Poetic Justice
Take your freedom from the cage you are in; Till the trial is over, the state is reigned in.” Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat said in his lyrical order, summarising in verses the reasons for granting bail to Babu, a suspect held in a case related to communal violence in northeast Delhi in February. “The State proclaims; to have the cake and eat it too; The Court comes calling; before the cake is eaten, bake it too,” the judge wrote. Communal violence broke out in northeast Delhi after clashes between citizenship law supporters and protestors spiralled out of control, leaving at least 53 people dead and around 200 wounded.
Flying Granny
Dukmit Lepcha, an octogenarian grandmother of three has become the oldest paraglider in Sikkim. The 82-year-old took to the skies on October 28 from a paragliding point near Aangi monastery, 20 km from Gangtok. The grandma, who went scuba diving off the Andaman coast in 2016, said she enjoyed it and wasn’t afraid, but her granddaughter, who is 17 and went before her, was scared. She flew for nearly six minutes at an elevation of about 4,500 feet as her family, onlookers and members of the Paragliding Association of Sikkim cheered on. Her next plan is cycling.
Spelling Devil
There’s a devil in the text and it landed Ram Pratap Singh of Hardoi in UP in jail. Singh had allegedly kidnapped an eight-year-old boy on October 26 and murdered him later. That day, he sent a text message to the boy’s father through a stolen phone to demand Rs 2 lakh for his release. He wrote: “Do lakh rupay Seeta-Pur lekar pahuchiye. Pulish ko nahi batana nahi to hatya kar denge (Reach Sitapur with Rs 2 lakh. Don’t inform police or your son will be murdered).” Police picked up 10 suspects, including Singh, and told all them to write: “Main police main bharti hona chahta hoon. Main Hardoi se Sitapur daud kar ja sakta hoon (I want a police job. I can run from Hardoi to Sitapur).” Singh spelt police as ‘pulish’ and Sitapur as ‘Seeta-Pur’—like he did in the ransom message. He confessed to the crime.
Transgender Madrasa
A madrasa has opened in Dhaka for transgender people—a first-of-its-kind in Bangladesh, where the government passed a policy recognising the LGBTQ community as of the “third gender” in 2013. The country’s election commission allowed registration of transgender people as “third gender” voters the following year. There are about 1.5 million transgender people in Bangladesh. More than 100 students of any age can study in the Dawatul Quran Third Gender Madrasa on a 1,200 square-feet second floor of a three-storey building at Lohar Bridge Dhal in Kamrangirchar. At the inauguration, 40 transgender people enrolled.
The Crooked Word
The Adani Group has unveiled its new name as Bravus Mining and Resources in Australia—believing ‘bravus’ was Latin for ‘brave’. The company said the word meant ‘courageous’ and denied the name change has anything to do with the negativity associated with Adani in Australia. Academics have pointed out that ‘Bravus’ has a darker meaning, closely relating to “villainous”, “crooked” and “deformed”. It would have to be something like “fortis”, for brave, if you are going for your classical. Bravus was related to the medieval, Latin word “bravo” that meant a “mercenary” or “assassin”. The word could be derived from “pravus”, which means depraved or crooked, as well as the Latin word “barbarus”, meaning barbaric.
Brevis
Illustrations:Ssaahil, Text curated by Alka Gupta
