Dead man talkingChief Justice HL Dattu surely would never have anticipated this bizarre moment in his career. Standing before the bench he was heading this Monday was 65-year-old Gulshan Kumar, the man declared dead by a judicial order nearly six years ago. Kumar beseeched his Lordship to take note that he was not dead!  “How can I be declared dead? Please have another judicial order declare me alive,” pleaded Kumar. The former Air India employee was a practicing advocate in the Supreme Court when a bench, in 2009, declared he was “no more.”  Initially taken aback by the dead-man-talking’ bombshell, Justice Dattu  recovering himself smilingly informed Kumar that the bench that declared him dead did not exist any longer. The judges on that bench have since retired. A jittery Kumar, however, insisted that the 2009 order be rescinded. Efficiency, clearly, is not one of the hallmarks of our judiciary.

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Rahul’s awe-and-shock showCongress vice president Rahul Gandhi has been a silent back-bencher for nearly the whole decade that he has been in Lok Sabha. Of course, silence did not relegate him into oblivion as it would have with any other member. Congress members prized him at all times. But Gandhi-watchers were in for shock and awe when he spoke loudly, aggressively — and more clearly than usual — for two days in succession. The first speech lasted 21 minutes, a marathon by his standards, and the other was less than five minutes. This amounted to two successive centuries in cricketing terms. It became clear that he would not deign to address anyone else in the government except Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, whom he attacked with left-handed compliments and faltering turns of phrase. Rahul’s surge of activity clearly stumped his critics who had written him off. Not to let down critics, he took a break from his strenuous labour and trekked to Kedarnath temple in Uttarakhand.

English in vernacular worldThe Marathi-speaking people have an edge over others in the country when it comes to proficiency in English. In the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), a way to measure listening, writing, reading and speaking skills, they have trounced the Bengalis, Malayalis and Tamilians and five other Indian languages-speaking people and come up trumps. This must have come as a rude shock, especially, to the Bengalis who once revelled in their reputation of being Anglophile — when the Thames appeared closer to their hearts than the Ganges. On a serious note, the British Council’s analysis of the IELTS scores should be a wake-up call for civic schools where English is accorded stepmotherly treatment. It’s a bogus argument that a vernacular medium student would find it difficult to cope if he/she is taught English alongside the mother tongue. Thanks to the shortsightedness of the erstwhile CPI(M)-led Left Front government in West Bengal, an entire generation studying in Bengali-medium schools in the Eighties had to suffer because of their rudimentary knowledge of English.