July 2013 by Pranab Gogoi

New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Pune

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Saturday, July 20, 2013

Vol. 7 No. 29

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE Ravinder Singh at the launch of his new book in Bangalore.

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH OTIS’ SEBI JOSEPH >Page 8

THE RETURN OF THE HALFSARI

Chennai unfurls its updated answer to north India’s ‘ghagracholi’. Deepika Padukone gives it the thumbs up >Page 7

IN THE REPUBLIC OF UŽUPIS

This selfdeclared independent republic in Lithuania promises easytoget passports, a quixotic constitution, and a hopeful worldview >Page 12

Do you have a tale to tell? Try writing your own love story, and you may be the next bestselling sensation like these men >Pages 1011

THE SCHOOL OF SINGH REPLY TO ALL

AAKAR PATEL

TEN TRAITS THAT DEFINED NARENDRA

he first thing is that Narendra always loved dressing up. It is not easy to find a photograph of his where he is not fully kitted out. Second, he was always chubby and in some angles appears rotund, but that did not embarrass him and it doesn’t take away from the fact that the dressing is deliberate. His clothes, not inexpensive, were made so that they hid his lack of fitness. To him the externals mattered. Third, there was an end to this sense of style, and this end was posing for the camera. >Page 4

THE GOOD LIFE

OUR DAILY BREAD

SHOBA NARAYAN

SAMAR HALARNKAR

LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS

IndianAmerican author Rajesh Parameswaran on talking tigers, barmy executioners, and the abiding link between love and violence >Page 14

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

NIRUPA ROY OVER THE HOUSE ON JIMMY CHOO SERPENTINE STREET

ith my first salary, I will buy a pair of Jimmy Choos,” said the teenager. I stared at her crestfallen. “What happened to giving your first salary to your mother?” I asked. “It is a great Indian tradition. Watch any Nirupa Roy movie.” “Who is Nirupa Roy?” she asked. This then is what is called the generation gap. With her question, my daughter had effectively removed one of the perks of motherhood... >Page 4

erhaps it is a yearning for childhood innocence, a golden past—real or imagined, I cannot say. Perhaps it is an olfactory whisper that crept through a cranial nerve at the back of my mouth sometime in the 1970s and lodged itself in the temporal lobe, seat of my memory. Every Ramzan, I cannot help but think of “Didi aunty”, a robust woman, neatly clad in a sari, her hair plaited and a smile that never seemed to leave her... >Page 5

FILM REVIEW

DDAY

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COVER L11

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READING

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School

The of Singh

DIVYA BABU/MINT

Do you have a tale to tell? Try writing your own love story, and you may be the next bestselling sensation like these men LOCATION

COURTESY

FULL CIRCLE BOOKSTORE/PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

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···························· t 26, Durjoy Datta is the author of eight best-selling novels, which have collectively sold more than two million copies till date. His latest, Hold My Hand, published by PenguinMetro Reads this month, was commissioned by the tourism ministry of Hong Kong. “They felt if I set my next book there, it might be a good way of promoting Hong Kong as a holiday destination among the younger crowd in India,” says Datta. “So I spent 10-15 days there on the ministry’s invitation and wrote a story set in several places in Hong Kong.” Datta, who went to engineering college and B-school, is a full-time writer now and co-founder of the publishing house, Grapevine, with his friend Sachin Garg who, also 26, is a huge success in mass-market English fiction in India. Garg’s latest offering, Come On, Inner Peace! I Don’t Have All Day!, sold over 40,000 copies in the first week when it appeared last month, and had re-orders for 2,000 copies. It topped the ACNielsen best-seller list on 22 June. Towering over Datta and Garg is

Ravinder Singh, whose new novel, Like It Happened Yesterday, out from Penguin-Metro Reads last month, had a pre-launch order of 200,000 copies. This is staggering even by Chetan Bhagat’s standards, each of whose books have sold over a million copies. “The concept of the author as celebrity is actually a thing now,” says Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, blogger-turned-“chick lit”-novelist. “Popular fiction has become a phenomenon, more than a genre.” How did writers like Singh, Datta and Garg get such a following and how are they changing Indian publishing? “There are some who wake up one day and decide they will write a book,” says Garg. “I am one of them.” So are Singh and Datta— and thousands of Indians yearning to tell their stories. Some 10 years ago, the aam admi woke up one fine morning to find novels, written in English, that they could read, enjoy and, more importantly, buy without feeling the pinch. The moment was ushered in by Bhagat’s Five Point Someone (2004), which, priced at `95 in its first edition, sold a million copies in less than 100 days. The book also spawned a deluge of mass-market fiction dealing not

just with campus life but also with matters mythical and matrimonial, which seemed to put thousands of hearts in peril across small-town India. Publishing suddenly woke up to a treasure trove of local—or “lo-cal”, as critic Sheela Reddy memorably put it—talent. Big publishers like Penguin Books India (PBI) started imprints dedicated to mass-market fiction. As Vaishali Mathur, who runs Metro Reads, says, “There was a huge untapped market of young, solvent readers who wanted easy reads for a modest price.” Increasingly, newer, if smaller, imprints like Fingerprint (with books like Cough Syrup Surrealism by Tharun James Jimani and Lost Libido And Other Gulp Fiction by Salil Desai) have a decent presence in the market, selling anything between 10,000-20,000 copies for their more successful titles. Suddenly, love seems to be cloying the Indian literary air. “I don’t take a prescriptive stance towards literature,” says author Namita Gokhale. “I don’t think there is a replicable formula to successful writing. India is a land of intense love stories, especially so the Punjab, where Singh has his roots. No wonder people love him.”

SINGH’S FAN PAGES, OFFICIAL AND UNOFFI CIAL, RECORD OVER 500,000 LIKES. EACH DAY HE SPENDS SEVERAL HOURS INTERACTING WITH FANS, SOLICITING THEIR OPIN IONS, LISTEN ING TO THEIR GUSHING AND GRUMBLING

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B Y S OMAK G HOSHAL

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Starstruck: (clockwise from above) Durjoy Datta in Connaught Place (CP); books by Singh and Co. for sale on the pavement of ABlock in CP; a tired Ravinder Singh signing cop ies about to be sent out to retailers; and Sachin Garg at a book store in Delhi.

In India, the romance genre has seen stylish, sassy and sophisticated writers like Anuja Chauhan, Advaita Kala and Madhuri Banerjee. Their books, priced higher than those by Singh and Co., sell in healthy numbers too (Chauhan’s newest, Those Pricey Thakur Girls,

published by HarperCollins India and priced at `350, has sold around 20,000 copies since it appeared in January). Yet none of them gets the film-star treatment Singh or Datta do. “Chauhan will spend time developing characters,” says Garg, who has no illusions about his target readership. “Durjoy, Ravinder or I won’t. We will go straight for the story and move it quickly.” Datta, who was alarmed to learn

I had been reading his books, has been called “an Indian male Candace Bushnell”. Dating, sex, onenight stands, smutty dialogue—he stirs up a lethal cocktail. His looks also help. “How can sum 1 have such cute dimple..!!! :-) :-* <3” runs the typical female sentiment on Datta’s Facebook pages. Male fans are more reticent, and stick to “awsum” or “handsome”. Singh’s fan pages, official and unofficial, record over 500,000

Likes. Each day he spends several hours interacting with fans, soliciting their opinions, listening to their gushing and grumbling. People take it to heart when he doesn’t respond to their messages personally. “I feel I should engage with my readers directly,” says Singh, who exudes an Olympian calm. “How many literary fiction writers will take the trouble?” asks Garg. Internet fandom is easy to build up these days (pop-hero Justin

Bieber, followed by over four million people on Twitter, gets retweeted some 68,000 times and favourited 46,000 times for tweeting, “Haha”). But when stars like Singh and Datta embark on promotion tours, the real craze of their appeal becomes palpable. Last month, at the Jaipur launch of Like It Happened Yesterday, a painstakingly detailed account of Singh’s own childhood and adolescence, the crowd included gig-

gling girls, shy boys (some had come to get signed copies for their girls), and moony-eyed aunties. “I love the simplicity of his style,” sighed Garima, in her 40s. “I have no time for difficult books.” When it was time for Singh to read, she volunteered her own copy, turned to the chapter where Ravin, the protagonist, is ogling his luscious English Ma’am, and sat through the reading, her eyes agleam with admiration. As the evening came to a close, a scramble ensued to get copies signed and photographs taken with Singh. A mini fight broke out between two girls who had stepped on each other’s toes. One guy begged me to take a photo of him with Singh on his cellphone. A young mother tried to shush her infant as he wailed plaintively, before plonking the child on its bemused father and joining the queue of admirers. Singh’s first book, I Too Had a Love Story, was inspired by Eric Segal’s Love Story, the first ever English novel he had read in his life when he was in his mid-20s. I Too is based on Singh’s real-life girlfriend, who died in a car crash. “I chose not to drown my sorrows in alcohol but to transform my own mortal love story into an immortal saga,” Singh explained to me solemnly. In I Too, Khushi and her fiancé, Ravin, meet on shaadi.com and fall for each other hook, line and sinker. They call each other Shona

and Shonimoni and carry on a phone-and-SMS romance that will make Middle India blush. “Ravin” is a cross between Mr Wickham and Mr Collins. When speaking to a “gora” he affects an accent. “Wudgyaa mind tellin me whom they were caallin for?” he asks a “white-skinned man”, while waiting to catch a flight. On discovering Khushi’s feminine charms, he goes ecstatic: “This is why we keep hearing, ‘Men build houses, but women make homes’. And now I had found one such woman.” One can almost see the desi Mrs Bennets swooning over Ravin, the perfect son-in-law. Written as a therapeutic exercise while Singh was working at Infosys, I Too was blurbed by N.R. Narayan Murthy, the co-founder of the company, who found it, “Simple, honest and touching.” It is precisely these qualities about Singh’s prose that make so many boys and girls hopeful of seeing their own love stories in print one day. Even those whose introduction to reading is not through Singh fall for his charms— because he makes the art of writing look so easy. One Anshuman Sinha writes on Singh’s website, “To be honest, when I first started reading your first novel... your language seems (sic) too childish, for I have read many works of R.K. Laxman, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.” He goes on: “I thought you were worse than Chetan Bhagat. But soon, the way the story started picking its pace, I was mesmerized in (sic) it.” He concludes by saying he is a “big fan now” and “Uh, just out of anxiety: I’m just 14 and trying to write a book about my teenage love story. Any tips?” For some, writers like Singh, Datta and Garg feel like a cruel joke. Brinda Bose, who teaches English at Delhi University, is alarmed by the rise of the School of Singh. “Not because I’m a purist or a snob, but because I think this kind of commercial writing is going to be detrimental to the richness of serious writing in Indian English we have seen for half a century now.” Bose feels this genre in India is mostly “puerile and badly written” when it could have been “edgy, subversive and transgressive”. “Publishers will have to go where the money is, and I can see that happening, from PBI to Rupa to Random House India,” she adds. “I think this means the death of Indian English Writing as we knew it.” Others are more charitable. Aruni Kashyap, a writer of literary fiction, says, “Any longstanding literary culture is sustained by pulp fiction. These books are not meant to change anyone’s world view but are to be read on the go.” Srishti Publishers, a low-budget venture, was responsible for introducing Singh, Datta and Garg, along with several other best-selling sensations, to Indian readers. Arup Bose, its proprietor, says there’s no fixed formula to massmarket success. “A good story that’s new and touches a chord with millions is the most important ingredient. The language must be colloquial but also make grammatical sense.” Srishti has sold over 400,000 copies for its top titles, like Preeti Shenoy’s Life is What You Make It, and recently published Complete/ Convenient: There is More to Men than Bromance by Ketan Bhagat, brother of—well—Chetan Bhagat. There are some Dos and Don’ts though. Nothing sells like simplicity. Garg says writers in this genre should be prolific and turn over three-four titles each year. He usually takes a few weeks to pull off a 40,000-50,000 word manuscript. Once in a blue moon, by sheer fluke, literary fiction can also become a best-seller like, for instance, Aravind Adiga’s Bookerwinning The White Tiger (2008), which the jury glowingly commended for its readability. “We must have sold over 200,000 copies of it till date, a stupendous figure for the genre,” says V.K.

Karthika, publisher of HarperCollins India, “and there is still demand for it.” Ankur Wahal, who sells books and magazines on the pavement of Block A in Connaught Place, New Delhi, affirms the continuing popularity of Adiga’s book, though the Holy Trinity of Singh, Datta and Garg brings in the bulk of his business. Adiga’s protagonist, Balram Halwai, who does not hesitate to kill his employer for self-advancement, seems to have a certain resonance with the aam Indian pysche, courtesy his pidgin English—Hinglish, to be precise—and his rags to riches story. Both seem to work like magic. In Singh’s prose, Hinglish is smattered with Punjabi, his mother tongue. Like It Happened Yesterday opens with a toddler Ravin sobbing piteously to his father in Punjabi, begging him not to leave him alone on the first day of school, quite an endearing contrast to the swarthy 30-year-old who makes the ladies go aww. Even Shobhaa De, high priestess of Indian pulp, is impressed by the “freshness...resonance and vibrancy” that connect the work of a Singh, Datta or Garg to the pulse of small-town India. “It’s the same emotive link that movies like Gangs of Wasseypur or more, recently, Raanjhanaa, are establishing with viewers,” she says. “India is finally celebrating its B-town heroes and recognizing their unique vocabulary.” Making a movie of your jilted love story, Bollywood style, may not be financially viable, but writing a book about it is easy. As for “unique vocabulary”: “HIIEEE ravin..i read both ur novels,, dey are just awsm nd really touching i always cry wen i read ur first novel.. i also love a guy very much but i dont noe if he also.,, ndi need ur suggestion plss rly me.. :( i’ll neva eva forget both d story... <3,” writes “Ritika Kush” in the Guestbook on Singh’s website (Singh’s second novel Can Love Happen Twice? showed the world that indeed, it can, and how). “Of the five-six submissions we get at Grapevine each day, at least one is from some guy claiming to have been ditched by his girlfriend, and wants us to help him tell his story,” says Garg, whose own initiation into writing happened partly out of his need to overcome a nasty breakup. Datta’s books, usually co-written with a female author, are facetiously titled Of Course I Love You...! Till I Find Someone Better, Ohh Yes, I am Single..!..And so is My Girlfriend!, You Were My Crush! Till You Said You Love Me!, and feature narrators who are cocky and certainly no picnic. Bickering couples, male bonding, one-night stands—his books deal with stuff mothers usually do not want their children to read, though he does look like the endearing boy next door in nerdy glasses (our photographer had an incident of sorts when a female fan, encouraged by her mother, ambushed Datta, while he was being shot for this story). Datta says he enjoys reading eclectically—he mentions Anjan Sundaram’s Stringer: A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo as one of the books he has enjoyed this year— and aspires to write like his favourite author John Green (best known for The Fault in Our Stars) one day. In the mean time, thousands are aspiring to write like him. In Jaipur, Aditya Bansal, 20, who hero-worships Singh, Datta and Garg, introduced himself to me as a “budding author”. “I Had 69 Girlfriends”, he said. “That’s the name of my book.” In case I was wondering, he really hadn’t had as much luck with the ladies, though he has not done badly either. And, of course, his parents don’t know of his literary accomplishments— yet. “How can I tell them I am writing such a book?” he smiled slyly. It may be best to wait till the book comes out and woos millions of 20-year-olds like him, all fondly dreaming of love and lucre.

CULTURE L17 SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 2013째 WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

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SATURDAY, JULY 13, 2013

Style TREND TRACKER

Big roles for extras Retail outlets now tweak visual merchandising strategies, jazzing them up with accessories. Men are beginning to mix separates and include accessories, says ColorPlus’s chief operating officer Hetal Kotak. Raheja and Samrat Som, creative director at Madura Fashion and Lifestyle’s Louis Philippe, agree, adding that this has made it easier to cross-sell merchandise. Most Indian menswear fashion designers like Zubair Kirmani and Narendra Kumar, besides apparel brands like ColorPlus, Louis Philippe and Van Heusen, have diversified into specialized accessory lines beyond black and brown Oxfords and moccasins. Most stores now carry braided canvas belts, digitally-printed wallets, gadget covers and other smaller accessories. Online shopping sites like Myntra.com and the brand new Seat14a.com have gone a step further to sell in-trend looks complete with bottoms, tops and accessories for a consolidated, often discounted, price.

Man’s new friend Fashion finally befriends Indian men, who for generations have been brought up to think grey, beige and boring

Dolce & Gabbana), roll necks and oversized squares. In response, brands in India are working hard to cultivate male shopaholics. Gaurav Raheja, design head at Van Heusen, says they now create workwear for two distinct categories: men under 35 and over 35. The brand’s classic and heritage collections are targeted at the mature customer, while Van Heusen Sport, VDot and soft formals are for younger men. “We are thinking of changing our communications strategy to cater differently to these groups,” says Raheja.

B Y P RERNA M AKHIJA

Local colour

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Over the last couple of seasons, bright colours, once reserved for casuals, playful inner linings and socks have been on top. From trousers to shoes and accessories, colour has seeped into menswear. Designer Narendra Kumar Ahmed says this will continue for the next few seasons. Often seen sporting tip-to-toe outfits in bold hues himself, Kumar adds that high-street brands and designer labels, including his own, will use jewel and saturated tones to replace Summer’s neon and highlighter-style shades for winter. Most United Colours of Benetton outlets in the metros had to replenish coloured pants and denims for men at least once this summer, claims Sanjeev Mohanty, managing director at Benetton India Pvt. Ltd. “We put out eight colours in trousers and six shades in denims like green, red and yellow. Men still came in asking for specific shades of these colours. This was strange because so far men had never asked for anything except black, grey, beige, brown and khaki,” says Mohanty. For Autumn/Winter, Prada has paired claret jackets with teal trousers. Colour rules even at premium brands like Louis Philippe and Park Avenue. The former recently launched a small collection of iPad cases and shoes in blues and reds. Atul Apte, chief designer at Park Avenue, says the brand’s Autumn/Winter semi-formals will boast of peppy, vintage elements with colourful windowpane checks, herringbone and plaids, and evening wear, including tuxedos, will ditch black for rich champagne hues. The colour

···························· t fast-fashion brand Zara’s outpost at the Palladium mall in Mumbai, the men’s department stocks beaded T-shirts, wild floral printed shirts, powder-pink jackets, skinny kneelength shorts and 1980s-style fluorescent shorts. As if the sales staff has worked up an androgynous theme with elements from the women’s section. It wasn’t just coincidence that in the next half-hour, at another venue, a young man in a crisp tomato-red dress shirt waltzed by. A quick browse through menswear stores in Mumbai’s High Street Phoenix compound shows that cobalt blue is the new black in menswear (in all clothing categories) even as department store Lifestyle flashes the “slim is always in” mantra on the men’s floor. Denims in regular washes and pants in neutral colours are now assigned to the bottom rack. Bright colours and neon denims, pastel linens and chirpy accents on shirts, Chinese collars, candy-striped shirts and limegreen shoes, casual wear over formal dressing, slim fits, half pants instead of sharp suits, braided belts and clubbing casuals— menswear in India is fast changing the rules of conventional dressing. Clearly a trickle-down from global trends, this change will be visible in the next season too. International catwalks showing Autumn/Winter 2013 menswear collections had claret, or dark red, as the top colour (Alexander McQueen, Prada, Canali), even as bright blues popped up repeatedly. So did paisley jackets (Etro,

Variety pack

itself makes about one-third of their overall sales. Shoe stores like Pavers England and Clarks now stock lime greens and aqua blues for men.

Less is more Slim fits are another big pull for male customers. The Landmark Group’s Kalyan Kumar, CEO of Splash, says he had never seen men’s floors at department stores like Lifestyle as stylish as this season. “There was a time when men liked to claim that they were a size bigger than they actually were. Now, every man wants to fit into a size 39-40 or a medium,” says Kumar decoding the store’s “slim is always in” mantra. At Arjun Khanna’s flagship store in Colaba, Mumbai, nearly all the product categories come in snug fits. “I wouldn’t dream of using darts up to five years ago, but it’s so easy to sell a super-fitted look now,” says Khanna, adding that his runway creations meant for super-fit models, which would earlier be resized for retail, now fly off the racks without alterations.

Carte blanche: (clockwise from above) Chinese collars by Manish Malhotra; cobalt blue at United Colors of Benetton; Ochre ensemble by Sayantan Sarkar, at the Lakmé Fashion Week Summer Resort 2013; and printed jacket from the Louis Vuitton Ready to Wear Fall Winter 2013 collection. wave has reaped profits for online retailers like Myntra.com. According to the website’s chief operating officer, Ganesh Subramanian, coloured bottoms contributed to over 18% of the menswear business for Spring/Summer 2013, which

MAN MUST DRESS

Style book: Try every combination that your personality allows, says Rathore (right).

Make it a style mustdo to reinvent your wardrobe twice a year B Y R AGHAVENDRA R ATHORE ··························· ulturally, Indian men tend not to spend on made-tomeasure or bespoke clothing. The latest smartphones, good drinks or a memorable meal with friends at an “it” restaurant seem to excite a completely separate set of neurons in our heads, against the minority that gets fired up when fabric is being tailored to our requirements. A lingering influence of the Gandhian era made it difficult for most people—certainly for men of my father’s era—to cultivate an appetite for “more” clothes. The lack of desire to have different looks for the morning, evening, let’s say the derby, limited the size of male wardrobes considerably. Also, weather-related challenges translated into bad fashion economics, as winter is the key season for fashion retail in other

parts of the world. But an in-your-face fashion media, stylish cinema icons, international players and highstreet brands have ensured the playing field has changed. The fashion business seems to be at its best in the last three decades. Men now invest differently in style and I can’t even begin to imagine the changes ahead. Mixing and matching brands from all over the globe has become the in thing—jeans from a highstreet brand, paired with a custom-made shirt from a designer label, packaged with accessories. It is now okay to pair a formal bandhgala with dark-coloured denims and lace-up shoes in rust for a formal function. This wasn’t done even a few years ago. The sophistication of contemporary products has seeped into our social consciousness, and their fine quality is influencing style in

Following market insights that shopping is becoming as exciting for men as it has been traditionally for women, brands now invest in flash collections and capsule lines designed around specific social occasions to trigger impulse buying. Men’s shopping in India is no longer in absolute black and white, says Som. “It used to be about what to wear to the office and what to wear outside it,” he explains. “Now a regular week packs in everything from Sunday brunches and corporate award functions.” When Sumeet Soni took over as the chief operating officer of Raymond Premium Apparel last year, he overhauled the entire internal architecture of the classic brand. Their business wear now includes ultra-formals and stylized formals as well as the ceremonial; while semi-formals, denims and separates make up the leisure division. Brands like Missoni and Givenchy have funky baseball jackets in their Autumn/ Winter 2013 collections. Semi-formals and dress casuals are becoming increasingly formal. While Soni says corporate dress codes have never been as relaxed as they are now, Kotak adds that at ColorPlus, chino sales soared this year because the line between formals and casuals has blurred. Autumn/Winter may mildly darken the dressing mood and bring back some black and blues, but there is little doubt that the shopping choices of a majority of men have become fashionably coloured.

multiple ways. With so many options in the market, how should you put it all together? First, pinpoint looks that have worked/never worked for your personality and character. Next, find a friend with a keen sense of style who can accompany you for a trial session, exactly as you would when you go to buy a new car. Attempt this at least twice a year with a focus on

reinventing yourself. My advice would be to let your hair down and try every combination and permutation that your personality allows. For instance, for a casual look, try a bamboo lycra black T-shirt with stylish cargo pants and leather slip-on sandals. For work, pair a customized suit with a perfectly made shirt. Embed a personal insignia discreetly on the lower

left side, and combine with customized accessories. Pamper yourself once in a while. A tiny upgrade in your clothing can have a huge personal and professional impact. People who don’t feel fashion is for them generally forget that fashion is a philosophy about people, an impression of your personal character and how it’s seen by the world. A non-pleated pant, the choice of a shoe, the wristwatch on your hand, the cologne you wear, the choice of font that your business card has been designed in, directly or indirectly relate to the thoughts you share with society. Sometimes, you will find, it’s worth being fashionable. The author is a lifestyle designer and a business entrepreneur who works between Jodhpur and New Delhi. Write to lounge@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, JULY 20, 2013

Style TREND TRACKER

The return of the halfsari Chennai unfurls its updated answer to north India’s ‘gha gracholi’. Deepika Padukone gives it the thumbs up

B Y P AVITRA J AYARAMAN pavitra.j@livemint.com

······················· ith a broad zari border on a green dupatta, an orange silk blouse and a flowing yellow skirt, Deepika Padukone in a pavadai thavani, or half-sari, is almost a cliché in the role of village belle in Chennai Express, which releases on 8 August. The humble half-sari, once the bridge outfit for girls too old to wear the traditional silk skirt without a dupatta but too young to graduate to a sari, has now been adopted by the Hindi film industry. Padukone’s outfit is the introduction to her role as Meenamma, daughter of a village don in Tamil Nadu. “We studied street fashion in Chennai and tried to understand how the locals dress—that’s where the half-sari came in,” says designer Manish Malhotra, who has styled the actor for the film. Colourful silks, bright gold borders and flowing skirts— Padukone’s outfits match the shock of colours that director Rohit Shetty has used to paint his idea of south India. Though Malhotra has stuck with traditional gold borders for dupattas, he has deviated slightly by using netted fabric in one song sequence. Tamil cinema has dressed heroines playing village girls in this outfit for decades. Worn by tucking one end of the dupatta into the skirt and draping the other end in the seedha palla style, the half-sari drape has also been spotted on the runway. From Sabyasachi Mukherjee (PCJ Delhi Couture Week 2012 and Lakmé Fashion Week Summer

Regional accent: (clockwise from above) Deepika Padu kone in Chennai Express; the pavadai thavani dominated the Carnatic music industry last year; and Sabyasachi Mukherjee incorporated the halfsari in his PCJ Delhi Couture Week 2012 collection.

Resort 2013) to JJ Valaya (India Bridal Fashion Week 2012), there seems to be a growing urban interest in this outfit. Lately, the skirt and dupatta pairing has been making a steady comeback into the wardrobes of young south Indian women as traditional wear. The most prominent comeback was first seen during Chennai’s famed Carnatic music season last year. Eager to level up to the diamond-studded, Kanjeevaram silk-clad seasoned senior

artistes, young female musicians chose the half-sari to look traditional. “In December I noticed a lot of kids running around in pavadai thavanis in the music season,” says Aruna Subramaniam, a management consultant who is a regular during the Marghazhi, or the Chennai music season. When 14-year-old Janani Iyer moved to Chennai three years ago to train and explore opportunities in Carnatic music, she was enamoured by the three-piece outfit. “I

bought many for my performances during the Chennai music season,” says Iyer. “It’s a smaller version of a sari and makes you look taller,” says the young musician, who recently participated in the Tanishq Swarna Sangeetham, a music competition for which she put her four-five half-saris to use. The pavadai thavani’s filmi resume in the north became noteworthy when in 2000, Chennaibased costume designer Nalini Sriram dressed Aishwarya Rai

Bachchan in it for the song Kannamoochi Yenada in Suresh Menon’s Tamil film Kandukondain Kandukondain. It triggered a trend in Chennai’s Pondy Bazaar. Even then Bachchan’s otherwise traditional outfit had been given a twist: The thavani (dupatta) had a small border, a new concept for the textile which had for decades just matched a synthetic length of cloth worn like a sari. The market was flooded with “Aishwarya pavadai-thavani sets”—silk-cotton blends for the skirt and blouse and a nylon dupatta with a border for the thavani. “City girls didn’t wear half-saris, they wore Western outfits and churidar-kurtas in our time,” laughs Sriram, who treated it with some scorn herself as a teenager in the 1980s. “But for the village look or urban-Brahmanical girl look, nothing establishes that milieu like the half-sari,” adds Sriram, who also dressed actor Shriya Saran in the half-sari in the 2007 film Sivaji: The Boss. “The music scene has

Welcome to the jungle You can sync animal prints into your ward robe with restraint and careful accessorizing B Y J EENA S HARMA ···························· ith the season turning, it’s time to tweak your wardrobe. One of the major trends for Autumn-Winter is animal prints. Despite regular appearances on international ramps, they continue to be explored in newer ways every time. However, artistic interpretations and digital reproductions of panther, zebra and tiger skins in contemporary, fluid fabrics are not the easiest to carry off. They require restraint, balance and careful accessorizing. Here are ways to style them.

garment right is to pair it with a monochromatic separate. The easiest example of this is a leopard-print top with a black trouser or bottom. “An interpretation of animal skins is a strong piece only meant for the bold. It is essential to be careful when teaming it and it should ideally be paired with subtle pieces,” says designer Manish Arora, whose opulent, Indiainspired last show at the Paris Fashion Week featured quirky animal motifs like lions and leopards. He paired his creations unconventionally and to good effect, including with sheer chiffon bottoms.

Pair it with a monochrome

“It is not necessary to stick to traditional jungle colours with this print. Animal prints are now

The simplest and most conventional way to get an animal print

Out of the forest

pumped up interest in the outfit. The pavadai thavani that stays in the background otherwise comes to the fore in very traditional events like music events and also during festivals like Deepavali and Navaratri,” says Mala Manyan, creative head of the Tanishq Swarna Sangeetham, the competition that Iyer took part in. Manyan dressed all her female contestants in the programme in especially designed half-saris. “Some we sourced from stores and some we had custommade by picking saris,” she says. “I see young girls wearing halfsaris at weddings as well,” says Sriram, pointing out that the pavadai thavani has undergone a change. “It’s not the traditional silk pattu pavadai (silk skirt); they are now matching silk skirts with cholis and brocade blouses,” she says of the outfit that is seen most often at mehendi ceremonies, a north Indian import into south Indian weddings that had earlier brought the ghagra-choli to the south. Chennai-based designer Chaitanya Rao says that though the outfit never really went away, it has made a significant comeback in the past year. “I had one bride asking me to design a half-sari for a wedding mehndi ceremony,” he recalls. While designers like Rao are being asked to design unique combinations, Subramaniam’s 25-year-old daughter creates her own version. “I’ve seen her in silk skirts, with zardozi-work cholis from the north and a dupatta worn the half-sari way,” she says. Stores like Nalli Silks, RMKV and Pothy’s sell unstitched sets in everything from cotton (starting from `1,100) to Kanjeevaram and Banarasi silks (starting from `11,000). “It is now the cool thing. The choices are so many, I see girls looking confused,” says Niranth Nalli, vice-chairman, Nalli Silks Group. Vinita Passary, who runs Anonym, an alternative fashion store in Hyderabad, notes that even when the traditional silk skirt is not worn, the seedha palla is certainly back. “I prefer to dress heroines in the half-sari over the regular sari because the silhouette makes them look very slim,” says costume designer Vasuki Bhaskar. She designs for Kannada and Tamil films and swears by pleated skirts with flat fronts to flatter silhouettes. “Now that Deepika Padukone is wearing it, there is no stopping the half-sari,” she says.

Thumb rule: no accessories.

Added appeal If you would rather not wear a print, try an animal print accessory instead. “Adapt the trend in minimal ways with an accessory like handbags, shoes or jewellery,” says designer Sanchita Ajjampur, whose brand sanchita creates numerous artistic renditions of animal skins. Barring that one accessory, keep the rest of your ensemble plain and simple.

reproduced in several other hues such as pink, blue, beige and black, widening the scope for styling. “Indian complexions usually do not complement wilder tones of this print. Pick a pastel version,” advises designer Pria Kataria Puri, who has frequently incorporated animal prints in her collections. You can also take a cue from pop diva Rihanna, who is often seen sporting colourful animal prints.

Sync your species

Wildest moment

Don’t mix panther with tiger or zebra in one look. Choose one kind of print and once you know it works, you can even go bold and try a top-to-toe look. It can look stunning if you take away all the other accessories. Look at British designer Stella McCartney's interpretations for inspiration and then pick your favourite from high-street biggie Zara.

Only tall and adventurous fashionistas should try this extreme tip. Try wearing a panther or zebra print with a striped skirt or another subtle print. Reference the Autumn/ Winter 2013 catwalks of designers such as Dolce&Gabbana and Preen.

Wild things: (from left) Full animalprint ensemble from Pria Kataria Puri’s Fall/Winter collection; bag and shoes by Sanchita Ajjampur for Fall/Win ter 2013; and an ensemble by Manish Arora.

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KOLKATA CHROMOSOME | SHAMIK BAG

INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

The Pied Pipers of College Street

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The mass protest marches in West Bengal’s capital are almost always led by intellectuals

egarded as the finest living Bengali poet, Shankha Ghosh brings up the name of the best-known Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore, when he talks about the politics of street protest in Bengal. Tagore would often be seen in public leading protests against acts like the Partition of Bengal, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, murder, and communal riots; it is Tagore, says Ghosh, who started the practice. On 21 June, Ghosh carried on that legacy when he led a protest march from College Square to Esplanade in central Kolkata. He was the most prominent face of a march by thousands of citizens protesting against the gang-rape and murder of a college student in Kamduni, a village north of the city, and Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) party supremo Mamata Banerjee’s subsequent handling of the situation. When faced with local women agitators during her visit to the village, Banerjee labelled them supporters of the opposition Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, and also saw a Maoist-opposition conspiracy. Later, she would brand guests at television chat shows as pornographers. In 2007, the poet was at the head of an estimated 80,000 people protesting against the killing of 14 villagers at Nandigram in March that year. This was during the Left regime in Bengal. A time comes, says 81-year-old Ghosh, when a poet like him can no longer remain at home. “Like everybody else, a poet reacts to what is happening around him and has to come out to protest. I was there too in my individual capacity,” says Ghosh. Theatre and television personality Kaushik Sen traces the influence that poets, writers, artists and intellectuals continue to have on Bengal’s political and social landscape, to the Indian People’s Theatre Association

INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

A culture of protest: (clock wise from top) A rally in Esplanade; filmmaker Aparna Sen (carrying a phone); Shankha Ghosh (in a white kurta); and traffic backed up by a march.

(Ipta) movement. This was an alliance of Leftist artists and intellectuals that began in the early 1940s; film-maker Ritwik Ghatak equated it in the book, Rows And Rows of Fences: Ritwik Ghatak on Cinema, with the coming of a “revolution in Bengal”, especially after Bijon Bhattacharya wrote the play Nabanna in 1944, on the plight of a farmer’s family during the Bengal Famine of 1943. It is apparent from Ghatak’s essay, My Coming Into Films, that Ipta (he became a member) was looking at galvanizing people through art. “Our colleagues and I roamed extensively all over the place and tried to rouse our people against the ills eating at the vitals of our society,” Ghatak wrote. Sen, director of Bengali theatre group Swapnasandhani and a vociferous critic of state repression and misconduct during both the Left Front and TMC dispensations in Bengal, considers most artists and intellectuals in the state to be of a Leftist orientation, though not always necessarily aligning with the CPM.

Before the Communists decisively came to power in West Bengal in 1977, most artists would be out on the streets protesting against the Emergency imposed by former prime minister Indira Gandhi or the corruption and hooliganism of Congress workers in Kolkata. The euphoria of 1977’s Communist win in Bengal may have led to a vacuum in artistintellectual socio-political activism in the 1980s, admit both Ghosh and Sen. The artistic community were, many agree, too blinded by the historic win to document the events even as the Communist government led by Jyoti Basu was accused of a massacre at a refugee settlement in the Sunderbans’ Morichjhapi island in 1978-79 (an episode revived in Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Hungry Tide) and allegedly engineered the killing of 17 members of the Ananda Marga religious organization in south Kolkata’s Bijon Setu in 1982. Though writers and intellectuals like Ashapurna Devi, Moitreyi Devi and Annadashankar Roy registered their dissent, the protests did not escalate to the

scale of the mass protests witnessed in recent times. Ghosh says he first registered his disapproval of the Left Front government after the Morichjhapi episode, through his poetry. In 1991, after then opposition leader Mamata Banerjee was seriously injured, allegedly in an attack by CPM goons, Ghosh read out a protest letter at a meeting of Left intellectuals at the Calcutta Information Centre. Ghosh lists other occasions when the intellectual community of Kolkata has taken to the streets for a cause—post the Babri Masjid demolition in Ayodhya, severe floods in Bangladesh in the 1990s, and the riots in Gujarat in 2002. The civil society movement in Kolkata, in limbo for much of the 34 years of Left rule, coalesced around the Singur-Nandigram phase of Bengal politics—the acquisition of land for industry— from 2006. This was also the beginning of a media boom when every incident was under the scanner, explains film-maker and theatre personality Suman Mukhopadhyay, who took part in

protest marches during the Nandigram agitation as well as during the recent Kamduni campaign. “Intellectuals and artists have traditionally been vocal in Bengal and the impact of such protests is possibly at a deep sociological perspective. One can also notice the political rhetoric changing from the grossly insensitive to pacifying,” says Mukhopadhyay. During the last phase of Left rule, plays like Bibhas Chakraborty’s Adbhut Aadhar, Kaushik Sen’s Manush, Mukhopadhyay’s Teesta Paarer Brittanto and Bratya Basu’s Winkle Twinkle had subtly or otherwise reflected the changing moral dynamics in Bengal politics. Post Nandigram, artists and intellectuals, many of whom had been Left Front government supporters, demanded poriborton (change). Sen has bitter memories of the post-Nandigram artistsintellectuals collective, Swajan, which included people like filmmakers Aparna Sen and Mukhopadhyay, writer Mahasweta

Devi, poet Joy Goswami, theatre personalities Shaoli Mitra, Arpita Ghosh and Bratya Basu, painters Jogen Chowdhury, Samir Aich and Shuvaprasanna, besides Sen himself. With the TMC aligning itself with the cultural clan, the party’s success in the Lok Sabha and assembly elections saw many unable to resist the temptation the new power structure held out for them. Basu became minister in the new state government, while others like Mitra, Shuvaprasanna and Arpita Ghosh have taken up plum positions. Swajan, as well as a larger progressive artist-led fledgling “apolitical” movement, was in disarray, says Sen. A new group, including people like Aparna Sen, Shankha Ghosh, academicians Sunando Sanyal and Miratun Nahar, besides Sen, is now being formalized. “There is a lot of confusion now. But in the group we are realize that any wrongdoing should be protested no matter which party does it,” says Sen. Sen claims that when Mamata Banerjee was the Union railway minister, she offered him a role in a committee looking at railway security. He refused. His wife, says Sen, was then offered a similar post. She too preferred to keep away. Write to lounge@livemint.com

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First published in February 2007 to serve as an unbiased and clear-minded chronicler of the Indian Dream.

SATURDAY, JULY 20, 2013° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

FIRST CUT

LOUNGE LOVES | INDIAN MEMORY PROJECT

PRIYA RAMANI

LOUNGE EDITOR

History lessons

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA

FACES DON’T MATTER ARUN GOPALAN

MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (EXECUTIVE EDITOR)

hat is there to say about couldn’t speak into the camacid attacks that you era,” she says. These days haven’t already read? Or are you she’s Miss Confident. the person who looks at a picAfter a journalist told her ture of a survivor and hurriedly about the organization Stop turns away? Acid Attacks (they subseWhat new insights can one quently hired her as a supervioffer about a man who flings sor earlier this year), she’s this corrosive liquid—usually given many interviews. The used to clean drains or make organization’s website has a fertilizers/explosives—on a banner with images of acid young woman, knowing that it attack survivors. No more hidwill almost certainly alter the ing—you need to see what shape of her skull, shrink her happened to us, it seems to skin, make her deaf or blind, say. The only unscarred face dissolve her nostrils and lips so on this banner belongs to you can see her teeth, and bruPreeti Rathi, the soon-to-be tally mark her face, neck, chest armed forces nurse who was and shoulders for life. All this attacked in May and sucusually because the attacker’s cumbed to her horrific injuries obsessive targeting of that last month. We still don’t know young woman didn’t elicit the who threw acid on her or why. response he thought it deserved. These days Laxmi even has Ten years after the confidence to demand answers. Recently, she and a SOCIETY Bangladesh banned the retail sale of acid group of acid attack survivors and only a few months after acid Second life: Laxmi, survivorturnedevangelist. handed in a petition with attacks—500 in the last four 27,000 signatures to Union years—were first recognized as a sep- acid attack survivor filed a PIL (public h o m e m i n i s t e r S u s h i l k u m a r arate crime by the Justice Verma interest litigation) the next year; all Shinde. “We waited 3 hours but he Committee, the Supreme Court these years later, the government has didn’t meet us,” she says. “We finally forced the government to con- finally responded to Laxmi’s PIL. finally had to waylay his car to hand cede this week that acid sales should Laxmi found the courage to con- him the petition.” be regulated the way we do the sale of tinue her studies and undergo seven In recent months, cases of violence any other poison. operations but it was only in 2010 against women and children clearly But we’re still so far from caring that she could shed her dupatta/veil seem to be getting more attention in about the survivors of these beastly and face the world again. The lady newspapers and on television. Rape attacks. Who pays the hefty medical who ran the dressmaking class survivors are courageous enough to bills for the multiple torturous sur- Laxmi attended told her it was up to tell their stories. Acid attack survivors geries a woman must endure after her to take the next step. So one day, no longer hide behind veils in photoan attack? Forget Western society five years after she had been graphs that stare at you when you’re luxuries such as psychological coun- attacked, she walked the half an hour sipping your morning chai. If you’re selling and rehabilitation, who is in to class with her face uncovered, even a fraction as brave as they are, charge of helping these girls find a scared and quivering. you won’t look away. job? In a country where rape surviThere’s no point repeating the sick It was only eight years after her vors with their hidden scars often say comments she is forced to hear when attack when Laxmi met Archana, it’s impossible to find employment, she’s out there. But one time on the Renu, Roopa, Shaina that she realwho will hire a girl with a face that is Delhi Metro in Noida a kindly lady ized she was not alone. “I didn’t unerasable evidence of living told her, “Faces don’t matter.” think so many girls had gone through hell? The first time Laxmi encountered through the same horror,” she said. Life as Laxmi knew it changed in a television camera was the year she “I felt really sad.” 2005 when she was only 15. With the filed the PIL. “It was a Mahila Samiti support of her lawyer, the teenage meeting but I was so scared I Write to me at lounge@livemint.com

LOUNGE LOVES | DOLCE&GABBANA

At the fashion altar PHOTOGRAPHS

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Their Fall/Winter collection for women is rich in texture, hues and history

istory is the sexy word of the decade,” says Anusha Yadav, founder of the Indian Memory Project, a Web project that collects memories and history from across India. Lounge has previously written about, and always been a fan of, the Indian Memory Project but last week we saw the website going viral on social networking sites and remembered how much we love it all over again. Despite having started in 2010, Yadav saw the site’s busiest day last week, with 12,000 clicks on 12 July when she reposted a photograph of Anupa Nathaniel with her closest friend Shalini Gupta, who formed India’s first known girl rock band. The photograph of the two friends was sent in by Nathaniel’s daughter Anisha Jacob Sachdev, who wrote in to say that her mother and a group of friends had formed Delhi University‘s first girl rock band, Mad Hatter, in their first year of college at Miranda House. “My mother was the lead guitarist and singer. Because of that status, when The Beatles performed, albeit privately, in Delhi in 1966, the Mad Hatters were given front seats priority,” Sachdev writes. “I see about 600 visitors every day, but this went crazy,” says Yadav about the post that she had originally posted in April 2010 in a Wordpress.org version of her project. “I tweet about old posts when there isn’t any new activity happening and that was picked up. The Internet is unpredictable,” she says. As a result, Sachdev received emails from cousins she has never met. The Indian Memory Project came into being after a publisher rejected Yadav’s ideas for a book. She created a group on Facebook asking friends to share wedding photographs. “The book didn’t happen, but the idea of the Indian Memory Project was firmly set in my mind,” recalls Yadav, who took less than 48 hours to put the site together. “People don’t take instructions well, they sent in old images from their albums that had nothing to do with weddings,” she laughs. Yadav realized that this was a unique way of looking at history.

Double act: Anupa Nathaniel (right) and Shalini Gupta formed India’s first known girl rock band. “Images just make my world better. The older they are, the more they lend themselves to fantasy.” If you have an old photograph that you want featured on the site, you can submit it online on www.indian memoryproject.com, along with a narrative. “A few people send in their own family pictures, but more often recommend that I look at a friend’s album,” says Yadav. Take the story of Bert Scott (born in Bangalore in 1915) and his first love Margurite Mumford, an AngloIndian girl. Jason Scott Tilly from the UK discovered negatives of the young couple holidaying across India and sent the images to the memory project. “There is something so obviously personal and intimate about the images,” writes Tilly in his note. “People love drama and the more personal it is, the more they love it,” says Yadav. Images and stories should be pre-1991. “After that, people started using hotshot cameras. I feel there was more deliberation in photographs taken before this time,” says Yadav. Pavitra Jayaraman

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS: In “Everest evenings in Thamel”, 6 July, homosexuality was decriminalized in Nepal in 2007.

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talian brand Dolce&Gabbana’s Fall/Winter 2013 collection for women is a treat, especially for Indians used to rich textures and gemstone hues. Our eyes are trained to notice what’s vivid, glistening, and in some ways reminiscent of an historical idea. This is that kind of collection—forking out wearability from a slice of history, and combining a populist approach with age-old religious imagery. While the brand’s official press release says “the starting point of the collection was the tradition of Sicilian Baroque…golden embroideries that recall Baroque mirrors and frames or embroideries made of small points inspired by dining room tapestries, prints of cherubs and angels that seem to have come out of a painting…”, fashion bloggers all over the world saw it as a staggering mix of Byzantine influences. Fitted dresses and short shifts with flute sleeves looking like jewel-encrusted ensembles in blue-green and golden yellow, in patterns of mosaics and frescoes with icons and saints on them, dominate the range, but it also includes sombre deep-grey jackets, prim houndstooth skirts as well as a sexy

They had their busiest day in three years after posting a picture of India’s first known girl rock band

MONDAYS Play Things: Everything fun, from the Play Station to the cricket stadium, and from power drives to dice rolls. By Gopal Sathe & Rudraneil Sengupta

TUESDAYS Hunger Games: What’s new with food and how we interact with it. By the Lounge team

ALTERNATE WEDNESDAYS mini collection in ruby red lace. Best worn with Indian separates like raw silk churidars, farshi pyjamas with delicate mukaish work or Jamawar shawls would strikingly complement this collection (to buy, see the brand’s online store at www.dolcegabbana.com). Styled with crowns and rosary beads that emphasize the decadent mood of the collection on the Milanese catwalk earlier this year, the accessories enhance the works. Baroque-patterned handbags carved out as if from paintings, chandelier earrings, cage heels with small, pretty florettes, velvet block-heeled Mary Jane shoes in deep orange, champagne and deep red, deco-

Rich hues: (above) A mini collection of ruby red lace ensembles; and a golden hued dress inspired from mosaic artwork and Italian frescoes rative hairpieces and antique framed sunglasses that could well have been from a European princess’s boudoir—it is a “have it now but wear it anytime” kind of selection. Makes us wonder: If Roman Catholic icons can be artistically incarnated for fashion, must we be offended if Buddha, Ganesha or Durga are similarly interpreted? Shefalee Vasudev

Understatement: Analysing popular culture statements made through actions or words. By Shefalee Vasudev

THURSDAYS Dancing Divorcee: A happy, sad, funny, obnoxious series on the misadventure called divorce. By Arathi Menon

ALTERNATE FRIDAYS Eye Spy: A fortnightly look at the world of art from close and afar. By Somak Ghoshal

ALTERNATE FRIDAYS Between the Lines: On readers, writers and publishers of the past, present and future. By Somak Ghoshal