EDITORIAL : THE HINDU, INDIA

The hunted turns hunter

For an opposition party, the Congress is in a strange situation in Kerala: the party is more on the defensive than on the attack. After five years in power, the Left Democratic Front led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has effectively revived memories of corruption scams and sex scandals of the previous Congress-led United Democratic Front. A former Minister of the UDF, R. Balakrishna Pillai of the Kerala Congress (B), is in jail after being sentenced by the Supreme Court to a year's rigorous imprisonment in the Idamalayar hydel project corruption case. Mr. Pillai was felled by a sustained political campaign and legal battle waged by CPI(M) leader and Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan — who is now using the success in court to great advantage in the electoral arena. Another former Minister of the UDF, P.K. Kunhalikutty, the general secretary of the Indian Union Muslim League, is facing fresh allegations in the ice cream parlour sex scandal. Moreover, the Congress is having a tough time fending off charges of corruption directed at the United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre. Thus what looked like a one-horse race in October 2010, when the UDF decisively won the local body polls at every tier, is now developing into a keen contest.

However, the LDF faces the challenge of fighting off the anti-incumbency factor and voter fatigue. After 1977, when the Congress was voted back to power, Kerala voters have never given a combine two consecutive terms in office. There is still a substantial gap for the LDF to bridge, and to do this Mr. Achuthanandan and the CPI(M) will need to sustain the newly gained momentum till the very end. The UDF is trying to position itself as pro-development, a euphemism for pro-industry, in an attempt to take up the space provided by the pro-labour policies of the LDF government. But the Cabinet approval for the agreement on the revival of the much-delayed SmartCity Project in Kochi in February this year might blunt criticism on this score. Another concern for the CPI(M) is the factionalism involving State party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan and the Chief Minister; the LDF will be hoping the bad blood at the top will not seep down to the cadre level. Mr. Achuthanandan was given the ticket only at the intervention of the party's Polit Bureau. Whether he can work up a groundswell of support, as he did in 2006 when he was similarly nominated after being denied the ticket, remains to be seen. What is likely is that after two one-sided contests in 2001 (when the UDF won 99 of the 140 seats) and 2006 (when the LDF took 99) in a State where ideology and policies matter, 2011 will witness a close finish. 

Liz Taylor: art and allure

Ask young people what they remember of Elizabeth Taylor and the answer is likely to be in the form of a furrowed brow. But there is little doubt they would have heard of her. That is how she left us, more a creature of the public consciousness than a prisoner of the pictures. As the stormy spouse of Richard Burton (and six others), she came to embody the romantic pursuit of lifelong love. As an AIDS activist, at a time few people were fully aware of the disease and fewer still wanted to be tainted with its homosexual associations, she came to represent strength and courage. As an outspoken critic of former U.S. President George W. Bush's handling of the Iraq war — in protest, she declined to attend the 75th Annual Academy Awards — she revealed a hitherto unsuspected political side. As gossip fodder, she, with her reckless lifestyle, spilling over with yachts and diamonds, virtually birthed the tabloid frenzy that envelops stars today. And as a world-class beauty, her name came to stand for physical perfection, even to those who had never seen a film of hers. It's a pity that these associations today have overshadowed what she was foremost — a wonderful actress, winner of two Oscars, co-star to giants such as Spencer Tracy, Richard Burton, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Montgomery Clift, and James Dean.

Taylor's cinematic career effectively ended when she won her second Oscar for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, in which she played a blowsy harridan opposite Burton. She was terrifyingly convincing as a wife on the brink of a marriage breakdown and a woman at the edge of sanity. But the public seemed less interested in her interpretation of Edward Albee's scabrous dialogue than in her intimacies with her co-star and real-life husband. Were Liz and Dick simply performing their parts, or were they making thinly disguised art of their real lives? This voyeuristic cloud completely eclipsed what was — and still is — a chillingly splendid portrait of the mysteries of marriage. Thereafter, Taylor's films (many of them with Burton) were mostly much less memorable, and her fame came less from being a star on the screen and more from being a regular in the tabloid press. For her greatest screen roles, we must look much earlier — he luminous child-aspirant of National Velvet; the pampered socialite of A Place in the Sun; the generations-spanning matriarch of Giant; the tempestuous empress in Cleopatra; and the wide-eyed manipulator of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, where she is breathtakingly beautiful, the very embodiment of temptation that Tennessee Williams dangled, like a ripe fruit, in front of his physically crippled hero. Few actresses have combined art and allure with such effortlessness.