Letters To The Editor

— Abhishek Law Kolkata

• If Darshan Desai is to be believed, all that went wrong with Gujarat in 2002 was because of Narendra Modi, and everything good that happened since (and the list in the article is unwittingly long) was in spite of the Gujarat chief minister. The article demonstrates — unintentionally, though — that prejudice is not uniquely a politician’s preserve.

— Ashish Bhat Mumbai

Road to good sense

• Why do Muslims resort to violence for every grievance? I remember that years ago when Al Aksa was damaged in Israel, Indians here were attacked. Now when an old dargah standing in the way of road development was removed, they resort to violence. Were not many mosques removed in Pakistan for road development? Even the mosque of Bilal, the direct disciple of Paigamabar was removed in Saudi Arabia for extension of the palace.

— B.V. Rao, Bangalore

Player unto team

• This is with reference to Harsha Bhogle’s ‘Genius is in a team empowered, not in dependence’ (IE, May 5). I agree with him. Games like cricket and football are team sports. Everybody has to perform well if the team has to win. I beg to differ with him on one point, though. I accept that a lot of hype is created around players, but it is this hype which helps in creating role models who inspire a whole new generation to take up the sport. It is because of a player like Sania that many girls wish to play tennis. It is because of Dhoni that young people from small cities dream of playing cricket for the country. Gone are the days when one player’s performance was necessary for the team to win in cricket. Now, even if Rahul or Sehwag does not play well, there are players like Dhoni, Pathan and Raina who can lead the team to victory. As for the hype, if a player does not perform well, there would be no hype at all.

— Jissy, Vadodara

Bollywood tunes out

• In the death of Naushad, the music industry has suffered an immense loss. Master of Indian classical music in Bollywood films is only Naushad. The soul of music is only Indian classical music, which Naushad brought into Bollywood film songs and even in background music. For a song he would create a number of tunes and then select the best of them. It is difficult to make a list of his best, but among the immortal ones a few would be: O door ke musafir (Mela), Madhuban mein radhika nache (Kohinoor), Huyen ham jinke liye barbad (Deedar), Aana hai to hai Bhagwan ke ghar der hai andher nahi (Amar), Jawan hai mohabbat (Anmol Ghadi), Suhani raat dhal chuki (Dulari), O duniya ke rakhwale (Baiju Bawara) and of course all the songs from Mughl-E-Azam.

— Mahesh Kapasi, New Delhi