, he had returned by 6 p.m.
But on that day, Noël prepared dinner,
then cuddled up in front of the
television. By 8:59 p.m., Davis still
wasn’t back.
EXPERTS DUSTED DAVIS’S
SAILBOAT FOR FINGERPRINTS.
INCREDIBLY, THERE WAS NOT
A SINGLE PRINT TO BE FOUND.
rolled-up sails, and on cushions they
found a small bit of hair and scalp,
which tests showed as being similar
to Platt’s.
Police examined the GPS unit
taken from Genstar Storage. The
manufacturer explained to them
that that particular model stored the
precise time and the last navigational
reference point registered when it
was shut off. When investigators
downloaded the data, the last time
and date recorded was 8:59 p.m.,
20 July 1996, the approximate date of
Platt’s death. It placed Davis’s boat
about six and a half kilometres from
At that precise time, 4 kilometres
from the Devon coast, a hand
switched off Lady Jane’s GPS. It was
exactly 15 minutes before sunset. In
that light, from that distance, a sailor
no longer needed the GPS. He could
see his way to shore. It was well after
dark when Davis came home.
On 25 November, another autopsy
of Platt’s defrosting corpse was done.
Something new appeared: a bruise
on the left leg, just above the knee.
With the body stretched out on the
examining table, a 4.5 kilo zinc-plated
anchor, similar to the one retrieved
from Patricia Johnson’s house, was
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THE CASE OF THE ROLEX MURDER
brought in and laid out along Platt’s
left side. The two bruises—the new
one and the one previously noted on
his left hip—matched the contours of
the anchor.
Investigators noted that roughly
28 cm from the belt buckle were
several marks on the leather that
contained zinc, of the kind used
to plate the anchor. This evidence
supported the theory that someone
inserted the anchor under Platt’s belt
to keep his body submerged. The
circumstantial evidence against Davis
was mounting.
Edinburgh; who professed to have
been a banker in the United States,
Switzerland and England before
retiring to become a psychiatrist?
None of his stories checked out.
Sincock had assigned two
detectives to review every scrap of
paper retrieved from Little London
Farm. The police then prepared an
information circular on Davis with his
photo and fingerprints. They passed it
to Interpol. On Friday, 22 November,
the National Criminal Intelligence
Service office in London received a
message from Interpol in Switzerland.
INTERPOL SAID DAVIS LOOKED
VERY MUCH LIKE SOMEONE
ON ITS MOST-WANTED LIST.
IN DEVON, THEY CELEBRATED.
WHO IS DAVID DAVIS?
But Sincock was still puzzled about
something else. He was certain David
Walliss Davis, as Davis insisted he
was formally called, was not his real
name. The police had run a search
and discovered only one David Walliss
Davis. He had been born in Britain,
and he had left as a child for parts
unknown—in 1949.
So who was this man—who claimed
to have been born in England; who
said he was an English-literature
graduate from the University of
They said that David W. Davis looked
like someone on Interpol’s mostwanted
list, a Canadian-born swindler
named Albert Johnson Walker.
In Devon, they celebrated. It looked
like they had caught a really big fish.
The murder investigation pressed
on. As the police soon confirmed,
Davis was indeed Walker, a Canadian
financier from Paris, Ontario, who
had fled his home country six years
earlier, taking with him his 15-yearold
daughter, Sheena—a.k.a. Noël
Davis—and millions of dollars’ worth
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Noël’s mother and sister with
her photo. She was 15 when
Davis fled with her.
for help with a bank-loan
application. In the process
Davis had cunningly talked
him into handing over his
birth certificate.
On 9 December 1996,
the suspect was remanded
into custody under his real
name—Albert Johnson
Walker.
of his clients’ money. The same
money Elaine Boyes had unwittingly
helped launder.
In all, police estimated Walker
had actually swindled more than
$2 million from his ‘clients’. He had
transferred close to $7,00,000 to various
European accounts, from which
he took out as much as $4,75,000 in
gold, in British pounds, and even in
French and Swiss francs.
As for the real David W. Davis?
Police learnt he was living in Canada
and had once gone to Walker
DAMNING TESTIMONY
By now the evidence against
him was overwhelming.
There was an array of witnesses
who said they had
seen Walker with Platt in
bars and hotels in Devon as
late as 10 July.
These reports were in
stark contrast to Sheena Walker’s
statement to the police that her
father had told her he had last
seen Platt off to France in June, and
supported the theory that Walker
was plotting something—the murder
of Ronald Platt.
Walker had needed a new identity.
The David Davis cover he was using
would only stretch so far. He had
Davis’s birth certificate and nothing
else. Ronald Platt had become his
key to an entirely new life. Once Platt
returned to England, all was at risk.
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THE CASE OF THE ROLEX MURDER
Walker knew his meeting with Platt
had to remain a secret. Thus, Sheena’s
testimony could be the prosecution’s
most potent weapon.
Alone in his prison cell, Albert
Walker must have realized the
danger. On Sunday, 2 February 1997,
he telephoned his daughter, who had
now returned to her mother’s house
in Canada, asking her to change her
testimony to say that she knew that
Ron had been in Devon with him.
Not long afterwards, Sheena made
personable and, except for the
handcuffs, charming.
The prosecution painted a picture
of him as a calculating man who
induced Platt to go to Canada, then
stole his identity. When Platt could
not make a go of it and returned to
England, Walker, a wanted man, saw
that his new cover might be exposed.
So he decided on murder.
He bought an anchor, took Platt
out to sea, knocked him unconscious,
fixed the anchor to his body and
WALKER STRODE INTO
THE COURTROOM. HE LOOKED
PERSONABLE, AND, EXCEPT FOR
THE HANDCUFFS, CHARMING.
her own transatlantic call—to the
Devon and Cornwall police, informing
them that her father had called her
from prison and ordered her to
change her testimony.
It was an explosive accusation. Phil
Sincock realized that if allowed into
the court record, it could be a real
trial clincher.
On 24 March, at a pre-trial hearing
to determine if there was enough
evidence, Walker strode into the
courtroom with all the bearing of
a trial lawyer. He wore a dark suit,
blue shirt and tie. His natural-grey
hair was neatly trimmed. He looked
heaved him overboard. But he made
two key mistakes: he left the watch
on Platt’s wrist, and he unknowingly
registered the date, time and place of
his movement on the GPS.
Walker’s defence team argued that
the prosecution didn’t have enough
solid evidence. Without an eyewitness,
they said, it could not be proved that
Platt had been murdered. His death
might well have been a suicide.
Furthermore, there was no absolute
proof that the anchor retrieved by
Patricia Johnson was the same one
that was pulled up in John Copik’s
net. Nor was there any proof that
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READERSDIGEST.CO.IN
the anchor was the one Walker
had bought on 8 July 1996. The
manufacturer had made thousands,
and the retrieved anchor could have
been any one of them.
More important, the defence said,
the prosecution could not prove that
Platt was on Walker’s boat on the day
that the alleged murder supposedly
took place, or that Walker himself was
there that day at all.
The defence argued that even the
date and time of death could not be
determined satisfactorily. Although
the watch had stopped at 11:35, it was
not clear whether it was a.m. or p.m.
According to the government’s
own evidence, the last time anyone
had seen Platt and Walker together
was 10 July. Death by drowning
was estimated to have occurred
approximately 10 days later.
The judge, however, was not
convinced by the defence’s arguments.
“It is my considered view,” he said,
“that there is sufficient evidence to
commit the case to the Crown court.”
The trial was set for 22 June
1998. The evidence was simply
overwhelming. Walker could not
account for the whereabouts of the
anchor that he had purchased on
8 July; he could not explain why the
GPS reading from the Lady Jane
showed the date, time and place that
it did and how he had come to be
using Platt’s driver’s licence, his birth
certificate, his bank accounts. Finally,
he had no plausible explanation for
where he was on the night of 20 July.
Added to all this was Sheena
Walker’s painful testimony about
the call from prison, exposing her
father for what he was: a supreme
manipulator capable of doing
absolutely anything to save his skin,
including telling his own daughter to
twist the truth.
On 6 July 1998, Walker was
pronounced guilty and began serving
a life sentence at Long Lartin
maximum-security prison in England.
In 2005 he was transferred to Canada
to stand trial on fraud charges.
Convicted on those counts, Walker is
serving that sentence in a British
Columbia prison.
A HAND IN THE WATER: THE MANY LIES OF ALBERT WALKER © 1998 BY BILL
SCHILLER IS PUBLISHED BY HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS LTD. HARPERCOLLINS.CA.
DASHBOARD APOLOGY They say it’s the thought that counts—
unless you’re left with this note and a damaged car. “Hi. My name is
‘Jim’. I accidentally hit your car and someone saw me so I’m pretending
to write down my details. SORRY. Jim.”
Facebook
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 155

WHO
KNEW
13 Things
Gyms
Won’t Tell You
BY MICHELLE CROUCH WITH
NISHA VARMA
We count on you not to show up.
1 About 25-30 per cent of people
who start an exercise programme
quit within six months. If more
members started coming regularly, it
would be chaos in here. Here’s a tip to
help you stick with it: start slow.
People who quit typically push
themselves too hard at first and
get discouraged.
You can usually beat the
2 membership fee down. And if
you’re not a regular gym person,
maybe you should go for the day-byday
pay option. Sometimes it can be
more economical in the long run.
The way many of you use the
3 treadmills is totally wrong. Holding
on for balance is okay, but some
people support almost all their body
weight on their arms. That’s unsafe—
and it prevents you from burning as
many calories. If you can’t manage to
loosen your grip, try slowing down.
4
What’s hot right now? Functional
fitness, or doing exercises that
help you in everyday life, which is
ILLUSTRATION BY SERGE BLOCH
156 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

important for older adults hoping
to prevent injury. That means fewer
exercises like leg extensions, a movement
you likely will never do outside
the gym, and more multi-joint, fullbody
exercises (like squats) that
strengthen you for real-life activities,
like lifting heavy boxes.
Be wary of products and banned
5 substances being promoted.
Gyms and trainers get a huge cut on
the sales. They could also be harmful!
Enjoy the free personal-training
6 session when you join. But if
your trainer shows you complex
exercises and doesn’t write anything
down, it might be the management’s
orders. The goal: to make exercise
seem complicated, so you go through
with buying training sessions.
Patience, people! TV ads may give
7 you the idea that you can lose
10 kilos and transform your body
in a few weeks, but unless you’re
spending eight hours a day in the gym,
that’s just not reality. Stick with us for
three months, and you will see a noticeable
difference in your physique.
Beware the smoothie station.
8 Some smoothies pack as many
as 500 calories, which may negate
the workout you just did. Plus, we
sell those products at a big markup.
You can save money—and calories—
by making them at home.
Want us to offer a class at a
9 different time? That’s great.
But we won’t create a new class just
because one person asks; we need
about 12 people to come regularly
to make it work. Get a group of
co-workers or friends who are
interested, and request it together.
Members can be unbelievably
10 territorial. Once, I was
teaching a spin class when two
people came in late and saw other
members on their reserved bikes.
They started yelling and pulling the
people off. It was like a scene out
of a movie.
You know those towels we provide?
They’re not there for dec-
11
oration. Please don’t forget to wipe
yourself, especially if you sweat excessively.
Always use a towel on
weight benches, avoid touching your
face and wash your hands immediately
after your workout.
Some trainers only pay attention
to those who give them an
12
extra payment or gifts. Avoid falling
into that trap.
Gyms don’t always reveal the
13 qualifications of their trainers
upfront. Ask for details.
Sources: Tom Holland, MS, CSCS, former gym owner and
author of Beat the Gym; Tiffany Richards, former employee
at a fitness chain; Charlie Sims, owner of a CrossFit gym in
Louisville, Kentucky; Jim Thornton, MA, ATC, CES, president
of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association; and economist
Stefano DellaVigna, who studied gym users for three years.
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 157

Brain Teasers
1
2 3 4 5 6
7
8 9 10
11 12
13
14 15
16
17
18 19 20
21
22 23
24 25
ACROSS
01 Inflate (a balloon) (4, 2)
05 Draw in liquid through
a straw (4)
08 Cause of a baby’s
sore bottom (5, 4)
09 Football official (3)
11 Puts a stop to (4)
12 Material used as
floor covering (8)
14 Beaten players (6)
16 Put your trust in (4, 2)
18 Colour of sailors’
uniforms (4, 4)
19 White graceful bird (4)
22 Man’s best friend (3)
23 Judo expert (5, 4)
24 In a lazy manner (4)
25 Uncover, reveal (6)
DOWN
02 Ran with easy
strides (5)
3 Methods (4)
4 Calm, peaceful (6)
5 Trained, taught (8)
6 Restaurant where
meat is sliced in front
of you (7)
7 Drew attention to
(words in a text) (10)
10 Womanly quality (10)
13 In all likelihood (8)
15 Badly bitten
(by an animal) (7)
17 Kind, merciful (6)
20 Periods of
seven days (5)
21 Jump with a rope (4)
ANSWERS
Across:
1 Blow up 5 Suck
8 Nappy rash
9 Ref 11 Ends
12 Linoleum
14 Losers 16 Rely
on 18 Navy blue
19 Swan 22 Dog
23 Black belt
24 Idly 25 Expose
Down:
2 Loped 3 Ways
4 Placid
5 Schooled
6 Carvery
7 Underlined
10 Femininity
13 Probably
15 Savaged
17 Humane
20 Weeks 21 Skip
158 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

IT PAYS TO ENRICH YOUR
Word Power
“X” and “Z” are among the shortest chapters in an English
dictionary. Without peeking into yours, try to define the following
words that start with these two rarely used letters
BY SAMANTHA RIDEOUT
1. xanthic
A: gummy.
B: yellowish.
C: calming.
2. zeitgeist
A: game-changing event.
B: harmless ghost.
C: spirit of the times.
3. xenon
A: chemical element
with atomic number 54.
B: planet Jupiter’s
red spot.
C: bull monster
from ancient Greek
mythology.
4. xiphoid
A: plotted on a graph.
B: sword-shaped.
C: notched.
5. xilinous
pertaining to
A: luxury.
B: infinity.
C: cotton.
6. zephyr
A: pleasantly
bitter taste.
B: light breeze.
C: inoffensive
comedian.
7. zygote
A: fertilized egg.
B: dormant virus.
C: cheekbone.
8. xeric
A: disillusioned.
B: dry.
C: concerned with
appearances.
9. zoolatry
A: study of animals.
B: worship of animals.
C: care of animals.
10. zymology
science of
A: muscles.
B: welding.
C: fermentation.
11. zealot
A: tax dodger.
B: arsonist.
C: extreme
partisan.
12. xenial
A: forgetful.
B: hospitable.
C: resourceful.
13. zonk
A: stun, as with
a blow.
B: trip and fall.
C: squabble
loudly.
14. Zoilus
A: unnecessarily
harsh critic.
B: greedy capitalist.
C: misleading
public speaker.
15. xyloid
A: silly.
B: tinny.
C: woody.
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 159

WORD POWER
Answers
1. xanthic—[B] yellowish. Not
a fan of white wedding dresses, Ana
settled on a gown with a xanthic tint.
2. zeitgeist—[C] spirit of the times.
Amitabh Bachchan, in Deewar was
praised for capturing the zeitgeist of
the 1970s.
3. xenon—[A] chemical element
with atomic number 54. Xenon gas
is used as a general anaesthetic
because it’s fast-acting and non-toxic.
4. xiphoid—[B] sword-shaped.
Gladiolus plants are known for
their xiphoid leaves and vaseworthy
blossoms.
5. xilinous—[C] pertaining to
cotton. After the air conditioning
broke down, Angad wished his suit
were made of a more breathable,
xilinous fabric.
6. zephyr—[B] light breeze. A
zephyr animated the laundry on the
line, creating a picture-perfect
springtime scene.
7. zygote—[A] fertilized egg. In
vitro fertilization involves creating
a zygote outside the human body.
8. xeric—[B] dry. Trees from
England don’t tend to thrive in the
xeric climate of Arizona.
9. zoolatry—[B] worship of animals.
Meera teasingly accused her boyfriend
of zoolatry after watching him
fawn over his cat.
10. zymology—[C] science of
fermentation. Before refrigerators,
zymology offered a way to preserve
food and drink.
11. zealot—[C] extreme partisan.
Despite the similarities between the
two parties’ platforms, zealots on
both sides opposed a coalition.
12. xenial—[B] hospitable. The
mayor implored the suspicious
townspeople to adopt a more xenial
attitude towards tourists.
13. zonk—[A] stun, as with a blow.
Seeing that Batman was distracted
by an overturned school bus, the
Penguin snuck up and zonked him
with an umbrella.
14. Zoilus—[A] unnecessarily
harsh critic. Apart from a few predictably
scathing reviews from
known Zoiluses, Bahadur’s novel
was well-received.
15. xyloid—[C] woody. Harish’s
homemade wine had a xyloid taste
from the grape stems he had
forgotten to filter out.
VOCABULARY RATINGS
7–10: fair
11–12: good
13–15: excellent
160 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

Films
Entertainment
April isn’t the cruellest
month as far as films are
concerned at all—one we
can’t wait to see is the live
action/CGI adaptation of Rudyard
Kipling’s The Jungle Book with an
all-star cast that includes Bill
Murray, Idris Elba, Scarlett
Johansson, Lupita Nyong’o, Ben
Kingsley and Christopher Walken.
Also, TV comedy heroes Key and
Peele have made a film, Keanu,
which might be brilliant, given
the quality of their show. On the
OUR BEST PICKS OF THE MONTH
Movie
of the
Month
Bollywood front, the big April film is SRK’s Fan, which features the star in a
double role—as himself and as his own psychotic superfan.
Television
The show we’re most looking forward to in
April is another one starring a desi girl. No,
not Priyanka Chopra, who hopefully will
take some time off after winning hearts at
the Oscars, but Mindy Kaling, whose hit
show The Mindy Project is back after a
four-month hiatus for the second half of
Season 4. Also premiering in April is a new
season of The Odd Couple, starring (and
produced by) Matthew Perry from Friends,
along with comedian Thomas Lennon; the
show is an updated adaptation of a 1965
Neil Simon play.
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 161

ENTERTAINMENT
Sports
For cricket fans still fresh
from the excitement of the
World T20 tournament, the
ninth season of the IPL
kicks off on 9 April. But this
month has more in store
for other sports fans as
well—the Chinese F1
Grand Prix is on 17 April,
while the Champions
League quarters and semis
should give football fans
plenty to cheer about—the
first legs of semifinals will
take place on April 26-27.
The EPL’s FA Cup will also
be on in full steam.
BOOKS
A must-read this month is Sunil
Khilnani’s Incarnations, which explores
the lives of 50 remarkable Indians,
from the Buddha to Emperor Akbar, to
business tycoon Dhirubhai Ambani,
and how they’ve helped shape the
world’s largest democracy. Another
interesting book out this month is We
Indians by none other than Khushwant
Singh, who dissects different aspects
of the Indian character, from our
attitude towards sex and religion to
our views on corruption and the
English language.
LEFT: PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE; BELOW: INDIAPICTURE
162 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST

Studio
HAI ABHI KUCH AUR, FROM THE NIRANTAR SERIES,
BY S.H. RAZA,
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 100 X 100 CM, 2015
Legendary artist Syed Haider Raza’s oeuvre has been as fascinating as his
life. His childhood, spent amidst the lush forests of Madhya Pradesh, inspired
his expressionist landscapes. At 25, he co-founded the Bombay Progressive
Artists’ Group. In France, where he lived for years, he began to represent
French landscapes geometrically. Then came the pure geometric figures.
“The bindu is the best known mystical symbol that Raza invokes in his art,”
says poet, cultural theorist and curator Ranjit Hoskote. “It is the focal
universal source from which all energy radiates, and into which it is
absorbed, in cyclic rhythm. Raza’s paintings portray a universe born from the
tension between entropy and regeneration.” To celebrate Raza’s 94th
birthday in February, Mumbai’s Art Musings gallery released a book last
month. It chronicles his works with them since his return to India in 2011.
READER’S DIGEST | APRIL 2016 | 163

Quotable Quotes
…if a technology doesn’t
actually help us socially
understand each other
better, it isn’t going to
catch on and succeed.
MARK ZUCKERBERG,
entrepreneur
Universities
are the
laboratories
of thought.
SERGIUS STEPNIAK,
revolutionist an d
writer
Not sure which is harder on a relationship: sharing a dresser
for three years or sharing an iPhone charger for one day.
RHEA BUTCHER, comedian
Life is always going
to be stranger than
fiction, because
fiction has to be
convincing, and
life doesn’t.
NEIL GAIMAN, author
VISUALIZING...THINGS
ARE ALWAYS
CREATED TWICE.
FIRST IN THE
WORKSHOP OF THE
MIND AND THEN, ONLY
THEN, IN REALITY.
SHARMILA NICOLLET,
golfer
When is the best time to
start up? Yesterday!
But, today, is not too
bad a choice either!
ARUN MUTHUKUMAR, entrepreneur
THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN A
HERO AND A
COWARD IS ONE
STEP SIDEWAYS.
GENE HACKMAN,
actor
A soul that shines out of sheer simplicity is the one
everyone’s drawn to.
DIKSHA LALWANI, yoga teacher
INDIAPICTURE
164 | APRIL 2016 | READER’S DIGEST