Seven Days

Delhi
Achtung Man

German ambassador Michael Steiner is a rockstar in the national capital. Seen at the right places, known for his parties, Steiner is also one to push the desi envel­ope, like co-hosting a Zubin Mehta concert in Srinagar or a yoga session by Baba Ramdev at his residence. His open letter rebuking Prof Annette Beck-Sic­kin­ger, chair of biochemistry at Lei­p­zig, for her gratuitous remark that she doesn’t accept “Indian male stud­e­nts” because of the “rape cult­ure  there” has been a brilliant diplomatic move at damage control.

Telangana
Royal Ripper

Accusing chief minister K. Chandras­ekhara Rao of behaving like some new age Nizam, the Opposition has hit out at him with a 10-feet-long ‘shahi firman’ (royal edict) tracking some 101 ‘major promises’ made by him before and after the creation of the state. It seems only three of them have come to fruition till now while 18 more have been partially honoured, claimed the ‘tracker’. Of the 80 left, the less said the better. The royal denial is awaited.

Maharashtra
Moo On

The Kerala-style ‘beef fry’ served at Sneha’s Restaurant at Mahim (Mum­bai) was adjudged the tastiest beef dish in Asia by a global network of food enthusiasts at a cerem­ony in Singapore. But the rec­o­g­nition arrived late, days after the restaurant was forced to take the dish off the menu following the ban on the slaughter of cows, bulls and bullocks. Now the million rupee question: will water buffaloes taste as well?

Karnataka
It’s Pouring

The month of March has seen more rain than ever before in the last 100 years (at least in north India), says the Met department. The unus­ual rain and snowfall in the higher reaches have made it a long, lingering winter even as state governments flag the destruction of crops. Indeed, the weather has even got people citing a Natio­nal Geographic report from a decade ago which had it that predicting the weather had become impossible with the flutter of a butterfly in China affecting tides on the western coast of the US. As if on cue, a report released this month by the Divecha Centre for Climate Change at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, holds that deforestation in Alaska, Canada and Russia is affecting the country’s monsoon.

Pune
Kickass Bhavani

Amidst all the women’s seminars, film shows, solidarity marches and exhibitions of self-defence classes (in pix, kung fu girls in Saidabad, Hyderabad), the mother of all self- defence weapons was unveiled by city orthopaedic surgeon Dr Pavan Kohli. Christened ‘Bhav­ani’, it’s a collapsible baton—a combination of a flick-knife, pepper spray, stun gun and panic button. Press of a button switches on a powerful strobe light to blind atta­ckers, ano­ther can spray pepper to immobil­ise 10 people while a third button emits a piercing siren. Mult­ipur­p­ose Bhav­ani weighs just 1.5 kg, is only 9” in length when contr­acted and can be carried in a bag like a water bottle. It uses a GPS system to send out location to pre-progra­mmed numbers. Kohli hopes to sell it at less than a thousand rupees.

Nagaland
Pinned Number

While politicians in the Northeast states are known to make money at prodigious rates, CM T.R. Zeilang must be the first to ask the RBI to inquire into documents, pro­duced by rebels from his own Naga People’s Front, that show a whopping `79 crore from a bank account bearing his name in Singapore transfer­red to accounts in HK and Malaysia. Zeilang denies the whole thing, and the ED is investigating if the account belongs to a namesake.

Tamil Nadu
Alphabet Soup

While the government is going ahead with its fancy ‘Digital India’ campaign and plans for financial inclusion, people in the countryside are at their wit’s end deciphering the text messages (in English) they are getting on their mobile phones from oil companies, banks and LPG dealers. Every such message makes them scurry for people who know English and can explain it, one of the complexities of multi-lingual India that Digital India will surely have to overcome.