Atul Kasbekar - Photographer and now Celebrity Manager

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

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

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 ?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

This feature appeared in the Sunday Times March 2007

In Search of the Perfect Backpack

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

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

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

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