February 2013 `25 Issue no. 15 Volume no. 43 An MBD Publication RNI No.: 23870/72
D E M O C R A T I C
W O R L D
SOCIAL AGENDA
10 STEPS TO GO VIRAL PAGE 18
LIGHT AND STAGE
AN INTERVIEW WITH THEATRE VETERAN M.K. RAINA
PAGE 24
A brief meeting with author cum historian William Dalrymple Page 12
PLUS
WAREHOUSE
HITCHHIKER’S
BROAD CANVAS
GOOD KARMA
EDIT ORIAL SONICA MALHOTRA KANDHARI | editorial@democraticworld.co.in
My Messy City of Surprises IT IS A WONDERFUL time
INDIA BYTE
WILLIAM DALRYMPLE: “The authentic Indian voice is one of those chimeras like the concept of ‘real’ India which is always somewhere else. There are a billions of different Indias and a thousand more varieties thereof”
to be in Delhi, the winter. A time to be outdoors; picnicking, visiting tombs and sarais, attending plays, exhibitions, reading a book in a sunlit park or watching a late night film. With the Oscar nominations announced, expect a few of the nominees in the best film category to hit the Indian theatres. In such a beautiful, calm time, does fear have to be our companion? The young woman who lost her life to a singularly brutal act of violence left the earth for a better place (I sincerely hope). With her demise all our false notions of being safe in the city were torn away. If the incident showed the heinous side of our city, reactions to it kindled hope. When I saw young and old, men and women, take to the streets demanding a right to safety, a right to walk where and when they please, freedom from platitudes, and sought better governance—I believed there was hope yet. This messy city of mine is all encompassing and all caring; it accepts the human and the inhuman. My city of contradictions is beautiful and terrible and naturally, some people are taking pleasure in vilifying it. But there is a heart—ancient and strong—that beats within Delhi. If you talk to historian-cum-author William Dalrymple, you would know just how soon it got to be the “home away from home”. The author who launched his latest book recently is on our cover in February. Effervescent and precise, we caught him in a rather
tight time. Yet he was generous with his time, thought and ideas. DW was a part of the Jaipur Literature Festival, which concluded some days ago, and our team was genuinely impressed by Dalrymple’s energy and focus. Read about what keeps him ticking on Page 12. Another treat in waiting is the in-depth chat we had with veteran actor, playwright and dramatist M.K. Raina. We talked to the thespian about stage, scripts, work and life around a time when the NSD Drama Festival was on. It was heartening that we actually managed to catch him in an especially busy hour. As usual, we have strived to get you a mix-andmatch of fact and fun. There is the Social Agenda section with the brilliant Tushar Kanwar writing on “how to make office stuff go viral”. Our columnists this month are Ashok Malik and Jai Arjun Singh. Their analysis of the recent crime is thoughtful. Do read and let us know how we can make our issues better. In the meantime, be the best that you can be.
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TOC
M.K. RAINA PLAYWRIGHT, ACTOR, DIRECTOR,PRODUCER AND ACTIVIST, M.K. RAINA TALKS ABOUT THEATRE, FILMS, CULTURE AND THE LACK OF IT
LIFE IS A STAGE
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C O V E R D E S I G N B Y A N I L V K | P H O T O B Y S U B H O J I T P A U L | I M A G I N G B Y P E T E R S O N PJ
TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S
READ MORE ON PAGE 24
12 JAI ARJUN SINGH
COVER STORY
12 | The Master Storyteller
22 | GENDER AND SPACES Acknowledging the markers of a patriarchal world
William Dalrymple talks about how history has a nagging habit of repeating itself ASHOK MALIK
Please Recycle This Magazine And Remove Inserts Before Recycling
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COPYRIGHT Democratic World is published & printed by M Gulab Singh & Sons (a unit of MBD Group) at Gulab Bhawan 6, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi 110002, India and printed at Perfect Printers Gulab Bhawan 6, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi 110002, India. Democratic World is for private circulation only. Material in this publication may not be reproduced in any form without the written permission of M Gulab Singh & Sons.
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32 | NO COUNTRY FOR WOMEN: India is a country with many laws, but little law, and a very little fear of the law
28 ISSUE
28 | LOOKING BEYOND THE BORDERS
Is our Foreign Policy keeping up with India’s trade interests? REGULARS
44
01| EDITORIAL 06 | UP-TO-DATE 10 | FOREIGN DESPATCHES 24 | LOOKING BACK 36 | READING ROOM 48 | STICKY NOTES
BROAD CANVAS
44 | The Canvas and Introspection
Clash of civilisation, urban & rural spaces and dispossession plague Binoy Varghese’s canvases GOOD KARMA
WAREHOUSE
SOCIAL AGENDA
HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE
34 | RAGS TO RICHES
38 | GADGETS & GIZMOS THE LEICA S2-P Why click a picture of
18 | HOW STUFF GOES VIRAL There is no formula
40 | FROLICKING IN PHI PHI, KRABI
to going viral, but there are wise steps that can make you stand out, at least
No money? Take a trip to Thailand, won’t you?
Conserve India is making rag-pickers climb the social ladder and earn the respect they deserve
the sea when you can click what’s inside? We’ll tell how
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ASARAM BAPU
“She should have called the culprits brothers and begged before them to stop”
THEY SAID IT
UPtoDATE Youth power: Young men protest government apathy and poor infrastructure at a rally held in New Delhi
Stop This Shame As Delhi rape victim battled death before giving in, the city raised its voice PROTEST \\ On December 16, 2012, a 23-year-old
physiotherapy student was beaten up and raped in a moving bus by six men. The woman who was accompanied by a male companion had boarded the bus at 9.30pm after watching a film. The woman succumbed to her injuries within two weeks of the assault. She was beaten up by an iron rod, which damaged 95 per cent of her intestines. The 23-year-old breathed her last on 29 December, 2012, in Singapore, where she was undergoing emergency treatment. The assaulters also beat up her friend and threw the two out of the bus. Police found and arrested some
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of the perpetrators within 24 hours of the incident. Out of the six accused, one is a juvenile, also allegedly the most brutal attacker. While the six will be tried for murder, the juvenile accused could walk free after three years of imprisonment. Meanwhile, protests broke out in Delhi, and the rest of the country, over government apathy and lack of safety for women. Protestors also took to streets demanding capital punishment and stricter laws for crime against women. In one rally, protestors allegedly clashed with the police, who then lathi-charged and shot them with water cannons and tear gas.
‘6’
assaulters have been caught and are being tried in the rape case
up-to-date
FROM AROUND THE WORLD //
India losses the ODI series to Pakistan LOSS \\ The recently-concluded India-Pakistan one-
Arrested: Om Prakash Chautala has been sent to Tihar
Former Haryana CM and son in Tihar Jail Om Prakash Chautala and his son arrested in the teacher recruitment scam
day series, hosted by India, was the first cricket series played between the two sides in more than four years. The series came with its expected hype, as it resumed cricket ties between the two nations after the infamous Mumbai Terror Attacks of 2008. The threematch ODI series ended with Pakistan winning it 2-1. The visitors exhibited their dominance from the very beginning, sweeping the series 2-0 before a victory in the last match in New Delhi helped salvage some pride for the host nation. In one-sided contests, Pakistan earned victories by six wickets and 85 runs in Chennai and Kolkata, respectively. Pakistan’s leftarm fast bowler Junaid Khan emerged as a crucial performer with eight wickets, while opener Nasir Jamshed added to his fine record against India with a 241 runs in three inning, thus earning the man-ofthe-series. For India, the only silver lining was debutant pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s bowling, which impressed fans and pundits alike.
ARREST \\ Former
Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala, and his legislator son, Ajay Chautala, were arrested in January along with 53 others on the orders of a Special Court in New Delhi for the illegal recruitment of teachers in the state. The accused have been sent to Tihar Jail. The Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) chief and his son were accused of illegally recruiting over 3,200 junior basic trained (JBT) teachers in Haryana when he headed the government in the state during 1999-2000. The arrest comes as a major blow to the party which is the major opposition party in Haryana as Assembly elections are due in 2014 in the state. The other 53 convicts include senior IAS officers Vidya Dhar and Sanjiv Kumar. Around 62 people were originally accused in the case. While six died during the trial, one was let go during the framing of charges.
EMERGING STAR
NOMINATION
Bombay Jayshri Gets Oscar Nod: In January the Indian film fraternity celebrated the selection of Chennaibased Carnatic music vocalist Bombay Jayashri’s Oscar nomination for Pi’s Lullaby from the Life of Pi for the 85th Academy Awards, terming it an “amazing honour” for a great artist. FEBRUARY 2013
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up-to-date
\\ FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Vigil (left) An Indian soldier at the LoC Mourning (below) Indian Army Chief General Bikram Singh addresses a news meet after the firings
LOC Killings Lead to Diplomatic Battle Two soldiers lose their lives in an attack by Pakistan Army BATTLE \\ The distraught father of Lance
Naik Sudhakar Singh, who was one of the soldiers killed in an attack by Pakistan Army across the LoC, wants the leaders of his country to give a “befitting reply” to the neighbouring nation for the “dastardly act”. Lance Naiks Sudhakar Singh and Hemraj were killed in a raid conducted by the 29 Baloch Regiment troops of Pakistan who had intruded into the Indian territory at the Poonch sector on January 8, 2013. The bodies of the soldiers were mutilated. “The government should respond to the dastardly act by the enemy (Pakistan Army) in a fitting manner. That will be the real tribute to my martyred son,” said Lance Naik Sudharkar Singh’s father, Sachchidanand Singh, after the cremation of his son. “Hamari iccha hai ki dushman ka datkar muqabla karke usko usi ki bhasha mein jawab
dena chahiye (We want that the enemy should be dealt with in a befitting manner),” said he. Singh hails from Dadia village in Sidhi district of Madhya Pradesh. “Sudhakar was our strength and was supposed to come to the village between February 15 and 16, but now everything is lost,” Singh said. The 30-year-old deceased soldier, the youngest of four siblings, had joined the Indian Army on April 7, 2002. He is survived by his wife and four-month-old son Bhaskar. When asked whether he was satisfied with the Government of India’s response on the issue, Singh said the government has its own responsibilities, but this situation “demanded an equally befitting action.” The martyred soldier’s cousin, Prem Singh, said Sudhakar’s father-in-law was also a retired army man and despite losing
Centre should respond to the act by the enemy (Pakistan Army) in a befitting manner— Victim's father
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his son-in-law, he wants his grandson to join the Indian Army. Fully supporting the views of the grief-stricken father, Professor Kailash Tyagi, from government-run MVM College in Bhopal, who is also the PhD guide of former Army chief, General V.K. Singh, said, “It is not advisable to remain defensive beyond a point, as it leads to cowardliness.” “After all, for how long? Defensive responses on serious issues like this result in demoralisation of forces,” said Tyagi, who teaches Defence and Strategic Studies. He said the issue was being debated by his students (under-graduate and post-graduate), who were “angry over the brutal killing of the soldiers”. A retired Lieutenant-General based in Mhow, on condition of anonymity, said, “You cannot expect anything from the government. The Indian Army should deal with the situation," he added. Cross border trade along the Line of Control was halted after some 25 fully-loaded Indian trucks were not allowed to unload at the Chakan Da Bagh crossing at Poonch. Later, more instances of firing were reported along the border.
up-to-date
FROM AROUND THE WORLD //
&
SALT PEPPER
NATION
Owaisi under arrest ARREST \\ On January 8,
2013, Andhra Pradesh Police arrested Majlise-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) lawmaker Akbaruddin Owaisi in connection with a hate speech case, hours after doctors at the government-run Gandhi Hospital said that he is suffering from a number
of ailments. As per the medical report released, Owaisi has adhesions and hernia in the abdomen and a bullet in his right thigh, which is pressing on his sciatic nerve. By then the police had registered four cases against Owaisi, the MLA of Chandrayangutta con-
stituency in Hyderabad, on charges of promoting enmity between groups and waging or attempting to wage war or abetting waging of war against the government of India. Owaisi was arrested from the state-run Gandhi Hospital, where he was taken for an examination.
HINA RABANI KHAR TALKS OF ‘PEACE’ PEOPLE TEAR HER WORDS TO PIECES
“@gutterfly: Hina Rabbani Khar is having a relationship with Bilawal Bhutto? Man, she’s going from Hermes to Herpes pretty fast.” Berges @Berges | Twitterati
Factional clashes claim 100 lives in Pakistan One of the bloodiest attacks yet
“Hina Rabbani Khar. So pretty. So shrewd. What a character she’d make in a book or a movie.” Chetan Bhagat @chetan_bhagat | Author
“Hina Rabbani Khar to appear in a new comedy serial called War-mongerilal Ke Haseen Sapne.” Oculus @daddy_san | Twitterati
After the blast—Shia Muslims protest against the communal attacks
“If BS were dollars, Hina Rabbani Khar could pay off Pak’s national debt 10 times over.” Laughing Gas @waatho | Satire Website
BLASTS \\ The death toll from a series of deadly bombings across Pakistan in the
second week of January 2013 rose to 120, Pakistan police reported, making it one of the deadliest month the country has seen in years. Five people who were wounded in twin bombings on a billiards hall died of their wounds around January 10, 2013, said senior police officer Hamid Shakeel from the southern city of Quetta, putting the death toll from that attack at 86. The strike was the worst of three deadly bombings targeting Shiites and soldiers in Quetta, capital of the volatile Baluchistan province, and worshippers at a Sunni mosque in the northwest. The billiards hall bombing, in a Shiite area of the city, started with a suicide attack but was followed by a car bomb minutes later in the same area. Militants often use such staggered bombings as a way to maximise the body count by targeting rescuers.
“Dear Hina Rabbani Khar, You know and we know that Pakistan doesn’t want peace. It wants piece. A piece of India.” Ramesh Srivats @rameshsrivats | Writer
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foreign despatches \\ NOTES FROM THE DIA SPOR A
MANIL SURI
Compulsory trips that I make to India are times when I recharge” I GREW UP IN “Bombay” not Mumbai obviously. It was an interesting place to be a child—we, (my father, mother and I) lived in a single-room set in a rented apartment. We shared a bathroom and a kitchen on a rather Tony area called Nepean Sea Road. We were paying guests. Rest of the tenants were Muslims, while we were the sole Hindu family in that building. That was an interesting point, I grew up thinking the reverse proportion was how things were in the country. I went to Campion School in South Mumbai. Campion students usually came from wealthy backgrounds. We lived in a single room, so I ended up never inviting my posh friends over to the fishing bowl I called home. As a child, I was mostly by myself and ended up painting, writing and studying a lot. The loneliness worked out for me. An added advantage; my mother was an avid reader. She had a big trunk filled trash and classics—Harold Robbins, James Irwin, Shakespeare and Irwin Stone, all of them jostled for a place in her magic book trunk. She would also visit the local library and let me borrow books as well. My mother was an English and history teacher, but her specialisation during Master’s was psychology and sociology. She started her career as a social worker, and also, for a year she worked under the then Prime Minister of the country, Indira Gandhi. She had a whole bunch of things working for her and I grew up having a strong female presence in my life. My mother was also a very open and liberal woman, especially around me, her only child. When at the age of 13 years, I declared I wanted to read Harold Robbins she accompanied me to the Warden Book House. I asked for The Adventurers, which, I think I received because my mother was there beside me, and
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Washington, USA MANIL SURI was born in
Mumbai and is a professor of mathematics and affiliate professor of Asian studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is the author of the novels The Death of Vishnu, The Age of Shiva, and The City of Devi. His fiction has won several awards and honors and has been translated into 27 languages. He was named by Time as a “Person to Watch” in 2000. He is a citizen of both the United States and India. In addition to his writing, he is involved in several mathematics outreach projects. His research is in the area of finite element methods for partial differential equations.
because the librarian was a man who knew his business. India in the 1960s and 1970s was a vibrant, bit confused and an inherently chaotic time. Arts were not encouraged, especially Indian arts. I hardly read any Indian writers in school. But thanks to my mother, I was a “reader” by the time I was in high school. I believe that my parents were responsible for my life's perspective. My father was an assistant to Madan Mohan and then to Laxmikant-Pyarelal; three, famous Bollywood music directors. He had travelled to Mumbai to become a singer. He never quite made it as a singer and instead got shunted into the secondary profession of being a music director. I was listening to a lot of Bollywood music while growing up, probably because that was the most-frequently played music on the radio. We had an old gramophone that played 78 RPM records. We never actually had a “modern” record player, and so I could never actually buy “new” music. For a long time I never heard any “English music”. My tryst with Bollywood goes on strong even today. When I visited Mumbai recently, I bought remix tapes, all complete with 20 awful songs. One of them is a song on an antennae, if I am not mistaken. Terrible and terribly good at the same time; that’s Bollywood for me. My life and the times then were deeply entrenched in the Hindi film industry. When I started writing some familiar names slowly crept onto the pages. I borrowed Asrani (a character in my first book), who was an actor and a friend of my mother. Remember, Mrs Jaiswal who cheated in cards? That’s a cousin from New Delhi. Only,
foreign despatches NOTES FROM THE DIA SPOR A //
“Each time when I have released a book, there has been gap of two to three years when I could not write at all. I seem drained and exhausted by the effort. This time I am hoping to break my threeyear-jinx”
unlike the Mrs Jaiswal in my book, she is an honest player. During a book launch in London, I remember her standing up and addressing the audience with, “My name is Mrs Jaiswal and I play cards. But I never cheat!” Fortunately, I simply borrow the names and not the characters. Friends, family, acquaintances, Hindi film industry, its players—at least some of them—occasionally find a place on my pages. Is it a conscious choice? Not really. The India of my youth— was a time when a student who showed any aptitude for studies, was pushed towards sciences and mathematics. If you failed those, you might try something else. Perhaps arts? We were a middle-class family which meant that science was taken very seriously. My grandparents were refugees from Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Like most good parents, mine too, wished to see me do something ‘respectable’; become a doctor. Though I was good in science subjects medicine never interested me. In college, I almost ran into chemistry, then went into physics, and finally settled with mathematics after taking a class in abstract algebra. What I love about mathematics is that one can find definitive answers in it. It takes an amount of discipline; one needs to spend time in it. Sit down and comprehend it. When you do a problem and it works out, it is a great feeling. A professor suggested that I try to find a fellowship in America. At that time I was pessimistic about my future in India. Once I got the ball rolling for studies in America, the idea excited me. I was around 20 when I obtained a fellowship to Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh. The year that I passed out, I obtained a teaching position at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where I have been working ever since. Currently, I am a full-time professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. My area of specialisation includes numerical analysis of partial differential equations. In today’s world there is a whole bunch of people who have merged mathematics and arts. I do not see myself as doing something different. Mathematics has
not managed to exploit auditory, visual mediums too well. By playing around video and words, I believe I can make math accessible to more people. I believe that arts and mathematics need each other. My first observation in the US was that there was no hierarchy of science. Most people I met, seemed to dislike mathematics, rather vehemently. Which was the only shock. Having said that, it was easy to set down roots in America. As far as culture shock is concerned, when I came to the US there was none. But every year, I need my dose of—what I label as—the Indian chaos, especially to write. I began writing fiction in 1980. It was not a smooth sailing process, I received numerous rejection slips. Until the publication of the Death of Vishnu, I kept my writing stint hidden from the rest of the faculty as a senior member had told me, that mathematicians who pursued other interests were not taken seriously. Despite me trying really hard, I cannot place my stories in the US. Its streets, alleys and walkways seem too clean and too devoid of the chaos—my fodder. This is a vibrant chaos that I miss sometimes, the one that is rooted in India. I have tried, several times, to place stories in my now-familiar home. But I have failed. Therefore, the compulsory trips that I make to India—thrice every year or more—are when I recharge my writing batteries. Then I expend that energy at my leisure. In August 1994, a man named Vishnu died in the stairway landing in my parents’ apartment. To mark his death because he was a nobody, I started to write about him. The Death of Vishnu, as a short story started there. I hopelessly abandoned the story almost two years later after suffering a rather severe bout of writer’s block. I was stuck in the third chapter. I enrolled into a five-day workshop at the Fine Arts Work Centre in Provincetown, Massachussetts, under Michael Cunninham. Though we dealt with another short story as a writing exercise (a story that I was actually interested in), Cunningham was more focused on the short story that I was stuck on. He egged me on to finish it and when it was complete, its excerpt was published in the New Yorker, entitled The Seven Circles. That led to W.W. Norton getting to see it and ultimately agreeing to publish it. Each time when I have released a book, there has been gap of two to three years when I could not write at all. I seem drained and exhausted by the effort. This time I am hoping to break my threeyear-jinx as my next project, a math e-novel, is something I wish to create for everyone. I understand that everyone is a problematic target audience. Do I want laypersons to read it? Or, people with a minimum interest and understanding of maths. I have no clue as yet. I am hoping that once this madness of launches subsides and I am back in my quieter writing zone, I would know. —As told to Rohini Banerjee
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Parallels Between Then and Now
William Dalrymple on how history has a nagging habit of repeating itself... BY ROHINI BANERJEE PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUBHOJIT PAUL | DESIGN BY HARIDAS BALAN
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cover story
THE MA STER STORY TELLER //
Chapter 1
First impressions
was told as a teenager that first the oft-repeated line, “People who forget history are bound impressions count. Though my wise to repeat it.” And Return of the King stands as a testimony and giggly friend was talking about to that. “I don’t know why this particular book had such a romantic love, however, I do believe difficult birth. Perhaps, because it was a more complex story first impressions count when it that we had to pull together, information from all sorts of comes to business as well; especially sources. The book involved Iran, Afghanistan, Russia and when you meet an author-cumIndia, especially history of the Sikhs. When a historian writes historian some hours before the launch of his much-awaited about Stalingrad or the Second World War, everyone knows book (it took him six years to complete), take his audience who Stalin was or who Hitler was. But no one has an effing (eminent critics, journalists and historians in their own clue about who Shah Shuja was. So, there was this awful lot right) through chapters of the tome, all on the eve of his book of explaining to do, and an awful lot of scene-setting without tour (of five cities of India), and then finish losing the audience’s interest especially in all “bookish duties” to co-ordinate and the crucial first 20 to 30 pages of a book when ma n a g e on e o f t h e m o s t p r o m i n en t you have to grip the audience’s attention and literature festivals of India. drag them into the story. However, the story A s f a r a s s c h e d u l e s g o , Wi l l i a m had such a wonderful narrative arc that once Dalrymple’s calendar was water-tight the I got going, and by the time we got the troops day we met him. So, it was no surprise that moving into Afghanistan, it kind of wrote the man who sat rather uncomfortably in a itself,” says Dalrymple. As an after thought he wooden chair, was looking rather harried. adds, “There was a lot of heartburn and Olivia His clothes were crumpled (he had forborne sort of made that simpler.” Olivia Fraser is several question-answer sessions with Dalrymple’s spouse and mother to their three attention) and was parched. The sound “wonderfully different” children. Fraser, we checks in British Council yard where the were told, was expected in half-an-hour’s time launch was to happen, and people asking with Dalrymple’s wardrobe. “Nothing fancy, (pretty much) the same questions may just a coat,” he said. The coat turned out to be have added to that overall discomfort. a dashing black Achkan. However, coming back to the bit about first Fraser is an established artist who has been impressions—the author’s patience was specialising in Indian miniature art (a legacy striking and impressive. He bore it all with she inherited from a distant relative James a distracted but smiling countenance. That Baillie Fraser of Moniack who started a group a historian has to be patient to do his work, comprising miniature artists called Company is no epiphany. But the infinite amount Painting) and has done occasional illustrations that Dalrymple seemed to possess on that for the Dalrymple’s books. However, Fraser particular day was impressive. is more than a mere illustrator. “She is my —William Dalrymple Dalrymple’s latest book—Return of a primary editor, a rigorous and ruthless one. I King, an in-depth analysis of the First know that almost always she is right. Having Afghan War, told through the lives of both said that I really don’t like it when she says British and Afghan characters, using Afghan accounts of page two’s boring or the third paragraph has to go. I wouldn’t the conflict—was a difficult project from the word go. It is know how to write without her,” that is quite a compliment a retelling of what Dalrymple states to be, “Britain’s greatest coming from one of the most-recognised authors in India, imperial disaster”, a still-pertinent book about colonial and indeed in the world. Because, we met him at such a ambition and cultural collision which is as relevant as a crucial hour, the day he was to present the Return of the King case study today as it was then. As Dalrymple points out to to the world, the conversation rarely veered from writing.
“Between Namita and I we cut the world. She gets South East Asia, and I get the rest. She gets 180 people and I get 70”
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cover story
\\ THE MA STER STORY TELLER
Chapter 2
The Shed in the Garden
“
am a hugely indisciplined human being in general, in a whole variety of ways. I eat too much. I like chocolates. However, I am greatly disciplined as far as my writing is concerned. Those disciplined bits of my life occur in cycles, every five to six years. The final bit (of a “cycle”) is like the final semester in a varsity—you get up early, drink less, and party no more. When I am writing I am up by six in the morning. I take copies of previous night’s chapters before I go off to bed. In that lovely hour before everyone’s up, I am busy correcting yesterday’s work.” Less of a routine and more of a regimen. Most of the magic happens outside the comfortable confines of home, in a small garden shed where Dalrymple locks himself without Wi-Fi. Not that technology is necessarily bad, but because it is evilly distracting. “Wi-Fi gives me Facebook and Twitter. I can lose hours if I am not careful. You can start searching for Voltaire and five hours later, end up reading about the upper Volga,” he breaks off into peals of laughter. So, most of the writing (of new material) happens in that happy hour between 9am and 11am. “I don’t always manage to write — William something substantial. Mostly though, the work gets done by lunch. The rest of the day is free for sending out emails and correction,” he adds. But before the writing bit, there is a small, mind-boggling bit called research. It can be exciting, exhausting and exhilarating process. In some cases (especially, in his), it is equally serendipitous. Dalrymple has been an object of envy of other writers we hear, as he has had the fortune of writing in some of the most exotic Indian locations—former palaces and forts now converted into Tory homes for the posh or boutique hotels. The Return of the King, however, took him down a different path altogether. When
during the conversation, the author-cum-historian seems deaf to all questions and gets busy with his mobile, we get to just how different it had been. Dalrymple gleefully shows a picture of an SUV with a bullet hole in one of its windows. “This was on the day we landed at the Kandahar airport. There were skirmishes and this was a result of one such,” he says. Not that he has a death wish, but it is hard for him to write without a “context”. “I did this dangerous journey along the route of the British Retreat of 1842, deep inside the Taliban territory, not because I enjoyed putting myself in danger, but because I could not have written truthfully without it.” And he had some serendipitous meetings. One such was with “a giant of a man”, called Anwar Khan, a former Taliban operative and an expert on the tribal geopolitics of Afghanistan. The research also included hair-raising escapes. An overindulgent lunch prevented Dalrymple, to take a trip from Jalalabad to a nearby town. On that very day, the local government decided to burn down poppy crops in that town, a move which resulted in a terrible gun-battle, hostage crisis and deaths. And the next day, when elders from the town came down to Jalalabad for parlay, Dalrymple was the only nonlocal allowed to witness the sessions thanks to Khan again—and Dalrymple received nuggets of information that writers usually kill for. And he has been quite lucky rather Dalrymple persistently. Years ago, Tatler wrote a piece about another such marvellous piece of luck; four years into his research for White Mughals, Dalrymple was on a final visit to Hyderabad. He decided to visit a local bazaar to buy metalwork boxes as presents. In that sleepy bazaar he met a stranger who ended up selling Dalrymple not just boxes but manuscripts bought by the shop owner in the sixties, containing a 650-page autobiography of Khair un-Nissa’s first cousin. With that manuscript and some more files, Dalrymple pieced together the book, originally planned as a general study of late eighteenthcentury British officials who had gone native.
“By the age of 21, I considered myself pretty well-travelled and could hold up my head high. Now I wish to see more of South East Asia and I do travel a lot”
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THE MA STER STORY TELLER //
Chapter 3
The One Big Festival
he expression of going native is a peculiar one—it could be said (just a little bit) about Dalrymple himself. He has made India one of his home. His three children partly grew up here. He has closely collaborated with Indian (and global) writers and experts for his books, and he has been one of the three founders of the Jaipur Literature Festival, one of the most prominent literature festivals in India.
In the past few years, the festival has grown manifold, and it has been exploring bolder, different themes and styles of writing—for example a session on prison diaries which was in spotlight the previous year. The focus has been increasingly on Indian writers from the margins, especially Dalit authors. Dalrymple is honest enough to pile praise on the lady who he believes has more to do with the change than he. “Between Namita and I we cut the world. She gets South East Asia, and I get the rest. She gets to invite 180 people and I get to invite around a 70; rather tragic. Between the two of us, Namita is
return of a king; About the book The Return of the King: In the spring of 1839, the British invade Afghanistan for the first time. Led by lancers, nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the high mountain passes and re-established on the throne Shah Shuja ulMulk. On the way in, the British army faces little resistance. But after two years of occupation, the Afghan
people rise in answer to the call for jihad and the country explodes into rebellion. The First Anglo-Afghan War ended in Britain’s greatest military humiliation of the nineteenth century: an army of the then most powerful nation in the world ambushed in retreat and utterly routed by poorly-equipped tribesmen.
THE AUTHOR’S VOICE “You escape the British and get an insight into what is going on in the head of the others. The British sources see bearded fanatics, but when you start asking why would a whole bunch of people start taking up arms against one of the strongest armies in the world at that time, you start getting a clearer picture of the times. For instance you meet a young noble man, Abdullah Khan, who has his girlfriend seduced by a British official and he gets angry. There is Mia Masjeedi, not paid by the British for rising against Shah Shuja so he is angry with the British as well. And when he tries to surrender, to give himself up, the British burn down
his home with his wife and children inside. So, he becomes an implacable enemy. He wants to drive the last English soldier out of his land. Amanoullah Khan, a noble man, wants the British out because his estates are captured by them. One by one you start putting faces to the causes and you start getting a clearer picture. The Taziks had their camps, the Hazaras had theirs, but the British can’t see it because they see a wall of Afghans who are shooting at them. But the Afghan accounts humanises the cause and there are such detailed records of it. To retrieve that from the vaults of history is a highly satisfying task.”—William Dalrymple
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\\ THE MA STER STORY TELLER
the one who is interested in suppressed literature, whether you are talking of Dalits or anyone else from the margins. I on the other hand, am more into inviting writers who I admire. Personally, I would turn the focus on writers from China and South East Asia, Palestine. I would like to see more biographies. Cutting-edge novels. We make a huge effort to avoid publicity of the frivolous and put focus on books. This year, too, we have Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha, really solid thinkers. Hardcore.” For the person who has been giving the microphone to Indian writers, we had to ask; does he believe that non-resident Indian writers can lend an authenticity to the ‘Indian voice’? “The authentic Indian voice is one of those chimeras like the concept of ‘real’ India which is always somewhere else. There are a billions of different Indias and a thousand more varieties thereof. I wouldn’t discount any literature on the account of a writer’s address. Then you lose Jhumpa Lahiri, who I believe to be a strong writer. Her Unaccustomed Earth made me weep me with pleasure, By that same token, Joyce wouldn’t be an Irishman and Ulysses, written during Joyce’s selfimposed exile, should not be considered an Irish novel. So, I believe the entire concept of authentic Indian voice is problematic.” Dalrymple also acknowledges that it is a tricky proposition pleasing all at the same time. His book, The Age of Kali ran into controversy over the interpretation of the word meenakshi. The word allegedly became ‘fish-eye’ rather than ‘eyes shaped like a fish’. “Inevitably you make errors and there are interpretations which people don’t like. I believe that if you are courteous to your critics, the task gets easier. What I believe to be important, and what I do, is send off the script to experts. For this book, it was Russian and Afghan specialists, East India Company experts and people who knew the geopolitical history of Afghanistan. If you can do that, you can pick up an awful lot of errors and controversies before it gets published. Having said that, there
will always be some (errors) which will get through. I have a list on my Blackberry of six errors that have already been spotted. You have to be prepared to make errors and be held accountable for them.” What he would vouch for is his style—he acknowledges that it is what he loves and continued to carry throughout his career as a historian-author. “The White Mughal, The Last Mughal and Return of the King, are narratives in the classical historical sense. It is a style in which very few are writing (in India) nowadays with the exception of Ram Guha (Ramachandra), who has been writing on 20th Century political events with rigorous research and turning it palatable for a general audience. At the end of the day, it is lovely that there are so few who are writing like us, because it gives me my little USP,” he chuckles. Mentions of his work is always peppered with mentions of colleagues, peers and collaborators. He speaks highly of historian and j o u r n a l i s t Ru d r a n s h u Mukherjee: “a friend who is very, very helpful and extremely generous with his advice.” And Mahmood Farooqui: “Persian and Urdu are the keys to my research and the person who has been closely collaborating with me on the projects has been Mahmood Farooqui.” And then there is the indispensable Bruce Wannel: “He sort of moves into a tent in our garden for six months. In the morning we meet up and work on texts together. We jot down names. Often, names are made more ‘familiar’ in the native tongue, and thus gets a bit garbled. Say, Colonel Hop-a-kins for Colonel Hopkins. We have to pay attention.” In good humour, Dalrymple admits that without translators he would have a tough time. “I am not a linguist. I used to speak Hindi better than what I speak now, after living here for so many years. I do know some European languages. But yes, I wouldn’t trust my grasp over Urdu and Persian with the kind of technical texts that we are dealing over here.”
“We have three very different children. Ibbi’s the one who shares our passions. Simon’s completely different and would rather spend time reading up and writing on the Higgs-Boson particle. Adam, is interested in football so far”
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THE MA STER STORY TELLER //
Chapter 4
The Treasure Hunt
or a man who was born in Scotland and brought up on the shores of the Firth of Forth, he seems surprisingly at home in India. Maybe it is time that people stopped writing or commenting on just how comfortable he is. It was in his gap year that Dalrymple first visited the Subcontinent, teaching at a school and working for Mother Teresa. He found it, “a complete shock” but after the first month he “fell in love with the place.” By the time he went up to
of the Taliban. So you have this extraordinary feeling of history just repeating itself. The political geography remains the same, and as you travel around the country you feel the parallels grow rather than diminish.” It is history repeating itself that finds centrality in his books, the rest is made easy because he likes his work. “The methodology starts with the simple act of reading. Then you move to more detailed research; and then to finding the resource which is the maximum struggle. It takes long time. Yet, if you really like what you do it never feels like work. It is like a treasure hunt.”
A short history of a master storyteller •1965: Born in Edinburgh, educated at Ampleforth College, North Yorkshire •1984 to 1989: Trinity College, Cambridge •1989: Dalrymple moves to India. In Xanadu is published. He also writes travel books—City
A historical account of the Sepoy Mutiny which was also Dalrymple’s sixth book to highlight his ongoing affair with India
of Djinns and From the Holy Mountain. Awards include the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the French Prix d’Astrolabe •2002: White Mughals, his first history book, is published •2006: Dalrymple co-founds the Jaipur Literary Festival; and The Last Mughal is published
Cambridge, his future path was set: he was going to be a writer. What fascinated him were the trappings history, and that not knowing it or complete denial of it was dangerous. “There are so many parallels between then and now. The West has installed on the throne in Kabul a man from the same tiny sub-tribe. Shah Shuja (ruler between 1839 and 1842) and President Hamid Karzai are both Popalzai, while the tribe which brought down Shah Shuja was the Ghilzais, who now make up the foot-soldiers
By now contently sipping on his wine and superbly excited as people start streaming in, he leaves with a final word. “With the Return of the King, I received the holy grail for a historian. First, the new material, second a great story with a tight narrative arc and great characters, and third a story with a global and contemporary appeal. I was lucky enough to have all three.” With that, and a nod, he goes on to present one of the best lectures by an author, in a long time.
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social agenda
\\ HOW STUFF GOES VIR AL
How Stuff
Goes Viral There is no formula to going viral, but there are wise steps that can make you stand out
BY TUSHAR KANWAR
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HOW STUFF GOES VIR AL //
PHOTO BY WALLPAPERSWIDE.COM
“I
need you to make this go viral now!” Words that can make any honest marketer roll their eyes and sigh. Unfortunately, thanks to the mind numbing success of Kolaveri di and Gangnam Style, every business owner, small or big, aspires for their content to go viral on social media, to have content which so overwhelmingly resonates with the audience that they feel the intense urge to share it with all their contacts immediately. So much so, it’s practically the Holy Grail of most social media and marketing campaigns. Think of the traffic, the audience growth, and the brand awareness! The fact of the matter is that you just cannot guarantee anything—neither your insanely cute puppy video nor your business’ new product campaign—will go viral. There is no formula that can, with any certainty, predict whether or not your content will go viral. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you blindly go out and produce just about any content and then pray to the Twitter and Facebook deities to make the magic happen. Having followed truly viral successes online for many years, here are some tips, broad guidelines rather, to ensure your video, blog post, marketing campaign or Facebook post has what it takes to go viral. Be creative: While that may seem to be a no-brainer, bear in mind that most viral content that you end up sharing and remembering has that extra special something done creatively—something that sets it apart from all the cruft. When you are sitting down and planning for your content, do not be afraid to be a little absurd and think outside the box. It’s usually the stuff regular folks find too unusual to attempt that catches on. Ask yourself this, “If I saw this in my newsfeed, would I share it?” If the answer is “no”, think about why and keep improv-
ing the content until you would be proud to share it yourself. If you would not share something, why should anyone else? Be engaging: Gone are the days of fireand-forget one-way messaging. Increasingly, brands are engaging fans through interactive content and user generated content contests. Be engaging—talk to your fans via Facebook, conduct fun quizzes and run buzz-friendly contests—you will find that the more interactive your content is, the more it gets shared. Be current: While your content should without doubt be original, bringing in a current popular trend and putting your own spin on it can be really effective to make that connect with the audience. Capture the moment, and keep it relevant— engage with your audience to find out what they’re talking about and roll those themes into your messaging. Be connected: You could, if your budget allows for it, pitch your brand to big-name social influencers on Twitter and Facebook. I mean, one tweet from them can potentially send your campaign into the viral content hall of fame! But this approach has its downsides as well, since these internet celebrities are hounded day and night for their marketing value and often come across and being “paid sellouts”. What probably has longer-term value is to create content targeted towards smaller connected influencers who share content within their own tribes. Research shows that the million likes often come from thousands of smaller networks internally propagating your content virally. Be genuine: If your content is promotional in intent, do not mask it under the garb of creativity. Be straightforward in your communication with your viewers, and do not try to deceive the consumer about who’s
running the campaign. It’s perfectly possible for branded content to go viral—remember the 2010 Old Spice made-for-Youtube commercials? Be shareable: Your content isn’t going to
TIPS & TOOLS Creativity can take you places, especially if you wandering in the web space. Think different and don't be afraid to experiment. Remember, the regular does not have any recall value. Make sure that you remain honest to your viewers. The content can be as absurd as you want it to be, but your intent should be made clear. You are here to market your product, do that openly! One of the biggest lessons of networking is to make contacts and stay connected. Each social media celebrity comes with a set of fans, and if this celebrity promotes your brand, you have better chances of going viral. So choose and use your contacts wisely. Think about the last few videos you remember that went viral. Do you find a connecting dot? They were mostly funny and carried positive ideas. Being funny is hard and that's why funny videos are popular. Try to bring out a little humour, it will take you long distances. If someone really likes what you have shared, and wants to spread it, then help him do that. Make your content shareable. Put up share buttons; connect it to as many social media platforms as you can and watch it go viral!
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\\ HOW STUFF GOES VIR AL BLOG WATCH
be anywhere even in the same pin code as viral if it is difficult to share, and people have to jump through hoops to share it. Make sharing your content easy-allow video to be embedded in other blogs, put share buttons on your web or blog page, and push the content out on Facebook and twitter where sharing it is just one easy click away. Also, incentivise sharing—if you are running a social media contest, you can reward participants with an extra entry for retweeting the contest message. Be mobile aware: Phones, not PCs, are where your audience consumes little tidbits of information all through the day, so if your content does not work on mobile phones, it can not go viral. Plain and simple. Make sure you have a mobile web version for your site which places the content front and centre, making it easy to consume and share. Be humorous: Take a look at your Facebook news feed, or your email inbox. Do you not notice a lot of funny stuff getting shared? Laughing together brings millions of people closer each day, and if you can tap into that emotion with your content, go for it! Be positive: If you want to see your content getting some share-love, focus on the positive. Studies show that content that evokes high-arousal emotions (i.e., awe, anger, and anxiety) is more viral, with awe-inspiring (positive emotion) stuff edging out sadness-inducing (negative emotion) stuff in terms of virality. Be list-friendly: Would this column have grabbed your attention faster if we’d called it “The 10 Best Ways for your Content to Go Viral”? It’s a proven fact that headlines with numbers drive greater response than those without. Keep that in mind. Additional Reading: Mashable’s Going Viral Visualized (infographic): http:// on.mash.to/W5UTNo Tushar Kanwar, a self-confessed gizmo-holic, is Bengaluru-based technology freelancer, who has contributed to leading Indian technology publications for years.
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It is not about Honey Singh A few days ago, I didn’t know there was a rapper called Yo Yo Honey Singh (no, seriously). Today, I know more about him than I need to. Yo Yo Honey Singh is a punjabi rapper, supposedly popular. He has written and sung some offensive lyrics, where he raps about women in (im) purely sexual terms and often, violently so. Not surprisingly, activist groups have been outraged. At one level of the spectrum there is the question of bad taste and obscenity, at the other end is the concept of free speech. It is next to impossible to legislate bad taste. Obscenity can be, but it is a slippery slope. You find Honey Singh’s lyrics offensive; I find swear words that suggest incest offensive; some find homosexuality offensive; there are people who find paintings offensive; many more find books offensive. Unfortunately, you cannot have things one finds ‘offensive’ banned in a democracy. On Yo Yo Honey Singh and his alleged lyrics (his lawyers claim that they were not written by him) the rationale used is that it promotes misogyny. I could give you an academic argument that no message is strong enough to pursuade its audiences so thoroughly; especially a set that consumes messages from a multitude of media and chooses which to accept; but this is not my classroom. I could give you the strawman argument; did you laugh at that famous chamatkar balatkar speech in 3 Idiots; did you dance to jumma-chumma de-de? The list of films and TV shows that are misogynistic are too many. And, why do they succeed? Because they reflect society we live in. Every time media tries to create content that is not regressive, not misogynistic, it fails. Years ago, a channel had created a show that featured a female protagonist who fought for women’s issues. The show flopped.
Harini Calmur
Post-show research revealed the audience feedback—‘aurat ghar ke bahar jayegi, toh balatkar to hona hi hai’. Fact remains that our society is deeply misogynistic and that attitude will take time to change. Given the misogynistic nature of society—the state has to bear a greater burden in ensuring that equality for women does not remain a paper provision. The System has to modify its processes and procedures, sensitise its employees and come down heavily on non-Constitutional bodies such as khap panchayats from impinging on women’s freedom. The State, the System and Society have been failing on most counts vis-a-vis women’s rights, as words such as caste, community and vote banks, have succeeded in tethering women’s rights. In such a scheme, item numbers or Honey Singhs are diversionary tactics—we can discuss freedom and obscenity; objectification and misogyny, till kingdom come. Neither the rapper nor the dancer cause rape. That is the product of a society that kills its women. A society that values machismo, where honour means beheading a sister for marrying outside community and where culture means covering up a woman. It is a product of a system of policing that makes women unsafe; of political parties that choose misogynistic pigs (apologies to pigs) to represent them. Honey Singh outrage diverts collective anger from things that need to be changed, to easily achievable things— say shutting down a new year concert. The outrage is justified; it is a free country. But, in this constantly moving target of outrage scenario, focus on change is lost. And, women remain unsafe. It really is not about Honey Singh. It is about taking a failing system to task and ensuring it delivers. (The blog has been edited and modified for print. To read the blog visit http://calamur.org/gargi/)
PLATFORM
JAI ARJUN SINGH | Columnist, Journalist
Gender and Space
Acknowledging the markers of a patriarchal world
MUCH OF THE recent public discourse
in India has centred on the gang-rape and murder in Delhi last December. The savage crime has led to introspection about the kind of society we are and about the prejudices deeply ingrained in our fabric; there has been discussion of the misogynistic elements of our popular culture, which can both reflect and influence social attitudes. At a cinema-related session I recently moderated at the Apeejay Kolkata Literature Festival, the conversation steered to representations of women in popular Hindi films—about how even seemingly innocuous movies have scenes where the “hero” pursues and harasses a girl until she falls in love with him. On the panel was Shyam Benegal, who himself has been such a sensitive portrayer of women that he is sometimes referred to as a “feminist director”. Unfortunately, the word “feminist” can draw ambivalent reactions. Many people I know are not comfortable describing themselves as such, because it is sometimes used as a derisive term, built around the stereotype of a man-hating woman who
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is venting her personal frustrations. But as the journalist Rebecca West said with ironic terseness, feminism is not a complicated idea at all—it is merely “the radical notion that women are people”. Seeing women as sentient human beings appears not to be easy in the Indian context, where they are typically treated as either objects to be possessed or goddesses to be worshipped. The two things often go together: the image of women as custodians of a family’s “honour” easily becomes a pretext to suppress them, to deny them basic rights such as freedom of movement. (Those goddess idols you see in temple—they stay rooted where they are, unless they are carried by men.) In the current climate, then, it is important—even for those who consider themselves liberal—to constantly be reminded of the many forms of discrimination that women face on an everyday basis. Some fine books on the subject have been published recently, among them Nivedita Menon’s Seeing Like a Feminist, which is a clear-sighted setting out of the feminist position as it tries to shift the
ABOUT THE WRITER Jai Arjun Singh is a New Delhibased freelance writer-cumjournalist. He has written for Yahoo! India, Business Standard, The Hindu, The Man, Tehelka, Outlook Traveler, The Sunday Guardian and The Hindustan Times. His book about the making of the cult film Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro was published by Harper Collins. He has also edited The Popcorn Essayists: What Movies Do to Writers, an anthology of film-related essays for Tranquebar. He writes a blog called Jabberwock
markers of a patriarchal world. There is much food for thought in Menon’s book, but one section I found particularly stimulating was the one about the fluidity of gender— built on the idea that the classification of people into watertight “male” and “female” categories can be misleading. Referencing the work of the feminist philosopher Judith Butler, as well as observations of gender roles in pre-colonial African cultures, Menon writes that being specifically a man or specifically a woman is to a large extent a “performance” that most people engage in, according to what society expects of them. Human bodies are really quite versatile and complex, occupying positions along a spectrum (lactation can be induced in men, for example), but due to stern cultural codes “a range of bodies becomes invisible or illegitimate”. Thus, a mother might worry about her son’s bulging breasts and a doctor might tell her that surgery might be required—though it is not a biologically “abnormal” condition. Another recently published book that touches on gender performances
platform
JAI ARJUN SINGH // HAVE AN OPINION ABOUT THIS COLUMN? WISH TO SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS AND IDEAS ON THIS MONTH’S ISSUE?
— Write to us editorial@democraticworld.co.in
and learned behaviour is Why Loiter? Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets, co-written by Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade. The authors point out that in public spaces in India, the act of constant self-surveillance by women produces what the French thinker Michel Foucault called Disciplined Bodies. “At bus stops and railway stations,” they note, “a woman will often hold a file, folder or book close to her chest, keep her eyes averted and seem to focus inward rather than outward [...] the average woman will occupy the least possible space, rendering herself as inconspicuous as she can.” For a male reader, Why Loiter? is an eye-opening analysis of how hard it can be for women to use public spaces in a relaxed manner. Especially disturbing, I thought, was a chapter about the disgraceful shortfall in public toilets for women even in big cities, a feature of urban planning that tells us something significant about the still-prevalent attitude that a woman’s place is in the home—that she has no business wandering about too much. A more piquant approach to the subject of feminism can be found in The Fabulous Feminist: A Suniti Namjoshi Reader, which includes extracts from Namjoshi’s previously published work such as the 1981 book Feminist Fables. These page-long fables are fresh takes on existing folk-
Seeing women as sentient human beings appears not to be easy in the Indian context, where they are typically treated as either objects to be possessed or goddesses to be worshipped... idols you see in temple—they stay rooted where they are...” tales and myths, done to emphasise the workings of social dominance. Much of their content is didactic, but also entertaining. Namjoshi compresses a lot of social observation and sarcasm into a few pithy lines. In one fable a Brahmin who wanted a son is given a daughter instead. “Though only a woman, she was a Brahmin, so she learned very fast, and then they both sat down and meditated hard.” (Of course, the father’s purpose in meditating is to ask again for a son, and Vishnu grants him this wish but not quite in the way he had expected.) In a Beauty and the Beast retelling, the lovelorn Beast is not a nobleman but a lesbian; since the books she reads make it clear that women love men, she decides that she can not be human. Questions of what is socially permissible are discussed elsewhere, too. “A plant with feet is not natural,” says the mother of a plant (or a human girl?) that has had the temerity to pull out its roots and prance about. Namjoshi’s original manuscript title for Feminist Fables was The Monkey and the Crocodiles, and the
story by that name is one of her most representative works. In it, a monkey who has grown up with two crocodile friends near a riverbank decides she wants to explore. The crocodiles try to warn her of beasts that are “long and narrow with scaly hides and powerful jaws”, but the monkey goes anyway and returns years later, badly injured. “Did you encounter the beasts?” her friends ask, “What did they look like?” “They looked like you,” she answers slowly. “When you warned me long ago, did you know that?” The story can be seen as an allegory for parents warning a daughter of a world populated by other humans who look like them and might not seem intrinsically threatening, but who could turn out to be predators. Namjoshi’s work, like the other books mentioned above, is a constant reminder of how hostile our world can be to 50 per cent of our population—and of the urgent need for both sexes to participate in the carving out of spaces and mindsets that let women live on their own, human terms. (The views expressed in this column are of the author alone)
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looking back
PHOTO BY SURESH GOLA
\\ M.K. R AINA
THE
PASSIONATE PILGRIM
Playwright, actor, director,producer and activist, M.K. Raina talks about theatre, films, culture and the lack of it BY MANJIRI INDURKAR
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looking back M.K. R AINA //
I
f you are in your early twenties and addicted to watching commercial cinema, then you might remember M.K. Raina as a man who played Sonam Kapoor’s father in Aisha. Or, as the man who played Anushka Sharma’s father in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. If you do, you can put the magazine down; this article is not for you. It is for a reader who, when he or she thinks of theatre, thinks of M.K. Raina. Who, when he or she talks about inspired performances, talks about Raina’s role in 27 Down, who does not forget to discuss Ek Ruka Hua Faisla either. Only such a reader will be interested to know why M.K. Raina cut himself off Hindi parallel cinema. She or he will wish to know why he did irrelevant roles in commercial films such as Aisha or Rab Ne... Such a reader will be surprised by Raina’s answer; that being an actor was never his ambition. M.K. Raina passed out of National School of Drama in the year 1970, with a best actor award. Ironically, he never aspired to be actor. “Being an actor never fascinated me,” says he, adding, “I was always a stage person, I fancied the roles of a director, a producer and a writer more.” Had he chosen it, he could also have become a teacher at NSD. Right after his graduation, Raina was asked to teach at the institute— an honour bestowed on few. He declined the offer. His reason: “I was never a nine-to-five person. Staying at a single place was impossible for me.” There cannot be a more truthful sentence; if one notices the way he talks, the way he sits and the myriad expressions that flash across his face, one understands that this man has an active brain and can’t sit still. He is a restless soul, so restless in fact, that the very day he finished shooting for his debut film—27 Down—he took the first train to Delhi. But more on that later. Raina was offered 27 Down while
“Many directors tried to make similar kind of films with big budgets and bigger stars. That just fell flat. The biggest mistake was that they also tried to become producers. For small budget directors, this was a disastrous decision”—M. K. Raina still studying at NSD. One fine day, while he was sitting in his hostel room at NSD, Naseer (Naseeruddin Shah), a year junior and a good friend, came knocking. He informed Raina that ‘a director’ had come to meet him. When Raina went downstairs, he came face-to-face with Awtar Krishna Kaul—a young director who made just a single gem of a film before his untimely death. That film was to be 27 Down. Kaul asked Raina out for tea, and Raina, Kaul and a mutual friend went off to New Delhi’s Bengali market. “Kaul and Bakshi (the friend) got into an intellectual discussion about literature and what not,” Raina recalls. “They gave me a book and said why don’t you read this and meet us later. I took it, read it and made a few notes. Then we met again to discuss the book. They asked me if I drank, and I said ‘why not!’ Somewhere between the drinks I was told that I was selected for Kaul’s first film.” He was cast opposite Raakhee, who was already a veteran actor and a star. But Raina was not intimidated, even though he had barely stepped out of NSD. He says that at times “arrogance is a good thing”. On sets, people would tell him to “behave himself and not be too intimidated” by the superstar. Raina, blissfully arrogant as he was, told himself that if Raakhee was a superstar, he, too, was a trained theatre actor who had Shakespeare and Munshi Premchand dramas in his repertoire.
This arrogance, made him shy away from Raakhee on the first day of the shoot. Then when he saw the actor’s dedication to her craft and saw how she without a fuss worked her way through crowded trains and stations during the shoot, they became friends. The film shoot also made him realise how he did not like living in Bombay (now Mumbai). “The thing about Bombay,” he says is that “one has to ask for work all the time. I knew I had enough talent to get work and keep my life going.” So, the moment he finished the shoot, he booked a ticket in third-class sleeper, made a bed out of newspapers and returned to Delhi. Here, he founded his own theatre group called Prayog, and occasionally went down to Mumbai to do films when he got exciting offers. He talks fondly about the time he spent in NSD, calling himself and his generation the ‘guinea pigs of Indian theatre’. That was a time when Indian theatre was moving away from the shadows of western theatrics and trying to find its voice. And that was also a time when Indian cinema was experiencing a major change—when legends like Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal and Govind Nilhani were trying to redefine cinema. Those were the first days of Parallel cinema. “That was an exciting time to be,” says Raina. He expresses his disappointment on the current state of Indian cinema.
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looking back \\ M.K. R AINA
Juror Number 7: Raina played a fickle juror in Ek Ruka Hua Faisla
The fall of the parallel cinema movement, according to Raina, was caused by the focus shift of many of its frontrunners. “Several of the directors tried to make similar kind of films with big budgets and bigger stars. That just fell flat,” says the thespian. “The biggest mistake of them all was that directors also tried to become producers. For small budget directors, producing and directing a big budget film was a disastrous decision,” he adds as an afterthought. The fall of parallel cinema also brought upon the end of Raina’s film career. For almost two decades he did not act in films. The films that he does today do not do justice to Raina’s potential or talent. Then why does he choose to be a part of such ventures? Because he loves a picnic! “The roles are easy, the money is good and it is fun to be a part of such a posh picnic.” Films, he stresses, have never been his priority. And they never will be. Theatre is his life and his soul. Today, when he is not-so-active in the theatre scene, he is busy reviving the Kashmiri art and culture. M.K. Raina or Maharaj Krishna Raina—a Kashmiri pandit—was born and brought up in Srinagar. He learnt acting in Kashmir; he fell in love with theatre in Kashmir. When Raina was a boy of nine, he performed in his first play— Neki Badi—written by his school principal, the famous Kashmiri poet Dinanath Nadim. In it, he played a flower in a jungle, where birds and plants get together to fight an evil
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DOSSIER Winds Of Change: Raina played a school pricipal in the critically acclaimed TZP
NAME: M.K. Raina PROFESSION: Dramatist, Director, Actor 1970: He passed out of NSD 1974: His debut film 27 Down was released PRAYOG: His theatre group, he has directed and performed in more than 130 plays Aisha: Raina played Sonam Kapoor's father
AWARDS: He was honoured with the Sangeet Natak Akademi award in 1995
owl. That play laid the foundation of his theatre years. So, it isn’t surprising that when he was offered a state scholarship for studying drama, he abandoned what could have been a flourishing career as a dentist, took a train to Delhi, gave an interview at the NSD and decided to settle here. “Tum ab kahi nahi ja rahe ho, tum yahi rahoge (You are not going anywhere, you are staying here)” were the words of his interviewers at NSD—Mohan Rakesh, Ebrahim Alkazi and Mukesh Awasthi. Kashmir of that time wasn’t the Kashmir we know. It was a more beautiful and peaceful Kashmir akin to the paradise on earth that it is often called. The Kashmir which gave
him everything is in shambles today. This fact pains him the most. Some 12-13 years ago, he went back to Srinagar, and what he saw there —the years of violence and bloodshed—had robbed his beloved land off its beauty. The culture was dead, art was dead and life was dead, it seemed to him. The visit left him in distress, and he decided that he had to do something for his land. He spoke to a few like-minded people and decided to start a cultural movement. As the first step, the group began to organise drama classes and invited people for it. “The first day, just two people turned up,” he tells us. “There were four teachers and two students! The morale was running low. I informed my group that I will teach even if one person turns up. We started the classes and in seven days we had 30 people showing up. And after a few months of practice our play was ready and Rabindra Auditorium opened its doors for a cultural performance after years,” he adds smiling proudly. Today, his theatre group travels country-wide performing from ‘Kashmir to Kanyakumari’ quite literally. Raina also started a pan-India literacy movement. Today, he is still trying to change the way formal education
looking back M.K. R AINA //
FILM FOLIO 1974: 27 Down: His debut film, he was cast opposite to Raakhee 1980: Satah Se Uthata Aadmi: Also known as Arising from the Surface was an Indian drama film, directed by Mani Kaul. It was screened at the Cannes film festival
“Culture has gone out of the society; it is no more our priority. The India of today lacks thinkers. There is an intellectual bankruptcy in today's time” —M. K. Raina is being imparted to students. He goes to the smaller public schools and teaches the kids through drama, performance and visual arts. If you, like me, were taught Shakespeare by enacting his plays instead of reading them, then you will appreciate the power of this rather silent movement better. It is a movement that will bear fruits years from now, it is a movement whose value shall be realised only when these children grow up to become citizens of our country and contribute towards nation building positively. In the words of the man, “It is not a glamorous movement, so no one talks about it.” And the man himself is much like his movement. He is a simple being who has dedicated his life to stage; his problems are like yours and mine. He, too, like you and me, gets angry with the system, with the governance and when the politics becomes disruptive. And he uses theatre as a
medium to convey his feelings. It is not about the bread and butter, but theatre is about life, purpose, and a way to give back to people. And it is a medium that has given him his closest friends and confidants. If he talks fondly of his friendship with Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri, who he met at NSD, he talks about his friendship with the legendary Safdar Hashmi with a sense of nostalgia and loss. Safdar Hashmi lost his life while performing his street play called Halla Bol, in an attack by the goons of the Indian National Congress. When this news reached Raina, he rushed to the hospital thinking, “Haath ki haddi tooti hogi, ye sab to hota rehta hai.” When he reached the hospital, it was a sight of horror that greeted him. Hashmi was unconscious, bleeding profusely. Lying on the bed of a government hospital, he was moments away from his death. Raina and friends
1986: Ek Ruka Hua Faisla: Basu Chatterjee's rendition of Twelve Angry Men 2004: He made a 'comeback' in Farhan Akhtar's Lakshya as Priety Zinta's father
took Hashmi to a better hospital, but the doctor informed them that “only a miracle” could save Hashmi. A miracle that never occurred as the very next day Hashmi died, leaving a vacuum in Raina’s life and in the Indian theatre scene. As a cultural activist he worries that “culture has seeped out of the society; it is no longer a priority.” In the wake of recent incidences, one could but agree. Crimes such as the one that happened in Delhi recently, do not occur in a ‘cultured and a civilised’ society. “There is an intellectual bankruptcy in today’s time,” he says, and falls silent. A silence that is a rebellion against all that is wrong. This silence is similar to his other endeavours (strong and motivated) through which he is trying to bring out a change. If he succeeds, the success will be his, but the celebrations will be ours. If he fails, the failure will be his, but the sufferings will be ours. For a country stuck in a time of anguish and hopelessness, people like Raina are the silver linings. They should be celebrated, lest we forget.
I Wish I Could Be M.K. Raina hailed from a family of doctors and engineers. Almost everyone in his family was a dentist. So it was natural for him to take up science in school. He studied biology and chemistry and was prepared to take up medicine when a drama scholarship came knocking. This scholarship provided him with an opportunity to study arts and he decided to break away from the family tradition and became a dramatist instead. Raina, however, waves it all aside as conjecture. “Even if I had studied medicine, I don’t know what I would have done. I don’t think I had the capability of becoming a clerk even,” says he and breaks into laughter. He tells me that he isn’t good at anything else—apart from the stage. Perhaps he is not. But that’s a blessing.
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Issue | A look at India’s foreign trade policy
Looking
Beyond the Borders India’s engagement in its wider neighbourhood, as far as its Foreign Policy is concerned, is weak for a political and economic power that claims to be rising, and interested, in managing the world’s affairs. India’s relations with regional agglomerations such as Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and ASEAN provide a mixed bag of insights into Indian foreign policy at work. However, the country appears ‘most weak’ when liaisons with its immediate neighbours are concerned—can building better trade relations improve things? BY ROHINI BANERJEE IS INDIAN Foreign Policy constrained? If we look at the
TRADE INS
THE BREAK; Citizens of
the South Asian countries, from the 1950s to the 1990s, had a per capita income between $300 to $500, if they were ‘doing well’. From 1991, all of these countries, especially India, started changing its destiny and within two decades, all South Asian countries showed a marked change in their per capita income.
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larger paradigm on how Indian Foreign Policy is conducted, then we will have to borrow from Shyam Saran who explained its scope as, an “immediate neighbourhood” including South Asia (plus); then an extended periphery including Central and South East Asia and South Pacific; and the larger section where there is maximum clarity on what India needs to do (Europe and Africa). In that larger section, Foreign Policy is largely dictated by economic ideas, constraints and ties. In South East Asia, India it is said wants to do ‘much more’, but because of India’s ability and image (when compared to China) it is not able to. India has made loud noises about Looking East. But if it really wanted to look east, the country by now should have had its presence in the area. Why have we not been able to have better ties with Myanmar? Because, to do that we will also have to make a bridge between Bangladesh, eastern India, northeastern India and Myanmar. India, it seems, is constrained by our own internal shortcomings. Perhaps, that is why it has not being able to successfully counter Indian insurgent groups based in Myanmar. To understand the region better, one has to look at its history; India, Bangladesh, Paki-
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stan and Sri Lanka, some 60 years ago, were all a part of one singular geopolitical entity. Myanmar was part of British India, as was India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Sri Lanka was under the British, so geographically, politically and monetarily, South Asia was one entity. There were economic similarities. When they got fragmented, from being an integrated region, South Asia became non-integrated, fragile. That also hit the economic prowess of every country and the petty quarrels that came forth due to the fragmented structure of all these entities, including India, made the region poorer—the region was not organised enough to boost business or exports. But it all changed from 1991, there was a growth spurt in the region and the rate of growth was fastest in India. The domino effect rippled beyond the borders of this country. There was a change in the group. Suddenly there was a coherency and coordination in this region, especially if you looked at Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. They started to look at India as a “role model”. So, the countries were deriving ideas and inspiration from each other. DW talked to two experts, Dr Prabir De, RIS and D. Suba Chandran, IPCS, on whether India’s Foreign Policy reflects its trade interests.
issue
FOREIGN POLICY //
PRABIR DE RIS
Prabir De is a Fellow at the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS). De works in the field of international economics and has research interests in international trade and development. He was a visiting research scholar of the ADBI PRABIR DE // India’s foreign policy tra-
ditionally used to be South Asia-centric. Today, however, it has a more global interests—as is apparent by the visits made by global, political and economic luminaries to India. For the past eight years, India has shown exponential growth in its bid to counter China and it is finally on the world map as a emerging and developing market, and India’s foreign policy, too, is showing these marked changes. India’s erstwhile Nehruvian policies, based on the ideas of detachment—we will not go to the Russian side, neither will we be a part of NATO—all
those ideas are slowly changing. India is an active member of world forums and sessions, whether economic or political. It is no longer a non-alliance partner. As far as India’s South Asian foreign policies are concerned, the economic engagements have become more pronounced and as such our foreign policy has started to show that trend to engage more with the neighbours. Economic integration between India and her South Asian neighbours has become more. Of course the relationship is not the same with everyone as various dimensions and variations are present in
this equation. Between India and Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, in terms of trade and investment, major imports are from India. In case of Nepal, 60 per cent of its imports come from India. In case of Bangladesh, over 20 per cent imports is from India, while in case of Bhutan, 80 per cent is from India while 30 per cent of Sri Lanka's imports are from Indian shores. What about India? Truly India does not depend on its neighbours as much as they do. Our economic profile requires a large amount of energy, to get that we cannot depend simply on our South Asian neighbours. India also needs a large amount of technological expertise for which it cannot depend exclusively on its South Asian neighbours. India’s dependence is less than that of its neighbours, but it is rising fast. When it comes to textile and ready-made garments; India imports a large amount from Bangladesh. Because Bangladesh is one of the top three garment export countries in the world. India has allowed dutyfree exports from Bangladesh. These changes, especially exchanges, are reflected in our foreign policy. Similarly, India exports tea from Sri Lanka, dry fruits from Pakistan and Afghanistan and there is a good amount of exchange between the countries as far as services are concerned. In Myanmar, India is much engaged in its politics. The country was one of the forward-looking and growing countries till the military took it over in the 1968. Today, economic sanctions have been lifted and people of Myanmar are looking more towards India as a “big brother”, as they are somewhat frustrated by the Chinese engagement with the country from 1998. We can safely say that India is more invested in developing activities in Myanmar, roads, infrastructure and education, than China ever was. Our Foreign Minister visited Myanmar in 2012. ONGC now owns stakes in two blocks of gas reserves in Myanmar. To bring that gas to India, the companies will need the Bangladeshi approval and if it cannot obtain that they will have to sell it to China. It seems that the one-way street is getting more integrated and, foreign policy is starting to manifest the changes.
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issue
\\ FOREIGN POLICY
D. SUBA CHANDRAN // We have to see the
question in two sets of responses that India in terms of economic situation within the region, especially when it comes to the immediate neighbours. Trade issues never made sense in building a better relationship with any one of our neighbouring countries—at least it seems thus when you look at the foreign policy that has been pursued by India. In fact, if India had indeed taken that attitude, then the SAARC would have taken a different avatar altogether. When it comes to our neighbouring countries, say a Pakistan or Bangladesh, an even if a better relationship would improve or enhance trade, neither India nor the neighbouring countries would pursue that option because of national pride. There is a wrong notion of bilateral relationship comes in the way of India pursuing a right Foreign Policy using economic means as a roadmap to build better relationships. India’s relationship with South East Asia or with Europe, economic factor does play a significant factor in developing our Foreign Policy. Today, IndiaASEAN ties is both a product and a strategy to enhance the larger India and South East Asia strategic partnership. Same is the case with India and Europe. Perhaps, we are moving towards a similar relationship with China as well. Trade and bilateral investments (by India) in China is playing a role in shaping India’s Foreign Policy more than its ties with the neighbouring countries— and it seems that it is unlikely to be feature as a factor anytime soon. Take Afghanistan and Myanmar for instance. India is looking at the two countries in terms of aid relationships—India is asking herself about how much it can invest in Myanmar or Afghanistan. It is not a relationship based on mutual investment, Rather, it is a strategy to upset someone else’s presence in these two countries—in case of Myanmar it is to ensure that Chinese footprint is kept minimal and in case of Afghanistan, it is of course Pakistan’s footprint. That is not an economic consideration but an aid relationship. There is talk around how “we” are pursuing a Look East Policy and how as early as the Vajpay government showed interest in the neighbouring countries around India.
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D.SUBA CHANDRAN
Director, IPCS My question is that who are these “We” collective that we constantly refer to? If you are talking about the Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) then perhaps, yes. The commerce ministry and others who could actually benefit from the economic liaisons are actually interested in pursuing the matter further. They don’t see it in the same paradigm as the PMO sees it. That is why despite a lot of promises been made by the PMO, the same is not actually translated on an economic level. Our investment has not moved—this Looking Towards the East or wherever we were supposed to look at, is not by a monolithic “we”. Finance, Commerce, Education and Petroleum Ministry are not on the same page as the PMO and the Foreign Ministry. I can give you an example to illustrate the lack of balance here; Sri Lanka wants an IIT extension in Colombo. While the PMO might very well want to have an extension as well, but the Education Ministry or the UGC has made little headway into the plan— because they are not too keen on that. Trade will continue to grow and expand in a substantial way and there has been a quantum jump in the past few years as far as you see China. But bilateral relationship will not grow in the same way. Especially if you look between 2008 and 2012, there has been exponential trade growth between the two of us. If you look at the foreign relationship, in 2012 we are were we were in 2008. Perhaps, we are waiting for a future date. In
D. Suba Chandran is the Director at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), New Delhi. His primary area of research includes Pakistan’s internal security, Afghanistan, and Jammu&Kashmir. Suba Chandran is currently working on Pakistan In The Next Decade this context, the larger interaction, there has been no negative consequences as well. On the economic side, we are marching, but we are competing with each other for the global or Asian or Africa supremacy talk. We are invested in aid in those areas because business and state agencies are both interested in trade relations there.
PLATFORM ASHOK MALIK | Columnist, Journalist
No Country for Women. India is a country
with many laws, but little law, and a very little fear of the law
IT IS BOTH poignant
and in the broader sense surprising that the year gone by will be defined for many of us by the events of its final fortnight. The horrific and brutal rape of the young woman in New Delhi on the evening of Sunday, December 16, and her subsequent passing in Singapore on December 29, has become the signature of 2012. I remember the night after I heard of the crime. It was difficult to just doze off; there was a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and a gnawing concern as I watched my children sleep. What sort of a world and what sort of city would they grow up in? At least two friends—both of them happened to be active on Twitter at that point—too confessed they were unable to sleep and for similar reasons. Somehow, somewhere the episode—not just the rape but the gruesome act of violence that accompanied and followed it—had stunned us. We were not alone. There has
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been an emotional upsurge in Delhi in the past week. Thanks to the media—shocked by the incident and also driven by the consumer interest in a crime that has such implications for white-collar, middle-class communities in the heart of a metropolis—the issue has been reported and talked about in other cities as well. In 1978, the Billa-Ranga case and the sexual assault on and murder of a young woman in the capital, Geeta Chopra, and the killing of her brother Sanjay had become a national story. In today’s much more connected media age, the quick transmission of the terror of December 16 can only be imagined. To be fair not every—in fact few—rape incident involves such dramatic events on the street and the kidnapping of strangers. Many involve men the victim or survivor knows quite well, as a family member or acquaintance. A study by the police in Indore found “94 per cent of reported molestation of women
Author
Ashok Malik has been a political journalist for over 20 years. He is now an independent columnist living in New Delhi and writing for a variety of publications, both in India and internationally. His area of focus is India’s political economy and foreign policy and their increasing intersection
and children was done by relatives or persons known to the victim”. Apparently a national study came up with a similar figure. A friend of mine who is a police officer once had a long chat with me about sexual crimes against women. She was indignant because a senior police officer in another state had sought to draw a correlation between western clothing and likelihood of being targeted by an assailant. In her 20 years in the Indian Police Service, she said, she had seen victims of rape who ranged from the “age of two to 60”. An overwhelming majority came from rural areas and wore nothing but traditional Indian clothing, dressing in a conservative sari or the like. Most of them had been attacked not by unknown men but those they recognised. My friend’s experiences and assessments reflected both urban and rural settings, because she had been posted in outlying districts as well as larger cities. The broad con-
platform
A SHOK MALIK //
In her 20 years in the IPS, she said, she had seen victims of rape who ranged from ‘two to 60’. A majority came from rural areas and wore sari”
tours of what she was saying would hold true in Delhi as much as in Dhubri. The problem is a far deeper one. It requires policing and sensitisation of the law, but it also calls for social engineering of the male of the species. Unfortunately, none of this is rocket science. It has been known, acknowledged and agonised over for decades. In 1978, the same year as the Billa-Ranga outrage, a film called Ghar was released. It was a remarkable portrayal of the emotional trauma that is the aftermath of rape, and survives far longer than any physical scar. I have thought a lot of Ghar in the past few days, and not just because of its melodious songs (Lata Mangeshkar singing Aaj kal paoon zameen par). The storyline is eerily similar to what happened to that medical student and her friend. In Ghar a young couple are walking home after a film, they are accosted by roadside thugs and brutalised. The incident becomes a media and political cause and then simply dies
away. Over 30 years have passed. Has anything changed? Rekha, the young actor who made a mark for herself in Ghar, is today a senior artiste, almost retired and even an MP. Her life and career have run the gamut. Two generations of Indians have grown up in this period. Yet, the basic, defining problem that was at the core of her first big film all those years ago still remains unresolved. Challenging the mind-set of sexual assault and making our cities and living spaces more secure necessitates education of males and a more equitable gender balance. It also necessitates old-fashioned law enforcement and community policing, including in the form of beat policemen who patrol their streets and know their citizens, whether in the form of sentinels or, in another context, intelligence gatherers. Pitifully, we are seeing too little of this being discussed. Instead, there is talk of the death penalty for rape and esoteric solutions such as
chemical castration. Frankly, not all cases of sexual assault deserve the death penalty. If death is pronounced as automatic punishment for proven rape then not only will it incentivise murder of a victim—and removal of the key witness—but it will also raise the threshold of proving guilt in court. As for castration, chemical or otherwise, it can be considered but it should be noted that punishment—whether imprisonment or castration—can come only after conviction. If our criminal justice system is so slow and lackadaisical and our conviction rate for rape is so low (25 per cent) does it matter if the end- punishment is chemical castration, physical castration, limited-term imprisonment or life imprisonment? That is where the nub lies, in a country with many laws but little law and very little fear of the law. The rest— including the convenient expedient of fast-track courts for some cases of some crimes—is only detail. (All views expressed in this column are of the author)
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good karma \\ CONSERVE INDIA
Founder FOUNDER NAME: Anita Ahuja ORGANISATION NAME: Conserve India STARTED IN: 1998 WEBSITE : www.conserveindia.org
RAGS TO
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Conserve India is working towards making rag-pickers of our country climb the social ladder and earn the respect they deserve BY MANJIRI INDURKAR
good karma CONSERVE INDIA //
An ignorant Wikipedia article describes
rag-pickers as a term for someone who made a living by rummaging through refuse in the streets to collect material for salvage. Then it informs us that while such a practice is no more functional in the first-world, it is active in the so-called third-world countries. And, it goes on to quote an example of India! I know what you will say India is not a third-world country. I know you will say how we are the leaders of the G20 nations, and that we are at par with China in terms of economic growth. I know you remember the GDP figures, like you remember your telephone number. But each morning, that young pre-adolescent who comes to collect the garbage from your place does not understand all your jargons, nor is he interested in them. The man who collects the waste you dump on the streets is unaware of the so-called economic growth that you rant about in gettogethers. Rag-picking is all that he cares about, as it gives him a chance to eke out a living—a hand-to-mouth survival. While most of these people continue to live in inhuman conditions, there are some who escape a bit; get a better home, send their children to school, and go to a doctor when they get ill. Who are these rag-pickers who get a little more lucky? These are the ragpickers who work for Conserve India. Started in 1998 by Anita and Shailendra Ahuja, Conserve India is one of the handful of organisations which takes care of the poorest of poor and ensures that they get their right to a better life. A very long time ago, before the Ahujas started the NGO, one day they met their colony residents and spoke about the heaps and piles of garbage that was nearly submerging their locality. Other residents, too, were rightfully worried about the possibility of germs and infections that could spread due to the mess. So, they decided to team up and clean up the
residential area on their own. In the process, they realised that it was impossible to create a zero-waste zone, owing to the non-biodegradable plastic bags, floating around on every corner of the country. And thus was born Conserve India, an NGO which takes plastic bags from ragpickers, recycles them and turns them into high-end fashionable products. “We wanted to work for the rag-pickers because they really are the most marginalised,” says Anita Ahuja. “They do not have any social skill set or any vocational skill set. We take them in and train them so that they get factory jobs and improve their lives.” When Ahuja began, she collaborated with 25 rag-pickers. Today, the number has gone up to a remarkable 300 workers or collaborators. There were several more former ragpickers who have been promoted to senior ranks, and are now involved in the key functions of the organisation. The process that they follow is quite simple; the rag-pickers collect the waste which is brought in to their factory where it is sorted according to the material, and then it is cleaned, and cut out in proper shapes and sizes, and then it goes into the machines, where it is recycled and converted into thick fabric, which is then used to making the
much fashionable bags. Ahuja informs us that these bags are quite in-demand and that they are able to not just scrape through, but also make profits out these bags. It is these bags which pay for the salaries of the many rag-pickers and the factory workers. For an NGO which started with a mere investment of `10 lakh, they seemed to have done well for themselves. The rag-pickers, who, before Conserve India happened to them, were scrapping through and barely managing on one square meal a day. Today they are rewarded a monthly salary which ranges between `4,800 to `5,200. That is not all. Conserve India’s main ambition was and remains to train rag-pickers and help them climb the economic and social ladder. The collaborators associated with Conserve India are trained so that they can build up a skill set and join the skilled labour set. “Primarily, when they just come in, the rag-pickers are trained in cutting the polythene, identifying colors, and sorting all cuttings, etc. Once a particular person shows promise, we promote him or her to the next level. He or she is then trained in factory work such as running the machines and maintaining them. And they are also responsible for quality control,” says Ahuja. Once the rag-pickers become factory employees, they get benefits such as provident fund, medical insurance, holidays, et al. Their children are sent to schools, run by the community, and are provided with doctors, who also run the community healthcare programme. The rag-pickers have much to benefit from Conserve India; and the most important aspect of the non-government organisation is that they provide rag-pickers the respect they deserve. “When you ask a rag-picker to sit on a chair and treat him or her as your equal, you immediately see a change,” says Ahuja, and goes on to add that, “When you say you love your country, you surely do not mean you love the land, the mud and the rocks in it, right? What is the point of loving the country, if you can not love its people?” A well-made point. While most of us in our blissful ignorant state are still treating our ‘beloved’ country as a dustbin, there are some like Ahuja, who are busy cleaning it.
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READING ROOM
“Dynasty, a political tool in the hands of the ruling class, has become the catalyst for a new colonisation...” — Tavleen Singh
Author
Durbar
Less of literature and more of a slam piece, Durbar is an intelligent and indulgent piece of work BY ROHINI BANERJEE
THERE ARE exasperating books—they
read smoothly even brilliantly in parts and deplorably in rest. They are exasperating because they leave a reader confused—is it even worth the effort? Tavleen Singh’s memoir is one such. It hooks you in some pages or bores the pants off you. There are sentences which make you think did a seasoned journalist actually write it? Then there are sentences which make you wish you were standing by her side when she experienced a slice of India’s equally exasperating and checkered history. Sentences such as “...I ended up doing a course in journalism at the New Delhi Polytechnic only because it was the shortest course on offer” may be honest. As is the sentence “...as a result, I did not discover that the earth moved around the sun until I became a journalist but I learned how to type”. But, they do little to give credibility to an old-time profession or to its participants. Which is important especially today, when newspeople are fast becoming news-makers in their own right (to expand the point I can only request readers to find out Arnav Goswani’s “remixed”
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interviews which are being played by young people at dance parties). Also, a small complaint; why could she not provide her readers a sample of all the brilliant political speeches which she had the fortune of hearing. Personally, I would have given my right arm to know just what Atal Behari Vajpayee said to the congregation at the Ram Lila Maidan in 1977. From a celebrated and well-calibrated author like her, one did expect more of newsroom experiences to fill the pages. Instead of newsrooms, I got more of lazy, booze parties. In most parts, Singh offered beautifullywritten genealogy of famous people. Where they hung out, cool places of yesteryears (again, do we really care?) and how bootlegger’s supply was the only poison available for the rich and famous under Indira Gandhi’s Emergency (oh, poor them!). Singh often feeds us mind-numbingly worthless details of posh people—what they wore and how they smelt—who could be found prowling the drawing rooms of Delhi, where she found most her contacts and fodder. Does the details manage to create an atmosphere? Sure it does, if Nora Roberts
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Singh worked in The Statesman as a reporter, in The Telegraph as a Special Correspondent, as the South Asia correspondent of the Sunday Times, London. She became a freelancer and started writing for India Today and The Indian Express Publisher: Hachette (India) ISBN: 978-93-5009444-0 Price: `599
is your favourite author. The first few chapters of Durbar does serve as a treasure trove of pet names, as well. If you are expecting a baby any time soon, how does Mapu, Roon, Dumpy, Biki or Goodie sound? If Ms Singh is planning a sequel, there were three alternative titles which popped into my mind while I was reading it. How about; My Life with Sonia, Delhi’s Drawing Rooms or Foreign Matters. However, everything is not bad in the book. For the good parts—which make the book well worth it at the end of it all. When Singh really concentrates on writing reportage she gets really, really precise, eloquent and crisply descriptive. The bits in the Kumbh Mela where the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi decides to makes an announcement which booms across the fairground like voice of god, goes on to show the absurdity of India’s political circus. Her portrayal of Rajiv Gandhi’s strengths and weaknesses, the cruelty and stubbornness of his brother Sanjay—are all fascinating bits to read. And she is less unkind to her subjects than a lot of others who have come out with their memoirs recently.
“I am so much better writing short stories. So, this was quite a task”
reading room CRITICS & AUTHORS //
— Madhulika Liddle
Where she earns her readers’ attention is when she writes about the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Her style (which appears burdensome when she talks of Cartier rings or lasagna cooked by Sonia Gandhi), suits passages where she talks of hopelessness and terror of those days.
A takeaway; it is comforting to note that the rich, upper middleclass, public school educated India has changed very little in the years after the Independence. It had little clue then as to what was going on and has little clue now. While the poor were too unempowered then
and too unempowered now to actually make a difference. Thus, one blanket (reductionist) statement that we can take away is that status quo—of not caring—has not changed much. It is a pity, that books such as these will not help matters much either.
Engraved in Stone
Liddle’s third book is a success with its simple plot and intricate storytelling BY ROHINI BANERJEE
THE FIRST Muzaffar Jang book that I happened to lay my
hands on was The Eighth Guest. That was the second in the trilogy consisting of The Englishman’s Cameo, The Eight Guest And Other Muzaffar Jang Mysteries and Engraved in Stone. With her third book, Liddle has established herself as a master storyteller and a desi Agatha Christie; the closest we can get to one. And, I am glad to note, she has won herself a fan in me. What is remarkable about Liddle is her confident grasp over her genre. Add to that her writing style (precise) and you have a hit. This time, too, Liddle transports her readers to the Mughal era (circa 1650s). Jang is back, escorting his elder sister (Zeenat Apa) and her beautiful lady friend (Shireen), to Agra. In the old city of Agra, Jang gets embroiled in a murder at his friend’s house and it is up to Jang to unravel a web, which started at Kabul and Bijapur. Though, the slowest of the three, it makes up for the pace by creating interestingly-layered characters—Mumtaz and Basheer Hassan, Ibrahim, and Jang’s friend, Akram. As always, the best bit is how Liddle manages to impart history lessons (yes, as I said before, I wasn’t paying attention in school) without sounding tedious. This
time though, Liddle does not leave the readers with the delightful footnotes. They were sorely missed. While Liddle focused on Delhi for the previous two books, for Engraved in Stone she takes us to Agra, with a quick detour to Sikandrabad. The best bit about this book is its subtle humour which is spot on and she uses the humour to de-mystify a lot of legends (for example, an exasperated Basheer Hassan informs Jang that Shahjahan did not chop off artisans’ hands after the Taj Mahal was completed). An added attraction in Engraved in Stone was the close examination of the Taj Mahal, the then newly-constructed mausoleum. Though Jang remains the endearing and stoic detective, choosing to listen more, his character does not reveal any new facet. The book does introduce a softer side to the young detective. Yes, there is a smattering of romance, and fortunately and sensibly, it remains only a short bit of the tale. While some loops are tied neatly, one or two bits (a staged dacoity, for instance) left me wishing for a tighter style. For those who have not read a single book in the Jang series, you can start with this one. You will not be disappointed!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Madhulika Liddle lives in Delhi and has worked in hospitality, advertising and instructional design before giving it all up to focus on writing. Her short stories have won several awards, including the top prize at the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association's Short Story Competition, 2003. Besides fiction, Liddle also writes on travel and classic cinema
Book: Engraved in Stone ISBN: 978-93-5009448-8 Publishers: Hachette (India) Price: `395
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WARE
HOUSE
Our pick of the boldest, bravest and craziest gadgets. Glance through the Warehouse page and check them out. Happy hunting!
LEICA S2-P `15,41,680
While you’re out and about, how about an exclusive camera to freeze frames? An old favourite and still available for anyone rich enough to splurge, the Leica S2-P is one camera that is built specifically for the outdoors. Apart from sporting such riches as a 37.5 MP CCD sensor (larger than full frame), 6 micron pixel pitch, autofocus lenses and a dualshutter system, the Leica S2 also has a fully waterproof body and lens assembly. So if you wanna dive into a pool and shoot underwater flora and fauna, by all means do so! A DSLR par excellence this one. Price: $28,000
Leica S2-P
SENNHEISER IE 800 Looking for a pair of earphones to give uncompromised audio quality during the seat-tied plane journey, look no further than the Sennheiser IE 800. Price: `55,005
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SONY HMZ-T1 Don’t you just hate getting subjected to substandard movie screens while jet-setting across the world? With the Sony HMZ-T1, you don’t face that problem. Price: `44,048
warehouse
GADGE TS & GIZMOS //
AURUMANIA BIKE `55,06,000)
For all you cyclists out there, how about this as a proposition? The good people over at Aurumania have built a bicycle so unique, owning it will put you on an ultra exclusive list. A custom made bike with 24-carat gold gleaming all over its metal body, and 600 odd Swarovski crystals gleaming brightly, this golden bicycle is one that you’ll have to guard with your life, in all probability. Yeah, it isn’t one to be left chained outside the front door, that’s for sure. Price: $100,000
VICTORINOX PRESENTATION MASTER `16,518
This is one Swiss Army Knife and USB drive combo that is perfect for James Bond. However, if you aren’t the famed MI6 agent, but a salesman who travels a lot and cares an awful lot about your data’s security, you can think of buying the Victorinox Presentation Master, too. Apart from a small knife, nail file and scissors, this Victorinox tool comes with a 32 GB USB drive that enjoys AES 256-bit hardware and software encryption. It also supports plug-n-play Powerpoint presentation slides. Price: $300
PUDDING MONSTERS OUT Zeptolabs, the makers of Cut-TheRope have unveiled a new game called “Pudding Monsters” for iOS and Android
THE FUJIFILM X-10 The X-10 packs the finest Fujifilm DNA into a fine full-metal Rangefinder-like body. It's got a 12-megapixel 2/3-inch EXRCMOS sensor. Price `44,990
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HIKER
PHOTOS BY RAHUL GANGULY
HITCH
Breathtaking Blue:
Boat ride to Koi Phi Phi Don
Frolicking in Phi Phi, Krabi No money? Take a trip to Thailand, won’t you?
MADHURIMA CHATTERJEE
L
et’s face it, when your plans of foreign travel on a shoestring budget is so frayed that even a trip to the nearest cobbler seems a bit too pricey, deciding on where to go becomes a wee bit easier. All those gorgeous (read: pocket unfriendly) places get crossed out of the must-visit list even before you can conjure their beauty in your mind’s eye. That means no Cliff’s of Moher, Salar de Uyuni can wait till I hit a jackpot and as for New Zealand, there’s always LOTR and now The Hobbit as consolation, thanks to Peter Jackson. So when my fellow travel-planner joked about how the only place we could fly to and back on our budget was Calcutta (my hometown), my mind went from being depressed to being seriously desperate. We had to find a place to go to. That’s how Thailand happened. A round-trip to Thailand is actually cheaper than a Calcutta trip. Hearing this, my friend said. “Well, why not? Any place is better than no place, right? The place is gorgeous, and think of all that Thai food we can binge on.”
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Right! And if we are lucky we just might miss running into our neighbour and their best friends honeymooning there. But idioms like “beggars can’t be choosers” have some grain of truth in them even if they are, well, clichéd. So we got researching. We
hitchhiker’s guide THAIL AND //
HIKER OF THE MONTH
booked Air Asia, which is the best budget airline, got hotels through Asia Rooms (again, gives great deals) and decided we would die rather than go to Pattaya— the one place in Thailand every Indian tourist seems to know other than Bangkok and even has “authentic Indian” food joints I have been told. Call us snooty but that is one thing we decided to avoid. So, we got ourselves Thai visas and stuffed our backpacks, determined to have a trip worth remembering. So here’s what our itinerary looked like—number of days in Thailand; six. First stop; Bangkok. The thing most people associate with Bangkok is great shopping, but honestly, for us it will always be food. It is a city that starts chomping at 6am and goes on chomping till way past midnight; it is no surprise that Bangkok is often considered the street food capital of the world. Walking down any street in Bangkok is a treat for the senses—the sizzle of oil in a wok, the smell of fried or steamed delicacies, the array of fresh fruits displayed and the flavours of every kind of food imaginable, from pork satay and fish ball soup to grass jelly and mango rice sold in kiosks by the roadside. Everyone knows about Bangkok, so there is really no point in penning much about its wonders, but the wonders of Bangkok are in walking down its sois and tasting its cuisine. Oh, and if you happen to be in the Sukumvit area, do visit Soi 11 and have a drink at one of the many Volkswagon dive bars hitched up along the roadside. Quite cool! Mind you, if you do try Durian, please brush your teeth at least twice! And if you want to try eating bugs,
A former journalist with a soft corner for the theatre, film and arts beat, Madhurima ‘Hobbit’ Chatterjee has worked in newspapers in Hyderabad and Kolkata, before moving to New Delhi. Now, on a muchdeserved break, she spends her time catching up on her long-list of classics, trash and absurd literature, writing, and learning how to cook healthy food that is surprisngly delicious at the same time
Fire Power: (Above) The fire jugglers of Koi Phi Phi Don are simply spectacular!
Exquisite Ayutthya:
(Right) The sunken Buddha head in Wat Mahathat
start with the bamboo worms; more palatable! So, after one-and-a-half days spent walking, bussing, eating, tuktuking, sky-training, eating and ferrying around glitzy Bangkok, all the while getting a million offers to be taken to “Pingpong Shows”, we decided to head to the historical city of Ayutthaya, situated along the banks of the Chao Phraya river, about 85 km from
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hitchhiker’s guide \\ THAIL AND
Bite Bowl: Pork pieces in soya sauce
Curio Case: Yes, Bangkok is a shoppers’ stop—try the flea markets
the Bangkok. The capital of Siam for over 400 years and named after Ram’s Ayodhya, Ayutthaya is now a sleepy small town littered with crumbling yet majestic ruins of Wats (temples) and palaces. It is, of course, easier to hire a car or bike and drive down, but being on a budget meant taking a 12-seater minivan, which dropped us off at the town centre. The best bit about visiting the ruins is that it is never crowded as The Grand Palace or Wat Pho in Bangkok. Needless to say language is a problem. But what’s a journey without your own stint of Lost in Translation, eh? We realized our van dropped us off a good 5km from our desired destination with not a rickshaw or bus in sight to take us to Wat Mahathat and Wat Ratchaburana, both UNESCO World Heritage sites. We had to exercise our dumb charades and take a roundabout walk under the sweltering afternoon sun. It was definitely worth the walk. Looming over the city, the crumbling Buddhist temples are stunning in their grandeur. Beautifully restored and loosely assembled and structured, Wat Ratchaburana, built in the 1400s, spans a lesser area where as Wat Mahathat is vast spread with stupas, Buddha idols and is also home to the iconic Buddha in a Bodhi tree—a pristine Buddha head entwined for centuries in the roots of an old Bodhi tree. It will make you contemplate on the nature of miracles. After remaining land-locked for three days, we decided to head to our next stop— the island of Phi Phi. We took a flight to Phuket. A quick deal with a fellow Phi Phi goer got us a cab ride from the airport to the Rasada pier, where ferries leave for the island every hour till 2pm. After a quick lunch, we boarded the 150-seater ferry
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and began our one-and-a-half hour boat ride through the breathtaking blue waters of the Andaman Sea. If you have a stomach for serious sun and choppy seas, I suggest you slap sunblock and sit out on the open deck rather than remain cooped up in the airconditioned chambers within because this is a trip where every second is majestic, thanks to the jutting rock structures dotted along the way. A word of caution, if you do take the ferry, make sure you board at the very last second. The luggage section is a mess! Though there is no chance of anyone stealing it, you might never find your bags. When they stow your luggage, they literally pile them. The ones at the bottom are the lost causes and the ferry might leave the pier before you even manage to fish them out. After wrestling with the bags, yelling at the helper grinning and watching us struggle, we got off at the Ton Sai Pier. Koi Phi Phi Don, the largest of the Phi Phi islands, is where all the action is. The main stretch is pretty with narrow roads disappearing into woody hills, littered with cottages run by locals. For those into peace and quiet, stick to the cottages. Closer to the beach, it gets crazy. Imagine the Goa party scene, only concentrated on a single stretch. After sunning all day, the party starts late and goes on into the wee hours. Beach shacks are crowded with tourists dancing and drinking. The island is also known for its fire shows where islanders do unthinkable tricks, which can make fire-jugglers look like novices. Everything is a little expensive, that is to be expected if you have to purchase everything from the mainland by boat, but the food is divine. If you happen to be in Phi Phi, definitely eat at a restaurant called Papaya, which makes the yummiest Tom Yum soup along with some of the freshest seafood dishes ever. And oh! If you can hold your liquor, do try out the
hitchhiker’s guide THAIL AND //
Green Trail: Make a home in the cottages of Koi Phi Phi Don—the walks are breathtaking
100 Baht drink buckets. A bucket comprises one pint of alcohol, one red bull, one soft drink and a straw. Simply pour it all into the bucket and sip it with the straw. Hangover guaranteed. Phi Phi, however, is not only about partying. There are several walkways, bicycle lanes and endless walking trails that one can explore while taking a break from the sun and sea. There are charter boats that take tourists on day-long-trips to the other islands in the area and offer incredible snorkeling stints. If, like us, you do go to the Phi Phi viewpoint to get a breathtaking view of the island, please, I repeat, please, don’t wear your beach flip-flops for the trip. At the top, it is beautiful. There is only the sound of the wind, the blue sea down below. It is the perfect spot for basking in the surrounding beauty. But we wanted to be adventurous and go looking for a less crowded beach—Rantee. We had read that the only way to reach the beach was by a quick boat ride or via one “pretty” trail winding down from the viewpoint. We were determined to go take a dip in the translucent waters. Hence, we decided to go walking. Unless you are ready for serious hiking (boots, protective hat, bottles of water, endless supply of insecticide et al)—do not attempt it. We thought it to be a charted, proper trail, but it was not. Six-inches wide at one point with a sheer drop on the other side, nothing but tropical jungle—its sights and sounds—for company, the trail is fun, only if you are planning to brag about it. The hike took us an hour. We were dirty, bitten and scratched, hysterical from almost tumbling to our deaths (sarong and slippers, not the most ideal option)
SNAP SHOTS
Food Boat: Railay has no permanent shacks, so boats are your only hope
Gastronomic Station:
Try out the sweets while walking the streets of Bangkok
but the end was well-worth the price. The sight that met our eyes on finally reaching the clearing was something out of The Beach, the film. White pristine sands, sparkling blue-green clear water, hardly four shacks on the small strip of beach and a handful of backpackers sitting around. Perfect! After catching our collective breaths and digging into lip-smacking crab cakes and beer, and spending hours in the water, we did the sane thing—took a small, six-seater ferry back to Tonsai pier. The next morning, we took a boat out of Krabi mainland. After savouring a taste of some authentic Thai Muslim cuisine (a unique combination of cooking methods and spices which emanates flavours akin to a mix of Thai and Indian) at Bismillah, one of the oldest restaurant in town, we took a shared tuktuk ride via beautiful, wide roads nestled amidst looming cliffs to Ao Nang district in Krabi, which is home to the popular Nopparattara beach. The seascape is similar to that of Phi Phi, cliffs set against an endless blue backdrop. The beachside town is quiet with restaurants twinkling with ferry lights and live music lining the beach, a perfect place to spend time post sundown. On our second day, we chartered a share-boat from the beach which took us to the secluded Railay beach, well known for its limestone caves, its fertility temple, its rock climbing cliffs and of course surf and sand. The best part about Railay? It is completely cut off from the mainland and can only be approached via sea. It also just has one resort (extremely un-pocketfriendly) which means the beach is absolutely empty, with no shacks or food stalls to spoil it. If you do want a bite, you can get it from any of the boat-food shacks anchored on the beach. Yes, locals come to the beach in their own boats and sell drinks and food. Railay is beautiful, especially because a part of it is riverine and has mangrove vegetation, the ancient limestone structures add to its striking beauty. And keep an eye out for those monkeys which come out for a quick bite too, they definitely add to the fun. And if you are lucky maybe you will be able to spot a gecko or two. Back on the mainland, we also got a quick glimpse of a typical night bazaar, with its mix of Angry Birdshaped fish sticks and all other kinds of seafood dishes, quail eggs and what not, gorgeous clothes at throw away prices (yes I did shop. I would be insane not to) and some wicked Thai pop music live acts. After six days of being gloriously tanned and gastronomically satiated (and thoroughly exhausted), we returned home, with a happy heart and a happier pocket. And only two honeymooning Indian couples. Definitely worth a second visit I say!
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BROAD CANVAS Colour Burst: Varghese's canvases give space to women and children—those usually marginalised
The Canvas and Introspection
Themes on dispossession, space clash find their way into Binoy Varghese’s canvases BY ROHINI BANERJEE
“D
on’t ask me tough questions,” is the first sentence that artist Binoy Varghese utters softly. A man with a ready smile and a quiet demeanour, Varghese is a pleasure to meet. When you do, you notice his hands first. They are small for a man known for his broad and vast canvases, lapped up by contemporary art galleries and art aficionados. His strokes are bold and the colours on the canvas pop out in their opaqueness. All that life and colour that his canvases breath out, comes from a mild-mannered, small man. The other peculiarity, is just how neat his studio is. It is spanking clean and austere, apart from the two easy chairs, a table, two frayed carpets spotted with paint and two canvases (one nearly complete and the other just starting to get brushes of colour). Both, I am informed, will find a place in the upcoming India Art Fair, to be held at the end of January. The walls of his studio are a unobtrusive cream—not quite the messy, ‘state-
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ment studios’ that some artists seem to prefer. The artist himself, like most members of his ilk, loves to work in the morning light. He makes ample use of the rays that streams in from the large verandah that adjoins his studio room. Clean and organised, the studio apartment breaks a layperson’s notion of how an artist lives and works. When you tell him such, you are greeted with a chuckle. “That is quite the romantic notion, is it not? An artist being an untidy, cluttered being, working in a similar environment; an artist being that person who ekes out a living and sustains herself or himself on cups of chai and adda?” he nods.
broad canvas BINOY VARGHESE //
ARTIST OF THE MONTH
But, it is not only a myth. Cups of chai, an odd trip to the library for the free books and hours of sessions on art were a part of Varghese’s life. Not the clutter though, never the clutter, as he had strict parents who emphasised on cleanliness. “I have seen both sides of an artist’s life—relative poverty and anonymity and the fame and fortune. I was a part of the art scene both before and after the Indian art boom. When I was a student at the Chennai Cholamandal Art Village, chai and adda sessions were all that we had in our life. We attended classes, went to the library to pore over books, then sat in the sun with chai and then talked till it was dark and we could not see each other. When we managed to sell a painting we patted our backs and thanked the Lord, and went out to party,” he ends with a chuckle. That life has changed. Today, Varghese is almost a household name—I say almost, as Indian laypersons pay little attention to fine arts or artists on most days, apart from a few world-famous personalities such as a Hussain or a Anjolie Ela Menon (incidentally, the lady in question provided Varghese a home and a studio space in Delhi’s Nizamuddin area when he had arrived as a student with just a few shows under his belt). Varghese does not agree with the statement that fine art is mugh-neglected. To him the Indian art scene has changed considerably. So much so that parents do not faint at the mention of art as a career—as his nearly did. Before it was all about fine art, it was all about
Binoy Varghese was born at Koothattukulam in Kerala. Varghese received his National Diploma in Fine Art from the RLV College of Music and Fine Art at Tripoonithura, Kerala. He received a 1993 Fellowship from the Madhavan Nair Foundation and a scholarship from the Arnawaz-Vasudev Charitable trust from 1994 to 1996. His works are in various collection in India and abroad
On Canvas: Like several members of his ilk, Varghese prefers acrylic paint
music for Varghese. All the five siblings were a part of the church choir. Varghese’s eldest brother is still in-charge of the local choir. Varghese is still known for his melodious voice and is often pestered to sing in parties and get-togethers. “I have two sisters and two brothers. I am, sort of,
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broad canvas \\ BINOY VARGHESE
in the middle. I was a sickly sort of a child, while my siblings were the boisterous lot, the local heroes, who went outdoors to play, mingle and be the stars. I would be at home sitting with my mother. In fact, I was at home even when she was not around. She would tell me sit at a spot and not move unless I needed to. Then she would go for a visit to a relative’s house. She would come back and find me sitting at the very same spot,” he remembers. The fact that the less-boisterous Varghese spent hours indoors in the company of his mother did help him develop an affinity towards silence and introspection—two things that are precious to him even today. By the time he was in school he was an introvert who wanted to be “different” from his “super-liked” elder brothers. “I realised that I could not be one of them, so I wanted to be me, and be liked for what I was. I wanted to develop my language and art seemed like a strong voice,” he says. Partly, the inclination towards art was also a familial effect—his parents were always inclined towards art. “In my childhood years, while visiting my maternal uncle’s house I would enjoy music and singing by my two maternal uncles; one a harmonist and the other a violinist and both singers in their own right. My parents always encouraged me and my siblings to be active in school singing competitions. We were a part of the church choir. We used to sing devotional songs every evening,” he adds. But coming back to his art, he started with a basic plan; doing illustrations of film posters and advertisements, which got the attention and nod of neighbours and family. During his Plus-Two, Varghese did the switch and enrolled into the RLV College of Fine Arts, Kerala, for a National Diploma in Fine Arts and specialised in commercial art, which he considered to be “pragmatic”. Post-diploma, Varghese did two solo shows and then went on to spend two precious years in the Cholamandal Artists Village, which he considers to be formative years for him. There, he met people (singer Minmini was a batchmate and Yesudas an alumni) who would act as valuable peers and mentors. “I was still experimenting with mediums, and around that time I received a scholarship Kanoria Art Center in Ahmedabad. Again that exposure to various forms did me wonders and got me close to Delhi, which was always a city that attracted me.” But he soon understood that the mixed medium that he loved to experiment with—some of the earlier works still strewn around his studio—had few
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INSTANT GLIMPSES
At Work: Artist Binoy Varghese in his studio
Acrylic on canvas
takers in the Indian market. He needed to be a part of something more familiar—and thus he started with oil and acrylic. At first he would paint people who he knew—friends and their spouses, putting them in a background that was interesting and different. In the year 1998 he received a studio space in Delhi and started working on his first solo show at the Academy of Fine Arts and Literature. Though the NCR is where he has been living for decades now, Varghese’s colorful canvases, are brimming with images that lie in the politics of his native Kerala. Migration and displacement, the clash between rural and urban cultures, violence, and gender discrimination are just some of the underlying concerns which he paints about. Varghese picks his imagery from the mundane—newspapers and magazines. There was a time when he would cut out photographs from newspapers. Off late, he has been contemplating and taking photographs on his own. Most of the time his protagonists—always Asian women and children—appear in their worlds against a background of a made-up environment of thick flora and fauna that engulfs them. Verghese tries to capture lives of dispossessed but they are not always the victims of bad times, but optimistic survivors of hard times. His paintings have a beauty, romance and dignity to them and a calm which is intrinsic to the character of the artist.
STICKY
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ALL THAT ECHOES
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All That Echoes is an upcoming album by American singer-songwriter Josh Groban, produced by Rob Cavallo. It is the sixth studio album for the tenor. For those uninitiated by the miracle that is Groban, his style is operatic pop and classical. Groban's latest album was announced on November 18, 2012 and It's first track (Brave) was released in November 2012.
SURAJKUND CRAFTS MELA Into its 25th year in 2013, the Surajkund Crafts Mela showcases some of the finest handloom, handicrafts, and Indian cuisine in an acre of land. Over 400 artisans display their crafts from all over India. The fair also hosts cultural programmes, and an amusement zone for the younger ones. The fair promotes different themes and states of India every year. This year the mela will be held between February 1 and 14 at Surajkund, Faridabad.
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DEMOCRATIC WORLD
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ATTEND
NAKSHATRA (TRADE FAIR) Wish to know what's wrong with your “chi” lately? Need to know how you can get your house prove lucky for you? Visit the Nakshatra Fair to be held at the Pragati Maidan (New Delhi) between February 4 and 10. Think astrological horoscope, lessons in vastu shaastra, yoga, Vedic sciences, spirituality, Feng Shui and mantras, and cassettes and software that could be used for astrological predictions.