WEEKLY MAGAZINE, JUNE 22, 2014 Free with your copy of Hindustan Times
We asked eight literary experts, writers, academics, publishers and critics, to choose the finest Indian novels in English (including translations in regional languages). You can’t afford to not read them!
AMITAVA KUMAR CHIKI SARKAR DAVID DAVIDAR JERRY PINTO HARISH TRIVEDI JEET THAYIL RAVI SINGH SUNIL SETHI
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BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
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ATTENTION, BRUNCH BOOK CHALLENGE CHAMPIONS! It all started this year. And since then, hundreds have joined the #BrunchBookChallenge on Twitter, and we’ve almost lost track of the zillions of books read. For every few bestsellers, there were some great literary titles. There were memoirs and non-fiction. And of course, there was self-help, but let’s leave that for another day. We’ve been introducing you to books, hot off the press, as promised. We sent complimentary books to the regulars. We told you about our favourites and we know your names (or at least Twitter handles)! To make sure that these bookworms don’t crawl back into their burrows, we thought we’d compile a list of interesting things about all of you on the Challenge and the books you are reading! Try and spot your names! (If you can’t, then it is time you start reading, tweeting or both).
CH B O UN
C
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BR
OK
HOW TO READ HA LLENG 24 BOOKS ) (OR MORE AR IN ONE YE
The one-time tweeter Chitra Ahanthem @ChitraAhanthem, the girl who tweeted eight times in one go and then we had a tough time finding her again!
BOOK REVIEWS
The tweet we did not understand Neeti Choudhari HT Brunch @nbc_kneetea @HTBrunch “#BrunchBookChallenge Book How we wish we knew what 17: Tangled by Emma Chase. It’s you meant! (But, <asked in hot, if u know what I mean :-P” a hushed voice> is it dirty?)
The most active tweeter @agrwl_neha She tweets a lot and we like it. She told us when she decided to read her third book, The Secret, when it arrived, when she was halfway through. And, obviously when she finished it!
Our Challengers sent in reviews of the books they liked. One thing’s for sure, our own list has lots of new must-reads!
Aman Mittal (@amanhimself) FAVOURITE BOOK Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira The story begins with a class assignment in which Laurel, the protagonist, is asked to write a letter to a dead person. Soon she has a notebook full of letters to Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger etc. But what helps her to discover her path: her writings about high school, new friendships, falling in love or learning to live with her splintering family? “I finished this book in two days, Something drove me back to it every time I started to flow away from the text. Great read.”
Aastha Jain (@aastha_jain08) FAVOURITE BOOK Paper Towns by John Green Quentin and Margo discover the corpse of a divorced man who had committed suicide. The narrative then moves to a time when Quentin and Margo are in high school but have grown apart. One night Margo shows up at Quentin’s window and begins the most adventurous day of their life! “It is an insightful read that makes you sit and think for hours. Also Brunch sent it to me.”
Abhinav Chakraborty (@AbhinavCJ) FAVOURITE BOOK Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami Kafka Tamura runs away from home under the shadow of a dark prophecy. Saturo Nakata finds his life turned upside down after taking up an assignment he was warned against. As their seemingly parallel lives start getting entwined, cats start talking and Colonel Sanders prowls the underbelly of Japan... “It’s a personal experience. Lyrical, mindboggling, awesome. You have to read it to believe it!”
The true book lover @AbhinavCJ He is the only one who’s been blogging about his list of 24 books (and good ones)!
Radhika S. (@braniac_ airhead) FAVOURITE BOOK The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin Sixteen-year-old Mara Dyer wakes up in the hospital to find that she is the only survivor of a terrible accident in which three of her closest friends have died. The last thing she needs now is to fall in love. Or is it? “The book is a heady mixture of all the right elements for supernatural science fiction and thrillers. And the lead hero is downright desirable and mysterious.”
THE CONQUERORS
People who’ve already completed the challenge. We feel like proud librarians, really! Aastha @aastha_jain08 Aman Mittal @amanhimself Anusha @Anusha14Dsou @Anusha14Dsouza Dhriti Gos Goswami ami @Dhriti19 Malvika Singh @mal2705 Mansi Draboo @Man_Dra5 Neha Sethi @nehasethi26 Payal P al Jaguste @P @Payal_Jaguste al_Jagust pooja bh bharadwaj ad aj @pooja_bharadwaj @pooja_bh ad aj Radhika @braniac_airhead Raghavv @ragh Ragh @raghavmodi vmodi Shefali. @remotel @remotelygirlish girlish Tanisha Mehta @tmehta16 The Bong One @AbhinavCJ
Neha Sethi (@nehasethi26) OURITE BOOK The Zoya FAVOURITE Factor by Anuja Chauhan The story revolves around Zoya, a junior-level executive in an advertising firm, who is believed to be the Indian cricket team’s good luck charm. In a country where cricket is a religion, Zoya suddenly finds herself being worshipped like a deity. The story gets complicated with her love-hate relationship with Nikhil Khoda, the captain of the Indian team who doesn’t believe in luck. “Spunky, eccentric and hilarious Indian chick lit. The writer fabulously interweaves the themes of cricket, politics and romance.”
AS FOR THE REST OF YOU, THERE’S STILL HALF A YEAR AND YOU CAN STILL READ 24 BOOKS. JUST PICK A NEW BOOK EVERY WEEK AND YOU SHOULD BE JUST FINE. BUT REMEMBER TO TELL US WHAT YOU’RE READING AND A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELF. JUST TWEET @HTBRUNCH AND HASHTAG #BRUNCHBOOKCHALLENGE Compiled by Abhilasha Gupta
On The Brunch Radar
Stuff You Said Last Sunday
LOVE IT
by Saudamini Jain
n “Don Draper’s going to die?” Was that
a spoiler? Surely that was a fake spoiler? n Hemant Kumar’s music n The random rush of thrill when you hear Schumacher’s out of coma n Mujhse Pehli Si Mohabbat by Faiz, recited by Zohra Sehgal n The chap who asked Delhi girls whether size matters. What a d*ck! Geddit!
SHOVE IT
n Game of Thrones inspired lists on
the Web n Tiger Shroff jokes. (I know we had our share right here, but ab bas yaar) n Obsessing over Humans of New York unless you live in NYC n Those mist cooling systems on restaurant rooftops when it’s already so humid n Relationships on a standhold “kyunki too busy watching the World Cup, dude”
Cover design Swati Chakrabarti
Authors (clockwise from right): Arundhati Roy, Khushwant Singh, Qurratulain Hyder, Kiran Nagarkar, Salman Rushdie, Shashi Tharoor, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Chandra, Ruskin Bond
the cover story on @HTBrunch today gives a or ad ss ba m #A that’s bye to a car befitting good l symbol of our na tio na a t almos tread country #mus n23 ee – @ArchitSar
Brilliant article on the Amby..It managed to revive childhood memories.. Cried buckets as a kid when we sold our Amby for a Fiat.. Whatta car! – @jaipanga
Thinking of co un dad in his #A tless trips with my mby with blue Truly the #G batti. randOldLady of a bygone era. Perfect su nday read @HTBrunch – @SunandaK
The #Ambassador is not just a vehicle; it’s a legacy, a symbol of majesty and a piece of India’s history – @vino_squat
le sharing ad about peop So nice to re crowning e th of e nc their experie the quinautomobile, glory of Indian car! Thanks or ad ss ba m tessential #A @HTBrunch Find Hindustan Times Brunch on Facebook or tweet to @HTBrunch – @anilbisht The beauty of Sundays: I can sit back peacefully and read amazing stories in my favourite magazine @HTBrunch! :) –@poosoul
EDITORIAL: Poonam Saxena (Editor), Aasheesh Sharma, Rachel Lopez, Tavishi Paitandy Rastogi, Veenu Singh, Parul Khanna, Yashica Dutt, Amrah Ashraf, Satarupa Paul, Saudamini Jain, Atisha Jain
JUNE 22, 2014
DESIGN: Ashutosh Sapru (National Editor, Design), Monica Gupta, Swati Chakrabarti, Payal Dighe Karkhanis, Ajay Aggarwal
Drop us a line at: brunchletters@hindustantimes. com or to 18-20 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001
What a great issue on the Amby today! I don’t know whether your next week’s issue is ready or not but can you please do the cover story on Tennis-Wimbledon just as you did last week for Football-FIFA? It would be awesome for the tennis fans out there. :) Thank you – Muskaan Singh
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COVER STORY
JURY
t
THE
his is a list of the greatest Indian novels ever written. It might feel incomplete (only books written in English or translations of works in Hindi and other regional languages figure here). It might seem biased (they’re personal picks from the best literary minds of our time). It might even appear as though we’ve missed your personal favourite (lists tend to do that). But for anyone looking to jump into the rich world of Indian writing, it’s a beautiful and imperative start. Our jury of eight – writers, publishers, academics and book critics – nominated 10 books each. Not surprisingly, there were overlaps, surprises and works we knew would never be ignored. In our masterlist of 54 books, you’ll know nearly everything there is to know about this great land of ours through the decades. And by the end, you’ll know more than what you’ve read. These are, in no particular order...
Amitava Kumar
Author of Home Products and A Matter of Rats: A Short Biography of Patna. Professor of English at Vassar College in New York
Chiki Sarkar Publisher of Penguin India
David Davidar
Publisher of Aleph Book Company. Author of The House of Blue Mangoes, The Solitude of Emperors and Ithaca
Harish Trivedi
Former professor at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. He has published in the areas of translation, post colonialism, Indian literature, and world literature
Jeet Thayil
Literary experts pick 54 great works (in English and in translation from regional languages) that you must read in your lifetime
Editor of The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets. His novel, Narcopolis, won the 2012 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
by Saudamini Jain
Jerry Pinto
Author of Em and the Big Hoom. He is at work on his next novel and has no idea when that will be finished, never mind published
Ravi Singh
Till recently copublisher at Aleph Book Company. Before that, he was publisher and editor-in-chief at Penguin India
Sunil Sethi
Journalist, author and television presenter. He is a columnist for Business Standard
MORE ON THE WEB Want to read more about this list, the jury, the books and the writers? For the full version of this cover story, log on to hindustantimes.com/ brunch
THE
JURY LIST Amitava Kumar
1. Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh 2. River of Fire by Qurratulain Hyder 3. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie 4. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth 5. English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee 6. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy 7. An Obedient Father by Akhil Sharma 8. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai 9. The Immortals by Amit Chaudhuri 10.
Abraham Verghese
Ahmed Ali
CUTTING FOR STONE (2009)
TWILIGHT IN DELHI (1940)
This bestselling novel (with more than one million copies sold) is written by an author who is also a physician and a professor. It is about twins, Marion and Shiva, born to an Indian nun and British surgeon, who are orphaned with their mom’s death and dad’s disappearance in Addis Ababa. Set in Ethiopia and New York, it is about family, betrayal and medicine.
Ali’s most important book was published when EM Forster convinced the publishers that it was not seditious. It is the story of an upper-class Muslim family in Delhi. Mir Nahal, a nationalist, vividly remembers the British cruelty during the Revolt of 1857. But now, in 1911, “firangi” elements have begun to appear: his sons’ government jobs, English boots... Old Delhi making way for the new.
The Feuding Families of Village Gangauli (Aadha Gaon) by Rahi Masoom Raza (translated by Gillian Wright). Note: This is an inadequate list. I wish I had read more Indian literature in translation. UR Ananthamurthy’s Samskara deserves to be on that list, as does OV Vijayan’s The Legends of Khasak. Or a novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. I had long been determined not to read anything in translation in Hindi. I refused
JUNE 22, 2014
Extract: People all around
were talking: ‘Is that the King on the horse?’ said one. ‘Don’t be mad,’ another ridiculed him. ‘He is a mere soldier or officer. Kings wear fine and to read Premchand’s novels or Shrilal Shukla’s Raag Darbari, which, I believe, hasn’t been improved upon when it comes to representing life in the Hindi heartland. A few years ago, I broke with my own rule and read in translation Rahi Masoom Raza’s Aadha Gaon. I liked the experience immensely. There are a few titles in English that have not met with widespread critical acclaim, like Sunetra Gupta’s mesmerising The Glassblower’s
flowering robes.’ ‘That’s all you know,’ a third butted in. ‘The English wear only those uniforms. Understand?’ Many passed caustic and humorous remarks on the dress and faces of the native chiefs, laughing at their retinues, calling them tin soldiers or made of straw. The children were excited by the sight, and gloated over liveries and uniforms and so many white faces as they had never seen before. They shouted and asked questions from people who either did not know the right answers or were too busy themselves watching the fun… Breath. For the most part, I’ve included only those well-known books that I think put the author’s imprint on a language, in a way that was distinctive and utterly Indian. A book with a primary claim on that description would be GV Desani’s All About H. Hatterr but I confess that even while I immediately saw its linguistic brilliance I couldn’t, despite trying more than once, ever read more than a few pages before l lost interest.
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Akhil Sharma AN OBEDIENT FATHER (2000) US-based writer Akhil Sharma’s book is about Ram Karan, a corrupt official, who sexually abused his daughter when she was younger. Now, his recently widowed daughter and eightyear-old granddaughter are forced to move in with him. This is a book about the consequences. What was your immediate reaction when you heard An Obedient Father was on our list?
I felt relief. The book, when it came out, sold 400 copies. The fact that it is remembered makes me think all that hard work I put in was not wasted.
How long did it take to write?
Nine years. I worked almost like a watchmaker working with enormously small cogs. Everything had to be meticulous.
Amit Chaudhuri THE IMMORTALS (2009) Set in the Bombay of the 1970s and ’80s, Amit Chaudhuri’s book looks at two families whose fortunes are connected by music (he himself is a talented musician). Shyam Lal, the son of a singer, teaches music to support his family. His student Mallika Sengupta’s musical ambitions are dulled by luxury. Her son, Nirmalya, is captivated by philosophy and incredulous of Shyamji’s material pursuits. This is about music in a modern world, a debate on Shyam’s comment that “you cannot practice art on an empty stomach.”
Chiki Sarkar
1. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry: Profound, heartbreaking, and full of humanity, this novel set during the Emergency is one of the truly great Indian novels. Very few Indian novelists can match Mistry’s depth or restraint. 2. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth: I first read this book as a bound proof as a teenager, and then reread it at university (when I didn’t get
How did Ram Karan occur to you? Do you like him? In some ways, I view Ram Karan as representing the shame and guilt I felt for the fact that I was okay and that my older brother was severely brain damaged. I knew it did not make sense to feel this guilt and so I sought to create a character who would be deserving of the shame that I felt ... Fiction allows us to engage with people we would not normally engage with in real life ...
we cannot only love the lovable. We need to stretch our compassion and empathy towards people whom we would normally dismiss. Because of this I believe that Ram Karan is deserving of attention.
Ray Isle called you “our Gertrude Stein, but straight, Indian, male”.
Ray was making a joke. He was referring to the fact that I have a wide network of friends like Stein did and so many people are connected through me.
Amitav Ghosh THE HUNGRY TIDE (2005) Piyali Roy is a young marine biologist from Seattle in search of an endangered river dolphin. She is aided by Kanai Dutt, a businessman and translator from Delhi, and Fokir, a young fisherman. This is their journey through the Sunderbans.
THE SHADOW LINES (1988) Two families – one English and one Bengali – and their lives through three generations. Set in Calcutta, London and Dhaka, this book is shadowed by the freedom movement, the Second World War and the Calcutta riots of 1964. Two of your novels feature in our list. If you had to pick one of all your works, which would it be?
The Hungry Tide and The Shadow Lines are both very close to my heart. It is wonderful to know that they both feature on this list.
Which was the most difficult to write?
It’s always the one I’m currently working on.
Which writers and books have you been most influenced by?
It differs from book to book. For The Shadow Lines, it was Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. The Hungry Tide was influenced by many
out of bed for two days). Last year I went back to it again and found that apart from its charm, wit, and its memorable characters, the novel is also an extraordinary portrait of 1950s India. Seth’s lightness belies his ambition. 3. Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra: The most ambitious and startling Indian novel of the last decade – the story of a Mumbai cop and a gangster, Sacred Games fuses the high octane
writers, including Mahasweta Devi, Gopinath Mohanty, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Graham Swift and Rainer Maria Rilke.
What is your writing schedule like? You’re active on the Internet, but still do most of your writing longhand.
I generally write through the day; and yes, I do most of my writing by hand, usually with a pencil or a fountain pen. Compared to writing prose longhand, retweeting is very easy.
What was the last good Indian novel you read?
Neel Mukherjee’s recently published The Lives of Others.
colour of Bollywood with superb storytelling. Chandra is the novelist whose next book I am most interested to see. 4. In Custody by Anita Desai: About the relationship between a college teacher and a decaying old Urdu poet is cerebral, ironic, bittersweet, exquisite and written with high intelligence. 5. The Enigma of Arrival by VS Naipaul: Does Naipaul qualify for this list? Nonetheless I will
JUNE 22, 2014
claim him and could include a number of his books for this list. But this one is my favourite. A complicated, deep feeling novel about home and establishing roots. 6. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie: It is bold, exuberant, inventive, written in an extraordinary language and is perhaps the most important English novel by an Indian in the last 25 odd years. 7. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy: Sizzling
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COVER STORY Anita Desai One of only two authors to appear three times on this list. The part-German writer has written 16 novels, been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times and has changed 23 addresses in 75 years.
THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS (1997) The first Indian novel to win the Booker Prize, Roy’s only novel so far has sold more than six million copies. Set in Kerala, it is about family and social injustices, about relationships that cross lines and how things fall apart in the bargain.
BAUMGARTNER’S BOMBAY (1988)
EXTRACT:
Hugo Baumgartner, a German Jew, flees the Holocaust by coming to India. This is the story of the wandering Jew in Bombay after World War II.
FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN (1977) Nanda Kaul renounces city life, leaves her family behind, to live in the hills. Until one day, her great-granddaughter comes to live with her.
THE FIG TREE (1959) This book by an Indian-Irish writer with an English upbringing is about a British scientist, who accidentally invents aphrodisiac figs.
Deven is a small-town Hindi lecturer with a broken dream of becoming a poet. He lives an insignificant, unhappy life. But then, he is asked to interview one of the country’s greatest Urdu poets. Deven takes great pains to put together the logistics. Yet, this project ends in misery.
Banabhatta
Aravind Adiga THE WHITE TIGER (2008) Adiga’s debut novel won the Man Booker Prize for fiction. In the book, the protagonist, Balram Halwai, narrates his life to the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao: how the son of a rickshaw puller works as a chauffeur in Delhi and then flees to Bangalore after killing his employer, stealing his money and becoming a successful businessman.
THE
“But what was there to say? Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief. Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.”
Aubrey Menen
IN CUSTODY (1984)
JURY LIST
GV Desani
Arundhati Roy
with energy, burning with passion, perfectly formed, and ingeniously structured – this is a dazzling book. 8. The Guide by RK Narayan: It has all the vintage Narayan traits – a classic, lucid prose style, sly humour, and a simplicity on its surface but with real depths below. 9. English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee: Black, ironic, full of a savage humour: perhaps 80s India’s most iconic
KADAMBARI (in Sanskrit, 7th century CE) translated by Padmini Rajappa (2010) Written in the 7th century, this is one of the oldest novels in the world (although it is not a novel in the strictest sense). Narrated by a parrot, it has stories within stories within stories. At its heart, it is the love story of the beautiful Gandharva princess, Kadambari, and the moon god, Chandrapida. After Bana’s death, his son Bhushanabhatta completed the tale.
novel. 10. The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh: I read it almost continuously through my school and university, and reread it last year when it had an even greater impact on me. Ghosh’s vision of history, the deep skein of emotion running through the book, and its heartbreaking portrait of a riot (the book was written in the shadow of the ’84 riots), is what makes this novel stand out for me.
JUNE 22, 2014
Bankim Chandra Chatterji ANANDAMATH (in Bengali, 1882) translated by Basanta Kumar Roy (1992) Roughly based on the Sanyasi Rebellion of 1771, this was banned by the British. Vande Mataram was originally written as part of the book. The story is about a couple who meet a group of sanyasis, revolting against the British, and join them. Incidentally, Chatterji’s Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) is considered the first Indian novel in English.
ALL ABOUT H. HATTERR (1948) Desani’s only novel. Anthony Burgess, introducing the novel in 1969, wrote, “It is not pure English; it is like Shakespeare, Joyce, and Kipling, gloriously impure”. Salman Rushdie called it “the first great stroke of the decolonising pen”. It is about H Hatterr, who grew up in Calcutta, and is looking for enlightenment – and so he visits seven Oriental cities and consults seven sages.
Irwin Allan Sealy THE TROTTER-NAMA: A CHRONICLE (1988) This is a mock epic, an account spanning the lives of seven generations of The Trotters, an everexpanding Anglo-Indian family, starting with Justin Trottoire, the Great Trotter, a French mercenary who came to India in the 1750s and worked with the British East India Company, and ending with Eugene, the Seventh Trotter, in the late 20th century.
Firdaus Kanga TRYING TO GROW (1991) A semi-autobiographical work about Daryus Kotwal, a Parsi boy in Bombay suffering from osteogenesis imperfecta (or brittle bones, a condition Kanga himself was born with) who doesn’t let that come in the way of his life and sex.
David Davidar
1. Train To Pakistan by Khushwant Singh 2. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth 3. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga 4. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai 5. The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor 6. The Trotter-nama by Irwin Allan Sealy 7. The Legends of Khasak by OV Vijayan 8. The Guide by RK Narayan 9. Samskara by UR
Ananthamurthy 10. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy Note: Most
of these books have stood the test of time and have been acclaimed for the usual reasons – originality, style, memorable characters and so on. I’ve edited or published virtually all these writers and think their books easily rank with the very best novels I’ve read. Incidentally, I
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Kamala Markandaya
Kiran Desai
Kiran Nagarkar
NECTAR IN A SIEVE (1954)
THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS (2006)
CUCKOLD (1997)
Born in Mysore in 1924, this is the pioneering woman writer’s best-known novel. It’s the story of Rukmani, daughter of a village headman, married to a landless tenant. Though Markandaya moved to England in 1948 and married an Englishman, she remained connected to her home country. The Trotter-Nama has been nominated as one of the greatest Indian novels of all time. Do you agree? You mean there are others?
Eugene Trotter from the book made an appearance in Red. How do you keep in touch with your characters? They flit in and out of the mansion. Eugene keeps reappearing (not just in Red ed, didn’t you spot him in The Brainfever Bird d?) but really, they’re a fading crew. I miss the real people I knew.
How did you move from writing longhand to the computer? Does it make a difference to the writing?
Daughter of author Anita Desai, Kiran is an accomplished writer herself. This is her second book and won several literary prizes. It features a retired judge in Kalimpong who looks back at a lifetime of arrogance. The story is also about his orphaned granddaughter and his cook’s son, an illegal immigrant in the US. A sadhu with a laptop looks like a tech junkie, while Miss Divya checking her mail in CCD is going about her business, right? By the way, my Doon connection predates my writing.
What were your biggest influences while writing The TrotterNama? Tristram Shandy and The Tin Drum.
[I moved] with the greatest difficulty; now it would be a wrench to go back. Yes, writing emails has changed the way I think and write and even spell.
A fictional retelling of the life of Mira Bai (the princess who believed she was married to Krishna) and her mortal husband, the heir apparent of Mewar. It unfolds as Babur sweeps in and invades India. Which is more important to you: Cuckold old or Ravan & Eddie ddi ? ddie
I think neither is more important or both are exactly as important. One is a serious book like Cuckold. But I think humour can be just as, if not more, serious. I don’t have children of my own. So in that sense, Ravan and Eddie are my children. I really can’t decide.
How long did you take to write Cuckold?
It took the shortest time – three years, while I was working. I really am not responsible. I’ve never worked the way I worked with Cuckold. I’m always claiming that I didn’t write Cuckold. I was just the medium.
You wrote your first novel in Marathi. Is writing writing in Marathi as easy or as difficult as writing in English?
RAVAN & EDDIE (1994) The Guardian named it one of the 10 best books about Mumbai, it is the story of two boys, Ravan and Eddie, growing up in a Bombay chawl in the ’50s. absolutely blind or just beyond rash imagination that I had the gall to sit down and write. One of the best things that happened to me was that I wrote my first novel in Marathi.
Do you have any regrets?
After I wrote my play [Bedtime Story, 1978], I got into terrible trouble, and for 15 years I did not write. This is not a sad story. This is a real shit story. Not to write for 15 years! I don’t know how to make myself pay for that folly.
So are you working on anything now? There is no book till it’s published, no? The problem is I’m not too well. But anything is a good excuse not to work. And you’ll be surprised how timeconsuming laziness is.
Oh yes. Only the first four years of my life I studied Marathi, so I don’t have the burden of tradition there, which is a very, very difficult thing to cope with. I don’t know if I was
You’re a writer who moved to Dehradun. And we hear you’re a tech junkie. That seems like an odd combination. How do the two co-exist?
Jerry Pinto EM AND THE BIG HOOM (2012) This is the story of the protagonist’s parents: Em, the bipolar mother and Big Hoom, the father, their 12-year-long courtship, marriage and her “descent into madness” and the family coping with her illness. It is part beautiful, part hilarious and part very, very sad. must say that the list of books I’ve chosen, in no particular order, is simply one of exceptionally accomplished works of fiction. I am totally against any ranking of creative work because the making of great novels is not a zero-sum-game and there are no winners and losers in this business only good books and awful books.
Harish Trivedi
1. Kadambari by Bana Bhatta (translated by Padmini Rajappa): The mother of all Indian novels. A sophisticated narrative of three love-stories spanning three rebirths and three worlds; contains magnificent descriptions. 2. Indulekha by Chandu Menon (translated by Anitha Devasia): Early encounter between Sanskritic tradi-
tion and Western modernity, with a lively heroine defying old Nair customs including polygamy. 3. Umrao Jan Ada by Mirza Hadi ‘Ruswa,’ (translated by Khushwant Sigh and MA Husaini): Fond recreation of the last days of elite Islamicate culture terminated by the upheaval of 1857. 4. Playground by Premchand (Rangbhoomi translated by Manju Jain): A stirring saga of
Gandhian nationalism with a morally resolute blind beggar as a hero, a pair of ardently idealistic young lovers spreading his cause, and a doubly frustrated British district magistrate. 5. The English Teacher by RK Narayan: A moving autobiographical novel of love and death. 6. This is Not That Dawn by Yashpal (Jhootha Sach translated by Anand): The great epic of
JUNE 22, 2014
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COVER STORY Khushwant Singh
Manju Kapur
TRAIN TO PAKISTAN (1956)
DIFFICULT DAUGHTERS (1998) Manju Kapur, who taught English at Delhi University, found success with her very first book. Set in the Partition years, it’s about a young woman in Punjab in love with a married man.
This is the Partition novel, written by one of India’s most colourful and mostloved writers. The narrative is set in Mano Majra, a Muslim-Sikh village at the Indo-Pak border unaffected by the Partition. But then, a money lender, the only Hindu in the village, is murdered. As events unfold, ordinary individuals get engulfed in the violence and tragedy of Partition.
DELHI (1990) This book traces the history of Delhi, from Nadir Shah to the rise of the British Delhi, ending with the assassination of Indira Gandhi. The backdrop is story of a journalist fallen on bad times and his relationship with Bhagmati, a hijra. Delhi reveals to us the underbelly of the chequered history of this old and grand city. The book, chosen by publisher Ravi Singh in his list of ten, calls it “a monumental Rabelaisian tribute to the capital city spanning over 1000 years. Only a writer with Khushwant Singh’s daring, scholarship and genius for entertainment could have written a novel as rich and uninhibited as this one. ”
THE
JURY LIST
independence and Partition by a bomb-throwing terrorist turned Marxist-novelist, this novel begins in ‘vatan’ in Lahore in 1947 and ends in ‘desh’ in Nehruvian Delhi in 1957. 7. Raag Darbari by Shrilal Shukla (translated by Gillian Wright): A trenchant satire on how within a couple of decades of independence, we
You write several novels at once. Were you working on other books while writing Difficult Daughters?
It took me eight years to write Difficult Daughters. During its composition, ideas would occur for other novels. I began to sketch them so as not to lose them. Thus the habit began and grew.
How aware are you of the reader’s experience when you’re writing?
What I do keep in mind is the best and most effective way to communicate the experiences that I am writing about. So I am very conscious of how I present my narrative. I want my story to have
Some critics consider this as the first Urdu novel (novel, in the strict sense of the term novel). The memories of a girl kidnapped and sold to a kotha, and her life as a courtesan in 19th century Lucknow. From the archives:
A founding member of Progressive Writers Association, Anand’s work often looked at the layers of colonialism within India. Coolie is about the adventures of Munoo, a boy forced to leave his village in the hills and move to towns and cities, from Bombay to Simla, working as servant, factory worker and rickshaw driver.
had merrily and comprehensively corrupted all our democratic institutions. One of the funniest novels ever. 8. English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee: A zany account of the huge disconnect between two Indias, as seen by a young civil servant fresh out of St Stephen’s. 9. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth: This novel is vast
JUNE 22, 2014
I would call myself a feminist as well. I believe it is impossible to live in the word today as a thinking person, and not be one. I don’t set out with a conscious feminist agenda, but in describing the relationships between men and women a feminist perspective is often inevitable – and this applies to books written well before the term was invented.
THE DEATH OF VISHNU (2001)
UMRAO JAN ADA (in Urdu, 1893); translated by Khushwant Singh and MA Husaini (1970)
COOLIE (1936)
Do you always set your novels out to be, at some level, feminist novels?
Manil Suri
Mirza Hadi ‘Ruswa’
Mulk Raj Anand
an impact, both emotional and intellectual, I want that the reader should think after s/he has read my book, and to achieve this I can spend years on a novel.
“...He [Mulk Raj Anand] has other fads. He eats half boiled eggs for breakfast. He keeps a bottle of brandy handy to have a swig whenever he is in the mood. CN: What’s your credo? MRA: To speak up for the down and out. To work for their uplift, and present them with dignity in my fiction. Even an untouchable has his dignity, or a coolie. The same dignity as a king – perhaps greater.”
Source: Speak Up For The Down And Out, Chaman Nahal meets Mulk Raj Anand after Anand’s 90th birthday, Hindustan Times, 24 December 1995.
in scope and so deeply culturally embedded that it reads like a Hindi novel 10. As with the 10th avatar of Vishnu, this slot is still vacant. Meanwhile, as a rotating place-holder, let us put here a current bestseller (for what are novels if they are not read?): Those Pricey Thakur Girls (2013) by Anuja Chauhan.
This debut novel by a mathematician was longlisted for the Booker and is about the spiritual journey of a dying man named Vishnu, working on a Bombay building.
Munshi Premchand Premchand is one of the most outstanding and celebrated writers in the subcontinent, a pioneer of Hindi and Urdu literature – and the first to introduce realism in his writing.
GODAN (in Hindi, 1936) translated by Gordon C Roadarmel (1968) Premchand’s last work and considered his finest. Godan
Jeet Thayil
In no order of importance: 1. All About H. Hatterr by GV Desani 2.Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya 3. The Financial Expert by RK Narayan 4. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie 5. English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee 6. The Trotternama by I. Allan Sealy 7. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy 8. The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth 9. The Serpent and the Rope by Raja Rao 10. In Custody by Anita Desai
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Which character do you prefer - Paro or the narrator Priya?
Paro, the dramatic, self obsessed, larger-thanlife protagonist of my first novel, was fun to write about precisely because she was observed through the caustic vision of the less glamorous Priya. Midway through the story, Priya says: “Even amidst the deepest flow of emotions I could never abandon the unmoved voyeur within me, the wary spectator in the crowd, never participating, only watching.” That was what interested me about Priya.
Paro was a risque novel, especially for its time. Was writing it a risk?
I think Paro was ironic and irreverent rather than risqué. I am glad that it has continued to amuse, if not to instruct, new readers.
Namita Gokhale PARO: DREAMS OF PASSION (1984) When it was released, the novel created a sensation. Set in Bombay, it’s about parties and the lives and times of two women Paro and Priya. Socialites had never appeared sexier!
The sequel, Priya: In Incredible Indyaa, did not make waves like Paro had. What changed?
I wrote the sequel out of a sense of curiosity about what might have happened to the characters of my first book, and as an exercise in craft. I enjoyed writing it, and I think it works, even though it stands overshadowed by the cult status of Paro.
O Chandu Menon INDULEKHA (in Malayalam, 1889) translated by Anitha Devasia (2005) O Chandu Menon, a voracious reader of English novels, would often tell these stories to his friends in Malayalam. It was while attempting to translate Benjamin Disraeli’s Henrietta Temple (1837), that he decided to write a novel. Indulekha is considered the first classic novel in Malayalam. It is the love story of a beautiful, English-educated, aristocratic young Nair woman, Indulekha, who falls in love with Madhavan, her cousin and an eligible bachelor – except her
grandfather forbids the match.
Review from the archives: “The novel is a blend of West and East in that it copies the English romantic plot, and relates it through the Indic mode of oral narration. The heroine is reminiscent of Austen’s heroines. However, it is not that it was a direct borrowing from the West. For the social context of 19th century India has amazing parallels with that of the 17th and 18th century England.” Between East and West by Jhelum Biswas, The Telegraph, February 18, 2005
Qurratulain Hyder
Rahi Masoom Raza
RIVER OF FIRE (Aag ka Darya in Udru, 1959) translated by the author (1999)
THE FEUDING FAMILIES OF VILLAGE GANGAULI, (Aadha Gaon in Urdu, 1966) translated by Gillian Wright (1994)
A magnum opus by the “Grande Dame” of Urdu literature, this books spans a period of 2000 years – from the fourth century BCE to post-Independence India and Pakistan. It is divided into four sections, and four interlinked characters reappear in every section.
Raza, an Urdu poet, was also a Bollywood lyricist and wrote the screenplay for BR Chopra’s Mahabharat. This book, set in the decade before Independence and during the Partition, it is about the Saiyid zamindars in Gangauli, a village in Uttar Pradesh. It sketches out rural life in transition.
is about Hori Mahato who desires to own a cow so that he can gift it to a priest on his deathbed as godan and find himself a place in heaven. He uses treachery and debt to buy the cow. But the cow is poisoned. This translation is considered a classic in itself.
PLAYGROUND (Rangbhoomi in Hindi, 1924) translated by Manju Jain (2011) A blind beggar’s struggle against the acquisition of his ancestral land. As with most works of Premchand, it is set in the rural backdrop of colonial India with its many hardships.
THE LEGENDS OF KHASAK, (Khasakkinte Itihasam in Malayalam, 1969) translated by the author in 1994
Jerry Pinto
that is so audacious that no one has ever been able to follow it up. No one should try. Not even Desani could. 3. The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh: This one is a favourite: rivers, language, sediment, dolphins. 4. Cuckold by Kiran Nagarkar: I don’t think we do historical novels well but I think this one is a stand-out. 5. Fire on the Mountain by Anita Desai: One of those quiet and lovely achievements. 6.
Coolie by Mulk Raj Anand: It was one of the first Indian novels I read and it hit me hard. 7. Difficult Daughters by Manju Kapur: No one does the small savageries of Indian households better than Manju Kapur and this one is a favourite. 8. Room on the Roof by Ruskin Bond: I should like to write like this: like a mountain stream, limpid, clear, looking up into an untroubled sky, with small
1. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie: In which an Indian writer revitalises the novel, tells the story of a nation, makes love to the language and writes back at the empire. Then he goes on to win a Booker and becomes a big international star and makes it easier for the next generations. 2. All About H. Hatterr by GV Desani: Because this is a book
OV Vijayan This book by cartoonist, novelist and satirist Vijayan is the stuff of legend. Thasrak, the village Kerala he based the fictional village of Khasak on, has become a centre of literary pilgrimage. This novel is about a boy called Ravi who renounces an academic career and love for an ascetic life. Guilty of committing incest with his stepmother, he decides to live in Khasak as atonement for his sin. He starts a new life setting up a single teacher school and lives with the village folk. Despite the new life, the dichotomies still drive his life.
polished stones of love and friendship and abandonment and loneliness and the invention of family. 9. The Fig Tree by Aubrey Menen Penguin brought Menen out again and he was as fresh and funny as he was so many decades ago. 10. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy: I remember reading it at one go, not stopping, and being so dazzled by the quality of the writing.
JUNE 22, 2014
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COVER STORY RK Narayan
Ruskin Bond,
The only other author (apart from Anita Desai) to feature thrice in this list is one of the forerunners of Indian literature in English (along with Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and Ahmed Ali). Graham Greene greatly admired Narayan and was instrumental in getting him published.
THE ROOM ON THE ROOF Ruskin Bond’s first novel – he wrote it when he was 17 is about 16-year-old Rusty, the orphaned Anglo-Indian boy who lives in Dehradun with his strict English guardian. What is Rusty doing right now?
Rusty is at the moment, 81 years old and very sleepy. Being my alter ego, I can tell you exactly what he’s doing - drinking coffee at the moment
THE FINANCIAL EXPERT (1952) The story of Margayya, who sits under a banyan tree and offers financial advice to the people of Malgudi.
What does it take to write more than 130 books?
A lot of them are children’s books. They’re not very long. I don’t overwork – a couple of hours a day is fine for me. I’ve been writing for more than 50 years - I’m sure there are many writers who’ve written more
THE GUIDE (1958) The story of Raju, the tour guide and Rosie, the neglected housewife.
MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN (1980)
This sequel to Swami and Friends (1935) and The Bachelor of Arts (1937), is semiautobiographical. It is about how Krishna, an English teacher, deals with life when his wife dies of typhoid.
It won The Best of the Booker, a celebratory Booker award in 2008. Part magic-realism, part historical fiction, it is the story of Saleem Sinai, one of the 1,001 children born on the exact moment of India’s independence. Sinai has extraordinary powers, like the rest of the other ‘children’. His life: a reflection of the course the Indian nation eventually takes.
From the archives: “I’ve always writ-
ten without any deliberate effort. But to get a thing printed or published was difficult. The difficulty was that the type of stories I was writing made no sense to my readers. But I persisted because I couldn’t write any other way. They were used to things like romance and plot – and everything was abolished in my style of work. But now critics and readers are able to see my point of view. Because a piece of writing is not a thing a writer can judge fully himself. It’s for others – the impact, what it stirs up in your mind. It’s all very different.
Shashi Tharoor THE GREAT INDIAN NOVEL This is satire at its best. Take the Mahabharat, insert the Indian freedom movement and all that followed over the next few decades. Add some puns. The result is a great Indian novel: The Great Indian Novel. The Great Indian Novel is on
our list of the greatest Indian novels of all time. A rather befitting title for the list, actually. Did you always know it would be so great? It was ambitiously conceived and written with all my heart and soul, but “greatness” is a quality for others to judge. I am glad it is still in print a quarter of a century later, and after 42 reprints, Penguin is planning to bring out a silver jubilee hardback edition in October.
Shrilal Shukla RAAG DARBARI (in Hindi, 1968) translated by Gillian Wright (1991)
Source: Susan Ram and N RAM’s interviews and conversations with RK Narayan, Hindu Frontline, October 18, 1996 (when the writer turned 90)
THE
And how do you write?
Well, I used to type but now typing or working with a computer, I get a stiff neck. So I prefer writing longhand. My desk is right next to my bed. So I sit on my bed. I write in a big notebook which is on the desk. And if I feel drowsy, I just have to slide into bed.
Salman Rushdie
THE ENGLISH TEACHER (1945)
JURY LIST Ravi Singh
than that. When I feel like it, maybe a couple of pages. If I’m really immersed in a story, I try to finish it in a few days. If it’s a longer work then it would take a few months.
Here’s a list of path-breaking Indian novels that I keep going back to: 1. Delhi by Khushwant Singh 2. Kanthapura by Raja Rao: A genuine classic, and perhaps the first book that made English an Indian language. 3. Raag Darbari by Shrilal Shukla (translated by Gillian Wright): I doubt there’s a more scathing, insightful and hilarious
It’s been 25 years since the novel was first published. Would you change anything about it now?
This Sahitya Akademi Award winning book by Shukla, a master satirist, is a satire on power. It is about Vaidyaji, a Brahmin ayurvedic doctor is the political mastermind of a village in Uttar Pradesh in the 1950s. This is his struggle for complete control of the village.
satire on Indian politics than this iconic Hindi novel. 4. The Room on the Roof by Ruskin Bond: Ruskin wrote the novel when he was 17, but it has the restraint, wisdom and compassion that few people earn at 80. 5. River of Fire (Aag ka Darya) by Qurratulain Hyder (translated by the author): One of the greatest works of fiction in Urdu, it draws upon 2000 years of history to give us a gloriously inclusive idea of India.
JUNE 22, 2014
No. Any book is true in and of itself, as a reflection of the time in which it was written. Every book is infinitely perfectible, but to change anything afterwards
6. Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto: It takes near magical skill to write about mental illness without sparing readers the savage sadness of it and yet leaving them with hope, even making them laugh. Fifty years from now, when many contemporary novels will be forgotten, people will be reading this one. 7. Ravan and Eddie by Kiran Nagarkar: An exuberant, ribald comic masterpiece. 8. Paro: Dreams of Passion by
Namita Gokhale: Some thirty years ago this slim novel caused a sensation. No one had written of physical passion, sexual jealousy, the cynical, comical lives of India’s rich and rapacious with such cool candour and acid wit. No one has done that since. 9. Weight Loss by Upamanyu Chatterjee: It’s bleak without mercy, yet strangely tender, and totally compelling. Not for the faint-hearted. 10. Trying to Grow by Firdaus Kanga: A
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Rohinton Mistry A FINE BALANCE (1995) Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, this novel set in Bombay during the Emergency is about Dina Dalal, a widow, who takes in a boarder in her flat in Bombay: Maneck, the young son of a friend. She also hires two tailors, Ishvar and his nephew Omprakash, for piecework. This is about how the four come together and form a sort of accidental family.
Extract: Dina Dalal seldom indulged in looking back at her life with regret or
would be like trying to fix the DNA of a baby after you’ve given it birth.
How many versions/adaptations and translations of Mahabharat have you read?
Dozens! I never stopped reading the Mahabharat. In fact, when I was in London to sign my contract for the novel with Viking, I was browsing in a bookshop and found the script of Jean-Claude Carriere’s play for Peter Brook – which I didn’t hesitate to buy, even while wondering if he had done things with the epic that would render my effort superfluous.
right now?
It’s been a while since you’ve written a novel. Are you working on anything fictional
I began a novel after Pax Indica, but then they made me a minister again! I’ve had to abandon that project for personal reasons, but hope to return to fiction one day. But in my current political life, I don’t know where the time – or the creative space inside my head – is going to come from, though.
boy with brittle bones, confined to a wheelchair, tries to defy his handicap and grow loving and lusting into manhood like every other adolescent. That this moving novel is now almost forgotten is the only tragic thing about it.
bitterness, or questioning why things had turned out the way they had, cheating her of the bright future everyone had predicted for her when she was in school, when her name was still Dina Shroff. And if she did sink into one of these moods, she quickly swam out of it. What was the point of repeating the story over and over and over, she asked herself-it always ended the same way; whichever corridor she took, she wound up in the same room.
Raja Rao KANTHAPURA (1938) When Rao wrote this novel, very little was known about Indian writing abroad. EM Forster called it “perhaps the best novel to come out of India”. It’s about how Gandhism made its way into Kanthapura, a small casteist village in southern India.
THE SERPENT AND THE ROPE (1960) Considered a masterpiece, it is a philosophical and somewhat esoteric account of a young Brahmin boy and his French wife seeking spiritual truth. Set in India, France and England, the dialogue
Sunil Sethi
For its dramatic sweep, vast array of characters and range of conflicts that cover love and war, bloodlust and retribution, magical realism and complex human emotion, The Mahabharata tops my list of the greatest of Indian fictions. Two landmark novels, both classics for their portrayal of the harsh edge of marginalised lives in colonial times, are Bankim Chandra Chatterji’s Anandmath and Munshi Premchand’s Godan. The first is a stirring account of a Bengal famine and sanyasi rebellion; the second the story of an impoverished
JUNE 22, 2014
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COVER STORY Vikram Seth
between Orient and Occident, a clash between Indian and Western cultures.
THE GOLDEN GATE (1988)
From the archives:
“If Marx dominated the last hundred years, Gandhi is going to dominate the next hundred years in Human history. This is the firm belief of Raja Rao, novelist and mystic... He has lived in France and the United States practically for three-fourths of his 65 and odd years, because “it is simpler to love there, though more beautiful to live in India” – simpler from the practical standpoint because books and other facilities a writer needs are easier to come by.
Source: A Writer’s Wandering Pilgrimage by Promilla Kalhan, Hindustan Times, February 12, 1977
Upamanyu Chatterjee Babu by day, writer by night, this author-bureaucrat has said he’s quite comfortable with this odd ‘schizophrenic life’.
Vikram Chandra SACRED GAMES (2006) The criss-crossing paths of a cop, Inspector Sartaj Singh, and the country’s most-wanted gangster, Ganesh Gaitonde. This is a book about the Mumbai underworld and about the city itself.
I try not to think of anything but the writing while I’m writing. The great Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman once wrote, “The single most important fact, perhaps, of the entire movie industry” is “NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING”. Trying to predict the reception to a creative work is a fool’s game. I do the work for myself and a couple of first readers; what happens after the book’s release, and in years that follow, is always a surprise.
This is a little like the Indian Catcher in the Rye. Agastya Sen has found himself a government job. While his friends go to top Ivy League colleges in the States, he moves to Madna, the hottest town in India. Overwhelmed by the bureaucracy, he takes solace in marijuana and masturbation.
How did you research for the novel?
In the usual way of reading a lot, talking to as many knowledgeable people I could about the milieu I was writing about, and sometimes trying to insert myself – if only for a couple of hours – into the world that my characters live within. This last part seems to fascinate people the most – “Did you meet any gangsters?” – but I think it’s a mistake to connect fictional authenticity with that kind of on-the-ground ethnographic research. The novelist’s job is to construct a convincing simulacrum, and good writers can do it even if they’ve
WEIGHT LOSS (2006) This is the story of Bhola, a highly sexed boy from the age of 11 to 38. This book is about a lifetime of fetishes.
THE
A SUITABLE BOY (1995)
Did you think Sacred Games would get the recognition it eventually did or was it a risk?
ENGLISH, AUGUST (1988)
JURY LIST
The novel in verse is about the lives of yuppies in San Francisco in the 1980s.
peasant’s debt trap in trying to purchase a cow. Political turmoil in Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi is a distant drumbeat. But in the post-1857 delineation of a Muslim joint family in a congested quarter of the inner city the writer achieves a fine emotional balance between the everyday rhythms of life and the inner preoccupations of his characters. Urdu writer and journalist Qurratulain
Hyder’s Aag ka Dariya (River of Fire), is a novel encapsulating time and history, from the 4th century BC to the subcontinent’s independence. Salman Rushdie once called Anita Desai “that great student of solitude”. Among the most acutely observed is Baumgartmer’s Bombay. Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines is a deft layering of history through the interlinked lives of three generations of
JUNE 22, 2014
gotten the ethnography from a book, or from an expert – in my case, the crime journalist Hussain Zaidi, who I was lucky enough to have as friend, philosopher, and guide.
The one thing you know about the Mumbai underworld now but didn’t when you wrote the book.
That it’s not an underworld. Crime – organised and otherwise – exists in the same neighbourhoods we live in, and exerts its influence over our daily lives. And, conversely, there are all sorts of legalised crimes that social and political systems inflict on people.
Do people confuse you with the other Vikram Chandra (from NDTV)?
I do get email from time to time congratulating or cursing me for some interview with a politician. And Vikram – the other one – told my sister that he once had a guest on his show congratulate him for winning an award for Love and Longing in Bombay.
Are you surprised that the book is considered one of the greatest Indian novels of all time? To use Russell Peters’ phrase: I am mind-blasted. And gratified.
a Bengali and British family, their lives shadowed by the violence of the freedom movement, World War II, the Partition and communal riots of the 1960s. Vikram Seth’s epic-length A Suitable Boy is an enthralling portrait of India in the 1950s, to be dipped into again and again for pleasure. Manil Suri, a maths professor, embarked on a trilogy in the 1990s, the first being The Death of Vishnu an unusually observant and controlled
This tome is several things at once. It is a love story, a family drama, an introduction to Indian politics and all things desi. Set in a newly independent India, it is Mrs Rupa Mehra’s quest to find a suitable boy for her daughter Lata. There are three young men: Kabir Durrani, Lata’s highly unsuitable boyfriend; Amit Chatterji, the internationallyacclaimed poet and Haresh Khanna, a foreign-educated shoe-maker.
VS Naipaul THE ENIGMA OF ARRIVAL Mostly an autobiography, the book is composed of four sections which reflect the growing familiarity and changing perceptions of Naipaul upon his arrival in various countries after leaving his native Trinidad and Tobago. He writes about his experiences of cities in England, America and contrasts it with Trinidad.
account of a man who lives and dies on the landing of a building in Bombay, coloured by the lives of the building’s inhabitants. And if the purpose of fiction is to take us deep into the lives of others, and to other places, then Cutting for Stone by the physician-author Abraham Verghese is a magic-tinted story of twin brothers set in Ethiopia and America – of estrangement, reconciliation and the redemptive power of love.
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Two of your novels, The Golden Gate and A Suitable Boy, have been nominated as the greatest Indian novels of all time. Which one do you prefer? On Mondays and Tuesdays I prefer Gate, on Wednesdays and Thursdays I prefer Boy, on Fridays and Saturdays I prefer An Equal Music, on Sundays I hate them all.
Which character – from A Suitable Boy – did you most enjoy developing? Cuddles, the vicious dog, who bit family friends, postmen and journalists with equal enthusiasm.
Apart from being a writer, you’re an economist. You cook and you paint. Is there anything you can’t do but would like to? Of late, I find it hard to get to sleep. But I am working on it.
A decade ago, in an interview with HT Brunch, you had told us that you write in bed, sitting up, covered by a plain duvet (“so I’m not distracted by the pattern”), composing sentences in longhand. Has anything changed since? Everything is much the same except that my sentences now spontaneously decompose.
Yashpal THIS IS NOT THAT DAWN (Jhootha Sach in Hindi, 1958-60) translated by Anand (2010) Considered the most towering writer since Premchand, Yashpal’s novel published in two volumes, is set in pre-Partition Lahore. Life is normal in the Bhola Pande galli until prejudiced leaders stoke communal fires. This starts a chain of barbaric events. People flee their homes, millions die and women are the worst hit. Not only does the demographic change, life changes for the people forever.
UR Ananthamurthy
Vyasa
SAMSKARA (in Kannada, 1965) translated by AK Ramanujan (1976)
THE MAHABHARATA (in Sanskrit, between 8th-4th century BCE) retold by C Rajagopalachari (1958)
Ananthamurthy is one of the most important voices in the Navya (new) movement in Kannada. Last year, the writer was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize for overall contribution to fiction. Samskara is the story of Naranappa, who lives in a community of Brahmins but rejects their way of life: he eats meat, lives with a prostitute. At his death, when the novel begins, the community is confused – they don’t want to perform his last rites but then, the community itself gets ‘polluted’ as his corpse rots.
The epic was first narrated by Ved Vyas more than 2,000 years ago. It is the longest poem in the world – with more than 1,00,000. C Rajagopalachari’s version is the simplest translation – the best introduction to the greatest story ever retold. Saudamini.Jain@hindustantimes.com; Follow @SaudaminiJain on Twitter
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indulge
When In Rome
I stayed in three hotels, ate at touristy places and neighbourhood restaurants. I did the whole tourist number and realised that Rome is far better than nearly everywhere I’ve been in Italy
P
OOR OLD Rome. It seems to have had its day – at least in the popular imagination. There was a time in the 1960s when Rome was fearsomely glamorous. Hollywood stars shot their movies at the city’s Cinecittà Studios; this, after all, is the city where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton famously fell in love during the shooting of Cleopatra. It is here that Clint Eastwood made his reputation in a series of spaghetti Westerns. And if you sat long enough at a table at a pavement
Vir Sanghvi
rude travel CRAZY CORNERS
In Rome, wherever you walk, you’ll see something surprising: a man dressed as a Roman Centurion talking urgently into a mobile phone or a Hindu swami levitating above the pavement (below)
café on the Via Veneto, you would see the jet set drift by. But all that was a long time ago. Burton and Taylor are both dead. They don’t shoot many English-language movies at Cinecittà any longer. The only spaghetti Western that poor old Clint Eastwood can shoot these days would have to be called A Fistful of Hair. Even the tourists give Rome a miss. They go to Venice, and increasingly to Florence. Like most people, I’d kind of given up on Rome, I went there quite a lot as a child, but in my adult life, even though I go to Italy at least once a year, I avoid Rome. This year I decided that perhaps I’d been too unfair. I knew that food critics often complained that Rome had the worst food in Italy. But it was time to go and check it out for myself. And so, I stayed in three different hotels and checked out two others. I ate at touristy places and neighbourhood restaurants. I did the whole tourist number, visiting the Forum, the Vatican, the Colosseum, the Pantheon and God alone knows what else. And I walked the streets of Rome till my feet hurt. The first thing to be said is that I’m glad I decided to put aside the prejudice and give Rome a chance. And the second is: I loved it! Ignore what the cynics say. There is no city in the world quite like Venice. But if you take that out of the reckoning, then Rome is my favourite city in Italy, far better
than nearly everywhere I’ve been in that country. So why did I love Rome? Well, mostly because the city is beautiful. It’s not grand and chic like Paris. But it’s gorgeous and charming. The roads are narrower than Paris, there are more pedestrians, more trees and no matter where you turn, you’ll find a beautiful and interesting structure. Much more than most European capitals, this is a city made for walking. And wherever you walk, you’ll see something surprising: a man dressed as a Roman Centurion talking urgently into a mobile phone; a Hindu swami levitating above the pavement; a pretty girl arguing with her boyfriend at a street café; and even thousands of Bangladeshi immigrants selling everything from knock-offs of Prada bags to bottles of mineral water. You can do the touristy thing at two levels. There is ancient Rome (the place where Julius Caesar was stabbed, the house where Augustus was born etc.) which I love. If you enjoyed the Rome TV series or watched Spartacus or Gladiator, then you should go to the Colosseum and the Forum. Both are quite spectacular. And then there’s medieval Rome, which I am less keen on. I thought the Vatican was a nightmare: thousands of tourists shoving and pushing in an enclosed space. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel lives up to its reputation but if you want works of art, don’t waste time on the Vatican Museum and go to the Uffizi in Florence instead. And all the religious stuff just passes me by, I’m sorry to say, with all that bogus European pretence about a blonde Jesus when we all know that he was actually a dark, Semitic type and that ancient Rome’s involvement with Christians was restricted to killing and crucifying them. But if you’ve done all the touristy stuff (or given it a miss) then you can enjoy the gardens of the city. The Villa Borghese area is far more stunning than say Hyde Park, the Tuileries or Central Park. There are little piazzas in residential areas of Rome, dating back thousands of years, that are more beautiful than famous historical monuments in other cities. And the food is nowhere near as a bad as the critics claim.
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1 At Palatium, a chic but relatively inexpensive restaurant run by the local government of the area to promote regional specialities, I had a terrific chicken cooked in a thick yellow gravy of eggs and lemon that I’ve never seen on any menu outside Italy. At the famous 72-year-old coffee shop Sant’Eustachio II Caffè, I had what many people regard as the world’s best espresso. (It was pretty damn good, I’ll admit). At Roma Sparita, in the residential part of the now touristy Trastevere neighbourhood, I had a delicious pizza bianca with porcini mushrooms. At Sora Lella, another famous Rome institution dating back decades, I had the local specialties of an oxtail stew and pasta carbonara. But the best meal I ate in Rome was at Vascello, a small neighbourhood restaurant high up in the largely residential area of Monteverde. The restaurant is run by two Sardinian couples who serve unfancy home cooking (the tastiest amatriciana I’ve ever had) and well-priced local wine. They hardly get any tourists and so were intrigued that I had made the journey from the centre of Rome to try their food. But no, I was hardly their first Indian customer, one of the lady owners told me proudly. “Jhumpa Lahiri now lives in Rome. She has a flat nearby and she is here all the time. Such a beautiful girl!” Rome has many, many great hotels. When I came here as a child, I remembered two hotels: Hassler Roma and the Excelsior. Hassler Roma is still the same: small, elegant, classy, run by the same family for decades. I had met Roberto Wirth, the owner, when he visited India for the opening of Travertino at the Delhi Oberoi so it was good to catch up with him again and to dine at Imago, the hotel’s Michelinstarred modern Italian restaurant. The Excelsior was the grand Rome hotel of the sixties and so it was a bit of nostalgia trip for me to stay there again. It is now a Westin, still expensive (I paid more there than I did at the two other hotels I stayed in), has those wonderful grand public areas and large rooms. But though room service, housekeeping and the breakfast room were all first-rate, the hotel now has a sadly down-at-the-heel air about it because of the sloppiness of the front office, a bunch of useless concierges, and a certain carelessness.
For instance, the person who led me to my room pointed proudly to a small box of cookies and declared “A little gift for you.” Only, it wasn’t. The gift was meant for somebody else because it came with a note (in Italian) addressed to a completely different guest. All quite sad because it is, potentially, a really grand hotel. The Regina, opposite the Excelsior, is a boutique hotel run to luxury standards by the Baglioni group. I enjoyed staying there and discovered that in Francesco they had the best concierge in Rome. They also have a wonderfully elegant penthouse apartment (about 10,000 euros per night, so forget it!) which they showed me, pointing out that one of their first guests in that suite was LN Mittal. I’ve written about the elegant (and expensive) Hotel de Russie before so I’ll only add that it gives you a glimpse of how glamorous Rome must have been in its sixties heyday. This is definitely a jet-set/private-plane kind of place! My favourite hotel in Rome, however, was the venerable old Hotel Eden, down the road from the Excelsior and now a member of the Sultan of Brunei’s Dorchester group. It was a perfect match of old-world rooms and truly excellent and gracious service. If you ask me to pick just one deluxe hotel in Rome, then the Eden is the one I’ll pick. (I also paid about 30 per cent less than I did at the Excelsior for an experience that was 100 per cent better.) By some coincidence, the week after I came back (via Istanbul – there were no direct India-Rome flights), Air-India launched its flight to Rome. So it’s now easy to get there. And compared to Paris, Florence, London, Zurich, Venice or Vienna, Rome is the cheapest destination for hotels and food. So, if you are going West, put it on your schedule!
AROUND TOWN
1. If you enjoyed the Rome TV series or watched Spartacus or Gladiator, then you should go to the Colosseum and the Forum 2. At the famous 72-year-old coffee shop Sant’Eustachio II Caffè, I had what many people regard as the world’s best espresso 3. The Villa Borghese area is far more stunning than say Hyde Park, the Tuileries or Central Park 4. The Excelsior was the grand Rome hotel of the sixties and so it was a bit of nostalgia trip for me to stay there again
MORE ON THE WEB For more columns by Vir Sanghvi, log on to hindustantimes. com/brunch The views expressed by the columnist are personal
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A Double Punch
The battle to crown the next tablet king is on. Two big brands fight it out fiercely
W
HEN YOU go to war, when you plan an assault, when you enter a battle zone – the first thing you do is invade into home territory. Samsung has left subtlety and niceties in the dust and to make that point clear – they took over New York City’s iconic Madison Square Garden with a vengeance. This was a coup of epic proportions with nothing left to chance. Samsung was here to make a point, to make as much noise, create as much hype and make headline news worldwide. And that headline was simple, lucid and very clear. Apple’s reign as tablet king was over, it was time for Samsung to take over.
ONCE UPON A TIME: At one time, Apple had the lion’s
share of the tablet market, with literally no other brand in sight. If you wanted to buy a tablet, you only had to decide which iPad to buy! That has changed dramatically. Today, Apple’s market share is down to about 30 per cent, it has lost 10 percent market share last year and that exact percent-
Rajiv Makhni
techilicious age is what Samsung has gained. Google, with its Nexus Tabs, and Amazon, with its Kindle range, are the other giants in the game. But the battle has taken a new turn now, a dramatic assault where the war bugle was sounded right in Apple’s own turf – New York City.
DUAL ASSAULT:
Sleek And Thin
The Galaxy Tab S 8.4-inch (above) weighs 294gms and is just 6.6mm thick while the iPad Mini Retina is 7.5mm thick and 331gms
MORE ON THE WEB For previous Tech columns, log on to hindustantimes.com/ brunch. Follow Rajiv on Twitter at twitter. com/RajivMakhni The views expressed by the columnist are personal
Samsung launched two new tablets (8.4-inch and 10.5-inch) here and called them Samsung Galaxy Tab S. The S moniker has always been reserved for Samsung’s flagship offering and no tab has been allowed that name till now. Samsung has either played in the totally el cheapo category (mostly 7-inch run-of-the-mill stuff) or the very high-end niche section (Note and Pro). Samsung users of high-end phones like the Galaxy S5 who wanted to buy a tablet, didn’t really have a choice. Thus the coming of these two tablets was no big surprise. In fact, for the last month or so, (planted?) leaks about the product were common in the techosphere. What did take most by surprise were the products. This was not just an assault on the iPad range, it was a carefully crafted walloping thwack deep into Apple’s territory. Every single thing on these tabs have been carefully crafted to outdo the iPad range and Samsung made sure everyone got that point. They even had iPads demonstrated right next to the new Tab S range for everyone to compare. This is how the dual Samsung Galaxy Tablets S story unfolds.
SAMOLED: Nope that’s not a term that Samsung came up
with, for their own displays. This is the biggest USP of the devices as they come with Super AMOLED screens. This is holy grail territory as this display technology gives a 100X contrast ratio over LCD screens, colours truly pop out and are very vivid, blacks are genuine and deep, and even in outdoor sunlight, these screens don’t fade out. It also throws in a RGB
JUNE 22, 2014
Kill Competition Every single thing on the Samsung Tabs (right) have been carefully crafted to outdo the iPad range sensor to detect light conditions and adjust white balance.
PPI PERFECTION: The resolution on these tablets is an
eye-popping 2560x1600. That’s a pixel-per-inch density of 359 on the 8.4-inch tablet compared to about 326 on the iPad Mini Retina. On a tablet, when you throw in better colours, deeper blacks, more contrast and a fantastic number of pixels – it shows! And the competition looks washed out.
THIN TO THE BONE: The Galaxy Tab S 8.4-inch weighs 294gm and is just 6.6mm thick while the iPad Mini Retina is 7.5mm thick and 331gms. The Tab S 10.5-inch clocks in at the same 6.6mm and 465gm while the iPad Air is 7.5mm thick and 469gms. Samsung’s made the very term iPad ‘Air’ sound heavy and chunky. YOUR FINGERS ARE YOUR CONTROL: The tablets come
with a hardware home button that also plays dual duty as a fingerprint scanner, but Samsung ups the ante. This can be used to enable Private Mode as well as scanning in up to eight users. Thus each can set up their own home screen and apps and ways of working and that very custom interface will open when you scan your finger in.
SPECCING IT:
Samsung’s hardware prowess can never be doubted. The WiFi-only version will have a Exynos Octa core processor while the LTE version will have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800. Add to that 3GB RAM, 16 or 32GB storage, microSD slot, 8MP rear camera and 2MP front camera, plus about 11 hours battery life when watching a video.
BUILD AND FORM FACTOR: Samsung’s Achilles heel is
turned into a bit of an advantage. This looks like a Samsung Galaxy S5 that has been stretched both ways. But somehow that speckled back and plastic makes this look and feel more robust. People won’t buy it for its looks but fortunately no one will reject it for the same reason either.
UPPING THE GAME:
SideSync pairs the tablet with a Galaxy S5 phone (more phones may be added). Immediately, the tablet mirrors the phone’s screen in a smaller window thus enabling voice calls, running apps as well as transferring files with a flick. Almost any app can be opened in a multi-window environment, thus enabling true multitasking. There’s Cisco’s WebEx for video conferencing, Galaxy Gifts for exclusive freebies, Remote PC to control a PC, Samsung’s very own magazine format called Papergarden with custom content from Condé Nast, Marvel and National Geographic and new covers, including one that has a built-in keyboard. All in all, Samsung has hit hard and fast with its dual punch out Tab S offerings by pricing them exactly like the iPads but upping everything else. With a 10 per cent gap in market share and Samsung growing at about 10 per cent annually – these two tabs may soon bridge that gap and dethrone Apple this year itself. Until you throw in the equation of the next generation iPads. When you are king and have some slick new arrows in your quiver, then the dethroning process isn’t as easy as Apple pie! Rajiv Makhni is managing editor, Technology, NDTV, and the anchor of Gadget Guru, Cell Guru and Newsnet 3
hindustantimes.com/brunch
Photo: NEW YORK TIMES
The Blues Go WhiTe
Sanjoy Narayan
download central I like Jack White when he plays the hard raspy blues and not so much the softer kind. He’s best when his guitar shreds unmercifully
T
There are 11 songs on Lazaretto but my biggest crib is about the length of the album: just 39 minutes
HE FIRST track on Jack White’s new album, Lazaretto (his second solo after 2012’s Blunderbuss) is called Three Women and it’s a contemporary upgrade of an early blues song of the same name – actually, Three Women Blues – by one of the genre’s pioneers, Blind Willie McTell, from the late 1920s. White’s tweaked the lyrics, laced them with wit (after all, it’s about having three women in your life at the same time but in three different places) and his characteristic musical panache – his searing guitar riffs, of course, but also an old-style organ line, bass and percussion. This is what epitomisesJack White’s music. He draws on old styles – blues, blues-rock, country, folk and ragtime even, and reinvents them in songs that bear a deep imprint of the man’s genius. There are 11 songs on Lazaretto but my biggest crib is about the length of the album: just 39 minutes. It should have been longer. Especially since White has put to-
GENIUS CERTIFIED
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Jack White draws on old styles – blues, country and folk and reinvents them in songs that bear a deep imprint of the man’s genius gether such a varied bag of tunes. There’s the fully instrumental searing rocker High Ball Stepper; the folksy balladlike Entitlement; the snarls on The Black Bat Licorice; and the album’s self-titled track Lazaretto, an angry song whose lyrics begin: My veins are blue and connected/And every singe bone in my brain is electric. In an interview with NPR, White says some of the inspiration for the new record came from his own early writings, which he rediscovered. But White is a musician with a highly innovative approach. His take on the blues and other genres, including vintage rock is more often than not singular. Listen to Just One Drink and you’ll get a classic Mick Jagger-ish feel but with a twist of White lime as garnish. On Temporary Ground, replete with strings and vocal harmonies, he’s gentle and almost sounds like psychedelic folk music can. Jack White has been in the news for several things recently: a second divorce, and a spat with Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, whom he allegedly accused of copying him, are among them. But he’s also been a very, very busy musician. After the dissolution of The White Stripes, he’s been associated with many projects, including bands such as Raconteurs and Dead Weather, and has produced at his Nashville studio several albums, his own and ones by artists such as Wanda Jackson and Jerry Lee Lewis. His first solo album Blunderbuss, recorded soon after his second divorce, seemed to me to be mostly about breaking down of relationships or about deciding to cry off women – and despite this, his ex-wife Karen Elson appears on backing vocals on many of the tracks. Blunderbuss, as far as I remembered (having not heard it in a while), was good but not perhaps as slickly produced as Lazaretto. After I’d heard Lazaretto a couple of times I realised that I liked Jack White when he played the hard raspy blues and rock songs, and not so much the softer kind, like he does with Entitlement or Temporary Ground. He’s best when his guitar shreds unmercifully, and when deep bass lines speak to you viscerally. Then I went back to Blunderbuss and reheard that first solo album of his. Blunderbuss is closer to the sound on The White Stripes albums – the ones he made with Meg White, raw, simple blues-based tunes. In contrast, Lazaretto has a more layered, polished and sophisticated sound. But here’s a strange thought. Perhaps we should listen to the two albums, separated by two years as they are, back to back. Blunderbuss followed by Lazaretto. True, the moods are quite a bit different on them but they could well be two scoops of ice-cream with contrasting flavours in a cone – two discs in a curious kind of double album by White. A DIY listening experience if you will. Try it; you may like it. Download Central appears every fortnight
MORE ON THE WEB To give feedback, stream or download the music mentioned in this column, go to blogs. hindustantimes.com/downloadcentral. Write to Sanjoy at sanjoy.narayan@ hindustantimes.com
THE GOOD SHOW
In contrast to White’s first album Blunderbuss, Lazaretto (right) has a more layered, polished and sophisticated sound JUNE 22, 2014
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Many Happy RetuRns M Birthdays are always fun; but those that come with the big 0 are something special
OST OF us would count ourselves blessed if we could get on a short-haul flight when we hit our nineties. Not so George Bush Senior, the 41st President of the United States. He had celebrated his 70th, 80th and 85th birthday by skydiving. And he saw no reason to desist merely because he had hit 90; or because he was now forced to use a wheelchair due to a form of Parkinsons. So the day he turned 90, Bush Senior jumped out of a plane yet again. His only concession to age and infirmity was that he tandem-jumped, harnessed to a former member of the armed services. The images of the 90-year-old Bush landing awkward-
Seema Goswami
spectator
FOREVER LOVE
When the 90-year-old Bush landed awkwardly on the green of his Maine ranch (right), his wife, Barbara, just a year younger, rushed up to kiss him (below)
ly on the green of his Maine ranch and being surrounded quickly by members of his loving – and I am guessing, nervous – family, must have brought smiles to the faces of everyone who saw them (they certainly did to mine). His wife, Barbara, just a year younger, rushed up to kiss him. His children and grandchildren smothered him with hugs while his great-grandchildren looked on. How utterly amazing to be alive at such an age! And what’s more, to have this kind of zest for life in what are usually called your twilight years. We should all be so lucky. But just in case you are not the kind to jump out of an airplane no matter how significant the birthday (yeah, me neither!), here are just some of the best ways to make merry on a birthday with the big zero in it. Sorry, young ones, 20 just doesn’t count. So, let’s skip ahead to 30. This is a tricky one. It creeps up on you when you are busy doing other things and taps you on the shoul-
Photo: THINKSTOCK
der to announce that you are now all grown up. Thirty. The word is enough to strike terror in the hearts of those who still haven’t figured out how this life thingy works. So, how do you cope with a birthday that says that you’ve already lived through nearly half of yours? Why, you throw a party of course! The mother of all parties, a party would put all the parties of your 20s to shame. A party that would announce that you are still young, still with it, still fun. And with a bit of luck, still standing at the end of it. If thirty can come as a dreadful shock, forty steals upon you like a familiar friend. You notch up a relationship or two, have a couple of kids (or not), settle into cosy domesticity, start clambering up the career ladder, all with a wary eye on the passing of time. And then it is upon you. The big Four O. No, a knees-up won’t cut it this time round. You need something more elegant, more sophisticated, and just a bit more sedate. Pick a Sunday and host a brunch. Keep the food simple and easy. Keep the drinks circulating. The adults can relax without worrying about bedtimes (or hangovers). The kids can run around and wreak havoc. Enjoy this time before they turn into surly teenagers and refuse to speak to you for a decade. By 50 you will be fortunate indeed if even 50 per cent of your friendships survive. So, thank your stars for the ones that do, and take all 10 of them for a weekend away. It doesn’t have to be Paris, the Maldives or anywhere exotic and expensive. Just choose a place where all of you can spend quality time together, reminisce on the days gone by and raise a glass to the future. Sixty calls for a trip away with the spouse, to rediscover one another now that the kids are all grown up and producing kids of their own. Do something fun and adventurous before the knees begin to give way and the backs start acting up. Go trekking in the mountains. Take in a walking tour of Switzerland. Try a spot of white water rafting. Live a little. I do hope that by the time your 70s roll along you would have ticked off most things on your bucket list. In case you haven’t, then mark this anniversary by doing at least two of those things. It could be going on a cruise along the Mediterranean. It could be visiting the Great Barrier Reef. It could be praying at Tirupati. Whatever works for you. At 80, it will probably be your family’s turn to throw a grand knees-up for you – even though you will probably have to stick to nimbu pani at the doctor’s advice. Take my advice. Sneak in a glass of champagne anyway. You deserve it; if only for having made it this far. And so finally we come to 90. Don’t worry if you are clean out of ideas by now. If all else fails, there’s always skydiving!
At sixty, it calls for a trip away with the spouse, to rediscover one another
Photos: GETTY IMAGES
MORE ON THE WEB For more SPECTATOR columns by Seema Goswami, log on to hindustantimes.com/brunch. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/seemagoswami. Write to her at seema_ ht@rediffmail.com The views expressed by the columnist are personal
JUNE 22, 2014
WELLNESS
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MIND BODY SOUL SHIKHA SHARMA
TRUE TO TYPE
PART- III
Managing your weight may just be easier if you understand your ayurvedic body type
For any worries related to unplanned pregnancy: Write to us at consumercare@piramal.com or call us at 1800-22-0502 (toll free) or sms ICAN to 56070 Website: www.i-canhelp.in
1. Dear Doctor, I consumed an emergency contraceptive th pill on the 6 day of my cycle and I got my periods within 2 th weeks that is on 20 day. Is this is symptom of pregnancy? I wasn’t expecting my period for another week.
T
Photos: IMAGESBAZAAR, SHUTTERSTOCK
gies, have thick and long hair. HE PHYSICAL constitution The teeth are well-formed and of one’s body is believed are pearly in colour. They take to be derived from the their own time to respond to same elements as in nature. situations and also take time to The beauty of ayurveda is that take decisions, in comparison it links these elements to us in a to other constitutions. But once logical way. Fire has attributes they take a decision, they are of being hot, so the season that extremely headstrong predominantly carries AQUA FORCE about it. Kapha people pitta (fire) is summer. Kapha prakriti have a pleasant voice Similarly, foods such as embodies elements and have great social black pepper carry of water skills. They build asa dominant fire sociations and groups element. Once we easily. People of this understand the constitution take time basic nature of an to learn new activities, element, it is easy to but are also blessed with very connect it with our envistrong memories. Their calm ronment, space and time. Here and tranquil nature is a positive are some physical, emotional quality though sometimes their and mental characteristics that emotional nature can give them make up the kapha or water health problems. They become body type. uncomfortable during winter. KAPHA PRAKRITI ask@drshikha.com Kapha prakriti is the embodiThis series has now concluded ment of the elements of water KAPHA AND WEIGHT GAIN and earth. It is thus easy to understand the traits of people Kapha people have a natural tenwith kapha constituency if you dency to put on weight and have know their prakriti. to nurture healthy habits Kapha people have a to avoid weight gain. wide bone structure with People with kapha wide wrists. They tend to constitution become have strong joints and unhealthy when they bones, and have a tengo overboard eating dency to put on weight banana, curd, cold easily. They have flawless drinks, cold water, iceskin, which doesn’t wrinkle creams, sugar, sweets, easily. maida, sooji, alcohol, fried Kapha bodies, being derived food, cream, cheese, milk, from earth and water enerwheat and rice. MORE ON THE WEB For more columns by Dr Shikha Sharma and other wellness stories, log on to hindustantimes.com/brunch JUNE 22, 2014
It is common to experience an early or delayed period after consuming an emergency contraceptive pill. It is not a sign of pregnancy. If you took the ECP within the stipulated 72 hour time frame, then the chances of pregnancy would be low. However, you need to be sure whether it was your actual period or just irregular spotting between periods. Spotting is also another common side- effect of ECP. If it was spotting, then you can expect your actual period on or around the expected date.
2. Dear Doctor, I am newly married and had intercourse on our first night without any protection. Are there any chances of getting pregnant so soon? Unprotected intercourse is always risky and may lead to an u n i n t e n d e d p r e g n a n c y. Depending on the day of your menstrual cycle you were in on your wedding night, your chances of pregnancy increases or decreases. I
suggest you patiently wait for your next periods and take a pregnancy test if it is delayed beyond 10 days from the expected date. In case you are not pregnant, I recommend you consult a local gynaecologist and get information on regular contraceptive options to delay your pregnancy for a couple of years. 3. Dear Doctor is it necessary to take an ECP after having an unprotected intercourse on the 4th day of cycle. Isn't it a safe day to have unprotected intercourse? Many people have this notion that first 5-6 days of the cycle are safe to have unprotected intercourse. Although it may be true in some cases where the cycle length is longer, but others need to be careful and must not take such a risk. The sperm is known to stay in the body for 3 days and during this time if ovulation occurs then chance of pregnancy is high. If you do not plan to have a baby then you need to use regular contraception like regular pills or condoms. Only in events where regular contraception was absent or it fails, you can take an emergency contraceptive pill.
Queries answered by Dr Nirmala Rao MBBS, MD, DPM; a well known psychiatrist who heads Mumbai based Aavishkar - a multifaceted team of expert doctors and health professionals. Aavishkar has a comprehensive approach to mental and physical health, with an emphasis scan this QR code to visit website on counselling and psychotherapy. Supported by:
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PERSONAL AGENDA
twitter.com/HTBrunch
Boxer/actor
Vijender Singh
BIRTHDAY SUN SIGN PLACE HOMETOWN SCHOOL/ OF BIRTH Gurgaon Scorpio COLLEGE
October 29
FIRST HIGH POINT OF YOUR LIFE BREAK Winning the bronze medal for
M D University, Fugly (2014) Rohtak
Bhiwani, Haryana
Boxing or acting, what is your first love? It will always be boxing. What requires more patience, boxing or acting? After working in Fugly, I think it’s acting. My first shot took place in Leh and we had to do several takes for it. It went on for sixseven hours. It’s a bit tiring and requires loads of patience. Doesn’t acting affect your dedication towards boxing? I don’t think so. I have my priorities quite clear. In fact, next month, I’m going for the Commonwealth Games. And I am working hard for it. What is the best thing about Bollywood? Since childhood, I have had a fascination for the camera. The toughest opponent you have faced in boxing. My opponent during the final fight at the London Olympics (2012). Whose acting skills do you admire? Akshay Kumar’s. He is my all-time favourite and also like
a mentor. When I joined the industry, he advised me to not waste time attending parties, to concentrate on my work and lead a disciplined life. The best actress in Bollywood. Shraddha Kapoor and Deepika Padukone. Adventure sports that you are fond of. I enjoy paragliding and bungee jumping. Which body part will you get insured? My heart. It is the most important organ. One piece of advice you would want to give to aspiring boxers. Never give up and always believe in yourself.
my movies
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A FILM YOU HAVE SEEN MORE THAN FIVE TIMES.
Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995) and Dabangg (2010) THE MOST PAISA VASOOL FILM
Hera Pheri (2000)
JUNE 22, 2014
boxing at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics
LOW POINT CURRENTLY I AM... OF YOUR LIFE Excited about my debut I don’t believe in them
The best thing about Delhi. It is the centre of power, has so much historical value and my wife also belongs to this city. How do you keep yourself fit? Besides my regular training for boxing, I regularly go to the gym and do a lot of cardio exercises. I am very fond of swimming too. Your favourite cuisine. Continental. How does it feel to be a father? It feels great. I love spending time with my son. A secret no one knows. That I am not rude or arrogant like most people think. The catch-phrase of your life.
A MOVIE THAT WAS A PART OF YOUR CHILDHOOD
Sholay (1975)
THE FIRST MOVIE YOU SAW ON THE BIG SCREEN
Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge
film, Fugly
Self-made people are the best. The worst thing that can happen to a boxer. Their eyes get badly affected, which leaves them with very few options. I hope the government takes steps for their welfare. How do you feel about movies being made on the lives of sports stars? It feels great to see them being honoured. What makes your day? My son’s smile. What spoils it? Being away from him. Your dream destination. Any place where I can spend quality time with my family. Your favourite co-star. I had a great time with all of them but I learnt a lot from Jimmy Shergill. You get angry when... There is a lack of punctuality. You destress by... Meditating. — Interviewed by Veenu Singh