Things turned upside down, And how...

A COW WAS NO LONGER JUST A COW The first few times it happened, there was shock and outrage — people beaten, killed, because they might have been transporting cows, even legally? By the end of the year, the mention of the word on a front page meant trouble. The gentle bovine had been turned into a tool for a deadly and divisive politics. Gau rakshaks were taking the law into their own hands with a sense of pride and entitlement. Dalits were threatening to leave carcasses on the street if they could not safely move them any more. Mainstream politicians were talking about funding cow-protectors with taxpayer money. People began to be sacrificed for the supposed good of the animal. TRIPLE TALAQ COULD NOT BE INSTANT From talaqs over phone to writing talaq in an email, the practice of instant triple talaq - where a man could say talaq thrice and end his marriage on the spot - was getting stranger by the day, forcing women to move court in 2016. And then in August this year, the SC braved opposition from a section of Muslims to ban instant triple talaq for being arbitrary and unconstitutional and not integral to Islam. Muslim men will now have to resort to only that system of talaq which is finalised over a period of three months. A Bill making instant triple talaq illegal and void and awarding a jail term for anyone resorting to it, was also introduced in the Parliament on December 28. THE CRICKET TEAM WAS NOT ONLY ABOUT MEN Remember the sexist quip by one of the male characters in Shah Rukh Khan’s 2007 blockbuster Chak De! India, where he insinuates that the hockey field is not meant for women n? Well, the situation was not vastly different for women’s crick ket in the country either. Cricket crazy as Indians are, not man y can sincerely claim to have sat through a women’s cricket match.m Before the 2017 Women’s Cricket World Cup, that is. Wh hile the women in blue did lose the finals to England, they man naged to win national adulation and ensure that cricket in Ind dia will never again be only about the men in blue. NEWTON WAS NOT ABOUT GRAVITY, BUT ABOUT THE OSCARS Isaac Newton was always the 17th century scientist who discovered gravity. But in 2017, for Indians , Newton meantt an acclaimed film, a dark comedy on the country’s election system. EEven bbeforef it got its glowing reviews here, the film had opened to a positive response in the international film festival circuit, including the Berlin Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival. The same day it released in theatres, Newton was announced as India’s entry to the Academy Awards in the foreign language category. The film did not make it to the shortlist, but director Amit Masurkar’s film is a reminder of the quiet revolution brewing in small-budget Hindi filmmaking in India. ARUNDHATI WAS A DISAPPOINTMENT, AND RUSHDIE’S DIDN’T EVEN MAKE A MARK Salman Rushdie won the Booker Prize in 1981 for Midnight’s Children. Arundhati Roy won the award in 1997 for The God of Small Things. Both writers had books out this year, but received a lukewarm response from readers and critics. Rushdie wrote The Golden House, whose main character, René, some critics found to be “tiresome” with his love of launching into lectures. Roy’s The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness, was awaited by fans for her style of breathless prose. While critics paid her a backhanded compliment for being able to package topics as diverse as Dalit politics, Kashmir and the issues of the eunuch community in a single work of fiction, readers may have found it all too much. The book, many say, is a showcase for her “concerns”. But “concerns” alone don’t make a novel or a good one.

SUU KYI FOUND HERSELF ONO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS DEBATE

TThehe year 2017 saw the clear fall from grace of one of the grreatest icons of democracy of our times. Aung San Suu Kyi’s non-nviolent protest against the military junta endeared heer to the democracy-loving West. But when reacting for thee first time to the Rohingya crisis in September, Suu Kyi told Turkey’sT President, Recep Tayyin Erdogan, that the situatioon was being distorted, it didn’t take long for the world to gasp in disbelief. The New York Times called her the “muuch-changed icon”, and in November, the city of Oxford strippped her of the Freedom of the City of Oxford award. It is todayy almost an irony that Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize foor her “struggle for democracy and human rights”. DHINCHAK POOJA B ECAME A CELEBRITY SINGER (WHO WOULD HAVE THOUG GHT?)

Wikipedia describes cringe pop as a genre of music in which the videos are so bad that people cannot stop watchingw them. Pooja Jain aka Dhinchak Pooja — the Delhi girll everyone woke up to this past year — may or may not be awware of this description, but it is likely she doesn’t care. Pooja is a star in her own right. The YouTube singer found herself crooning all the way to the Big Boss house. For those wondering how far being bizarrely bad at something could taake someone, Dhinchak Pooja was a case study. TWITTER BECAME LO ONG FORM

Wish you a very happy y and successful New Year 20 018. May God grant you health, wea lth and happiness and may all your dreams come true in the comin ng year…. In the past, trying to twe eet this would need some editing to keepk within Twitter’s character limi t, one of the key features of the mic cro-blogging site. But in November, TwitterT doubled its character li mit from 140 to 280. Comfortable. Bu ut let’s not make Twitter like other r social media sites with their neveren nding posts.

AARUSHI’S PARENTS WERE NOT IN JAIL, BUT RAM RAHIM WAS

In October, Nupur and Ra ajesh Talwar walked out of Ghaziabad’s Dasna jail after the e Allahabad High Court acquitted them in the double murder case of their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj. The case re emains one of the most sensational in the country. No one knows who killed Aarushi and Hemraj. Meanwhile, in August the CBI court in Panchkula convicted Dera Sacha Sauda chief anda self-styled Godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim for raping tw wo woman disciples. His supporters created mayhem in Har ryana, Punjab and Delhi, leaving 41 people dead. But one of f the strangest images of 2017 has to be that of the once-fla mboyant Dera chief in tears, begging for mercy.