Sonya Dutta Choudhury

Atul Kasbekar - Photographer and now Celebrity Manager

2010-11-03T06:12:00.000-07:00

Meeting Atul Kasbekar was definitely the highlight of this feature on Celebrity Managers ! Quite the celebrity himself, as he walks into a coffee shop in Bandra, wearing a grey Abercrombie Tshirt and trousers. He lays his glares on the table, puts down his two phones, a Nokia and a Blackberry with a secret number, known only to 10-12 people. Sorry he’s late he says, the meeting with Deepika Padukone, took longer than he thought.
This chemical engineer turned ace fashion photographer, and now celebrity manager as well, is easily as charming as the stars and celebrities he represents. It’s been 20 years since he began fashion photography, shooting the likes of Sheetal Malhar and Yana Gupta, John Abraham and Katrina Kaif, creating Bollywood super stars and celebrity super models. Today he runs Bling, an entertainment company that represent s many of these models and stars, and a few sportsmen as well.

HOW HE CAME TO IT: As a photographer, Kasbekar sorely missed an agent figure who would step in to cover all the marketing and commercial aspects of a deal, so he could concentrate on the photography.” I think I've done alright for myself as a photographer I’m not complaining but I know I could have done 4-5 times better if I had an agent. So at Bling my job is to do what I wish I had as a creative person . No creative person should be negotiating their own deals, you’re a lousy negotiator for yourself, whoever you are.”

ONE DEAL TO REMEMBER: Creating a distinctive brand for actress Sonam Kapoor. This was post the film ‘Saawariya’. When Kapoor signed on with Bling, she was perceived as very Indian looking, “almost rustic”. The truth couldn’t be further, says Kasbekar. “She is actually 5 10 , 11, fabulous looking, great body, extremely pedigreed, incredibly read don’t know too many people who are better read- and probably has the most innate sense of fashion that I’ve seen. Izct’s not a stylist dressing her, it’s her. We just started to showcase that- next thing she was on magazine cover after magazine cover etc- within a year and half she is on every best dressed list justifiably so. So this is what we do and this is what we do really well”

SPORTS AS PART OF CELEBRITY: Bling handles Jonty Rhodes as well as Zaheer Khan. But sportsmen come with their own set of challenges. “Too many of them act like tomorrow is quicker than you thought and they want to make as much as they can right now. So building a brand becomes difficult, Kasbekar explains. With a minimum guarantee, you can’t say no to any endorsement, no matter what it is. Otherwise if say a ceiling fan offer came I would decline it and I would tell you by the way ceiling fan came its not something we should do- its not our fit, and there are some digestive pills which have come as well and there’s an underwear campaign which at this stage in your career you definitely shouldn’t be doing we’re saying no to that as well”. Instead many sportsmen end up doing way too many endorsements.

TYPICAL DAY (YESTERDAY) : I have twins a boy and a girl it was their 14th their birthday yesterday – so I said bye to them in the morning met my trainer worked out. At 10 am, I had a 2 hour meeting with some people who wanted to talk about a joint venture with my company. From there I rushed to Sonam Kapoor’s house for a meeting. From there, there was a meeting at Shahid Kapoor’s house. Sahil Shroff who is one of our clients, had a meeting with us after that on a movie he’s doing and 2 other projects which have come up where dates are clashing . Through that throughout that we wangled one of our girls who is in the fashion week to do an item no with Sanjay Dutt ,so we are trying to work that out, with various phone calls and a quick meeting on my way home. I reached home at 6.30 -7 . My son Arnan had recorded some Arsenal goals ( form the Champions league soccer) So we watched that and then went out to dinner.

WHAT IT TAKES TO SUCCEED IN THIS BUSINESS: it s a lot of hard work people. Keep your phone on at all times. Not reaching your agent is death- this is the core in Hollywood

BIGGEST CHALLENGE Being able to say it like it is .”It’s a dangerous business of expectation management if I paint a rosy picture for a star which is unrealistic- the only person who is going to suffer is me.”
“filmi people play stupid games I’d like to think that don’t wear a mask- what you see its is pretty much what you get- even with our stars I will respectfully but firmly tell them when I think there is something wrong- somebody was harrowing me we haven’t cracked x no of deals like we were supposed to and I was like x no of projects you’ve done – there has not even been one which has had a sort of luke warm reception at the box office what do you want me to do ?"

WHAT I LOVE: Being able to build a person as a brand “ I find the whole process incredibly intriguing and fascinating that eventually how many layers and facets you add and all of a sudden the net worth and the value of that person becomes something
,

WHAT I WOULD CHANGE : You know I wish what happens with people who are important or famous is that when they need something now they need something now – very few of them will say 2 in the morning maybe I shouldn’t call now or its 2 in the afternoon where I am in new York clearly it will be daylight every else on the planet - it happens to me all the time

MONEY It all depends on the stars and celebrities you have. You normally make margins of 10-15% on stars and anywhere between 20-30% on models and lesser known stars.

To read full feature in Mint go to http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2010/10/10202944/Jerry-Maguire-anyone.html

Gettting together for a run

2009-12-15T00:17:00.000-08:00

Running long distance can be a lonely business. But if you thrive on camaraderie and competition, then joining a runners group could be the thing that will motivate you to take part in a marathon.

“You’re more likely to get out of bed and go running if you know there’s a group...waiting for you,” says Arvind Krishnan, CEO, Runners For Life (RFL), a running group that began six years ago in Bangalore.

Many runners would agree. “It’s really fun because you start off with a group, but you can choose your own distance,” says Purvi Sheth, vice-president at Shilputsi Consultants. Sheth, who is part of Savio D’Souza’s group at the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai, says her group has runners who run at different speeds. But they all start together. And when they finish, they do their stretches and cool-down exercises together as well.

Sheth began running a year and a half ago. She says she is one of the slower ones in her group. “But everybody eggs you on; when you feel like you’re dying and like you’re going to stop, somebody will cheer you on, they’ll slow down and run with you.”

Plus, here’s where the difference in solitary stretches and doing a group exercise comes in. “They’re (the latter) just that much more scientific,” says Mahesh Srinivasan, vice-president, ABN Amro Global Markets, who used to run alone for some years before he came acrossTopGearMIG, a volunteer-driven running group based in east Bandra, Mumbai. “Previously I couldn’t run for two days after my long run,” he says. “Now I can and my timing and my distances have improved tremendously.”

Group advantages

Motivation and friendly competition apart, there’s also the logistics of the run. “Somebody has to organize the route, the water and refreshment stations for a long run,” says Tanvir Kazmi, founder of Delhi Runners. Kazmi, who organizes monthly half marathons in Delhi, tries to pick varied routes and involve different groups of runners as volunteers. TopGearMIG sends out a mail every week to members with timings, route details on Google pedometer, and also interesting options for where to have breakfast after the run.

Being part of a group also ensures lots of bonhomie and scores of stories to be swapped between the members. “There are not too many people who understand runners, why they need to go to bed at 10.30pm, why they will not go out Saturdays nights (because they have the long run on Sunday),” says Sheth. So it helps to be a part of a group that understands you. Runners are constantly exchanging notes: what to do for that troublesome knee or where to get a good pair of shoes. Some groups have online discussion sites, with forums discussing where to get good reasonably priced whey protein, etc.

Also, joining in on group activities is a flexible option. At TopGearMIG, not all members join in for the after-run breakfast, which is sometimes at Leopold Cafe, sometimes at the Parsi Gymkhana or elsewhere. Srinivasan is one of those members who misses the group breakfast. But like everyone else, he takes along with him food that the group shares: “I carry bananas or dates or stuff that can be consumed on the run,” he says.

Suddenly, that long run doesn’t seem so lonely any more.

This feature appeared in Mint 15th December 2009

In Search of the Perfect Library

2009-11-25T00:39:00.000-08:00

Dip into the voluminous heaven that is the American Public Library system, and you will be hooked forever. I certainly was. The malls may have been magnificent, but it was the libraries with their kiddie sections that saved the days, days I must add of diapers and dishes and of no domestic help. What delight then to dash into the library and deposit my daughters in the children’s section. Here where low lying shelves crammed with books were set amidst chairs, they picked up their favorite Barney and Big Bird cushions and settled down with piles of picture books and giant jigsaw puzzles. Leaving me free to scour the stacks nearby. All too often though, I’d double back, gazing at the rows and rows of older children’s fiction, dipping into all the Judy Blume’s and Madeleine L’Engle’s I missed in my small town childhood days.
And then the Sales. What Sales! Doors open, and we’d be there, our exchange rate disadvantaged brains delirious at the prospect of books for free. Well, maybe not free, but it certainly felt that way. Eleven rupees (25c) for nicely bound Sesame Street stories, like the ones in which Elmo learns the days of the week, or Big Bird learns to read. Thirteen rupees (30 c) for the Prize winning Frog and Toad Series by Arnold Lobel and eleven rupees again for Eric Carle’s captivating ‘Thank you Brother Bear’. The princely sum of Rs.22 for Margaret Wise Brown’s comforting classic ‘Good Night Moon’ and so on.
Moving back to Bombay, I began the hunt for a good children’s library, or even a browsable bookshop. Old favorite ‘Strand’ simply didn’t qualify anymore. Its one thing to browse in an old curiosity shop and it’s quite another to tote toddler, baby and baby bag up the shop’s steep wooden stairs to get to their minute mix of kiddie delights.
‘Crossword’, which to the connoisseur, is like confusing cream cheese with camembert or Nescafe with café-au-lait, so solely bestseller-centric is it’s book collection, actually ended up faring better on my kiddie scale . It’s Hogwarts Express; with space in it for kids to climb in and read was always a hit. The staff smiled (So what if they never knew where any book was or whether they had it at all). It was secure and it never raised your expectations - you knew you’d never stumble on a rare book, one you’d heard of for ages and never found (like Noel Streatfield’s ‘The Circus is Coming’ or ‘The Random House Book of Poetry’ ) or even an unusual one you might be looking out like eleven year old Samhita Arni’s self illustrated rendition of the Mahabharata from Tara Publishing.
You’d have to travel northwards from the city to ‘Landmark’, a branch of the Chennai based store, to source these books. But it was a mixed thing taking kids there. The store’s so full of other things, Barbie and Batman sets and other toys, that the wide selection of kiddie books was rather lost . And then there was no space to sit.
Ultimately it was old college favorite BCL that saved the day. The place to be, for atmospheric old issues of the Times and classic Brit novelists, the British Council Library had, I discovered, a wonderful children’s section too (complete with the Barney and Noddy cushions!) For a totally- worth- it annual fee of Rs. 2500 , we could borrow an unheard of aggregate of eighteen books , that ran the gamut of prize winning fiction to gorgeously illustrated hardback non-fiction. Space Travel, the Animal World, the Magic of Numbers piled onto Dave Pilkey’s ‘ Captain Underpants’, Lemony Snickett’s ‘Unfortunate Events’ and Philip Pullman’s ‘The Fire Makers Daughter’. The library has all these holiday programs for young readers, like ‘Little librarians’ where the kids actually kid the library (as in man it). So it’s a wonderful chill out place to be in, and when you walk out with your eighteen books (or fifteen books and three DVD’s) it’s like you have the keys to the kingdom.

Where are the interesting girls ?

2008-04-25T00:08:00.004-07:00

When I was growing up, my least favorite character among Enid Blyton’s Famous Five was Anne. She never had anything interesting to say. The only time you noticed her was when she burst into tears. As for Bets and Daisy, from the Five Find Outers, they weren’t much better. The only girl who seemed to do things was Georgina and even she had to change her name to George and have boy cut hair.

As for the princesses in all the other stories, they certainly looked lovely in their pink princess-y dresses. But imagine how uncomfortable (and boring) life must have been for them if they had to sit about in party clothes all day. Why weren’t they busy with interesting stuff? Like maybe managing their kingdoms?

I speak to the famous film director Shekhar Kapoor about this. He has just finished making his second film about a young girl who found herself the queen of England. This was 400 years ago and no one then thought women were smart enough to rule. The courtiers around her plotted and planned, and everyone tried to line up a husband for her who could be king. But Elizabeth 1, for that was her name, proved them all wrong. She didn’t sit about looking pretty. Instead she ruled wisely and well.

Why, I ask Shekhar, are there so few girls in movies and on TV who are shown like this? Why are most movies and TV serials about smart and brave boys – why do the girls have the sidey roles? Why girls are only bothered about dressing up and dating? I mean Mary Kate and Ashley or even Lizzy Mcguire are ok but how about some really clever and smart girl characters ? Like say Jo in Little Women who becomes a writer or Hermione in Harry Potter who comes with clever plans?

TV and film, Shekhar Kapoor explains, are a lot about looks and about action. But you do have powerful girl characters, he points out – look at Lara Croft Tomb Raider, look at Catwoman. They’re strong and powerful girls in animation too, right from the Power Puff to the other girl characters in Japanese cartoons. But yes they’re mostly shown as good looking, with bodies (like Barbie’s) that may look good but would be unhealthy if you had them in real life. But then again, boys are also shown as great looking –they’re tall with broad shoulders and biceps. Still that doesn’t mean that good looks are the only important thing. Sometimes an unusual character, small and puny looking with spectacles comes along – and he’s a hit! Yes, you guessed right we’re talking about Harry Potter.

But here’s another question to consider - would Harry Potter have been such a hit if he was a girl?

Certainly the boys I talk to say they don’t like watching ‘girl’ characters. ”I hate girls” says 7 year old Aditya Shah. His friend Aryaman nods in agreement. For boys like these being friendly with girls maybe ok. But it’s simply not ‘trendy’ to watch a show like Hanna Montana which stars a girl.

And so we have many more movies about brave and powerful boys than about girls. The film studios that make these movies, find that both boys and girls watch movies about boys (with girls in side roles). But movies or serials about girls like the Olsen Twins are watched only by girls.

Turn then to the world of books for interesting girl characters. There’s Roald Dahl’s Matilda, both brave and brilliant, there’s Scheherazade the wonderful story teller of the Arabian Nights and there’s Anne Frank. Write in and tell us if you think of these and of other girl characters you admire – who are they and why do you like them.
This appeared in the Chidlren newspaper YA in February 2008

Gary Kingshott

2008-04-25T00:08:00.003-07:00

When I call Gary Kingshott, this airline CEO is, appropriately enough, boarding a Jet Lite flight. He’s enroute to his home in Bombay, where he spends weekends; working weekdays at the Jet Lite offices in Delhi. We agree to meet at the old East Indian Bandra Gymkhana. It’s close to his Bandra home; here’s where he chills out on weekends. ”It reminds me of the footballs clubs in Australia”, he says, as we sit down a week later, to tea and to coffee. “It’s cool , there’s cricket on, you can get active with a pool upstairs and tennis and it gets very lively later on at night.”

He seems at home here, this tall, slim and formally dressed Australian. Naturally we talk turnaround. How does he do it ? And is that why he’s called Garry Slingshot Kingshott ? He smiles. “It’s a good story. It’s maybe because I was associated with a couple of turnarounds in Australia “. These include Ansett Airlines , travel agency Traveland and travel logistics company Showgroup. But Kingshott hasn’t always been an airline man – he has marketed sea food, beer and even Melbourne ( during his stint as CEO of the Melbourne Convention and Visitors Bureau.)

And now he’s been picked by Jet’s Naresh Goyal to head the Air Sahara turnaround team. ”Just fix it” was Goyal’s brief to Kingshott, on the morning of 18th April 2007, two days before the takeover papers for Air Sahara were to be signed. And fixing it is what Kingshott certainly seems to be doing. No mean task this. Air Sahara, as Kingshott says “was a mess; the airline (with 9 out of 24 planes grounded) was a mess; and the business (with huge financial losses) was a mess”.

Six months later, losses are coming down. “From 12 million US$ (Rs.47 crores) loss in April 2007 to under 5 million US$ (Rs. 19 crores) in October; we are on schedule to breakeven in December”, declares Kingshott. All this through a mix of cutting costs, adding on revenues, and synergizing with Jet Airways. Headcount has been reduced by a drastic 50% (from 4300 employees to approx. 2000) and per seat km costs slashed by 37%.

Things at the airline clearly, aren’t the same. Plus they’re no more stars! “Sahara did carry a lot of people for free”, shrugs Kingshott. “It’s amazing they’re no stars anymore” a young pilot told him. But Kingshott, who watches Bollywood on subtitled DVD and whose favorites include Saif Ali Khan and Preity Zinta in ‘Salaam Namaste’, was clearly unmoved “It’s how it should be”, he responded “you can’t run an airline and just keep giving tickets away”. The only starry connection Jet still has is with director of the Jet Air board Sharukh Khan. “I meet him at board meetings, and he has a view –and he knows where he can add value “, says Kingshott

So when did Kingshott first hear of Jet Airways? “When Naresh Goyal came onto my cell phone”, says Kingshott “I was sitting in my office in Melbourne , when my cell phone rang and Naresh came on and said ‘This is Naresh Goyal and I run Jet Airways’. I think I said ‘I’ve never heard of you and I’ve never heard of Jet airways’, which was true at the time. So he talked a little about Jet Airways and then he said ‘Would you be interested in coming to India? And how much do you want?’” 12 months and two meetings later, Kingshott did indeed come, to take over as Commercial Director in Jet Airways.

And was moving halfway across the hemispheres from Melbourne to Mumbai, something of a culture shock? “Not really”, says Kingshott, recalling his first impression of Mumbai off a flight in 2005 “ It felt like Bangkok circa 1985 – coming out of the aircraft into a hot and steamy night; dogs running around; lots of people ; taxi touts, all that sort of thing . It felt very familiar actually; it just felt like another large Asian city”

And now? Kingshott may work weekdays out of Delhi; but his heart is clearly (in more ways than one) in Mumbai. I grab a cue from Mario, the waiter at Bandra Gymkhana, and ask him about his girlfriend. “Jacqueline” he smiles,” loves Bombay and Bandra even more than me “The two Australians frequent Bandra’s many restaurants like hot favorite Soul Fry and China House, they shop (and even haggle) on Bandra’s Linking Road.

And then they’re the Bikes. Kingshott has an Enfield Bullet, and Jacqueline has both a bicycle and a Honda Activa. “It’s an Indian institution; the longest continuous production motorbike in the world and a wonderful piece of machinery”, Kingshott says of his bike. Besides Mumbai, he has also biked up the Ghats to Matheran with a group of 5 other bikers. For the rest he spends weekends at his Bandra apartment, a place he moved into over a year ago, after a short stint at Powai’s Hiranandani Gardens “It was a beautiful apartment”, he says of that first flat “but it didn’t feel like India, despite the lake it was very dusty, and then there were supermarkets with trolleys. It didn’t feel right you know “, he quips “where were the cows?” Bandra, with its greenery and its Melbourne like byways, obviously feels just right.

But come Monday morning and its back on the first flight to Delhi, where Kingshott scans daily revenue and load reports, and on time statistics to keep the airline up in the air. A 9 AM sms from Central Ops every morning keeps him informed of how well the network is doing that day, as Kingshott strategises on brand and business. “Someone told me that IBM had a motto in the 1980’s when it was struggling. ’Steal shamelessly’ it said, and that’s what I do. Why reinvent the wheel?” So Kingshott bases much of his modeling on the successful Quantas Jet Star partnership. The Australian full service carrier Qantas has made, in the last few years, an unusual success of low cost partner Jet Star. And now Jet Lite, along with Jet Airways is moving fast in that direction. Starting a week ago, hot meals for Jet Lite have been replaced by more economical boxed snacks. The crew for the Boeing 737’s will be reduced from 6 to 5, and will be now in a new uniform (“We won’t offend you by girls in short skirts flouncing up and down, unlike most of the other airlines, who all to me look like they came out of Europe somewhere –they’ve got girls running around in short skirts and tight blouses and things”). Jet Lite will begin operations to the Gulf, early next year, as soon as regulatory approvals come in, with fares, that Kingshott promises “will be competitive with low cost carriers”

And what of aviation itself and its issues of crowding and congestion?
“For most of last year we had an imbalance in the capacity and demand; excess capacity and less demand. That seems to be getting fixed in the latter half of this year. But now there are too many aircraft and not enough runaways. That too will get corrected but it’ll take a while longer “. 2-5 years is what Kingshott estimates. It’ll take 2 years to get the parallel runaway in Delhi operational, and to get the brands new airports in Bangalore and Hyderabad going (which will he feels be full almost as soon as they become operational) and to solve the Mumbai problem of repossessing land or alternatively setting up a Greenfield site in Navi Mumbai may take up to 5 years.

As for Kingshott, he’s already multitasking on his next project – an ocean rigged cutter yatch “ between 40 and 50 feet long that’s capable of ocean passage”. He plans to sail himself around the world in it. And yes, that is why he’s just ordered the book ‘How to sail Round the World ‘off Amazon.com. Really.

Mint Business Lounge December 2007

In search of the Perfect Christmas Pudding

2008-04-25T00:08:00.002-07:00

Of all the December in Delhi traditions, Christmas pudding was the one I remember most. The excitement after dinner, when the lights went out. And then the pudding! Wreathed in pale bluish purplish flames, rich with the smell of cinnamon and spice, it came to the table sprinkled with castor sugar, all steaming. With dollops of brandy butter, or for us kids, with custard and clotted cream. It was a tradition, rather like the deep mahogany dining table and chairs, inherited by my very Punjabi family, from its English civil service days.

But for the kids, it was pure pleasure, and one that began weeks before D day. It started with the shopping, getting together raisins and blackcurrants, and purple and orange ‘peel’ from special shops in Khan Market. You watched these being soaked in rum or in brandy and then 2 days later, it would be stirring day. We’d cluster around, thrilled to handle the big wooden spoon and stir in the eggs, the fruit, the treacle and the spices one by one into a large white bowl. Bits of silver would go in too – coins for luck, a thimble for thrift and sometimes even a ring. And then we’d peek at the pudding while it steamed –and steamed –and steamed. Puddings are meant to steam for long, for 6 or even 9 hours. And then it was finally done, it would be wrapped up, and put away, in muslin cloths, for the flavors to get richer and richer, and to be served on Christmas day.

These were home made institutions, you made them in your own special way. Some used the traditional suet or lard, some didn’t, some used sherry and some used rum. But generally, you had to make your own Christmas pudding –it was not something you could buy from anywhere.

It’s different now. In Mumbai, where I live, Christmas puddings are seasonal business. If you aren’t lucky enough to organize yours from Marks and Spencer’s or better still Fortnum and Mason’s, head for the 5 star hotels. They’re very in with this, and even have special stir-in days. My food columnist friend told me he’d just been one such food event - complete with flashbulbs and models. But he recommends the American Express Bakery, with branches in Byculla and Bandra for traditional Christmas pudding. You can have the fruit/ plum Christmas cakes too, and Moshe Shek, who bakes variations in his bakeries recommends the pudding “It’s moister, softer and richer “, he says. Moshe’s does the traditional Christmas pudding and a cake with an almond marzipan topping. And like the 5 star bakeries, they also do pannetone, sweet Italian bread loaded with fruit.

In Delhi, where I used to live, you now get Christmas pudding at Wengers, at Modern Bazaar, at India International Centre (IIC).

So all you need now is a matchstick and a generous quantity of rum to make the magical blue flame appear. It’s easy.

Not for me though. I find myself , as my kids grow noisily participative , making my way to ‘Quality Dry Fruits’ the shop in Juhu, for my fix of peel and fruit. It’s a little like the little shops in Crawford market, with their tuttie frutties in greens, yellows and oranges, their peel and their black currants . From here to the pudding is still a long way to go though . Still, there’s much excitement already ; even though we’re nowhere near the flambé , and we haven’t even got to the stir and make a wish day!

This feature appeared in the Times of INdia December 2007

Mad about Maths

2008-04-25T00:08:00.001-07:00

The art of motorcycle maintenance may have its followers, but if there’s one thing I’d choose to teach my kids its good old Maths. As God said, go forth and multiply.

So while the kids may or may not count on me, count they must. In steps, series, squares and cubes. Our baby conversations began with “one, two buckle my shoe “, and books like Dr. Seuss’ when he says “"Think! Think and wonder. Wonder and think. How much water can 55 elephants drink?" Primary school music revolved around School House Rock, that incredible set of songs where multiplication tables are cleverly set to jivvy little numbers.

An Indian obsession maybe, this middle class mesmerization with mathematics, but it certainly has its benefits. It’s the secret ingredient, as any astute analyst will tell you, for the Indian success, the reason why Indians are in such demand , and the reason why even Japanese schools are aiming to go the Indian maths way.

And now India is Shining and all that, with its gleaming crop of IB schools. Why then you may ask, do I as parent persist with this atavistic fixation with figures. Why bother with the binomial or struggle with statistics when you could earn credits with the intricacies of illustration or with ikebana?

Multiple are the reasons for the merits of Maths. The most important comes from something French philosopher Descartes said – “It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well." Nothing, needless to say can beat doing maths on a mind and memory sharpening exercise.

Go deep down enough and everything eventually comes down to numbers. The business of life and living is so numerical, beginning with statistics like date of birth and height and weight and culminating in the decimal points on your bank balance. So why not train kids to be the sort of people who can be interested in numbers, and their interconnectedness. This way they get more confident and have more choices than if they stayed the ‘Oh I’m so bad at Maths ‘kind of kids who glaze over as soon as they sight a sum.

Because everyone can do Maths. The ‘I just can’t do Maths’ may have something to do with bad teachers, but it’s also one of the biggest myths on the education circuit. As a high school teacher said "There are two ways to do great mathematics. The first is to be smarter than everybody else. The second way is to be stupider than everybody else -- but persistent."

The 3P’s above all else – practice, practice, and practice. OMR (Optical mark readers) make multiple choice papers easier to administer these days , but as the Maths minded spouse insists , its problem solving that must be mastered. 20 or 30 or even 50 sums a day everyday till numbers become people you know. Like 1729, the smallest number you can express as a sum of 2 cubes in 2 different ways ( 9 cube plus 10 cube as well as 12 cube plus 1 cube). We end up quizzing the kids on their favorite numbers and getting them to look for patterns in the license plate numbers they see. Any maths exam- and we’re there - The IPM (Institute for Promotion of Maths) scholarships, the Asset and the Maharashtra State government scholarship exams. It’s an effort ; all those Sundays ( not counting the days of prep) but it’s also the only way to travel out of a fixed school syllabus , to engage with off beat problems.

Besides all this they must count; whatever can be counted – right from steps and yellow cabs on the road to the number of kilometers to destination, on highway travel. Read maps and train time tables. And play guessing games galore – the 2 year old toddler must estimate how many spoonfuls of dal are left in her katori (you’ll be surprised how much faster this makes the eating ordeal !) while her 7 year old sister estimates weights of packages and lengths and breadths of rooms.

Like it or not Maths is the one key fits all, for disciplines ranging from engineering to economics. Even drawing draws from mathematics ( yes it’s the geometry that’s plane fun ; life without geometry as they say, is pointless !). It’s also as Richard J. Trudeau says in his book ‘Dots and Lines’, “ the world's best game. It is more absorbing than chess, more of a gamble than poker, and lasts longer than Monopoly. It's free. It can be played anywhere - Archimedes did it in a bathtub. “

This appeared in Mint Lounge February 2008

Anil Ambani

2007-07-18T21:48:00.000-07:00

Reliance Communications is "converting the whole of India into a hot spot", says company chairman Anil Ambani. "Wherever we have voice communication we have internet access." The 47-year-old business magnate looks pleased. As he should -- it's a good day and been a good year, as Reliance Communications announces its first dividend of 10% to celebrate profits of $734 million. It wasn't always this way. Two years ago when Anil Ambani took over Reliance Communications -- along with Reliance Capital and Reliance Energy -- in what was perceived as his less than fair share of the great Reliance industrial empire of India, it came with CDMA technology he wasn't particularly partial to. There was a huge dispute over call re-routing with state telecom companies. And he had a frequently defaulting low-arpu subscriber base. Today profits are up a staggering 612% over last year, subscribers have crossed the 30 million mark, arpu is up at 371 rupees ($9.08) a month and the network is booming. Some of this is, of course, due to the expanding market -- a market which is adding over six million subscribers a month and in which rival Bharti recently reported $1.05 billion profit. But industry observers credit Anil Ambani, junior brother to Mukesh -- who now heads the crown jewels of the empire, the petrochemical business -- with the astute financial restructuring that this Wharton School alumnus is best known for. Within a year of the split with warring brother Mukesh, Reliance Comm was listed and restructured. Today Reliance Comm's acquisitions -- such as the once loss-making submarine network Flag Telecom are doing well. Flag has expected revenues of $450 million. And Reliance, like arch rival Bharti, is betting big on the telecom infrastructure and towers business. The towers have been hived off to form a separate company, RTIL, with a valuation of $735 million. "It has got no debt, and so the rollout of 20,000 more towers this year can be achieved based on the company's own balance sheet, without Reliance Comm putting in any more capital," says Ambani. "All the new towers that we are building will be multi-tenanted and multi-technology. And lastly, since RTIL is debt-free, all the funding that the tower company needs will be on its own balance sheet, with Reliance Communications as its anchor customer and with other potential customers."

Tower auction
Ambani is ebullient on the matter of the towers and certainly it looks as if he has reason to be. For Reliance recently emerged as winner on crucial tower sharing auctions conducted by the Indian government of India out of the universal service obligation fund, to which all telecom operators contribute 5% of their revenues. "In the recent auction we've been the number one leader," says Ambani. Reliance will have to construct 500 of the total 8,000 rural towers, but this will give the company "access to towers that are likely to be built by BSNL in the remaining of 8,000 locations", he says, "and in these locations we don't have to pay any rental for the first five years". This is a major strategic advantage, says Ambani: "If anybody wants to come even close to operating in 8,000 locations, which is what we have achieved from the universal service obligation tender, it will require a multi-billion-dollar capex to do that. Also, the tower infrastructure that is being created is good for 2G, 2.5G, 3G and 4G -- whether it is GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, EVDO, or WiMax. So, we are investing for the future, and as and when these services have to be rolled out, we'll have a time-to-market advantage, apart from a cost advantage." The multi tech towers tie in with another Reliance ambition: the rollout of GSM services nationwide. This is a shift from its current position where it dominates the mainly two-player CDMA market with a 60% market share. It still has a small 3% presence in the GSM market. Reliance may have initially used CDMA to its advantage from 2003 by building subscriber growth by bundling cheap handsets and by reducing churn rates, but Ambani is keen to roll out nationwide GSM services. "We chose at that stage due to non-availability of spectrum to go CDMA," he explains. So Reliance has applied and is awaiting along with a whole slew of other telecom hopefuls, for spectrum allocation.

Spectrum auction
"They've been announcements coming out of Delhi that a large quantity of spectrum is due to be released in the second quarter," Ambani explains, "and we are waiting to receive GSM spectrum." Reliance has already pre-emptively invested in passive infrastructure. "We can, at an approximate cost of $1 billion, roll out nationwide GSM coverage in the space of one year," Ambani declares. Indeed nationwide network expansion is a prime concern for all the telecom operators operating in this market, with a remarkably low teledensity. Ambani is proud to point out Reliance's strategic advantage in this area, specially as private players go -- the state-run BSNL with its vast network of fixed lines is in a class of its own. Reliance is going "deeper down", he says, moving to towns with a population of 5,000 plus. Down and up as well: all the way up to the Hindu pilgrim site of Badrinath and Kedarnath in the Himalayas, situated 3,000 metres above sea level. There's a personal significance in this, for Anil Ambani who is deeply religious -- as was his self-made billionaire father Dhirubai Ambani, who founded Reliance Industries and developed it to become the first Indian company in the global Fortune 500 list. Dhirubai Ambani died in 2002. Flamboyant lifestyle notwithstanding, the younger Ambani makes it a point to visit the country's ancient Hindu shrines with his film star wife Tina Munim and his two sons, or with Hindi movie star friends the Bachchans. Today Ambani has an interesting little anecdote about inaugurating services in the Kedarnath pilgrim site: "When I met the chief priest there, a young man in his thirties, his first question was about internet access and email." Clearly Reliance's moves to data are being taken seriously at the highest level -- and just as well, for Ambani feels voice arpu could decline to as low as $2.47.

Talking SMS
There's clearly a market for value added services, Ambani says, and not just in the metros. Yet it's an undeveloped market, where the typical customer is a man who goes to a public call office to make one rupee -- that's two-cent -- call and doesn't know how to send an SMS. Reliance plans to address this segment with innovative products like "talking SMS". From talking SMS for rural customers to IPTV for the metros, Reliance is clearly looking to straddle it all. A look at the group's acquisitions over the last couple of years reveal as a larger plan at work. For if Sunil Mittal of rival company Bharti is referred to as telecom czar, Anil Ambani is clearly moving towards being entertainment czar. Reliance has 150,000 km of fibre optic network and it is looking to use this connectivity as its takes over some key content providers -- Adlabs, a multiplex major and film production house, TV Today, Big FM, Zapak, a the gaming portal, BigAdda, a social networking site -- to fashion a giant entertainment empire. "We're very much on track for both IPTV and DTH," says Ambani, referring to direct-to-home satellite television services. "We expect a nationwide launch of DTH towards the end of this year." And what of the battle for telecom market share? "In circles [licence areas] that we are operating both GSM and CDMA we have more than 25% share of the market," he says, adding that one of his objectives "is to shoot for a 25% market share across India in the services". Reliance has a much higher market share in a lot of its other businesses, he points out, "and naturally we would like to retain and maintain that. However we are not only committed to having market share. We are also committed to our EBITDA and our profitability -- so market share at what price is something we constantly evaluate internally." And yet Reliance, with deep pockets, has had a history of slashing prices to gain market share and I ask Ambani whether this will continue to be an area of focus?

Lower tariffs
"From a pricing perspective we're already seeing that the lowest levels of tariffs probably in the world are existent in India," he points out, adding significantly: "If there is room for more, more will come." Interestingly a few days after this conversation, more price cuts did come, with Reliance starting a virtual price war by slashing tariffs on roaming rates and on its international calling cards -- calls to the US and Canada at the equivalent of five US cents a minute. The company also introduced its lowest price handset ever: at $19 each, and the company was reported to have won a million new customers in the first week. Rivals immediately followed suit: Bharti and Hutch dropped rates and Tata Telecom lowered its bundled handset prices as well. Then Vodafone announced its emerging market handsets, priced at $25-$45 range in a move widely seen as one to challenge Reliance's economy handsets. In all this, Anil Dhirubai Ambani is clearly upbeat. He may have lost the competition for Hutchison's operation in February 2007 to Vodafone -- and with it the chance to be the biggest telecom operator in India -- but he remains unfazed. "I don't see much change," he replies to a question as to whether he considers Vodafone will intensify competition. "There was a five-six-seven player market, and there's still a five-six-seven player market. No there's no change at all: I think that if Vodafone is clear about the price that they've paid then they'll be far more cautious in trying to make money on their investment." At any event telecom in India is definitely a good place to be and as he says "the overall pie will grow and grow".

Alexandra Pringle

2007-05-31T00:09:00.004-07:00

Editor-in-chief Alexandra Pringle is in Mumbai and she’s being mobbed. Not surprising, considering Pringle presides over Bloomsbury, the world’s most glamorous publishing house. “I’d no idea there were so many writers”, Pringle quips, as member after member of the audience at the lit-fest discussion got up to tell tales of publisher woe. Later the array of aspiring authors surrounds Pringle, for tips on getting published in the West.

Two days later, we meet across town, at the Prithvi Theatre in Juhu. Pringle is there to attend readings by Bloomsbury authors like Esther Freud, soon-to-debut Tishani Doshi and Kamila Shamsie. We talk about Bloomsbury. Being at Bloomsbury, the house that is making its fortunes on publishing the amazing Harry Potter must surely be exciting in these Potter struck times. Little surprise then, that Pringle bubbles over with enthusiasm and animation. With a lively repertoire of tiny tales. Like the time she met Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie. “It was at a fiction writing workshop in the States”, she explains.”Kamila’s was the only story in the whole bunch that was any good. So we got talking, and I discovered I had years ago, published her great aunt the Pakistani writer Attiya Husain.” The two kept in touch as Shamsie honed her writing . Today Bloomsbury is publisher for Kamila Shamsie’s novels, with her fourth novel ‘Broken Verses’ due in 2008 .

Alexandra Pringle prides herself on such personal connections, “As an editor you need to share an empathy with your author, especially for fiction. If there isn’t a personal connection it’s not going to work very well”. Bloomsbury is like this, she says. “It’s just the most wonderful company”; she applauds” Everybody at Bloomsbury really cares tremendously about the book”. It’s not always so in publishing and Alexandra is quick to point this out. Having moved to larger corporate publishing house Hamish Hamilton, after a beginning in the young feminist Virago Press, Pringle was put off by the culture .“Everybody was fighting for their own careers”, she complains. So much so that she quit publishing, becoming instead a literary agent, for little under 4 years, till Bloomsbury beckoned. And now it’s at “Bloomsbury till I retire, I hope. There’s nowhere else I want to be “, she confesses.

You’d expect the editor –in-chief of the world’s most record breaking publishing house to be passionate about books. And she is. Like a good publisher she shortlists at first, Bloomsbury authors like young Nigerian Helen Oyeyemi, Donna Tart and Sri Lankan Michael Ondaatje. Ondaatje’s new book ‘Divisadero’ , the story of a family getting fractured as a result of a passionate love affair, will be launched soon and Pringle sounds entranced. Austen is an old favorite , and Dodie’s ‘I Capture the Castle’ a recent one.

But Alexandra’s also passionate about other things. Like Billie Holliday and Ella Fitzgerald. And her houses. One in the south west of France and the other, her London houseboat.” It’s like a New York loft on the water”, she marvels, ”When you wake up , you hear the ducks and the swans and the water lapping, all this in the middle of London”

Also appropriately enough, she‘s a publisher who’s crazy about India. This is one place she keeps coming back to . The first visit was to Delhi and then to Rajasthan. ”That was it!”, She exclaims , ”I was besotted.” Then there was the trip with author Manil Suri ( The Death of Vishnu), that included a trip to Kerala and Madras. ‘The Age of Shiva’ Suri ‘s second book is forthcoming soon . “It’s stunning. One of the most beautiful and important novels to be set in India in years”, Alexandra raves.

And now there’s another India connection for this very animated, very elegant publisher. Alexandra has a nephew whose moved to Calcuta to work with ‘The Telegraph’. This is not counting her other close association with recently appointed editor-in-chief of Random House, Chiki Sarkar. “Chiki came to me fresh from Oxford”, Alexander reminisces,” and we worked very closely for seven years”. I ask her about Bloomsbury’s India plans, restricted right now to an association with Penguin.” Who knows”, she speculates,” I would love it if something would happen in India. Who knows what’s round the corner?”

This appeared in the Deccan Herald May 2007

Tishani Doshi

2007-05-31T00:09:00.003-07:00

If dancing by day and writing by night seems fairytale like, it’s because a lot of Tishani Doshi’s life is like that. Five years after the half-Welsh half-Gujarati Tishani returned to hometown Chennai to write, she’s sharing the stage with literary heavy weights like Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka and Margaret Atwood at festivals round the world. “Countries of the Body’ her collection of poems has won poetry’s prestigious Forward Prize (the poetic equivalent of the Booker). And next year will see the launch of her debut novel ‘The Pleasure Seekers’ by power house publishers Bloomsbury.

Talk to Tishani and it’s hard not to be charmed. She’s earnest and speaks with a thoughtful, wonderfully deliberate intonation. Slim and fair with kohl rimmed eyes and long shiny hair, Tishani would do any book promoter proud. “Tishani looks lovely”, publisher Alexandra Pringle of Bloomsbury tells me when I mail her a photograph of the two together at the recent lit-fest in Mumbai. The meeting with Pringle, like Doshi’s introduction to dance and indeed much of the other exciting things in her life was serendipitous, when the two shared bed and breakfast lodging during the Haye literary festival. Pringle, who was so impressed with the prose and poetry Doshi showed her, got back to London and contacted Doshi’s literary agent, to sign her on in a successful scout for new talent process that will culminate next year in the publication of Tishani’s The Pleasure Seekers

Certainly there is something about Tishani that gets her powerful patrons. Take Peter Florence for instance, the organizer for the prestigious Guardian festivals. Florence who has an impeccable track record for spotting talent (having prompted Arundhati Roy long before she was recognized by the Booker) put the young debut poet on the same stage as Margaret Atwood and Seamus Heaney, as each read 7 minutes of their poetry to an audience 1200 people strong. That was last year. This year she shared the same forum as Nigerian poet Soyinka at Cartagena in Colombia.

And then there was the legendary Chandralekha who taught Tishani, when she was over 70 and Tishani 25 years, how to dance. “Come and meet me”, the Chandralekha asked the young Doshi five years ago, in a meeting in Chennai, soon after Tishani had come came back from a John Hopkins, USA. “And six months later, we were in Taiwan performing to an international stage and I was a dancer”, Doshi marvels. “It was like the best love affair”, she reminiscences of her bond with Chandralekha,” I had gone all over the world but never had this quality of relationship. For me it was being in contact with somebody who you could look up to at many levels, not just as a guru “. Dance for Tishani became a way of exploring the possibilities of her body, possibilities she never knew existed.

For a writer working ‘in great patches of solitude’ dance turned out surprisingly , “rewarding at a different level”. Like Tishani’s other passion – travel, and there’s been much of that for this young bag packer – from Ladakh to as far away as the South Pole. “The only thing I’m greedy about is travel”, she confesses,” anybody would say come and I’d go. If I can afford it, I just go”. Mostly the journeys turned out well but sometimes, like on a solo trip to the Greek islands, they didn’t feel all that great. Still as Tishani reasons “I don’t want to be too comfortable. I don’t want to have a house and two kids – for me that’s not where my writing comes out from .I want to experience somebody else life I want to be a fly on the wall “. It’s a creative position comes with its own particular perils. In a humorous take on singledom Tishani writes for a daily on ‘The Rains have come and you’re not married ? ‘. “It was borne out of frustration that piece “, she admits “The whole thing about being a 31 year old unmarried Indian woman - everybody is concerned about your well being – why aren't you getting married – you can be a writer and be married at the same time .I’d had it up to here if I have to hear about the M word anymore “, she exclaims. But the feature was “, she continues seriously “a deeper thing to examine the urban Indian woman … she has so many possibilities ..she can be a many armed goddess. Why not? Let’s do it.”

At 31, poet, traveler, dancer and writer Tishani Doshi is as many armed as many armed can be.
She talks about the differences of writing poetry and prose, the difficulties she faced in writing a novel “When I started writing I realized I hate narrative. I didn't want to write ‘He got up and opened the door’. But you have to write that sometimes , because otherwise the reader doesn’t know how it happened.” Doshi’s favorite writers like Marquez or Michael Ondaatje are not the most sequential writers either “what I love about them is their language – sometimes it doesn’t matter if you don t know what’s going on “. Ultimately though she analyses, “a novel requires great stamina because you have to hold the entire thing in your head , like a 100,000 words at a time ” . A poem is different,” like a little jewel”. Sadly today poetry has become a marginal activity, with none of the following a poet like Pablo Neruda inspired. “80,000 coal miners would come to his readings “, she exclaims.

But then, as she concludes “ultimately you have to do what you love – if you want to make money you become an investment banker or something”

This feature appeared in the Deccan Herald April 2007

In Search of the Perfect Swimming Pool

2007-05-31T00:09:00.002-07:00

Bombay for me has turned out to be the city of swimming pools. Never mind that I grew up in Jamshedpur, where club memberships (complete with pools) were offered to us all on a platter. I still didn’t know how to swim. And so it was that when I arrived in Bombay, 24 years old and with a newly acquired job, I couldn’t so much as float.
But where could you swim; in a city were club pools were the preserve of those with old money or of those with new? Where the vast Breach Candy swimming Pool across the road from my exorbitant paying guest pad, was still ‘Mostly European only’?

Plenty of places, it turns out, though this was a discovery I was to make in need-to-know driblets. First there was the YMCA pool at Agripada , the generously populated pool my banker friend and batch mate K went to. Despite a childhood full of air force station postings, K like me could not swim. Now driven by hitherto undiscovered aquatic instincts, she woke every morning at five, to trek to the crowded pool where coaches stood out of the water and desultorily directed the cork float trussed up tenderfoots . 30 coming-to-work-with-dripping-hair days later, she had , for less than the price of a restaurant meal, learnt to swim.

As for me, I had would have to wait four years , two shifts of residence and one baby later, to begin my aquatic apprenticeship. Those were the days of the Juhu Centaur, whose sea –overlooking vast lawns would be hired out for parties and parades. The pool, sparkling blue and ringed by palm trees that swayed in the sea breeze, was all of 25 metres long. And the crowd that swam there was wonderfully rambunctious, Lorena who lived in the hotel and swam with lipstick and long hair, Simran the stunning sardarni who swam 40 laps in long and powerful free style and middle aged Ashok who swam his constitutional mornings and evenings. And Hilary, who taught me to swim, coaching neophytes with casual ease , setting up coin chasing competitions and other scuba fun. Alas, today the pool, when you espy it on Google Earth, is a rectangle of white, all drained after months of legal wrangling over the hotel and what’s worse the discovery of a dead body in the pool.

There were other hotels whose pools one could swim in like the Ramada or Sea Princess or Sun-n-Sand , for a per day charge of a few hundreds, or an annual amount of 15 or 20 thousand. But they all seemed small, puddle like even, you couldn’t tread water endlessly or lie on your back and watch the jets go by, like you could at Centaur.

Still , my girls were now 4 and 6 , and as summer came, a swimming pool became a hang out zone the holidays were hot and bothersome without. I stumbled eventually upon in what would turn out to be a wonderfully educative pool – the Andheri Sports Complex pool. Post all the queuing and the paperwork ( and there was lots ) the diving pool and the Olympic size main pool were great places to swim in , where groups of of lithe young swimmers flipped and snorkeled, crawling, diving ,and skimming the water like inspiringly energetic sea creatures. All for an annual fee of Rs.1200. But then I guess pools like other Piscean personalities also have their life cycles. It’s been three years since the Andheri Sports Complex pool closed down for repairs. Now like a nomad I wander, with a butterfly stroke here, a dog paddle there and free style everywhere.

Sometimes at National Sports Club, an old fashioned Bombay Gymkhana kind of pool or at Bandra’s lagoon-like pool at Otters Club . In building pools, like the nicely clubby one at Hiranandani Powai, where our friends live. Occasionally at the posh ‘The Club’ next door, where you can pay a few thousands to swim for a month. This month it’s at the little Renaissance club off Four Bungalows where Ujjwal Sir, the greatly dedicated coach who’s rumored to live in the water, trails tiny groups of learners in methodical breadths across the shallow.

This feature appeared in the Sunday Times April 2007

IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT CHILDRENS BOOKS

2007-05-31T00:09:00.001-07:00

In Search of the Perfect Backpack

2007-05-31T00:09:00.000-07:00

IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT BACKPACK

We’ve decided, now that our youngest has turned four, to go on a Himalayan holiday. Four villages and two valley towns in 10 days and no baggage except the rucksacks on our backs.

Adventurous indeed but for the catch – four years of airplanes- to- grandparents holidays and we possessed nothing remotely resembling backpacks. Which is why I found myself, as prime convener and mover of the expedition, on the hot and humid streets in search of the ideal haversack.

With a list of specifications a mile long (most of which I have to say did sound reasonable) So it seemed obvious that the backpacks in question should be large enough. And large enough to take clothes, maps, sketch books, medicine kits, cameras, food and water (and piles of books that must be taken). With enough nifty compartments around the sides for need- to- fish- out- in- a -second items like money or a mobile or even mint . And with zips that won’t suddenly give way in the remote fastnesses of Jalori Pass 10,000 feet above sea level. And swoosh-like styling. After all if you’re going to huff and puff your city self through the mountains you might as well feel sporty about it!

“Buy a Nike , or a Reebok, or some other brand”, advised my sister Salone , who swears by the Jansport she bought during her years in America. “The copies look good, but then the zips will come off”, she said sagely and expertly. And so brand hunting I went. “No Tara Rum Pum”, I begged my friends “I need rucksacks”. We wandered the mall at Infiniti, Versova flitting from Nike ( with all of 6 small sized models priced Rs. 800 upwards) to Reebok. At Samsonite we picked the largest of them all – a cavernous black with a profusion of bright red pockets. “Why is it Rs.3999 ?”I gasped to my friend Sonal.”Parachute material ?” she hazarded. “Parachute Material” said the man at Azad Bag House on Station Road Andheri, of the very same red and black, “ 350 rupees final”. I must confess that I was tempted . Maybe not by the parachute material “fully waterproof”, but certainly by the many others , the fake Jansports and the Reeboks that ranged from 160 rupees to 350. Still somehow they didn't quite look right. The straps for add ons like water bottles were clearly frayed. And the material just didn’t feel the same, like really really light and almost not there .

Six days to go before the train to Delhi, to Kalka and then to Shimla and I was still stuck in decision tree deadlock . No brand or brand ? 250 rupees for now or 1200 rupees for life ? And then serendipidity in the form of a trip to Crawford Market intervened. Here’s where I found backpacks and more backpacks. In different nicely pocketed styles as well. And then the most delightful backpacks of all - those that came with a little strolley . So if you got tired of carrying all that stuff on your back and wanted to , like on a station platform or on a level road just walk , you could wheel your haversack alongside. All at rupees 450 apiece. Shimla, Naldehra, Narkhanda, Jalori, Gosaini, Manali here we come!

This appeared in the May 20th 2007 Sunday Times

The Class Wars

2007-05-31T00:03:00.001-07:00

The Sunday morning round of golf starts late for Anand Krishnamurthy, co-head of global banking at HSBC. Before he can get to the putting green, Krishnamurthy must keep another appointment—with the roller-skating rink, where his six-year-old Sahana attends a weekly class. Every weekend at 7am, 20-odd kids descend on suburban Mumbai’s Hiranandani complex, to twirl, loop and spin with various degrees of proficiency, as their parents look on, read the papers and hand out water at break time.
Several kilometres across the city, in Andheri, writer Chatura Rao does the same with her six-year-old. Only the venue changes to the cavernous state-run Andheri Sports Complex. And Rao uses her daughter’s skating session as a chance to go for a run at the stadium next door.
But if Krishnamurthy and Rao seem to enjoy carting their children around, there are plenty of folks in the opposing camp. As summer sets in and the list of kids’ activities climbs mercury-like, the class lovers and class haters are slugging it out with quiet ferocity. To the observer, it sounds like a case of the Joneses. A “My son goes for chess, swimming and computers. What does yours go for?” sort of thing. Or of the mommy wars: “Working mothers have to send their children for back-to-back classes. I believe in being there for my child” (That’s when the other party sniggers, “Yeah, we know her child watches Toon Disney every day while she vegetates. At least our children learn life skills in a fun way!”).
But it’s really more than that. Most children enjoy painting and pot-making at the classes they attend. And there are additional benefits as well. “Kids learn discipline,” analyses Krishnamurthy, having watched Sahana progress and have fun with skating.
Where in a city are the gardens and open spaces that children can play in? All too often, they veer towards watching TV
Certainly, parents, like good penguins, can be extraordinarily discriminating about the things their children do. Rao, for instance, has tried other classes with her daughter Pratya. Some, like pottery, proved enjoyable. Others didn’t. “Keyboards as an activity was a complete flop show,” she confesses. “At six, Pratya was probably too young to be learning music, she’d be climbing on to the back of the instructor’s chair,” she laughs.
Talking to parents like Neepa Shah can be akin to getting a crash course in kiddie classes. After much qualitative and quantitative research, Shah has settled on a mix of classes for her six-year-old son. On Mondays, Aditya and his group of friends go to a reading class, where they pore over Dr Seuss and Roald Dahl and play word games. On Fridays, they have a Geeta class, in which they’re introduced to Hanuman Jayanti or taught the significance of certain shlokas. Other days are for swimming or football (“We tried the Leander Paes Academy of tennis at The Club, but it didn’t work. There were just too many children in a batch, and Aditya doesn’t enjoy cricket that much,” explains Shah).
And while Aditya’s football teacher is a “talented-with-kids” sort of personal trainer, his “Swimming Sir” is another story. Unlike most coaches, Farzad Billimoria (Tel: 098211 61595) takes on just three to four kids at a time. “I get down to their level,” he says. He also uses underwater strikers and props like colourful fish to encourage the children to try out new things. “Before they know it, they’re diving into the water, but otherwise ask three-year-olds to put their head down into water and they’ll scream.”
Billimoria is an example of the new generation of teachers—an expert who believes in incorporating fun and games into children’s education. Like Bangalore-based IBM engineer Kuntal Kapadia of Creative World (Tel: 093428 22369), who returned from the US 10 years ago, and now runs a creative centre for toddlers and children. “She’s amazingly energetic and sources the best pottery teachers or dance instructors to conduct sessions for the children. I wouldn’t even know how to look for such things,” says Suparna Mitra, the marketing head for Titan, whose nine-year-old daughter, Shreya, regularly attends workshops and summer programmes at Kapadia’s centre.
Kapadia’s of the same mould as partners Amrita Singh and Bindu Bhide of The Little Company in Bandra, Mumbai (Tel: 098202 54642). One is a business school graduate from Symbiosis, Pune, the other, a BITS Pilani engineer; they got together to set up a daycare and activity centre after their children were born. Besides a wide range of music, dance, yoga, and art and craft, they offer several “on-the-move” programmes such as visits to a planetarium or a museum.
Or like Jyotsna Shourie of the Dance Centre, Delhi (Tel: 011 2411 3454), who’s used her classical training in Bharatnatyam to teach children different styles of music and dance; Shourie’s troupe has performed their specially designed ballets all over India and other parts of the world.
There are several more, like and unlike these—from specialized individuals like Billimoria to franchised chains such as those of Shiamak Davar (Tel: 022 2353 7930) and Raell Padamsee (Tel: 022 2287 1851), to more common brands like the YMCA (Tel: 022 2307 0601). Ballet to Bharatnatyam, name it and there’s a kids’ version available. So much so that city folk sometimes seem to look down upon this abundance of choice. But to an outsider like myself, who grew up in small-town Jamshedpur, where our piano lessons came to a premature (and permanent) halt when the town’s only teacher eloped with her lover, such scorn seems rather presumptuous.
Mumbai’s prestigious Cathedral and John Connon School endorses and participates in various summer camp activities, such as the annual eight-day summer camp organized by alumna Shyla Boga at Manori Bell, a seaside town outside Mumbai, in April and May. Forty-five students from Cathedral attend this workshop, along with 25 children from Manori fishing village. “It’s very different and loads of fun, with activities like chocolate-making, kite-making, astronomy, music, magic, birdwatching and football,” says Boga.
The most important aspect of the workshop is the interaction between the kids from the village and those from Cathedral, as they make nets and gaze at stars on Manori beach. “The children at our school are in a privileged position through no merit of their own, and this is a good way for the two groups of the same age to interact,” explains Meera Isaacs, Cathedral’s principal.
If such interesting extra-curricular activities exist, then why aren’t they accepted as something every child needs, an opportunity for exposure to activities parents and day schools can’t provide? Why are they a bad word, insinuating pushy parents or, worse still, neglectful ones? Or even seen as an expensive indulgence?
Clearly we, as a society of nuclear families, need them. Working or even stay-home parents can’t do it all; neither can day schools. “The curriculum is too strenuous and too many children have to be attended to,” explains Shourie of the Dance Centre.
Besides, where in a city are the gardens and open spaces that children can play in? All too often, they veer towards watching TV. “You want a situation where children are not sitting at home watching TV,” explains Kapadia, echoing the concerns of some 50 parents, who send their children to her summer classes.
Education experts like Shalini Advani, former principal of the British School, Delhi, concedes an “ambivalent approval” of such classes. It is triggered by many of the new brain/learning theories, which prove how new neural connections develop with exposure to new kinds of activity. “The physical brain development triggered by a karate class is different from that of an art or chess club,” explains Advani.
If that sounds reason enough to diversify, to add that extra speech and drama class to an itinerary that already includes dance and tennis, it isn’t quite enough for the critics.
“It’s peer pressure,” says lawyer mom Neeta Joshi. “There’s a subtle competition among the mothers. Then there’s always the flavour of the season, it could be chess or basketball or anything. And if your child doesn’t go for it, you feel why am I being left out? Why is my child being left out?”
And if pushy wasn’t bad enough, there’s worse: preoccupied and pushy. The latter sort of parents are widely vilified for having little time for their kids because they are too busy doing their own thing. “Parents want their children busy, occupied and out of their hair, and they’re pushing, pushing. The children have to achieve, but why should that be their only business, why not relax?” exhorts Cathedral’s Isaacs.
Psychologist Sonya Mehta agrees, and wonders about the “angry dynamic that comes with parents programming and packaging their kids to be more and more competitive, by shuttling them from one class to the next”. Peer pressure and pushy behaviour—they’re both usually bad for kids, but a few years from now, these could very well be credited as the reasons why Indian children are successful adults (much like the Indian education system is today applauded for the success of the Indian IT industry).
As for the ‘shuttled’ children, most seem happy enough with their pottery, painting, dance and drama. “I like all my classes,” says five-year-old Vikram Singh. “I go for swimming, I go for drama class, I go for piano class, I go for drawing class and then I go to school.” Seven-year-old Sanya Khorana is more selective. “I like my swimming class and my computer class, but I don’t like tennis. They make me run and my legs pain,” she complains.
Ten-year-old Bhavya Vora, who attends a mix of back-to-back extra curricular activities (at least one for every day of the week), has a two-step approach to help decide his activities. “My mom tells me about the different classes, and then I decide,” he explains. So, would he prefer to drop Wednesday’s Science Experiments class, the one activity he doesn’t like? “No,” he says promptly. “Sometimes it’s boring, but then sometimes it’s nice. And in June, my friends are going to join, I’ll have fun with them.”

This appeared in the April 21st edition of Mint Lounge Supplement

The Bad Book Club

2007-05-31T00:03:00.000-07:00

The Princess Diaries heroine, Mia, is fuming. Her mom is pregnant with her algebra-teacher boyfriend’s baby. “Why weren’t she and Mr. Gianini using birth control?” explodes Mia. “Whatever happened to her diaphragm? And what about condoms? This is so like my mother. She can’t even remember to buy toilet paper. How is she going to remember to use birth control?”
Ellie, heroine of Jacqueline Wilson’s Girls in Love, is not happy either. She doesn’t have a boyfriend. “My tummy’s round and my bum is round. Even my stupid knees are round. Still,” she consoles herself, “my chest is round too. Magda has to resort to Wonderbra to get a proper cleavage, and Nadine is utterly flat.”
And so it goes. Kidlit has never been so crammed with pulpy paperbacks. Many are cleverly packaged to appeal to readers as young as seven or eight, even though they may be designated as ‘teen’ books. There’s the ‘dreadlit’ of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps, teeming with titles such as Go Eat Worms, Dance of Death, Killer’s Kiss and Who Killed the Homecoming Queen? There’s the pink world of party girls, who exist only to weight watch and boyfriend hunt. And then, there are the Pokemon/Power Ranger/Barbie product placement excuses for books, in which the franchise rules. So, if you’re a believer in any form of censorship or even in a guide-them-gently-towards-the-right-books approach, it’s time for you to read the print.
You might be shocked at your pile of rejects. I was. No Mary Kate and Ashley for my tweenie girls. This, after I read about the twin heroines of Billboard Dad, where they spent all 100-odd pages trying to set up their dad with a date (even as they went to diving class and admired the very athletic diving instructor, Brad). No ‘Animorphs’, where children are morphed into creatures, speaking in staccato: “Yeah and you know how he feels about that guy. Or creature. Or whatever the Ellimist is. Ax says to watch your butt?” No R.L. Stine. No Baby-sitters Club, where Stacey is “in luv again. There’s only one problem. Wes is Stacey’s substitute math teacher. Can Love Conquer All?” And definitely no pink princesses.
Many will disagree. As Scholastic publishing director Sayoni Basu explains, “Children should be allowed to read everything. Well, almost. There is no other way that they will develop a sense of discrimination and appreciation of the good.” Certainly, we’ve all read our share of Star comics (where love did conquer all), Mills & Boon and Sidney Sheldons. But there’s stuff in the current crop that’s disturbingly insidious.
“I’d rather my children picked up Archie comics and read them rather than these stories of ultra-bratty, sassy girls, all eight going on 18, forever plotting and scheming,” says author Meher Marfatia of pink-jacketed kid chicklit. Ex-banker and stay-at-home mom Soundari Mukerjee agrees. “I wish we could go back to the basics and do away with this pink/blue thing. When I grew up, we were reading Russian books such as Baba Yaga.” Baba Yaga has morphed into Barbie, and the cash registers are ringing.
“There’s not a lot you can learn from such marketing-tool books,” says writer Samit Basu. “Names of the Pokemon,” scorns Basu, referring to what children learn from reading the Pokemon books. Or Step-Into-Reading Barbie books, which dress you up with ‘silver crowns and golden gowns’. No trace of any subliminal house-of-straw and house-of-brick lessons or of how the small boy with brains can triumph over the evil giant kind of exciting adventures.
Evil is exciting, and no writer knows this better than best-selling R.L. Stine. Kids love him. “He’s scary and he doesn’t linger only on one thing,” says eight-year-old Goosebumps fan Zain Lokmanji. But should his brand of horror and violence be in school libraries? “It’s disturbing,” maintains Marfatia. “It’s creating a culture where children are resisting joys, where that’s uncool, where it’s trendy to be twisted.” Forbidden fruit is all very well. But you could be excused for protesting, as mom Mukerjee does, “When there is so much good stuff to read, why read bratty books?”
This feature appeared in the Lounge Supplement Mint dated May 19th

Taking Kids to Work

2007-05-30T23:52:00.000-07:00

If six-year-old Aditya Shah knows what the word ‘budget’ means, it’s because Daddy talks shop with him. On holidays and other special days, Keais Shah, his father, takes Aditya to work at the big retail showroom the Shahs run.
Certainly, there are benefits of taking your child to work, besides the obvious ones, such as having your child around you all day long. Chances are that your small wonder will fiddle with the office software, pick up the paint or just soak in the atmosphere of your workplace. In the West, many offices even have a take-your-child-to-work day.
Aditya tells me the share market is down after this year’s budget. I ask him what a budget is, and pat comes his reply: “The money you get and the money you spend for the whole country.” He’s visibly impressed by the scale of it all.
“I take him to work, so he gets a macro idea of what business is,” explains Shah, a partner at C. Bhogilal, the bathroom interiors store.
Aditya plays ‘shop-shop’ much like Puffin editor Vatsala Kaul’s children play ‘meeting-meeting’. Or like actor Konkona Sen Sharma who, when she was 10, played ‘director-director’. “Ever since I can remember, there would be production meetings at home,” says Konkona, who’d sit with her mother’s assistants and draw up make-believe production schedules and cost sheets.
So, is this something you should do? Reinforce nature with nurture, stepping back into age-old systems of ancestral apprenticeships? “No,” says NDTV business analyst Ashu Dutt. “Stock markets and exchanges are not conducive to kids. Let them grow up as kids and enjoy their childhood.” Rohit Gupta, executive vice-president, Sony TV, agrees with the no-shop-talk policy. Rohit’s teenage daughters don’t discuss work with their father, unless it’s a one-off career counselling sort of thing. “He doesn’t like to bring work home,” says Gupta’s wife, Rina. “He keeps home and the office compartmentalized.”
Most corporates choose to do that. Parents who are into the arts are far more inclusive. Paris-based painter Sakti Burman tells a wonderful story of how he kept baby canvases in his studio for his children to mess around with. Suchitra Krishnamurthy does the same with six-year-old daughter, Kaveri, taking her along to her Juhu studio to paint.
Does exposing your child to your workplace pressurize him or her to emulate you? Kaveri’s father, director Shekhar Kapur, who takes her to work all the time, cautions, “I would love to share my work with my daughter. But sometimes, children can perceive that as subtle pressure to follow in the parent’s footsteps. It’s also a kind of peer pressure.”
Anjali Raina, training director at Citibank, looks back at her branch manager days at Grindlays when her little toddler would come in to work after school hours. “I’ve never kept her away from my work. She’d meet my office colleagues, say hi and play on the playground opposite.” It could be serendipitous having a playground opposite the office, or being dispatched like my brother was, to my father’s office (Dad was director of budgets then) on Sundays because that was the boys’ day together, no matter where. But exposure like this can benefit children a great deal. “Being part of my work world built self-confidence in my daughter and helped her deal with all sorts of people,” says Raina.
It could also mean travelling together and introducing children, like six-year-old Kaveri on the sets of The Golden Age, to the mechanics of film-making. “Kaveri could be introduced to an infinite world of audio-visual expression, a world that encompasses not only film-making and storytelling, but also concepts of new media such as YouTube,” says Kapur.
The little boy who doodled figures in his director-of-budgets father’s office has now returned from Wall Street and works in private equity. The little girl who divided time between her mother’s bank branch and her father’s is artist Maya Burman

This feature appeared in the May 5th Lounge supplement Mint

Vodafone's expensive road to India

2007-05-29T03:58:00.000-07:00

It's a market where customers queue up for phone connections, and where one new mobile subscriber signs on every two seconds. India, with its explosive rate of growth, has overtaken even China, to become the world's fastest growing mobile market, with 6.5 million new subscribers a month — 200,000 a day.
That means every three months Indian companies add as many mobile phones as Canadian or Netherlands operators have since the industry started.
Little wonder that global giant Vodafone, beset by sluggish growth and saturated markets, is making an $18.8 billion entry into this massive market. In a hotly contested auction Vodafone has bought a controlling 67% stake in Hutch, India's fourth largest telecom company— with 24.4 million subscribers — from Hong Kong-based Hutchinson Telecommunications International (HTIL).
Vodafone's winning bid beat three rivals: Indian telecom operator Reliance; the London-based Hinduja brothers; and Hutch's minority stakeholders, Essar, controlled by the Ruia brothers.
The big question doing the rounds of analysts and market watchers is: Did Vodafone pay too much?
"India is worth a lot more to Vodafone than it is to HTIL," says Tucker Grinnan, senior telecoms analyst at HSBC. Indeed the move to India is in line with Vodafone's larger strategy of exiting from stagnant subscriber markets such as Belgium and Switzerland — where it sold its minority stakes last year — and investing, as the company outlines, "in higher growth emerging markets" with the aim of increasing the company's EBITDA from what it calls EMAPA — or Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and affiliates. The target increase in EBITDA is "over a third by FY 2012".
India, with its investment-friendly policies, clearly fits this billion dollar bill. Government regulations permit up to 74% foreign investment in telecom, compared with Vodafone's 3.2% stake in China Mobile.
The UK based telecom operator has been trying for the last four years now to enter India, settling two years ago for a 10% stake in market leader Bharti Airtel. Now, buying 67% ownership of Hutch has given it management control in the world's hottest market, a market where penetration rates are still as low as 13%.
Sunil Mittal, head of Bharti Airtel — former collaborator and soon-to-be competitor — told the Daily Mail during 3GSM in Barcelona: "In Vodafone's place I could have spent a couple of billion dollars more. In my place, probably $3 billion-$4 billion less."
Still, as analyst Harit Shah of Angel Broking points out, "eventually what Vodafone is paying for is for growth".
Explosion in capex
And what growth: "There's an explosion in capex, there's an explosion in numbers of base stations," says HSBC's Grinann. "Bharti has announced the construction of 20,000 base stations in the next year alone. A market like Korea has 8,000 base stations in all. Even Vodafone's total tally of base stations in the UK is only 30,000."
So what changes will Vodafone bring to the Indian market? Certainly, its entry is being greeted as a major event by all sections of the Indian economy, including the media.
After Vodafone's successful bid Arun Sarin, the group's Indian-born CEO, arrived in Delhi and Mumbai to a red-carpet reception.
"There's a new ring master in town" yelled the headlines of the country's largest daily, The Times of India, "and he says rates are going to fall further". Indeed Vodafone announced a whole host of goodies, from low-priced handsets — from its procurement agreement from Chinese manufacturer ZTE — to lower tariffs and better coverage, through savings in opex and capex through infrastructure sharing deal with Bharti Airtel.
Here's where Vodafone encountered its first road block. Not everyone proved equally ecstatic with these offerings. Vodafone's minority partners, the Ruia brothers, whose Essar company holds 33% in Hutch, were reportedly miffed by Sarin's triumphant announcement of an infrastructure sharing deal with Bharti.
What followed was weeks of wheeling and dealing, as the Ruias sought to bargain for more operational control and a higher value on their "put" option — their ability to sell out their minority stake, if at any time in the next five years they should choose to. Questions were raised in parliament about the legality of the amount of foreign investment in this deal. A lobby group, Telecom Watchdog, filed an objection with the Delhi High Court. That now seems to be sorted out.
Vodafone will pay Essar $415 million extra and grant it a put option to buy back its shares in three to four years of operation for the amount of $5 billion, leaving Vodafone free to get on with the business of slugging it out in the Indian market.
It's a market that is looking clearly at growth. "It's a marathon which is not anywhere near its close — it's a little beyond the start," says K A Chaukar, managing director of Tata Services, the promoter company for Tata Indicom.
Six big telecom operators and several small ones have made this market unusually competitive. Tariffs, at one or two cents a minute, are the lowest in the world. "Mobiles have become a grocery item," exclaims entrepreneur and telecom consultant Amit Bose, who points to SIM cards selling for 90 rupees ($2.07) — "less than a bottle of Horlicks", he notes. Mobile recharge cards are less than the price of a Coke.
Average use runs at 187 minutes a month and declining, while ARPU is $7.60 a month and also declining. But Indian operators continue to report healthy EBITDAs of 30% and above.
The secret of their success is volumes. "The market is expected to grow to 400-500 million subscribers in the next 48-60 months," says Bose, and indeed these are estimates echoed by every telecom major.
Mobile money transfer
High growth areas include mobile broadband, as wireless connects remote areas that have never seen fixed-line phones. "We are introducing instant messaging and also money transfer through mobile phones,", says TV Ramachandran, chairman of the Cellular Operator Association of India. "With up to $22 billion being repatriated to India by the migrant population, GSM systems would be much more cost effective than the current £8-£10 pound surcharge by banks on a money transfer of £50."
Now with the imminent allocation of 3G spectrum, such value added services will receive a fillip, and operators are lining up in droves.
Historical underinvestment in telecom networks and capacities has made the country a more flexible area in terms of technology standards. It has also made the market an opportunity for a whole host of technology providers such as Ericcson, IBM, Motorola and Alcatel-Lucent.
"Unlike other emerging markets like Korea and China, where the government tells the operator what technology to deploy, the operators here are able to choose their own technologies, making India an even more attractive emerging market," explains Grinann at HSBC.
So which are the telecom titans that Vodafone must now tussle with, in its quest to be market leader?
Bharti Airtel — nurtured by owner Mittal to the number one position with 34 million subscribers — is in a sense its biggest competitor. "We are an organization with entrepreneurial DNA," says company president Manoj Kohli, "and we have always welcomed competition."
Indeed Bharti, which will lose a collaborator once Vodafone sells out its stake and will probably experience a setback in its 3G programme, has reaped some benefits both from its infrastructure sharing deal and its status for three years as Vodafone's preferred vendor for national long distance and leased line services.
Its biggest strength however remains its first mover advantage, as it grabs high-ARPU customers along with high market share in regions hitherto unexposed to any telecom at all.
Then there is state-run BSNL with its 25 million mobile subscriber base, and its 34 million fixed-line subscribers. Numbers come easy to this concern, the best network in rural areas. "We are present completely all over India," says chairman and managing director A K Sinha.
Broadband subscriber target
BSNL has the advantage of an extensive existing landline penetration and is targeting five million broadband subscribers in the next three years, up form the current sector total of 2.1 million — aside from subscriber additions in basic mobile connections.
Voice ARPUs, especially in the rural sectors, are among the lowest in the world, and BSNL by bundling broadband with existing fixed line connections is hoping to maximize revenues.
Sinha is unperturbed by Vodafone's imminent entry: "For us it doesn't matter so much. In the last five years we have gained considerable experience, we will continue to price ourselves aggressively," he says.
Reliance Telecom, the largest CDMA player and the third largest telecom operator in the market, also counts in the numbers game. It was a late entrant into the Indian telecom market, but it dug deep into its pockets for petrochemical cash to achieve critical mass very quickly.
The company launched with an offer of 501 rupees ($11) for handset and connection, suddenly making the mobile phone a mass-affordable communications device. Its mobile subscriber base is now 31 million.
Last year Reliance announced a strategic shift to provide GSM services as well. But its unsuccessful bid for Hutch has been a major setback in its ambitions of achieving number one position.
Value added services
Tata Indicom, promoted by the $17.80 billion Tata Group, also uses CDMA technology and has a 7.2% share of the mobile market with a subscriber base of 10.7 million. It also has 4.7 million fixed line and fixed wireless subscribers. Its focus on value added services is buttressed by the acquisition of former state-owned telecom services company VSNL.
In a sector where rapid growth is going to lead to major spectrum shortages, Tata Indicom plans to emphasis its superior quality, especially for value added services, as compared with the existing 2G GSM providers. "Technology gives us the competitive edge," says K Chaukar, managing director of Tata Services. "We have a superior combination of data and voice on a CDMA spectrum efficiency."
Idea Mobile, promoted solely by the $12 billion Aditya Birla group, has 13 million mobile subscribers and 8.7% of the total market. It recently had a successful IPO to fund its ambitious expansion programme; planning to invest about $2 billion in services over the next few years as well setting up national long distance networks.
So that's the market in which Vodafone must achieve its declared target of 25% market share by 2012. What it has is the Hutch brand with 24 million subscribers, its nationwide network and an experienced management team led by CEO Asim Ghosh, widely credited for making Hutch what it is today.
Vodafone seems to have a lot going for it despite its history of reverses in Japan and parts of Europe. It has the advantage of being the only international brand in the Indian market, giving it the ability to leverage its vast global experience. It has access to international technology and procurement and it has deep pockets to fund cap ex on much needed network development.
Ghosh, CEO of the company, soon to be renamed Vodafone Essar, sums it up: "There will be more penetration. There will be more investment. We'll get our share of the growth." GTB

Appeared in the March April issue of Global Telecoms Business

Bradshaws for Breakfast

2007-01-15T00:38:00.000-08:00

Am I a factoid philistine? Boorishly unfervent about the nuances of narrative nuggets?

Should I on that Saturday night, have applauded the curiously cubic chronicle of the number ‘1729’ ?

A Saturday night that began at eight pm with a million multicolored balls in the air. Tickets to a to nine o clock play at Prithvi Theatre with free seating that ensures that the later you get the worse corner bench you’re squashed in. Yoghurt I HAD to set for tomorrow’s cream cheese dip, and then a call to the shop next door. Dosa batter, soda and bread for Sunday breakfast that I must remember to order just as I finish ironing this silk blouse. Oh and the strawberries too, and these from the fruitwala. So what then, if spouse and soul mate (lounging on the sofa with ‘A History of Numbers’) found me unappreciative and inattentive . Yes , mathematicians Hardy and Ramanujan did meet a century ago. And Hardy remarked that he had arrived in a taxicab whose number, 1729, was quite uninteresting. But then Ramanujan replied that, on the contrary, 1729 was quite interesting as it was the smallest positive integer which could be written as the sum of two (positive) cubes in two different ways: 93 + 103 = 123 + 13. So ?

It’s not like I’m mathematically challenged. Seat me at a desk, a laptop or even in a silent space and I can juggle numbers as well as any man.

And so it goes with other stuff. But no, I can’t co-obsess about coordinates on a wonderfully scenic drive. Or swoon over the survival instincts of the Savannah centipede. Or expand enthusiastically and endlessly, on where Sachin Tendulkar scored centuries .

Call me crass , but I’d rather read a thriller, than read up on the origins of the ektara. I don’t, like my fact obsessed better half , browse through Bradshaw’s for breakfast. And if you do inform me in tones of newly discovered awe, that the Rajdhani takes 20 mins less than the August Kranti in its journey to Delhi, I’m more likely to be busy with the Bombay Times.

Does that then make me then the archetypal enemy of the arcane – the ‘soft’ sex with more EQ than IQ , more right brain than Left ?

It seems it does. And what’s more I’d like to state ( in my statistically unsupported stance!) that this maybe all to the good. Life’s way is most likely to be the highway, never mind all those beguiling branch lines to eternity.

What’s it then with this male mania for trivia ? Are narrative nuggets the new age medallions ? ‘ Mr. Know It All’ Esquire magazine Senior Editor and author Jacobs would agree. And he should know. Jacobs spent a whole year reading the Encyclopedia Britannica . As he says in an interview shortly after, having just read about a long-dead ruler of Saxony who hunted and killed more than 42,000 deer during his reign,” I’m worried I'm not much better than John of Saxony. I'm just trying to fill my wall with the stuffed heads of deer and lion and bears, though in my case, my wall would be filled with facts about lions and bears - for example, bears are not true hibernators - their body temperature doesn't dive and they are easily awakened. Is all this a macho accumulation?” It’s an accumulation that serves Jacobs well and not just on the cocktail party circuit, though it works well on that too. Too much trivia maybe a tad tiresome, but it certainly has its uses and these are not just limited to BBC Quiz Time, topic ‘The life and times of Martina Navratilova age 26 to age 28’.
In the end it seems more about a male craving for the comfort of cold fact. As one blogger confesses,” I can only speak for my own gender, and I can reveal that men are mostly dragged kicking and screaming into grown-upness. They never give up the secret hope that complexity will go away and leave them alone. They take refuge in trivia because facts, nice orderly facts, are psychological balm to the friction burns inflicted by contact with real life.”

In Man's World January 2007

Uprooted

2006-08-04T22:04:00.000-07:00

A giant tamarind tree stood tall behind our house. Its tiny leaves, perfectly shaped, looked viridian green on cloudy days, emerald on sunny ones. And it made a fantastically foresty Venetian Blind for our block of flats. I'd look out from my fifth floor corridor and all I'd see was green and a bit of brown-black. Occasionally a parrot or a mynah might alight, but that was all.

It made me think of my neighbour and friend Anisha’s astonished question. I’d once told her the price of land was the same in our Juhu neighbourhood as the newly developing Parel. And that my brother was buying a flat in a gigantic Parel complex. “Why would he want to live in Parel if he could live in Juhu for the same price?” she’d puzzled.

Why indeed? Maybe Juhu-Versova is far far away from the Fort-Fountain finance and heritage hubs, but it’s a most pleasant spot to live in. And wonderfully wooded as the many walkers in the area will vouchsafe.

I’d have expected coconut palms in this suburb by the sea, and they’re there too, sometimes five storeys high, like the ones that sway in the breeze outside my window.

But there are many more trees as well — the rain trees, the Ashokas, the mango trees and of course the Gulmohars. Streets in the JVPD scheme, like the Gulmohar Cross Roads 1-10, stand testimony to these leafy wonders.

They surprise me, these trees. I trudge through Juhu Market’s traffic jammed streets into the Isckon Temple and there they are. Peepul trees in the marble arched inner courtyard. One moment I’m in an unruly medley of autos, and the next I’m in arboreal heaven.

And then there’s the road I always take, no matter which direction I must go – the Juhukar Gandhigram with great big trees on either side. At its very end is the road’s most magic spot, where stands an ancient banyan whose earthy roots envelop all space. But the tamarind tree... it toppled over in last fortnight’s deluge. Smashing the boundary wall, flattening two cars. Some say it was old, 90 years or more and that it had to go. But the gnarled old Mali who tends these trees all year long, says that like the raintrees that fell last year, this too could have lived. If only its roots hadn’t been so crowded out by concrete.

This appeared in Mumbai Mirror dated August 5th

Racists by Kunal Basu - Book review

2006-06-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

It’s 1885. Off the coast of Africa, where the slave ships ply , lies the island of Arlinda. Here a black baby boy and a white baby girl are being raised by a mute nurse, as par of an experiment in race studies. Arlinda is an interesting setting : Islands lend themselves well to powerful denouements or at the least to idyllic romances, as anyone who has read Goldings ‘The Lord of the Flies’ or seen ‘The Blue Lagoon’ will testify. Add to this the extra dimension of genetic theory , and you could with artful plot and perspective have a provocative piece of ‘Frankenstein’ meets ‘Never Let Me Go’.

Management Professor Basu has written earlier about 'The Opium Clerk' and then 'The Miniaturist' a court painter in Akbar's Court. The two warring scientists in this, his third novel, book certainly add depth to this varied repertoire. Bates , the Englishman collects skulls, in an office referred to appropriately enough as the Madhouse. According to him the White race is superior to the Black and skull measurements confirm this hypothesis. Belacroix, the Frenchman is less defined. He is subject to a basketful of weird skin conditions, but mostly he takes notes and he also engages Bates in pages and pages of pseudo scientific argument. His thesis remains that the races are different but doomed to hate each other. The Arlinda experiment is the statistically half baked consequence of this disagreement. The White girl will emerge as superior , says Bates. They will fight and one will kill the other says Belacroix. It’s a macabre menage-a-trois, Bates and his assistant Quartley, antagonist Belacroix , and the two ‘savage’ children with their dumb nurse. They circle each other , like gladiators in a ring, for most of the book, which sounds suspenseful, except that nothing happens. It’s all dependably dull. Bates, Belacroix , Norah and specially the children never come to life. The denouement isn’t overly dramatic either, but it comes as a relief all the same.

This review appeared in India Today June 2006

Mommy Lit ? Momoirs ?

2006-06-19T08:52:00.000-07:00

Is motherhood, that most primeval of states, much maligned in today’s mommy lit? Methinks so, a Martian might be moved to venture, on reading the current crop.

With titles that run the gamut from ‘Misconceptions’ to ‘Oh Yeah Get a Life’, you don’t have to delve too deep to figure that all-effacing motherhood is not the formula for the new millennium. Motherhood maybe our biological bug bear, these books say, but the times they are a–changing and we no longer care to pretend its mere child’s play. Such books, and there are now a whole bunch, ranging from activist analysis to easy breezy ‘momoirs’, don’t shy away from displaying their diapers, poopy or otherwise. The most sensational of them all, Orange prize winning ‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’, tells the story of Eva Khatchadourian , an otherwise fulfilled career woman who can’t bring herself to like her child. That he kills seven fellow students in a high school shooting before his sixteenth birthday, is one of the questions this powerful novel asks – was Kevin innately bad or did he get twisted ? Analysing the runaway success of her book, journalist author Lionel Shriver says in an interview to the Guardian ,”I think Kevin has attracted an audience because my narrator, Eva, allows herself to say all those things that mothers are not supposed to say. She experiences pregnancy as an invasion. When her newborn son is first set on her breast, she is not overwhelmed with unconditional love; to her own horror, she feels nothing. She imputes to her perpetually screaming infant a devious intention to divide and conquer her marriage. Eva finds caring for a toddler dull”.

The metaphors of dullness , imprisonment and indeed, lack of feeling are not new ones. Betty Friedman in her 1963 cult book ‘The Feminine Mystique’ famously exploded the happy housewife mother figure. The real life women in Friedman’s book, in ‘smiling empty passivity’ or in ‘morbid depression’ tell their stories , one young mother of three even describing herself ‘ready for a padded cell’ before half the day’s work was done. But it took Erma Bombeck in the 1980’s to cleverly convert this maternal angst into daily diary humour in her bestselling ‘Motherhood : The Second Oldest Profession in the World’. It’s here she asks -"If someone was to run an ad in the New York Times which read: WANTED: Household drudge, 140 hour week, no retirement, no sick leave, no room of own, no Sundays off. Must be good with animals, kids and hamburger. Must share bath, would 42 million women still apply?" Sounds like a snappy bit of humour , and yet there’s no missing the serious satire. It would be two decades however, before another woman writer, this one an economist , would address Bombeck ‘s question with real numbers . Anne Crittenden in her ‘The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued’, quantifies the loss of lifetime earnings of the average college educated American mother as a million dollars. In a revealing anecdote Crittenden talks about the genesis of her book , a few years after she left her job at the New York Times to be full time mother ,” I ran into someone at a party who said, "Didn’t you used to be Ann Crittenden?" That’s when I knew I had to write this book.”

Crittenden’s book joins other activist titles like ‘The Myth of Motherhood’ and ‘The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars : Who decides What makes a Good Mother’. But it’s the Bombeck tradition of mommy lit that currently rules commercial roost ( even though the phrase ‘mommy lit’ appeared later, in a sort of maternal elder sister extension to the ‘Bridget Jones Diary’ inspired ‘chick lit’.) The Divine Secrets of the Mama Sisterhood have never been more readable and the last decade has seen a proliferation of such titles. They crib and they complain – some stridently and others satirically, and yet to read them is to see that they’re also crying out for help.

Of these, the best known is undoubtedly Allison Pearson’s 2002 novel ’I don’t Know How She Does It’. It tells the story of Kate Reddy, working fund manager mother of two and the multiple juggling act that is her life. Frantically defacing perfect factory made meat pies to look as if they’re homemade Kate Reddy reflects , “I already understood the world of women was divided in two: there were the proper mothers, self sacrificing bakers of apple pies….and there were the other sort” . And as she spars , singly with the Corporation she says, “It’s possible to get sway with being late in the City. The key thing is to offer what my lawyer friend Debra calls a Man’s Excuse. Senior managers who would be frankly appalled by the story of a vomiting nocturnal baby or an AWOL nanny…are happy to accept anything to do with the internal combustion engine ’The car broke down/was broken into.’ ‘You should have seen the – fill in scene of mayhem-at the –fill in street’ Either of these will do very well.”

This appeared in The Sunday Times Bookmark on May 8th - mothers day

Allan Sealy

2006-06-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

Allan Sealy doesn’t read newspapers. He lives, like fellow writer Ruskin Bond, in the foothills of the Himalayas. The only concession this 54 year old Anglo Indian writer makes to modernity is his mouse. Also his computer and his net connection.
So even as Sealy loves his solitude, he delights little-boy like in the marvels of technology.

‘Red’, the book Sealy is here in Mumbai to promote, is about many things. It’s also the first book Sealy has written on a computer. Three threads, colour coded run through the book. The red thread tells of billionairess Aline and avant garde musician Zach, who meets in front of Matisse’s painting entitled ‘The Red Room’. The black tells of Gilgitan, earthy and energetic, a Dom who blackens his face with soot and grease, and yet wins the love of an unlikely woman. The third wire is a green one and the most obviously autobiographical. It tells of N, the Narrator, who lives in Dariya Dun, his work and his relationships with his estranged wife Olivia and his daughter, Mandalay. I ask Sealy if he has a daughter as well. ”Yes”, he says after the briefest of pauses,” But she doesn’t look anything like N’s daughter in the book.” Deepa Rose is the same age as the book’s Manda, and she lives in New Zealand (unlike Mandalay who lives in America). Sealy and his New Zealander wife, live like N does, in a little house in Dehra Dun with a walled garden. It’s a house with a newly acquired resident. One that becomes, as Sealy tells me “one of the characters”. Acquired after much frustration with having to access the net from seedy centres -“I was a prisoner of these cybercafés”, Sealy tells me “and they were filthy little places, horrible holes.” So Sealy bought himself a computer, a flat screen monitor and a wireless mouse. Like N in the novel, who encounters, besides the picture of a ‘ dripping Bipasha Basu’ , “something sticky on the floor under my shoe and it’s not chewing gum. It’s- o my god’. So N gets himself a computer too, on which he types in www.hermitagemuseum.com and then ‘Matisse’ in the search box, to watch ‘The Red Room’ download.

We talk about the book’s sense of colour. It’s easy for Sealy to engage with these themes, he’s a painter himself. “I never carry a camera. Instead I do small sketches “, he tells me. I ask him if he’s done any of Mumbai. ”The view from here”, he says gesturing to the sea and South Mumbai green outside. It’s a little pencil sketch on a small President Hotel pad. But it has point and perspective, with the morning star, the taxis and the World Trade Centre.

‘Red’, also has poetry, a quality Sealy’s earlier books have often been praised for. Right from the ‘The Trotternama’ a chronicle of Anglo Indian history, to ‘The Everest Hotel’ . In Sealy’s love story novel, ‘The Brain Fever Bird’, the city of Delhi comes alive in lyrically poetic prose. Here’s Lev, the out of work biological weapons scientist from St. Petersburg, in Delhi – “India Gate, his map says. The wide road leading to it is heroic, out of another sort of dream. Its vaunting scale is familiar : he recognizes the bullying note from his Moscow days”. And of the brain fever bird –“a shy bird, furtive in speckled fatigues, a cuckoo with a liking for babblers nests…and a call that climbs and climbs maddeningly through the hot June afternoon and the burning nights : brainfever! brainfever ! brainfever ! higher and higher till the crazed listener sits down on a stool and prepares a noose that could either be for the bird or for himself.”

We talk about his first name ‘Irwin’ – “it was my father’s name as well, so I was always called Allan. Subconsciously I must have resented it , because I decided to resurrect it, but only the initial. “ And then Sealy tired of people asking him what the ‘I’ stood for.So now ‘Red’ is the first book that features the author’s full name on the jacket - ‘Irwin Allan Sealy’.

What do Sealy’s literary awards mean to him- ‘Trotternama’ won the 1988 Commonwealth Writers prize and ‘The Everest Hotel’, The 1998 Crossword Award . Sealy’s philosophical – “ It’s nice to get a lakh or two. Prizes may probably quicken a writer’s career, but they can also deaden some impulse in him – they can interfere with the flow.” And all those hefty advances overseas writers get ? “It doesn’t touch me “, Sealy maintains. We talk about the huge advance the Harvard student author Kaavya Vishwanathan received “It’s a huge wallop on the head – she doesn’t realise it - at the moment she’s floating but she could sink “ - a prophecy that was to prove uncannily true a few days later.

Sealy himself , may travel but always goes back to his Himalayan Retreat , safely distant from the big bucks. Is money an issue ? “Not a serious issue, in other words I’m not seriously poor!”, he jokes. It’s a joke like most, with some truth. It’s N the narrator in ‘Red’ who answers it most poetically- “When I’m anxious for the future, I look up at the hornbill in the palm tree with a single areca nut in his beak, and think that’s his whole pension too, his provident fund, his retirement package, his future, and then my fears are quelled. Not answered, put at rest. You have to sit quietly on your branch and offer up your self entire, to the world, to the universe, to the next passer-by”.

This appeared in The Week April 2006

KIran Nagarakr

2006-06-19T08:39:00.000-07:00

I meet Kiran Nagarkar at his beautiful Breach Candy bungalow – raintrees outside, brass urns, and mahogany tables inside. It’s a friend’s house, he tells me, he lost his own . How that happened is a story that could be an aside in any of Nagarkar’s novels. A sinister version of the ‘Water Wars’, the squabbles the chawl protagonists in his famous Bombay novel ‘Ravan and Eddie’ are subjected to. It’s an urban nightmare both sad and scatological, and the writer is upset in the retelling.

But today is a hopeful day – the 63 year old Marathi English novelist is back after a break of eight years. Like ‘Cuckold’, his historical Sahitya Akademi winning 1998 novel, this present work is another voluminous saga. It tells in 584 pages, the coming of age story of a young Indian terrorist - Zia Khan. Early reviews have been mixed. Nagarkar is back last night from a reading in Germany, and is off the following day for the books launch in Delhi. Mumbai and Calcutta follow next. So Nagarkar is all keyed up. A new book is always a tense occasion ,and must be particularly so for Nagarkar, a writer who has risen from humble beginnings through constant re invention, moving from Marathi to English, and from novel to screenplay to a play.

So we talk. About Zia, Nagarkar’s terrorist hero. About the art of the novel. A subject he’s eloquent on, and obviously impassioned about,” I keep going back to these classic tales”, he confesses, ”you can live your life by these stories, Homer has you by the collar, and Kabir has you by the throat… I mean gosh, how many times have they buried the novel?” he demands. “All this post modernist fixation of -I have to be different, I have to be original… “.

I ask him if he enjoys any contemporary writers- Amitabh Ghosh , he answers , pausing to wonder at Ghosh’s genius for unravelling fascinating nuggets ,”I mean he found out that the Burmese King actually lived in Ratnagiri”, constructing much of his ‘The Glass Palace ‘around that little fact.

And Rushdie ? In Nagarkar’s new book, his terrorist hero Zia , is obsessed with killing Rushdie. Zia, who has been sent by his family to study at Cambridge , updates Allah with Yeatsian status reports on SR/Essar’s whereabouts “The Beast has gone underground…All the heathens and disbelievers of the world have conspired to throw a smoke screen around it “. I ask him where all that graphic imagery of ‘the evil one reading from his satanic book ‘…and his ‘hooded eyes’ came from ? “Well that’s Zia’s perspective “, he clarifies. Nagarkar himself doesn’t enjoy Rushdie’s prose anymore – “he’s trapped “, he analyses . Nevertheless he fumes those who criticise at Rushdie– “these are people who have no idea of the value of life”.

Nagarkar should know. In 1977 Nagarkar wrote ‘Bedtime Stories’ a scathing retelling of four stories from the Mahabharata. The play had a chorus that was represented by a Nazi , and the perpetrators on trial were the audience themselves. The play was attacked by the RSS even as rehearsals themselves became an impossibility , to say nothing of an actual performance. But then Nagarkar’s non novelistic endeavours have always been somewhat jinxed. The famous Bombay novel ‘Ravan and Eddie’ began life as a screenplay for Dev Benegal, but was abandoned mid-way. And in this latest book Zia’s novelist brother Amanat has a run in with a couple of such fickle film producers who “keep him hanging for months on end, destroying whatever fragment of self esteem he had left”. Why does this happen , I ask him ? Maybe they are just horrid people , he replies post a thoughtful pause. Yet Nagarkar confesses he is still extremely fond of Benegal, even though the two scarcely speak.

Like Nagarkar and the Marathi establishment. Once hailed as a shining gem of Marathi literature, Nagarkar reveals how today he is persona non grata . It’s an episode that has been particularly painful for this Marathi writer. Right from 1991 when Nagarkar was in Chicago on a fellowship (“cleaning bathrooms “, he tells me in another delightful aside “the fellowship was so shoe string”). That’s when he made the decision to switch languages “For days I couldn’t get out of bed “, he confesses , “the move seemed a betrayal”. And yet Marathi readership with its abysmal numbers was slowly killing the writer in him. Nagarkar hadn’t written for 12 years. As he explains,“ Saat sakkam trechalis’ is called a milestone in Marathi lit… But what’s the use of a milestone if it sells only 1500 copies in 25 years?” .

I ask him how he spent those non writing years . “We struggled to make ends meet, he confesses. Arun ( Kolatkar, the poet) and I were partners for 20 years. We wrote ad copy but then our agency closed down,. We were out of a job. We’d go around together, and we just would not get any work – me in my kurta pajama, Arun with his long hair .God knows why, he, Arun had a reputation for unreliability. Our rejection fee used to be Rs.1500 for an assignment and Rs.3000 if our work was accepted. Somehow we got by. And now after his death Arun gets all this recognition. What damn use is it ?”

So will this new book change all of this ? ‘God’s Little Soldier’ is contemporary. It’s come after eight years of writes and rewrites. “I struggled”, Nagarkar explains “with the character of Zia.” The first draft, 800 pages plus and handwritten, was rejected when Nagarkar realised that the rigid idealistic terrorist hero he had created could take no humour. Zia was emerging as a vastly different character from the tongue in cheek chawl boys in Ravan and Eddie. Where Ravan and Eddie coped with recognizable evils like errant fathers and school bullies with zing, Zia created his own monsters. Like keeping Ramadan to please his aunt, by pretending to eat (to satisfy his liberal Muslim parents) and then throwing up post every meal. Or by flagellating himself. All of which makes ‘God’s Little Soldier’ very dramatic. Also cinematic, as locales move from Bombay to Cambridge and then worlds away to a Trappist monastery atop a ledge of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It’s been described a book which has the ideas and events for three or four different novels, and certainly as you follow Zia through his childhood , and see him moving from Cambridge dons to gay priests to arms dealing god men, you begin to see why. Colourful, kaleidoscopic and quite the dance of life, even if it is macabre.

IN the Week April 2006

I Love Juhu

2006-02-06T03:02:00.000-08:00

I love Juhu

Marshland and a sandy island called Juhu Tara metamorphosed into this queen of the suburbs- Bollywood’s own Beverly Hills. Juhu, with its film-famous beach , coconut palm skyline and its barricaded bungalows is a movie goers Mecca. Crowds congregate every evening , via wide bodied Volvos , or by BEST bus rides from the Vile Parle Station to take in the temples, the sand and the sea . Also to scour the streets for that single second serendipitous glimpse of their favorite film stars – a scene they will describe many times over to enthralled audiences in the great Indian hinterland.

Almost every road in Juhu seems to have own little story. The mini Gandhi ashram, the temples, the tanks, the Bollywood homes  all these are local reference points, as estate agents and autowalas inform all prospective buyers and passers-by with pride. [Even for the suitably inured resident, it is rather a thrill to encounter Shabana Azmi strolling on the beach or wheel one’s trolley past Hema Malini at the Foodland supermarket. At the hip Nalini and Yasmin beauty parlor, you could be flanked by Farah Khan in the midst of a power hair wash and dry, and Dimple Kapadia on the other side. And at Rain and Vie, the beachfront bar, you’re likely to spot Kareena Kapoor, Bobby Deol or Bipasha Basu in animated conversation at the little tables perched atop a softly luminous floor.

But it isn’t all high living in our neighborhood. Next to the giant glass-windowed Shoppers Stop (with its very own Crossword and soon-to-come Moshe’s) is Chandan Cinema. Here, for the princely sum of Rs 40 you can sit back in air-conditioned comfort and watch the latest blockbuster. Crowds of college students, Sindhi and Gujarati families and the inevitable complement of unemployed /part time /playing hooky? young men line up for matinee shows.

Life is lively on the Juhu streets. Spicy vada pav and sweet steaming chai at many street corners find conversational crowds of takers, discussion veering from film star employees to cricket controversies. College students congregate in coffee shops and householders wax expansively with their families over generous dollops of ice cream and milk shake . Gyms, saunas and Jacuzzis dot the area as their many patrons – the yummy mummy’s , the actor wannabe's and the adventuring Buntys and Bablis scour designer boutiques for sensational strappy wonders, as they ready themselves for nights of net working in the areas chic pubs and lounges.

Mostly though, it’s just good to be home. Mornings bring birdsong – emerald green parrots pecking at the coconuts on the palm trees, tiny grey sparrows, shimmering sunbirds and maybe even a mynah. And everywhere, the feel of the sea, just there, or a couple of lanes away. You can see it if you climb high enough – that and a wide open vista beyond foam flecked waves and a blue grey Arabian sea.

NEIGHBOURHOOD GEMS

Juhu Beach All roads in Juhu lead to this stretch of sand and sea. The beach has something for everyone – sports enthusiasts play Frisbee, football or beach cricket mornings and evenings. Walkers, laughter clubs and suryanamaskar practitioners congregate mornings, while evenings turn almost carnival like. Picnicking families set out little rectangular cloths, women unwrap carefully packed parathas and theplas while their kids tuck into pink candy floss, build sandcastles and dip in the sea.

The ISKON Temple Complex With its black and white marble floors, its generous tree- shaded quadrangle and great teak and gold doors that open onto ornate Krishna figures, the temple is worth a visit. There’s also an excellent auditorium that hosts classical dance and music performances. Gourmet meals at the in-house restaurant ‘Govinda’, that connoisseurs delight, with its trademark ‘chappan bhog’ in shudh ghee, are the icing on this cake. At Hare Krishna Land, Juhu Tel 26206860. Temple opens from 4am – 1 pm and 4-9 pm. ‘Govinda’ open all days of the week from 12.30 -3 pm and 7.30-10 pm . Meal for two Rs.1100

The Centre for Arts and Crafts. Originally Contemporary Arts and Crafts, this store has a new name, but retains its distinct feel. It’s crammed with mix of irresistible artifacts - pottery, lamps and even a warm wooden bar. Tribal masks, silver Ganeshas and wicker furniture too. This a great store to pick up unusual presents and the displays are gorgeous. They play Buddha Bar, but don’t let that put you off. There’s a smell of freshly roasted coffee from the tiny café. Seating is outside, under dark blue canopies  nice, except when it’s raining. At 9, Juhu Supreme Shopping Centre, Gulmohar Cross Road no 9. Tel 26204668 . Open all days of the week from 10am -8 pm

Bharat Scouts and Guides Grounds – Turn off the Juhu Military Canteen road at the police Chowky, past Rutumbara/ Sanghavi College and suddenly out of nowhere, you have an amazing, almost endless expanse of verdant green. There’s a series of tennis courts here , six or more and often a cricket game in progress too.
Off Juhu Military Road, past Ritumbara College Most games between 7 am to 6 pm

Prithvi Café Sip mint tea or coffee, splurge on brownies or get serious with chicken tikka at this arty outdoor café, ringed by bamboo trees. The crowd here is an interesting mix of intense artists, articulate writers, hippie girls and lets-hang-out-in-an arty-place others. Besides Prithvi theatre there’s also The Corner Bookshop for a bit of browsing. At Janaki Kutir, Off Juhu Church Road. Tel 26149546 Open all days from 12.30 in the afternoon to 11.30 at night.

Mahesh Lunch Home Spicy tandoori pomfret, tiger prawns, Mangalorean fish bathed in satisfyingly rich coconut gravy. Mahesh Lunch Home is a branch of the original thing in Fort and located very accessibly on Juhu Tara Road promises all that and more. Only, one wishes the décor was not so Udipi-turned-prosperous plush. At Juhu Tara Road, next to Hotel Tulip Star Tel no 56955554, 56978966/8967 Open all days of the week for lunch from 12-3.30 and in the evenings from 7 - 12.30 PM. Meal for two Rs.500

Natural Ice Cream The winning combination of fruit and creamy kulfi-like ice cream was born here. Today Natural of JVPD has branches all over Mumbai, but the original Juhu outlet continues to do brisk business. Crowds converge at all hours Seasonal specials are posted on boards – strawberries, sitaphal, watermelon , cheeku or tender coconut….all very hard to choose between , even after sampling tiny white plastic spoons of each.
At 13th North South Road, Opp.Lotus Eye Hospital Tel 26707558, 26206053. Open all days of the week . From 10AM – 12.30 midnight. Prices range from Rs. 25 a scoop of ice cream upward

An edited version of this appeared in Timeout January 14th 2006

Party time in Juhu

2006-02-06T02:52:00.000-08:00

January in Juhu and it’s party time. The Citizen’s Group is taking a break from clearing road blocks and battling beach encroachments. Earlier in the week, slim blue and white flyers are slipped into mailboxes and under doors in most households in the area. ‘Volunteers required’, they invite, ’for the Juhu Hamara Festival 2006’, details set against a beguiling logo of a radiant sun on the sea.
So calls flood in - a few want to help, others to attend festivities and many to see the stars.
Juhu Citizen members dash around in different directions – Hansel is putting together the free film screenings, Gulu Gadekar makes the round of local schools for kiddie activities and Adolf processes entries for Sunday evening’s talent night. So much classical music and dance, he discovers. Age old traditions from ‘Nandan’, the celebrated Bharat Natyam School opposite Amitabh Bachchan’s shrub filled and fenced palatial house ‘Pratiksha’ . From ‘Sangeet Mahabharti’, the singing institute in the striking old world house and garden across the road.
Song and dance, and the grounds opposite the Shoppers Stop Mall are beginning to look festive. Here’s where Hema Malini will inaugurate the festival and Ahana Deol will perform a traditional Ganesh vandana dance. The Mall itself with it’s strings of fairy lights and giant glass windows will be host to a series of literary readings. It’s sprawling basement Crossword will see an enactment of Dalit writer Urmila Pawar’s gritty autobiography ‘Ayudaan’, stories of the sea by Juhu Versova born poet Saleem Peeradina, Arundhati Subramaniam and Anand Thakore’s poetry of the sea and a reading from ‘The Girl’, journalist Sonia Faleiro’s haunting debut novel of love and betrayal set on the sea.
A few streets away, the Kaifi Azmi Park with it’s carefully coiffured landscaping, paths and podiums will be another scene for much bustle and buzz – pot painting, craft work and kite flying. At Juhu Jagruti, Javed Akhtar inaugurates the film festival with a mix of Mumbai gems like Anand Patwardhan’s classic commentary and Paromita Vohra’s neighbourhood documentaries. Oh, and there’s the Juhu Dream Run , Sunday 8 am everybody, the gorgeous Pooja Bedi’s going to flag off runners from the spacious Jamnabai Narsee School Grounds, deep in the heart of the gulmohar tree lined JVPD Scheme.

This appeared in the Mumbai Mirror Jan 18th

Papa, Pass the Pullman

2006-02-06T02:50:00.000-08:00

How many children read the dazzlingly inventive adventures of Artemis Fowl, boy genius and criminal mastermind? How many venture into the incredibly complex, richly textured parallel universes of Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy? Do tweenies and teenagers really dip in, of their own accord, into the time travels of Jonathon Stroud’s infamous djinn Bartimaeus?

Certainly not as many as the multiple displays in the Children’s Sections of many bookstores would have us believe. Armed with a basketful of questions based on these bookshelves, at a recent children’s literature quiz, I was greeted by staggering silences on these bestsellers. And yet the same kids were competently conversant with Shakespeare and Sherlock Holmes, with Janus and Jules Verne.

So why are these titles all over children’s sections? Why isn’t Pullman, like HG Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds’, tucked into the crowded recesses of adult science fiction and fantasy? Perhaps it’s because booksellers, like movie makers have discovered the secret of wholesome family fare. If ‘Shark Tales’ with its Robert de Niro and Martin Scorcese voiceovers can net in entire families, books targeted at teenagers and yet complex enough to hold their parents attention are sure volume winners. Spawning a separate category called ‘crossover’. It’s a category that’s largely publisher created and it features a lot of complex fantasy like Pullman , Stroud and Ursula Le Guin. Also other intricately nuanced books like Mark Haddon’s ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time ‘ , a story of an autistic child which makes the grade because of it’s simple language and it’s child protagonist. But really a book that is, in the reading far more complex, than a standard Hardy Boys roaring river mystery. Interestingly, both Pullman and Haddon, never intended their books to be for children. Yet both ended up being wildly successful after being slotted by their publishers, in the children’s fiction category. For children’s fiction shelves are by all accounts , burgeoning, and how ! What’s debatable is who exactly is driving that boom.

Post Potter, it is no longer infra dig or dumbing down to read children’s books. More and more adults are doing exactly that – maybe because these books are well marketed, they stand out from the clutter and are exceedingly well written. They feature powerful and very primeval stories that engage with the always fascinating metaphysical confrontations of good and evil. Harking back to days when, crossovers’ ancient predecessors , ‘The Arabian Nights’, ‘The Odyssey’ or ‘The Mahabharata’, enthralled all ages in the telling . Or even their modern day variations that work so successfully at various levels. Lewis Carroll, Roald Dahl, Tolkien and CS Lewis . Rushdie in that delightful children’s tale of ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories’. I loved reading it out to my six year old who delighted in the action of Haroun on a boat in a lake, while I marvelled at Rushdie’s scrumptious satire as Snooty Buttoo speaks through the Mists of Misery, on the Dull Lake, in the Valley of K. A great story - but not one you’d find the average child reader rushing off into a cosy corner with.

This appeared in the Sunday Times of India Bookmark page 5 th Feb 2006

No God in Sight

2006-01-04T00:32:00.000-08:00

Nestled amidst the clean lines of Tyrewala’s debut novel, lie a million voices. Voices that belong to many protagonists. Faceless people you see all the time, but rarely look at - a housewife, a butcher, a beggar, an Urdu teacher.
They could come from anywhere and yet they also belong exactly where Tyrewala situates them – among the congested streets of Mumbai’s oldest neighborhoods. They tell their stories simply – a chapter for each character. But their voices when you hear them are like the unborn-baby voices in the head of the illegal abortionist protagonist, “discordant and raw and numbing “.
It’s an unusual novel - spare and simple but strangely dispersed. Yet Mumbai based Tyrewala navigates the six degrees of separation between his pavement protagonists with cinematic ease. Beginning with ‘Mrs. Khwaja’ who tells us,”I used to be a poetess and would dwell on minute metaphors for days. Now all day long I cook for Ubaid and Minaz, spend the thousands their fathers earns every month, and contemplate television absentmindedly.” And ‘Mr. Khwaja’ on the next page,” Twenty six years ago I married a mediocre poetess. She gave me two kids”. One of these kids will now visit Akhbar, the abortionist. Kaka , the father of the abortionist, is a shoe salesman. Everyday, for the last thirty years, he climbs to his place of work , where he stays crouched “between the shop’s false ceiling and real ceiling, the mezzanine, where boxes and boxes of footwear are stocked.” Only , Amin-bhai, the shoe shop owner and a disillusioned man, will soon sell the shop and emigrate on an aircraft whose “projection screen will show a blue India, with our plane’s route-so- far outlined in white like an anemic tapeworm in the belly of a diseased nation”.
Strong metaphors these, but expressive of the sense of isolated hopelessness most of Tyrewala’s Muslim protagonists feel . Like Rohington Mistry’s impoverished Parsis who are remorselessly squeezed into smaller spaces , the characters in this book no longer seem to belong . Sohail Tambawala’s wife must borrow her maid’s mangalsutra before she registers a missing person complaint in the local police station, Suleiman obsesses about his Muslim identity , his great-grandpa’s conversion that “turned us into outsiders to be driven out of villages..”, Tambawala recoils from the disgust of the Honda City passengers face ,”staring out at what must seem just another filthy Muslim ghetto”.
Simple yet soulful , this is less that is definitely more.

This review appeared in the Deccan Herald December 25th 2005

The Geisha Strikes Back

2006-01-04T00:27:00.000-08:00

Arthur Golden’s best selling saga of a geisha girl is back in the news. First published in 1997, this kimono clad ‘Pretty Woman’ meets ‘A Woman of Substance’ wowed readers with its exotic subject and setting. Indeed Golden ( who based his tale on the confessions of Mineko Iwasaki, a retired Kyoto geisha) was much praised for his atmospheric authenticity. But three years and four million copies later, Iwasaki sued Golden claiming that he "tarnished her reputation, breached an unwritten contract not to reveal her identity and unjustly enriched himself through the novel".

Now Memoirs finds itself in the centre of another news making controversy – this one caused by the release, earlier this month of it’s cinematic version. Produced by Steven Spielberg, this visually sumptuous epic of the East seemed an inevitable development of a Hollywood hungry for Oriental inspiration. But the film invoked the ire of purists and politics , for it’s controversial casting of Chinese actresses in the three Japanese female leads.

All of which makes Memoirs the season’s trendiest read – a worthy successor to sushi bars, pokemon and manga comics. The book itself is undeniably engaging. Set in early 1900’s Japan, it opens in the little fishing village of Yoroido. Sayuri (still called Chiyo-san) and her elder sister Satsu are sold by their fisherman father and sent many miles away to Kyoto. There, they are separated – the plainer Satsu into an ordinary brothel and Chiyo with her striking grey green eyes into a geisha obiya. This house of the rising sun is run by two mean and ugly crones, ‘Mother’ and ‘Auntie’ . Nine year old Chiyo must fight their petty cruelties and the evil wiles of the beautiful but cruel geisha, Hatsumomo. One day , teary eyed on the banks on the Shirakawa river, Chiyo meets the man who will change her life, known simply as ‘Chairman ‘. He gives her counsel and a coin to buy ice candy ( also a monogrammed handkerchief to wipe her tears). Chiyo’s luck turns, she acquires a fairy godmother, the famous Mameha, who is also rival to Hatsumoto. She applies herself feverishly to her lessons, playing the shamisen, learning dance and deportment (including training to pour tea with just the right glimpse of bare skin visible through a kimono sleeve and walking daintily in wooden shoes ). Events proceed briskly in the tatami matted territory of the Gion tea houses . Mameha’s manipulations for the bid price for Sayuri’s mizuage ( virginity) by playing two interested bidders off each other, pays off. Sayuri is now an independent geisha . But in the conspiring cat-eat-cat world of the Gion geishas, will she achieve her dream of acquiring the ‘Chairman’ as her danna or special patron ?

Golden tells the story deftly, with lots of intricate little descriptions ( Hatsumomo’s kimono, for instance is ‘ water blue, with swirling lines in ivory to mimic the current in a stream. Glistening trout tumbled in the current, and the surface of the water was ringed with gold wherever the soft green leaves of a tree touched it’.) There’s lots of interesting trivia as well , from the designer details of kimonos with their broad belt obi’s and under layer koshimaki’s to the intricacies of geisha make up . And in the distance , tiny glimpses of a frightening real world – of poverty, of common whore houses , being made to work in a factory and of War time in Japan.

Definitely worth a read . For even if it’s a cliché it’s a fascinatingly accoutered one.

This appeared in The Times of India Sunday BookMark dated 1st January 2006

Chrissie Robin Pooh Pooh !

2006-01-04T00:25:00.000-08:00

The 100 Acre Wood is under attack. Home to Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh since 1926. Here’s where Pooh pursues his honey and goes visiting, Eeyore has a birthday and Piglet meets a Heffalump. Areas marked on the map drawn by Christopher Robin invoke their make belief world - Where the Woozle Wasn’t, Eeyore’s Gloomy Place Rather Boggy and Sad, Nice for Piknicks and the top right corner marked To North Pole. But all that is set to change soon. The original creator of these characters A.A Milne is long since dead. And now the Monstrous Mouse franchisee, that makes the mega moolah off merchandising these characters, finds that little six year old Christopher Robin doesn’t sell. Certainly not well enough as his animal friends who bring in upto US $ 1 billion . What better reason then, for the Disney Corporation to write him off their stories and videos, replacing him with a trendier (and presumably more saleable) female counterpart? Never mind that the original stories were actually written around the character of Christopher Robin, named after Milne’s own son. And that the original Winnie-the-Pooh was named after Christopher Robin’s toy bear.

The as-yet-nameless new girl (referred to as ‘tomboyish’) will be launched in 2007 as part of a package of celebrations around Pooh’s 80th anniversary. But for generations of readers who have grown up on these stories, Disney’s crass commercialism is adding insult to injury. Remixed Disney versions of the Pooh books, with their uniformly bright colors and dumbed down stories, have slowly pushed the amusingly written, thoughts from a child’s world originals into oblivion.

Look for the originals and (if you find them) it’s like a journey into Lewis Carroll –like heaven. From the delightful make belief of ‘Nursery Chairs’ to the child like reality of ‘Solitude’ to the serious business of ‘Lines and Squares’, Christopher Robin tells us -“ Whenever I walk in a London Street,/I’m ever so careful to watch my feet;/ And I keep in the squares, /And the masses of bears/Who wait at the corners all ready to eat, /The sillies who tread on the lines of the street, /Go back to their lairs”

And then there’s the ‘100 Aker Wood’, with all it’s idiosyncratic adventures – Here’s where an ’Expotition’ began to ‘discover’ the North Pole ( ”What is the North Pole” he (Pooh) asked. “It’s just a thing you discover,” said Christopher Robin carelessly, not being quite sure himself.’ ) Here’s also where Eeyore loses a tail, Pooh and Christopher Robin rescue Piglet from the Flood in an upturned umbrella and Christopher Robin hosts a party for Pooh and gives him a present –‘It was a Special Pencil Case. There were pencils in it marked “B” for Bear, and pencils marked “HB” for Helping Bear, and pencils marked “BB” for Brave Bear.’

Yet even then (in Disney–less days) it was not all fun and happiness – the real Christopher Robin was growing up and beginning to be affected by the huge popularity of his print persona. So Milne concluded his popular series in ‘The House at Pooh Corner’ where ‘Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place, and We Leave Them There’ with Christopher Robin saying
‘”Pooh, promise you won’t forget about me, ever. Not even when I’m a hundred.”
Pooh thought for a little. “How old shall I be then?”
“Ninety nine “
Pooh nodded.
“I promise”, he said. ‘

So conclude the Pooh books declaring that ‘in that enchanted place on top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing’. Little did Milne dream that eighty years later his magical world would be modified so, all by a mercenary Mouse.

This appeared in the Times of India sunday BookMark dated 25th December 2005

Celebrate Bandra

2006-01-04T00:23:00.000-08:00

At Carter Road, on Bandra’s beach front promenade, the crowds are celebrating. Spiffy old ladies with cropped hair and cotton print dresses, tank top teenagers and their families jive to a local band’s rock n roll. A few kilometers south, at Bandstand, another sea front, more residents congregate to the sounds of Sheena and Nicole and their electric guitars. Bandra-ites , descendants of Mumbai’s old Koli and Christian families and many later immigrants, are celebrating, quite literally, the ground beneath their feet.
The fortnight long ‘Celebrate Bandra Festival’ brings people and place together in a unique way. As Darryl D’Monte , Convenor of the ‘Celebrate Bandra’ festival points out “ this is different. It is unlike any other festival which is run by private institutions or the government. This is citizen driven”. Certainly the sense of community bonhomie at the venues bears D’Monte out. At the Lands End Amphitheatre children perform their acts to the very vocal encouragement of friends, family and the neighborhood aunties and uncles. D’Monte also emphasizes the importance of place, ”The festival has been made possible because of the citizen’s creation of free space – an area one can call one’s own’. Five years ago, both Carter Road and the Bandstand were junky, bedraggled stretches of dumping ground. Citizen Groups consisting of Residents Associations and the ALM’s ( Advanced Locality Management) banded together to fight for a beach front. Architect PK Das who designed the present promenade with its neat concrete walkway and benches describes the festival as having been “born out of this movement. The struggle for space consolidated the area’s sense of community and led to a tremendous pride among the people.” Das is currently working on a beach development plan for Juhu, along with the Juhu Citizen’s Welfare Group (JCWG) a local residents group committed to safe guarding public space . “Everyday is a struggle”, confesses PK Das,” With land sharks and with the apathetic bureaucracy – its many layers can bury you in its own graveyard.” The Bandra project took over 4 years to complete. But looking at it today, it all seems worth it.
Simple outdoor stages designed by Bandra based event management group Fountainhead , with basic sound and light effects utilize these spaces for a various performances. The audience sit en familie and entranced. Early birds fill the rows of white plastic chairs placed on the promenade, others stay standing. At Bandra Bandstand some of the crowd even spills out onto large rocks on a low tide beach . There’s a nip in the November air and the crowd , seated or standing is animated and enthusiastic. Gushes middle aged Shirley D’Souza, out with her friend Samantha for the evenings festivities,” They have been having some great events – Bandra people but they’re just like performers”. Indeed in a star studded neighborhood ( the three Khan’s , Aishwarya Rai and the Tendulkar’s all live in Bandra), there’s been something of an absence of stars. D’Monte does confess to having tried to “tap into star power”. But in an era where stars charge big bucks for brief appearances , a low budget local festival is hard put to compete with high profile brand ad spends. “We did have Perizaad Zorabian though”, says D’Monte ,”she came very gracefully and described herself as a ‘goondi’ of Bandra” . Celebrities like Gulzar , who was the subject of a tribute also participated enthusiastically. Other notable highlights included a delightfully whacky musical ‘The Ballad of Bandora’ performed outdoor to loud applause , an animated panel discussion on the role of the media and Cyrus Mistry’s play ‘Legacy of Rage’ played out against the spectacular backdrop of a quaint old time Bandra bungalow. Outdoor screenings of popular films like ‘Taal’ and ‘Lagaan’, Paromita Vohra’s delightful documentary ‘Sandra from Bandra’ and the food festival held on the steps of the historic Mount Mary’s Church kept the excitement going.
The festival also hopes to raise some funds . The very first 2003 festival had generated a small surplus, which was divided among the different geographical zones of Bandra for general upkeep. This time the ‘Celebrate Bandra Trust’ hopes to utilize this surplus for projects like Rainwater and Waste Management.
Absence of celebrities kept TV cameras away and a major newspaper boycotted coverage for commercial reasons. Still everybody seems happy. Says Fountainhead Director and Festival Partner Neale Murray “Everything we’ve given has been exceedingly well received. We have one hell of a lot of happy Bandra- ites who can’t stop thanking us “

his appeared in the Hindu Sunday magazine 1st January 2006

House Hunting in Juhu

2005-11-28T22:24:00.000-08:00

It’s almost as elusive as the Holy Grail – but we search nevertheless. Scanning numerous newspaper ads and waiting by the phone – all for those few square yards of reclaimed land to call our very own. We begin our quest on Juhu Tara road, where tiny designer boutiques occupy the ground floor of old apartment buildings . Clothes stores must flourish here – a new one opens every few weeks. I see these ‘openings’ on my way back from town to our rented apartment of many years. Traveling down the unevenly tarred roads, they appear as tiny traffic jams where cameras and crowds cluster outside , and the beautiful people sip their wine and cheese inside. They’re flats for sale here on this palm tree lined, pocket- handkerchief- glimpse- of -sea promenade. ‘Sea touch’ as the broker lingo describes them, these buildings are often over 20 years old. Many have spectacular views – glass windows that look onto a shimmering blue grey sea. But there’s damp on the walls and the plaster is crumbling . The sea air will ruin all your TV’s and CD players a musically inclined friend warns us. Need massive maintenance and structural repairs, another friend counsels.

So we move onto the cozy streets of the Juhu Scheme. There’s lots of new construction here, ‘TDR buildings’ as the local broker calls them. ‘Transfer of Development rights’ buildings are easy to spot. Newly erected giant columns prop up old apartment buildings. Fresh floors are then added on with generous abandon. Inside the flats look swankingly modern – granite floors and brass tapped bathrooms. Outside the parking spaces are defined in tightly squeezed slots. Not much green, but they’re gulmohar trees on the street and some parks in the neighborhood. “Madam, flat le lo , badiya location hai , Film star ka neighborhood hai”, our earnest faced part time broker ( he’s a fitness instructor in the other time) urges me. But the views from the windows depress me. They’re multi storied buildings coming up in at least two lots close by . Many more will come up soon, as property prices zoom and proliferating families trade their ancestral houses for neat little blocks of flats. Soon all the charming bungalows that line these streets will disappear.

So we carry on northwards to the Juhu Versova Link Road, where apartment buildings line the road with large spaces in between. These are the mangrove areas and the residents have fought bitter battles to keep them so. We maneuver our car through a tight band of metal spikes. Spikes that have been erected by residents to keep away trucks that made stealthy trips in the middle of the night to dump soil on reclaimed mangrove land. Many spacious buildings line the mangrove sea front – but this again is not to be. The land is Collectors Land , we’re told and comes with a whole barrage of pre conditions, most of which we, as ten year residents in the city do not fulfill. So it’s back to the streets again !

This appeared in the Mumbai Mirror November 25th 2005

Life at the Juhu Versova Naka

2005-11-28T22:20:00.000-08:00

The Juhu Versova naka is (like all others of its ilk) a noisy and eventful confluence. Identity wise though, it has always been a bit quirky. Some years ago, a tiered and landscaped garden with green grass and fountains sat regally in the centre. Maintained by the Lokhandwala Builders , the circle, perhaps logically, was named in their honor. All very well, though as it turned out , Lokhandwala Circle was a few miles away from Lokhandwala Complex, with Four Bungalows in between. And unlike the dual name American cities like Cambridge and Rochester ( oceans away from their English namesakes), this circle was sufficiently close to its Complex counterpart to confuse most first time visitors to the area.
Then, in a traffic streamlining initiative, the circular garden was razed to the ground. In its place was installed that red, orange and green presiding deity of all urban movement- the traffic light. Free right turns and free left turns were now rigorously administered. Traffic policemen in the area suddenly turned prosperous.
Today the naka is somewhat uncertainly referred to as Juhu Circle. It sprawls over as many as six roads. One corner encloses the empty concrete spaces of a BEST bus depot, the other makes its way down to Mithibai College. Yet another goes down gulmohar tree lined double carriage roads, past star’s bungalows and spacious apartment buildings.
The naka is a little world in itself- the modern day equivalent of the village banyan tree- the home airport in the areas hub and spoke system. Always noisy and always lively. Two newsvendors hawk their wares from one corner- wooden newsstands filled with newsprint and glossy Elle’s and Outlooks. Peripatetic policemen in perpetual attendance on the traffic lights. Little balloon children who skip around on the pavement . Sometimes they sell colorful talismans – pale yellow lemons strung with a series of slim green chillies and sometimes they sell toys and sometimes they sell republic flags. A wizened old woman who taps hopefully on every car window. You know she lives here on this naka, you see her every day. The other families too - their pots and pans on the sidewalk, their clothes put out to dry on the road dividers . The news vendors, the policemen and the seller of spurious books – they all go home every evening , but these poor people , the new age urban nomads , many miles away from the villages of their birth , are perhaps the only constants in this traffic filled transit space.

This appeared in Mumbai Mirror September

The Sunday Philosophy Club - Book review

2005-11-17T04:10:00.000-08:00

A fat lady detective in Botswana, who drinks red bush tea and drives a little white van around the Kalahari desert, Mma Precious Ramotswe has quickly notched up legions of fans, since her debut six years ago in the best selling No 1 Ladies Detective Agency.

Now her creator, 56-year-old bassoonist and Scottish medical law professor, Alexander McCall Smith, brings us another equally lovable and quirkily eccentric heroine.

Forty-one-year old Isabel Dalhousie lives in Edinburgh. She edits a philosophical journal called ‘The Review of Applied Ethics’, attends symphonic concerts and art galleries, whilst ruminating on Auden and Kant, solutions to the Times crossword and repressed Albanian film makers, in her spare time.

All very arty, but Dalhousie is no dilettante. She may live an industrial age away from the stout, sturdy Precious Ramotswe but both woman are uncannily similar in their honesty and their matter-of-fact zeal for fighting the evil in their worlds.

A young man falls to his death after a performance by the Reykjavik Orchestra and Isabel thinks that it wasn’t an accident. Her doughty Scotswoman housekeeper Grace, quick to pronounce devastating moral judgments on the world at large seems to agree. Twenty-four-year-old Cat, who runs a delicatessen and is Isabel’s niece, protests at Isabel’s involvement,” You simply cannot get drawn into other people’s business like this”.

For Isabel though, there’s a moral bond between them (“I was the last person that young man saw… Don’t you think the last person you see on this earth owes you something?”) She embarks upon an investigation of sorts– meeting a whole congregation of characters from the predatory paparazzi McManus to the art collecting fund Manager Paul Hogg and his ‘man-eating ‘, art-swindling fiancé, Minty.

Intrigues emerge as she finds out the deceased young man was called Mark and was also a fund Manager, working coincidentally in the same firm as Paul Hogg, and that his flat mates Neil and Hen are hiding something.

It’s an interesting story, beautifully told. McCall Smith’s cameo characters from Grace and Cat, to Cat’s rejected suitor Jamie, are well developed and distinct. There are a profusion of profound little plots and sub-plots.

Grace’s friends husband’s mid life crisis– “He’s bought teenage clothes. Tight jeans. Sweaters with large letters on them. And he’s walking around listening to rock music” grumbles Grace; Cat’s suitable and unsuitable suitors; Jamie the musically minded “bit of a wimp”; Tony with the “touch of cruelty in [his]; Face and Isabel’s speculation, “Why should anybody actually want a hunk, when non-hunks were so much more interesting”.

These delightful digressions also echo and enrich the main narrative in their subtle meditations on the foibles of human behaviour and McCall treads gently and entertainingly (“was he married or… “, Isabel asks and then pauses ,”People often did not bother to marry…and yet it amounted to the same thing in many cases”).

All of which makes The Sunday Philosophy Club that rarity– an interesting detective story that’s not necessarily a hurried page turner, the development being every bit as satisfying as the denouement.

Deccan Herald September

Friends, Lovers, Chocolate - Book Review

2005-11-17T04:08:00.000-08:00

This review appeared in the Deccan Herald November 6th 2005

A case of too much of a good thing

The latest book in the detective series is fairly radical in its own right, but not much new happens here, just more of the same.

Friends, Lovers and Chocolate is book two in the prolific Professor Alexander McCall Smith’s new detective series. His phenomenally successful first series, The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency was set in Botswana.

This new series moves, fairly radically too— from dusty underdeveloped third world Africa to the rarefied cultural capital of Edinburgh. Its Scottish single woman-of-independent-means protagonist, Isabel Dalhousie finds herself (a bit like Miss Marple) drawn into strange situations, called upon by her conscience to investigate anything remotely grey in her vicinity.

Last time around in ‘The Sunday Philosophy Club’, the forty-one-year-old editor of ‘The Journal of Applied Ethics’ found herself on the case of the strange suicide-that-wasn’t. This time Dalhousie is in the midst of an even more bizarre mystery. In a typical McCall setting of old world meets new (seen here as medical technology meets the supernatural), Isabel encounters a heart transplant patient.

Over mackerel and wine at the Arts Club, Ian of the transplanted heart, discusses his cellular memory theory (that it maybe “perfectly possible that the heart may be the repository of memory”) and of one such recurring memory of which he is “worried that it’s going to kill” him.

The mystery of a sinister memory he’s received via a heart transplant? It’s a theme that could with Stephen King be pregnant with possibility, but McCall Smith’s mysteries are mostly mundane (no racy chases of missing manuscripts please). His detective’s concerns are earthy and ‘slice-of-life’ and his protagonists, like the kindly car mechanic Maketoni, are prone to many delightful digressions on life, the universe and everything else.

So the story of the memory of “high browed face, with hooded eyes and a scar running just below the hairline” doesn’t go anywhere. The desultory detection that follows is dilute even by McCall Smith standards. And the ending when it eventually arrives is a complete anti climax.

So much so, that much of what had delighted in ‘The Sunday Philosophy Club’, the elegant twists and turns and the rich ruminations now prove irksome. For nothing happens except more of the same.

Isabel’s love life is still in limbo. Niece Cat’s rejected suitor Jamie, who Isabel likes, continues to play platonic. Salvatore, the intriguing Italian of ambiguous origin (another aspiring Cat Suitor) vanishes as abruptly as he arrives. Also, interspersed with these everyday events are constant and even cloying references to Auden, Burns and Haydn.

There’s reams of reflection too (“Did the Turks go over their history with a moral fine tooth com?”) and some contemporary commentary (“exactly the same emotions and energy that had gone into witch-hunting now went into the pursuit of our preferred modern victims”). Good, but also decidedly a case of too much of a good thing.

Still, read it if you’ve never read McCall Smith.

Cross over Directors ..

2005-11-17T04:04:00.000-08:00

This is a feature I wrote many years ago ..just found it online so decided to post it here

In director Tarsem’s Singh’s visually arresting debut film, The Cell, Jennifer Lopez, an expert child psychologist enters the mind of a serial killer in order to obtain information on the whereabouts of his victim.

With this as the basic storyline, we are transported by Tarsem Singh, an award winning music videos and commercials director, to a world of sights and sounds that embrace the full visual power of what cinema can do.

Wild flourishes and varied canvases bring the 'mindscape' of the subconscious to life and the imagery employed mixes the surreal textures of Salvador Dali, the gothic motifs of Tim Burton, Japanese-inspired costume design and some truly bizarre set pieces.

Stretching traditional cinematic boundaries we have a genre of directors, many first time, who bring with them the strengths and elasticities of their earlier disciplines, whether it is cinematography, ad filmmaking, painting or even film criticism.

For directors like Santosh Sivan, Rajiv Menon, M F Husain and Khalid Mohamed, direction has been a richly interactive experience, a process of being defined by cinematic traditions as well as defying them, and of positioning themselves at varying degrees on the art cinema-commercial cinema continuum.

For Santosh Sivan, this has meant moving from the award winning, low budget somewhat niche The Terrorist, where Sivan worked wonders with his camerawork and Ayesha’s Dharkers expressive eyes to magnum opus Asoka.

Inspired by the late Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese, Sivan’s Asoka, based on the life the 3rd Emperor of the Mauryan Dynasty, is a three-hour epic love story, which deals with the transformation of the emperor Asoka from a bloody warrior to a peaceful monk.

Beset with controversy from the start as to historical accuracy, the film is however nothing short of sheer visual magic. Sivan’s cinematographer’s eye captures the essence of the changing seasons, the colors and the landscape as well the femme fatale of the piece, the Kalinga Princess Kaurwaki played by the oomph-laden Kareena Kapoor, with poetic accuracy and stunning virtuosity.

The film is a riot of colors, of contrasts, of light and shadow and striking sets sans the usual glitz and glitter. You can’t miss the cinematographer Sivan in his films, he is truly in every shot.

As fellow cinematographer, former ad filmmaker and director Rajiv Menon points out , "Cinematography helps you to keep the shooting problems in mind. It also helps you to think visually. Direction and Cinematography are related. The only difference between here and the west is that, there, the Cinematographer decides the shots while here the Director does the same job. I understand the cameraman better - my single greatest plus”.

For artist M F Husain, films have always been a passion. "It is", he declares, "a way for art to reach the people. Painting often becomes the preserve of a few art critics, who guard their knowledge jealously and do not want to share it with anyone. Besides painting, as even Dali put it is 'intellectually inadequate'. My intention in making a film like Gajagamini and casting superstars like Madhuri and Shah Rukh Khan was to bring art to the people.”

Gajagamini sketches the different forms of woman -- mysterious, multi-faceted and majestic. Filmed in surreal set pieces, with a format of a dance ballet, linear time and space progression are deliberately bent to artistic effect. Husain attempts to dispense with the concept of time by showing Leonardo Da Vinci and Shah Rukh Khan (playing himself) sharing screen space with Monica, a modern-day Madhuri, and Kalidas riding a bicycle!

Visually each frame is like a prize painting. In one of the many surreal scenes, Shabana Azmi is unable to hear Madhuri, Shilpa and Farida Jalal's voices, emphasizing that women down the centuries, want to be heard, but aren't. The role of women in keeping the cycle of creation going is established through the scene where Shilpa Shirodkar ceaseless pushes a laden-with-children giant wheel.

Yet there’s a surfeit of surrealism and symbolism here, and the Director whose celluloid brush endeavors to create a film that’s not too 'artsy artsy' and 'audience friendly', seems to have fallen short despite the star power.

Then you have film-critic Khalid Mohamed’s Fiza, that is fully accepting of the pop tradition, yet unusual in the very character of Fiza, the heroine of the film. One of the few really strong woman characters in Hindi cinema, Fiza as Director Khalid Mohamed points out is the rare film that shows a woman with a book. Amaan the hero is by contrast, shown as a well-intentioned but rather weak man.

The film delineates characters in detailed hues, though much criticism was leveled at the director for selling out to mainstream Bollywood song and dance traditions, thus situating his strong, intellectually inclined heroine in a bar and having her dance for dramatic effect. "It was however a natural progression", the director maintains, "a deliberate upset of the stereotype that Muslim woman have to exist in their mohalla and cannot dance."

Commercial successes in varying degrees, these films are nevertheless interesting ones to look out for, in the power of their imagery and in their cinematic explorations, transcending stereotype and tradition and yet also somewhat intrinsically and eventually contained by it.

Author Profile - Bapsi Sidhwa

2005-11-17T03:59:00.000-08:00

This appeared in the Hindu Sunday Magazine November 6th 2005

Novelist Bapsi Sidhwa talks about her writing, her best-known book about Partition and her latest one on Lahore.
BAPSI SIDHWA is in Bombay to promote a book of writings on the city of "sin and splendour" that she grew up in — pre- Partition Lahore.

I meet her at her cousin's elegant, old time Parsi apartment in South Mumbai. The heritage-like flat with its dark teak furniture and copper urns looks out onto an expanse of the Oval Maidan, onto the Rajabai Clock Tower and the gothic spires of the Bombay High Court.

It's a sumptuous setting. Also one that's immaculately appropriate for the petite Punjabi-Parsi- Pakistani writer sitting across me. Indeed this could be a still from a Merchant Ivory film. The fair 67-year-old writer, clad in a pink salwar kameez, with her carefully modulated tones, certainly looks the part. (The closest she's come to this, she confesses, is a cameo in the Deepa Mehta directed "1947 Earth", a film based on Sidhwa's classic story on Partition The Ice Candy Man.)

Early days

The last few days have been hectic as journalists and their photographers line up back to back. A TV shoot the day before, of the Houston-based writer hunting for bargains on Colaba's colourfully chaotic Causeway bazaar, has left her with a bad back. She also has a bad stomach ("All that Bombay duck," she exclaims, "I can't have enough of it.")

We talk of her days in Bombay, the five years of her first marriage. Sidhwa, like her eight-year-old heroine in the Ice Candy Man, had childhood polio and wasn't allowed to go to school. "I came to Bombay like a country bumpkin," she declares. "My first husband said, `you can't walk; you can't talk. What you can do?'"

Still, it was a city the young woman found enormously liberating. "Unlike Lahore where everybody knew you, in Bombay there was a wonderful anonymity, you could wear what you liked and just get on a bus".

Like Madhu Jaffrey, who tells an interesting ugly duckling story of how unattractive she felt as a young woman until she moved to the U.S. and threw her spectacles into the Atlantic, Sidhwa too, discovered the confidence of being a late bloomer.

Years later, on her second marriage honeymoon to the mountains, her first novel came to her ("I'd never written before", she says, "just some stupid little piece on pregnancy and how if you walked too far front you were carrying a boy"). It's a story I've read of before, but Sidhwa tells it beautifully, in the manner of a storyteller born. She describes the remote mountain fastnesses between Afghanistan and Pakistan ("you could lose a herd of elephants in there, let alone Osama bin Laden") and tells the tragic tale of a runaway young bride bought as a wife for a tribal man. The short story she set out to write (in secret, she was afraid she'd be laughed at), turned eventually into her first novel The Pakistani Bride.

Trauma of Partition

Interestingly, the story she'd carried inside her almost all her life — that of the terrors and traumas of Partition — was to emerge much later in 1988 — as The Ice Candy Man (published in the U.S. as Cracking India as "ice candy man" had colloquial connotations of a drug supplier).

It's an immensely powerful book, written from a child's point of view and based on Bapsi Sidhwa's own terrified memories. As she writes in an essay for The New York Times of those times, "Yet the ominous roar of distant mobs was a constant of my awareness, alerting me, even at age seven, to a palpable sense of the evil that was taking place in various parts of Lahore...(And when) the dread roar of mobs has at last ceased, terrible sounds of grief and pain erupt at night. They come from the abandoned servants' quarters behind the Singhs' house... why do these women cry like that? Because they're delivering unwanted babies, I'm told, or reliving hideous memories."

Later that evening, at the book's formal launch at a city bookstore, strangers come forward emotionally with their Partition stories — one lady wants the book of writings on Lahore autographed for her mother who used to live in Lahore, two young students from Xavier's introduce themselves, "We did a presentation on you." Question hour is animated.

Journalist Anil Dharker asks her, "You look so gentle and genteel. How then do you manage to write such ribald stuff?"

Sidhwa splutters, "But my writing is very decent — I don't write like writers like ... er ... Philip Roth" (the infamous Portnoy's Complaint being a prime example!).

"If a writer writes about a boy's sexual urges it is perfectly natural; but girls also experience the same feelings, the daze and the dazzlement, so how does that become ribald and indecent?" she queries, still smarting under the recent U.S. high school controversy on a couple of burgeoning sexuality scenes in The Ice Candy Man.

Book Review - The Harmony Silk Factory

2005-10-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

This review appeared in the Sept 22 issue of Time Out Mumbai

Booker long list contender , Tash Aw’s debut novel, is a fractured and complex tale. Set exotically enough in the jungles of Malaya, it tells the story of the “infamous Chinaman Johnny Lim” ‘s rise from illiterate peasanthood to power in Malaysia’s Kinta Valley.
The book, Rashomon- like has three narratives. Which do we believe ? Is Lim the ‘liar , a cheat, a traitor’ his embittered son Jasper tells us about ? Was his meteoric rise, a ladder littered with a litany of horrific crimes ? Or is he the blandly inscrutable, distantly adoring husband , his reluctant aristocratic bride Snow Soong describes ? In an extract from her private journal , she tells of the couple’s bizarre honeymoon in Malaysia’s Seven Maidens islands .Or do we believe the third narrative ? This from Johnny’s friend Peter Wormwood’s geriatric days in an Oriental people’s old age home. Wormwood describes a simple and likeable Johnny, in chapters that shift between landscaping the old age home and his memories of the strange honeymoon trip, an almost Conradian journey in to the ‘Heart of Darkness’ ?
‘The Harmony Silk Factory’ has received critical acclaim and it’s easy to see why – the novel has all the right elements - plenty of local color in the story of the rise of Johnny from his days as a brilliant mechanic in the tin mines of Malaya ,as well as the strange tale of a bizarre jungle honeymoon shared with an odd set of characters. There’s suave Japanese military man in disguise, Kunichika , also titled ‘Butcher of Kampar’, English tin mine owner Honey Fredrick , Peter Wormwood and of course Johnny and Snow . Add to that the novel’s narrative complexity of multiple points of view, its themes of appearance and reality and the heart of darkness where the jungle takes over (‘Broken branches littered the place I worked so hard to cleanse, and above us the canopy of leaves suddenly seemed more opaque than ever’). All very promising, but the multiple points of view disperse in different directions, minus any shades of Rashomon-like brilliance, and the story remains rather unraveled despite the dramatic denouement. It does however leave you looking out for more from Tash Aw.

Life in the Bombay Chawls - Ravan and Eddie

2005-10-02T21:15:00.000-07:00

This appeared in the Times of India Sunday edition 11th September

Ravan and Eddie, Kiran Nagarkar’s scathingly funny novel of two young boys in the Bombay chawls, began as a screenplay for a Bollywood film. The film (to be directed by Dev Benegal) was never made, instead Ravan and Eddie made their debut in the beginnings of a Marathi novel. Years later, Marathi writer Nagarkar, still grappling with the iniquities of language , rewrote this growing up story in English, a language he describes in the book as a “maha-mantra….an ‘ open sesame’ that doesn’t open mere doors, it opens new worlds and allows you to cross over from one universe to another”.
Ravan and Eddie are both occupants of Central Works Department (CWD) Chawl no 17. ”The Hindus and Catholics in Bombay’s CWD chawls (and perhaps almost anywhere in India) may as well have lived on different planets”, but Ravan and Eddie are connected in a bizarre, almost Rushdie-an way. Nagarkar’s narrative style, however, is anything but . It is casual and conversational and very slice-of-life, lit up occasionally by bitingly ironic authorial insights. The best known of these ( among the delightful asides on Snow the fairness cream , Shammi Kapoor and the Poverty Line ) is of course Nagarkar’s digression on ‘The Great Water Wars’ in the chawl- “ They should have killed for water, the men and women of the CWD chawls. People have been known to kill for less: religion; language; the flag; the colour of a person’s skin or his caste; breaking the queue at a petrol pump...”

For the rest, you follow Ravan and Eddie’s struggle for survival in the packed and proliferating world of the Bombay chawl .It’s a world where babies are space and energy consuming burdens and husbands almost vestigial. Ravan and Eddie’s families survive , like many in India due to the undefeated energies of the woman. Eddie’s father dies Pandu-like in a moment of lust. Ravan’s father Shankar bestirs himself from his bed only to bring in a mistress, leading his mother Parvatibai to obsessive temple visiting anxiety - ”The woman was a drain on the limited finances of the house…What would she do if instead of one intruder, there were two. All that hyperactivity on the bed was bound to bear fruit.” Meanwhile, Eddie’s widowed mother Violet is considering re-marriage and Eddie is tortured by grim imaginings, ”babies would start rolling in…whatever extra the new man earned would be wiped out by the new mouths that would have to be fed…So much for his mothers life becoming easier.” And so it goes on. The boys separate struggles and their growing up stories are comic, but also achingly sad. Eddie is inducted into the Hindu Mahasabha, hopelessly won over by his bribe of a Wilson pen and stories from the Mahabharata. Predictably all hell breaks loose when Violet finds out and Eddie is rushed to the Church to save his soul. Ravan, in the meantime, is in trouble with the more liberal Hindus over his earnest drive to recruit new members to the Sabha. Subject to such proxy battles, the two little boys also have to contend with life’s other tribulations – sexually predatory bully Prakash for one, besides poverty and prejudice. Yet there’s joy too – the thrill of a good story, the hit movie ‘Dil Deke Dekho’ and ‘Rock Around the Clock’, biryani in a Irani Café and kite flying on Sankranti. Nagarkar’s world maybe a poor one , but its not despairingly and hopelessly so. Wit and irony save his characters from becoming relentlessly miserable Rohington Mistry protagonists, many of whom are similarly boxed into tiny spaces, in a Bombay gone to seed.

Multilplex madness

2005-10-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

This appeared in the Mumbai Mirror September

You don’t expect to see fluorescent yellow and pink palm trees on the industrial stretch of the Andheri Malad Link Road. But they’re there – little beacons of festivity in a road crammed with one room garages, industrial parts shops and other unaesthetic nuts and bolts of our smoothly mechanized lives.

I like the trees. They make showy promises of glitz and glamour, never mind that they’re window dressing for ‘Neelam Bar and Restaurant’ type of joints. Like their larger and more showy avatars halfway across the globe – those myriads of flashing figures that light up Las Vegas. It’s always lights and showtime in that man made fantasy fairyland though its set in the unlikeliest of spaces, surrounded by barren stretches of the Nevada desert.

And its showtime here too, off the fume filled and pot holed Andheri Malad Road. More pink palm trees, and steps up to the greatest American temple of all – the Mall Multiplex. Yes, its glittering glass and chrome – No, it doesn’t have the art deco of Metro or the history of Eros. And sue me – but I love it – the go carting on the ground floor, the book and music shop on the first floor, the Coffee Shop downstairs and the smell of Caramel pop corn in the air...

Here’s where I brought my five year old daughter Aleya to attend her first school friend’s birthday party – the class enthralled by a little orange clownfish scouring the seas in search of his father. Later, after cake and burgers in the food court on the second floor, each child trooped home with a return gift of a little gold fish in a bag full of water.

And here’s the Café Coffee Day I hung out at for almost a fortnight. Perfecting near impossible jugglery of children’s school pick ups and playtimes, in between watching Francois Ozon’s compelling drama of creativity,’ The Swimming Pool’. Or the Croatian ‘The Horseman’ where tribesman war with each other as the Ottoman Empire collapses and a Muslim Romeo falls in love with a Christian Juliet. Another day it was Walter Salles touching tale ‘Central Station’ where a lonely middle aged woman and a little boy traverse miles of Brazilian highways in a Quixotean quest. Peter’s Greenaway’s intriguingly titled ‘The Cook, The Thief, his wife and her Lover’, a viscerally revolting tableaux of gourmand excess set in a Parisian restaurant, love and rebellion in Argentina’s coal mines , Shwaas, Black Friday and Amu… All at 60 rupees a film and best of all ,no traffic traumatized long and winding roads to YB Chavan auditorium in town.

Did anybody say anything about the cultural constraints of suburbia? I’m not listening - for this is definitely home delivered heaven .

Book Review - The Quiet of the Birds

2005-10-02T21:10:00.000-07:00

This review appeared in the September 4th Hindu Sunday Magazine

The Quiet of the Birds, Nisha da Cunha, Penguin, Rs.295.

SAD may have been sweet so far as Shelley's skylark goes. Unfortunately the same doesn't hold good for Nisha da Cunha's collection of sad stories. They tell of illness, abandonment, and death in little country cottages with cypress trees, on "a lonely stretch of beach and sea and a bit of lane", in the hills, and on holiday in Goa or Greece.

Relentless tragedy

Tragedy — gentle, relentless and inexorable — comes calling, in story after story. All of which sounds sweetly sorrowful but in effect tends towards dreary morbidity. The recurring deaths and desertions, sans any of the passion and high drama of classical tragedy, make this collection tediously sad.

In "Old Cypress" the middle-aged female protagonist is abandoned by her husband of many years. "Allegra" is series of letters, most written by a young, tragically paralysed and bedridden protagonist to her mama. They tell of how tragedy struck the happily pregnant Allegra as she returned from a picnic in the sunny English countryside in a motor accident where her husband was at the wheel. Later, inevitably (for the story) he abandons her.

The title story, "The Quiet of the Birds" is another tragedy — that of Safia, a motherless innocent child of the woods. A strange obsessive father brings her up. With her father's death, Safia is thrust into an everyday urban reality she is catastrophically unprepared to handle. "The Permanence of Grief' takes us to another disturbing story where a strange brother-sister duo live together, under the shadow of their beloved dead pet, a dog (somewhat mysteriously) named Judas.

And so it goes on... Most of the stories are deeply disquieting. The protagonists inhabit an uneasy twilight world of reflective loneliness, a melancholic Neverland. Sometimes they have traitor-like names like Mordred or Judas, or Mukta, but most often they are "she" or "he" or "I". Dreadful things happen to them — El in "African Bird" loses a leg, the protagonist in "Down and Out, Washing up with Gladys" witnesses a self administered abortion and Allegra is permanently paralysed. Conversations tend to be lengthy monologues, often staccato and peppered with pedantic literary allusions.

Not gripping

Still, some stories have a haunting bittersweet feel. In "Autumn on a Summer's Day", a middle-aged couple grapple with the grim reality of the wife's terminal illness. So, also "There are no Brownies in St. Anthony", an acute and upsetting story of a just bereaved middle-aged woman. "Wedding" is touching and ends hopefully, as the young mother who ran away from an oppressive marriage leaving her five little children behind, now meets her youngest son on his wedding day. One of the few other non-illness/abandonment/death stories in this collection, "Teachers Day" with its tongue-in-cheek look at the ennui of the education system could have been effective too, if it weren't so long winded.

Indeed one couldn't use "crisp" or "crackling" to describe any of the stories here. Reading these is like walking into a melancholy maze. I struggled through the stories, many of them not particularly short. Also, perhaps unfairly, I compare them to the masters. Maybe this is because of their dreamlike timeless quality — for they have none of the gripping grittiness of everyday contemporary reality, the kind you find in Jhumpa Lahiri's portrait of Mrs. Sen in The Interpreter of Maladies or Lavanya Sankaran's "Mysore Coffee" in the recently published The Red Carpet.

So I long for the energetic verve of a Saki, the narrative vigour and cultural cameos of a Maugham, the imaginative bizarreness of a Roald Dahl or the feminine insights of a Doris Lessing. All of which seem so much more comforting on a grey monsoon day with the wind storming outside and the Mumbai streets in flood.

Changing face of the Juhu Scheme

2005-09-01T10:59:00.000-07:00

This appeared in the September 1st edition of The Mumbai Mirror

Many quiet lanes criss-cross Mumbai’s Juhu Scheme. Walking through these uneventful streets feels deliciously old–world. Traditional housing societies in shades of grey, cream and beige rise no higher than three storeys. Occasionally you encounter a bungalow nestling between two co-operative societies. Surrounded by a concealing hedge and sporting a Delhi Defence Colony aesthetic, these starry structures come with their distinctive paraphernalia of a security guard at the gate and sometimes even a trailer parked outside. ‘Bappi Lahiri ka bungalow hai’, your autowala will inform you with casual pride, or ‘Jeetendra (and now Ekta Kapoor) ka ghar hai’.

Still you don’t see many people around — a few walk casually towards a cluster of shops at the end of the block. There’s a corner provision shop with its ubiquitous complement of mops, orange plastic balls and buckets hanging at the entrance. A black and white tin board on the Sagar Milk Centre across the road advertises its lassi and it’s srikhand, and next to it is a tiny Bharat Glass outlet, with rows of red cylinder stacked up diagonally across the road.

Walking through this tiny hub takes all of a minute and you’re back to the gulmohar trees that flank the road on either side. The roads are generous, with walkable mud pavements on both sides. I recall a discussion at the Juhu Citizens Committee Meeting the previous week, at Juhu’s charming Janaki Kutir society, home to the Prithvi Theatre. “The Juhu Scheme roads belong to the residents, so the BMC doesn’t want to touch them for maintenance,” a member explains, “this is a grouse that comes up again and again.” Still, the roads provide a pleasant walk. It feels miles away from the traffic snarled, red light dotted NS Road, only a few streets away, that connects Mithibai College to the Juhu Circle.

Lots of green and shade here, and the quiet – it’s almost perfect. Yet there is rubble in Paradise – piles of sand and slag, line of select plots on almost every street, as new construction creeps in. Some buildings have been granted TDR (transfer of development rights) and steel girders and grey unfinished walls protrude from existing ill-maintained structures.

A little further, a bungalow has been razed to the ground and there’s a construction crew complete with a bright yellow earth mover and workmen who tramp their way over a truckload of grey mud and steel cables. And at the end of the street in neo-pink and silver, many storeys high stands the almost complete Divinity. Concrete ramps, stairs and car parks, with tiered rows of big bay windows. As for the quaint cottage opposite with its little railing that runs the length of the upstairs verandah, I can almost see it disappear. The price of urban heaven I suppose.

Women's voices from Partition

2005-08-14T00:24:00.000-07:00

An edited version of this appeared in the 14th August Times of India Book section

The particular resonance of the female voice in Partition literature comes, perhaps, from the vulnerability of women as victims.
Subject to the most terrible abuse and alienation, at both private and political levels, these women find their voices in the fiction and commentaries of those times. Ayesha in the film ‘Khamosh Pani’ whose father orders her to jump into the well rather than risk dishonor, Lajwanti in Bedi’s eponymous story whose husband would not touch her after her abduction, are tragic archetypes that recur in Partition literature, and most powerfully in the following books.

The Ice Candy Man by Bapsi Sidhwa (1983)
Set in 1940’s Lahore, this classic Partition story employs an unusual narrative device. Told from the perspective of eight year old polio stricken Lenny, it portrays poignantly the insecurities, shifting allegiances and, betrayals of those tumultuous times. Petrol cans hidden in the back of the family car, great fires that can be seen from the family roof tops, the troubled house next door, where ‘fallen’ women cry and wail all night are some of the searing images in this book that echo and illustrate history the way no text book could. We are introduced to an unforgettable cast of characters, the ice candy man, the Masseur and of course Lenny’s beloved ayah. Ayah, who is betrayed to a mob gone mad, a mob made of men who were her friends and even suitors. And when Lenny eventually finds her again she is an empty shell of her former cheerful nineteen year old self.”I don’t want her to think she’s bad because she’s been kidnapped”, says Lenny, in stark contrast to the attitudes such abused women were subjected to, attitudes reflected in films like ‘Pinjar’ or in Bedi’s moving short story ‘Lajwanti’ . The Ice Candy Man (later editions renamed ‘Cracking India’) has also been made into a feature film, ‘Earth’ by Deepa Mehta.

‘My Temples too’ (Urdu 1948, trans. Eng. 2004) and ‘River of Fire’ (Urdu 1959 trans Eng.1998) by Qurratulain Hyder
Hyder belongs to a Lucknowi zamindari family and her novels mourn the loss of that golden world. In ‘My Temples too’ the young idealistic Rakshanda Begum , editor of the progressive Muslim magazine New Era and her friends are thrust from their hallowed Nehru’s autobiography and Confucius quoting world to a barbaric one. ‘Everybody seemed to have changed , or so it appeared to Rakshanda who noticed a group of Muslims on a wayside platform looking strangely scared .There they are, she thought bitterly, strangers in their own country.’
Hyder’s magnificent magnum opus ‘River of Fire’ looks at 2500 years of Indian history, coalescing and interweaving only to sunder irrevocably in the terrible tragedy of Partition.

‘Sunlight on a Broken Column’ by Attia Hossain (1961)
Largely autobiographical, this critically acclaimed book tells the story of Laila, who is the orphaned daughter of a distinguished Muslim family, and is, set in Oudh and Lucknow. Laila’s coming of age, her choices and fight for independence, are juxtaposed with the political upheavals of the time and their implications for her larger family.

‘What the Body Remembers’ by Shauna Singh Baldwin (1999)
This best seller tells the story of Sardarji, an engineer in the British government and his two wives, haughty barren Satya and young beautiful Roop. The saga of the woman’s lives is set against the back drop of the history of the day, culminating in the horror of their nightmarish journeys across borders. The description of these two journeys, Sardarji’s by train and Roop on the Grand Trunk Road emerges the most powerfully unforgettable section of the book

The Other Side of Silence, Voices from the Partition of India by Urvashi Butalia (1998)
A seminal collection that employs a mix of interviews, reminisces and personal recollections, diaries and autobiographies to look at the effects of violence on women including rape, kidnapping and then after that often the trauma of return. Original and analytical, though it does tend towards the abstrusely academic turn of phrase.

‘No Woman’s Land’ Ed. By Ritu Menon (2004)
Activist and Women’s Publisher Ritu Menon puts together a section of essays and stories by women from different countries. Some like Ismat Chugtai’s reflections on Partition literature are fascinating, so also Sara Suleri on ‘Papa and Pakistan’. Others catalogue personal stories of tragic deaths and displacement and memories of violence and abandonment. Some like Shehla Shibli speak more hopefully of life in ‘Either, Neither, or Both

Plastics on Juhu Beach

2005-08-10T21:26:00.000-07:00

This appeared in the August 11th edition of the Mumbai Mirror

Tere mere beach mein...

Walking down the narrow lane that leads to Juhu beach on a Sunday evening, is a strangely different experience now. There is no holiday crowd in noisy conversation and I miss the medley of shrill voices, motorbikes and the jingle-jangle of women’s anklets. Instead, the road is a deserted stretch, pitted and puddled. There’s a fierce wind though, chilly and uncontrolled.
At the beach the familiar set of hawkers with their red and white plastic chairs laid out in neat lines, is missing. There is no bhelpuri wallah in sight and even the ubiquitous nariyal pani guy isn’t in attendance. A woman at the lone corn on cob stall calls out to me hopefully. A selection of roasted cobs sit on red hot charcoal but there are no takers. I search my pockets for some change – “I have only four rupees,” I tell one of them. “No matter,” the woman says, “Take one.”
There are piles of broken branches and sticks washed up all around the beach-front. There are bits of wood and even a wrought iron gate lying forlorn. And everywhere the deadly rubble of the urban metropolis – the virulently non-living, non-breathing and non-decomposing plastic bag.
I am reminded of my parents visiting from Delhi last month. Of promising them a beautifully breezy beach walk just down the road, only to turn onto a sea-front littered with miles and miles of muddy plastic bags. “You throw all this rubbish into your streets and nullahs all year long, and then the rains send it all into the sea. Now look, the sea is throwing it all back at you,” my father observes disapprovingly, unaccustomed as he is even to the sight of an open dustbin in South Delhi’s leafy tree-lined neighbourhoods.
I try and ignore the plastic, focusing instead on the slate grey Arabian Sea. There is a swell I haven’t seen before, and the waves come in hard and fast and foam flecked. Further away the sky is laden, heavy with the threat of even more storm clouds. I walk away from the fishing village by the sea, along a polythene plastered promenade. Grey windswept apartment buildings alternate with the glass and stone facades of the hotels that line this much vaunted sea-front.
Sun ‘n’ Sand with a large blue polythene (oops, not again) cover for its poolside, Holiday Inn with its lamp-lit glass frontage and further down, a darkened almost abandoned Tulip Star previously known as Centaur in better days. Now sale scams and scandals have all but shut it down. Still further is the beige stone and halogen lighted JW Marriot. Near Juhu Chowpatty and there are a few stalls open-steaming hot sugary chai, nariyal pani and unexpectedly a kulfi and falooda seller appears as if from nowhere. There are few people though, some strangers and some resident regulars. Lots more plastic bags and a narrow stretch of land the tide is already trying to claim.

Gregory David Roberts

2005-08-07T09:51:00.000-07:00

This appeared in the Hindu Literary Review dated August 7,2005

The bad boy of fiction

SONYA DUTTA CHOUDHURY

Because his life has been so notorious, it can overshadow his work, says Australian novelist Gregory David Roberts.

GREGORY DAVID ROBERTS (GDR), the latest bad boy of fiction, is in Mumbai working on a sequel to Shantaram, his best-selling novel of his own story as a runaway Australian convict on the mean streets of the Mumbai metropolis.

I meet him at Leopold's Bar and Restaurant, overlooking Colaba's colourfully chaotic Causeway. Humming with the buzz of many accented conversations in foreign tongues, Leopold's is, in many ways, a centre for the story. It was here, seated on cedar chairs that surround a profusion of glass-topped tables in "Leopold's little world of light, colour and richly panelled wood" (Shantaram), that everything began. Here's where the author — escaped convict, one-time junkie and gun-runner — began his career of crime in Mumbai, a life that was the inspiration for his stunningly compelling novel of crime and punishment, and of love and friendship.

Obvious question

So how much of the book is really true, I ask him, having spent the better part of the last few days mesmerised by the dramatic details of the author-narrator's life in the Cuffe Parade slums, battling fire and flood and municipal demolition, of drugs and dope and petty crime and of squalor and torture in the Colaba police pick up. Shantaram maybe a potent mixture of fact and fiction, but GDR is not enthused by this oft-repeated question. "Nine out of 10 people ask me this question," he complains. "Because my life has been so notorious and so bad, it can overshadow my work." The book itself, all 900-plus pages of it, makes for racy reading, as the author-narrator makes his living black-marketing and money-laundering on the streets of Colaba, then moves into the Cuffe Parade slum and establishes a clinic there, only to be imprisoned in the Arthur Road Jail, emerging again to more crime and then eventually gun-running in Afghanistan. Is the horrific jail section true, I ask him, did the "aeroplane" style beating really happen? "Everything I wrote about the jail is true; it was in fact much, much worse." And the Colaba police pick up? "That part too, is true", he says. "I met some of the same cops now — they are all good decent men, trying to do their job and they have a hard life and they are incredibly brave. Give a policeman in Australia or New York a piece of bamboo, and ask them to maintain order on their beat, they'd never do it."

The conversation veers from law and order to literature and GDR is equally enthusiastic. He talks about the structure of the novel, any novel, and then that of Shantaram. It is, he points out, extraordinarily complex. Shantaram echoes the central theme of the 21st Century — that of exile, and of mass migration, especially to the cities. Mumbai, as an island city, is a symbol of that exile, and the leitmotif that recurs in images throughout. He explains and illustrates literary parallels that inform the plot and the characters, parallels that may emerge only on a detailed or a repeat reading. GDR's literary influences have been the classical writers, Herman Melville, Lawrence Durrell, Flaubert, Dante and Shakespeare and he illustrates how some of these classics reverberate in Shantaram. His is a novel that is in the tradition of Cervantes' Don Quixote la Mancha and also of Dante's Inferno, in its themes of exile and descent into hell (read prison and a life of drugs and crime), and his little guide Prabhakar is akin to Virgil as a guide to Dante's hero and Sancho Panza to Don Quixote. Besides this, he discusses other, not-so-immediately apparent complexities of the novel's structure — the symbols and the self-referencing, and the "house of mirrors", as it were, with every character and event having a mirrored version occurring somewhere else in the book.

So what now? The screenplay for the film version where Johnny Depp plays "Shantaram" is complete. GDR divides his time between the sequel to Shantaram (of which he gives a gloriously alive preview of accents and action; he's as theatrical as he is literary!), his mobile clinic project and joint endeavours with artists — there's a collection in New York inspired by Mumbai and soon there will be a book of photographs on the island city. Coffee at Leopold's is over and the all-black-clad and booted, neatly pony-tailed, six foot-plus GDR, with associate Ader, is off on his bike to the Crossword bookstore to lend support to theatre personality Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal's reading at another book launch.

Why are immigrant stories so powerful ?

2005-07-21T00:13:00.000-07:00

This appeared in The Hindu's Literary Review May 2004

Between memory and desire

Immigrant literature may seem to occupy a curious midway world, weaving a tapestry that is at once familiar and far away. Yet, it is a validation of the American way of life, with assimilation being seen as coming of age, says SONYA DUTTA CHOUDHURY.

WHAT is it that makes the immigrant experience such fertile literary ground? Popular and prize-winning, these angst-ridden accounts of the aspiring outsider seem to sweep the bestseller stakes. Whether it's Irish immigrant author Frank McCourt in Tis or British born Bangladeshi , Monica Ali's Brick Lane, the stories weave a tapestry that's both familiar and faraway .

For, the immigrant is in a unique position to tell a tale. Like every great epic, from The Odyssey to The Ramayana, his story is also that of a traveller. The immigrant journeys to the promised land and battles adversity, both mental and material. Jasmine in Bharati Mukerjee's Jasmine, for instance, begins her journey travelling through the underbelly of the immigrant trade route on forged papers, through the tiered bunks on the trawlers out of Europe, and ends up making good as a respected "caregiver" as opposed to the more servile Indian version of the "ayah" and then a wife . She moves from Jyoti to Jasmine and eventually to Jane Ripplemeyer, shedding personas like so many skins, eventually metamorphosing into a creature ready to fight fate and "reposition the stars".

Eighteen-year-old Nazneen, in Monica Ali's Brick Lane may have a smooth maiden flight to London, but she is to be married to a man she has never met, pot-bellied, stomach-stroking Chanu, and this is a battle for her nonetheless. Cloistered in her cluttered Brick Lane apartment, Nazneen struggles to find meaning in her day-to-day existence, gradually coming of age by attending activist meetings and eventually achieving economic independence and identity. Gogol in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake is born at Saint Auburn Hospital, overlooking Boston's Charles River and the Memorial Drive, but he must nevertheless struggle all through school and even later for a sense of self. He is not born Indian, definitely not yet American. Appropriately and wholly unintentionally, he is somehow given a name that is neither Indian nor American, taken from the surname of his father's favourite Russian author.

The immigrant, like the Greek hero, also takes on the force of Fate itself whether it's the Chinese mothers in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club or Nazneen in Brick Lane. The primeval power of Destiny and men and women's struggles despite it, has always been the stuff of compelling story-telling and these stories are no exception. Fate appears as a leitmotif in Brick Lane where Nazneen's is born stillborn and left to her fate but still survives, this being a precursor to the many events in her life. The opening pages of Jasmine, under a banyan tree in the village of Hasnapur, introduce an astrologer cupping his ears ("his satellite dish to the stars") and foretelling Jasmine's widowhood and exile. Such stories, then, deal with the self and spirit yet viewed through the safety of the prosperous western prism. This is also what perhaps gives these books their "feel good" factor and makes them prime contenders for Western awards — for all the trouble these immigrants endure, their dauntless participation in the Great American Dream is what ultimately "liberates" them. The figure of the immigrant is romanticised as a spiritual vagabond and his or his progeny's ultimate assimilation seen as "coming of age".

Besides, the many exotic trapping of these stories, sketched on a canvas that stretches backwards in time and space, give these the universal appeal of the traveller's tale. Spice-filled kitchens compete with arranged marriages and vermillion filled partings, all adding up to create an atmosphere of these foreigners and their quaint colourful little ways. Third world cultures are painted as better somehow, more spiritual, earthy and even sensual but in nice non-threatening ways as in Irish or Asian lamb stew or wrapped up neatly in fortune-cookie wisdom. There's a multicultural richness in these accounts, in their creation of an exotic backdrop, the literary equivalent of "Casablanca" or Arabia of "Lawrence of Arabia". The description of food, clothes and festivals is in a language that flows and enfolds, appealing in a quirky crossover way — Mrs. Sen's kitchen knife in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, for instance, is described vividly as a "blade that curved like the prow of a Viking ship, sailing to battle in distant seas". Yet for all the exoticism and nostalgia, the "home" left behind is undoubtedly not the place to be. Chanu in Brick Lane is muddled and misguided in his quixotic intent to return — the Bangladeshi village may be sylvan in retrospect, but Nazneen's sister Hasina's letters paint a dismal picture of the sordid life a woman might have to lead if trapped there. Gogol and Sonia in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake dread their holidays to Kolkata, the crowds and the discomfort, and rejoice in their return, "once again free to quarrel. To sleep for as long as they like". Immigrants like Hanif Kureishi's Karim in Buddha of Suburbia or Frank McCourt in Tis bring with them a whole new perspective on the structure of society, this brilliance of perception probably being possible only by virtue of their exclusion. Ultimately and importantly however, there is a complete validation of the Promised Land. Frank McCourt cribs and carps about the aloof unemotional American approach to life where taking in a meringue to a movie is construed as a huge breach of conduct, yet he can think of nothing worse than those poor souls who reached Ellis Island, who were turned back.

Set firmly in the context of a validation of the present way of life, an immigrant's story is thus powerful both in terms of story and setting, as well as politically correct. Asian historical memoirs from Wild Swans to Daughters of Arabia are stories of oppression and unhappiness, now safely told from the haven of the New World. Novels like The Joy Luck Club and Brick Lane reiterate this. They also deal with complex and very universal issues of enquiry into identity and being, striving to make sense of life mysteries — who am I, what is my name and where is home? It's a potent combination of the particular with the profound and in a world where boundaries simultaneously blur and yet don't go away; this is a story for us all.

Book Review Tokyo Cancelled

2005-07-02T05:52:00.000-07:00

This appeared in the Feb 20th edition of The Deccan Herald

Thirteen passengers stranded overnight in a strange airport tell each other stories all night in Rana Dasgupta’s debut novel. The darkened airport lounge (“like the back corridor between 2 worlds ..where people only alighted when something was seriously wrong with the eschatological machinery”) works effectively as an eerie setting for the strange and magical tales exchanged between these displaced individuals.

The stories themselves are striking - not only for their page turning ‘what comes next’ quality, but also for the richness of their resonances. Dasgupta draws inspiration from a timeless fairy tale genre, simultaneously subverting it, by situating each story geographically and temporally in a magical and yet tangibly disquieting reality. This could be our world, as on the streets of Paris and London, Delhi, Istanbul and Buenos Aires, poverty and the plague coexist with industry and money.

And yet it is a fantastic fairy tale world peopled by kings and princes as well as tailors, sailors and magic map readers, a rich Indian industrialist who makes a Faustian bargain with a cloning scientist and an Argentinean video store owner who turns recycler of garbage - or is he all along really the dictator?

The many tragic twists and turns in these modern day fairy tales make for racy reading and also for much provocative questioning - events are arguably driven not so much by destiny as by greed and power, and the magic that could so easily have been technology gone all awry. All this in events and symbols that could only belong to today.

So the Cinderella like figure in the fifth story is really actress Isabella Rossini’s illegitimate daughter and her Prince Charming none other than Robert de Niro’s illegitimate taxi driver son Pavel. Tellingly the transforming magic potion is no simple ‘Alice in Wonderland’s’ ‘Eat Me’. Instead in a world straddled with big brands, it is very appropriately, an Oreo cookie. This cookie when crumbled doesn’t make Isabella a predictable princess; instead it transforms her into a glass and concrete swanky super store on Madison Avenue.

Another story follows the fortunes of Riad, a modern day mariner, who like his ancient ancestor is also marooned at sea - and this time it’s not wind that’s the villain but matters of custom and immigration.

An albatross emerges from his throat flying to Istanbul, to his Bangladeshi sweetheart who organises a rescue mission.

Structurally the stories are somewhat thinly threaded to each other and even less so to the travelers who tell them. Unlike Chaucer’s pilgrims who are described in great detail, these commuters remain largely undefined except in indistinct glimpses like ‘a large middle aged man with remarkable crevasses across his face (the plague survivor?), ‘the Japanese man’ (the doll fetishist?) or ‘the backpacker girl’.

Yet their stories seem to come from the same world - a curiously dialectic space driven as much by possibility as by privation, its motivations sometimes magical and other times merely mercenary.

In fashioning this and in creating its protagonists, modern day versions of age old archetypes, Dasgupta gives us a powerful vision of both - the cloned rich industrialist’s daughter Sapna as modern Rapunzel, rich inventor and map reader Klaus as Blue beard, Riad as Sindbad, Katya as Karna and Isabella as Cinderella are strangely memorable, and the multiple resonances of their stories make them curiously haunting

Book Review - Sangati

2005-06-29T00:28:00.000-07:00

This review appeared in the India Today

There is perhaps no perspective more powerful than that of the outsider and Tamil Dalit Christian writer Bama’s ‘Sangati’ testifies to this. If Art has hitherto reflected ‘high life’ rather than life, such ‘outcaste’ stories, literary cousins to the historical subaltern study can be extraordinarily powerful and provocative. They reveal a consciousness long suppressed, that is increasingly finding expression in a trenchant idiom that eschews traditional literary aesthetic. Dalit writers like Bama and Sharankumar Limbale (‘The Outcaste’translated from Marathi), and Lakshman Gaekwad (‘The Branded’) works’ are, in the remorseless violence of their stories as well as the anguished emotion of their narrative voices, a world away from other more pop ‘outsider ‘stories like Hollinghursts ‘The Line of Beauty’ and ‘The Nanny Diaries’ where a delightfully self conscious ironic narrator views an alien world. In Bama’s autobiography ‘Karukku’ (pub. in translation 2000) for instance, chronology and characterization come a poor second to the primacy of protest – the book is a disturbing blur of anguished impressions, questions and reflections.

In ‘Sangati’, written after ‘Karukku’, Bama takes us into the elemental, impoverished and most often violent world of the Dalit woman – Bama’s paati (grandmother) tells her of her aunt’s death, “I reared a parrot and then handed it over to be mauled by a cat. Your Periappan actually beat her to death …He killed her so outrageously, the bastard”. Later on in the book we witness the village trial of the aunts daughter Mariamma who has been accused of being together in secret in the pump set shed with another village boy by the landowner Kumarasami, to hide his own sexually predatory actions . The entire episode in cinematic in its description, almost surreal if it were not so totally tragic. When Manacchi, a village girl becomes ‘possessed with a pey’, Bama watches the whole violent sequence of exorcising the demon with a skeptical eye, analyzing later why it was always a woman who was possessed,” in the fields there is back-breaking work besides the harassment of the landlord…And once they have collected water and firewood, cooked a kanji and fed their hungry husband and children, even then they can’t go to bed in peace and sleep until dawn. Night after night they must give in to their husbands’ pleasure…The ones who don’t have the mental strength are totally oppressed; they succumb to mental ill health and act as if they are possessed by peys.”

Centuries of history , folklore and economic deprivation may conspire together to heap every imaginable burden on the woman and yet Bama finds herself amazed by the Darwin like survival capabilities of the Dalit women – their spirit and energy as illustrated in their loud quarrels (“If he shows his strength of muscle, she reveals the sharpness of her tongue”), their immense capacity for hard physical labor and appreciates their freedom to work outside the house ( as opposed to upper caste women), the absence of dowry in their social system and the right to remarry. The vignettes of the women in this book from Mariamma to the little girl Maikkanni who works in a match factory and Sammuga Kizhavi (who pissed into the landowners water pot because he beat up a small child whose hand brushed against the pot), are vivid and compelling and the stories heart rending – all told in a style that maybe straightforward but is hugely energetic and elemental.

Book Review - Chasing the Monsoon

2005-06-28T05:24:00.000-07:00

This appeared in the July 26th Books section of The Times of India

In Shantaram, the latest hip book on Mumbai’s seamy side, escaped convict hero Gregory Davis alias Shantaram, discusses the weather with acquaintance Lisa as they await the monsoon – “It’s always worst just before the monsoon…this is my fourth monsoon…You start to count in monsoons after you’ve been here a while,”, says Lisa, “This is my second”, says Davis,”I love the rain even if it does turn the slum into a swamp”.
Time and place are truly measured in monsoons for many of us and that’s why Alexander Frater’s excellent and even exciting ‘Chasing the Monsoon’ touches so many chords. Travel writer Frater grew up on an island in the South Pacific where “tropical depressions moved in and out like trains”, and where his favorite rainy scene bedroom print was entitled “Cherrapunji, Assam, The Wettest Place on Earth”.
Many years later, having moved to England, after a particularly dank, dismal and depressing winter, Frater decides to follow the monsoon on its journey from Trivandrum in South India onto Cochin, Goa, Bombay, Delhi , Calcutta and finally Cherrapunji. ‘Chasing the Monsoon’ is the story of that meteorological pilgrimage, an English weather buff ‘s account of people and places, meetings with weathermen, poets and politicians, monsoon massage men , waitresses and doormen. In Trivandrum, where ‘the monsoon hijacked every conversation’, Frater meets the Meteorological Departments Julius Joseph, who is reporting the monsoon’s progress to the PM’s office- “At eight am it was cutting through upper Sri Lanka…Well, two days maybe three”. In Cochin “in the dark harbor small boats ran for home. Waves bursting over the scalloped sea were suffused, curiously with pink light”. Frater meets the McCririchs, an expatriate couple with Harrisons Malayalam, a company that owns tea and coffee plantations. Sitting in their ‘enormous, high ceiling’ bungalow, Anne-Marie McCririch talks of monsoon power failures and the snakes and cobras the rains bring out. In Goa where ‘miles of flooded paddies and puddle roads reflected the pewtery light’, Frater attends a monsoon do, then going onto Bombay and then to Delhi where he runs the bureaucratic rounds for permission to visit the rainy , rebellion filled North East . Armed with his hitchhikers guide, a well thumbed ‘South East Monsoon’ by Y P Rao, Frater‘s delight in the vagaries of wind and weather is infectious. He dips into history ever so often, and generally ruminates on the rain. Of the deluge at Cherrapunji he says,” I felt little of the excitement I had known when the burst arrived in the South. Those had been occasions for public jubilation. This was a routine matinee….awesome certainly but exhilarating only to the collectors of meteorological records; such specialists would now be watching, incredulous, as their gauges foamed like champagne glasses.”
‘Chasing the monsoon’ is wonderfully entertaining and very empathetic , and while Fraters vantage point may not be a Cuffe Parade slum, (he “chases it [the monsoon] by plane with intermittent pit stops in the swankiest of hotels “ as one acerbic critic puts it) it is nevertheless quite the best monsoon story you are likely to come across.

Book Review - Maximum City

2005-06-16T04:19:00.000-07:00

This review appeared in The Telegraph

IN THE RECYCLED MESS

Part of the rot
Maximum City: Bombay Lost & Found
By Suketu Mehta, Penguin, Rs 595
Suketu Mehtas magnum opus on Bombay is impossible to put down. The New York-based writer returns to Bombay 21 years after his family migrated to New York, this time to plumb the dark underbelly of the metropolis. Mehta moves from the cages of Kamathipura to the gullies of Madanpura, the slums of Jogeshwari and Dagdi Chawl to the matchboxes of Mira Road with ease. In this reportage of the city, fixers, shooters, rioters, policemen and film directors come alive in vignettes both stark and cinematic.
The stories are powerful and haunting. They shock with their graphic descriptions of violence and of police brutality. Mehta takes a hard look at Mumbais police force, socializes with Bandra cop Ajay Lal in a Bandra police station, and discusses police encounters with assistant police inspector, Salaskar. He befriends underworld shooters Mohsin and Satish, who explain their techniques and describe their habits in a matter-of-fact manner.
Mehta spends nights at Sapphire and other beer bars, hangs out with the sexy 20-year-old dancer, Mona Lisa, at trendy cafeterias or at her home, where she tells him her story. She talks about her father, who abandoned the family, her mother, who sent her to the beer bar, and the lover for whom she slashed her wrists.
He meets film director Vidhu Vinod Chopra, co-writing his script for Mission Kashmir. Mehta is relentless in his exploration of the urban landscape both physical as well as mental. What does a man look like when hes on fire? he asks Sena activist, Sunil. He analyses the men in the mob responsible for the horrific 1992-93 Hindu Muslim riots in Mumbai. The vandals are young men, who, after working twelve hour days as peons in some office where they endure humiliation and even a slap or two from men who are richer and less Maharashtrian than they are, take the train home. Inside the train they bathe in perspiration; the air is fetid with sweats and farts Such a man lives with a constant sense of his own powerlessness, except when he is part of a mob.
The underlying theme that runs through the book is one of rot that comes through powerfully in the images of filth. In one such image adman Prahlad Kakkar tells Mehta, Half the population doesnt have a toilet to shit in. Thats five million people. If they shit half a kilo each, thats two and a half million kilos of shit everyday. When Mehtas foreign-born children fall sick with amoebic dysentery he says, We have been feeding our son shit. It could have come from the mango we gave him; it could have been in the pool we took him swimming in... There is no defense possible. Everything is recycled in this filthy country, which poisons its children, raising them on a diet of its own shit.
The book is a deeply disturbing, disquieting portrait of a city where, as Sunil the local Sena boss declares, even murder is all right. Mehtas Bombay has none of the magic of Salman Rushdies childhood world, or the affectionate idiosyncrasies of Pico Iyers travel tales or even the hopeless nostalgia of Rohinton Mistrys Parsee protagonists. Instead, we are drawn into a world sans basic amenities, where the neighbourhood pav-wallah is set aflame, where the primeval impulse for territory makes men loot and kill with equanimity, where models and bar girls measure their grief in the number of slashes on their wrists. Mehta may be the quintessential artist as outsider, but he leaves behind a vision that is compelling.
SONYA DUTTA CHOUDHURY

Artist profile - Sunil Das

2005-06-16T04:15:00.000-07:00

This appeared in the Deccan Herald in April 2005

Sunil Das is at Mumbai’s Jamaat Art Gallery in downtown Colaba for his exhibition entitled ‘Horses and Bulls’. The seventh floor gallery is full of light and breeze and tug boats and steamers glide by on the blue grey Arabian Sea, as the artist settles down with black coffee and a cigarette to talk art. The Gallery and its deceptively spacious Annex, once perhaps a sea view balcony, are today an appropriate setting for the paper and canvas works of impetuous animals that line its walls. You can almost see each magnificent animal draw in its breath, sometimes rearing, sometimes snorting or else gamboling. There’s mobility, power and a sinuous grace in every frame – Das’s skill lies in creating a form simultaneously abstract yet wholly representative, in definitive strokes that flow, using a palette that is minimalist and yet absolutely expressive, not only in terms of the sheer physicality of the beasts, but also in terms of its spirit – sometimes tempestuous, sometimes temperate or just plain playful! The black and white bull on a 6 by 4 feet canvas seems to almost leap at you from a background that somberly golden acrylic, there’s a flash of movement – perhaps he is charging and perhaps he is just spirited.

Sixty something, Kolkata based post modernist Sunil Das has an impressive oeuvre both in terms of the medium that he works with as well as his choice of subjects. Das uses paper, acrylic and canvas as well foil, nails or anything else that strikes him to impressive aesthetic effect. All this sells well and Das says he has sold even his student sketchbooks which figure several thousand horses. The first time he began to draw bulls, sitting at bull fights in Spain, people around him would buy the drawings then and there. Today, his soulful series on women and other work notwithstanding, horses and bulls continue to be a leitmotif of sorts for the painter, who explains why. Studying at the Government Art College in Kolkata, the young Sunil would complete his classes and spend the rest of the day walking around the streets of Calcutta, sketching everything he saw around him, and catching the very last train home. One day he was struck by the mounted police and followed the horses back to the stables, and began to sketch them. Thus began a life long affair with these magnificent beasts – “I became known as Horse Sunil – one of my horses was sent to Delhi to the President and I won the national Award as an undergraduate”, he recounts,” I suddenly became well known, the college had a special holiday, girls who had never even looked at me before now started to”. Das reminisces about his scholarship interview, where he enthusiastically walked into the office staggering under a load of all his drawings, unlike the other candidate with neat business like single file folder resumes – needless to say he won the scholarship! His stories of how the young, unsophisticated Sunil found his feet in Paris are fascinating, peopled with an unfeeling Indian Embassy (who later he delights to tell, found themselves wiping wine glasses for receptions for the now well known Indian artist!), a young African boy and a Frenchman who appeared miraculously in response to his fervent appeals to God.

Several exhibitions and awards later, Das has now opened his own Gallery at Kolkata, called Gallery Sunil where he discusses art with prospective buyers by appointment over a cup of coffee .

Book Review - Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul

2005-06-16T04:12:00.000-07:00

This review appeared in the Times of India dated May 1st

Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk’s best selling ‘My Name is Red’ and ‘Snow’ have catapulted him centre stage onto a Western world, both politically baffled and intellectually bewildered by a rising Islamic sensibility. Western educated Pamuk, with a cultural consciousness that seems to alternate effortlessly between Flaubert and Turner, Turkish memoirist Hisar and journalist- historian Ekrem Kocu, has emerged as an interpreter par excellence, a subtler Edward Said, whose own 1978 brilliantly incisive ‘Orientalism ‘ transformed the world’s West-defined intellectual map. ‘My name is Red’ , a murder mystery set among the miniaturists of a medieval Istanbul vowed western readers with its mesmerizing mix of intrigue and aesthetic theory, as well as a tautly controlled ‘1001 nights’ structure of story and allegory. ‘Snow’ , the story of returning immigrant Turkish poet Ka’s struggle for identity , amidst the conflicting forces of a once glorious history and present day polity and poverty, went on to garner further intellectual praise for its poignancy and ironic sensibility.

Pamuk’s latest offering ‘Istanbul’, part early autobiography and part cultural memoir, is a hauntingly beautiful portrait of what is arguably, the most intriguing city in the world. ‘Istanbul ‘s opening lines, taken from late nineteenth century Turkish columnist Ahmet Rasim quote,’ The beauty of a landscape resides in its melancholy’, and indeed much of Pamuk’s urban love letter is suffused with this sentiment, one he describes as ‘huzun’, not merely the melancholy of what was once a great city but also the huzun shared as a community –“of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter…of the old booksellers who lurch from one financial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear…of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men..” Peppered with such ‘painterly’ observations and poetic reflections, Pamuk’s ‘Istanbul’ accompanied by its black and white reproductions of cobbled streets , boats and the Bosphorus and its stories of ‘Famous Fires and Other Disasters’ , is as vibrant in its own way as Kocu’s celebrated Istanbul Encyclopedia that Pamuk profiles so affectionately.

Pamuk’s personal memoirs follow a somewhat meandering narrative, with frequent digressions that range from fascinating to outright esoteric as he analyses perspective in Melling’s Istanbul paintings, tells anecdotes about Flauberts syphilis stricken anatomy and philosophizes on the ‘picturesqueness of ruins’ for prosperous other world travellers like Nerval and Gautier. A fascinating if arcane mix of geography, history, philosophy and aesthetic theory, Pamuk’s ‘Istanbul’ is a definite don’t miss for anyone ever intrigued by Istanbul and of course for all Pamuk fans.

Artist Profile Badri Narayan

2005-06-16T04:08:00.000-07:00

This feature appeared in The Deccan Herald dated 26th September 2004

Badri Narayan is a lot like his work, disarmingly gentle and simple, yet with a depth of meaning waiting to be discovered in his simple sentences, his stories, his illustrations and indeed, in all his art.

The recent exhibitions at Mumbai and Bangalore that highlight his paper and water color series emphasise this quality.

Born in Secunderabad, then part of the Nizam Dominions, Badri Narayan discovered that painting and story telling were skills that came to him, early in life.
He began writing for children, as well as providing illustrations for the stories.
Moving to Bombay, the artist continued with his labour of love, painting scenes from mythology, conducting workshops for children, as well as writing and illustrating mythological stories for children, like the beautifully produced Orient Longman illustrated “Mahabharata” and “Ramayana.”

This close association with children and belief in their art as well as the power of simplicity are profound influences on Badri’s art.
He has over the years, explored the nature of reality and the principles of religion through his stories and sketches.

In his works, archetypal figures like Prakriti, the artist and the wise man inhabit vibrantly washed worlds in shades of rusts, ochres, yellows and blues.

Clean, uncluttered lines delineate visages tranquil and ageless, yet firmly standing in the moment. Badri uses a wealth of mythological and aesthetic tradition in an exploration of both the spiritual and the artistic, his use of motifs like the drifting boat, the castaway garment and symbols like the unicorn and the elephant situate the artist’s personal quest in ancient philosophical traditions.

This is perhaps inevitable, given the artist’s deep involvement with Hindu and Buddhist philosophies as well as their wealth of mythology.

The book lined shelves of his studio at Sion in Central Bombay, bear voluminous witness to the weight of his philosophical leanings from The Puranas to the Jatakas, to Aurobindo and a “Survey of World Civilizations.”

This philosophical bent is what distinguishes his paintings, which frequently feature the exploring artist in several forms, whether in self portrait or as the wise man, the monk or the pilgrim.

Besides Hindu mythology, Buddhism and its tenets also recur.
The artist’s paintings of the Buddha and the Buddhist monk spring from this belief, as does the elephant, for the elephant is, as the artist explains, an illustration of the great principle of a unique combination of strength with gentleness.
Badri relates the pithy simplicity of the ancient mythological parable to the art of the child.

The aesthetic of children’s art was only recognised as late as the 20th century, and the artist states a favorite quote of Picasso’s, “Not for me the horses of Parthenon, but the rocking horse of my childhood.”

Badri’s own stories and illustrations, as well as his water colors seem to hark back to this intuitive expression, using story, mythology and vibrant color to create a mythical narrative world.

The uncertainties and paradoxes of this realm are reflected in the shadows and dark spaces as well as use of devices like the drifting boat, yet the overall mood is one of lightness and brightness, a sense of peace and of hope.

2005-06-13T03:31:00.000-07:00

Beachward ho

2005-06-13T03:29:00.000-07:00

Balcony View

On Corporates and Culture

2005-06-13T03:10:00.000-07:00

Thsi appeared in the Deccan Herald

It’s monsoon time and Malhar, the festival at St. Xaviers College Mumbai is in full swing with animation and activity in every frame of an entire generation that populates these ancient premises with such joie-de-vivre.
The famous wooded quadrangle houses the festival stalls, and Pepsi very prominently, while BPCL banners and logos compete with red and white AirTel logos in the approach quadrangle. It’s an industrious mix of college and the corporate and a combination that seems completely Win-win.

For college fests today are increasingly becoming mega-events, mini microcosms as it were of a competitive world, where contestants write copy, design board games, plead cases in courtrooms and sing for a lot more than their supper. The heart of these creative, very “productive”, fun extravaganzas is of course the corporate sponsorship.

Types of sponsorship
Varying in degrees, such sponsorship could begin with contributing prizes for informal events like quizzes, to picking up the tab as the title sponsorship for amounts ranging from a few lakhs to ten lakhs. For the students it's the only way they can plan an event of such magnitude, and as Anindita Sanger of Sophia's Kaleidoscope succinctly puts it, “Without the money there’s no show”.

Festivals today typically have several competitive events packed into 3-4 days, with 2 or 3 special performances from well known artistes, both classical, pop, fusion et al. Besides this there are workshops on varied themes ranging from pottery and theatre to dream analysis! All this comes at a price though ranging from a couple of lakhs for the smaller fests to as high as Rs 25 lakh for fest at the larger better-known colleges. There’s a tremendous amount of fun and learning and talent that goes into both the organisation and the participation of such events and this is the other aspect of sponsorship — just as corporates invest in Art, as Alok Jhamb, CEO, AirTel explains, “Youth is all about fun and we as corporates should step in with our support.”

Market penetration
It’s also all about marketing and market penetration. For corporates, especially those who have a “youth brand” association, a college festival with its concentration of an ideal target audience, provides a unique advertising opportunity. As Suparna Mitra, Business Head, Lee explains, “For a youth brand like Lee, college sponsorships are an important part of the brand’s promotion plans. Connecting with the youth is a challenge in these times when media is fragmented and the lifestyles of the young involve “hanging out” in cafes, pubs etc rather than appointment TV watching. Also, the task is complicated as getting mind share is even more difficult as the young are often into multi-tasking when engaging in traditional media - e.g. sending SMS messages, surfing the net, reading magazines while watching TV or listening to radio.”

Alok Jhamb, CEO, AirTel, agrees with the importance of brand presence at a college festival. “We target the upwardly mobile youth segment, they are very critical to us both in terms of being brand ambassadors of a sort through their usage and also in providing a large potential as we take them up the lifecycle.”

For AirTel, College Fests are the beginnings of the student corporate interaction and one that sometimes develops into live projects and a marketing effort that is truly “viral”. Himanshu Chakrawarti, General Manager Marketing at Tata’s lifestyle store, Westside, also finds College fests an important marketing platform, “the college going crowd, which forms a large part of our target segment is difficult to reach through regular media. Participation in such festivals through sponsoring events like the fashion show gives us an opportunity to showcase our products and to build better bonding, encouraging students to come to our stores.”

Westside’s experience has been very positive, participation in college fests has actually seen an increase in sales every time- so much so that Westside has begun to conduct inter college fests in Pune and Chennai.
Yet for all this, marketing departments at the fests, whose job it is to go out and collect sponsorships describe it as a hard job. Sangram Kadam, Member of IIT Bombay’s Mood Indigo Core Committee, explains how marketing for the fest held in December every year begins as early as May. “It’s all about bargaining,” says Anshuman, marketing for Xaviers Malhar.

Value for money
Corporates in turn discuss the value for money concept, as sponsorship amounts for the larger festivals could be high enough to pay for 4 or 5 ten second spots on prime time television. The title sponsor for Xaviers Malhar, spread over 4-5 days with an exposure to several thousand students, could instead feature a hoarding at a prime location on Marine Drive, Mumbai for as long as two months for the same price. Besides this sponsorship has also to be woven in intrinsically into the festival rather than being pasted on.

As Suparna Mitra, Business Head, Lee elaborates, “Sponsorship and the brand should be worked well into the event rather than just be an exercise of putting up brand posters and banners in the event location and getting a few mentions from the MC. In Lee, for example, last year, we had sponsored freshers’ parties for a few colleges in Delhi where the brand was worked into a personality contest among the freshers and a Mr Lee and a Ms Lee was chosen from among the freshers.”

Where corporate sponsorship has transformed the face of the festival, it has also intensified commercial exposure to a class that’s increasingly consumerist. Yet in the ultimate analysis, it is a reflection of the real world as also a symbiotic meeting of mind and matter, with a product thrown in for every prodigy, be a it a biggie like the Hero Honda for Mr Umang at the N M College Festival or coupons for coffee.

Author Profile - Jean Echenoz

2005-06-13T03:07:00.000-07:00

This appeared in The Hindu Literary Review

`IT is fashionable in France to pronounce the novel dead every 10 years,' says best selling contemporary French novelist Jean Echenoz. Winner of France's prestigious Prix Goncourt, for his Je m'en vais (I'm Gone), Echenoz is at Cercle Litteraire in Mumbai's Fort district for the launch of Mark Polizzotti's critically acclaimed translation of the same. Published by Rupa France, in a slim black and white soft cover version, this tale, like Echenoz's others, fairly bubbles over with intrigue and unlikely adventures, all told in a delightful pop culture idiom.

The joy of fiction

Part of a literary legacy whose best known and translated writers, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, were winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 and 1964, Jean Echenoz is today one of the leading lights of the stable of writers assembled by legendary editor Jerome Lindon at "Editions de Minuit", including Samuel Beckett and Nouveaux Romanciers novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet as well as contemporary, well known and translated authors like Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Marie Ndiaye and Marguerite Duras. These are cultural touchstones and influences that both fascinate and inform the author and he speaks at length about that amazing literary form — the novel, which, phoenix-like, reinvents itself every time. "The joy of fiction, the very words inspire me", he confesses, "and it is this love that enables me to write". Jean Echenoz's novels are anchored for most part in Paris, yet make great peripatetic leaps into exotic lands — Felix Ferrer, the failed artist turned contemporary art dealer in I'm Gone, journeys to the North Pole, while mysterious villain Baumgartner, travels through southwest France in picaresque fashion to Spain, Pons in Double Jeopardy moves to a Malaysian plantation, while Max in Piano wakes up to find himself as far away as in the afterlife. Shifts in time and place are handled almost cinematically, in prose that maybe spare, but is wonderfully inventive and evocative — the airport where Ferrer begins his journey "a belvedere... where rabbits with kerosene breadth leap and bound" to the Arctic; "the boreal summer progressed. Night never fell."

Like fellow novelist Daniel Pennac, Jean Echenoz's genius lies in his appropriation of the romans policier (detective story), once derided as railway station reading not worthy of a literary label. His novels may deliciously subvert the detective story genre, with their anti-heroes, in simultaneously prosaic and banal and then wildly improbable scenarios, but Jean Echenoz, an admirer of Dashiell Hammett`s hard boiled detective fiction, prefers to look at it as paying homage to the genre. Indeed, not only does he reinvent the romans policier, he uses it skilfully to experiment with multiplicity of narrative — the exploration of a shifting je; the "I" of the character moves to the narrator, the author or sometimes even to an unnamed, undescribed casual bystander who maybe witness to the action. Characters disappear, merge or reappear, and this confusion with identities often becomes, rather like Graham Greene's The Third Man, the heart of the mystery story. The denouement, when it finally arrives after many lively digressions, often ends up asking more questions than it answers. For Echenoz's characters, the central quest maybe defined in whodunit terms, but emerges as so much more fundamental and existential. Their quests never seem to go anywhere, rather like Felix Ferrer — "And since Ferrer, subject to these immutable orders asked himself every morning how to break out of this ritual, the question itself became incorporated into the ritual". Ferrer spends the rest of the novel travelling, both geographically and through a succession of relationships with women, only to return 364 days later, Sisyphus like, to where he began.

Moments of insight

So, does Echenoz view man as fundamentally isolated and alienated? "I am not a philosopher or a thinker, I am just a novelist," says the fair-haired, soft-spoken author, firm despite his hesitant English. For all that, his novels have more than their moments of extraordinary insight. Predominant aspects of pop culture appear delineated in a dry wit that moves from mild to mordant. Drugs, celebrity and murder (Big Blondes), gun running (Double Jeopardy) all get their fair share of attention. Echenoz's descriptions of the modern art world in I'm Gone are particularly striking — note Ferrer's recommendation of a work of juxtaposed aluminium squares painted light green, "at least when you come home and find that on your wall you don't feel attacked. There's always that." Or of the "smug and self satisfied" young plastic artist whose "trick is... instead of hanging a painting on a wall, he eats away at the corresponding place in the collector's wall with acid: small rectangular format... exploring the concept of negative work, so to speak." Echenoz's text fairly abounds with these instances. His wonderfully evocative descriptions, whether of the Arctic sled dogs or of Parisian art, make this book a delightful read. After this we look forward to his earlier works, already translated and available overseas, being made available here as well.

Book Review - Fearless Nadia

2005-06-13T03:04:00.000-07:00

This book review appeared in The Week

Interest in Bollywood’s blond-haired and blue-eyed 1930s and 40s stuntwoman heroine Nadia, the ‘fighting, climbing, riding, courageous Lady Robin Hood’ of a whole genre of box-office stunt film hits, was revived with grand-nephew Riyad Wadia’s award-winning 1993 documentary, Fearless—the Hunterwali Story. Dorothee Wenner’s biography makes for fascinating reading, situating Nadia against the socio-historical and cinematic map of her day.

Stop me if you can: Fearless Nadia in Lutaru Lalna

The chronology of Nadia’s story is interspersed with a rich combination of analysis and anecdote, from stunt sequences to the ideological and creative impulses for various plot developments. Besides the daring and thrilling fighting scenes like those atop a train on Miss Frontier Mail (1936) or in a waterfall in Diamond Queen (1940), what made the Nadia films superhits were also their basic themes.

Wenner quotes film historian P.K. Nair: "The viewers always had the impression that the Nadia films dealt with precisely the conflicts which most affected them", going on to describe Nadia’s freedom dance in Bambaiwali (1941) and her fiery plea in Tigress (1947) against landholders. Yet ‘with raised eyebrows and slightly nauseated by the vulgar hurly-burly at Nadia’s showings—the secret of Nadia’s success was snobbishly put down as violence glorifying action entertainment’ and critics like Baburao of Film India repeatedly exhorted the Wadia Movietone Studios to move towards ‘social action’ themes.

This may have led to the split between the two Wadia Brothers. The elder J.B.H. wanted to move towards social drama like The Court Dancer, while the younger brother Homi, now married to Nadia, wanted to continue the stunt hits.

Wenner tells the Nadia story with all the delightful detail of an admiring insider, illustrating the radical social messages of the Nadia films, where the cult actress sidesteps the saint-immoral vamp polarity to emerge as a truly empowered individual.

Literature and the Immigrant Experience

2005-06-13T03:01:00.000-07:00

This feature appeared in The Hindu Literary Review

WHAT is it that makes the immigrant experience such fertile literary ground? Popular and prize-winning, these angst-ridden accounts of the aspiring outsider seem to sweep the bestseller stakes. Whether it's Irish immigrant author Frank McCourt in Tis or British born Bangladeshi , Monica Ali's Brick Lane, the stories weave a tapestry that's both familiar and faraway .

For, the immigrant is in a unique position to tell a tale. Like every great epic, from The Odyssey to The Ramayana, his story is also that of a traveller. The immigrant journeys to the promised land and battles adversity, both mental and material. Jasmine in Bharati Mukerjee's Jasmine, for instance, begins her journey travelling through the underbelly of the immigrant trade route on forged papers, through the tiered bunks on the trawlers out of Europe, and ends up making good as a respected "caregiver" as opposed to the more servile Indian version of the "ayah" and then a wife . She moves from Jyoti to Jasmine and eventually to Jane Ripplemeyer, shedding personas like so many skins, eventually metamorphosing into a creature ready to fight fate and "reposition the stars".

Eighteen-year-old Nazneen, in Monica Ali's Brick Lane may have a smooth maiden flight to London, but she is to be married to a man she has never met, pot-bellied, stomach-stroking Chanu, and this is a battle for her nonetheless. Cloistered in her cluttered Brick Lane apartment, Nazneen struggles to find meaning in her day-to-day existence, gradually coming of age by attending activist meetings and eventually achieving economic independence and identity. Gogol in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake is born at Saint Auburn Hospital, overlooking Boston's Charles River and the Memorial Drive, but he must nevertheless struggle all through school and even later for a sense of self. He is not born Indian, definitely not yet American. Appropriately and wholly unintentionally, he is somehow given a name that is neither Indian nor American, taken from the surname of his father's favourite Russian author.

The immigrant, like the Greek hero, also takes on the force of Fate itself whether it's the Chinese mothers in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club or Nazneen in Brick Lane. The primeval power of Destiny and men and women's struggles despite it, has always been the stuff of compelling story-telling and these stories are no exception. Fate appears as a leitmotif in Brick Lane where Nazneen's is born stillborn and left to her fate but still survives, this being a precursor to the many events in her life. The opening pages of Jasmine, under a banyan tree in the village of Hasnapur, introduce an astrologer cupping his ears ("his satellite dish to the stars") and foretelling Jasmine's widowhood and exile. Such stories, then, deal with the self and spirit yet viewed through the safety of the prosperous western prism. This is also what perhaps gives these books their "feel good" factor and makes them prime contenders for Western awards — for all the trouble these immigrants endure, their dauntless participation in the Great American Dream is what ultimately "liberates" them. The figure of the immigrant is romanticised as a spiritual vagabond and his or his progeny's ultimate assimilation seen as "coming of age".

Besides, the many exotic trapping of these stories, sketched on a canvas that stretches backwards in time and space, give these the universal appeal of the traveller's tale. Spice-filled kitchens compete with arranged marriages and vermillion filled partings, all adding up to create an atmosphere of these foreigners and their quaint colourful little ways. Third world cultures are painted as better somehow, more spiritual, earthy and even sensual but in nice non-threatening ways as in Irish or Asian lamb stew or wrapped up neatly in fortune-cookie wisdom. There's a multicultural richness in these accounts, in their creation of an exotic backdrop, the literary equivalent of "Casablanca" or Arabia of "Lawrence of Arabia". The description of food, clothes and festivals is in a language that flows and enfolds, appealing in a quirky crossover way — Mrs. Sen's kitchen knife in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, for instance, is described vividly as a "blade that curved like the prow of a Viking ship, sailing to battle in distant seas". Yet for all the exoticism and nostalgia, the "home" left behind is undoubtedly not the place to be. Chanu in Brick Lane is muddled and misguided in his quixotic intent to return — the Bangladeshi village may be sylvan in retrospect, but Nazneen's sister Hasina's letters paint a dismal picture of the sordid life a woman might have to lead if trapped there. Gogol and Sonia in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake dread their holidays to Kolkata, the crowds and the discomfort, and rejoice in their return, "once again free to quarrel. To sleep for as long as they like". Immigrants like Hanif Kureishi's Karim in Buddha of Suburbia or Frank McCourt in Tis bring with them a whole new perspective on the structure of society, this brilliance of perception probably being possible only by virtue of their exclusion. Ultimately and importantly however, there is a complete validation of the Promised Land. Frank McCourt cribs and carps about the aloof unemotional American approach to life where taking in a meringue to a movie is construed as a huge breach of conduct, yet he can think of nothing worse than those poor souls who reached Ellis Island, who were turned back.

Set firmly in the context of a validation of the present way of life, an immigrant's story is thus powerful both in terms of story and setting, as well as politically correct. Asian historical memoirs from Wild Swans to Daughters of Arabia are stories of oppression and unhappiness, now safely told from the haven of the New World. Novels like The Joy Luck Club and Brick Lane reiterate this. They also deal with complex and very universal issues of enquiry into identity and being, striving to make sense of life mysteries — who am I, what is my name and where is home? It's a potent combination of the particular with the profound and in a world where boundaries simultaneously blur and yet don't go away; this is a story for us all.

Artist Profile - Satish Gujral

2005-06-13T02:50:00.000-07:00

Satish Gujral is in Mumbai after three years. At a preview of his paintings and sculptures in the courtyard of the magnificent heritage Deutsch Bank building , the artist and his stately wife Kiran converse with bankers, gallery owners and other art aficionados. Gujral’s exhibition at Jehangir Art Gallery begins two days later, amidst a flurry of high profile viewings that include superstar Sharukh Khan, industrialists and fellow artists. For Gujral is, in many ways, a legend.

Extraordinary not only for his vast and versatile artistic talents but also for his sheer grit and gumption. His life story is a fascinating saga- born in Jhelum in 1925 in pre-partition West Punjab, he never allowed an early loss of hearing at the age of eight to come in his way, as he studied art at the Mayo School of Art in Lahore and then at J J School in Bombay. It was while studying art at Lahore, where the school’s curriculum included various techniques for stone and woodcarving, metal smithery, clay modelling, drawing and design, that the seeds of his very real versatility were sown. For Satish Gujral is remarkable in the sheer breadth of his oeuvre that stretches from paintings and sculpture to wood work, ceramic, plastic and murals.

You see his magnificent and multi-faceted talent in each sculpture and canvas in this current collection. The paintings feature a series of stunning acrylics of both human and animal figures. Each canvas has an amazing degree of complexity, working at several levels in terms of colour and texture.

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The artist uses multiple frames within the same canvas, creating a many layered effect of mood and meaning as well as a multiplicity of perspective- it is, he explains part of a conscious effort to depict the complexity and strength of his subjects, mentioning Picasso and the Cubists as influences. Gujral’s lines are akin to master draughtsman’s in many senses, clean and free flowing, perhaps an influence of his architect abilities. (He has won several awards for designing the Belgian embassy in Delhi). The use of gold and a vivid earthy maroon as well as vibrant emerald greens in contrast to pale grays and muted whites all within several geometrical loci in a single canvas is striking. Gujral has long been a student of colour and it shows. His exposure to acrylics began many years ago, when he worked in Mexico in apprenticeship to Diego Rivera and David Sequeiros. “I used to make my own colours then,” he says, adding, “And even now when acrylics are so readily available I work with a combination of commercial colours as well as my own colours”.

Another feature that distinguishes a lot of Gujral’s work is the influence of mural art. The artist has long held for the need to discover an individual and distinct Indian style. “A work of art should be like a person,” he declares, “you should look at the painting and be able to tell it’s Indian”. Through it all, the fame and the fortune, Gujral remains essentially his own person and in many ways the anti-thesis of a lot of very media savvy artists of today.

Book Review -Tokyo Cancelled

2005-06-13T02:44:00.000-07:00

This review appeared in the Deccan Herald

Thirteen passengers stranded overnight in a strange airport tell each other stories all night in Rana Dasgupta’s debut novel. The darkened airport lounge (“like the back corridor between 2 worlds ..where people only alighted when something was seriously wrong with the eschatological machinery”) works effectively as an eerie setting for the strange and magical tales exchanged between these displaced individuals.

The stories themselves are striking - not only for their page turning ‘what comes next’ quality, but also for the richness of their resonances. Dasgupta draws inspiration from a timeless fairy tale genre, simultaneously subverting it, by situating each story geographically and temporally in a magical and yet tangibly disquieting reality. This could be our world, as on the streets of Paris and London, Delhi, Istanbul and Buenos Aires, poverty and the plague coexist with industry and money.

And yet it is a fantastic fairy tale world peopled by kings and princes as well as tailors, sailors and magic map readers, a rich Indian industrialist who makes a Faustian bargain with a cloning scientist and an Argentinean video store owner who turns recycler of garbage - or is he all along really the dictator?

The many tragic twists and turns in these modern day fairy tales make for racy reading and also for much provocative questioning - events are arguably driven not so much by destiny as by greed and power, and the magic that could so easily have been technology gone all awry. All this in events and symbols that could only belong to today.

So the Cinderella like figure in the fifth story is really actress Isabella Rossini’s illegitimate daughter and her Prince Charming none other than Robert de Niro’s illegitimate taxi driver son Pavel. Tellingly the transforming magic potion is no simple ‘Alice in Wonderland’s’ ‘Eat Me’. Instead in a world straddled with big brands, it is very appropriately, an Oreo cookie. This cookie when crumbled doesn’t make Isabella a predictable princess; instead it transforms her into a glass and concrete swanky super store on Madison Avenue.

Another story follows the fortunes of Riad, a modern day mariner, who like his ancient ancestor is also marooned at sea - and this time it’s not wind that’s the villain but matters of custom and immigration.

An albatross emerges from his throat flying to Istanbul, to his Bangladeshi sweetheart who organises a rescue mission.

Structurally the stories are somewhat thinly threaded to each other and even less so to the travelers who tell them. Unlike Chaucer’s pilgrims who are described in great detail, these commuters remain largely undefined except in indistinct glimpses like ‘a large middle aged man with remarkable crevasses across his face (the plague survivor?), ‘the Japanese man’ (the doll fetishist?) or ‘the backpacker girl’.

Yet their stories seem to come from the same world - a curiously dialectic space driven as much by possibility as by privation, its motivations sometimes magical and other times merely mercenary.

In fashioning this and in creating its protagonists, modern day versions of age old archetypes, Dasgupta gives us a powerful vision of both - the cloned rich industrialist’s daughter Sapna as modern Rapunzel, rich inventor and map reader Klaus as Blue beard, Riad as Sindbad, Katya as Karna and Isabella as Cinderella are strangely memorable, and the multiple resonances of their stories make them curiously haunting

The Publishing Industry in India

2005-06-13T02:41:00.000-07:00

This feature appeared in The Tribune

THE publishing industry in India is worth Rs 6,000 crore and is the third largest in the world. Business is also booming. But why aren’t writers being paid what they deserve and why aren’t the prices of books falling?

BOOKS continue to be big business, the world-at-the-touch-of-a-mere-mouse mesmerisation of multi-media notwithstanding. Black and white still sells and how! Whether it is textbooks or general interest publications, the English language publishing industry today seems to have a lot going for it. As literacy increases, the demand for textbooks and other academic volumes continues to rise. As for fiction, world over the Asian subcontinent is definitely ' in'— whether it's Vikram Seth's hefty advance for his autobiography or Bangladeshi born UK-based Booker nominated Monica Ali, writing in English has well nigh exploded today. Mega bookstores like the Oxford Book Shops in Calcutta and Mumbai, Crossword Mumbai, Landmark in Delhi and Bangalore, compete with the famous US-based Barnes and Noble book chain, providing the customer with not just a book but the 'whole reading experience.' There's light and space, softly piped music and the rich smell of freshly brewed coffee to go with the rows and rows of print and paper.

With international publishing houses beating expectations on the street, where do their Indian counterparts stand? "Look around yourself and you'll get the answer", says Ravi Dayal of Ravi Dayal Publishers, adding, "with the proliferation of books and publishing houses, it’s obvious they are surviving and making money." And indeed several large international publishers like Penguin, Harper Collins, Macmillan and Picador have set up shop in India in the last 10 to 15 years. Besides other traditional heavyweights that include Oxford University Press, Orient Longman and indigenous publishing houses like Rupa and Jaico, a number of smaller niche publishing houses have come up as well. The Indian publishing scene today is populated with small, independent publishers, each with a distinctive profile and a separate specialisation. Kali for Women, for instance, was founded by two women Ritu Menon and Urvashi Butalia 18 years ago. Beginning out of a garage, it is today a profitable publishing house. So also Katha, an extraordinary non-profit organisation, that has begun to salvage the lost classics of vernacular India, translating them into English with flair and publishing them in beautiful editions. These and others like Tulika (academic and children's books), Stree (women's books), Ravi Dayal, India Ink, Srishti, Minerva, English Edition, Permanent Black (trade and academic books) are all becoming well-known.

With a market size that's estimated at Rs 6,000 crore (including books, newspapers, magazines, periodicals and academic journals), India actually ranks third in the world in its number of English publications per year, after the USA and UK. Publishers agree that the potential in this industry is tremendous. As Urvashi Butalia, founder of Kali for Women, analyses," I think the Indian publishing industry is in an exciting phase right now. The earlier profile, which was that 80 per cent of the books published were textbooks and these were the bread and butter books, is changing somewhat, That is to say while textbooks still remain the profit earners, many publishers are also beginning to turn to producing books for the general reader. This is what explains the success of publishers like Penguin and Harper Collins, who produce books for general readers, or books that are known as trade books. J.S. Sethi, who began by book distribution and now runs the publishing firm of English Edition, concurs, "The potential for publishing is very good. English Edition brings out two to three titles a week. As far as publishing houses that publish textbooks go, they have a captive market and are minting money". S.C Sethi of Jaico Publications also echoes these bullish sentiments, "We are doing extremely well and we are one of the biggest distributors of British and American publications in India."

Despite all the good cheer, however, volumes are quite literally abysmally low. Given the almost 20-million-strong English-speaking and reading public, print runs of commercially successful books could be as low as 1000 copies. What are the reasons for this paradox? "Book buyers are few," says Sethi. "The electronic media doesn't bother about books."

"It’s because prices are way too high," says T.S. Shanbagh of Mumbai's Strand Book Store, that old world cramped but comfortable bookstore that's irresistible to every aficionado. Quoting Tagore's Gitanjali: Where knowledge is free/..Into that heaven of freedom, my father / Let my country awake, Shanbagh puts the blame for low volumes and high prices on high margins and inefficient distribution, "The cost of a book may be as much as 10 times the cost of production, the reader often pays for the overheads of five administrations." Publishers in India today, he feels, also do not bother developing local talent, they often reprint international books, and in essence lack that "some little idealism, which is so necessary to this trade." It is this lack of commitment, of concrete investment in the product, the book and its author, that seems overwhelmingly to explain the problem of low volumes. Promotional budgets are low, and marketing professionals almost non-existent. "Whereas bestsellers’ authors abroad have a publisher’s dedicated marketing team to promote a book and make sure the backlist stays in print, a publisher here may have one person who has sold biscuits or toothpaste for the last so many years and is now told to sell books", points out bestselling novelist Shobhaa De. Agrees adman Alyque Padamsee, whose autobiography A Double Life was published by Penguin, "Marketing of books in India is zero and what the book industry needs desperately is professional marketing of books."

P. Sainath, journalist and author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought, explains that publishing houses need to step out of the "cocktail circuit book launch at India International Centre, Delhi, with 40 people in attendance" and reach out in other ways. Bhawna Somaaya, film journalist and author of books like Amitabh Bacchan The Legend published by Macmillan India, Salaam Bollywood by Spantach and Lancer, UK, elaborates in the same vein, describing her efforts to market her books in the absence of any from her publishers. "For a creative person to be involved in the process of publishing is a huge responsibility and liability."

Other problems include those of piracy, as evidenced by the plethora of cheap photocopied bestsellers available at the traffic lights, that cause the publishing industry an annual loss of Rs 350-400 crore. The problem that was sporadic about 10 years back has acquired epidemic proportions now. "It is not just fiction but educational books like NCERT textbooks of the Central Board of Secondary Education and Andhra Pradesh Textbook Corporation's books for school kids, that have begun to have their pirated editions," said N. Subrahmanyam, Managing-Director of Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Ltd in a recent interview. The amending of the Indian Copyright Act in 1986 , has helped and police raids and prosecutions have been carried out on unauthorised translations and photocopying operations. Piracy has also affected export markets, as S.C. Sethi of Jaico adds, " Indian textbooks are pirated in Bangladesh and Pakistan as well."

In the ultimate analysis, problems of piracy and production costs aside, Indian publishing continues to remain a poor cousin of the West, despite being placed in the most-populous marketplace. Book promotions may cost money but, as has been illustrated so successfully internationally, they make even more money. Here is where stepping out of the traditional promotional model of exhibiting at book fairs, small-scale book launches and making calls to editors to review books can make a difference.

Witness the marketing miracles of Oprah's Book Cub where talk show host Oprah Winfrey discusses her recommended books as well the carefully orchestrated, perfectly executed Harry Potter campaign and it’s obvious that good marketing can truly sell volumes and volumes.

The Runaway Thriller

2005-06-13T02:38:00.000-07:00

This Feature appeared in The Hindu's Literary Review
AS popular art forms go, nothing captures public imagination in quite the same way as the thriller. Beginning with classic whodunnits, serial killers and spies, today's thrillers rock bestseller lists with their excursions into law, medicine, high finance and even religion. Moving from a genre that was wildly popular within its niche, the thriller, once defined both contextually and spatially, has broken all boundaries. The profusion and popularity of high voltage dramas set in court rooms, fast food corporations, hospitals, airports and computer firms is more than just a literary trend — it is a reflection of life as we know it today.

The last few decades have seen a virtual explosion in the genre of the thriller with traditional mystery and detective stories from P.D. James, Mary Higgins Clark, Patricia Cornwall, spy stories from Ken Follet, Colin Forbes, Robert Ludlum, John le Carre competing with medical and sci-fi thrillers from Michael Crichton, Robin Cook, courtroom intrigues from Scott Turow, John Grisham, Steve Martin and now religious and art conspiracy thrillers from Dan Brown, and Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason's latest blockbuster The Rule of Four. What is interesting though is that these intricate variations on the intrigue theme have each their distinguished predecessors. Sci-fi conspiracy dates back to H.G. Wells' War of the World. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a classic predecessor of Robin Cook stories like Chromosome 6 and Outbreak. Morris West wrote a racy religious Vatican conspiracy that dates back to the 1960s and lawyer cum detective Perry Mason stars in courtroom conflicts. So what makes this current spate of "specialty" thrillers different, almost a movement as it were?

Layman's manual

The answers to this seem to lie in the world we live in today — one of super specialisation and globalisation powered not just by politics but by micro economics. In this increasingly complex world, the thriller, with its detailed behind-the-scenes descriptions, whether in the esoteric world of banking as in Arthur Hailey's The Money Changers, or the frighteningly immediate yet complex world of medicine in Robin Cook's novels, becomes much more than a riveting airport read. It functions as a unique layman's manual, a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy as it were. The same reader who'd follow Michael Crichton's Airframe or his path breaking The Andromeda Strain with fascinated awe would be hard put to pick up the equivalent textbooks on aerodynamics and anatomy. Similarly, the average layman would seldom venture into a jargon filled treatise on various aspects of the law, its loopholes, its provisions and precedents. And yet, as citizens in a democratic society, the rights and wrongs of conflicts, the understanding of how and why a government can order another citizen to pay money, give up their children, even to be imprisoned or put to death are issues of compelling interest. In this context a book like John Grisham's The Chamber is much more than a taut tale, it is an incisive and legally coherent argument against the death penalty.

The current crop of specialty thrillers is also striking in their delineations of grey. No more the black and white or red of political drama or the criminal versus society of the pure detective novel. Today's thrillers engage social themes and ethical questions with gusto whether it is racism and information technology in Hari Kunzru's Transmission or religious conditioning and conspiracy in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Grisham's thrillers trace the murky background of courtroom conflict and big business looking at jury selection and the tobacco industry in The Runaway Jury or law and crime in The Firm. Robin Cook's Fatal Cure attacks the anomalies of the health care system, his Vital Signs explores the issue of in-vitro reproduction and Toxin indicts the fast food industry.

Specialty thrillers today are therefore much more than suspense stories — they are in many senses social documents of fundamental interest, both in the way they pick up on society's current fears and in the manner in which they outline them. Packed with a wealth of circumstantial detail, they appeal to the general reader in their approximation to real life, the information they provide as well as their racy resolution.

New realities

Like modern day film, which gets technically more competent and more realistic, specially in conflict sequences, whether its epic battles or car chases, today's thrillers are truly cinematic. If Arthur Conan Doyle described a surgeon vis-à-vis his clothes and maybe his chambers, today's specialty thriller will get up, close and personal as he picks up his scalpel, glorying in the nitty gritty, the hows, the whys and the therefores. Like modern day science, the thriller investigates everything, and unlike science it has the benefit of an ethical viewpoint. Also unlike science it has the advantage of imagination on its side.

Fact and fiction

It is this provocative blend of fact and fiction most recently exemplified in the best selling Da Vinci Code that makes it so unique. Set against a backdrop of organised religion already reeling under allegations of long hidden conspiracies of silence, of excesses and of abuse, the events in the Da Vinci Code use a fascinating mix of religious geography, iconography and art history to uncover a secret conspiracy. From ancient history to technology, thrillers today dip into different areas of special research to construct concepts simultaneously novel yet frighteningly believable. In a world beset by religious fundamentalism and conflict as it hurtles towards progress, this heady combination of different specialist ideas, their consequences and resolutions seems one way of understanding reality — whether it is molecular manufacturing, biotechnology and the behavioural science of bees and ants in Michael Crichton's Prey or the combination of venture capitalism, interactive online games and e-mail viruses in Hari Kunzru's Transmission.

Book Review - India in Mind

2005-06-13T02:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.the-week.com/25may01/lifestyle_article5.htm

From Australian writer Robyn Davidson’s toilet travails with the Rabari nomads in the Thar desert to Peter Matthiessen’s Himalayan quest for the snow leopard, India in Mind is a literary map of sorts, multi-dimensional in diverse perspectives that range from Rudyard Kipling to Mexican poet Octavio Paz to ‘beat’ gay writer Allen Ginsberg’s Indian Journals (‘naked saddhus who don’t talk, crosslegged smoking dope/ to overlook the corpse meat-dolls’).

The collection is remarkable in the breadth of subjects it encompasses, with Hermann Hesse’s spiritual mysticism and Andre Malraux’s philosophical ruminations on Ellora and Elephanta cheek by jowl with Somerset Maugham’s portraits of the vina player and the Dewan of Travancore and Bruce

Yet it is a collection that disappoints—despite vivid descriptions of people and places, the characters remain cliched caricatures and slightly ridiculous in their attempts to measure up to western standards. Mark Twain’s bearer, whom he names Satan, V.S. Naipaul’s unreliable Kashmiri hotelier Mr Butt or J.R. Ackerley’s distracted maharaja. Paul Scott and Ruth Prawer Jhabwala’s stories are exceptions, yet, tellingly, Jhabwala’s patronising Margaret memsahib and Scott’s supercilious Mrs Grigson are not Indian.

Mostly, however, what you miss is a sense of the unexpected—an insider’s intimate view of the depths below the colourful vibrancy of the streets of Varanasi or the tombs of the Tughlaqs. You miss the belongingness of a Salman Rushdie or an Arundhati Roy, the affection of Ruskin Bond or the matter of factness of Jim Corbett.

India in Mind is a collection whose literary credentials are impeccable—an expert and diverse selection accompanied by Pankaj Mishra’s introduction to each writer, which makes for interesting reading, yet it remains naggingly unsatisfying and somewhat uninspiring.

The City and its Stories

2005-06-13T02:03:00.000-07:00

juhujournal

By 2030 two-thirds of the world's population will be living in cities. No wonder then, says SONYA DUTTA CHOUDHURY, that the city is acquiring a literary identity of its own in modern imagination.

SHASHI ASHIWAL

Cityscape: A montage of joys and miseries...

THE city has always been an important backdrop for the story, from the bleakly industrial London of Dickens' Hard Times to the Baltimore of Anne Tyler's finely nuanced everyday world. Now it becomes protagonist in a new genre of books that hail it as centre-stage character — from the recently launched Bombay by Suketu Mehta to the critically acclaimed The Weekenders, a collection of stories set in Kolkata.

This trend is indicative of the increasing importance of the city. At a time when the urban population has for the first time in the history of mankind overtaken the rural population and is projected in U.N. population studies to account for two thirds of the world's population by 2030, the city is under intense scrutiny. Increasingly, it is acquiring a literary identity, its stories multidimensional maps where fiction, history, sociology and geography come together in fascinating accounts of people and pavements.

Provocative mix

Truth is stranger than fiction, and the city's provocative mix of both has a special appeal. It is, for the storyteller, the ultimate inspiration. Here's where Oceans of Stories and the Arabian Nights come together in a rich multiplicity of voices, immortalising both the prince and the pauper. The modern metropolis has an epic sweep, its many worlds both co-existing and colliding. Its juxtapositions, the poignancy of its unsung heroes and their immense isolation amongst the crowded streets, rather like Coleridge's ancient mariner with "water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink" reveal life at its most powerfully ironic. The rickshaw puller, the bar girl, the taxi driver emerge from the choruses of grand heroes as icons of everyday existence — plebeian yet potent. So Monica Ali, in The Weekenders, writes of Deepak, a lost little boy who "works" in the carriages of trains that steam into Howrah station. The late Arun Kolatkar, that quintessential Mumbai poet, wrote in his Kala Ghoda Poems of the drunks and the dogs of the city and of the "Old Woman" showing us life "through the bullet holes she has for her eyes". The city is where emotions run high, where the minutiae of everyday, acquire in the retelling a status that is larger than life. Suketu Mehta's stories of the city, of hanging out in hotels and beer bars with Sena local bosses Sunil and Amol and shooters Satish and Mohsin, in five star hotels and cafeterias with Mona Lisa the bar dancer and with young unemployed Girish in his slum, prove fascinating in the context of the concrete pavements of that teeming, multitudinous city, Mumbai. Everyman is no longer faceless; his story is interesting as well an intriguing blend of fiction and social history. The appeal of such stories lies in their embrace of the marginalised many — of the cross dancer Honey, whose spectacular dancing skills earned her thousands every night at Mumbai's Sapphire Bar (Suketu Mehta's Bombay) and of Razia, Panna and Vimla , eunuchs who live in an old Mughal haveli in the gullies of Old Delhi, in William Dalrymple's The City of Djinns, among other such in-your-face but oft-ignored inhabitants.

The city emerges as a space where history and the contemporary story resonate, as William Dalrymple in The City of Djinns meets Pakeezah Begum, the youngest descendant of the Mughal Dynasty, in a ruined haveli near Faiz Bazaar, and visits tombs, palaces, graveyards and gardens in search of the stories of the generations of emperors and imperialist who held court on those very premises. Jerry Pinto recalls in the anthology Mumbai Meri Jaan the day during the Second World War in 1944, when the battleship SS Fort Stikine exploded and he saw a headless horse and Timeri Murari tells of the history of the Hindu Building in The Unhurried City Writings on Chennai. City stories are part reminiscence and part folk tale and the nostalgia of these personal metropolitan stories make history come alive in a way no text book ever could. So also journalist Pinky Virani's book on Mumbai, Once Was a Bombay, talks of Rozena growing up in of Mazgaon, of Pakya the shooter for hire, of politician Chaggan Bhujbal and film fight master Veeru Devgan, while simultaneously tracing the rise of gangsterism and religion in local politics.

This is history at its best, and social studies too. The story of the modern city is really the equivalent of the great battle tales of yore. For it is contemporary warfare at its refined best, deadly despite its deceptively civil veneer of good behaviour. The story of the city is that of constant conflict, as Kiran Nagarkar exclaims in his quirky tale of the Bombay chawls Ravan and Eddie — "They should have killed for water, the men and women of the CWD chawls. People have been known to kill for less: religion; language; the flag; the colour off a person's skin or his caste; breaking the queue at a petrol pump".

A riot of colours

You are impelled to read such city stories, because the city is a geographical entity you know, or want to get to know, a place where the streets have a name. The metropolis is a complicated character — no blacks and whites here, it's a virtual riot of colour — a montage of joys and miseries. And like the bazaars of the East, long the staple attractions of the traveller's tale, the many colours, sights and sounds of the city signify everything vibrant and diverse — an emblem of what life at its best should be. Nothing can quite beat the bubbliness of the bustling city. The liveliness and energy of the everyday streets is only surpassed by the many modern day extravaganzas. For, like ancient Rome and its gladiators, today's cities play host to colourful spectacles, marches, processions et al. William Dalrymple describes with much fascination the crowded spectacle of the partridge fight, also the majesty of the Id prayer, Suketu Mehta tells of the Ganapati celebrations in Bombay, the bull slaughter at Id and Sameera Khan describes "Muharrom in the Mohalla" in Bombay Meri Jaan, as colourful illustrations of this joie de vivre.

There are truly "six million stories in the naked city" , as Jules Dassin exclaims in his film starring New York and perhaps that explains why we seek to understand its soul.