Dotting the ‘i’

#1. The censor board, after consulting with its specially constituted panel, has decided to clear Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film — after the makers carry out 26 cuts. Oh, and change the name of the film from Padmavati to Padmavat.

Does it occur to you that as a nation, our collective “sensibility” is extremely fragile, and also extremely malleable? That these “sensibilities” are easily offended and as easily appeased? What is an ‘i’, more or less, among friends anyway?

Don’t imagine for a moment, though, that this is the last you are going to hear of a tiresome movie by a tiresomely pretentious film-maker — once the release date is set, now-dormant sensibilities in Rajasthan and elsewhere will be duly aroused again, and much ruckus will duly follow.

But what about…?

The Marans. The coal allocation scam. The spectrum scam. Robert Vadra and DLF. Most recently, Karthi Chidambaram.

On the other hand, Vyapam. Pankaja Munde’s chikki and biscuit scams. Raman Singh’s 36,000 crore PDS scam. More recently, a rice export scam. This report today about Anandiben’s daughters and land allocation.

And those are only the ones I recall off the top of my head.

BJP official calls Durga “sex worker”

No, honestly. See?

The irony: a video of the show, seen by The Indian Express, shows that those two words were read out by V V Rajesh, BJP state secretary, while quoting from pamphlets that he claimed were distributed on the JNU campus and later produced in Parliament by HRD Minister Smriti Irani.