A U G U S T 2 0 2 0 `1 5 0 GENTLEMEN OF OUR TIMES I BY SOLOMON SOUZA
SOUZA REBORN
THE VOICE OF A NEW GENERATION
Return To The Garden by Solomon Souza
THE SOUZA EVOLUTION
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SOUZA REBORN
THE VOICE OF A NEW GENERATION
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AUGUST 2020
From grandfather to grandson, the artistic legacy carries on, one mural at a time. By Vivek Menezes
10 Editor’s Letter 14 Contributors 147 Where to Buy 150 Humour
ART: SOLOMON SOUZA (RETURN TO THE GARDEN), IMAGE: YUIMIRIN L SHIMRAY (AUGUSTINE SHIMRAY)
Contents
Beat Hollow
Cross Currents
Rapper Prabh Deep gets candid with GQ on keeping it real.
Five actors from South Indian film industries who are part of the new wave.
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How Pandemics Wreak Havoc – And Open Minds Pg. 136
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Rules Of Engagement Pg. 56
Add a touch of class to your every day with the season’s best accessories.
Born To Win Pg. 64
A look at the potential positive outcomes of the ongoing crisis.
GQ squad shares tips on how to elevate your style and make it more personal.
A Step Forward
Going Live
Gucci Off The Grid: All the goodness of ecofriendly products, without compromising on style.
The recently held digital Menʼs Fashion Week and everything you need to know about it.
Gins Blazing Pg. 26
From homegrown labels to the classics, check out the top names on our radar.
Upping The Ante Pg. 92
A peek into the Kia Carnival – the spacious, high-ontech minivan.
Rebuilding Tomorrow Pg. 90
The legendary RC Bhargava of Maruti Suzuki shares his thoughts on a cleaner future. Pg.
47 Screen For Days With a 6.5-inch display and quadcam set-up, Oppo Reno4 Pro is a bigger, smoother and more powerful Android experience.
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24 Staying In The Game Prakash Amritraj on how to remain motivated in these difficult times.
GQ Taste Pg. 32
The healthy snack, the timeless cognac and the latest cafe you need to give a try.
Ready To Launch Pg. 34
Accent pieces that breathe life into a room, courtesy exciting brands and its designer collabs.
Tapping Traditions Pg. 68
The spotlight’s on Indian wear in our shot-at-home feature this month.
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68 AUGUST 2020
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Contents The Long Lock Manual Pg. 66
Growing out your mane? Here’s a guide to maintaining that hair.
The Clef Notes Of Savan Kotecha Pg. 94
Coat Of Arms Pg. 114
Subdued, floral or experimental, there’s an overcoat for every one.
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Easy-on-the-eye silhouettes for a chill day out.
A round-up of 2020ʼs most unusual yet surprisingly pertinent graphic novels.
Party Hat
A cross between an SUV and a sedan, with AMG-looks, that’s the Mercedes-Benz GLC Coupé for you.
AUGUST 2020
Step up, gentlemen and divvy up chores with your partner.
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The Art Of Style
The Genre Benders Meet the Indian-American songwriter behind some of the brilliant pop hits from One Direction to Ariana Grande – to name a few.
It’s A Great Time For Men To Do More Housework
AUDEMARS PIGUET
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102 High Note The annual GQ Watch Report is back: Top 31 timepieces on the table right now.
The Great Next Migration Pg. 120
An excerpt from Sonia Shah’s new book that looks at migration as a solution, not a problem.
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ART DIRECTOR Mihir
Cordo
CULTURE EDITOR Nidhi STYLE DIRECTOR
Charu Adajania, Sneha Mahant Mehta SENIOR ADVERTISING MANAGERS Dipti Uchil,
Shikha Sethi
DEPUTY ART DIRECTOR Vivek
Dipti Dani, James Williams ADVERTISING MANAGER Ankita Saxena (New Delhi) ASSISTANT ADVERTISING MANAGER Ria Doshi ADVERTISING SALES COORDINATORS Nishant Santosh Shetty,
Surve
Gupta
Vriti Malhotra (New Delhi)
Shivangi Lolayekar
SENIOR FASHION EDITOR
MANAGERS – DIGITAL SALES Peeyush Lakhotia, Afzal Khan (New Delhi)
Vohra
SENIOR MARKETING MANAGER Pooja Jaggi MARKETING MANAGER Christel Anthony SENIOR MARKETING EXECUTIVE Ankita Rajurkar
Gopa Pincha
SENIOR COPY EDITOR
COPY EDITOR Anamica COPY EDITOR Janice
Nair
FASHION BOOKINGS EDITOR
PR DIRECTOR Swati Katakam Samant SENIOR PR EXECUTIVE Waheeda Abdul Jabbar Machiwala
Channa
PHOTO ASSISTANT Nidhi
CREATIVE DIRECTOR – PROMOTIONS & CREATIVE SOLUTIONS Dipti Soonderji Mongia ASSOCIATE PROMOTIONS EDITOR Sneha Mahadevan PROMOTIONS WRITER Tina Jimmy Dastur SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Varun Patil, Atul Hirijagner
Chinoy
JUNIOR FASHION STYLIST Selman
Fazil
MANAGER – CIRCULATION OPERATIONS Jeeson Kollannur
Marwah
SYNDICATIONS MANAGER Michelle
Shobhana Parmar
CO-DIGITAL EDITOR & FASHION EDITOR Aarthi
Pareek
Baliga
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR – COMMERCIAL PLANNING Alisha Goriawala
Shah, Rimi Chakraborty
Shikha Talwar,
SENIOR DIGITAL GRAPHIC DESIGNER Anita PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Sunil
DIRECTOR – HUMAN RESOURCES Coralie Ansari ASSISTANT MANAGERS – HR Ria Ganguly, Neha Pednekar DIRECTOR – DIGITAL SALES & BRANDED CONTENT Shreyas Rao
Yash Bharati, Aastika Marwaha
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Dake
Nayak
SENIOR MANAGER – COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION Sudeep PRODUCTION MANAGER
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Amrit Bardhan FINANCIAL CONTROLLER Rakesh Shetty ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR – PROCUREMENT Veerbhadra Maurya SENIOR ACCOUNTANT Dattaprasanna Bhagwat ACCOUNTANTS Anthony Paulose, Nitin Chavan DIRECTOR – VIDEO COMMERCIAL Harmit Singh Sehmi ASSISTANT MANAGER – PROCUREMENT Anubhuti Sharma
Pereira
CO-DIGITAL EDITOR & MANAGING EDITOR Shabdita
SENIOR DIGITAL WRITERS Vrutika
HEAD – EVENTS Fritz Fernandes SENIOR MANAGER – EVENTS Khushnaz Daruwala
Megha Mehta
JUNIOR FASHION STYLIST Shaeroy
SYNDICATIONS COORDINATOR
HEAD – ADMINISTRATION Boniface D’Souza
Fernandes
FASHION EDITOR (LONDON) Ravneet
DIGITAL WRITERS
ITALY SALES REPRESENTATIVE Angelo Carredu US ADVERTISING MANAGER Alessandro Cremona
Rahul Vijay
LIFESTYLE EDITOR Saumyaa
Mehra
PUBLISHER Almona Bhatia ADVERTISING DIRECTORS Kapil Kapoor (New Delhi),
Shah
PHOTO DIRECTOR Gizelle DEPUTY EDITOR
CHIEF BUSINESS OFFICER Arjun
Che Kurrien
Pawar
Mangesh Pawar
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS & PHOTOGRAPHERS
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DIGITAL DIRECTOR Saurabh Garg MANAGER – DATA & GROWTH Tanvi Randhar MANAGERS – DIGITAL MARKETING Akansha Naik, Priyanka Shivdasani SENIOR EXECUTIVE – EMAIL MARKETING Tanya Chhateja ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR – CLIENT SERVICING & PROJECT MANAGEMENT Neha Dhanani MANAGING EDITOR – NATIVE STORIES Shivani Krishan MANAGER – INFLUENCER MANAGEMENT Insiya Bagasrawala COPY EDITOR – BRAND SOLUTIONS Tanuj Kumar (New Delhi) SENIOR MANAGER – BRAND SOLUTIONS Shweta Mehta Sen SENIOR MANAGER – DIGITAL BRAND SOLUTIONS Ankita Bhushan (New Delhi) CREATIVE STRATEGIST Karan Kaul CREATIVE PRODUCER – CONDE NAST CREATIVE STUDIO Mandira Sharma GRAPHIC DESIGNER – NATIVE STORIES Ayushi Teotia
Sameer Kulavoor, Tarun Khiwal, Tarun Vishwa, Uday Benegal, Vikram Raizada
DIRECTOR – VIDEO Anita Horam SENIOR CREATIVE PRODUCER – VIDEO Preshita Saha ASSISTANT CREATIVE PRODUCER Aditya Sinha EA TO MANAGING DIRECTOR Karen Contractor Avari
MANAGING DIRECTOR Alex
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8 —
AUGUST 2020
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A U G U S T 2 0 2 0 `1 5 0 GENTLEMEN OF OUR TIMES I BY SOLOMON SOUZA
SOUZA REBORN
THE VOICE OF A NEW GENERATION
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Editor's Letter
olomon Souza shot to fame in 2015 after spray painting portraits on 250 shop shutters in Jerusalem’s historic Mahane Yehuda Market – depicting famous Jewish and world figures, from Golda Meir to Mahatma Gandhi. His artworks created such a stir that they became an instant attraction within the ancient “Shuk”. Visitors that thronged the site included Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin and the President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier. This month’s cover story traces the ascension of the 27-year-old British-Israeli muralist, street artist and painter. Solomon’s inter-generational odyssey spans Goa, London, Jerusalem and New York – laced with a whiff of Iberian breeze. Pursing through his textured tale are some of the most poignant human themes: migration, identity, dislocation, community, transition, lineage and hope. GQ’s impressionistic story joins the dots between Solomon and his grandfather, the Goan modernist painter FN Souza, one of the vanguards of India’s avant-garde art movement. At one point, FN Souza was rated alongside Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud as the future of the post-war art scene. It was our writer Vivek Menezes, also a close friend of FN Souza, who helped unearth Solomon a year ago and shepherded him to India, the land of his late grandfather for the first time. Invited to be part of the visionary, vital Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa, Solomon hit the ground running. Over 30 days, Solomon completed an astounding 20 murals of Goan icons, including sprinter Seraphino Antao (who represented Kenya), martyred anti-colonial “Passion flower of Angola” Sita Valles, and ace trumpeter and iconic jazzman Chic Chocolate (Aldona). Solomon was recently commissioned by billionaire Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea Football Club, to create a 12-metre mural at Stamford Bridge. This artwork pays tribute to two Jewish footballers and a British soldier sent to Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and is part of Chelsea’s “Say No To Anti-Semitism” campaign. “I’m a big mix of a human, a mutt, with roots from India to Israel, which means I sit quite literally on the fence of civilisations, and from my viewpoint I’m able to see the beauty of the world and its differences,” says Solomon. He is the voice of a new generation.
@chekurriengq
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AUGUST 2020
PHOTO:MAX HERMANS/THOMPSON PHOTO IMAGERY (CHE), ADIL HASAN (SOLOMON SOUZA)
S
Solomon’s Song
Contributors
Your most cherished piece of traditional wear
Vivek Menezes Edward Urrutia
“FOR ME, IT’S A TIE THAT I WEAR ON A NIGHT OUT TO DINNER WITH MY LOVED ONE.” WHO: Sydney-based photographer who always keeps a camera close, and who tends to ignore Twitter and limit time spent on Instagram. WHAT: “Coat Of Arms”, page 114 DREAM COLLABORATION: “The list is endless, but I wonder if I could collaborate with my younger self what would it be like.”
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AUGUST 2020
Parth Charan
“A WHITE LINEN BANDHGALA. MORE DELICATE THAN PRECIOUS, SINCE I NEED TO DRY CLEAN IT EVERY TIME I WEAR IT.” WHO: Mumbai-based writer who is spending his downtime sketching with charcoal, some of which has taken up permanent residence under his fingernails. ANALOGUE OR DIGITAL: “I’m an analogue guy all the way. But I do see the use of a smartwatch for certain tasks.”
“MY ANGAMI NAGA SHAWL, HANDMADE IN KHONOMA. I WEAR IT WITH GREAT PRIDE AT APPROPRIATE EVENTS.” WHO: Co-founder and co-curator of the Goa Arts + Literature Festival. Twitter @vmingoa WHAT: “The Souza Evolution”, page 36 SOUZA VS SOUZA: “Souza and his grandson Solomon share an ability to belong wherever they are, and create magic with whatever’s available.”
Nidhi Gupta
“A SAPPHIRESTUDDED GOLD RING, GIFTED BY MY GRANDMOTHER. I NEVER PUT IT ON, BUT IT REMINDS ME OF HER COURAGE, HER DIGNIFIED PRESENCE AND HOW SHE LOVED BEING SURROUNDED BY BEAUTY.” WHO: Culture Editor at GQ India. Instagram @_niddee_ A DAY IN THE LIFE OF: “Kanye West. So I can see for my own eyes where the man ends and fiction begins. And also to snoop on his breakfast.”
BOOKS
THE GENRE S R BENDE A round-up of the most unusual graphic novels of 2020
W R I T T E N
B Y
L I N D S AY P E R E I R A
Becoming Horses by Disa Wallander; An inside page from the graphic novel
Familiar Face by Michael DeForge; An inside page from the graphic novel
Glass Town by Isabel Greenberg; An inside page from the graphic novel
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AUGUST 2020
F
amiliar Face, the latest graphic novel from prolific Canadian comics artist Michael DeForge, arrived in bookshops a little before the world went into lockdown. That seemed surprising, when I first flipped through its colourful pages, because it felt as if the book had been created by someone already in quarantine, for an audience struggling to make sense of this unprecedented way of living. There are no actual faces here, or none that look human. Set in a future where humans and the world they live in are nothing more than a blend of software and hardware, it describes the dangers towards which we are collectively headed as a species. DeForge’s unnamed narrator supposedly works for the government, as does his or her partner. We can’t tell because there are no men or women here, just sentient beings with constantly updated software patches. People wake up looking different; the rooms and shapes of their homes change randomly, as do roads, parks and offices. Controlling it all, including how they are meant to feel, is an unseen authority. And yet, in this dystopia, a lot of things start to seem recognisable. I realised, after putting it down, that graphic novelists were probably more equipped to grapple with our current state than artists working with other media because they could go where budgets prevented everyone else from going. For family and friends in isolation, I began recommending titles that resonated with what we were all going through – radical, intriguing, challenging work such as Sweet Time by Singaporean cartoonist Weng Pixin. The book looks like a pack of Polaroids, then starts to resemble Instagram stories put up by couples struggling to stay together. These are tiny, bittersweet stories, none of which end well for their protagonists whose relationships are unravelling at the seams. Another title I kept going back to was Becoming Horses by Swedish cartoonist Disa Wallander, who has long had a habit of working with 3D materials and collages. She tends to be rather philosophical, which is probably why each subsequent reading revealed things I had missed earlier. This is a book that is hard to describe without accompanying visuals, because of how each illustration is juxtaposed alongside a wry comment or insight. All one
Sweet Time by Weng Pixin; An inside page from the graphic novel
can say is, it tries to make sense of the world and our place in it by recognising that all our interactions are a matter of perspective. American cartoonist Kevin Huizenga’s The River At Night was another book that stayed with me for weeks by not conforming to expectations of what a graphic novel must be like. It stars Glenn Ganges, an unassuming character created by Huizenga a decade and a half ago. In this latest appearance, Ganges examines the nature of time itself, in the form of deceptively vague conversations with his wife, Wendy. He struggles to fall asleep, then spends nights retracing his steps, analysing his life and questioning the futility of human existence against the age of the planet. The result is a meditative experience almost tailormade for readers trying to survive a crisis. This isn’t to say all the best books of the year so far have been depressing. There was also Glass Town: The Imaginary World Of The Brontës by the fabulous British illustrator Isabel Greenberg, who kickstarted her career with The Encyclopedia Of Early Earth and chose a bit of historical fiction this time around. It can almost be described as metafiction, given how Greenberg makes real what was an imaginary world created by the legendary Brontë sisters. This is a mix of writing by the Brontës themselves, coupled with biographical notes, some great illustrations and a poignant AUGUST 2020
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BOOKS
Parable Of The Sower by Octavia E Butler
The River At Night by Kevin Huizenga; An inside page from the graphic novel
peek into what those lonely writers created to escape the sometimes painful realities of their lives. Set over a century and a half before our time, it is also a moving testament to how human beings and artists constantly try and find ways of breaking free from spaces that restrict their movements, physical or mental. One writer who had no problem escaping into other worlds was Octavia E Butler. She passed away in 2006, but, thanks to the efforts of fellow American writers like Damian Duffy, and artists like John Jennings, continues to attract new generations of sci-fi fans. The duo last collaborated to adapt Butler’s best-selling novel, Kindred. This year, they showed up with the undeniably more immersive Parable Of The Sower, one of two books that form Butler’s Parable (or Earthseed) series. There are a lot of ideas at work here, based on a community trying to survive in a world that has collapsed politically as well as socially. Like the best science fiction, it holds a mirror to what we can expect if we continue to ignore climate change and unbridled consumerism. The graphic novel appeared on shelves in January, two months before we were suddenly confronted with the shocking realisation that what writers have been warning us about forever may come true. One of my last picks is a title that managed to cheer me up despite every indication from the cover that it wouldn’t. The Phantom Twin, written and illustrated by American cartoonist Lisa Brown, is set in the early 20th century and stars a pair of conjoined twins named Jane and Isabel Peabody. “Jan-Iss” are exploited as freaks in a carnival sideshow, but deal with their circumstances rather well until a doctor tries to become famous by separating them, with disastrous results. The thing is, there is horror here, and sadness, but also an exploration of what it means to be outsiders. It makes for a story not without flaws, but not without hope either, reminding us of what we have rather than what we have lost. The coming year in (hopefully) a post-pandemic world will reveal how artists have responded to Covid-19. Until that happens, there has been enough good stuff published in 2020 to make one of the worst years of our lives more palatable. Lindsay Pereira writes on art and pop culture for GQ India
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IMAGE: XIOIXOIXOIXOIOXIOXI
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IN THE How to be your own coach WRITTEN BY PRAKASH AMRITRAJ
WHAT’S YOUR CODE
Muhammad Ali, with corner man Drew Bundini Brown (centre), at Gleasonʼs Gym, New York in 1976
IMAGE: MATT SAYLES (PRAKASH), ALAMY (MUHAMMAD ALI)
“
W
e get up in the morning feeling tired. Sometimes we feel good, sometimes we feel bad, but we gotta go through it with feeling. That’s the root to the truth, that’s where everything starts.” —Bundini Brown These words are particularly apt for this challenging time we’re all facing. Muhammad Ali’s cornerman, sometimes writer and, most of all, hype man, Drew “Bundini” Brown was famous for bringing positivity, perspective and that much needed fire throughout Ali’s career, especially when Ali needed it most. The GOAT kept him in his corner for a great part of his career as Bundini brought tremendous value. That’s the same kind of emphasis the rest of us need to place on positivity and uplifting ourselves, especially in the middle of a pandemic. Perhaps now is the time to learn how to be our own Bundini Brown. This lockdown period has caused many across the world to feel isolated. We’re not exchanging our energies with others like we used to. In turn, this has led to feelings of inadequacy. Some of us have faced more conflict in our relationships – whether romantic or within the family. There’s been a loss of motivation and a drop in productivity. Social systems the world over have proven to be broken. With so much negativity all around, constantly permeating our spirits, we must acknowledge Bundini’s sentiment about feeling all our feelings. The emotional ups and downs will come; even the greatest are not immune to it. And, the tougher the times, the wilder the roller coaster. We need to learn to be especially kind and loving to ourselves right now, and in some cases, even tough. One of the overarching principles of my code is selflove, along with discipline and self-belief, but the latter principles stem from the former. This should be at the root of everyone’s code. When we are isolated, it is an opportunity to spend time with ourselves. This is something we don’t generally get to do in the hustle and bustle of daily life. Use this time to have those conversations with yourself. Work through the thoughts and feelings that you are not happy with. Focus on those that bring you joy. Call the people you love and miss and tell them you are grateful for their presence in your life. Be cognisant of the thoughts and feelings that cause you pain. Give yourself permission to be free of them. When you’re back to running from pillar to post once work resumes, you may wish you had this chance again. If you find yourself fighting with your significant other, or with a brother, sister, or parent, relax. It’s happening all over the world. Tensions are high and misunderstandings are commonplace; giving each other the benefit of the doubt isn’t. There have been times when these people have been 100 per cent there for you, and you have been there for them. There is a reason for that. Sometimes, we get lost in our own heads and expect that our SO/family member should understand exactly
Make a daily list of accomplishments to complete. Always set a few more than might be reasonable what we are going through without our communicating it. Give the ones close to you more leeway. Listen to them to understand them, as opposed to listening purely to respond. This is a difficult time for everyone, and most of the time, people just want to be heard, especially by the ones they love the most. Loss of motivation and productivity is another completely normal result of this unprecedented period. But remember another one of the pillars of the What’s Your Code mindset – progress. Any inch of movement further than where you currently are is a step towards your ultimate goal. Just because you can’t achieve everything you’d normally have under ideal conditions doesn’t mean you can’t still make strong strides. Make a daily list of accomplishments to complete. Always set a few more than might be reasonable. This will allow you to strive for more than is possible. The mindset behind this is to appreciate the work you’re doing, give yourself credit for it and help you find the inspiration to achieve more. At the end of the day, the more completed ticks you see on your list, the more motivated you’ll feel to achieve the same, or more, the next day. Positive momentum is tough to break. The world is facing several challenges, and it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. If you’re not sure how to help make the world a better place, I encourage you to read and learn. Educate yourself. Whether you then choose to share your opinion with the world, or a friend, or no one at all, it will come from a deeper, more authentic and powerful place. And this knowledge will help guide your spirit in whichever way it is truly destined to move. If all this feels like a lot, that’s because it is. 2020 has been a heavy year. But I want you to understand that the ability to carry this weight lies within you. I stand by all of the physical practices we’ve previously discussed, including training for the body and meditation for the mind. But remember, if we’re not speaking mind, body and soul, we’re not truly loving ourselves to the highest degree or reaching our highest potential. Greatness is still within our grasp, even during this time. But how hard are you willing to fight for yourself? Take heart in Bundini’s famous words to Ali: “Rumble, young man, rumble!”. May you, too, find your own inner strength in these tough times to “rumble”. AUGUST 2020
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BEEFEATER LONDON DRY
Founder James Burrough’s OG nine-note recipe has never been tampered with for a reason: it’s made Beefeater a verified gin classic. It mixes like a dream; and, if you’re a sweet cocktail person, try it with some orange juice, ginger ale and a drop of cherry brandy.
` 2,900
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, your home bar will be the tops – once you’ve got the right bottles. Our round-up of iconic heavyweights and homegrown up-and-comers can help
HENDRICK'S MIDSUMMER SOLSTICE
The breezy tones of this limited release infusion are inspired by the summer solstice – ie, bursting with flowers in full bloom. Its light orange blossom freshness works best with a citrusy juice to unlock its flavours: grapefruit, if you can get your hands on it, orange if you can’t.
` 8,000
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AUGUST 2020
WORDS: SAUMYAA VOHRA. IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK (LABEL). PRICES MAY VARY ACCORDING TO VOLUME AND LOCATION
blaz i ng
THE DRINK DU JOUR
ROKU GIN
We’re partial to this Japanese craft drink for its sakura flower, gyokuro tea and its punch of spicy sansho pepper. Easily one of the more layered editions on the market, this one does beautifully as a sipping gin – just add a pair of large ice cubes and you have yourself a drink.
THE BOTANIST An Islay dry smoother than Sinatra live at the Greek Theatre, this one can thank its trifecta of water mint, wood sage and camomile for its relaxing vibe. Serve in a chilled coupe with a bit of basil and honey to open up all the layers.
` 6,500
` 6,150
GORDON'S LONDON DRY
An easy Friday night go-to, this quadruple-distilled gin is as clean and minimalist as they come. While you will, of course, find several other botanicals at play, the juniper berry is at the locus of this spirit. Go the dry martini route with this one – olives, not onions.
` 2,700
MONKEY 47 SCHWARZWALD DRY
The evocative flavours of this fullbodied gin are not for the faint-hearted. The labyrinthine, 47-botanical recipe (with the unusual lingonberry taking centre stage) is a serious drinker’s gin, shining most with a sprig of mint and a soda straight up.
` 6,000
AUGUST 2020
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CAORUNN MASTER’S CUT
Higher hitting than your average juniper joe at 48 per cent ABV, this extra dry distillation is the gin coup de grâce. If you’re looking for a true cocktail braveheart, drink this in a smoky martini (dry vermouth, peated whisky and ice) for best results.
TANQUERAY LONDON DRY
Owing its air of effortless cool to its eccentric founder Charles Tanqueray (rarely spotted without an idea-filled notebook in hand), this gin – and its original recipe – never went out of style. A simple Tanq with tonic is the surest way to make the most of its signature citruslicorice notes.
` 3,851
` 3,200
This indigenous, Himalayan gin is so fresh on the scene, it could be the prince of Bel-Air. It may be a few weeks old, but it’s garnered quite the following for its spicy tones (locally sourced from Delhi’s Khari Baoli) and au courant glass bottle. Worth picking up for gin mavens and hypebeasts alike.
` 2,000
STRANGER & SONS
The refreshing, Indian citrus tones of this gin are absolutely perfect for a sticky, monsoon evening. We’d recommend making the most of the Gondhoraj lemon, Nagpur orange and Goan sweet lime notes by mixing this into a gimlet: two parts gin, one part lime and simple syrup if you like it sweet.
` 2,575
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AUGUST 2020
WORDS: SAUMYAA VOHRA. PRICES MAY VARY ACCORDING TO VOLUME AND LOCATION
TERAI
THE DRINK DU JOUR
JAISALMER
INDIAN CRAFT GIN
We’re always drawn to a spirit with heritage, and everything about Jaisalmer – from the Rajasthan-inspired black and gold bottle to its traditional copper pot distillation – has a strong sense of history. A small-batch that simply must be on your shelf.
GREATER THAN
The lemon-laced gin is already a household name to the Indian gindrinker – no small feat for a five-yearold homegrown brand. We credit its popularity to its clean palate and easy mixability – it lends itself to a bitter negroni as easily as it would to a sweeter gin fizz.
` 3,640
`1,550
BOMBAY SAPPHIRE
ENGLISH ESTATE
This Englishcountry inspired limited-ed really ups the ante on the classic London dry. The connoisseur will notice new notes of rosehip and hazelnut, with a just-strong-enough kick of Pennyroyal mint. Best in a highball with tonic and lemon to really bring out the freshness.
` 2,580
HAPUSA
Made with foraged Himalayan juniper with touches of turmeric and raw mango, this Indianmade gin is one of the few savoury variants on the market. There’s an earthiness about it that’s unlocked when it’s in a simple G&T, with a touch of lime to draw out those forest flavours.
` 3,200
AUGUST 2020
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A MUSICAL MASTERPIECE
A romantic story, soulful music, promising newcomers and a powerful supporting cast — expect all of this and more in Bandish Bandits India’s first-ever musical original series, streaming on Amazon Prime Video from August 4th, 2020
Rithwik Bhowmik and Shreya Chaudhry in Bandish Bandits
It is tough to imagine a Bollywood film without the quintessential song and dance routine. While this has constantly evolved over the years to suit the changing narrative, music still plays a pivotal role in the process of film-making. It’s no wonder, then, that the first musical film —Ardeshir Irani’s iconic Alam Ara — came out as early as 1931. But unlike the big screen, which saw massive success with musicals, this genre has remained largely untapped on digital platforms. Now, Amazon Prime is challenging stereotypes with their latest show, Bandish Bandits, which is being touted as India’s first-ever musical original series. With a story that offers a rare glimpse into the legacy of Rajasthani musical gharanas and their culture and a stellar supporting cast, Bandish Bandits aims to pack a punch in the OTT space. Produced and created by
Amritpal Singh Bindra (of Bang Baaja Baaraat fame) and directed by Anand Tiwari (of Love Per Square Foot), Bandish Bandits will stream on Amazon Prime Video from August 4th 2020.
WHAT IT'S ABOUT
Bandish Bandits is a dynamic love story between an excellent Indian classical singer shackled by centuries of tradition and a free-spirited pop star who makes up for her mediocre talent with her sensational skills as a performer. Introducing Rithwik Bhowmik (Radhe) and Shreya Chaudhry (Tamanna) as leads, the series follows the love story of two young performers from very different musical backgrounds. But despite coming from completely different worlds, Radhe and Tamanna set out together on a journey of self-discovery.
GQ PROMOTION Atul Kulkarni (of Rang De Basanti and Jazbaa) plays Radhe’s uncle whose fate is connected to music, but when tragedy befalls his career, things go awry. Kunaal Roy Kapur (of Delhi Belly and Yeh Jaawani Hai Deewani) plays Tamanna’s manager while Sheeba Chaddha (of Luck by Chance and Talaash) plays the role of Radhe’s mother, who is extremely supportive and understanding of her son yet respects Guruji and his high regards for his rigid principles. Rajesh Tailang (of The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Panga) plays the role of Radhe’s father, who does not fully support Radhe’s dream to be a classical singer.
DIRECTOR’S CUT
After his directorial debut Love Per Square Foot with actors Vicky Kaushal and Angira Dhir gained immense popularity, Anand Tiwari is back in the director’s seat with this web series. “Bandish Bandits is a story about the meeting of two individuals and cultures that are in many ways different, and yet in other ways incredibly similar,” says Tiwari. “While each character has a unique and compelling story in their own right, it’s how these stories come together that makes this series so powerful, romantic and real,” he adds. Tiwari also states that he is “beyond excited to work with composers Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy”.
CAST AND CREW
Renowned composer trio Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy have composed an exciting original soundtrack and are making their digital debut with the show. Ritwik Bhowmik, known for his collaborative videos with Filtercopy and TVF, is set to debut with the show and plays a classical singer. Shreya Chaudhry, who ventured into the film industry with the 2017 film Dear Maya, makes her digital debut in Bandish Bandits, in which she plays a pop singer who aspires to become India’s most popular music sensation. Besides the newcomers, the 10-part series also features veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah, who plays Guruji – a Rajasthani classical musician and Radhe’s grandfather. As a special treat for the actor’s fans, the makers dropped the trailer of the show on Shah’s 70th birthday on 20 July.
PRODUCER’S TAKE
Amritpal Singh Bindra, known for the web series Bang Baaja Baaraat has written and produced the show. Calling it a true labour of love, Bindra says that he is pleased to be partnering with Prime Video, which champions unique original content from around the world. “While elements of the show are rooted firmly in Indian tradition and values, this is without a doubt a modern musical romance that will appeal to a global audience. We can’t wait to take Prime members on a journey of love, differences and discovery against a backdrop of soulful music,” Bindra concludes. For more information, visit primevideo.in or follow @PrimeVideoIn on Facebook, @PrimeVideoIN on Twitter and @primevideoin on Instagram
THE BREW
COFFEE FIRST | BENGALURU Nobody takes their coffee quite as seriously as the java-only populace of the garden city, and this newly launched grab-and-go coffeehouse already has everyoneʼs stamp of approval. Youʼll find two house blends: Svara (Indian Origin, best in their milk-based cappuccino or iced latte) and Armonia (Indo-Colombian, for the purist who prefers pour-overs). You could grab a piccolo latte or a cold brew en route to work, or get a DIY brewing kit if you’d rather, well, do it yourself. Itʼs also all made by an automated Swiss machine versus a barista, because a cup oʼ joe should come with a side of social distancing. @coffeefirstblr
Taste F O OD . DR
. T R AV K IN
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THE CLOUD KITCHEN
HELLO PANDA | DELHI If you’ve spent Saturday nights sipping cocktails and tucking into soft shell crab at Wasabi by Morimito or The Kimono Club, you’re familiar with Chef Vikramjit Roy’s delectable Asian fare. His latest venture, started early July, is a delivery kitchen that brings fabulous food and artisanal cocktail premixes to your doorstep, with plans to also turn into dine-in restaurants across the city by late 2020. We suggest ordering in the Truffled Purple Potato and Pork with Lychee Sauce, with a DIY Spicy Bengali premix (smoked raw mango, black salt and chilli) until you can wait for a table. 78383 93111
THE COLLECTOR’S EDIT
THE HEALTHY SNACK
EPIPHANY SNACKS | MUMBAI Snacking is to working from home what Netflix is to a lazy Sunday – too natural to fight. The bite-sized chunks of these vegan, gluten-free snacks might sire a binge, but they’re rife with enough healthy nuts and plant-based organic flavouring (like brown rice syrup and pink salt) to knock the guilt right out of your snack-bender. They’re great on their own, but work equally well with almond milk for a quick breakfast. Mumbai folk can find these at department stores or order them online right now, but they’ll be available pan India early next year. epiphanysnacks.com 32 —
AUGUST 2020
If you take some of the finest eauxde-vie in the world and bottle it in a mouth-blown decanter laden with history (and 18k champagne gold), you get this exquisite, limited edition cognac cruet. The by-request-only Saint-Louis crystal decanter is a re-edition of the original bottle, inspired by a flask discovered on the battleground of Jarnac, 1569. Bedecked in a gold metal coffret (with medal designs inspired by the archives of the Monnaie de Paris) and the exceptional Grande Champagne blend it carries, a collector’s edition is born. Definitely warrants its own shelf on the display, no? conciergerie@louis-xiii.com
WORDS: SAUMYAA VOHRA
LOUIS XIII TIME COLLECTION: CITY OF LIGHTS - 1900
ARJUN R AMPAL
THE NEW RULES OF FATHERHOOD J U LY
2 0 2 0 `1 5 0
ARJUN R AMPAL
THE NEW RULES OF FATHERHOOD J U LY
2 0 2 0 `1 5 0
ARJUN R AMPAL
THE NEW RULES OF FATHERHOOD
Flamboyant Hues
A monochromatic space may seem like a good idea at first, but months of being indoors might quickly lend to monotony. Our recommendation to help lift your mood: the BOMBOM collection by Joana Vasconcelos x Roche Bobois. The rugs come in all shapes and sizes, and will be a good fit in your home office or your favourite spot where you unwind after a long day. A pop of colour on a gloomy day never hurt anybody.
Art and history lovers, this one’s for you, particularly if you’re finding ways for your space to reflect that too. The Makrana console by Iqrup+Ritz is a serious dose in history with its European-styled architectural pillars. Inspired by the reproductions at the Plaster Courts of the Victoria and Albert Museum, this white marble piece is, simply put, elegance par excellence.
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WORDS: JANICE FERNANDES
Of Notable Reproductions
To Infinity And Beyond
In need of a chair, an ottoman or a complete sofa? The Bent Chair x Leo Schlumberger Infinity collection is the ultimate three in one. Perhaps more. When you’ve customised your sofa as per your liking (comes in L- and S-shaped options, among others), use it either as one big piece, or break it up into individual seatings. Every time you’re in a mood to mix things up, rearrange as you like; there’s no right or wrong, just endless possibilities. And now with house gatherings becoming the new norm, your guests are sure to take notice.
Ready To
Launch
One-of-a-kind collaborations between brands and designers continue to keep things interesting in the world of decor
The New Old
Ninety years, numerous avatars and still here to tell a tale – the Vanity Fair chair from Poltrona Frau has been an iconic symbol in Italian design. Quality materials handcrafted to perfection coupled with timeless elegance is why it makes the cut as one of our favourites. This revisited version – the Vanity Fair XC by designer Roberto Lazzeroni – in eye-popping red is even more comfortable and welcoming, and just what you need in your corner.
One With Nature
Go bold and make a statement with quirky, colourful elements. You won’t regret it.
If you’re the outdoorsy type who’s had to cancel plans this year, the Forest collection by Italian sculptor and designer Marcantonio for Scarlet Splendour might help perk you up. While creating a whole forest-themed room might not be a commitment you’re ready for, a few pieces to dot your home is a good starting point. The meticulous inlay work is an added bonus. Our instant crush from this whimsical collection: the tree cabinet, which is equal parts sculptural and functional.
Gentlemen Of Our Times II, oil on canvas, 2020
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o z u S a THE
E
volution
In a fascinating story that spans multiple generations and continents, as well as reflects universal human themes of migration, dislocation and identity, Vivek Menezes traces the ascension of muralist, graffiti artist and painter Solomon Souza, the Jerusalem-based grandson of the great modernist legend FN Souza
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S O L O M O N
n the middle of May, earlier this year, an important moment in Indian art history played out in the unlikely location of Safed, perched high in the mountains of Galilee in Israel. The young Goan-British-Israeli artist Solomon Souza recalls it as “an end-of-theworld, last supply-run type of thing” because lockdown had been temporarily lifted, while the Covid-19 pandemic continued to rage throughout the region. He was taking the opportunity to say goodbye to his mother before moving to Jerusalem and to “a perfect studio set-up”. Even while he was getting into his car to leave, Keren Souza-Kohn came to him “with a large roll of canvas in her arms. I could see it was old, dog-eared and browning.”
S O U Z A
That dusty bundle turned out to be an extremely consequential gift from the past, directly from the hands of the great, pioneering modernist painter (and founder of the seminal Progressive Artists Group of the 1940s) Francis Newton Souza. Solomon says, “It had belonged to my grandfather, and must have been the last roll he ever bought. My mother had procured it after helping to clean out his apartment in New York soon after his death in India in 2002, and she’d been holding onto it for almost 20 years. Now it was being passed on to the next generation, and I felt its powerful potential the moment it touched my hands. I knew his canvas could only be used to pay homage to my grandfather.” The results of this extraordinary passing of the baton are in your hands. GQ readers are immensely privileged
I
t’s been a wild ride over the past year for Solomon. In January, even as the Covid-19 contagion spread stealthily across Europe, but just before its presence turned the world upside-down, he found himself strapped into an extensive safety harness that was dangling from the business end of a crane at Stamford Bridge, the hallowed 143-year-old stadium home of Chelsea Football Club in London. This was the biggest career moment in the young (he turned 27 in July) artist’s life, capping an extraordinary series of highlights, which had culminated in his debut in India last December – the ancestral land of his grandfather. For several magical weeks, he’d roamed Goa on a scooter laden with cans of spray paint, creating murals of unsung Goan heroes, from the Goan-Angolan anti-colonial freedom fighter Sita Valles to the nonagenarian artist Vamona Navelcar, for the Serendipity Arts Festival that immediately attracted considerable attention and acclaim.
Solomon Souza poses in front of a mural he painted of Israeli-Arab news anchor Lucy Aharish in Jerusalemʼs “Shuk” in 2016; FN Souza with one of his paintings in a London studio in 1955
IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES (SOLOMON SOUZA, FN SOUZA)
to bear witness to this startling, eye-popping, irresistibly compelling and utterly gorgeous international public debut. Solomon says, “I’ve taken up my grandfather’s brutal style, his shocking colours and heavy-hitting lines. Moving as he did, I attempt to allow the canvas the privilege of feeling as it would if Souza himself was painting upon it.” As anyone familiar with both artists’ oeuvres will be able to attest, these new paintings on weathered canvas are all Solomon, yet also bear the signature imprints of his grandfather’s artistic DNA. The three heads are uncannily reminiscent of Souza’s talismanic 1955 Six Gentlemen Of Our Times, although serene, where the originals were spiky with fury. But it is the painting of the young couple that truly takes the breath away, with its lightning strike of museum-calibre genius, along with clear echoes of the superb 1940s oils on board that first made Francis Newton’s reputation. Solomon says these subjects “are leaving behind them the distant smog, the strain of city life, with the future in their hands, and the tools with which to tend to our damaged, cracked and dry earth, and the seeds of potential it contains.” In fact, much the same can be said about this early work: his first truly mature and self-contained painting, his only major artwork to directly confront and embrace his Indian heritage. Souza is dead. Long live the new Souza.
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Return To The Garden, oil on canvas, 2020
Gentlemen Of Our Times III, oil on canvas, 2020
“Art is, at its core, self-expression,” Solomon says, “a tool with which man may make sense of some of the things he feels inside or sees outside. And yet art has been commandeered, it is used and abused. Street art and graffiti exist outside the corruption of money, they aren’t tied to it, don’t need to wait to be paid for, commissioned or hired. It’s a burst of desire, a need to create and communicate” 40
IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES (HOLOCAUST COMMEMORATIVE MURAL)
But now was the really big time: a personal commission from Roman Abramovich (the Russian-Israeli billionaire owner of Chelsea) to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz – the notorious Nazi concentration camp, where an estimated 1.1 million people died. Solomon knew all about the subject of his paintings: three footballers who had been condemned to Auschwitz (two of them perished, the third was a British prisoner of war who survived to return home). And there was another more personal inspiration too: It was the memory of his grandmother Liselotte Kristian (née Kohn), who fled Prague immediately after the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939, and had been studying acting at the storied Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London when she met the hungry-eyed FN Souza. Most of that Jewish branch of Solomon’s family tree perished in the Holocaust. The Chelsea commission allowed him to pay tribute to them, in ways which offered up both memorialisation and closure.
B
ut there was an additional intriguing plot twist at play, which closed yet another circle for Solomon, underlined by an unmistakable element of redemption. Here he was being paid to express his artistic vision, with full official sanction – including live webcam coverage – on the best-known walls in Chelsea. But just a few miles up the undulating River Thames in the gritty precincts of Hackney, he’d spent a considerable part of his teenage years scrambling away from the Metropolitan Police force, and other authorities who decidedly did not approve of his spray-paint endeavours. It has always been thus for street artists, whether bygone or contemporary. It’s only relatively recently, starting in the late 1980s in New York City, that renowned graffiti masters such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons and Keith Haring began to be recognised by galleries and collectors, and realisation began to dawn that masterpieces of our times lurked amidst what was generally reckoned to be vandalism. Leap forward through the decades, and now cities like Buenos Aires and Lisbon vie to commission street art on a multi-milliondollar scale, and the notorious Banksy is quite possibly the most famous artist in the world.
Artist Solomon Souza painted the Holocaust Commemorative Mural at Stamford Bridge, London, in January this year
Solomon has been part of that journey to commissions and curation, but he still likes to go out at night to paint on buildings where he’s not necessarily welcome. “Art is, at its core, self-expression,” he says, “a tool with which man may make sense of some of the things he feels inside or sees outside. And yet art has been commandeered, it is used and abused. Street art and graffiti exist outside the corruption of money, they aren’t tied to it, don’t need to wait to be paid for, commissioned or hired. It’s a burst of desire, a need to create and communicate.” It’s the elemental jolt that attracts him. “I will forever love the freedom of street painting, the separation of business and creativity, painting just to paint, to influence, shock and awe. It’s an adventure. Something you can never experience while cooped up in a studio.” The young artist has an unusual, bohemian and transcultural background. His mother Keren Souza-Kohn raised him singlehandedly “in a huge Victorian house, a rather grand construction. My mother had come into possession of this property after squatting in its abandoned shell with a group of friends... I remember the day the government officials came, more than 20 years after she’d first
42
Separately, media attention for Solomon’s work in the Shuk also brought him to my attention, via the internet, from my home in Goa. His grandfather had been a good friend of mine, and remains a lasting inspiration. In 2019, I got permission from Smriti Rajgarhia of the Serendipity Arts Festival to curate ICON: Solomon Souza, as part of my section of the festival entitled Mundo Goa.
W
hen Solomon walked onto Goan soil for the very first time, he told me, “Something within me was awakened. Roots of my ancestry that had been deeply buried in the earth began to poke out at me from all angles. I felt love and appreciation, an ancient and kindred connection. Colours and shapes that I grew up surrounded by in the form of my grandfather’s paintings suddenly made sense to me as I experienced their origin. The slap of life, colour and action that hits you when you first step out of the airport is overwhelming, but my mind soon adapted to it, and I felt for a time like Goa was all I knew.” The months-long episode in Goa confronted Solomon directly with his grandfather’s impact and importance. They had met briefly a couple of times, which left only hazy memories, so he’d grown up with the Souza story in the vein of mythology, with powerful paintings on the walls, and oft-repeated stories passed on by his mother and her sisters. Solomon recalls: “My grandfather’s paintings have had a huge conscious, and unconscious, effect on me. I was always enthralled by the brutality, the rawness, the strokes and the textures. He showed me that a painting does not need to be pretty and conforming, but can be a blunt expression of experience, opinion and observation. A lot of my work tells a tale, I know this passion has come directly from my grandfather, through my mother Keren.” Solomon himself recognises this. “My earliest memories are of my little self, making his way up the stairs to my mother’s studio. I grew up on the edge of this enchanted land, peeking at the stacked paint pots and vibrant palettes, with the pungent smells of oil and linseed, and the racks of paintings, each one a wonder, a gem. I didn’t know any different, I thought it was natural and all families had painting rooms in their homes. My mother raised me covered in paint, quite literally! I loved the Power Rangers, and she would frequently paint my entire body red, blue, green... I would prance around the house locked in some imaginary battle. My youth was filled with
PHOTO: ADIL HASAN
moved in. They gave her an ultimatum, buy the property or leave. It just so happened that her single mum savings, and the £10,000 that her mother had left her, was just the right amount to secure ownership.” “As I grew, my sense of adventure (and balls) grew,” reminisces Solomon. “I found myself frequently in trouble, spending many nights in cells, with the burn of the handcuffs sizzling upon my wrists. As much as my mother invested everything she had in raising me right, there comes a time when a boy has to take steps towards manhood. And seeing as I had no idea what that felt like, I turned to my peers: a rebellious bunch, constantly in trouble, smoking, stealing, fighting.” The future was shaping up most un-promisingly for the rambunctious teenager when momentous transformation struck his life. Keren Souza-Kohn became immersed in the Jewish heritage of her own mother via the revivalist Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, and decided to relocate her family to Israel. At the age of 17, the repeat offender and confirmed vandal was plucked out from Hackney and plopped down into the ancient city of Jerusalem, eventually attending the Rabbi Avtzons Program, which he describes as “a last-chance-place for boys who had been expelled from other programmes. But that’s when things started to change for me. I grew a lot there. It’s where my motivation and sense of responsibility began to grow.” And thus, from that rather unlikely location, the Souza legacy wound its way back into the annals of art history. A significant beginning was made in 2015, when Solomon began sneaking in to paint at the sprawling, iconic Mahane Yehuda market (aka “The Shuk”) in the heart of Jerusalem. Highly unexpectedly, this pastime went legitimate, then became internationally renowned. He recalls: “A dear friend, Berel Hahn, had the idea to change the face of this historical place, painting portraits of hundreds of heroes – from Golda Meir to Mahatma Gandhi – across the metal shop shutters. I’d painted a few times in the market, illegally and anonymously, sneaking around. But it had never dawned on me to focus my efforts into one push. We found ourselves entwining with the holy city and its occupants. It took me out of the dark and thrust me into the all-seeing eye of the world.” It was this set of artworks that eventually led to Chelsea. Solomon remembers: “Berel and I were honoured to give the president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, and his aides, a tour of the market and gallery we’d created. He invited us to an event we couldn’t attend, so we sent our good friend Fleur Hassan-Nahoum [she is now the Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem] instead, and she sat next to the Head of Special Projects at Chelsea FC, Rola Brentlin. That’s how I got to Stamford Bridge!”
“I am a big mix of a human, a mutt, with roots from India to Israel, which means I sit quite literally on the fence of civilisations, and from my viewpoint I’m able to see the beauty of the world and its differences”
Sita Valles, the fearlessly bold anti-colonial revolutionary of Goan origin, often referred to as Passionária de Angola, was shot at 26. Painted here by Solomon Souza, as part of the ICON series at the Serendipidity Arts Festival Goa, 2019
creativity, which my mother nurtured and encouraged… Without her guidance I wouldn’t be here today.” Still, as Solomon has matured as an artist, and especially after his transformative experience in India (where he would like to return as soon as possible), the paintings and life lessons of Francis Newton Souza are becoming increasingly ingrained in his grandson’s consciousness. When the former was born in his beloved ancestral village of Saligao in North Goa, his homeland was still the centrepiece of the Estado da India of Portugal. Souza wrote in his brilliant Nirvana Of A Maggot that it was “a small plot of land left on this planet that had not been poisoned by that ghastly civilisation, if it can still be called a civilisation, with its mechanised fangs which were simply and surely sucking the life out of us.” But he also chafed against the conservative Catholic society he was born into, and was much happier when his mother relocated him 500 kilometres north to Bombay, and the British Raj. Soon after independence in 1947, he migrated to London, and wound up spending the last decades of his life in New York. Those peripatetic, transnational urges have so far characterised Solomon’s life as well. Right until quarantine grounded him in Jerusalem, he was contentedly and constantly on the move. He told me, “I guess I’m a worldly individual, and have been privileged to come from, travel to, and experience many different backgrounds, with a wide range of religious and cultural practices. I am a big mix of a human, a mutt you could say, with roots from India to Israel, which means I sit quite literally on the fence of civilisations, and from my viewpoint I’m able to see the beauty of the world and its differences… As for my personal identity, I’m still discovering it. It’s something I am building, slowly and cautiously, as I make my way through life.” As the world remains mostly locked down due to the global coronavirus pandemic, Solomon has been dwelling on what he desires in the immediate future, with the long view steadily gestating as well. He told me, “I want to keep on doing what I’m doing... It appears to be working. But long term, I want happiness and stability, and a family. It’s what my soul craves.” Watch this space, the Souza story has more chapters on the way. 43
BEATOW L L O H
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RZA, Action Bronson, Tyler, The Creator have all tried it: But it’s evident that only the bravest have gone this deep, confident in everything else their song has to offer. It’s been nearly three years since his debut album Class-Sikh zapped Prabh Deep straight into the orbit of Indian hip-hop royalty as the main purveyor of Punjabi conscious rap, and established Azadi Records as a force to reckon with. In that time, the independent music industry did come closer to resembling an organised industry: Artists had platforms to come through; indie labels like Gully Gang and Khatarnaak cemented their place on the landscape; and a degree of professionalism crept in. Even if there was still the nationwide problem of favouring quantity over quality to kvetch about, we were closer than ever before to producing a “Despacito”level phenomenon, ie, a piece of pop culture that transcends all boundaries. And then, of course, like the cruellest plot twist, 2020 hit: All sense of time, any notion of linearity has collapsed. It seems fitting that this bleak afternoon, Prabh Deep has chosen a tee featuring an artwork that shows Van Gogh and Mona Lisa out for a ride in a red convertible on a starry, starry night. Days earlier, the first single off his upcoming album, “Chitta”, arrived on streaming platforms, a powerful indictment of drug
IMAGE: ANURAG SHARMA / AZADI RECORDS
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rabh Deep wants to make a hip-hop album without drums. No boom bap, no hard-hitting trap, no rattling hi-hats. “I want to create a meditative sound – something you can walk into a jungle with and feel at peace. It’s not about what I’m saying, necessarily. I want people to pay attention to the frequencies of sound; to understand that you can have rhythm without drums.” “But how do you move people without drums?” he pre-empts, a smile on his face showing that he has thought long and hard about this. As radical as it sounds, this has been done before. Most famously, you have Nas “Nasty Nasdaq” raging against the world over Jay Electronica’s calm keyboard-led production on “Queens Got The Money”. That was 2013, a year when Jay Electronica himself had demonstrated that you could emblazon a rap track onto unwitting brains even if there’s only acoustic guitar and violins – and a lion’s roar – for company, as on “Eternal Sunshine”.
Pandemic or not, Prabh Deep’s quest for perfection – in body, soul, sound and words – carries on uninterrupted. As the rapper and producer prepares his next album, he tells Nidhi Gupta about this phase of evolution in his life and career
HIP-HOP HEADS
HIP-HOP HEADS
– and it’s the same throughout. Everything else behind it is driving the songs.” By this, the Punjabi rapper means the synth-heavy, smooth-as-honey production by Hashback Hashish on tracks like “Maya” and “Amar”. After that first taste, he travelled to Karma Studios in Thailand. It’s where he put together a chunk of the new album, worked with the owner Chris Craker and other legendary musicians from around the world, toyed with giant audio mixers and boards, and understood the importance of leaving his ego outside the studio. Now he feels he is more than ready to give shape to “the sounds I can hear in my head”; step outside the structure, distance himself from that puzzle-fitting approach to music-making. To experiment. “I just want a blank canvas to paint on.”
abuse (with drums intact and a music video featuring several neon-clad humans moving as they must). Days later, Kanye West will announce his candidacy for President of the US. Outside our windows in Mumbai and Delhi, tight lockdowns are in force as the pandemic rages. And yet, keeping up with the current universal trend of bucking all logic, Prabh Deep appears to be in the best form of his life, physically and artistically. “The pandemic is the reason I am who I am right now,” he says. “I used to be an athlete in high school, but then I got into music and started spending 8-12 hours in front of computers and lost touch with my body along the way. I’ve been working out and on a diet for two months now. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do!” Also, “I have all the time in the world to reflect on myself. To think about the mistakes I’ve made in the past, try to make those mistakes right. This has been the time to evolve. To uplift the people who work with and for you, with your energy. When this year started, I had this feeling that this year is mine, and everybody’s around me – and it truly is, actually. I’ve grown a lot as a person.” Part of that growth has been a return to production. Somewhere between Class-Sikh and K I N G (his first experiment with producing for himself), Prabh Deep says he stopped listening to rap altogether. “I started exploring different genres,” swapping out J-Dilla for the likes of Flying Lotus and Thundercat, “stuff that I never thought I was going to have access to.” “Right now, on my playlist is music from, like, the 1970s. I’m listening to Donald Byrd; what an incredible musician he was. You can’t figure out what year he made these tracks in. I’m investing time and effort in this; I’m going after that timeless quality in music.” Thus the preoccupation with deleting the drums. “I don’t know if people noticed,” says Prabh Deep, ensconced in a swivel chair at his West Delhi home, “but every song of the K I N G EP (2019) has drums in a very basic loop 46 —
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rabh Deep says he’s also learning to mince his words and be less aggressive, so to speak, as a rapper. “When I started, I was very vocal about things, very direct. Along the way, I understood that my words can be toned down, can be made softer, but I can still put across the same message in a different style of music.” He’s on his way to cracking that level, where he can address really strong issues – his life’s project is to speak about the 1984 riots – but in a way that his work transcends into the realm of art. For now, “I’m more in that soul-searching mode, inspiring people to do what they want to do.” That instrospection has sired this next, as yet untitled album – which he says he’ll put out only when there’s an appetite for it. “All these songs are like time stamps to me, they’re about different phases in my life. That’s not to say that I’ve done all the things I’m talking about in real life. These are characters I’ve had in my head, versions of myself. Sometimes, you just want all the money in the world; others, you want all the peace in the world. These are different sides of me.” A new single arrives this month and it’s a different personality from the one he presented in “Chitta”. “This one’s almost the opposite; it’s a cocky side of me, talking about a phase of life when I was being immature about a lot of things. This is a personality on the edge of learning the consequences of their decisions. It’s what I’m saying through these songs: The world is infinite, you can go anywhere, and everything depends on your decisions, even if that is to eat well and sleep properly.” Most of all though, Prabh Deep instinctively knows the value of keeping it real and authentic in his music, about not caring how a song is received. He has evidence in the fact that he has fans in Europe and Africa, who may not understand the words, but understand and feel what he’s saying. How? “I think they resonate with the frequencies in my music, I put a lot of effort into vocals and delivery. This is always my intention when I record,” he says. “When I speak, I want it to come from my very bones.”
OBJECTS OF DESIRE
SCREEN FOR DAYS Among the bumper crop of smartphones this season, the Oppo Reno4 Pro is a standout device
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WORDS: NIDHI GUPTA
andemic or not, if you’re going to stay captivated by the screens around you, might as well invest in the nicest, most powerful device you can get your hands on. The Oppo Reno4 Pro is all about that screen: Much like its peers, it offers a 90Hz refresh rate; but it really wins on design as its 6.5-inch screen wraps around the front display to give it that premium, borderless look. It’s not just surface value with the Oppo Reno4 Pro: At its core is a Snapdragon 720G chipset (known to power mobile gaming to a higher level) and a 4,000mAh battery, accompanied by a 65W Super VOOC 2.0 charger. The device comes with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage. With a 32MP lens on the front and a quad camera on the rear – including Sony’s 48MP IMX586 as the main camera, an 8MP ultra wide-angle lens, a 2MP macro and 2MP mono lens – the smartphone relies on powerful software for your on-point photography worthy of a 2020 ’gram. Even if 2020 itself isn’t. ` 34,990
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A well-told story is going to be a straight hit, regardless of language, scale or budget. As you might’ve discovered during your quarantine bingewatch, it’s an axiom upheld by a bold new generation of film-makers and actors from the South Indian film industries. Few others are systematically scripting content that is hyperlocal and aesthetically global all at once, and helping unfamiliar audiences caper past that “one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles”. Meet five eminently watchable actors fronting Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada cinema, as they dwell on their extraordinary journeys and why, pandemic or not, breaking the mould is a full-time job.
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TA M I L TA K A M I N N L TA A D K A M I A N L N A TA M A K M I D A A N L A L N A TA YA M A K M I D A A N L A L AY L M N TA M A D K A A L A L T E M I A N A A LU L M N TA Y M A A D K A A L G U T M I L A E L A N N A M L TA TA Y U M A D K A A L G U A L M I T E M I A N N A M L A L L T TA Y U M A A M K A A D K A A L G U T M I L A E L I L N N A N A L T M N A TA YA U G M A A A D K K M T E A N M I D A A N L A U L A I L A L L N T M N TA M A YA U G M A A M A D K A A D K A T M I L U L A L E I A N A N N A M L AY LU L N A TA TA YA M A M A K A K A G M T E D A A N M I L A D A A N L A U L L I A L AY LU L M N A TA M N A Y M M A K A M A K A A L G U A L T E M I T E D A A L D L N A I L A N N A M AY LU L AY LU M N T M M A A D K A A L A D K A G U A L G U A L T E A L M I T E M I A N N A M A N N A M A L L A L L TA T Y U M YA U G M A A M A D K A A L A D K A G U A L M I T E T E M I L U L I A N A A N N A M L AY LU L AY LU L T M N T M A M K A A A D K A A L A D K A G U A L G U A L M I T E A L M I T E N N A N A I L A N N A L A L L AY LU TA M N A TA M YA U G M A M A A D K A K A A D K A A L G U M T M T D L U L A E L I L A L A N N E L I A N A A N N A M L L T M N A TA M A YA U G M A YA U G A M A A K K A D K A M T D A N M I T E D A A N L A U L A L A U L E I A L A A N N L A L L LU N A TA M N A TA YA M M A YA U G M YA M A K K A D K A G U A L M I T E D A A N M I T E L A D A L U L L L A N A A AY N N A M L AY LU L AY LU M N T M N T M M A M A K A M A L A D K A A L A D K A G U A L A L T E G U A L M I T E D A L A T E A N N A M I L A N N A M A AY N N LU A M L A L A L T T M Y U M A YA U G A M M A A D K A A M A L A D K A G U A A D K A G A T T T L U L A E L L A U L A E L I L A L A N N E L A M I L A N A A N T
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AY M TA TA YA U G YA A M U G A D A D A D G U A L A L T E A L M I T E A L A N M I T E L A U A N L A A N U A A A A L A L AY LU L TA AY LU M N A TA M N A TA YA U G M M A N A M A M A K A K A A L G U M I A L T E G U M I T E D M I T E L D U D L L A L N A A N N A M A AY N N LU A M L AY LU L T AY LU M N T T M A M A M A D K A A M A L A D K A G U A L A D G U A L M I A L T E G U A L M I T E A L T E A N N A M I L A N N A M A A N N L A M L A L T A L T T Y U M YA U G A M M A Y A TOVINO THOMAS U G A M M IMAGE: A D K A A M A L A D K A G U A D A L T E T E A L COURTESY T E L A U L A I L U L A I A N A I A N A A L L L L T A L M N TA M N T Y U M M N A Y U A M M Y U M D A I L N A A M D A I L K A M I L A K M D A I L K A A D I L K A M A N L A M A N L K A N N A K A M A N N L A A M A L N Y A A N A A A D A A L N N AY A D N N L YA D A L N A A A D A A AY A A L A M Y A D L A M M A D A A M A L A A M A M L L A M A T L A M L A E M A M T L A L Y M A L T E AY L A L E L YA U T L A L YA G L T E L A LU A L G E L AY U L A U L YA G L A M LU YA G U L A M U A L U M T G L A M A T L U A T T E U A M TA T E M M A T E I L M T T E M LU L TA T E M I A N N LU A M AY L TA M A A A D K A A L T E G I L LU YA M A A M G A D K A M I E L L A U L A A N N L L TA U G M YA U G M A A D K A M T U E L
31, Kochi
HOME RUN: Since his debut in the 2012 film Prabhuvinte Makkal, Tovino Thomas’ rise has been mercurial. In a series of power-packed performances in critically acclaimed films like Luca, Godha and Virus, Thomas has essayed characters from all ends of the morality spectrum in Malayalam cinema. This year, he blew us away again in Akhil Paul and Anas Khan’s Forensic. “It could’ve been my biggest commercial hit till date, but it was released just before the lockdown. I’m glad it’s got good ratings on Netflix though.”
HERO WORSHIP: Apart from growing up with the cinema of Mammootty and Mohanlal, Thomas remembers idolising Kamal Haasan. “Before cinema happened for me,” he says, “I once came across Haasan in a hotel cafe in Mumbai. I felt compelled to talk to him so my friends and I went up to him. He spent quite a long time chatting with us. With me, he spoke in Malayalam, in Tamil to a friend from Tamil Nadu, in English to a couple of NRI friends and in Hindi to the friend from North India. So eloquent and insightful.” WINDS OF CHANGE: As Thomas sees it, the “new wave” of Malayalam cinema is more about “how the content is treated, because we’ve never been deprived of good content. The difference between commercial and art house cinema is now leaner, films are doing well in both the festival circuit as well in theatres.” But as different genres come up with a hybrid model of formula and art films, he says it’d be wise to keep in mind that “there will always be a ‘new wave’, compared to what currently exists.” IDYLL, NOT IDLE: With no payslips forthcoming and all shoots stalled (his next, Basil Joseph’s Minnal Murali, in which he plays a superhero, was about 80 per cent complete before the lockdown), Thomas is choosing to look at the positives: having time to spend with family, especially with his newborn son Tahaan; to revisit his home library; to “unlock his complete physical potential”.
“I’m possibly the fittest I’ve ever been. I’m doing leg-splits, kick-ups; I can even jump up to fourfeet high,” says Thomas, cheerfully. “And then there are the pets! I have two dogs now – a Beagle and a Saluki. I’ve got a koi carp fish pond, lovebirds and finches, Kadaknath (black) chickens, who now take care of our egg supply at home, and I’ve just set up a space for pigeons too – I have these happy sights all within the compound of my house.” FOREIGN BUT FAMILIAR: “I remember watching this Turkish film called Incir Reçeli [by Aytaç Agirlar]. It was a story about unconditional love, set against the gorgeous backdrop of Istanbul. Everything was unfamiliar to me then – the language, the place and even the emotional traits. But I remember it left such an impression on me: And I believe that’s how good cinema makes itself present to you.”
A D K A A L A D K A G U A L A L T E G U A L M I T E D A A L A N M I T E L A U A N N A M A AY N N LU A M L AY LU L TA AY LU M N A TA T M M M K A A A K A G U A L A D G U A L M A L T E G U A L M I T E D A L A M I T E L D A N A N A A N N A M A AY LU A M L AY LU L T A L M N T T M N A A M Y U A M M A A D K A A M A L A D K A G U A L G U A L M I A L T E G U A L T E T E D A I L A L A N N A M I L A N N A M A N N L A M A L T L T T Y U M A YA U G A M M A YA U G A M M A A D K A A M A L A D K A G U A D T T T I N N TA A D M I L A TA N M D A I L N A A M D I L A M I L A K M D A I L M A A D I L K A A N L A K M N L K A A L N A K A M A N L A N A K A M N L Y A A N A N A AY A D A L N N A A L D N N L Y A L A N A A A L D A A AY A D A L A M Y A D L A M M A D A A M A D A L A M A T L L A M M T L A M A L A E M A M T E L A L Y M A M T L L Y A L T E AY U A T E L A LU YA G L T E L A L Y G L E L AY U A U A LU YA G U L A M LU YA G U L M T U G A L A L G U A L A L M I T E D A A N U A A A M AY L AY LU N A TA M A T M A K A A L A L G M I D G U L L A A N A A TA U A L A L A T A M D A L A L A I L A U N N A M A M LU Y M TA YA M A A A D K A A L G U A L T E M I T E M L A L A A U N N A M A L L L T M N T Y M M N TA YA U G M A YA U G A M M A A D K A A M A L A D K A A D K A A L T E T E T E M I L A U L A U L A I A L N A M I A N A A N L L L A L N L T M N TA Y M M N TA Y U M Y U A M A D K A A L A D K A A L A D K A G U A L A L T E G U A L M I T E A L M I T E M I A N N A M A N N A M A A N L A L A L L A L L T T Y M M N A TA YA U G M A YA U G A M M A A D K A A A A K K A T T M T L D A N M I L A D A U A N L A E L L A U L A E L I L A L A N N E L A M I L A L TA M N A TA YA U M M A TA IMAGE:N COURTESY AISHWARYA YA U G M A YA U G M A LEKSHMI A K K A K T M I T E D A A N M I T E L A D A A N M I L A D A U A N L E L A U L L A L L AY LU L AY LU M N A L TA M N A TA YA U M M A N A M A M A K A K A A M A L K A G U A L T E G U M I T E D M I T E L D D L L A L N A A N N A M I L A AY N N LU A M L AY LU L AY LU M N A TA TA M A M A M A K A A L A D K A G A L A D K A G U A L T G U M T D M T M I L E L A E L I L A L A N N E L A M I L A N N A M A A N L A L T T
28, Chennai
FAIRY-TALE BEGINNINGS: In just three years, Lekshmi has built a short but stacked resume: From her breakout performance in Aashiq Abu’s Mayaanadhi to Amal Neerad’s superlative Varathan opposite the inimitable Fahadh Faasil, and now, her Tamil debut with Karthik Subbaraj’s much-anticipated Jagame Thandhiram, also starring Dhanush – it’s been something of a dream run. And that’s not even counting the Mani Ratnam magnum opus in the works, which she is signed on, along with a galaxy of stars of the south and Hindi film industries. YOUNG AND RESTLESS: Growing up in Kerala in a conservative family, Lekshmi’s exposure to cinema was limited to once-a-year visits to the theatre and watching Malayalam TV series with her grandmother on the sly. She grew up watching Mohanlal and Urvashi, and became a lifelong fan of the legendary
actor Shobana. “She is so smart, sexy, urban, talented. Watching them all, it felt like it was possible to be many things at once.”
CONTENT IS KING: It always has been, Lekshmi has realised watching old Tamil and Malayalam movies during this lockdown. What’s happening right now is “simply a reinforcement of that age-old value – the script is hero.” She believes OTT platforms have changed that dynamic fundamentally, for hitting the back button is a lot easier than walking out of a theatre. “We are compelled to provide a better product to our audiences and to be the best version of ourselves.”
THE LONG ROAD: Lekshmi’s wishlist for the industry she works in is long: “I feel we need to make more movies for kids as they depend on international content for entertainment. I would like to see actors break language barriers and work across industries. Of course, we need more substantial roles for female actors; and I hope that in the future, content and strong performances make stars, not online fan battles.”
L AY LU M N A TA M N A TA YA U G M M A YA U G M A M A K A K A A L T E G U M I T E D A M I T E L A D A U L A U L A L L A N N L A M L A L L LU M N A TA M N A TA YA U G M A YA U G M YA M A K K T E G U A L M I T E D A A N M I T E L A D A U A N L A U L A L A L A LU L AY LU L LU M N A T M N TA Y M M M YA A M A K A L A D K A G U A L G U A L T E G U A L M I T E D A A N M I T E L A L A A M A N N A M AY LU L A L L L N T T M M Y U M U G A M A D K A A M IMAGE: COURTESY ADIVI SESHY A A L A D K A G U A L G U A L T E A L T E T E L A U I L A N N A M I A N A A L A L L L T M N TA YA U G M M A YA U G M A U G A M A D K A A D K A T E T E M I T E L A U L A U L A U L I A N A N L L A L L LU M N A TA M N A TA YA U G M A YA U G M K K T E G U A L M I T E D A A N M I L A D A U A N L A U L A LU L AY LU L M N A T M N TA Y M M A K A L A D K A G U A L G U A L T E A L M I T E D A A N M I A M A N N A M AY LU L A L L N T M Y U M A A M A D K A A L A D K A G U A L G U A L T E T E L A I L A N N A M A N N A M A L L T YA U G M A YA U G M A A M A D K A A D T E T E L A U L A U L A L A I A N A L L L M N A TA M YA U G M A YA U G M A K T E M I T E D A A N L A U L A U L A L A LU L LU M N TA M Y M YA A K A A L G U G U A L T E M I T E D A L A N N A M AY LU L LU TA M M A D K A A L G U G U A L T E M I T E A N N A M A L L LU TA YA U G M A A D K A G U T E M I L A U L A A N L L M N A TA YA U G M A K T E M I D A A N L A U L A LU L M N Y M A D K A A L G U A L T E A N N A M AY LU M A D A L G U A L T E A A M A L YA U G M A T E L A U L A L M YA U G T E L A U LU M G U T E LU G U
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34, Hyderabad
BOLD BEGINNINGS: Before Adivi Sesh turned up as Bhadra in SS Rajamouli’s epic Baahubali, he’d already built himself a reputation for being something of a maverick. Back in 2010, he debuted with Karma: Do You Believe? a film he wrote, directed and starred in. A film grad from San Francisco State University, Sesh’s ambitions lie in telling good stories. He’s kept the hits coming with Kshanam (remade as Baaghi 2 in Hindi), Evaru and Goodachari, making Sesh a key figure on a changing Telugu film landscape. FROM WHERE HE STANDS: “Telugu cinema has always had little bursts of creative ingenuity,” says Sesh, “the trouble has been with being able to sustain it long enough.” This has evidently changed since Baahubali. After its historic success, he’s seen the rise of a stronger support system for ideas that might’ve previously been dismissed as too progressive, too outré – and credits this very infrastructure for buoying Kshanam to the top of the box office in 2016. And “once the pandemic eases, [his next film] Major is going to be made on a huge canvas in both Hindi and Telugu, and will see a pan-Indian release.” PIGEONHOLE PERSPECTIVE: Sesh believes that the widely touted idea that Telugu cinema is largely about masala films has been both a boon and bane. “It’s true that we can do large canvases like no other,” he says. “But let’s not forget that there is no Kabir Singh without Arjun Reddy, no Ram Aur Shyam without Ramudu Bheemudu, no Ek Duuje Ke Liye without Maro Charitra.”
COMING SOON: Sesh is using this time to polish his scripts for a sequel to Goodachari and Major. The latter is based on the life of the late Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan who lost his life during the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Sesh first came across his story during the 26/11 reportage on TV while in the US. “A great deal of research with the NSG, a physical transformation to look more like him, weapons training, speaking to his army colleagues/friends and parents to understand his psyche have all been part of the process” of building this biopic.
HERO WORSHIP: Sesh is an unapologetic fan of Aamir Khan. Apart from admiring his acumen and choices, “I remember this amazingly subtle scene in Rangeela where he’s talking to the love of his life and casually steals a banana off a street vendor’s cart. The infamous ʻEk kele mein tera kya jaa raha haiʼ line? It’s one of the most incredible bits of comedic timing I’ve ever seen... So blasé and effortless in contrast to every showy celebrated performance in the films of that era.”
FOREIGN BUT FAMILIAR: After adapting Oriol Paulo’s blockbuster thriller ContraTiempo into Evaru, Sesh remembers going on a Spanish film marathon, which is when he first laid eyes on Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. “It’s a crime that I didn’t see this extraordinary film earlier. To speak about social constructs in a fantasy realm, like he does, is something I could never have fathomed. I would love to act in a film like that.”
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MORAL FIBRE: For her part, Srinath is grateful for the break from “an unreasonable amount of travelling city-to-city, hotel-to-hotel, different lives, different sets.” For once, she feels she’s plagued by the same thoughts and uncertainties as everyone else. And so, she’s taking this time to educate herself on climate change and broadcast her learnings to her seven lakh Instagram followers as she goes along. “I realise that I come from a place of privilege, so I can divert my energies into doing something good. I’m here to make a difference.” THE RIPPLE EFFECT: Srinath offers a macroscopic assessment of the “new wave” in southern cinema. “There is a section of the audience that is better versed in global cinema and demands more – and they’re the ones driving this ‘new wave’. Of course, there are also young film-makers who have the power to make the films that they’d want to watch. Formula films still work, and will work for a long time; but this segment of the audience is clearly unshakeable. And growing. There is hope!” MORE IS MORE: The change that Srinath does hope to see is “more meaty, more author-backed roles written with more depth” for women. She fancies a project of a biographical nature for herself and wishes “to be given roles that delve deeper into the human psyche.” Such as the role of a cop in her next Tamil film Chakra: “a commercial whodunnit” which wants us to reconsider the omnipresence of technology in our lives. FOREIGN BUT FAMILIAR: Srinath recently watched Dark, the German language Netflix original that has become a worldwide phenomenon, and was dumbstruck. “No matter what language it’s made in, if it’s good, it will travel. I aspire to be part of that league of film-making.”
IMAGE: COURTESY SHRADDHA SRINATH
29, Bengaluru
ZONE OF INFLUENCE: Whether by design or default, Shraddha Srinath has debuted in a different language industry every year since 2015, and garnered instantaneous awards, acclaim and fandom. She’s nothing if not prolific, having delivered huge hits like U Turn, Vikram Vedha, Richie. This year, her sophomore Telugu film Krishna And His Leela saw her turn the tables by playing an urban, modern character (vs the docile mother and wife she played in her award-winning Telugu debut Jersey). “I’m mostly known for those emotional, serious roles, but I want to be able to surprise people and be a sort of chameleon.”
A D A L M A L G U A L M I T E D A A L A N M I T E L A D A U A N L A U A N E L A A A M L A L L T A L M N T M N T Y U M N A YA U G A M M A YA U G A M M A A D K A A M A L A D K A G U A L T E T E T E L A D A U L A I U L A I A L A N A I A N A N N L L L L T L M N TA M N A TA YA U G M M A YA U G A M A YA U G M A A K K A D M T M I T E D A A N M I T E L A D A U A N L A U L A E L L A I U L A L A A N N L LU L TA LU M N A TA M N A T Y U M M Y M Y IMAGE: COURTESY DANISH SAIT M K A A K G A A D G A M A L T G U A M T D A L A M I T E L D U A N L A U L A E L I L L A E L I L A N N A M A A A M L TA AY LU TA M N A TA YA U G M A N A YA U G M A M A A K K M A T G M I T D A M T L D U A L D A U L E I L N A A M D A I L K A D M I L A K M D A I L M A A D A I L K A M A N L A M A A N L K M N N A K A M N N L A A K A M A N AY A A N A L AY A D A A L N N YA A D L N N L A A L D A N A AY A L DA A AY A L A A M YA A D A M M A L D A A M M A L A M A M T L L A A A T L A M M T E L A M A M T E L A L Y M A L E L AY A L T LU YA T E L A LU YA L T E L A LU A L G E L AY G U L A LU YA G U L A M LU YA G U L A M U G A L U M T G U L A M TA T L U A TA T E U A M TA T E M M TA T E M I L M TA T E M I LU L TA T M I A N N A M A M AY LU L LU L TA M A A K A A M A L T E T D A A N L L A A I L A LU L A A D A G A T T A L M I L A L A E L E A N N A M L T M YA U G M A U G A M A D K A K T E T L U L U L
32, Bengaluru
SLAY STATION: Sait, a comedian, emcee, film-maker and actor, has been around for a good decade and is something of a celebrity in Bengaluru’s improv circuits. It took a global crisis for the country at large to wake up to his talent, courtesy his absurd one-man, one-minute sketch videos on Instagram and Twitter that efficiently satirise the quarantine conversations we’re all having with and at each other right now.
PASSING THE BATON: Sait also thinks that there’s been an innate realisation that “it takes one generation of stars to create another.” Like Puneeth Rajkumar: “He’s had such massive successes, and he could’ve stayed in his bubble, but instead he’s generated one of the biggest hits of last year,” referring to Kavaludaari (followed by Law and Mayabazar 2016 this year). And then there’s Rakshit Shetty, famous for Kirik Party and co-founder of Pushkar Films, who produced Humble Politician Nograj. “To take this random, radical internet character and let him loose for two hours of comedy – that takes guts.”
FOREIGN BUT FAMILIAR: A Fahadh Faasil fan himself, Sait strongly recommends Kumbalangi Nights and Trance (if you’re among the 0.5 per cent of the Indian population that hasn’t seen them yet). He’s also charmed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s Spanish sci-fi flick The Platform since “it’s such a great metaphor for how we’re living right now.” “The story needs to be compelling,” he says. “Human emotions are the same everywhere.”
FIRST IMPRESSIONS: At the heart of Sait’s comedy has been a gentle, affectionate ribbing of Bengaluru’s residents, accents and stereotypes. These invented characters have been with Sait for a long time, travelling with him from radio prank call shows (which is where he first found fame) to online videos to feature length films.
LONG FORM: Sait forayed into feature films with Humble Politician Nograj in 2018. After sold-out shows in Bengaluru theatres, it arrived early to VoD and became something of a cult hit, especially among that subsection of the audience that rabidly follows Sacha Baron Cohen. With his sophomore feature film, French Biriyani (recently released on Amazon Prime Video), Sait adds Asgar The Auto Driver to his wall of faces. Made with his serial collaborator Saad Khan, and starring some of his closest friends from the city’s improv community, French Biriyani “is a comedy of errors” where a French guy (Sal Yusuf) gets stuck with Sait’s Asgar as they drive around Shivajinagar, not understanding each other and thus offering up the “perfect recipe for disaster”. “It won’t change your life or anything, but it provides comic relief.”
THE CHANGE WITHIN: Two minutes or two hours, Sait is convinced that size no longer matters. It’s why he’s churning out content at unprecedented rates, including a third feature film, ie, a sports drama (with Khan), and extending Humble Politician Nograj into a web-series with Applause Entertainment. On a larger scale, Sait says there’s a newfound boldness and winner-takes-all spirit in the Kannada film industry. “I met Yash in Doha recently, and I asked him how he put together such a monster hit [KGF],” says Sait, ”and he simply said that someone has to try and fail before someone can succeed.”
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ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST
` 200 JULY-AUGUST 2020 THE MOST BEAUTIFUL HOMES IN THE WORLD
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still, life
ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST
` 200 JULY-AUGUST 2020 THE MOST BEAUTIFUL HOMES IN THE WORLD
INDIA
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still, life
ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST
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INDIA
INDIA
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A Step Forward
WORDS: SHIVANGI LOLAYEKAR
Recycled. Organic. Bio-based and sustainably sourced. Hundred per cent Econyl regenerated nylon made out of preand post-consumer waste. Welcome to Gucci Off The Grid, a gender-neutral collection to celebrate a new and necessary world of better living and consumership.
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hyp THE
NECKCHAIN BY ALEXANDER MCQUEEN, PRICE ON REQUEST
BROOCH BY RANIWALA 1881, `6,16,000
Rules Of
Engagement We went across three menswear-defining categories to give you the best products on offer right now KURTA BUTTONS BY ANMOL JEWELLERS, PRICE ON REQUEST
EARRING BY ALEXANDER MCQUEEN, PRICE ON REQUEST
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AUGUST 2020
RING BY FOREVERMARK, `68,000
BRACELET BY LOUIS VUITTON, `1,42,000
WORDS: SHIVANGI LOLAYEKAR
NECKCHAIN BY TIFFANY, `1,46,000
THE LINE-UP PENDANT BY BOTTEGA VENETA, `59,000
RING BY INOX JEWELRY, `1,200 BRACELET BY BEBAJRANG, `1,000
NECKCHAIN BY DIOR, `70,000
LAYER ON
KADA BY MEN OF PLATINUM BY PGI, `1,50,000
BROOCH BY AMRAPALI, `39,000
A piece of jewellery or five amps up anything you're wearing
BRACELET BY OM JEWELLERS, `83,000
NECKCHAIN BY MISHO, `9,500
hype THE
FANNY PACK BY VALENTINO, `78,200
KEYCHAIN BY BERLUTI, `35,000
LEATHER HAVEN
The card cases and wallets you can never have too many of
CARD CASE BY SALVATORE FERRAGAMO, `25,000
LUGGAGE TAG BY ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA, `16,000
WALLET BY PAUL SMITH, `22,500
CROSSBODY BY NAPPA DORI, `4,800
BACKPACK BY HIDESIGN, `10,600
WORDS: SHIVANGI LOLAYEKAR. IMAGE: STUDIO DES FLEURS (HERMÈS)
BAG BY BURBERRY, `87,500
BRACELET BY HERMÈS, PRICE ON REQUEST TIE BAR BY BERLUTI, PRICE ON REQUEST
BOW TIE BY TED BAKER, `3,800
THE LINE-UP
POCKET SQUARE BY ETRO, `8,000 AVAILABLE AT THE COLLECTIVE
LAPEL PIN BY THE TIE HUB, `800
TIE BY CELIO, `1,300
TAILOR-MADE
TIE, `800, POCKET SQUARE, `800; BOTH BY OROFIT
You may think you don't need these in your closet right now, but you'l be surprised at the treats out there
CUFFLINKS BY AZGA, `1,850
AUGUST 2020
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IN THE KNOW
l Men’s a t i g i d st of one The be eek for any nW in Fashio e globe. Get th across
DIOR
I
n June every year, people from across the world would gather in Milan and Paris for a memorable live viewing of Men’s Fashion Week. The sun would be out and you couldn’t help but indulge yourself to the champagne served at shows. Then, this year, magic happened. You could pour any drink of your preference because every mega luxury brand you love went live with a digital showcase that didn’t limit any viewer.
Artist Amoako Boafo collaborates with Kim Jones for the Dior Men Summer 2021 collection
There’s no doubting Kim Jones. He goes for every collection with his own thought process, bringing in collaborators from across the world and never playing by a rulebook. What follows is a collection that’s faultless and flawless, every damn time. A perfect example would be the Dior Men’s director’s digital showcase of S/S 21: “A celebration of identity, of the power of creativity, of art’s ability to transport.” This time around Jones collaborated with Ghana-born, Vienna-trained artist Amoako Boafo, armed with a rich textile history, stemming from his roots in Accra and Ghana as well as being celebrated culturally for his work on black diaspora portraits – many a reference of his personal identity and masculinity. Jones spent his childhood across Africa and calls it home. Travel remains the starting point of all of his menswear. What resulted was a thought-provoking, modern, powerful and fresh collection brighter than fluoro lights and cool as a monsoon breeze. The clothes are all live to see on Dior’s website but beware, you’ll want everything. 60 —
AUGUST 2020
WORDS: SHIVANGI LOLAYEKAR. IMAGE: FRANCIS KOKOROCO (DIOR)
G N I GO
p hy e THE
SALVATORE FERRAGAMO
A model gets candid for Salvatore Ferragamoʼs Pre-Spring 2021 collection
The Italian house’s Creative Director Paul Andrew says, “This collection was made under exceptional conditions, through which we were all obliged to adapt and innovate. Even before lockdown began, I was planning to start with a consideration of mid-century Scandinavian furniture design. Later, that inspiration came into its own: functionalism inspired by nature featuring clean lines, organic materials, minimal construction and a relative lack of ornament.” What many don’t know about British-born Andrew is that he is, in fact, a master creator of sublime, elegant fashion made of high quality, organically sourced fabric and gender-neutral clothes – never taking away from Ferragamo’s rich heritage. The short film to accompany the clothes is a masterpiece of just that: combining the past, present and future innovation faultlessly – one you don’t want to miss on the brand’s website.
HERMÈS The first to kick off a digital version of Paris Men’s Fashion Week, Hermèsʼ grand-standing menswear queen Véronique Nichanian’s defined her vision for Spring/Summer 2021. She went all out for a short film, combining runway and backstage motions with the help of Cyril Teste, known for his creative and artistic visual performances across the world. The menswear pieces were limited, owing to lesser staff but not short of Nichanian’s inimitable aesthetic: a timeless casualness of light, fresh and free clothes. Accessories like horn pendant necklaces and leather sandals only made us more hopeful of a happier time. Teste confirms, “Rather than create an event, we are attempting to bring our encounter – which stemmed from both work and necessity – to life. A response to the question: how to think, react and create in [a] new context?” Looking into the future for Hermèsʼ Spring/ Summer 2021
Gucciʼs internal team play models for Cruise 2021
GUCCI Never one to shy away from innovation and go all guns blazing, Gucci’s Creative Director Alessandro Michele flipped the game like a chess board, putting the bishops and knights in place of the king and queen. The result: a real and raw portrait of humanity with the fashion (obviously) never being compromised. Gucci’s all-encompassing designers played models, while models took on the role of photographers and storytellers. Backstage heroes come to the forefront. A reimagination of an otherwise faultless live set-up to resonate and be relatable for anyone watching from anywhere. Many of the faces you’d see are Michele’s travel, art and working companions. People that understand his admirable knowledge and equally inspire his love for art, culture, music, monuments and moments because otherwise, “What is the impact of unveiling what builds illusion?” he said. AUGUST 2020
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IN THE KNOW
Menswear magnificence best describes Ermenegildo Zegna SS 2021
ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA It was only fair that as Ermenegildo Zegna celebrated its 110th anniversary this year, Artistic Director Alessandro Sartori went right back to where it all began. A video and full collection called Nature, Man, Machine out of Oasi Zegna in Trivero. Both were filmed and photographed against the backdrop of a lush enviable forest with clothes to diversify masculinity and define androgyny – from oversized nonchalant suits to tailored shorts and shirts. #UseTheExisting, a process Sartori has now followed for many seasons, meant every piece was infused with recycled material: wool, hemp, raw fibres and papery nappa. He also considered this as a challenging time for humanity and the entire process alluded to each one’s personal actions on the planet and people around them.
p hy e THE
The Todʼs Gomminos you definitely want for Spring Pre-2021
A virtual story of true reality as Tod’s call it. And it’s just that. An honest insight into the HQ in Brancadoro, in the Le Marche region of Italy. What you’ll see in the short film that follows Creative Director Walter Chiapponi is an eye-opening, start to finish process – right from the mood board to concepts and the delicate craftsmanship that goes behind the making of every piece out of this Spring Pre-2021 collection to be retailed December onwards. All this besides the stunning clothes and accessories themselves including the renowned, delicious leather and suede loafers, and signature Gomminos that deserve a place in every man’s wardrobe. In a consumerist-heavy world, you often see the end result and buy off-the-rack, hype-heavy pieces you must have in your arsenal. But every collection is a long process and takes many moving parts behind the scenes to come together. Tod’s shows you just how it’s done. 62 —
AUGUST 2020
WORDS: SHIVANGI LOLAYEKAR
TOD’S
JULY 2020 150
ANUSHKA LIVING IN THE MOMENT
JULY 2020 150
ANUSHKA LIVING IN THE MOMENT
SABYASACHI 20TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW
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Born To
Win
GENDER BENDING
I’ve worn tuxedos at wedding receptions, gathering eyeballs across the room for not turning up in what calls for Indowestern, glamorous attire. On the daily, a preference for black clothing, often slim-fit trousers and a tucked in shirt or oversized gear – much before androgyny became normal or a novelty, had people think, “Ah, maybe she’s just a tomboy.” Sneakers have forever been my go-to choice of footwear, mainly for the comfort, practicality and fear of falling flat on my face in four-inch heels. Then arrived the cool factor of many of these looks. Was I ahead of the curve? Not really. The reality is, personal style is what you make of it. And that can be an honest reflection of your evolution as a person and your attire. Today, the beauty of fashion is that versions of womenswear can be enjoyed by men and vice versa. Designers across the globe, from edgy heroes like Rick Owens to creative gamechangers like Craig Green, or Indian tastemakers like Sabyasachi to indie, homegrown labels like Bodice and Antar-Agni, have only propelled, promoted and aggressively pushed out gender neutral clothing. The bonus? You and your other half can start sharing clothes and cut costs, but remember, don’t ever compromise on your personal style. That’ll always remain the essence of fashion. —SHIVANGI LOLAYEKAR HERMÈS
CONCEAL YOUR FLAWS
No hypebeast clothes or fine tailoring can make you look your best if you’re averse to clippers and scissors. Well, unless you’re blessed with a fine mane. I get my haircut fortnightly and keep my beard in check weekly. Thanks to my groomingobsessed father, I can never leave my nails unclipped either. But here’s where the fun begins. To make sure I look boxfresh every time I step out, a smart skincare routine is my ultimate #lifegoals. Apart from drinking a lot of water, I use a moisturiser and a sunscreen suited for my skin type, which, frankly, took me a while to get right. Then comes a tea tree face mask every night and an exfoliant that I use weekly. 64
It’s helped improve my skin tremendously, especially from my mortal enemy, ie, acne. The scars it left behind are easy to hide with a good concealer, which, of course, also works to minimise dark circles – just dab on a minimal amount using your fingers. Setting concealer with a loose powder is my goto technique if I’m stepping out for a quick coffee. And if I need to take it a notch higher, I dust off a bit of bronzer on the outer corners of my face for a contoured look. There are a million YouTube tutorials that can guide you if you don’t know where to start; but maybe, this is your first step. —SELMAN FAZIL
IMAGE: STUDIO DES FLEURS (HERMÈS)
GQ’s style experts share their personal experiences, tips and tricks on finding what suits you best
I used to think good clothes were enough to get by and look great. But choosing the right accessories? That’s a whole different conundrum, especially with the options available today. But hey, I guess you learn on the job. For a casual look on a regular workday, I keep it light with a Gucci or Kenzo crossbody to carry my essentials. I believe in keeping it sharp, simple yet impactful, so sometimes I throw on a neck chain to amp up my look. The key is to never wear all my jewellery together and fit in a pair of classic aviators or wayfarers when I’m out for a work commitment. What you absolutely can’t go wrong with is a pair of good, comfortable white sneakers. At a formal GQ event, I normally wear a suit or asymmetric Indo-western kurtas. For the former, a tie or pocketsquare is just enough. For a full-blown tuxedo, a vintage velour bow tie gives you sharpness, edge and elegance all at once. I top it up with a sexy watch, statement cufflinks and patent shoes. At meetings, a shirt or jumper, chunky sneakers and a man clutch are all I need. From everything I’ve learnt, and this is regardless of what you’re wearing, a winning formula for accessories – less is always more.
THE INSIDER
LITTLE BY LITTLE
When Hedi Slimane sent down a tribe of models on the YSL runway to show off a razor-thin aesthetic, you couldn’t ignore the casting. Models with narrow waists, thin legs and of medium height, signalling a loud message: This fit is definitely not for everyone. If you’re like me, less rock ’n’ roll and with a typical “Indian bod”, this wouldn’t be my #BigFitOfTheDay. Instead, I use an old-fashioned formula, which designers like Giorgio Armani have promoted for years: fuller, pleated pants with an ideal half or a medium break and slightly longer back lengths than the front. It automatically slims you down and adds the illusion of height. For denims: a no-break fit is important for all body types and you should be able to pinch any extra fabric by the thigh to ensure it fits right. When it comes to jackets, shoulder pads work best if your shoulders are slightly bent. However, it’s all about proportions. The golden rule of broad/ narrow or narrow/broad is always flattering. When it comes to a shirt, adopt the Tom Ford rule: collars that are neither too pointy, nor too big, but just the right size to elongate your neck. Most of all, make sure the areas around your armholes and crotch are roomy enough – you don’t want creases spotlighting your pit stains or manhood. —RAHUL VIJAY
BRUNELLO CUCINELLI
VALENTINO
FIT FIRST
—SHAEROY CHINOY
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THE LONG LOCK
MANUAL Salon visits may be few and far between, but hair growth – like time – stops for no one. We’ve got you some expert advice to help you handle that overgrown mane, and all the products you’ll need to go with it
THE CONDITIONER
HAIR SELF-CARE
Truefitt & Hill Replenishing Conditioner The milk and wheat protein formula strengthens your hair and adds volume – the ultimate antidote to the tangling and breakage that often comes with overgrown locks. `2,400
THE OIL The Man Company Onion Seed Hair Oil A solid oil is to haircare what a stuntman is to a Bourne film – never in the spotlight, but beyond necessary. We like this one for its mix of ten essential oils and its unimposing fragrance. `399 THE MASK
THE DRYER Dyson Supersonic A dryer that works hard saves time, and the Supersonic is a good bet because it styles and smoothens while it dries. Plus, it looks more futuristic than your regulation point-shooters. `28,900
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THE WA X Brylcreem Bold Hold Hair Wax Restyling & Matte Texture We love how the hydrating hold of this almond-and-aloe wax helps you transition from bedhead to Zoom meeting-appropriate with just a quick flick of the wrist. `249
WORDS: SAUMYAA VOHRA. COORDINATION: MEGHA MEHTA
Yves Rocher Reparation 2 in 1 Balm Mask As a bimonthly favour to your hair, let the jojoba oil and agave of this mask seep into your strands for a few minutes, either before or after you shampoo. `790
THE TRIMMER Philips Multigroom series 7000 13-in-1, Face, Hair and Body A shower-proof powerhouse, this trimmer is an investment worth making for its 13 grooming tools. Bonus points for its DualCut tech that lets the blades self-sharpen as you shave. `4,295
THE SHAMPOO
THE MOUSSE
Kérastase Résistance Bain Extentioniste Just work a dollop of this taurine-rife shampoo into your scalp and its length-boosting effects will spring to life. Hey, if you can’t cut it, you may as well grow it right. `2,100
Schwarzkopf Professional OSiS+ Grip Extreme Hold Mousse Shake that can like a polaroid picture before you work the product into your damp hair, and then blow dry. You’ll have yourself a tonne of volume and a naturallooking shine. `950
EXPERT TIPS For healthy, long(er) hair
THE BRUSH
DELPHINE SARROCHE Creative Director, Jean-Claude Biguine India Never sleep with product in your hair. Just rinse it out with a little shampoo and water before you go to bed. A little-known hair secret: Sleeping with a silk pillowcase will reduce splitends and also keep your hair soft. To control hair fall, massage your head with your fingertips so you can see your scalp move. It stimulates follicles and helps with growth. If your hair tangles easily, use a little oil or hair cream before taking a brush to it; it minimises breakage. A blow dry will always make your hair more manageable.
The Body Shop Paddle Hairbrush The conductor of the orchestra when it comes to hair is always the brush. The paddle helps you detangle easily, without yanking at your scalp. `1,495
TAPPING
TRADITIONS
A self-shot series by a diverse group of avant-garde outliers, each unabashedly embracing a present and future version of their rich heritage
R E M O T E L Y
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R A H U L
V I J A Y
RANJIT ARAPURAKAL MUSICIAN AND ACTIVIST NEW JERSEY
WORDS: SHIVANGI LOLAYEKAR. IMAGE: RANJIT ARAPURAKAL
A linen suit with Himachali topi and .
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AUGUSTINE SHIMRAY ARTIST UKHRUL, MANIPUR
IMAGE: YUIMIRIN L SHIMRAY
, An Angami Naga man s wrap-around with a cardigan and trousers; accessorised with a customised neck piece made of bones and earplugs made of wood.
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IMAGE: SANJAY PANDIT
ARJUN SALUJA CREATIVE DIRECTOR, RISHTA BY ARJUN SALUJA DELHI A deconstructed sherwani with zero point pants and inverted-cuff shirt. 71
ARTIST LONDON A traditional court dress ( ) made from pure cotton sourced in India. 72
IMAGE: JATINDER SINGH DURHAILAY
JATINDER SINGH DURHAILAY
KAUSTAV DEY TED SPEAKER AND VP MARKETING, TOMMY HILFIGER, CALVIN KLEIN AND ARROW INDIA BENGALURU
IMAGE: KAUSTAV DEY
A handwoven silk Benarasi shawl with a velvet pant-suit.
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AVAN JOGIA ARTIST VANCOUVER
IMAGE: CLEOPATRA COLEMAN
A traditional kurta borrowed from his father, accessorised with jewellery.
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WARIS AHLUWALIA EXPLORER NEW YORK CITY
IMAGE: LEXI MERISON
Shirt paired with tie-dyed pants.
KALLOL DATTA CLOTHES-MAKER
A cotton 3D veil, silk kurta, 3D curve overlay and textured cotton ; accessorised with silver, brass and gold jewellery. 76
IMAGE: NAVONIL DAS
KOLKATA
HANSRAJ MAHARAWAL PRODUCTION
IMAGE: HANS NEUMANN
DESIGNER NEW YORK CITY A kurta-pyjama set with a vintage block-printed, Kutch-quilted bandi. 77
SHANI HIMANSHU FOUNDER, 11.11 ELEVEN ELEVEN DELHI
IMAGE: ADITI GOSH
A wrap shirt with a pair of pleated trousers, made in handspun cotton and dyed in natural indigo.
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HANUT SINGH JEWELLERY DESIGNER DELHI A signature talismanic ruby, emerald, pearl and diamond neck piece, topped up with a kite-shaped diamond signet ring, an old mine diamond ring and an emerald and ruby baguette ring.
IMAGE: MADHAV PRANJAPE (HANUT SINGH), AADITYA GANGWAR (MANAV ANGELO KASHYAP)
MANAV ANGELO KASHYAP SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIST AND BRAND COMMUNICATIONS, SABYASACHI CALCUTTA KOLKATA A hand-painted and digitally printed floral khaki kurta set.
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ACTOR MUMBAI A bandhgala with his signature neckerchief and Nehru topi. 80
IMAGE: AARTI VELE
JACKIE SHROFF
LEO KALYAN SINGER AND MUSIC PRODUCER LONDON
IMAGE: SIMRAH FARROKH
A vintage Indian paisley jacket in silk, vintage leather cummerbund belt and gold jewellery.
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PRANAV MISRA CREATIVE DIRECTOR, HUEMN DELHI
IMAGE: RAHUL KAUSHIK
A chikankari kurta and an embroidered shawl from Kashmir.
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IGNATIUS CAMILO MIXED MEDIA ARTIST AND LIFESTYLE CONSULTANT GOA A deconstructed cotton pinstripe trench shirt and sarouel trousers.
JOSH FERNANDEZ IMAGE: IGNATIUS CAMILO (IGNATIUS CAMILO), JOSH FERNANDEZ (JOSH FERNANDEZ)
MUSICIAN CHENNAI A sequinned appliqué coat with his signature bindi.
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ZORAWAR WARAICH MODEL, STYLIST AND PHOTOGRAPHER
High-waisted trousers and an oversized shirt layered with a printed tank top; accessorised with a silk block-print scarf from Udaipur and jewellery.
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IMAGE: LEO KALYAN
LONDON
SUMANT JAYAKRISHNAN IMAGE: POMY ISSAR
SCENOGRAPHER DELHI A turquoise shirt and sarong with curled-tip and silver jewellery.
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NILIK KHIMANI MULTIDISCIPLINARY CREATIVE LONDON A floral printed shirt layered with a black ribbed tank top and high waisted wide-leg trousers; accessorised with Indian tribal jewellery.
ALEX MATHEW AKA MAYA THE DRAG QUEEN DRAG PERFORMER
Traditional Indian jewellery (necklaces, ring and nose-ring) with a tulle dress.
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IMAGE: NILIK KHIMANI (NILIK KHIMANI), ALEX MATHEW (ALEX MATHEW)
BENGALURU
ARYA BHAT MODEL AND YOGA TEACHER
IMAGE: NAINA ARUN
KASHMIR An organic cotton cape and pyjamas, accessorised with a locally crafted scarf worn as a turban. PRODUCTION: MEGHA MEHTA 87
r t y a P a HAT
Is the new Mercedes-Benz GLC Coupé a style-led affair, or a genuine cocktail of cool?
CROP-TOP
sloping roofline does not a coupé make. But try telling that to pretty much every automotive manufacturer and suddenly you’re drowning under mirthful bouts of laughter. Automotive design, like anything in a free market economy, is democratised to an extent; and if people want their cars to be a cross between an SUV and a sedan, that’s what they’re going to get. Case in point, the new Mercedes-Benz GLC Coupé: now unencumbered by the AMG price tag, while clearly possessing AMG-looks. GLC Coupé: 1, Old-fashioned motoring hack: 0. Looks aren’t the only thing working in this car’s favour, although when compared to similarly powered siblings, it is the car’s main draw. Perhaps that’s why Mercedes-Benz India deemed it prudent to extricate the design out of AMG’s folds and add it to its rapidly growing family of SUVs. Much like the GLC, the coupé gets some key design changes which make it look very sharp indeed. There are new headlight inserts, running a parallel inner track to the outer shape, with auto-adjusting multibeam headlights. There are also new
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six-spoke, 19-inch alloys (not pictured) and chrome-plated bumper cladding on both ends. Obviously, the definitive attribute here is the sloping roofline, which is very easy to get used to, because, call it what you will, it does soften-up the overall profile, adding a level of sophistication and joviality to the relatively staid look of the standard GLC. And right there, the GLC Coupé earns itself another point. Despite the redesigned tail lamps, the rear section looks very similar to other coupéstyled Merc crossovers and SUVs, but with the upcoming GLE Coupé, that’s likely to change a bit. Then there’s the fact that it’s got a new diesel engine – the 300d. There’s a petrol variant too, but this 2.0-litre, four-cylinder unit (BSVI compliant, like every car in Merc’s
WORDS: PARTH CHARAN. IMAGE: © DAIMLER AG (EXTERIOR), PARTH CHARAN (INTERIOR)
The GLC Coupé’s curved roofline adds a lot more to the overall profile than it subtracts from it
fleet) replaces the former 2.1-litre unit, packs 241bhp and a very satisfactory 500Nm of torque. Straight off the bat, it’s an immensely smooth unit, heaping dollops of torque at the driver immediately. It’s aided immensely by Merc’s 9-speed automatic gearbox, which normally remains as seamless as a silken scarf but did take some time during downshifts. I’d have imagined that the 19-inch wheels would make the ride a tad stiff, but the ride quality remained splendid, even in Sport+. Then there’s the inside of the car. Spruced up in accordance with the needs of our times and endowed with Merc’s new MBUX connectivity system which has all the necessary electronic bells and whistles: builtin navigation; an onboard sim card; Merc’s own “Hey Mercedes” voice command system, which has actually grown scarily intuitive. This is particularly helpful if you find yourself overwhelmed by the lack of tactile buttons and the maze of menus, in which case, who better to ask than the car itself. Of course, there’s touchscreen interactibility. In fact, there are two little touchpads on the steering wheel. If there’s one drab aspect to the otherwise neatly appointed cockpit, it’s the faux-wood running down the touchscreen right up till the trackpad. It’s by no means an ungainly sight, it just contrasts poorly with a glistening and finely-chiselled steering wheel. Move over to the rear and you’re immediately struck by just how comfortable it is at the back, sloping
roofline and all. You’re not really robbed of considerable headroom, the compromise isn’t a very severe one, but – as with all things beautiful – there is a hint of impracticality that’s commensurate to how tall you are. But that’s the extent of it. Merc has also taken cognisance of how the space saver tyre ate up precious boot space, now tucking it neatly under the boot floor. There’s something to be said about the fact that the GLC Coupé has a certain charm, and on a rain-soaked afternoon, like the one I find myself driving in, it does have a cheering effect. And with cheer in such short supply, that’s not a trait to be brushed aside, for more practical considerations.
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automobile manufacturer – Bhargava, who turns 86 next week, has cut a towering personality in the world of business and industry. His time served in the public sector during the era of a closed economy, and later as helmsman of a brand that tapped directly into the desires of an aspirational, fast-growing nation, makes his perspective unique and valuable. In his new book Getting Competitive: A Practitioner’s Guide For India, Bhargava, an alum of the Doon School and Williams College, passionately advocates for an Indian manufacturing revolution. In an animated discussion over Zoom, he passionately talks about past policy failures, management models that aid social equity and the future of mobility in a world changing at breakneck speed.
REBUILDING
TOMORROW How to invent a cleaner, more prosperous future, according to RC Bhargava, the iconic chairman of Maruti Suzuki, India’s largest auto manufacturer
INTERVIEWED BY CHE KURRIEN & PARTH CHARAN
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early four decades ago, Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corp decided to forge into India, a country where automobile ownership was limited to a miniscule elite. Today, Maruti Suzuki accounts for over half of Suzuki’s global sales. In fact, Maruti Suzuki has surpassed its parent company in many ways, becoming, in 2018, the ninth most valuable car manufacturer on the global rankings – the first Indian carmaker to crack the top ten. RC Bhargava was present when the first car rolled out of Maruti’s greenfield factory set up in a marshy backwater called Gurgaon, in 1983. He was the boss when the brand’s 15 millionth car came off the line, in 2015. With a career spanning over six decades – first as a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Energy, and later as Managing Director and Chairman of India’s largest 90 —
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You’ve been deeply inspired by Japanese management culture. How would you define this style of leadership? What the Japanese did was work out a system where workers and unions didn’t see themselves as adversaries of management, and they collectively understood that if the company did well, they would do well. If everyone works as a team, everyone will succeed. Individual brilliance doesn’t get the same result that teamwork does. We tried this at Maruti almost 40 years ago and the workers accepted it absolutely without hesitation. The real problem is on the management side. You will not be able to build a team if there are huge differences in the lifestyles of the people at the top, if the workers see that the bulk of the benefits of the increase in productivity are being taken away by management for personal benefit, and the assets of the company are being used by the higher ups for self gain. But isn’t “reward” a hugely powerful incentive that spurs business leaders to take on the stress and risks associated with being an entrepreneur? What is your goal when you build or run a company? Is it the satisfaction of building a company like General Electric, or is it to build a smaller company and lead a lifestyle that compares with or is better than managers in the West? This kind of disparity of lifestyles and the failure to provide employment to the people of India is getting worse. The business elite of this country need to understand that if they don’t create jobs for the people and if they don’t reduce the gulf, then this stable society may come under pressure. Even in India, we have people with immense wealth who lead very modest lifestyles. Look at Azim Premji and Narayana Murthy. They are hugely respected. So it’s not that money alone gives you status. In your book, you talk about developing a national consensus around economic growth. Is such a consensus possible in a country as diverse as India? The problem arose when (prior to economic liberalisation in 1991) the industry had to bear an extra cost of production to meet socialist objectives. And that made it non-competitive. The taxes on manufactured goods were high, because they were produced for the rich. So the demand never grew. What needs to be
THE ARCHITECT
understood by everyone in this country is that if you want to achieve a socially just country, you have to be able to create wealth and employment. And that happens when manufacturing grows. How bullish are you on India’s automobile industry? It’s one of India’s most globally competitive sectors. And that’s the reason why it has grown to become the fourth largest car-manufacturing market in the world and should climb to number three by 2024. We’re already exporting three quarters of a million cars a year. We have a very good supply chain, with lots of competition which leverages the best technologies at the lowest cost. My view is that if the government becomes a facilitator, then the costs will come down and India will become a major hub for supplying small cars to a large part of Africa and the Middle East. Ours is also the largest two-wheeler industry in the world. These are areas where the future is going to be good. Policy-makers need to understand the importance of competitiveness. Competitiveness requires micro-level attention to cost reduction and we need policies that facilitate this. Do you think that the pandemic will dramatically reduce the need for mobility? The amount of mobility will reduce if the work-fromhome phenomenon becomes a permanent feature. But it won’t become the norm for all people. In some industries there may be a higher percentage of people working from home; in other kinds of businesses it may simply not be possible. For those employees transport will be required. Public transport will also grow. That’s a
good and energy-efficient form of mobility, but it will not take away the requirement for personal transport for uses other than commuting to work. Considering that most global carmakers are slowly heading towards total electrification, what are the steps manufacturers in India need to take to be ready for this change? The global growth of electric cars is not as high as it’s made out to be. The percentage of electric cars which are sold every year form a very small percentage of the total number of cars produced. Unfortunately, our main issue is that the raw material for the battery is lithium, which is not available in India. A lot of the lithium resources of the world are under Chinese control and so, one of the strategic issues the government needs to look at is whether becoming totally dependent on import of lithium for batteries, and forgetting other sources of energy, is a good step or not. Given India’s resource endowment, we should concentrate on developing hydrogen as a fuel for the future, unless someone develops batteries which uses raw materials available in India. Is electric mobility a stopgap measure? No. At the moment, the best bet for us is to further develop cars that run on compressed natural gas (CNG), because we have an ample supply of CNG. It’s suited for small cars which are the overwhelming majority of cars bought in India. And we need to build the infrastructure for distributing CNG much faster; but there’s no reason why for the next 10-15 years, while hydrogen technology develops, CNG should not be our intermediate step. It’s affordable and doesn’t require an elaborate electric infrastructure. CNG works with smaller cars. What about luxury vehicles? The bigger cars can remain powered by petrol. Or, since they don’t form a large part of the Indian market, they could even be electrified, because the dependence on imported batteries at such limited volumes will not be a major issue. Two-wheelers may have to go all electric, because they have very few options.
(Clockwise from top) RC Bhargava’s new book; Osamu Suzuki, Chairman and CEO of Suzuki Motor Corp and Bhargava at the MSIL brand centre; The one millionth Maruti Suzuki car handed over to Mother Teresa
The pandemic has been a big setback to the car industry. How will this impact employment? We’ve had a setback this year, and it’s likely that we will see another decline in volumes in 2021. But after that, hopefully, we will get back to the normal rate of growth. I think the government will also understand that growing the automobile sector is an essential part of increasing India’s manufacturing base. This sector is roughly 40 per cent of all manufacturing in India. And unless this sector grows at a high rate, the overall Indian manufacturing sector cannot grow at a high rate. And then the employment problem won’t be solved. The real reason why manufacturing has to grow and become even more competitive is because it spurs employment. How will jobs be created if you don’t have manufacturing? AUGUST 2020
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PARTY STARTER
UPPING THE
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Taking a minivan – the automotive equivalent of celery – and naming it “Carnival” is a serious vote of confidence. But if the success of the Seltos is anything to go by, Kia Motors has plenty of reasons to be selfassured. Its second entrant in the Indian market, contrary to popular belief, is stepping into relatively unclaimed territory – something that its sheer size and opulence makes clear, the moment it greets your eye. The Carnival is a grand piece of design, trumping most SUVs in terms of street presence with its mammoth proportions and swept-back looks. What I like in particular is the restraint Kia has shown in designing the Carnival. In an era of oversized grilles, acutely angled headlamps and slapdash draftsmanship, the Carnival is designed to be an object of utility rather than an outright object of desire, and this distinction, in turn, makes it look more desirable. An arrow-straight
WORDS: PARTH CHARAN
The Kia Carnival may have the chops to kick off the luxury MPV parade. But can it start a revolution?
shoulder line, pinched third-row window, upswept headlamps and 18-inch alloys make it look impeccably groomed. However, its USP lies on the inside. A quick peek through that large mid-row window exposes its cavernous midriff, which, in the top-end Limousine trim (pictured left) offers Napa leather upholstery, two 10.1” touchscreen entertainment units and underseat leg support (for the middle row). The Limousine trim, which features seven seats, also allows you the option of moving those two mid-row captain seats sideways, in order to facilitate easier movement to the third row. For its price, I do wish the mid-row seats were a little more contoured and padded, but sitting there with the leg rest propped up, it’s evident that even on the road, space is the ultimate luxury, and, being over five metres long, the Carnival has plenty to spare. But it’s not idle space Kia has lavished the car with. Everything here has been carefully inspected by the quality fairy, which explains the padded finish on the dashboard, carpeted floors, air purifier – the works. Looking at the spec sheet of this particular trim, it’s clear that the Carnival is the result of Kia having closely studied the minutiae of entry-level luxury, so you don’t find it lacking in any way. Not with three-zone climate control, keyless entry and powered sliding doors, which come as standard fitments across the range. The optional electronic parking brake is a nice touch, too. That 2.2-litre, diesel motor (BSVI compliant, obviously) does a truly remarkable job of hauling this thing around. Mated to an eight-speed automatic gearbox, this is a robust and smooth unit making 198bhp
The most surprising attribute of the Carnival is the way it manages to disguise its weight and a whopping 440Nm of torque. The most surprising driving attribute of the Carnival isn’t the muscle power, it’s the way it manages to disguise its weight. Step on the throttle and you hear some commotion up till 2,000rpm, as the otherwise seamless gearbox hastens to downshift. But from then on, the Carnival does its best to forget that it’s an MPV. The engine has been tuned keeping its potential as a highway-ready halter in mind. And with all other modes of transport becoming a health hazard, why would you opt for anything other than a mobile lounge. Getting the suspension just right with a car as long as this one can be a tricky proposition, given how much it has to work with. But the Carnival shines through again, swallowing the bumps. The minivan space is a fledgling one in a country preoccupied with SUVs and the presumed status benefits we think it brings. But the ideal mobility solution has been staring us in the face and the Carnival only makes that more evident. It’s not here to whet your appetite for this genre of vehicle. There are plenty of others that have done it and continue to do it fairly well. At `33.95 lakh, ex-showroom, the (top-end) Carnival isn’t exactly inexpensive. But it brings the benefits of much more expensive cars to a lower price bracket, and apart from the fact that it may not be a breeze to parallel park this thing, it brings very little compromise to the table.
The top-end Carnival comes with connected car technology that allows you to connect it to your smartphone via an app. This enables you to remotely control 37 features, including turning on the car and having the air con cool it up to your preference before you enter it.
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Savan Kotecha 94
IMAGE: COURTESY SAVAN KOTECHA
THE CLEF NOTES OF
The story of modern pop music is inextricably tied to the second-gen IndianAmerican songwriter who has delivered the superhits and superstars that define the past two decades. But where does a career end, and the man begin? W R I T T E N
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N I D H I
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n 2012, Savan Kotecha suffered a bout of writer’s block. One Direction, the English-Irish pop band he’d discovered and shepherded to the third spot on X-Factor’s seventh season, had become a global phenomenon; and with their sophomore album Take Me Home charting around the world, it seemed they’d begun to “outgrow” Kotecha. The 41-year-old songwriter from Austin, with roots in Gujarat, began his career in 1999, when he signed to the NYC-based music publishing company BMG. He was then “shipped off” to Sweden to hone his craft. Which he did by hanging out with Stockholm’s genius producers and writers – once members of a collective called Cheiron, now shaping modern Western pop music at its commercial best at the cusp of the 21st century. When he felt too broke to even afford “beans out of a can”, Kotecha would head over to the UK to crash on his aunt’s couch for weeks at a time and network with the London scene. He found a mentor and friend in Simon Cowell, Britain’s self-appointed chief talent hunter, who assigned him as the main writer for Irish band Westlife. With songs on huge albums like World Of Our Own and Turnaround (he wrote “Obvious”), he demonstrated a gift for melody. Soon after, he was in Swedish legend Max Martin’s Stockholm studio, collaborating with modish American artists like Usher and Britney Spears. By 2010, Cowell had coaxed Kotecha back to his island to play vocal coach on X-Factor. After months of grooming five teenage boys, wearing weird wigs to escape being on camera, and yet being stalked by Britain’s notoriously efficient tabloid press, Kotecha came to be known as “something of a rainmaker” in LA’s music circles for shaping the pop phenomenon that was 1D, much like Martin had done with the Backstreet Boys a decade ago. But after the mega-success of Take Me Home, he found himself in a funk. A new-born son meant Kotecha could not join the band on the extensive 123-gig world tour 1D had announced at the top of 2013, during which they hoped to write their next album. “I wasn’t able to be the centrepiece in [One Direction’s] creative story
any longer,” says Kotecha. Thus came the move from London to LA, and the beginning of another chapter in Kotecha’s long songwriting career. Down in California, Kotecha slowly moved to action. With Martin, who’d moved from Stockholm to LA months before him, he “began talking about setting up a studio, inviting other Swedes for songwriting camps.” Then, Wendy Goldstein, an A&R executive at Republic Records, got in touch. “‘I need something for Ariana’,” Kotecha drawls from memory, imitating his friend’s nasal twang, “‘She’s just about to explode!’ she said.” Goldstein was, of course, referring to Ariana Grande: bright, fresh-faced, barely an album old. Kotecha half-heartedly agreed to meet her, expecting to palm her off to some younger writers. “I didn’t fully realise at the time that her voice was probably one of the greatest of her generation,” he says, “but we bonded immediately.” Grande mentioned wanting to do “a Drake melody” – and the dam broke. My Everything went platinum, got Grande a Grammy nom and established her as a superstar. “It all happened like lightning in a bottle,” laughs Kotecha. The rest of the decade proved to be very good indeed for Kotecha. Apart from co-writing “Thank U, Next”, “No Tears Left to Cry” and “God Is A Woman” for Grande; he worked with Ellie Goulding, The Weeknd, Normani, Halsey, Demi Lovato, Maroon5 and Madonna, among others. He helped score millions of streams and won several awards from ASCAP and BMI, landed 17 Grammy noms and a nod at the Golden Globes for his Fifty Shades Of Grey track. To wit, Kotecha has written a lot of the songs that will define this moment in musical history. Which is why, it’s slightly alarming when, at the top of our Zoom call on opposite ends of this day in July, he declares that “for the first time in 26 years, I haven’t written a song in three months.” As his sons play outside in the LA sun, his wife and he are busy bubble-wrapping their possessions. By the time you read this, Kotecha and his family would have moved base across the Atlantic, to Stockholm. “It’s going to be an experiment,” he’s saying now, cheerfully, “We bought a house just outside the city last year, it’s on the 95
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icture, if you will, Kotecha at 15: The younger child of Indian immigrants from Uganda – his grandparents left India in the 1920s or 1930s. A straggly boy who spent his childhood in Northern Virginia before his “IBM parents” moved to Austin for his high school years, where he felt like an outsider in all the ways one can imagine in 1980s America. A kid learning bhajans on the harmonium at home while Michael Jackson dominated American pop culture and his brain. “I was a pop music fan throughout, but I also loved 1990s R&B: Babyface, Boyz II Men, Mariah Carey. And, of course, Bryan Adams and Richard Marx, since I saw myself as something of a romantic. In fact, all those early Westlife songs were all pretending to be Bryan Adams ballads,” he grins. The arrival of New Kids On The Block was Kotecha’s moment of epiphany. “My older sister, who’s a fairly introverted person became an instant fan,” says Kotecha, “and suddenly she had all these friends around her; she had something in common with other girls her age.” It’s why “I don’t see pop music as this cheesy, fluffy thing. I see it as something that builds community, while also providing escape.” Naturally, at 15, he decided to round up the troops and front a boy band of his own. Forte was his baby: Kotecha wrote the songs and recorded the demo tapes and sent them out to the record labels around Austin. “I still have a box with 460 rejection letters at my parents’ house,” he laughs. “I recently found this one demo tape I made when we heard that Babyface was coming to Lake Travis for the summer. I spent every dime I got for birthdays and Christmas and made tapes. I wrote a ‘covering letter’ to him, highlighted every vacation rental, knocked on every single door asking for him, slipped these tapes under doors. For months after that, I kept getting calls: ‘I don’t know any Babyface guy’,” more of that Southern drawl, as he imitates strangers on the other end of the phone, “‘but this is good music!’” 96
Forte died with the end of high school. “Austin was known as a rock city, sure,” he says, “but that was all downtown, and what Indian teenager is allowed to go downtown?” With no one to relate to, now that he’d been chalked up as the “black sheep of the Indian community” for pursuing music instead of going to college, Kotecha was on his own. Like his personal lifelong hero, Jo March of Little Women, he knew he had to own the hustle. Around this time, SXSW was becoming a thing. “I’d sneak into the hotel where all the music people would stay,” he says, “and pass out my demo tapes until they kicked me out for soliciting. I’d then put on a new shirt and a hat and go back in, until they caught on, you know. Luckily, I started getting some good feedback.” One came from David McPherson, an A&R executive at Jive Records. “He wanted a track for an ‘exciting’ boy band he had just signed, but my Mom wouldn’t let me give it to him,” Kotecha says. His parents “didn’t understand it. They didn’t want me to be in music, and they didn’t want me to get ripped off. But about a year later, Backstreet Boys’ ‘I Want It That Way’ played on the radio and I was just like, ‘Mom!’” It was another bit of feedback that really set Kotecha on course as a songwriter, though: While he had talent, a record executive (he won’t name them) told him, “‘No one in America is going to put up the poster of a brown guy on their walls”. And I was just like, oh okay,” he shrugs, “and shifted gears pretty quickly.” “Pop music is about sex appeal, right, at least in the West,” Kotecha offers, having long accepted the limitations of his circumstances. “I think this next generation will start accepting South Asian men or Indian men as sexy. The first step in America, at least, is the visual medium, that heartthrob factor,” he shrugs, “and then comes the music.”
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he boy band’s ebb and flow in pop music is a curious thing, arriving from nowhere, defining adolescence for each generation, and outlasting much else in what remains of our youth in memory. In a way, BTS is to Gen-Z what the Backstreet Boys were to early millennials and The Beatles were to the baby boomers. Riding at the crest of Hallyu, or the wave of Korean youth culture washing over the world, the “fun boys” are weirdly unique and deeply familiar at once. “At a time when so much else is serious and dark and trap, K-Pop sounds super refreshing,” Kotecha enthuses. There’s another reason for its astounding popularity: “The kids decided that it was great. So many corporations tried to push various types of boy bands between 1D and now. None of them worked, but kids found K-Pop and
IMAGE: ALAMY (MOVIES), COURTESY SAVAN KOTECHA (AWARD WALL)
water and it’s beautiful. And it’s the only place I get eight hours of sleep.” Is this another creative rut? “I’m just taking a break, I’m pretty sure I’ll return to it,” he laughs, suggesting a readjustment in life priorities with the “forced stop” that the pandemic has brought. He plans to fly back and forth for business, but, “I’ve decided I’m only going to take on projects that I really love. I can afford to: If I don’t work another day in my life, my kids will be fine. I’ve been running at 100 miles an hour since I was 15.”
In the past decade, Savan Kotecha has co-written songs for mainstream artists such as Ariana Grande, The Weeknd and Madonna; won several BMI and ASCAP awards and 17 Grammy nominations. “Double Trouble” and “Husavik (My Home Town)” from his OST for the Netflix film Eurovision, continue to dominate the airwaves
BY 2014, THE POP “SONG MACHINE” (AS JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR JOHN SEABROOK DUBBED IT) WAS DU JOUR. IN THESE LUSH LA, STOCKHOLM, LONDON STUDIOS, WRITERS FUELLED BY ENDLESS ROUNDS OF SUSHI CRAFTED SONGS LIKE PUZZLES: VERSES, PRE-CHORUSES, HOOKS BORN FROM REAL-LIFE OBSERVATION BUT TREATED AS MOVING PARTS TO BE ASSEMBLED FOR MAXIMUM IMPACT.
elevated it and made it their own. And that’s what’s changing in the music business: It’s become more of a pull business than a push business.” With the internet, there’s been a boom in the number of people making music and the ways to find them. “It’s a scary time for us in the older generation,” he grimaces, “but very interesting in other ways, because we’re really getting the truth from the audience.” “I also think the boundaries between genres of Western music are falling,” Kotecha nods vigorously. “Separating genres to me is also tied to the race issue, so I’m glad that people are noticing that we shouldn’t call things ‘urban’ anymore.” Still, it’s not a great time to be a songwriter on the come-up, he agrees. “Streaming has been great for artists and record labels, but it’s very hard for middle-class songwriters to make money. It’s an all or nothing game now – you’re either part of the big, big hits, the radio and TV syncs; or you’re working on minimum wage.” Kotecha himself might be the last of a generation of songwriters who got rich peddling their songs to big artists. “When I was coming up,” he recalls, “a song by Westlife, which may not have even been a big hit, but existed on an album that sold four million copies, would’ve made me, 97
like, $100,000. And I could live off that for a few years. But now that doesn’t exist, because it’s all streaming. I’ve been very lucky, but the reason I point it out is because as someone who loves the craft and would like to see others come up, this is going to kill the composers unless they don’t figure out this payment system.” His own way of balancing the odds a little bit is to spotlight new songwriters wherever he can. On Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga, he did just that. When Amy Dunning, director of music at Netflix Entertainment, reached out to him for recommendations on Swedish producers to lead its music direction, Kotecha jumped at it. Once he’d created “Double Trouble”, with longtime collaborators Rami Yacoub and Arnþór Birgisson, he put together a team of new writers, also featuring real-life Eurovision contestants. “It’s a strange, wonderful tradition,” Kotecha says, recounting his first brush with the contest that once gifted the world a pop group named ABBA, and till date, brings all activity to a grinding halt in Europe. “The lyrics often sound like they’ve been pulled off Google Translate, and the bizarre costumes and stages are all just dressing. But the melodies at the heart of these songs have always been pure gold.” Kotecha himself approaches a song through melody, and relies on fiction to be able to fashion elaborate ruses for his artists. “I’m a pretty square guy, I don’t live a wild life; never did,” he shrugs. Instead, he has stuck to combing through the sappy movies, TV shows, books that he loves – Marian Keyes novels, This Is Us, Dawson’s Creek, Love Actually; and keeping an ear out for phrases, sentences, body language – to create rhymes and rhythms that resonate, and don’t necessarily challenge the listener. Has he, with age, wanted to tell stories that spoke more to the human condition, the political sweep, rather than the universal emotions that 98
bleed through his entire discography? “Around the time that Donald Trump was getting elected,” he says, “I’d written some songs with Skip Marley [Bob Marley’s grandson], and they were of a political nature, but they didn’t connect.” “My ability to do that will always depend on the artists wanting to stand up and say those things,” Kotecha adds. “That’s difficult to find because these songs are meant to go on to radio, and American radio is not going to play something political because it won’t want to alienate middle America. That’s sort of the unfortunate part of the modern music business in a way. It isn’t necessarily artists, but the corporations that don’t want to take those risks. You saw that happen here during the Bush years when the Dixie Chicks spoke out. It’s a mass appeal thing.” And then there is this thing that Simon Cowell once said to Kotecha, words that he has abided by: “Don’t worry about being cool, just try to be great. You’re a pop writer; write pop songs – don’t try to be someone you’re not.”
IMAGE: COURTESY SAVAN KOTECHA (GRANDE AND SALMANZADEH), GETTY IMAGES (MARTIN AND TITTA)
Kotecha with frequent collaborator Ilya Salmanzadeh and Ariana Grande in the studio; (Below) With Max Martin and ASCAP Executive Vice President, Membership, John Titta at the 2016 Pop Awards
’d like to give you an honest answer about why I’m taking a break from songwriting,” Kotecha emails, a week after our conversation. At 7 am LA time the following day, he slips back on to the leather couch, just back from a run. “So the reason that I’ve slowed down drastically,” he gets right to it, “is that I’ve been diagnosed with depression.” Since we last spoke, Kotecha has organised a special birthday party for his wife (who is Swedish). She wanted to go to Paris for her 40th, and since they couldn’t do that, he decided to bring Paris to their backyard. While he ushered the family off for a day-trip to Malibu, he had “people” install a tiny Eiffel Tower and a replica of Les Deux Magots, their favourite Parisian cafe, inside their West Hollywood home. “My wife’s an academic, she’s just got her Master’s in Gender Studies,” he’d told me earlier. “We’ve been together since I was a broke writer, so she’s definitely proud of what I’ve accomplished. She’s had to give up a lot for me to chase my dreams. But pop music is not her cup of tea. If I play her a track and she thinks it’s crap, we can both agree it’s probably going to be a hit,” he laughs. When he brought up these things with her – therapy, the move to Sweden, time off from work, more attention to the kids – he remembers her saying, ‘I’ve been waiting for you to wake up’.” At therapy, which he started in January this year, he learnt that he’s been depressed for at least two years. “I didn’t really know why it was happening; I just felt sad and unmotivated all the time.” A hit song climbing charts did not bring euphoria; a less successful project made things bluer. “A close artist friend of mine caught it before it got too dark.” Partly due to the stigma around mental health that South Asian cultures harbour, and partly due to the shame and guilt of going through something like this despite his privileged lot in life, Kotecha has refrained from talking about this publicly. “I think it has something to do with how I was
“SEPARATING GENRES TO ME IS TIED TO THE RACE ISSUE, SO I’M GLAD THAT PEOPLE ARE NOTICING THAT WE SHOULDN’T CALL THINGS ‘URBAN’ ANYMORE”
raised, and the mountain climb to get to where I was, and very much feeling like you had to prove everyone wrong. I think it happens a lot within the South Asian community – that line between self-worth and a good career is easily blurred.” It’s a hard road ahead. “I’ll be away from the centre of all action – that’ll be like an athlete that’s retired? I don’t know how I’ll cope with that.” But perhaps part of the quest for balance are the film and TV projects that Kotecha is developing to bring in more of those second-gen Indian narratives: such as a film loosely based on his own life, greenlit by Universal Studios last year, and expected to be directed by Nisha Ganatra (Late Night). “It’s basically about these four Indian guys who form a boy band in the 1980s,” explains Kotecha, “and like me, this one boy is told he can’t expect to be on pop star posters as a brown kid. But unlike me, he begins to reject his culture. The story is about how he finds his way back to it.” “I met Savan at a fundraiser for a civil rights organisation in 2017,” recalls Sanjay Shah (BlackIsh, Central Park), who is scripting this film. “I immediately felt a kinship. We both grew up in the 1990s when it was still a little weird for Indian kids to pursue anything in entertainment. Maybe it still is, I don’t know. But when we were kids, it felt like it was not the realm of possibility for us.” “If you saw an actual brown person on TV – and not a white guy in brownface – it was so rare and such a big deal. You’d yell out to everyone in the house to come and see.” It’s why he’s excited about this film: “It’s a story I want to tell because I’m raising a brown kid in a racist world. It tells us that what makes us different is what makes us strong.” Kotecha also feels he must now turn his attention to the motherland: “I won’t be satisfied,” he says, “until I’ve introduced an Indian artist to the global musical landscape. I know there’s so much talent there; Sony Music recently sent me some hip-hop tracks and they were excellent.” “The thing that breaks out will have to be authentic. Look at the rhythms from Latin music. People can’t be taking Indian artists and trying to Americanise them anymore; and they can’t be afraid of having a piece of that culture in music. You don’t need a hispanic Bieber or Indian Ariana Grande. But I haven’t found that yet.” He’s confident that he will, once he has some time on his hands in Sweden. “I was such a workaholic but I wasn’t happy – so the coronavirus, while it’s as bad as it can be, also forced me away from the bar, so to speak,” he laughs his stuttered laugh, sounding lighter already. “Maybe, I just want to write a few good songs, have some fun, help people along the way – and that’s it. Maybe, I don’t have to build an empire.” 99
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It’s been an unusual sort of year, to put it mildly. However, virtual-reality launch sessions and online exhibitions have gone to show just how quick the world of haute horology has been to adapt to the battery of setbacks that the year 2020 has thrown at all of us. And while some of these setbacks have come in the form of diminishing export value and declining sales, they certainly haven’t affected the sheer number of great watches that have come out this year, ranging from incredible to positively otherworldly. Freshly minted materials, dials that contain everything from pixels to lunar meteorite and reimagined classics – the next few pages feature them all. EDITED BY PARTH CHARAN
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All triumphant operatic moments are recognised by their orchestral swells. It’s much the same in the world of fine watchmaking, as exemplified by these 31 grand timepieces BREGUET
Classique 7137 The new and revamped Classique 7137 features one of the most exquisitely engraved dials in recent times, featuring three distinct guilloche patterns: “basket weave” for the fan-shaped power reserve indicator, “checkerboard” for the date display and “hobnail” for the rest. This pocket watch inspired timepiece gets a silver-coated dial made of solid gold, covering an ultra-thin movement and a new moonphase display with an engraved moon (also made of gold) that resembles the lunar surface. In short, all hallmarks of a traditional Breguet design. 2
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Luminor Marina Fibratech 44mm Featuring one of the two new materials the brand debuted this year (the other being Goldtech), the new Luminor Marina Fibratech features a case composed through a fusion of basalt rock and mineral fibres. Accompanied by a smokey, blue dial with
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Super-LumiNova-coated hour markers, this 44mm unit also gets a Carbotech bezel and crown bridge lever. Not created for a limited range of “halo” timepieces, Fibratech, which happens to be 60 per cent lighter than steel, is aimed at series production along with a host of other elements Panerai has in the pipeline. Whatever will it think of next? 3
JAQUET DROZ
Petite Heure Minute “Tiger” The tiger motif is something of a recurring theme for Jaquet Droz, but it burns much brighter on the Petite Heure Minute “Tiger” thanks to its photorealistic paintwork and a large, 43mm-sized canvas. Available in both red and white gold versions, it’s the latter that makes for a more arresting visual, with a black enamel dial and a white tiger gazing piercingly at the beholder. Limited to 28 pieces each, this watch is all about the details. 4
RICHARD MILLE
RM 33-02 Richard Mille isn’t really known for its dress watch aesthetic, but the brand has a way of surprising you. Exhibit A: the RM33-02, which ditches the usual mix of bright colours splashed onto that trademark tonneau case, and instead goes with a traditional round case made of Carbon TPT and red gold. Limited to only 140 pieces, the RM33-02 features a skeletonised, automatic-winding movement with titanium componentry; proving that even the most diminutive and understated of Richard Mille’s watches hit the trifecta of having sporty underpinnings, radical materials and unparalleled visual flair. 5
gets a fuel-gauge inspired power reserve indicator, a crown shaped like a classic race car fuel cap and the route of the Mille Miglia etched onto the crystal case back, with an individual edition number inscribed onto each of the 500 pieces it’s limited to. Time to dust off those perforated racing gloves. 6
AUDEMARS PIGUET
Royal Oak Offshore Selfwinding Chronograph (Black Ceramic Case) The unabashed opulence of the Royal Oak Offshore is back; this time, having woven multi-coloured ceramics into its dials and pushers against a robust 44mm black ceramic case. Available in blue, green and 18k goldbezel versions (the latter-most featuring black ceramic pushers), the latest Royal Oak Offshore Selfwinding Chronographs are characteristically bombastic and well-finished. They also serve as proof that when it comes to the Royal Oak Offshore, constant reinvention is the key to longevity.
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Villeret Quantième Complet The Blancpain Villeret collection is a welcome departure from the show-stealing Bathyscaphe and Fifty Fathoms collections, and highlights the brand’s expertise in using traditional watchmaking aesthetics. While watches like the Villeret Quantième Complet aren’t new, they’ve never been served up in this smashing gold-and-blue combination. A deep blue dial, paired with a darker blue alligator leather strap, makes this one of the most striking, complete calendar watches out there. Superocean Heritage Limited Edition The Superocean Heritage collection takes inspiration from the surfer vibe of the 1960s and 1970s suburbia of the American west coast. The highlight of the collection is the Bohemian Superocean Heritage Limited Edition, featuring rainbow coloured hour markers placed inside a black ceramic bezel ring. Hey, just because it’s not safe to go to the beach doesn’t mean you can’t dress for it, right?
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Mille Miglia GTS Azzurro Every year, since 1988, Chopard has served as the official timekeeper of the famous Mille Miglia classic car rally, and each time, it has produced a tribute watch inspired by the golden age of motoring. This year’s new steel and rose gold Mille Miglia GTS Azzurro Power Control
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BOVET
Récital 26 Brainstorm Chapter Two Being a successor to Chapter One of the Bovet Récital 26 Brainstorm is no easy task. Bovet, a Swiss brand famous for its handcrafted watches and sculptural, handpainted dials, seems to have set yet another benchmark for decorative timepieces. This particular piece gets the brand’s patented double-sided tourbillon, a second time zone with a 24-city disc and a precision moonphase – all of which add up to create a watch that needs a special eye to admire the myriad of details it carries. If there’s a visual highlight this year, this watch is it. 10 ROGER DUBUIS
Excalibur Twofold Not one to deal with the cookie-cutter variety of watches, Roger Dubuis always walks the razor’s edge when it comes to contemporary watch aesthetics and material innovation. It features a skeleton double flying tourbillon and a never-seenbefore white mineral composite fibre forged in the brand’s hallowed “Q Lab”, which retains its luminosity even with everyday usage. Limited to eight pieces only, you’d have better luck spotting the Yeti in the snow than this ultra-rare beaut. 11 A. LANGE & SÖHNE
Zeitwerk Minute Repeater 147.028 A fresh take on the world’s only watch combining a mechanical jumping seconds with a decimal minute repeater, the new Zeitwerk Minute Repeater is metal craftsmanship at its finest. It’s got a dial and time bridge forged from silver and rhodium plated silver respectively; and rhodium gold hands, packed in a white gold case. With that winning combination of white gold and iridescent blue, non-hand-based time displays have rarely looked this cool.
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Big Bang e Black Ceramic This year Hublot adds a second connected watch to its Big Bang collection (the first being the Big Bang Referee from 2018). The new and updated version gets metallised numerals on a ceramic bezel placed under a scratch-resistant sapphire crystal. An AMOLED touchscreen serves as a portal to swirling pixels that can conjure up several grand complications: perpetual calendar, moonphase, you name it. Powered by the latest WatchOS, this bad boy makes a strong case for form-focussed smartwatches. 13 IWC SCHAFFHAUSEN
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Big Pilot’s Watch Big Date Spitfire Edition “Mission Accomplished” IWC loyalists will recall last year’s Timezoner Spitfire Edition “The Longest Flight” – a
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timepiece designed to commemorate the start of a 43,000-km undertaking which involved ace pilots circumnavigating the globe in a Spitfire warplane. This year, the brand has launched an edition to mark the successful conclusion of that flight, with the “Mission Accomplished” edition. With the four-month-long journey being an unmitigated success, IWC created a simple yet elegant pilot’s watch, with timeless elements like bronze forming the case, while a quintessentially British shade of military green adorns the dial.
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1858 Automatic 24H Before you begin to shout in protest, no, that’s not a compass, it’s a one-handed wristwatch. The latest addition to Montblanc’s mountaineering-inspired 1858 collection, the 24H, as its name suggests, features a 24-hour dial. This might be trickier to read, but continues to be a wholesome and inventive take on timekeeping. The watch also doubles up as a compass of sorts (should you keep track of the sun’s trajectory). And with a thick, black NATO strap, this one is more adventure-ready than you’re likely to be. 15 ULYSSE NARDIN
Hammerhead Shark Diver Chronograph 44mm Limited to only 300 pieces, the “Hammerhead Shark” edition is the highlight of Ulysse Nardin’s new Diver Chronograph collection. Everything about this watch screams “diver watch” right from the concave unidirectional bezel, paddle-shaped hour markers and a matte grain textured dial designed for greater underwater visibility. In case you’re looking for the Hammerhead shark motif that distinguishes it from the pack, that’s clearly etched on the case back, indicative of this watch’s place in the horological food chain. 16 OMEGA
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Omega De Ville Central Tourbillon Numbered Edition It’s a lesser-known fact that Omega was behind some of the first generation tourbillon wristwatches, back in the 1940s. Here to reclaim that glory is the Omega De Ville Central Tourbillon – the first master chronometer Omega tourbillon in history. While the original De Ville Central Tourbillon was created back in 1994, this one uses a new tourbillon movement, while retaining the basic structure and architecture of the original. Having received the“Master Chronometer” certification, it’s a necessary reminder of the aces that hide up Omega’s sleeve.
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Bivouac 9000 Black Edition Slapping on a shade of black on to one of the world’s foremost mountaineering watches has a way of bringing home the seriousness of the endeavour. And that’s exactly what Favre-Leuba has done with the Bivouac 9000 Black Edition. Mechanically speaking, it still remains the first watch to be capable of recording altitude all the way up to 9,000 feet, with its rotating bezel serving as both an altimeter and a barometer. Sharp looks, great legibility and military-grade functionality make the Bivouac a sports watch icon. 18 HERMÈS
Arceau L’heure de la lune Debuting at the 2019 SIHH, the show-stopping Arceau L’heure de la lune gets five new versions this year, three of which feature dials made of real meteorite. Available in Black Sahara, Lunar meteorite (pictured) and Martian meteorite, this watch is this year’s unofficial champion of material novelty, because offering an actual slice of the moon or Mars is about as exotic as watch dials can get. And if it’s accompanied by a dual moonphase indicator that’s built in-house, then we’ve reached peak Hermès and there’s nothing much to do except gape in wonderment.
superiority which comes from its “1,000 Hours Control” certification (an intense battery of tests) to make a statement.
Apple Watch Series 5, ft. watchOS 7 With a highly accurate heart rate monitor, ECG function and decibel meter, the Apple Watch Series 5 wasn’t exactly running low on functions. However, the new watchOS 7 update that’s due in autumn adds to the already wide gamut of features and will go on to include a handwashing notification that’s capable of reminding you to engage in a timed handwashing session as soon as you get home. In addition to this, the update will also allow users to track their sleep patterns, with data being logged directly onto the Sleep app on their phone.
BR-V2 92 Military Green Sometimes, all it takes to be noticed is a clean, uncluttered dial – a soothing matte khaki dial with a NATO strap in military green to be exact. The Bell & Ross BR-V2 92 achieves more with this minimalist look than some of the brand’s other watches do with their far busier dial designs. The black anodised aluminium insert with a 60-minute scale adds a layer of functionality to an otherwise simple date and time display, but the appeal of this watch lies not in its ability to be a faux military tool, but its broad-spectrum sartorial versatility.
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Spirit 42mm Automatic Chronometer Chronograph (L3.820.4.93.0) Part of the vintage-inspired Heritage line, the Longines Spirit collection taps into the brand’s past associations with aviation greats like Amelia Earhart and Howard Hughes whose individual flying records were timed by Longines. In keeping with that spirit is Longines’ new Automatic Chronograph, featuring a chronometercertified movement. With a blue, sunray dial, classically shaped steel case and lugs, and oversized pushers, this piece just moved up several notches in the chronograph hierarchy. 21 JAEGER-LECOULTRE
Master Control Calendar Chronograph Every year Jaeger-LeCoultre showcases a superlative and ultra-rare timepiece ignoring spatial constraints and featuring as many grand complications as possible. This, however, isn’t that watch. The Master Control Calendar Chronograph is a highly elegant and understated watch designed to be celebrated for its clean, back-to-basics aesthetic. Instead of using ostentation to draw attention, it relies on its technical
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Ocean Moon Phase Automatic 42mm Opulence, thy name is Harry Winston, or, to be more specific, the Harry Winston Ocean Moon Phase Automatic – a diamond-studded ode to a bygone era. Those 91 baguette-cut diamonds instantly give away the brand’s expertise in jewellery design, but equally eye-grabbing is the three-dimensional, open-worked dial with carbon inserts and a unique seconds display. Placed in a white gold case, the Ocean Moon is noteworthy for mixing unconventional design in a traditional package. 24 RESSENCE
Type 1 Slim X Ressence isn’t just out to make highly desirable watches, it’s here to reinterpret time as we see it. The Type 1 Slim X commemorates ten years since the founding of the Belgian watch brand and features the brand’s patented Ressence Orbital Convex System (ROCS), which allow the sub-dial discs to continually orbit around one another. Apart from creating a highly recognisable visual trademark, Ressence has breathed life into the otherwise saturated space of mechanical innovation in the world of haute horology.
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Seastar 1000 Powermatic 80 While the Tissot Seastar 1000 Powermatic 80 doesn’t break any new ground in terms of watch design, it does bring an impressive level of reliability and performance to the brand’s range of watches. Water-resistant up to 300 metres (or 80 bar), a power reserve of 80 hours and with a unidirectional bezel and divers’ safety buckle, it meets every requirement in the diver watch checklist.
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G-Shock DW-5600THC-1DR (G1008) There’s a certain retro appeal of a rectangular G-Shock that never seems to fade. And it’s much the same with this rather inconveniently named model, which throws in red highlights near the lugs to add a bit of colour onto an otherwise clinical design making this a throwback to the DW-5000 that was launched in the 1990s. As a timepiece that can be outmatched in terms of technology by even the most rudimentary piece of wearable tech, the G1008 G-Shock exists purely to satiate nostalgia pangs. 27 RADO
Captain Cook Bronze There’s just something about a bronzebodied watch and its rugged patinated exterior that’s catnip for vintage watch enthusiasts. So it makes sense that the successor to the popular Rado Captain Cook Automatic is a bronze edition. However, the appeal isn’t just metaldeep, as Rado has utilised its expertise with ceramic and created different coloured dials. In doing so, it has paired a cutting-edge material like ceramic with an ancient one like bronze – and for this stark contrast alone, this watch is worth a gander.
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Iconic Link Despite its visual simplicity, Daniel Wellington’s Iconic Link is a sophisticated work of craftsmanship, which took three years to complete. And it all had to do with the links of the bracelet, which the brand’s founder Filip Tysander wanted, to have a cascading effect, with each of the metal links crafted individually. Just when you thought it’s all about the movements and the dial design, DW is here to remind you just how important a role straps and bracelets play in watch design. 29 ARMANI EXCHANGE
Drexler Being a fashion brand, it makes perfect sense for Armani Exchange to bring urban
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streetwear aesthetic to its watches, and the Drexler exemplifies just that. It’s got a tried and tested mix of red, white and blue, which the brand has described as being inspired by 1990s streetwear. This colour combo might be an old-fashioned one, but for an easy-access, quartzpowered watch, it’s still an effective way to make a statement. 30 CALVIN KLEIN
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Squarely Bracelet Watch Calvin Klein’s aptly named “Squarely” takes the vintage mould of a rounded square and offers it up in a variety of Superluminova-coated dial colours ranging from white to black and, a PVD-coated, light yellow. With a brushed, stainless steel body and a fivelink steel bracelet, the Squarely is a nice change of pace from the contemporary fare offered by Calvin Klein. 31 SWATCH
Swatch X 007 Tribute Collection: Moonraker 1979 Sure Swatch and the materially enhanced James Bond aren’t a natural fit. But the brand has been known to produce Bond merchandise every now and then, and this Moonraker -themed watch from its latest 007 Tribute collection might just be the coolest of the lot. Largely because its lack of Bond branding makes it appealing to aeronautics and space enthusiasts as well. If it still seems like too much of a stretch to associate Swatch with Bond, just remember who ultimately owns Omega.
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Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom
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e Housework Coronavirus has meant a huge increase in necessary housework and child care. For the sake of your relationship, figure out how to split it up fairly W R I T T E N
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oronavirus has scrambled our domestic arrangements. Most of us are still clocking in from the dining table; restaurants are either closed, restricted, or simply a kind-of-bad idea, and the future of school remains a messy, uncertain patchwork around the country. The heaviest burdens of the pandemic have fallen on people who have gotten seriously ill or lost loved ones, but for many lucky enough to avoid that, the defining experience of the past few months has been trying to take care of a child between Zoom meetings, or just wondering how it’s possible that you have to do dishes again. There’s more domestic work to be done than ever, and more compromises required to make
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sure it all happens on schedule. So for the sake of your relationship, it’s worth spending some time to take a hard look at who is actually doing the work at home and making adjustments if necessary. Among heterosexual couples, women tend to do more housework than men, which probably comes as a shock to no one. What is surprising is how little mitigating factors affect that discrepancy at all – the imbalance still appears in progressive couples, in households without children and in instances where the woman outearns the man. When there are kids at home, the disparity is only exacerbated – one Pew social trends study showed that in dual-income households in America, mothers did about 28 hours of housework 111
and child care per week, compared to 16 hours for fathers. (In India, women spent nearly six hours a day in unpaid labour compared to less than one hour for men, according to the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.) Not every couple chooses to split domestic labour evenly, of course. But as dual-income relationships become the norm, it seems like a fair starting point, and there’s evidence that it ultimately leads to a happier relationship. Unfortunately, for many couples who say they want to split chores and child care, the lion’s share of the work still seems to fall on women. Part of the problem could be that men are overestimating their contributions. A survey by Morning Consult showed that 45 per cent of American men think they’re picking up “most” of the homeschool duties now that kids are stuck at home, while only three per cent of women agree with that self-assessment. If this is hitting close to home, at least you’re not alone. For men who recognise that much of this increased labour is being done by their partners and who would like to do better at pitching in, figuring out where to even start can be daunting. So I spoke with Darcy Lockman, psychologist and author of 2019’s All The Rage, for some advice on how men in general – but especially dads – could step up and better support their households.
It’s not (necessarily) your fault. The household labour gap often presents as early as the teenage years, with young boys allowed more leisure time while young girls are tasked with more housework. The truth is that we’re all socialised along gendered lines, even if we have 112
the best intentions in terms of an egalitarian household. “Cultural influences are so much more prominent in influencing our behaviour than we realise,” Lockman says. It’s not your fault that things are this way, men, but it is your fault if things don’t change in your household. According to Lockman, “There are couples who have success in navigating this dilemma, but it has to be very intentional.” Clichéd as it may be, the first step is admitting there’s a problem. Acknowledging that you’re operating within a sexist system rather than suffering from inherent, immutable personality flaws can actually be really freeing, because it lets you both off the hook a little. “Having some absolution of responsibility is useful,” Lockman says. “It goes a long way towards household equality being a neutral goal.”
Talk it out. Honestly, I cannot imagine anything hotter than my partner sitting me down and saying, “Hey, I recognise that you’re picking up more of the responsibilities around the house, and that must be a huge strain. Let’s talk about what we can do to make that more fair.” As a little thought experiment, imagine if your partner expected you to do 50 per cent more work than them. If all the household tasks always went on your plate. If you were always expected to find time to sign permission slips, shop for groceries and schedule the plumber. You’d probably start to resent your partner a bit, huh? Yeah. Do you know what does not foster a loving, sexy, healthy relationship? Resentment. So sit down and talk. First, do a chore audit with your partner; there are plenty of worksheets available online if you don’t know where to start. Ask your partner detailed questions about what you both want done around the house and how to fairly split up tasks. Also – and this is crucial – you must set agreed-upon standards, what author Eve Rodsky calls a “Minimum Standard of Care” in her book Fair Play. You and your partner may not personally have the same views regarding cleanliness. That’s okay! But you can both agree to change the sheets once a week regardless, because that’s what human adults do, or you can agree to mop the house twice a week even if it doesn’t seem dirty. That way, if you’re not the kind of person who notices grimy floors or remembers how long ago you laundered linens, it doesn’t matter; the schedule is set. When you have these agreed-upon standards, which might seem nitpicky at first, you eliminate disagreements and resentments. You take out the trash bins because it’s trash day; you vacuum the sofa because it’s vacuum-the-sofa day.
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IF YOU WERE ALWAYS EXPECTED TO FIND TIME TO SIGN PERMISSION SLIPS, SHOP FOR GROCERIES AND SCHEDULE THE PLUMBER, YOU’D PROBABLY START TO RESENT YOUR PARTNER A BIT, HUH? YEAH
What To Expect When You’re Expecting
government employees get up to 15 days off.) The benefits – including lower divorce rates, closer ties with children and more equitable divisions of housework – last for years. Not only does this bond you better with your children, it also helps alleviate stress for your partner, gives them more time to build their life outside of children, and fights the commonly, if subconsciously, held assumption that children are inherently the responsibility of mothers. Yes, it’s tempting to spend any free time with the whole family, but bonding with your kids when you are the only adult around is vital.
Show off.
Take full responsibility for your chores. Rodsky insists that CPE – conception, planning and execution – of a task should belong to one person. If you’re in charge of organising a playdate for your kid, for example, you shouldn’t be relying on your partner to pick them up or drop them off; or to plan a snack for their ride there, thereby creating even more work. Same goes for your partner. Once you divvy up tasks, you have to be fully responsible for every facet of all your chores.
Spend more time alone with your kids. Lockman says that one of the best ways to equalise the household workload is to be alone with your children more, starting from a very early age. As she puts it, “Human beings learn by doing. None of this is instinct. So fathers who are alone with their babies have the opportunity to become confident that they are as much a primary parent as their wives.” Neither parent should feel more competent or responsible than the other. If it’s available to you, take paternity leave. (There is no provision on paternity leave in Indian labour law for private sector workers, but each company has its own policy;
According to legend, even Bill and Melinda Gates have struggled with equitable divisions of labour around the home. Apparently, when one of their daughters started going to a school farther away from their home – a school that Bill was really pushing for – Bill offered to do the school drop-off. After he did, more and more dads in the community started dropping their kids off at school as well. As one parent put it, “If Bill Gates… can drive his kid to school, so can you!” Lockman freely admits that this story is an outsize example. “But,” she says, “the fact is that we’re influenced by what we see around us. So the more men step up and are publicly doing these things, the more other men will step up and publicly be doing these things.” Being very public about your fatherly duties might inspire the men around you to do more too.
Remember that initiative is hot. If you came into your job every morning and asked your boss, “Hey, what am I supposed to do today?” you probably wouldn’t have a job for very long. Housework is work; no one wants to be doing it. Think about the two of you as coworkers – if you’re slacking off and waiting to be told what to do all the time, that ultimately creates more work for your partner. Find out what tasks need to be done with your partner, agree on them, divvy them up and then execute them without prompting. That last part is key – “I want you to want to do the dishes” became a cliché for a reason. Household work is one of the parts of being an adult that kind of blows, much like bad knees, worsening hangovers and colonoscopies. You are going to have to do some tasks that you don’t like, and maybe even some things you think are pointless. You don’t have to like the work, but you do need to do it. Besides, there’s evidence that men who do more work around the house get laid more. 113
T A CO OF S M R A Thanks to these fine outerwear, there’s no better time to prepare for and savour a rare trip outdoors P H O T O G R A P H E D E D W A R D S T Y L E D H A R R I E T
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Life on the planet is on the move – the plant kingdom, wild animal species and people. But far from being a disruptive behaviour, as popular media would have us believe, migration is, in fact, an ancient and lifesaving response. In this excerpt from her new book, The Next Great Migration, awardwinning writer Sonia Shah talks about why the world needs to reimagine such movement as a solution, rather than a problem.
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met Sophia and Mariam a couple years ago in a cramped second-floor apartment in a run-down neighbourhood in East Baltimore, where a local NGO had placed the two women together with their children. As a newly christened volunteer for the local refugee agency, I’d been handed a pile of folders about each refugee family in need of help. Instructed to pick one, I’d chosen them. We talked through a local translator, patched in through a cell phone. Mariam, who had fled Eritrea on foot, made it to a refugee camp just over the border in Ethiopia. Freed from the persecution of
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Eritrea’s military regime, she spent most of her time hanging around, somewhat aimlessly. She is lithe, playful, and quick to smile. But living in a refugee camp had excluded her from the productive activities of society. She did not go to school. She did not have a job. Her main memory of her time in the camp, when I ask her, is of playing pickup games of soccer. Sophia’s track out of Eritrea curled toward the north. From Sudan she made her way to Cairo, where she scraped by along the margins. The small cross she wore dangling on a chain around her neck marked her as an outsider, excluding her from mainstream Egyptian
IMAGE: ALAMY
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Motor and wildlife crossing in Dorsten, Germany
society. She took a job cleaning hotel rooms. But the heavy lifting damaged her back, and the botched surgery that followed left her incapacitated and unable to work. In yet another stroke of bad luck, doctors diagnosed her little boy, fathered by a fellow Eritrean on the run whom she’d met in Cairo, with a cancerous tumor in his left kidney. But Mariam and Sophia had a path to a more secure future. Through the local offices of the United Nations’ refugee agency, Eritreans in Cairo and in refugee camps could apply for refugee status. The agency would scan their faces and collect their fingerprints and
biographical data. If the officers found them acceptable, they might refer their cases to some other country, which after conducting its own investigation into their backgrounds and biographies might find them suitably harmless and deserving. They might be allowed to move to a place where they could start making a home and a life for themselves. Every year, the agency resettles around 100,000 of the nearly 26 million refugees it recognises. Mariam and Sophia both applied. They waited for nearly a decade before they were granted refugee status. The UN agency accepted their applications and referred their cases to officers of the US Refugee Resettlement Program, which decided where they would, from then on, be allowed to live. Separately, they collected their belongings and boarded planes that would deposit them in their new homes. They wanted to find jobs, they said. They wanted their children to be educated. Sophia’s son, a tall, watchful boy, leaned on his mother’s knee, his eyes wide and his expression serious. Mariam’s daughter took an opposite tack, screwing her face into exaggerated expressions, touching my things, and climbing up onto my lap in a successful effort to charm. As we sat together on the carpeted floor and pondered their prospects, Mariam brought out from their little galley kitchen plates of glistening strawberries, thinly sliced apples, and sliced oranges. The kids gathered hungrily around a platter of injera, the Eritrean sourdough flatbread, with steaming spiced lentils and curried potatoes mounded atop it. Mariam and Sophia knew only a few words of broken English. They had no job skills to speak of. They were refugees in a society whose leaders called refugees “animals,” “pests”, and worse; and they were black women in a city so plagued by poverty and so ordered by race that living in one of its poor black neighbourhoods curtails life expectancy by three decades. They had to care for two toddlers. They didn’t know how to drive. Who would hire them? How would they manage to get to work if anyone did? They had little family around to call on for support. The fathers of their children lived thousands of miles away. Mariam’s partner had been resettled in Germany; Sophia’s in Sweden. A framed photograph of a young woman was propped up on a small shelf. It was Sophia’s daughter, who lived in Eritrea. She’d been a toddler when Sophia left. Now she was a teenager. Sophia hadn’t seen her in years. Borders had cut through her family like a freeway through a forest, scattering broken pieces across the continents. One recent evening in December, I picked them up to go see the Christmas lights in downtown Baltimore. After parking the car, we had to walk a few blocks in below-freezing weather, during which they described to me how in Eritrea they celebrated Christmas with a special meal at church and a round of visits to neighbours. Then the scene of electrified American excess that I’d brought them to see came into view. On this particular city block, locals had looped strings of twinkling lights from their windows, porches and roofs, 121
in between their row houses and across the narrow street to the row houses facing theirs. They’d crammed their small front yards with giant electrified candy canes, plastic snowmen waving their chubby arms, and piles of shiny gift-wrapped packages under sculptural Christmas trees built out of beer cans and old hubcaps. A woman dressed as Santa Claus handed out cookies to the crowd gathered to ogle the spectacle. At the end of the street, couples holding snowsuit-clad babies on their hips lined up to snap photos of themselves standing next to a man wearing a felted reindeer costume. In the car, as we drove back to their apartment, the women were quiet. “Is nice,” Sophia finally said, nodding. “American Christmas.” I didn’t know what to say. The candied red and white extravaganza challenged my own fledgling sense of cultural competency. I couldn’t imagine that it made any sense to her – it hardly made any sense to me. I turned up the heat. Mariam’s toes were numb because she had not worn any socks under her thin black sneakers. We drove in silence until we reached their neighbourhood a few miles away. Months would pass before they found work, Mariam taking a night job at an industrial Laundromat, Sophia cleaning a cafeteria. As I turned into the driveway, their building emerged out of the shadows. Despite the strangeness of the night, the uncertainty of her future, the precariousness of the journey that had brought her to this unlikely destination, Sophia looked up at the sight of her building, as if it were unexpected, and whispered softly to herself, “My home.” he fractured landscape that migrants move across can be repaired for both people and wild species. Instead of expanding the borders of isolated parks and reserves, new conservation efforts are seeking to stitch together private lands, ranches, farms and parks into wide, long corridors across which animals can safely move. The Yellowstone to Yukon Initiative, for example, has brought hundreds of conservation groups together to manage more than five hundred thousand square miles stretching southward from northern Canada, to ease wildlife movement across the entire expanse. A similarly ambitious project aims to protect millions of square
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miles of jaguar habitat across fourteen countries from Mexico to Argentina. Conservationists have pinpointed at least twenty places around the world, including biodiverse but highly fragmented locales such as the Eastern Arc mountains of Tanzania and the Atlantic forest of Brazil, where similar wildlife corridors could connect isolated fragments of protected lands into more than half a million acres of continuous forest across which species could freely move. New infrastructure built for wildlife can ease their movement over the obstacles we’ve created. In Canada, grizzlies, wolverines, and elk march across wildlife bridges suspended above and below the TransCanada Highway. In the Netherlands, deer, wild boar, and badgers make it across railroad lines, business parks, and sports complexes thanks to six hundred corridors specially designed for them. In Montana, black bears, coyotes, bobcats, and mountain lions pad across more than forty wildlife crossing structures built over an interstate highway. Elsewhere, conservationists have built tunnels for toads, bridges for squirrels, and ladders for fish. They’ve stitched together vegetation-dripping green roofs for birds and butterflies to rest on as they pass overhead. Together such efforts could create a kind of interstate network for wild species, creating seamless wildlife corridors over vast regions. The ability to move is no panacea, of course. Species that shift their ranges as their habitats vanish may end up exposed to more dangers rather than fewer. In Russia, Pacific walruses whose sea ice has melted now swim to distant rocky beaches to haul out. In the summer of 2017, wildlife filmmakers watched as the elephantine creatures climbed to the top of the rocky cliffs, plunging to their deaths on the beaches below, exhausted. Those that successfully shift their ranges may be condemned as “invasives”. Wild species that have been criticised as unwanted intruders include the endangered freshwater turtle from Vietnam and China that successfully established itself in Hawaii; the Monterey pine trees, endangered in California and Mexico, that made it to Australia and New Zealand; the endangered barbary sheep that arrived on the Canary Islands; and the Sacramento perch, which spread through the western United States before going extinct in California.
“For too long, we’ve suppressed the fact of the migration instinct, demonising it as a harbinger of terror. We’ve constructed a story about ourselves, our history, our bodies, and the natural world around us in which migration is the anomaly. It’s an illusion. And once it falls, the entire world shifts.” 122
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Fish ladders at Hwangryong River near Jangseonggun, South Korea
Still, for the thousands of species now on the move toward the poles and into the higher latitudes, movement could be their best shot at surviving in the new era of climate chaos. It is possible to envision a world in which people, too, safely move across the landscape. People seeking to move as the climate changes or as their livelihoods dry up don’t have to risk being hunted down by Border Patrol agents, or drowning in the sea, or dying in the desert. International borders that now bristle with armed guards, razor wire, and border walls could be made softer and more permeable, more like the borders between, say, Massachusetts and New York, or between France and Germany. Initiatives such as the United Nations’ Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration suggest a possible framework. The compact calls for countries to create more legal pathways for migrants in search of new livelihoods. It calls for countries to collect and share data on migrants and provide them with proof of their identity, so that migration can become more regular and orderly. It includes measures to make it easier for migrants to send funds and other support to the places they’ve left behind. And it calls for turning the detention of migrants into a measure of last resort instead of a reflexive first step. The permeable borders that the compact imagines wouldn’t absolve newcomers from the responsibility of obeying local laws and customs or erase the distinctiveness of local cultures. Rather, they would make migration safe, dignified, and humane.
One hundred and sixty-three of the United Nations’ 194 member nations have adopted the voluntary, nonbinding compact. In 2019, Portugal incorporated it into its own national immigration policy. The militarised borders that bar human movement today are not sacrosanct. They’re not fundamental to our cultures or histories. People in Europe started drawing borders around their countries only a few centuries ago. The British lawyer who established the borders around India and Pakistan marked them out over the course of just a few weeks. Even the highly contested border between the United States and Mexico was mostly permeable until just a few decades ago. Throughout much of our history, kingdoms and empires rose and fell with blurry edges, each culture and people shading gradually from one to the next. It’s not that borders were open or closed. They didn’t exist at all. If we were to accept migration as integral to life on a dynamic planet with shifting and unevenly distributed resources, there are any number of ways we could proceed. The migration ratio will continue its inexorable approach, regardless. People like Sophia and Jean-Pierre and Ghulam will continue to move. We can continue to think of this as a catastrophe. Or we can reclaim our history of migration and our place in nature as migrants like the butterflies and the birds. We can turn migration from a crisis into its opposite: the solution. The Next Great Migration: The Story Of Movement On A Changing Planet by Sonia Shah (Bloomsbury) is out now
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The plague marked the end of the Middle Ages and the start of a great cultural renewal. Could the coronavirus, for all its destruction, offer a similar opportunity for radical change? B Y
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reat crises tend to bring profound social change, for good or ill. The consequences of wars and economic depressions have been amply studied; the consequences of pandemics, less so. This spring, in order to understand our possible future, I decided to look at the past through the eyes of Gianna Pomata, a retired professor at the Institute of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. When we first talked, on Skype, she immediately compared Covid-19 to the bubonic plague that struck Europe in the 14th century – “not in the number of dead but in terms of shaking up the way people think.” She went on, “The Black Death really marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of something else.” That something else was the Renaissance.
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not empirical.” European scholars at the time studied a number of classical physicians – including Hippocrates, the Greek philosopher of the fifth century BC who is considered the father of medicine, and Galen, the second-century Roman who was the most influential medical figure in antiquity – but scholastic medicine was confounded with astrological notions. When the King of France sought to understand the cause of the plague, the medical faculty at the University of Paris blamed a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius, which had occurred on March 20, 1345. “Whether it descended on us mortals through the influence of the heavenly bodies or was sent down by God in His righteous anger to chastise us because of our wickedness, it had begun some years before in the East,” Giovanni Boccaccio wrote in the Decameron, which was completed by 1353 and is set during the plague in Florence. “At its onset, in men and women alike, certain swellings would develop in the groin or under the armpits, some of which would grow like an ordinary apple and others like an egg.” These pus-filled swellings, called buboes, were inflammations of the lymph nodes. They eventually erupted. Internal organs broke down in a bloody froth, and bodies darkened with gangrene, which is why the plague came to be called the Black Death.
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efore arriving in Italy, the rampaging contagion had already killed millions of people as it burned through China, Russia, India, Persia, Syria and Asia Minor. It was said that there were entire territories where nobody was left alive. The source of the disease was sometimes thought to be “miasma”, or air that was considered unhealthy, such as sea breezes. Paradoxically, there was also a folk belief that attendants who cleaned latrines were immune, which led some people to confine themselves for hours a day amid human waste, absorbing the presumed medicinal odours. “The advice of doctors and the power of medicine appeared useless and unavailing,” Boccaccio wrote. Some people maintained that “the surest medicine for such an evil disease was to drink heavily, enjoy life’s pleasures, and go about singing and having fun, satisfying their appetites by any means available, while laughing at everything.” Others, he observed, “formed themselves into companies and lived in isolation from everyone else.” The Decameron tells of ten friends who shelter in place, entertaining one another with stories while the plague assails Florence. These ribald tales pay little heed to medieval notions of sacredness or piety; indeed, the society that the sequestered young people describe is amoral and cheerfully hypocritical. Priests are portrayed as stupid, lustful, greedy connivers. Illicit sex is exalted. The earthy realism of the Decameron, written in Italian vernacular rather than in classical Latin verse, sounded one of the opening notes of the Renaissance. Pomata told me, “What happens after the Black Death, it’s like a wind – fresh air coming in, the fresh air of common sense.” The intellectual overthrow of the scholastic-medicine establishment in the Middle Ages was caused by doctors who set aside the classical texts and
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Since retiring, Pomata has returned to her hometown, the old city of Bologna. “You know Bologna, right?” she asked in that first conversation, on March 27. Decades ago, I was the best man at a wedding there. I recalled the giant churches, the red-tiled roofs, the marble walkways under arched porticoes; a stately city, low-slung, amber-hued, full of students and indomitable old couples. During the Middle Ages, Bologna was home to more than a hundred towers, the skyscrapers of their era, which served as showplaces of wealth and ambition for powerful oligarchs. Two of the remaining ones have become symbols of Bologna: one slightly out of plumb, the other as cockeyed as its cousin in Pisa. “You remember the Piazza Maggiore, the very heart of the city near the two towers?” Pomata said. “That’s where I live.” Pomata’s country had been in a nationwide lockdown since March 10. “In Italy, the streets are always crowded, night and day,” she said. “Our cities are medieval, made for a different way of life – not for cars but for people. Right now, to see them empty of people is so sad.” When we spoke, the number of confirmed cases in Italy had reached 86,000. Only the United States had a higher number, having just eclipsed China. Pomata, who is 69, has brown hair, with a long, open face. That day, tortoiseshell glasses rested at half-mast on her nose, beneath upward-pointing, quizzical eyebrows. Like me, she was beginning to show the pallor of confinement. Having spent much of her adult life in the United States, her English had little accent, but she retained an Italian lilt, lingering on the broad vowels. I asked Pomata to imagine walking out of her apartment 672 years ago, during the Black Death. How would Bologna appear different? “If you try to imagine a plague-stricken city in the Middle Ages, the first thing you’d see would be dead people on the streets,” she said. “Just as we have to send the Army to take coffins to crematories in other cities, as in Bergamo right now, in the Middle Ages they couldn’t cope with so many dead. The bodies just piled up on the streets.” She paused and said, “I don’t have an idyllic vision of the Middle Ages.” Italy at the beginning of the 14th century was a conglomeration of prosperous city-states that had broken free of the feudal system. Some of them, such as Venice, formed merchant republics, which became seedbeds for capitalism. Venice and other coastal cities, including Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi, set up trading networks and established outposts throughout the Mediterranean and as far away as the Black Sea. Other Italian cities, such as Bologna, became free communes, which meant that peasants fleeing feudal estates were granted freedom once they entered the city walls. Serfs became artisans. A middle class began to form. The early 14th century was robust and ambitious. Then, suddenly, people began to die. Bologna was a stronghold of medical teaching. The city’s famous university, established in 1088, is the oldest in the world. “What they had we call scholastic medicine,” Pomata told me. “When we say ‘scholastic’, we mean something that is very abstract, not concrete,
“WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE BLACK DEATH, IT’S LIKE A WIND – FRESH AIR COMING IN, THE FRESH AIR OF COMMON SENSE" gradually turned to empirical evidence. It was a revival of medical science, which had been dismissed after the fall of ancient Rome, 1,000 years earlier. “After the Black Death, nothing was the same,” Pomata said. “What I expect now is something as dramatic is going to happen, not so much in medicine but in economy and culture. Because of danger, there’s this wonderful human response, which is to think in a new way.” In the 14th century, Tatar warriors in Crimea laid siege to the Black Sea port city of Caffa, which was owned by a group of wealthy Genoese traders. Like so many armies in history, the Tatars were also fighting an unseen enemy: they carried with them a horrible disease, which killed some victims in a few days, and left others to die in indolent agony. Before retreating from Caffa, the Tatar general, Khan Jani Beg, ordered the diseased bodies of dead warriors catapulted over the city walls, in one of the first instances of biological warfare. Panicked citizens took to boats, navigating through the Dardanelles into the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean. A dozen ships made it to Sicily, in October 1347. Sicilians were appalled to find on their shores boats with dead men still at their oars. Other sailors, dead or barely alive, were in their bunks, covered with foul-smelling sores. The horrified Sicilians drove the ships back to sea, but it was too late. Rats and fleas, the carriers of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the plague, quickly infested the port of Messina. By January, Italy was engulfed. Ships arriving in the Venetian vassal state of Ragusa – present-day Dubrovnik – were required to sit at anchor for quaranta giorni, or 40 days, which is where the term “quarantine” comes from. Medieval mortality figures are a matter of speculation, but Bologna is believed to have lost half its population in 1348. Cities all over Europe were emptied. That first
A colourised black and white print depicting the Black Death in London, 1665
outbreak, between 1347 and 1351, is estimated to have killed at least 75 million people worldwide, and maybe as many as 200 million. “Child abandoned the father, husband the wife, wife the husband, one brother the other, one sister the other,” a contemporary writer, Marchione di Coppo Stefani, observed. Deep trenches were dug in churchyards. “Those who were responsible for the dead carried them on their backs in the night in which they died and threw them into the ditch,” Stefani continued. The next morning, dirt was thrown on the bodies as new corpses were piled on, “layer by layer, just like one puts layers of cheese in a lasagna.” Pomata told me, “Chroniclers of the plague describe the crumbling of the family. At the same time, human beings are creative. They react to this perceived moral decay by creating new institutions. For instance, they create boards of health, which are in charge of quarantine.” For the first time, hospitals split patients up into specific wards, so that broken bones and wounds, say, were treated separately from diseases. There was also a rise in trade associations, to take care of medical costs and funeral expenses. “So you can see both trends,” Pomata said. “On the one hand, the plague works as a kind of acid. On the other hand, people try to recreate ties – and, perhaps, better ties.” When I called Pomata again, on April 7, using Zoom, she had set up an avatar: a bouquet of plumbago. I asked her why she had chosen it. “There was a big bush of plumbago next to the door of my grandmother’s little country house when I was a child,” she said. The house was in Sardinia, where Pomata grew up. “I loved my grandmother and I loved that house. So I just love that plant. It’s a colour I remember from when I was very, very little.” Plumbago blossoms are a delicate blue, 139
like a summer afternoon in Texas, where I live, when the colour has almost been bleached out of the sky. Plumbago grows well in the heat. Pomata’s sister, Daniela, is an emergency-room doctor in Bologna, at Sant’Orsola-Malpighi Polyclinic, the largest hospital in Italy. The two sisters live in the same building. “We used to be together constantly, and now I can’t see her,” Pomata said. From the start of the outbreak, her sister had emphasised that the coronavirus was not an ordinary flu. “She says, ‘I’ve never seen such pneumonias, they’re devastating,’” Pomata told me. When we spoke before, there was a fear that Sant’Orsola would run out of beds in its intensivecare unit. Now the crisis had begun to ease. I asked Pomata if Italians who recovered would be allowed to return to work. “There is no work for them,” she said. Even before the global economic implosion caused by the coronavirus, unemployment for young Italians was 30 per cent. “What you need is exactly what the Federal Reserve is doing in the United States – you inject money into the system.” Pomata’s daughter, Catherine, lives in New York, where she works in the film industry. “I don’t like the situation there at all,” Pomata said. “She is with her husband, she’s not by herself, so that’s good. They live in a tiny apartment near Columbia University, on the Upper West Side. Until recently, she was walking to Central Park, but now she doesn’t, because she feels that people don’t always pay attention to distance.” Catherine had sent her mother a video of the Cathedral of St John the Divine, just blocks from Catherine’s apartment, which was planning to house a temporary hospital. This underscored the scale of the contagion.
Red Cross volunteers fighting against the Spanish flu in America, 1918
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“Catherine loves New York,” Pomata said. “Living in New York was a dream. But now I think she’s very scared.” Another feature of the Covid-19 pandemic reminded Pomata of the Black Death. “We cannot go and visit the dying, we cannot celebrate funerals,” she said. “I think, What if something happens to my daughter, and I couldn’t even see her body? It just feels intolerable.” “I am reflecting on the idea of disease waves,” I said, when Pomata and I spoke again, in May. Scientists were talking about a second wave of Covid-19 in the fall, or perhaps many waves. The 1918 Spanish flu began in the early spring, disappeared in the summer, then returned in the autumn. October 1918 was the deadliest month in American history. A third wave came in 1919; after that, the disease retreated, having killed at least 50 million people worldwide, including nearly 7,00,000 Americans. Public health officials dreaded the day the virus would return. In 1976, it did. This time, it killed only one American, a young army recruit named David Lewis. Another variant of the same strain returned as a pandemic in 2009, but proved to be less severe than the usual seasonal flu. The bubonic plague came in three great pandemics. The first, known as the Plague of Justinian, lasted from the sixth century until the eighth, with few letu-ps, ravaging the Byzantine Empire. The second pandemic, the Black Death, arrived in Italy in December 1347, and spread quickly across Europe. Pilgrims carried it to Mecca the following year. The plague soon infested Scandinavia. A third of the population of Egypt died. Subsidiary outbreaks continued to appear in Europe for 300 years. The Great Plague of London, which Daniel Defoe chronicled, hit in 1665. After that, the plague mysteriously faded away.
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here was a much more circumscribed episode in Marseille in the early 18th century,” Pomata told me. “And that’s it for Europe, but not for Asia.” The last plague pandemic began in the mid-19th century, in China, and spread to India, where it killed six million people. At the beginning of the 20th century, the disease journeyed to America, where a Chinese resident of San Francisco was the first to die of it. Henry Gage, the governor of California at the time, tried to play down the outbreak, speculating that white people were immune to the disease; scores died. The plague has never been entirely eradicated, but, with each wave, it may have killed so efficiently that it starved itself of human hosts. Having persisted in flea and rat populations, the bacterium continues to infect humans from time to time. As many as 2,000 cases are reported to the World Health Organization every year, often including a handful in the American Southwest. The Black Death caused economic and demographic collapse throughout Europe, but some devastated regions rebounded surprisingly quickly. London, the engine of English prosperity even in the Middle Ages, lost an estimated 40,000 citizens, out of a population of perhaps 70,000, but it soon enjoyed greater affluence than ever. I asked Pomata about Italy’s economic experience after the Black Death. “It was a great time to be an artisan,” she said. “Suddenly, labour was scarce, and, because of that, market wages had to go up. The bourgeoisie, the artisans and the workers started to have a stronger voice, simply because labour was scarce. When you don’t have people, you have to pay them better.” The relative standing of capital and labour reversed: Landed gentry were battered by plunging food prices and rising wages, while former serfs, who had been too impoverished to leave anything but a portion of land to their eldest sons, increasingly found themselves able to spread their wealth among all their children, including their daughters. Women, many of them widows, entered depopulated professions, such as weaving and brewing. At one point in our conversations, Pomata confessed, “I’m so upset and emotional, it’s difficult to think clearly.” I asked what was troubling her. “First of all, it is rediscovering the extreme fragility of life,” she said. “So much of our way of life is insane. Right now, for instance, in Italy we don’t have face masks.” Such masks used to be manufactured there, but today this work has been outsourced to China. If the pandemic had struck in the early 1990s, she believes, Italy would have responded more effectively from the start, and not just because masks would have been on hand. “Our national healthcare system was better funded, we had more hospitals, the hospitals were better equipped, they had more intensive care units, and all that has been cut, cut, cut for austerity policies dictated by Brussels” – that is, the European Union. Nevertheless, current talk about how the crisis could spell the end of the EU frightens her. “I am a Europeanist,” she said. “I have always believed in Europe as a culture and a political idea. But right now I see this. And I’m very angry.” Pomata mentioned an essay that Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank, had published in the Financial Times, in March, suggesting that European leaders were questioning some fundamental
ideas about economic growth. Draghi has been at “the pinnacle of the European bureaucracy that has been enforcing the economic policy called austerity,” Pomata explained. The southern tier of European countries – mainly Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece – have been struggling with heavy debt loads; northern countries, including Germany and the Netherlands, which hold the debt, insist that it must be repaid on a rigid schedule. She described the EU’s ethic as “Spending more than we have is heresy, and we should never do it.” She went on, “The problem, as John Maynard Keynes said, is that when you are in a crisis you don’t maintain that stance, because it makes the crisis worse. Which is what happened in the crisis of 1929. He said what you do is build an infrastructure – you build a pyramid if you have to, build. You create jobs and the economy doesn’t stop.” She continued, “For a long time, European bureaucrats and the European ruling class have been firmly anti-Keynesian. And Draghi was part of that class – he was at the top of it! And suddenly he writes in the Financial Times saying the opposite of what he has been preaching all these years.” Draghi described the coronavirus as “a human tragedy of potentially biblical proportions.” He added, “The challenge we face is how to act with sufficient strength and speed to prevent the recession from morphing into a prolonged depression, made deeper by a plethora of defaults leaving irreversible damage. It is already clear that the answer must involve a significant increase in public debt.” Pomata said, “I’m glad, at least, that Draghi spoke up. But that ruling class, the European elite, has to really rethink.” Since then, the leaders of Germany and France have proposed creating grants, financed by collective borrowing, that would help prevent the poorer regions of Europe from falling into a lengthy recession. At the end of May, the EU presented a twotrillion-dollar coronavirus-response plan, with the aim of reviving flattened economies, especially in the south. If the member countries approve the plan, it could mark the moment when the EU moves toward a federal framework, like that of the United States. Germany’s finance minister, Olaf Scholz, has compared the measure to the actions taken in 1790 by Alexander Hamilton, the architect of the American financial system, to have the US government assume the Revolutionary War debts of the states. Pomata described the pandemic as “an accelerator of mental renewal”. She explained, “We listen more, perhaps. We’re more ready to talk to one another. Once again, I give Draghi’s example, because I’m so struck by it. An anthropologist should write about this kind of thing. Draghi’s world was very stable. He had some beliefs about how the economy should be handled. And suddenly he’s in a whirlwind, and he has to think anew.” In 1345, shortly before the plague devastated Verona, the Italian poet and scholar Petrarch was rummaging through the library of the city’s cathedral. Among the crumbling manuscripts there, he found letters written by Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman statesman and orator who is sometimes credited with making Latin 141
"BECAUSE OF DANGER, THERE’S THIS WONDERFUL HUMAN RESPONSE, WHICH IS TO THINK IN A NEW WAY”
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e seem to be at another point when society will make radical adjustments, for good or ill. History offers mixed lessons. The Plague of Athens, in 430 BC, led to a protracted period of lawlessness and immorality. Citizens lost faith in Athenian democracy, which never regained its standing. The millions of deaths caused by the 1918 Spanish flu and the First World War brought on women’s suffrage but also inaugurated the Roaring Twenties, which featured disparities of wealth unequalled until the present day. After the shock of the Second World War, America transformed itself into the strongest economic power in history, largely through an expansive middle class. But after 9/11 the United States forged a dark path. Instead of taking advantage of surging patriotism and heightened international good will, America invaded Iraq and tortured suspects at Guantánamo; at home, prosperous Americans essentially barricaded themselves off from their fellowcitizens, allowing racial and economic inequalities to fester. The country we are now was formed in no small part by the fear and the anger that still linger from that tragic day. Pomata and I began to speculate again on potential positive outcomes of the current pandemic. “People are noticing in Venice that the water is suddenly transparent,” she said. “It’s clean. And even I, here in Bologna, I open the window, and usually it smells foul because of too many motorini, and now it smells nice. It’s like being in the countryside.” In Austin, the city where I live, I also have treasured the absence of the usual traffic roar, the neighbourhood streets given over to pedestrians and exhilarated children on bicycles. I have been inspired by photographs of Los Angeles looking eerily pristine, and by newfound vistas of the Himalayas from Punjab, hidden for decades by smog. Could these images have a galvanising effect, like the 1972 photograph of Earth taken from space by the crew of Apollo 17, which helped bring the environmental movement to life? The atmosphere feels scrubbed clean; the stars are sharper and more visible. The relationship between humanity and the natural world is more balanced and harmonious. Such ecological restorations, of course, have come at the cost of collapsed economies and punctured dreams. Traffic will necessarily resume, oil will be pumped, airplanes will take off. But I wonder if the glorious experience of living with less pollution, however momentary, will linger in our consciousness as an achievable destiny – and as a reminder that major transformations are possible.
IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES
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a literary language. Until Petrarch’s discovery, Cicero was almost totally forgotten, as were most of the great figures of the classical era. Reading Cicero’s letters – or other abandoned works, like Livy’s history of Rome – revealed to Petrarch how degraded civilisation had become. He christened the period after the fall of Rome the Dark Ages. The beauty of Cicero’s language, the rigour of his thought, inflamed Petrarch with an ambition to restore the glory of the past. And that meant opening the minds of his contemporaries to the possibility of change. “For Petrarch, it was about disliking his time and his age and the condition of Italy,” Pomata said. He expressed his frustration with his era by writing letters to the ancients. “It could be like someone today disliking the present state of America and wanting to talk to Thomas Jefferson or Martin Luther King.” The Middle Ages didn’t end definitively until the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, when scholars of the Byzantine Empire migrated to Europe, especially to Italy, bringing their libraries with them. But new thinking was already under way, spurred partly by Petrarch’s embrace of old thinking, which is why he is often cited as the instigating figure of the Renaissance. Artists reclaimed ancient techniques for drawing and painting with perspective. Musicians recovered melody. Humanism unsettled the stagnant rule of religion over people’s minds. Michelangelo, da Vinci, Palladio, Brunelleschi, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Machiavelli and Dante Alighieri became foundation stones of European thought. Italian explorers, including Christopher Columbus, Giovanni da Verrazzano and Amerigo Vespucci, changed the map of the world. Galileo established the scientific method. The Italian Renaissance was perhaps the greatest efflorescence of science and art in Western civilisation. Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Italy’s economy was already one of the weakest in Europe – its gross domestic product was at a dead stop. The US, meanwhile, had reached almost full employment, before plummeting to a level of joblessness not seen since the Great Depression. Congress and the Federal Reserve have acted forcefully, and a recent drop in unemployment suggests that some American jobs will come back quickly. Yet Jerome Powell, the Fed chairman, has predicted “a long road” to recovery. Both in the US and in other countries, an era of significant unemployment is likely, creating a labour surplus – the reverse of the situation after the Black Death.
Toward the end of spring, Italy began to open again. “Starting tomorrow, they’re going to relax the rules a bit,” Pomata told me, with excitement. “You’re supposed to be able to go and visit ‘relatives’, but of course nobody knows what is meant by relatives. A fiancée? A lover? A mistress? We’re making lots of jokes about the meaning of a relative in Italy at this moment!” Pomata’s optimism was further buoyed by the fact that her country’s shutdown, cohesive and well managed, had worked: new infections were petering out there. Italy had 6,000 new cases a day when spring started and only 200 a day when it ended. In the meantime, the epicentre of the contagion had moved to my own part of the world. By early July, Texas was reporting more than 9,000 infections a day, and was one of several Southern states that had boosted the spread of the disease to record levels. Hospitals in Houston were nearing full capacity, and Austin was preparing its convention centre as a spillover medical outpost. Governor Greg Abbott, who had begun aggressively reopening the state in April and had even forbidden mayors to enforce rules concerning the use of face masks, now reluctantly tapped the brakes, warning of a “massive outbreak.” Texas had ended up basically in the same condition that Italy was in when Pomata and I first spoke. Pomata was shocked by the direction that the pandemic was taking in the United States. She understood the reasons for the mass protests and political rallies, but, as a medical historian, she was uncomfortably reminded of the religious processions that had spread the plague in medieval Europe. And, as someone who had obediently remained indoors for months, she was affronted by the refusal of so many Americans to wear masks at the grocery store and maintain social distancing. In an email, she
condemned those who blithely ignored scientific advice, writing, “What I see right now in the United States is that the pandemic has not led to new creative thinking but, on the contrary, has strengthened all the worst, most stereotypical and irrational ways of thinking. I’m very sorry for the state of your country, which seems to be in the grip of a horrible attack of unreason.” She continued, “I’m sorry because I love it, and have received so much from it.” I understood her gloomy assessment, but also felt that America could be on the verge of much needed change. Like wars and depressions, a pandemic offers an X-ray of society, allowing us to see all the broken places. It was possible that Americans would do nothing about the fissures exposed by the pandemic: the racial inequities, the poisonous partisanship, the governmental incompetence, the disrespect for science, the loss of standing among nations, the fraying of community bonds. Then again, when people confront their failures, they have the opportunity to mend them. We agreed on one thing: Nothing about our societies could truly be fixed as long as everyone remained stuck inside. At one point, when Pomata and I were fantasising about the end of our captivity, I asked her what she wanted to do when she finally went out again. “I don’t actually feel starved for human contact”, she said, with a bit of surprise. “I’ve never written so many letters as in this period of my life!” She then noted, “Of course, I see my sister from the window, and we cannot hug each other.” Above all, Pomata said, she longed to visit her mother, who lives in Sardinia, and to swim there again. This summer, she plans to make the trip. “Older people need exercise,” she said. “I don’t spend time at the beach gossiping with friends. I don’t even take the sun. I just go immediately into the sea.”
New Yorkers practising social distancing in Domino Park, Brooklyn, July 2020
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BIKRAMJIT BOSE
Gear up for the biggest virtual beauty bash
Calling all beauty lovers! Your one-stop shop for all things beauty— Vogue Beauty Festival 2020—is here. Spotlighting the best in haircare, makeup, skincare and fragrance, Vogue’s two-day virtual affair has a host of activities in store, all of which celebrate the exciting world of beauty.
WHEN: AUGUST 29TH AND 30TH, 2020 WHERE: vogue.in/beauty-festival-2020 For more information, log on to @vogueindia on Instagram For partnership queries: sales@condenast.in
INDIAN EDITION
THE LAST WORD IN TRAVEL JUNE-JULY 2020 | 150
STORIES OF HOME, HOPE AND LONGING
INDIAN EDITION
THE LAST WORD IN TRAVEL JUNE-JULY 2020 | 150
STORIES OF HOME, HOPE AND LONGING
Where To Buy
The products featured editorially have been ordered from the following stores. Prices and availability were checked at the time of going to press
IMAGE: NILIK KHIMANI
A A. Lange & Söhne alange-soehne.com Alexander McQueen alexandermcqueen.com Amrapali Mumbai, 022-2612 5001; Delhi, 011-4172 4235; Bengaluru, 080-2222 1622 Anmol Jewellers Mumbai, 022-6133 3444; Delhi, 011-4082 3366; Bengaluru, 080-4112 8383 Apple apple.com Armani Exchange Mumbai, Palladium, 022-4002 4412; Delhi, Select Citywalk, 011-4168 0071 Audemars Piguet Delhi, Kapoor Watch Co., 011-4676 7777 Azga azga.in B Bally Delhi, DLF Emporio, 011-4053 4149 Be Bajrang Mumbai, 99305 10672 Bell & Ross Available at ethoswatches.com Bent Chair bentchair.com Berluti Delhi, DLF Emporio, 78761 23123 Billionaire billionaire.com Blancpain Mumbai, Art of Time, 97731 33333; Delhi, Johnson Watch Co., 011-4151 3121 Bode bodenewyork.com Bottega Veneta Mumbai, Palladium, 022-6615 2291; Delhi, DLF Emporio, 011-4609 8262 Bovet Mumbai, Regalia Luxury Retail, 022-6633 9000; Delhi, Johnson Watch Co., 011-4151 3121 Breguet Mumbai, Art of Time, 97731 33333; Delhi, Johnson Watch Co., 011-4151 3121; Bengaluru, Ethos Watch Boutique, 080-2268 2445 Breitling Mumbai, Art of Time, 97731 33333; Delhi, Johnson Watch Co., 011-4151 3121; Bengaluru, Zimson Swiss Watch Boutique, 080-4098 2100 Brunello Cucinelli Delhi, 96811 23123 Brylcreem nykaa.com Burberry Mumbai, Palladium, 022-4080 1994; Delhi, DLF Emporio, 011-4652 9850; Bengaluru, UB City, 080-4173 8825 C Cadrys cadrys.com.au Calvin Klein Watches Available at ethoswatches.com
Casio Mumbai, Palladium, 022-2493 7692; Delhi, 98913 77000; Bengaluru, 89043 59499 Celio Mumbai, Palladium, 022-4080 2301; Delhi, DLF Promenade, 011-4601 6018; Bengaluru, Phoenix Marketcity, 080-6726 6252 Chopard Mumbai, 022-2288 4757; Delhi, Johnson Watch Co., 011-4151 3121; Bengaluru, Zimson Swiss Watch Boutique, 080-4098 2100 D Daniel Wellington Mumbai, 022-4973 341; Bengaluru, 080-2501 8010 Dior Men Delhi, DLF Emporio, 011-4600 5900 Dolce & Gabbana dolcegabbana.com Dries Van Noten driesvannoten.be Dsquared2 dsquared2.com Dyson dyson.in E Ermenegildo Zegna Mumbai, Palladium, 022-4347 1261; Delhi, DLF Emporio, 011-4606 0999 Etro Available at The Collective F Favre-Leuba Available at ethoswatches.com Forevermark forevermark.com G Giorgio Armani Delhi, DLF Emporio, 011-4102 7122 Givenchy givenchy.com Gucci Mumbai, 022-6747 7060; Delhi, DLF Emporio, 011-4647 1111 H Harry Winston Delhi, Johnson Watch Co., 011-4151 3121 Hermès Mumbai, 022-2271 7400; Delhi, 011-2688 5501 Hidesign Mumbai, 022-6654 1615; Delhi, 011-4087 0047; Bengaluru, 080-2544 0535 Hublot Mumbai, 022-2651 5757; Delhi, 011-4676 7777; Bengaluru, Zimson Watches, 080-4091 3800 I Infinite Luxury Brands Delhi, 011-4698 0000 Inox Jewelry inoxjewelry.in
Iqrup+Ritz iqrupandritz.com IWC Mumbai, 022-2362 0275; Delhi, 011-4134 5678; Bengaluru, 080-4099 9621 J Jaeger-LeCoultre Mumbai, 022-6615 1308; Delhi, 011-2688 5040; Bengaluru, Zimson Swiss Watch Boutique, 080-4098 2100 Jaquet Droz Available at ethoswatches.com K Kérastase hair-salons. kerastase.in Kia Motors Mumbai, Kia Autobahn, 90292 92929; Delhi, Frontier Kia, 98739 43152; Bengaluru, Advaith Kia, 96110 06006 L Longines Mumbai 022-6743 9853; Delhi, 011-4359 2848; Bengaluru, 080-4098 2109 Louis Vuitton Mumbai, 022-6664 4134; Delhi, DLF Emporio, 011-4669 0000; Bengaluru, UB City, 080-4246 0000 M Men Of Platinum menofplatinum.com Mercedes-Benz Mumbai, MB Auto Hangar, 022-6612 3800; Delhi, T&T Motors, 011-4005 8300; Bengaluru, Akshaya Motors, 91085 35297 Misho mishodesigns.com Montblanc Mumbai, Palladium, 022-4333 9994; Delhi, 011-2302 2351; Bengaluru, 99011 61354 N Nappa Dori Mumbai, 022-2204 2162; Delhi, Select Citywalk, 011-4109 0510 O Om Jewellers omjewellers.com Omega Mumbai, 022-3060 2002; Delhi, 011-4151 3255; Bengaluru, 080-4098 2106 Orofit Mumbai, 88281 31624 P Panerai Mumbai, Officine Panerai Boutique, 022-2288 5052/53; Delhi, 011-2687 4050; Bengaluru, 080-4099 9621 Paul Smith Mumbai, Palladium, 022-4006 5089;
Delhi, DLF Emporio, 011-4604 0734; Bengaluru, UB City, 080-4173 8882 Philipp Plein plein.com Philips philips.co.in Poltrona Frau Mumbai, 022-2261 4848 Prada prada.com R Rado Mumbai, 022-6743 9856; Delhi, 011-4357 5253; Bengaluru, UB City, 080-4098 2107 Raniwala 1881 raniwalajewellers.com Ressence Delhi, Johnson Watch Co., 93122 64405 Richard Mille richardmille.com Roche Bobois Mumbai, 022-4923 7772 Roger Dubuis Mumbai, Time Avenue, 022-2655 2727; Delhi, Kapoor Watch Company, 99105 55111; Bengaluru, Ethos, UB City, 080-4099 9623 S Sabyasachi Mumbai, 022-2204 4774; Delhi, 011-2664 4352; Bengaluru, 080-4112 1088 Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello Delhi, 78771 23123 Salvatore Ferragamo Mumbai, 022-3062 1018; Delhi, DLF Emporio, 011-4660 9084; Bengaluru, UB City, 080-4302 0456
Scarlet Splendour scarletsplendour.com Schwarzkopf nykaa.com Swatch Mumbai, 022-2413 4449; Delhi 011-2241 2241; Bengaluru, 080-2206 7775 T Ted Baker Delhi, 011-2688 6070 The Body Shop thebodyshop.in The Collective Mumbai, Palladium, 022-4023 4414; Delhi, 011-4087 0544; Bengaluru, UB City, 080-4120 7331 The Man Company themancompany.com The Tie Hub thetiehub.com Tiffany & Co. tiffany.com Tissot Mumbai, Ethos, 022-6615 0351; Delhi, Ganga Ram Gallery, 011-2241 2241; Bengaluru, Ethos, 080-2206 7775 Tod’s Mumbai, Palladium, 022-4242 1818; Delhi, DLF Emporio, 011-4666 2700 Truefitt & Hill nykaa.com U Ulysse Nardin ulyssenardin.com V Valentino valentino.com Versace Available at Infinite Luxury Y Yves Rocher nykaa.com
AUGUST 2020
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LUXURY, FASHION AND GROOMING IN STANDOUT STYLE
A Sporting Sensation
The Tissot SuperSport Chrono is a tribute to the physicality associated with the sport of rugby. The wristwatch flaunts an imposing 45.5mm body that is shaped out of steel, with colour options that range from black to rose gold via PVD technology. Available in a variety of bracelets and straps, it also features a fixed glass engraved with a tachymetric scale gradated up to 400km/hr, 12 easily legible indexes coated with Super-LumiNova® technology and a crown that boasts considerable diameter for easy gripping.
Straight From The Streets
Step up your style game with The Street Collection from Max Fashion, which spotlights fun retro styles and typographic prints on everything from shirts to tees. Keep it light and easy and play with funky checked shorts and trousers, stylish bomber jackets and edgy biker denims in a versatile colour palette. You could also switch things up and experiment by mixing and matching retro prints to create a look that’s all your own. Available at all Max Fashion stores and on maxfashion.in
Minimalistic Marvels
Sleek and sophisticated, the wristwatches from Daniel Wellington’s Iconic Link collection feature a luxurious metal bracelet with three-piece links, with each segment comprising solid steel, individually crafted pieces in an elegantly tapered form, ensuring a seamless transition from case to clasp. Available in silver and rose gold variations, with white and black options for the signature 12-index dial, the tickers from this range make for a great addition to your wardrobe.
`27,000. Available across all Tissot boutiques in India
`12,399 (28mm and 32mm dial size), `13,599 (36mm dial size). Available at all Daniel Wellington stores and on danielwellington.com/in
Guilty Pleasures Tailored Excellence
Menswear fashion label Orofit threw open the doors to its first experiential store in Mumbai’s Bandra suburb last month. With a commitment to designing impeccably tailored bespoke attire, Orofit has cemented itself as the brand of choice for the discerning few who settle for nothing less than perfection. Its 600sqft Bandra atelier will offer customers a selection of beautifully crafted clothes and accessories along with a number of exclusive services to enhance customer experience. Orofit, Deccan Court, SV Road, Bandra West, Mumbai 400050. For more information, follow @orofitbespoke on Instagram 148 —
AUGUST 2020
To mark the first anniversary of #ForeverGuilty, Gucci has added two limited edition scents for Him and Her to its Gucci Guilty repertoire. Housed in a pastel green glass bottle that flaunts a halfopaque half-frosted finish, the men’s EDT variant, Gucci Guilty Love Edition Pour Homme, is an aromatic fougère spicy green scent. Flirting with the freshness of ginger, the top notes open with kumquat accord, mandarin and pink pepper, and are balanced by heart notes of lavender, geranium and rosemary, with base notes revealing patchouli and vetiver mixed with benzoin. `7,850 (90ml). Available at Parcos and select department stores
Keeping Time, In Style
A Royal Retreat
As the country slowly starts to open up, escape to the palatial environs of Fairmont Jaipur. If you’re travelling with family, opt for the Fairmont Family Getaway package, which includes, among other things, a complimentary adjoining room for children up to 12 years of age and children’s activities at the property’s kids’ club, Tinger. Alternatively, if you’re holidaying with your partner, the Unforgettable Romance package, complete with a romantic candlelit dinner experience and in-room floral bath setup, would be a good idea. Regardless of the package you choose, you can expect a luxurious stay, topped off with the brand’s best-in-class safety and hygiene standards and world class hospitality.
A year after its official launch, the Code 11.59 series of wristwatches by Swiss luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet has released five new selfwinding date, hour, minute and second references and five new selfwinding chronograph models. The latest iterations feature smoked lacquered dials with a sunburst effect in hues of blue, burgundy, purple, light grey and dark grey; an extra-thin bezel and double-curved glareproofed sapphire crystal; a two-tone case that juxtaposes 18-carat white and pink gold; and a hand-stitched “large-square scale” alligator strap that matches the dial’s colour.
For more information, visit audemarspiguet.com
A Drink That Delights
The first truly international Indian-blended liquid gold spirit by global premium spirits company Beam Suntory, Oaksmith® Gold is a versatile aqua vitae that combines the best of the East and the West. It is made by blending high-quality 100 per cent aged malts from the Scottish highlands, with aged Kentucky Straight Bourbon from the United States using traditional Japanese craftsmanship in a beautifully crafted sixedged bottle. For the perfect serve, pour 45ml into a pre-chilled glass, add signature Oaksmith® Gold spherical ice as per the Takumi ritual (or four big ice cubes or six small ones) and top it off with a bit of water (but no more than the pour size).
`9,000 plus taxes per room, per night (Fairmont Family Getaway Package), `11,999 plus taxes per room, per night (Unforgettable Romance Package). For reservations, email jai.reservations@fairmont.com or call +91 1426 420 000
`1,375 (750ml bottle) in Maharashtra, `1,300 (750ml bottle) in Telangana. For more information, follow @OaksmithGoldIndia on Facebook and Instagram
A Very Bespoke Experience
If you’ve always dreamed of having the same team that makes customised clothing for some of the biggest names in international business curate a sartorial wardrobe for you, your dream has come true. Luxury lifestyle retail store for men, JadeBlue, is taking its fashion game a notch higher by amplifying its online presence. With the world becoming increasingly digital, the label is now offering a selection of cool merchandise on their website, including polos with youthful cuts and snug-fitted formals in high-count cotton fabrics. Soon, JadeBlue will also offer bespoke attire online. For more information, visit jadeblue.com
A Mountaineering Marvel
This year, German manufacturer Montblanc released its iconic 1858 Geosphere watch in grade 5 titanium, combined with blue and contrasting icy white design details. The masterpiece flaunts a blue Sfumato calfskin strap from Florence that holds in place a smoky blue dial complete with the design codes typical of the 1858 collection, including the Arabic numerals and indexes, the Montblanc logo from the 1930s and the domed cathedral-shaped hands. `5,17,300 AUGUST 2020
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HUMOUR
ILLUSTRATION: ANNAH FEINBERG
Thirsty texts from all your ex-clothes
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AUGUST 2020