NL Hafta

Samar Khan and Rahul Puri are back with their weekly roundup of sports. They share their views on the legacy left behind by Arsene Wenger, Gautam Gambhir stepping down from captaincy, the rediscovery of MS Dhoni and more.On Arsene Wenger, Rahul says: “I think he is the last of the managers that you will see have a role like that. That's for the clubs today, they limit the managers' authority.” Adding to it, Samar feels, “It's a lot to do with the new owners. People who are coming with new money, they need far more control.”On the ownership model, Samar points out that previously people who had a passion for football owned clubs. In agreement, Rahul says now they are just corporations.Furthermore, Rahul calls Wenger a "complete control freak" and that he had so much power at Arsenal, the only way in which he would leave was by somebody taking a harsh call. Samar recalls the famous Wenger and Alex Ferguson rivalry.Rahul mentions that Manchester United fans are struggling with the fact that Ferguson is no more the manager. Talking about instant success, Samar points out that it has been a while since Liverpool tasted instant success. Rahul appreciates the kind of football being played by Liverpool.The duo then discusses the ongoing Indian Premier League. On Gautam Gambhir stepping down as the captain of Delhi Daredevils, Samar calls it "pretty much the end of the road for him."Regarding the CSK versus RCB match, Samar says, “At 36 or 37, Dhoni has rediscovered his form.” To which, Rahul calls Dhoni a “phenomenal finisher of a match.” He adds that Dhoni might not be a consistent player, but “if he scores 10 runs in one over, he is capable of getting 30 in the other over.”Apart from Dhoni, the duo feels Ashwin is another one to surprise with his captaincy skills in the Punjab team. One interesting fact that they notice is that in this IPL season, young Indian boys and lesser-known names are doing well.All this and more on this week’s podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Awful and Awesome this week, Abhinandan and Rajyasree are joined by our very own Deepanjana Pal (DJ). This time, she's back as a guest to talk about her first novel Hush a Bye Baby, a thriller about a gynaecologist, Dr Nandita Rai, who is accused of conducting sex-selective abortions.Sekhri and Sen question DJ about her choice of genre. In response to which, Pal says, “So, at a very basic level, I think it’s fair to say that Hush a Bye Baby is kind of in the middle of many genres. It is a thriller, I hope. But it is also a social drama like you’re describing. It does have a lot to do with the society in which all of this is taking place. It isn’t a conventional murder mystery which is what most thrillers tend to be. There are no dead bodies in this. In many ways, it’s a little bit of a cross-genre kind of a thing.”After having discussed the novel extensively, and DJ’s view on abortions and a woman’s autonomy over her own body, Sekhri and Sen move on to discuss the bizarre, shocking, and extremely disappointing comments made by Bollywood celebrities on rapes in India.The greatest superstar of the country, Amitabh Bachchan, also the brand ambassador of ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’, when asked to comment on the Kathua rape case, said: “‘Don’t bring up this issue, it is terrible to even talk about it.”While it is a disgusting incident, that doesn’t mean you don’t comment on it. As Sekhri commented: “He is a superstar and we respect him but he is like every other uncle.”Next in line is Saroj Khan, who had something to say about the existence of the casting couch in the industry: “Tum film industry ke peeche kyu pade ho. Woh kamse kam roti toh dedeti hai. Rape karke chorh toh nai deti”. To Sen, the justification that she is making is hardly some salvation.While Bachchan’s and Saroj Khan’s old age can be held up as an excuse for making such statements, what reason does Ranbir Kapoor have? Speaking about the casting couch, the Rockstar actor said: "I don’t know if it exists. I have never been expected to do it” and then laughed!Sen had a very obvious remark to make to that, “For everyone who comes from a level of privilege in their sphere of life, to say I’ve never seen this deprivation is ridiculous.”Moving on, the duo discusses the teaser of Ranbir Kapoor-starrer Sanju, produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and directed by Rajkumar Hirani. Both are highly impressed by the actor’s uncanny resemblance to Sanjay Dutt, but the teaser fails to make a mark on them.According to Sen, “I didn’t think much of the teaser. I thought it was a bit farcical. Like they had just slapped it together. And for some reason, I got the feeling that it was making a hero out of Sanjay Dutt’s stupidities. Because I do think he’s a silly man. He came from the lap of privilege and went wayward. That has been made into a virtue.”Sekhri, however, is less harsh in his opinion on the teaser, “What they’ve attempted is very clever. His life is more tragic than comic. But rather than make the trailer tragic, they attempted to make it almost farcical. I don’t think it works. But it was a clever thing to have tried.”Next, the new Durex Kohinoor Meetha Pan condom ad is reviewed. For Sekhri, the ad is "wrong in all sorts of ways". He also adds, “Ever since Pooja Bedi’s Kamasutra ad, nobody has come up with a classy condom ad. All condom ads have been sleazy.”Talking of advertisements, the next topic of discussion is a print ad commissioned by the ministry of health, to promote healthy eating and being slim. But of course, it’s only directed at women. No surprises there.Sekhri brings out the fallacies that this ad, which shows two women of different sizes, displays. Lastly, Sen talks about an Amazon original that she watched, written and acted in by Sumukhi Suresh, called ‘Pushpavalli’. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this podcast of Reporters Without Orders, we have Ramnath Goenka award-winner Rahul Kotiyal joining the panel. Currently a freelancer, he has earlier been with Scroll.in's Hindi website Satyagraha and Tehelka. The panel discusses the issues of death penalty, the Dainik Jagran article on Kathua rape, Judge Loya verdict and more.Rahul describes the story that won him the Ramnath Goenka award for Hindi reporting under the print category. “It was a two-part series on organisations in north India that are running an anti-jihad campaign called Beti Bachao, Bahu Lao. This campaign stops girls from having an inter-caste marriage. I reported this from Dehradun,” he says.Nidhi Suresh, our in-house reporter on the ground in Kashmir, elaborates on her story about a 16-year-old minor girl from Kulgam who went missing and the chargesheet was filed a few days ago. Disappointed by the preliminary chargesheet, she says, “The girl said she was drugged. To establish that, they should have conducted a medical examination. It has to be done within 24 hours.”Abhinandan feels that the whole excitement about the death penalty for child rapists is “such a dumb celebration by dumb people for dumb policy and intervention by dumb policymakers.”Amit adds that the incidents that were in the news last week deserved to be covered. They include the sacking of Atishi Marlena, Judge Loya verdict and the impeachment process. On the other hand, “Swati Maliwal’s indefinite hunger strike was not covered by the mainstream media,” he says.On the issue of death penalty, Rahul points out that the media didn't take it the way it should have been taken. It took it as a welcome step. “It was brought in as an ordinance but an ordinance should come in emergency situations; this will bring a regressive change in our legal system.”Furthermore, he discusses that the Dainik Jagran front page article was a culmination of baseless allegations. The article claimed that the Kathua rape never happened. No evidence substantiated the claim. “They claim there were two post-mortem reports but they haven’t presented the reports anywhere. The major and only difference they found is that one had seven injuries and the other one six injuries.”Nidhi calls this as “reflective of our lack of understanding of rape.”The Loya case, Abhinandan believes, deserved more coverage. He points out that the reporting wasn’t dissecting the judgment page-by-page. “On one hand in the same order, they said a judge cannot lie. On the other hand in the same report, there is another judge who says the ECG machine was not working, so he was mistaken.”In the case of death penalty, Rohin argues that when the state cannot give life, how can it take life away? “Nobody is a rapist by birth. Social conditioning contributes to it largely. Even if you give death penalty to the rapist, whom will you blame for social conditioning?” he questions.He further points out that in remote areas, organisations such as Newslaundry, Boom Live, Alt News find it difficult to reach the masses. Hence, publications such as Dainik Jagran circulated a narrative in those areas. Now they feel people are unnecessarily blaming Modi in the Kathua case.While working on the Kulgam case, Nidhi shares that she was disappointed to see that there is interest in the case as long as there is a politician involved. “Let’s face it, Kathua caught fire only because two BJP leaders were involved.”Abhinandan adds: “From the news point of view, there are certain mechanisms that are outcomes of civilisation, governance, democracy, bureaucracy. When that process becomes a perpetrator of the crime, from a macro point of view, it is a failure of the system as opposed to a crime which like Anand Vardhan once said is ‘the banality of crime’.”All this and more on this week’s podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

सुप्रीम कोर्ट के चीफ जस्टिस दीपक मिश्रा के खिलाफ सात विपक्षी दलों द्वारा महाभियोग लाने का प्रस्ताव, जज लोया की संदिग्ध मौत की जांच की मांग वाली याचिकाओं को सुप्रीम कोर्ट द्वारा खारिज किया जाना, प्रधानमंत्री का विदेश दौरा और वेस्टमिंस्टर सेंट्रल हॉल में उनका साक्षात्कार और मक्का मस्जिद केस के आरोपी असीमानंद समेत सभी आरोपियों को कोर्ट द्वारा बरी किया जाना इस हफ्ते न्यूज़लॉन्ड्री चर्चा के प्रमुख विषय रहे.चर्चा में शामिल रहे ओपिनियन राइटर आनंद वर्धन, कैच न्यूज़ के असिस्टेंट एडिटर चारू कार्तिकेय और संवाददाता अमित भारद्वाज. चर्चा का संचालन न्यूज़लॉन्ड्री के कार्यकारी संपादक अतुल चौरसिया ने किया. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s NL Hafta brings together our in-house team of Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Raman Kirpal along with Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, Associate Editor, Scroll. The panel discussed a range of issues -- the Supreme Court calling the public interest litigation for an independent investigation to Justice Loya’s death ‘frivolous’, the continuing outrage over the Kathua case, the Mecca Masjid blast verdict and a lot more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A snippet of NL Hafta for non-subscribers.NL Hafta has gone behind the paywall, but we love our listeners. So, here's a little sneak peek of the complete episode where our in-house team of Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Raman Kirpal is joined by Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, Associate Editor, Scroll. The panel discussed a range of issues -- the Supreme Court calling the public interest litigation for an independent investigation to Justice Loya’s death ‘frivolous’, the continuing outrage over the Kathua case, the Mecca Masjid blast verdict and a lot more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Samar Khan and Rahul Puri are back this week with their latest round-up of sports. And they have a lot in store -- Manchester City winning the Premier League, Indian Premier League (and Virat Kohli’s fate), the Formula One races and more.For Puri, Manchester City’s win was something that was just bound to happen sometime, and the title was, indeed, well deserved. The part that money might have had a play in giving the team an upper hand is undeniable, but both agree that money cannot be enough. The problems, however, that the money factor brings into the game are pointed out by Puri when he says, “What worries me about this money thing is that it won't surprise me at all if all these teams including Liverpool, increase their squads. And I don’t think that is good for football -- that all the elite players should congregate at just a few clubs. That’s not how the English game has ever been.”Regardless, whether Manchester City will be able to retain the title was a question both Khan and Puri seemed to have answered in the negative. Puri says, “Winning back-to-back titles in England is not a joke. And nobody’s won back to back since ten years.”Moving on, the duo discusses IPL and Royal Challengers Bangalore’s unwise decisions in the game. As Khan says, “Virat Kohli and the IPL just do not seem to get together. He makes unquestionable decisions about team selection. Bangalore has always struggled with the bowling attack. It just seems to be like a jinx that Kohli cannot get together for the IPL.” Partially agreeing with this view, Puri adds, “But I think that we all need to understand that IPLs and tournaments like IPL, you cannot win with two men. You need a team. Bangalore’s problem throughout is that it is not about teams.”What is it about, then? For Khan, it is more about ‘big flashy individuals.'Further, about the IPL, Khan and Puri make it a point to give a special mention to Kolkata Knight Riders -- the team that is pretty much coming together. It has Andre Russell, after all, who Khan likes to call a ‘butcher’, and Puri calls him a ‘weightlifter’. Two teams they are worried about are Delhi Daredevils and RCB. All in all, both foresee an interesting IPL season, considering they still don’t have favourites.The last topic of discussion was the Formula One races and Lewis Hamilton’s defeats. But both agree how Hamilton does not give up, and that it will be interesting to have Formula One competitive again.Tune into #JustSports for all this and much more! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Awful and Awesome is back this week to give you a dose of the latest pop cultural updates. Rajyasree and Abhinandan take you through three Hollywood trailers, two films (A Quiet Place and October), the National Awards and Beyonce’s performance at Coachella.Starting with ‘A Quiet Place’, the duo believed it wasn’t half as good as the trailer promised. Regardless, both Sen and Sekhri did appreciate the skill required to direct and act in a horror film with minimum dialogue. Abhinandan says, “I won’t say I hated it but when you take up such a difficult job, you have got to be super brilliant to pull it off.”Then we have Sen reviewing Shoojit Sircar’s ‘October’ alone because Abhinandan has pledged to not watch a Varun Dhawan film again (the last Dhawan film he watched was ‘Judwaa 2’, that must explain it). Sircar’s direction and Juhi Chaturvedi’s writing is back after Piku in this film. Dhawan plays a grumpy and disgruntled hotel trainee, Dan. When one of his fellow trainees goes into a coma after an accident, he suddenly finds a purpose in life. Sen finds it difficult to relate to this unusual obsession but liked the way Sircar portrays Delhi. Commenting on Varun’s acting, she says, “He has acted better than he has acted before.”Rajyasree and Abhinandan also discuss the National awards, which started off with understandable awardees such as Newton for best Hindi film and Baahubali for best action, direction and special effect. But Sridevi getting the best actor female award for Mom, according to the two, reeked of sentimentality.Moving on, both our reviewers were highly impressed with the trailers of ‘The Wife’ starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce, and ‘Can you ever forgive me?’ starring Melissa McCarthy and Richard E Grant. For the former, Sekhri says, “It is one of the most compelling trailers I have seen in a long time. Think it is going to be great. I hope it is not like ‘A Quiet Place’ where the trailer was 20,000 times better than the film.”However, the two were quite unhappy with the trailer of ‘Solo’, next in the series of Star Wars. A new Star Wars film every year is a ‘money-making machine for Disney’, feels Sekhri.Sen then discusses Beyonce's performance at Coachella and how this was the first time since 1999 that a black woman had headlined the fest. But that wasn’t the only reason why Coachella was making news. Philip Anschutz, the owner of Coachella’s parent company, is, in fact, a Republican donor and a huge supporter of anti-LGBT groups. Which has been all over the news lately. Regardless, Beyonce’s two-hour-long power-packed performance, in which she went through five outfit changes (and also nail polish changes), was definitely worth a watch.Listen up now for all this and more at The Awful and Awesome, and as Sen rightly said, “Pay for free news and better jokes”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this podcast of Reporters Without Orders, we have a surprise guest joining the panel. A reporter from The Quint, Meghnad Bose, joins the panel to discuss the Kathua rape case, fire at a Rohingya refugee camp, Rahul Gandhi’s midnight march and more.Meghnad tells us about the story that he broke on CBSE class 12 exams wherein the marks were being unfairly moderated. “A data scientist had observed a very odd marking pattern that an unbelievably high number of students in CBSE were getting the number 95." The numbers like 91, 92, 93 and 94 were obtained by 60-70k people and 195k people got the number 95. We realised that CBSE adopts a moronic system, Meghnad tells the panel.Cherry talks about an article published by The Sunday Guardian, authored by Sushil Pandit. She says that the article should not have been published. “The editor is still defending the piece stating that it is the reporter’s right to write fiction and once you have given a disclaimer [that the story is a concotion] it's okay." But what the piece is doing, in reality, is using actual facts, actual events of an eight-year-old Kathua girl’s rape and murder to delegitimise an entire sequence of events, Cherry says.Abhinandan adds, “Some people are saying it's a satire. I don't see the satirical bit in it.”Cherry also spoke about that the fire at the Rohingya refugee camp where 50 shanties were burnt down. She says while it was reported upon, it did not get wall-to-wall coverage.Rohin, who covered this incident says, “People couldn't decide whether somebody started the fire or it happened on its own. As per the police, it could have been due to a short circuit but people are saying they don't have such wires that could lead to a short-circuit. Their Burmese IDs and refugee cards from the UN were burnt down, technically they are illegal now.”Talking about propaganda related to the Kathua case, Rohin says that it is very insensitive of people to raise questions like -- how come the girl was wearing the same clothes in pictures released before and after the death? Did she have only one set of clothes?Meghnad feels that despite Kathua and Unnao cases receiving wall-to-wall coverage, the questions related to political leadership have not been asked.He tells the panel more about a documentary that he made on rape culture in Haryana. He wanted to investigate why so many rapes happen. “Societal attitudes are so intensely patriarchal that it creates conditions where sexual assault against women is normalised, legitimised and justified.”He feels that the electoral bonds that were told to be anonymous by the government did not get enough coverage. “You have gone to the extent of putting numbers there but people can't see on the face of it. I am surprised that no one picked it up.”The panel discusses the midnight march by Congress President Rahul Gandhi. Amit calls it a “spontaneous” decision because around 9 pm, Rahul Gandhi tweeted that he will take out a march at the India Gate. Amit spoke to some members of the Congress party, who told him that they were informed about the march in the afternoon. He goes on to say that various TV channels and news portals covered it, but there was no reportage in the newspapers.Cherry says that the crime should be talked about and not just the protest. “I don't think it is right to use a protest which is now turning into a brand to peddle your own agenda even if subtle. It is absolutely necessary to talk about that heinous crime that was perpetrated when we talk about rape."To which Abhinandan adds, “There are certain tipping points and that tipping point is usually an incident or a specific event. "It's like the biggest problem that we had with the British was imposing a tax on salt but you can use that as a hinge to set off a bigger protest.”To read more visit: https://bit.ly/2qIvoao Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

जम्मू-कश्मीर कठुआ और यूपी के उन्नाव में बलात्कार की घटना और आरोपियों को सत्ता का संरक्षण, पश्चिम बंगाल में पंचायत चुनावों के स्थगित किए जाने की मांग को लेकर हिंसा, राहुल गांधी और प्रधानमंत्री का उपवास, डेटा लीक के मामले में फेसबुक मखिया मार्क जुकरबर्ग की कांग्रेस में पेशी, कुमार विश्वास को आम आदमी पार्टी के राजस्थान प्रभारी से हटाया जाना व अन्य मुद्दे इस हफ्ते न्यूज़लॉन्ड्री चर्चा के प्रमुख विषय रहे.चर्चा में शामिल रहे वरिष्ठ पत्रकार जितेन्द्र कुमार, न्यूज़ नेशन के अभिषेक पराशर और न्यूज़लॉन्ड्री संवाददाता अमित भारद्वाज. चर्चा का संचालन किया न्यूज़लॉन्ड्री के कार्यकारी संपादक अतुल चौरसिया ने. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.