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Saturday, May 23, 2009

Vol. 3 No. 20

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

Actors and IPL team owners Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta watch a match between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Deccan Chargers in Cape Town.

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH TURNER’S STEVE MARCOPOTO >Page 7

THE SALAD­SANDWICH BRIGADE There are many ways to get your children interested in cooking >Page 5

9 0 0 2 L IP , S T I H

REPLY TO ALL

S E S S I M D N A IFS

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TRAVELLING TIFFIN

SHOBA NARAYAN

THE NEW LAND OF GRIN AND BARE THE TALIBAN THEM ALL he Taliban will win in Pakistan. They are on the right side of the law. They are also on the right side of history. Last month, a video of Talibs whipping a 17-year-old girl for adultery upset Pakistanis, who thought it barbaric. It might be, but it is the law. The punishment for married adulterers in Pakistan is to “be stoned to death at a public place” (Ordinance 7 of 1979).

Unmarried adulterers are to be “punished, at a public place; with whipping... >Page 4

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Men’s drawers now come in a vexing array of cuts and fabrics; one shopper’s brief tale >Page 9

two t s u d j , wo r s t n a d us e best 2. Six n i h be t th f IPL 10 a s e k h c atc ok ba ents o >Page m h 57 , we lo re mom ir lists t i W o go izar are the t b t t f s le mo ans sh d n a et f k c i cr

THE GOOD LIFE

AAKAR PATEL

HIGH ANXIETY OVER UNDERWEAR

f you’ve seen the advertisement that often appears in this newspaper to promote Mint’s bloggers you may have noticed this.

There are 18 bloggers. Out of 11 women, six are grinning (more than 50%). None of the seven men are grinning. A grin, according to the dictionary, is a smile with teeth showing.

Over the last few months, I’ve noticed a curious thing. Women grin. Men smile. Not all the time and not necessarily in real life, but in published photographs. >Page 4

MARRYAM H RESHII

SWEET TRUTHS IN GUJARAT

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lack pepper in an ice cream? Anywhere else in the habitable world, it may sound outrageous. In Gujarat, it is but one of the eye-popping ingredients in one of the many brands of ice cream that the state is famous for. Try and part the denizens of Gujarat from their ice cream, and you’ll have a riot on your hands. They love their sweets, so much so that every katori (bowl) in a thali (plate) has varying amounts of sweetness in it.

It is possible, however, to feed them pasta, pizzas and vegetarian burgers... >Page 18

‘I WROTE IN SNATCHED TIME’ In our debut authors special, Sarita Mandanna talks about her book and staying away from the ‘desi’ tag >Page 14

DON’T MISS

For today’s business news > Question of Answers— the quiz with a difference > Markets Watch

HOME PAGE L3

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

SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

FIRST CUT

LOUNGE REVIEWS | HEALTHY MENUS, MUMBAI

PRIYA RAMANI

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA

MUMBAI’S REAL POLITICAL VOICE VIJAYANAND GUPTA/HINDUSTAN TIMES

MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (MANAGING EDITOR)

ANIL PADMANABHAN TAMAL BANDYOPADHYAY MANAS CHAKRAVARTY HARJEET AHLUWALIA JOSEY PULIYENTHURUTHEL ELIZABETH EAPEN VENKATESHA BABU ARCHNA SHUKLA ©2009 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved

E

veryone who’s visited Mumbai has a tale/ take about the city’s black and yellow taxis. They are an integral part of our popular culture—most recently we spotted them in the ongoing television series Vicky ki Taxi (where the starring taxi is called Jaaneman) on Real and in the 2009 film Barah Aana (though Meter Down from 2006’s Taxi No. 9211 was my favourite modern-day c i n e m a t i c m o m e n t Minimum fare: Good conversation is guaranteed. inspired by a Mumbai taxi). They’ve been used on cushion covers break-up of his daily earnings—of the and trays; in art; and, of course, in video Rs500 or so he earned, Rs250 went to the games and fashion (though I still haven’t “Sardar” who owned the taxi and an addiseen a cab on a tie). tional Rs180 or so was spent on CNG. “The They are smelly, dirty (think cockroaches rest is mine. Now how can I pay him intercrawling up your leg and blackened vintage est with this amount?” cushions positioned just so they nuzzle Like most Mumbai taxi drivers, he pulinsistently into your freshly-shampooed led a 12-hour shift (another driver hair), rickety and have weird signs on their worked the remaining 12 hours). Accordrear windshields. In all my years of living in ing to the Bombay Taximen’s Union, the Mumbai, No Screwing, city has 55,000-56,000 taxis and SIT BACK stretched boldly across the 100,000-150,000 drivers. glass, was the funniest one I My guy said he had been driving a taxi ever spotted. Mumbai being a city where since 1975 (FYI, that’s one year before the space is definitely a final frontier (you can Scorsese movie came out) and he always see I’m cold turkeying for the new Star Trek advised people to stay away from the profesmovie), couples have often been known to sion that had ruined his life: “Yeh line mein “check into” a taxi, tinted windows rolled mat aao, meri puri life khatam ho gayi hai.” up, for a long drive. Some taxis actually Every day I plead with God to end my strive for that love motel effect with red seats life, he said. and a baroque “ceiling” light.

I pointed out that he was beginning to But even more iconic than Mumbai taxis sound like a bad Bollywood movie. are their drivers. Surly and sweaty, they are “No, really,” he said. “And I don’t care the politically somnolent city’s most aggres- how my family does after I’m gone. I’m fed sive/cynical political animals (maybe up of providing for them.” because many of them come from Uttar To cut a long story, I lent him the money.

Pradesh and Bihar).

His face lit up, he touched the Ganesh and Yet, even though they’re cynical about the Sai Baba idols on his dashboard and swore future of this country, the corruption of our he would return it by the end of the month politicians and the state of our roads, I’ve (I’ll keep you posted). never met a taxi driver who has lost hope.

Clearly a con artist, declared my mother.

Until recently, that is.

How does it matter, said the husband. We He was probably just having a bad day give only to make ourselves feel less guilty, and needed a good listener. my mother-in-law said. Nobody really He was from Jaunpur in UP and began understood that I gave him the money talking almost immediately. His son was in because I couldn’t bear to see a Mumbai hospital for an appendix operation and he taxi driver without hope. needed Rs2,250 by the next morning. A friend had promised to lend him the Write to lounge@livemint.com money, but when he went to pick up the cash, the friend of 15 years informed him www.livemint.com that he would have to charge him 10% Priya Ramani blogs at interest on the loan. blogs.livemint.com/firstcut The taxi driver quickly rattled off the

inbox

Write to us at lounge@livemint.com DOCTORS’ DILEMMA Thank you for including my viewpoint from my blog www.mededblog.com in your write­up ‘The case for a well­paid village doctor’, 16 May. The issue of sending doctors to rural areas is not as easy as it seems. Governments have tried coercion, threats, incentives and punishment. But till they make the rural posting useful and satisfying, till doctors feel they are able to actually deliver quality stuff, the frustration will continue. The system needs massive revamping. So does our style of medical education.

ANSHU

New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Pune

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Saturday, May 16, 2009

Vol. 3 No. 19

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH COGNIZANT’S FRANCISCO D’SOUZA >Page 6

FIRST LADY OF SOUL Why we’ve been swinging to Lata Mangeshkar’s voice for more than half a century >Page 15

ART FOR A SONG HIGH WINDOWS

MUKUL KESAVAN

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>Page 10

THE GOOD LIFE

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y maid’s son gets epileptic fits. His name is Gerald and he is a young handsome boy of 16. Every now and then, sometimes three to four times a day, he gets these fits and simply falls down on the road, unable to move. People in the neighbourhood carry him home. Many days, my maid Teresa doesn’t send him to school because she is worried about the fits. Teresa is young, slim and cheerful, except when she talks about her son.

Then, her pretty eyes get teary. >Page 4

WITH PRIDE BUT NO PREJUDICE The story of a fledgling television channel that’s trying to take the middle path >Page 16

Collector Khushroo Kalyanwala with a mixed media painting

by Dhiraj Chowdhury, which he bought for Rs50,000 two years ago.

OUR DAILY BREAD

SHOBA NARAYAN

CAN IDEOLOGY BEAT ACCESS WHERE IT FACTIONALISM? MATTERS MOST s a consumer of news, you could be forgiven for thinking that Indian elections are ideology-free. Pundits are always saying that votes are bought, coalitions are constructed out of caste fractions, politicians defect, political parties switch sides with frictionless ease and the policies contained in party manifestos are irrelevant to the democratic process because they’re never seriously discussed. Add up these defects and what India seems to have by way of elections... >Page 4

Not quite, but you can still save up a bit and buy original works of art without having to sell your house

SAMAR HALARNKAR

STEAMED UP, AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

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ive years ago, I gave my in-laws a really hard time. They were going to the US—as they often do to meet their son—and asked what they should get me. “A bamboo steamer,” I said, prompted no doubt by some dumplings I’d had (I don’t really remember) recently. A steamer, if you don’t know, is that exotic wooden thing they produce with a flourish at Chinese restaurants, usually to serve fragrant dumplings, spare ribs, steamed squid and other delightfully delicious (and ultra healthy) delicacies. >Page 18

THE PAINTED VEIL Bangalore’s Muslim women are ready to experiment at the Islamic Boutique >Page 18

DON’T MISS

Ask your vendor for a copy of Mint’s Special Election Issue tomorrow

NEW WINDOW The First Cut column of 2 May, ‘On behalf of the girl child’, was interesting and provocative. It had insight into the life of a girl child in urban India.

But the TV serial ‘Balika Vadhu’ is an eye­opener on the plight of less fortunate girls in other parts of India. I consider the character of the young girl in the serial a role model because of the way she fights her problems and survives. It’s a window to life in rural India.

DEEPTI SINDHVAD

VEGGIE BITES The Big Bang Stir­Fry recipe in ‘How to be a Wok Star’, 2 May, was a welcome break from the non­vegetarian recipes in ‘Lounge’. Our Daily Bread is a good read and the recipe suggested was easy to make and delicious to eat.

Usually, out of sheer desperation, I read non­vegetarian recipes and create my own vegetarian versions of them. Please publish more vegetarian recipes and tips to make our daily food interesting.

ANITA JULANIYA

Vegetarian menu at Olive, Mahalaxmi Race Course

has recently hopped on to the set-lunch bandwagon with their Kebabbq Wellness Lunch. Now we love anything with the words “barbecue” and “wellness” and the two put together had us immediately reserve a table.

South Mumbai’s vegetarians have more reasons to visit Olive.

A.D. Singh’s restaurant has a new, all-green menu, featuring savoury crêpes and baklava, as well as mock, veg-friendly versions of prawns and caviar.

The good stuff

The good stuff Vegetarians should give the Veg Soya Prawns (Rs480) and Veg Caviar (Rs370) a try. The former are tiger prawnshaped pieces of soya, complete with orange striations and a mild crustacean-like flavour. The caviar made of seaweed is served on bread rounds piped with a creamy, cheesy mixture, with the black beads on top. The salty cheese overpowered the dish. Only when we tried the “caviar” separately could we appreciate its mild oceanic flavour.

We tried two savoury crêpes (Rs350)—Mediterranean Crêpe with grilled vegetables and goat cheese, which was fresh and light and came with a pesto and burnt sun-dried tomato salsa.

The grilled aubergine crêpe with feta, sun-dried tomatoes and olives was delicious, but it had too many sour ingredients and nothing to balance them out.

Our favourite was Vegetarian Paella (Rs480). We didn’t miss the traditional seafood flavour in this Spanish dish because the chunky vegetables in the creamy saffron rice (and bits of mock soya prawns) made up for the lack of seafood. And the sugarfree cheesecake with Mango Coulis (Rs290) was creamy and not too sweet, with a mild lime flavour—the tart coulis cut through the richness of the cheese beautifully.

The not­so­good The problem with the Vegetarian Carpaccio (Rs350)—a base of thinly sliced zucchini, liberally topped with sun-dried tomato, olives, capers, tomato, herbs, olive oil and balsamic vine-

Experiment: Veg Soya Prawns. gar—was the fact that it was vegetarian. Raw zucchini just doesn’t have the same appeal as raw beef.

To make up for the inherently boring nature of the vegetable, a substantial quantity of the toppings was piled on. So it wasn’t much of a carpaccio in any sense.

The crêpes were too brown and too crisp. It was more of a brown dosa than a golden crêpe.

Our non-alcoholic Peach Julius (Rs120) was a mix of artificial-tasting peach syrup with muddled lime and mint. Avoid.

Talk plastic A vegetarian meal for two without alcohol and tax is Rs1,250.

Add 12.5% tax to the food bill, plus 10% service charge.

Parizaad Khan

Kebabbq Wellness Lunch, Kebab Korner, InterContinental Marine Drive The kebabs at this restaurant are some of the best in Mumbai.

Their rotis are as soft as they get, and the meat is succulent. But lunches are a slow time for most restaurants, and especially so for Indian restaurants—butter chicken, dal makhni and naan in the middle of a working day?

So restaurants are offering set lunch options that are quick to serve and cost less. This eatery

Some lunch options here will not figure on a weight loss diet plan but the restaurant tries to keep things healthy and light—substituting atta (wheat) for maida (refined flour), yogurt for mayonnaise, and using less oil. The combos available are Soup, Salad and Wrap; Soup, Salad and Grill; Carb ’n’ Fibre Lunch and Keep it Low Lunch. The soups have generous portions and the Indian salads available are filling and refreshing. We tried the Great Indian Caesar topped with yogurt dressing, paneer and bits of naan (as croutons), and the Tandoori Shrimp Salad, both of which were excellent. But it was the ingenious Guava and Smoked Cottage Cheese Salad with a date-tamarind dressing that scored over the others. The grill menu lists tandoori fish and chicken kebabs (no lamb kebabs) and vegetarian options such as paneer and the tangy tandoori broccoli—your shot of iron for the day. The light, non-greasy vegetarian biryani is a delicious surprise. To up the health quotient, the restaurant makes it with low glycaemic index rice (which apparently keeps you feeling full longer).

The not­so­good Even though these are separate meal plans, you’re picking dishes from the main menu.

There’s no separate menu with details of health benefits and calories, which is sorely missed in a “wellness” lunch. Also, there are no healthy or low-calorie dessert options, except fruit.

Talk plastic Lunches are priced at Rs750-950, plus 12.5% VAT. Rachana Nakra

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS: In ‘The first lady of soul’, Lata Mangeshkar was born on 28 September 1929. The photograph was taken in 1934.

L4 COLUMNS

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

AAKAR PATEL REPLY TO ALL

Why the Taliban’s going to win in Pakistan

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DAWN NEWS/AFP

he Taliban will win in Pakistan. They are on the right side of the law. They are also on the right side of history. Last month, a video of Talibs whipping a 17-year-old girl for adultery upset Pakistanis, who thought it barbaric.

It might be, but it is the law. The punishment for married adulterers in Pakistan is to “be stoned to death at a public place” (Ordinance 7 of 1979). Unmarried adulterers are to be “punished, at a public place; with whipping numbering one hundred stripes”.

Later in April, the world worried over Pakistan’s decision to enforce Shariah law in the district of Swat, being held by the Taliban. But Shariah is already in force in the whole of Pakistan; it is only being implemented selectively. What the Taliban are demanding is enforcement.

Pakistanis might fear the Taliban but nobody opposes Islamic law. Speaking against the “ideology of Pakistan” means 10 years in jail (Penal Code 123a).

In Pakistan, defiling the Quran means life in prison. Speaking against the Prophet is an automatic death sentence (Penal Code 295c).

Under laws that president Zia-ul-Haq introduced, the maximum punishment for theft is amputation of hands. Muslims caught drinking face 80 lashes.

Under prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, founder of the liberal Pakistan People’s Party, parliament apostatized the entire Ahmedi sect, a group of Punjabi Muslims.

An Ahmedi “is not a Muslim for the purposes of the constitution or law” (Second Amendment, 1974). If Ahmedis refer to themselves as “Muslim”, or their prayer house as “masjid”, or recite the azaan (call for prayer), they shall be imprisoned for three years (Pakistan Penal Code 298B, 298C).

What happens to Pakistan’s liberal

politicians when these laws are passed?

They have to disappear.

Bhutto’s finance minister was the socialist, Mubashir Hasan. Every year, he leads the candle vigil at Wagah. His book, The Mirage of Power, is a detailed account of his four years as minister but makes no mention of the apostatization of the Ahmedis. He skips over the episode. Why? He is afraid to communicate his opposition because he might be lynched.

It is difficult to be secular in Pakistan.

The man whose party surrendered at Swat was Asfandyar Wali, grandson of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the Frontier Gandhi.

The Taliban cannot defeat Pakistan militarily. The Pakistan army will rout it because the Talibs have neither armour, nor artillery nor aircraft.

The Taliban will win because what they want is already being implemented by Pakistan.

On 23 December 1999, Pakistan’s supreme court banned the charging of interest on loans, deciding it was not Islamic. Effectively, this would shut down the banking system and switch off the economy. Pervez Musharraf, then president, got the court to appoint a committee to decide how to implement this ban. This has delayed the destruction of Pakistan’s economy, but not avoided it. In 1998, prime minister Nawaz Sharif moved the 15th Amendment to enforce Shariah. This would designate him Amir-ul-Momineen, commander of the faithful, like Mullah Omar. The Bill was passed by the lower house before being blocked in the senate by the small party of Bihari-UP migrants

Brute force: Under the Shariah law, public flogging is allowed in Pakistan. from India, the Muhajirs.

Urdu-speaking Muhajirs form the only secular party in Pakistan. Their base is Karachi, where they are up against four million Pashtun immigrants. Who are the Talibs? Ethnically, they are Pashtun, 15% of Pakistan’s population.

Many were students of a curriculum designed at Deoband, a school in Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur district. It was set up after the war of 1857, seen as the end of Muslim rule in India. Its purpose was to revive Islam by ridding it of the corruption of Hindu influence. It recognizes the jurist Abu Hanifa (who died in 765). The Jaish-e-Mohammad follows the Deobandi ideology.

Pakistan was founded by a man who didn’t really understand Islam.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah was a South Mumbai Gujarati who spoke no Urdu or Arabic. He was a constitutionalist who did not understand the nature of the state he had founded. He was a Shia of the Sevener Ismaili Khoja sect. They are talented businessmen and good citizens, but Sunnis regard them as heretics. To widen his appeal, Jinnah converted to “regular” Twelver Shiism.

But that wasn’t good enough.

When he died in 1948, a year after Partition, his deputy, Liaquat Ali Khan,

had him buried as a Sunni with a Deobandi maulvi leading his funeral prayer. Six months after Jinnah’s death, on 12 March 1949, Khan introduced the Objectives Resolution in the Pakistan assembly, which was legislating the new constitution. Pakistanis, Khan declared, would enjoy democracy, freedom and equality “as enunciated by Islam”. These words alarmed the assembly’s Hindu members, all Bengalis from East Pakistan.

They said this was not what Jinnah had promised them. But Jinnah had been vague. And the Muslims in the assembly were able to point to instances where Jinnah had spoken clearly of Shariah law.

The committee voted 21:10. All Muslims voting for; all Hindus against.

Khan assured the Hindus that they would not be discriminated against. He was assassinated in 1951. The discrimination would be written in later, incrementally and over time.

By law, only a Muslim may now be Pakistan’s president (Article 41-2) or prime minister (Article 91-4). Not that there are many non-Muslims left.

Pakistan is today 96% Muslim and unable to think on secular lines. Why are Pakistanis doing this to themselves?

B.R. Ambedkar speculated about this in 1946. “The Muslims have no interest in

politics as such. Their predominant interest is religion” (Pakistan: The Partition of India, pages 232-233). All that the Muslim voter cared about, he wrote, was that the candidate “replace the lamps... (and) provide a new carpet for the masjid”. He added: “None of the secular categories of life have any place in the politics of (the) Muslim community and if they do find a place—and they must because they are irrepressible—they are subordinated to one and only one governing principle of the Muslim political universe, namely, religion.” Months later, Ambedkar began work on India’s secular constitution, which took force on 26 January 1950.

Till last year, Nepal was the only Hindu state on earth. The Chhetri (Kshatriya) dynasty ended with the republic of 2008.

Why was it a Hindu state? Because executive power flowed from a warrior king, as prescribed in the Hindu code, Manusmriti. But Nepal was Hindu only to that extent. Nothing else from Hindu texts could be applied because most of it is against the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, just like Shariah is.

The religious state is utopian, and demands perfection. If we obey God fully, He will look after us. This is not the view of just the bearded Talib of Swat: the justices of the supreme court of Pakistan expect that blessings will be showered on their country after they skewer its economy.

Pakistan is in religious ecstasy. Like Iran, it will have to go through the process of full Islamization.

After this it will learn that there is no other way to run a modern state than as a secular democracy.

Aakar Patel is a director with Hill Road Media.

Write to Aakar at replytoall@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Aakar’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/aakar­patel

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

Women grin and bare them; men merely smile

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PAWAN KUMAR/REUTERS

f you’ve seen the advertisement that often appears in this newspaper to promote Mint’s bloggers you may have noticed this. There are 18 bloggers. Out of 11 women, six are grinning (more than 50%). None of the seven men are grinning.

A grin, according to the dictionary, is a smile with teeth showing. Over the last few months, I’ve noticed a curious thing.

Women grin. Men smile. Not all the time and not necessarily in real life, but in published photographs.

If you don’t believe me, just flip the page. I would wager that most of the men whose photographs appear in publications are not smiling. In contrast, the women are.

We women smile more than men anyway. According to an article by Lee Ellis, professor of sociology at the Minot State University, published in the journal Physiology and Behavior, several studies have found that testosterone and other male sex hormones tend to “alter brain functioning in ways that inhibit male smiling, especially during the most reproductively active years”.

Stands to reason. Look at it from an evolutionary point of view. In most species, we females choose our mates.

Men have to compete with other men to

win our attention. Smiling, as the article succinctly puts it, “interferes with their (men’s) ability to successfully intimidate rivals”. Ergo, men don’t smile.

Like all generalizations, this, too, is not entirely true. Men do smile. A lot. They just don’t want to be perceived as being “smilers”. There are several factors that contribute to gender differences in smiling. In a paper, Julie Woodzicka of Washington and Lee University and Marianne LaFrance of Yale University argue that men and women smile in comparable amounts when they believe they are not being observed. Once they know that they are being evaluated, women smile more than men. In other words, we women smile for effect because we intuit that smiling women are viewed more positively than non-smiling women. Men don’t smile for the same reason: because they intuit that grinning or even smiling may portray them as wimps. Although it irks my feminist principles, I have to agree

All smiles: Is this viewed more positively? with the biology of it: Women smile to attract mates; men don’t so they can intimidate rivals.

To dig deeper, smiling, like orgasm, can be faked. The scientific term for this is the Duchenne smile because it was discovered by a French neurologist named Guillaume Duchenne. A Duchenne smile is the real thing because it involves the contraction of two muscles: the zygomatic major muscle that raises the corners of the mouth and the orbicularis oculi muscle that raises the cheeks and forms crow’s feet around the eyes. Most people cannot contract the orbicularis oculi voluntarily. In other words, you can raise the corner of your mouth into a smile but you cannot fake

crow’s feet. Non-Duchenne or fake smiles are rampant—watch television announcers. But most of us can tell the real from the fake. We know when a guest at our party is listening to our joke and doing the zygomatic muscle thing and when he actually thinks our words are rip-roaringly funny.

So a smile, dear reader, isn’t a simple thing. We smile to be polite, to defuse situations, to make a point, to appear cool or menacing, or out of pleasure. The question is: Why do newspapers put more images of grinning (teeth-showing) women and unsmiling men? Is it a biological thing or an editorial preference? Let me explain.

The photo that appears alongside this column shows me grinning. But its history offers options. Mint sent a photographer who clicked a hundred photographs of me—there was the serious Shoba, the impish, the shy, the grinning and the benevolent dictator Shoba. Say, the 100 got whittled to a dozen images of me. And yet, the photo editor chose the grinning image. In contrast, most of the male columnists and bloggers who write for this paper are not grinning. Using the same logic, there were probably a dozen images of these men in various stages of smile and grin, yet the ones that were chosen for publication were the non-smiling ones.

So is it the photo editor’s fault that women grin and men smile (or not)?

I sent an email to the Lounge editor—who, incidentally, grins in her image. Change my photo into a non-Duchenne-smile one, I implored. I want to appear serious. Notice that I didn’t say that I want to be serious.

“Will change if you insist but like your current image,” she replied. Of course.

She is the grinning one.

So why do women grin and men don’t? Is it because photo editors naturally gravitate towards choosing images of smiling women and unsmiling men? Is it a biological reality that men simply smile less? Or is it simply that men don’t smile in the presence of photographers? L.K. Advani never grins in his photographs. Neither does Manmohan Singh. Sonia Gandhi, on the other hand, shows teeth. I think I know the answer. I think we all do. Grinning appears inviting and playful. It makes a person appear approachable. But it lacks gravitas. Even male comics who want to be perceived as funny don’t smile. Have you noticed?

Shoba Narayan’s orbicularis oculi muscle is out of control, causing her to grin all the time. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shoba­narayan

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SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2009

L5

Parenting

LOUNGE ACTIVITY

The salad­sandwich brigade Classes, recipe books or preparing their favourite dishes at home—there are many ways to get your kids interested in cooking

B Y S EEMA C HOWDHRY seema.c@livemint.com

··································· ishara Rajagopal, 10, finds it boring to roll out chapattis. Her favourite foods this summer are pasta with chicken and mango ice cre am , an d sh e l o ves h el pin g h er grandmother Sabita Radhakrishna make both at home. “I am not a big fan of Indian food. When I help amma in the kitchen, I want to do it for different kinds of foods like pastas, not for dal and rice,” she says.

Radhakrishna, the author of Kids’ Kitchen, a cookery book for children that’s just come out, says one way of getting her grandchildren into the kitchen was not forcing them to learn how to prepare traditional Indian foods. “My grandchildren always want to make burgers, pastas, fried rice—foods I would call ‘junk food’. But since these dishes are not part of their staple diet, they are attractive for them. These are the kinds of foods they want to try cooking as well.”

T

To get her grandchildren interested in cooking and cut down on their “junk food” intake, Radhakrishna decided to make these dishes at home, but in a healthier way. “I make it a point to tell them how to use less oil for frying or why baking an ‘aloo patty’ for a burger is better than shallow-frying it, or why paneer (cottage cheese) is healthier to use in snacks rather than processed cheese only. And when they get to decorate the food on their own, the whole activity becomes even more exciting.”

Nishi Chopra, who plans to enrol her nine-year-old son Aditya for chocolatema k ing c l as s e s at Choko L a, Ne w Delhi, says she wants her son to learn early in life that cooking is not a “sissy” activity. “My friend’s son had joined last year, and he had a lot of fun decorating the cookies and making chocolates in different shapes. A hands-on experience hopefully will convince my son that cooking is almost as cool as soccer and swimming.”

Radhakrishna made her four grandchildren and some of their friends practise almost all the 52 recipes—including drinks, soups, salads, main meals, snacks and desserts—in her book. “As a child growing up in Chennai, I was never encouraged to step into the kitchen,” she recalls. “My parents said there would be time to work in the kitchen later. They made cooking sound like a chore.”

But Radhakrishna did not want to adopt the same approach with her grandchildren. “Learning to cook at a young age can be fun. And I believe this activity also helps instil healthy eating PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

HEMANT MISHRA/MINT

Young cookies: Ananya (left) and her friend Sahara learn how to make chocolate­chip cookies (top, right) at the Institute of Baking and Cake Art, Bangalore.

FUSS­FREE

1 lime 5 bananas 5 square wafer biscuits

Two easy­to­make recipes from ‘Kids’ Kitchen’ u Biscuit Faces Ingredients 24 Marie biscuits O cup mashed ‘paneer’ 2 tbsp butter 20 black grapes 10 tomato slices 6 cheese slices 6 cucumber slices Method Place the biscuits on a large plate. Mash the ‘paneer’ smoothly with the butter and spread on each biscuit. Cut each grape into half and use for the eyes. Using kitchen scissors, cut curved strips of tomato for the lips, thin triangles of cheese for the nose and curved strips for the eyebrows. Arrange these to

Kids’ Kitchen:

By Sabita Radhakrishna, Westland, 131 pages, Rs195. make faces with different expressions. u Banana Boats Ingredients 1 packet (90g) blue or green jelly 1 tsp gelatin N cup hot water

Method Make jelly according to the instructions on the packet.

Pour it into a large, shallow, round dish. Dissolve gelatin in one­fourth cup of hot water and add to the jelly mix. Stir well and place in a refrigerator to set.

Thirty minutes before serving, cut each banana into half lengthwise.

Squeeze the lime and strain the juice. Cut half an inch off from each end of the bananas so they can stand erect. Place these on the jelly in the bowl. Cut each biscuit into half, diagonally, and fix it on top of each banana to make it look like a sail. Serve the jelly with banana boats before the jelly melts.

habits at a young age.”

Vidya Suresh, who also subscribes to this view, was more than happy to accommodate her 13-year-old daughter Ananya’s wish to join a cooking class during her summer break. She had heard about the Institute of Baking and Cake Art, Bangalore, and suggested that Ananya take part in a three-day programme there. “I thought baking would be more gratifying than a traditional Indian cooking class.”

A huge plus was the institute encouraging children to adopt a hands-on approach. “I knew Ananya would like that and learn more that way rather than just standing around and watching other people do all the work.”

By the end of the 15-hour course, Ananya had learnt how to bake bread, cakes and biscuits. Her favourite recipe is chocolate chip cookies. “Now that her basics in baking are clear, we both intend on trying out new dishes from a recipe book over the weekends,” says Suresh.

Ananya can’t wait for the weekend. www.livemint.com Read the review of ‘Kids’ Kitchen’ at www.livemint.com/kidskitchen.htm

SMALL HELPINGS Some children­friendly cooking classes in your city u Mumbai

Mahek Mandlik organizes one­day sessions for adults and girls above the age of 10. Each session deals with one topic such as salads, sandwiches, ice creams, cakes or chocolates.

Charges: Rs500-1,000 a day, depending on the course Contact: 09323469312 u

Bangalore

The Institute of Baking and Cake Art conducts baking classes for children.

Charges: Rs2,000 for a three-day (15 hours) workshop (ingredients included) Contact: 080-22998806 u

Chennai

The Hippocampus is organizing cooking workshops around themes such as picnic lunches. These are being held every week. Children are taught how to

decorate the dishes too.

Charges: Rs250 a day Contact: Chandani Khanna at 09444049175 u

New Delhi

Aadyant Global Public School, Vasant Kunj, is organizing a summer camp for children in the 5­9 age group. Apart from skating, dance, art and crafts, the school will offer sessions in “fireless” cooking, with children being taught to make sandwiches, and salads Charges: Rs4,000 (thrice a week); you can choose any two activities Contact: 09810270412 Chef Bill Marchetti, Spaghetti Kitchen, Select Citywalk mall, will hold a 2­hour cooking workshop daily from 16­19 June.

Charges: Rs500 per session Contact: 011-42114295 or kidsclub@selectcitywalk.com

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SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2009

Play

LOUNGE

BOARD GAMES

Get out of jail free How history’s most popular board game helped defend the free world

B Y B RIAN M CM AHON ···························· uring World War II, the British secret service hatched a master plan to smuggle escape gear to captured Allied soldiers inside Germany.

Their secret weapon? Monopoly boxes. The original notion was simple enough: Find a way to sneak useful items into prison camps in an unassuming form.

But the idea of using Monopoly came from a series of happy coincidences, all of which started with maps.

Maps are harder to smuggle than you might think. They fall apart when wet, and they make a lot of noise when unfolded. Allied officials feared paper maps might draw the attention of German troops, so they turned to an unlikely source for help—silk.

Not only would silk maps hold up in all kinds of weather, but they’d also come with the life-saving

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War game: Prisoners of war depended on special Monopoly sets for escape instructions during World War II.

benefit of being whisper-quiet.

To produce these silent maps, the British turned to John Waddington Ltd, a company that had recently perfected the process of printing on silk and was already manufacturing silk escape maps for British airmen to carry. What else was Waddington known for?

You guessed it—being the licensed manufacturer of Monopoly outside the US. Suddenly, the popular board game seemed like the perfect way to get supplies inside German-run camps for prisoners of war (PoWs). At the time, the Nazis were hard-pressed to get provisions to their own troops, much less to the Allied soldiers they had captured. Wishing to hide this less-than-stellar upholding of the Geneva Convention, they happily welcomed Red Cross aid packages for PoWs. So throwing Monopoly games into the care kits along with food and clothing was met with little scrutiny. Monopoly was already a well-known game throughout Europe, and the German guards saw it as the perfect way for their detainees to remain occupied for hours.

In 1941, the British secret service approached Waddington with its master plan, and before

Terminator animation An online spin­off blends movie action and video­game art B Y B RIAN M CM AHON The Wall Street Journal

···························· o build on the story of the coming Warner Bros movie Terminator Salvation, the studio chose a developing medium called “machinima”—animated films that use graphics and characters from video games.

Starting this month, the first of six episodes of Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series is available online on iTunes, Amazon Video and Microsoft’s Xbox Live.

Set in 2016, the series focuses

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on Blair Williams (in the movie, the character is played by actor Moon Bloodgood), a soldier who is part of the human resistance in the battle against intelligent machines. The story follows Blair in her search for a mysterious hacker who has been disrupting her army’s communications. The producers wanted to tell the tale of how humans reacted and took up arms after the intelligent machines first attacked, says Andy Shapiro, who handles new media under Terminator Salvation film director Joseph “McG” Nichol at Wonderland Sound and Vision. “We wanted to explore who Blair was and how she got there,” he says.

Machinima series typically take elements of video games—such as characters and

long, production of a “special edition” Monopoly set was under way. For the top-secret mission, the factory set aside a small, secure room—unknown to the rest of its employees—where skilled craftsmen sat and painstakingly carved small niches and openings into the games’ cardboard boxes.

Along with the standard thimble, car and Scotty dog, the PoW version included additional “playing” pieces, such as a metal file, a magnetic compass, and of course, a regional silk escape map, complete with safe houses marked along the way—all neatly concealed in the game’s box. Even better, some of the Monopoly money was real. Actual German, Italian and French currency was placed underneath the play money for escapees to use for bribes. Also, because of its collaboration with the International Red Cross, Waddington could track which sets would be delivered to which camps, meaning escape maps specific to the area could be hidden in each game set.

Allied soldiers and pilots headed to the front lines were told to look for the special edition game if they were captured.

The identifying mark to check

for? A red dot in the corner of the Free Parking space.

By the end of the war, it’s estimated that around 35,000 Allied PoWs had escaped from German prison camps. And while there’s no way to set an exact figure on it, more than a few of those escapees certainly owe their breakout to the classic board game.

But despite its brave and noble role in all of it, Monopoly’s heroic war deeds would go unrecognized for decades. Strict secrecy about the plan was maintained during the war, not only so that the British could continue using the game to help PoWs, but also because Waddington feared a targeted reprisal by German bombers. After the war, all remaining sets were destroyed, and everyone involved in the plan, including the escaped prisoners, was told to keep quiet. In the event of another large-scale war, Allied officials wanted to make sure the seemingly innocent board game could go back into action.

Believe it or not, it wasn’t long before Monopoly found itself in the middle of yet another international conflict—this time defending itself from Communist leaders in Russia.

Being that Monopoly is essentially a game in which one player gets rich at the expense of others becoming poor, Soviet officials had long seen the board game as an overt symbol of capitalistic frivolity and greed. So, as its popularity soared, Communists made

WARNER PREMIERE DIGITAL

WARNER BROS PICTURES

Backstory: Terminator Salvation has additional background to the plot of the summer blockbuster; and Moon Bloodgood plays the character of Blair Williams in the movie. settings—to tell new tales or to provide fresh detail on existing storylines. Other popular machinima series have used characters from best-selling games such as Halo and Grand Theft Auto IV. Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series is part of a larger marketing strategy.

Warner Bros and Wonderland had talked during pre-production for the film about creating a direct-to-DVD stand-alone fea-

ture for Salvation, but nothing developed. However, when the chance to create something similar with machinima arose, Warner Premiere thought it was the perfect opportunity to create a companion storyline.

Director McG calls machinima “a new way to discover voices in a writing capacity”. When Wonderland started working on Terminator Salvation, the company looked at the myriad ways that the Termina-

more and more efforts to curb the enthusiasm. Cuba, the former USSR and other Eastern Bloc countries outlawed the game for fear it would corrupt the public with positive notions about a free-market economy. Soviet leaders even tried coming up with their own Marxist-themed spin-off games designed to highlight the virtues of frugality. The title of one such knock-off from Communist-era Hungary loosely translated to Save, while another in Russia had a name that roughly meant Manage.

But bans and spin-offs couldn’t hold down the individualistic drive of the human spirit.

Monopoly became an underground success, secretly coveted and played behind the Iron Curtain as a way of escaping the drudgery of Soviet life. It wasn’t until 1987, four years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, that Monopoly was allowed to be sold legally there.

Today, Monopoly is licensed in around 80 countries, and no fewer than 200 spin-off versions exist. Of course, playing it in the cosy confines of your living room, it’s easy to take for granted that there was a time when, to many, Monopoly was a lot more than just a game.

The article is reprinted with permission from www.mentalfloss.com Write to wsj@livemint.com

Red vs Blue featuring Halo characters, are comedies and are sometimes based on characters wearing headgear.

To create a drama, the animators behind Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series had to use cinematic sleight of hand. Camera angles were shifted to obscure faces and close-ups were created digitally by an animator. The directors also made use of one staple of the Terminator franchise: voice-overs. That way, they didn’t have to show a character’s lips moving. “We had to cheat a lot,” says Tor Helmstein, one of the series’ co-directors.

Allen DeBevoise, CEO for Machinima, Inc., an online portal for the genre, says the work of artists in the machinima field is analogous to the early digital animated work of John Lasseter, chief creative officer of Pixar, who was able to get everyday objects to display life and emotion, such as the desk lamp in his short Luxo, Jr. “We’re looking for our ‘Lasseter’ moment,” DeBevoise says.

tor franchise could be developed, and even included the video-game team on the film’s pre-production.

One of the big challenges is how to get the video-game characters to look as realistic as their on-screen counterparts. Computer animation still struggles to create completely realistic human movements—facial expressions are a particular problem. That’s why most popular machinima series, such as Write to wsj@livemint.com

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2009

L7

Business Lounge

LOUNGE STEVE MARCOPOTO

The wonderful travels of Marcopoto When it comes to coping with changes in the way media is created, broadcast and consumed, this veteran is quite the sport B Y N EELAM V ERJEE neelam.v@livemint.com

···························· or someone who spends more than half the year travelling, it is no wonder Steve Marcopoto has his trolley suitcase in tow when we meet for a drink at Mumbai’s Four Seasons Hotel. After the meeting, he’ll be heading to the airport to catch a flight to Hong Kong.

The impeccably mannered and soft-spoken Marcopoto—occasional musician and one-time stand-up comedian—sets himself a gruelling pace in his role as head of the Asia-Pacific operations of Turner Broadcasting System, the media group which owns CNN, Cartoon Network and TCM. He brushes off talk of jet lag as “mind over matter” and explains, over a glass of lime soda, how technology has helped him use his time more effectively while on the road.

Peppering his speech with industry jargon, he says he has a fascination with gadgets, and inventions such as the iPod have helped to increase his “media consumption” by making it more flexible.

“It really is about ‘I want it when I want it where I want it’,” says Marcopoto, referring to the freedom to watch movies and television shows on his iPod at airport boarding lounges, while waiting to catch flights. “This is all late-adopting for me, but for my kids, this is all they have known.

They watch what they want, how they want it and on whatever device they want. So within this, I think, are lessons for all of us who are content producers and

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network operators.”

Marcopoto, 53, a native of New Jersey, US, who has spent almost his entire professional life based out of Hong Kong, has been absorbing the dynamics of the relationship between consumers and the media ever since he got his first taste of the industry as a 10-year-old newspaper boy.

Before setting off on his delivery round, he would pore over newspapers and magazines, especially Sports Illustrated. It marked the beginning of a lifelong fascination with the media industry; an inter-

est that his musician and photographer father helped cultivate.

“Sports crazy”, he began his career as part of the press corps for the New York Yankees baseball team in 1977 after graduating from university with a degree in journalism and mass communications. He cut his teeth on the business side of the industry at the now-defunct SoHo News magazine in New York before moving to Asia in 1981 to work with various media companies. A decade later, Marcopoto was named managing director of Fortune Asia; a year later, he took up the top job at Time Inc. Asia.

Following the merger of Time Warner and Turner in the mid-1990s, he became the regional head of Turner Broadcasting System.

“It is hard to believe that back then globalization was a very new concept,” reflects Marcopoto, recalling his early days in Asia. “It was a great place to be in and it was a wonderful place to work with all the different cultures; working in Japan one month, India the next and being part of the early emergence of China.”

He proudly remembers “growing up with the industry in India”.

“The cable and satellite industry in 2009 is a big headline-grabbing global story but I

remember (the) 1990s, when it wasn’t one. Everyone and their uncles weren’t filing in here and there weren’t 300 channels. It was the early stages of something that was just growing up,” Marcopoto says.

Today the picture has changed somewhat. Marcopoto had a much tougher economic climate to battle against as Turner’s WB, a Hollywood movies channel, launched in India in March, in conjunction with Warner Brothers. It’s now set for a “highdecibel” marketing campaign in June. The launch came soon after the company launched Real, a Hindi general entertainment channel with Alva Brothers Entertainment.

“We didn’t wait for the market to be in the position it is in now, and say ‘we think we will launch this channel’,” says Marcopoto, on the timing of the launches.

“After nearly 20 years in the market, we’re certainly people who take a long-term view.”

The company’s approach to Real is also long term, says Marcopoto, explaining that the chan-

‘After nearly 20 years in the market, we’re certainly people who take a long­term view.’

nel wants to carve out a “different” demographic with the objective of doing things differently from everyone else in a saturated category. On the launch, he adds that “some things worked better than others”.

Some things will be tweaked in the coming months, and new projects are in the pipeline.

Marcopoto, who played the piano, trumpet and various percussion instruments in his school and university days, now plays with jazz groups in Hong Kong when he can make the time. He describes his children—a 14-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son—as his “very own media lab” in understanding how the Internet and technology have changed the way children use and access media.

“These kids are here smack dab in the middle of the millennial generation and I have watched how, as media transformed, their consumption has changed along the way. What they read, they largely read off the Web more than printed. It is really at the centre of how they consume.”

He adds: “I think the thing that has very much been a force for change in the market (since he joined the industry) has been the Web and Web properties and Web consumption.”

While Marcopoto is enthusiastic about embracing the opportunities presented by developments in technology—such as Internet radio, which allows him to listen to the jazz show on his hometown radio station while shaving in the morning in Hong Kong— he is also careful to note that “the story is far from over”.

“Technology is marching on,” says Marcopoto, “but our vision is that we remain a content-focused company, because no matter how technology moves, the Internet is never going to replace human creativity. So that is what we are focusing on and that is what we aim to exploit.”

CURRICULUM VITAE

STEVE MARCOPOTO BORN

19 September 1955

EDUCATION

BA in journalism and mass communications, Seton Hall University, New Jersey

CURRENT DESIGNATION

President, Turner Broadcasting System (TBS), Asia­Pacific

WORK PROFILE

Marcopoto moved to Asia in 1981 before eventually becoming managing director of ‘Fortune Asia’ in 1992. He then went to Time Asia, as publisher and then president, before taking over as president of TBS Asia­Pacific in 1998

HOLY REVENGE

Marcopoto is known for his sense of humour. In response to Sinead O’Connor’s 1992 performance of Bob Marley’s ‘War’ on ‘Saturday Night Live’—midway through the song, she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II and threw the pieces at the camera—Marcopoto emerged on stage one evening at an office event, dressed as the Pope. He produced a picture of O’Connor and returned the favour

Small beginnings: Marcopoto got his first taste of the business by working as a newspaper delivery boy.

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

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SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2009

Insider

LOUNGE

Cupcake: At Tart, Express Tower, Nariman Point, Mumbai, Rs100.

Decanter: At Silver Oak, Shree Laxmi Deep Industrial Estate, Mum­ bai, Rs7,900.

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Napkins: At Yamini, 380, Shanti Niwas, 14th Road, Mumbai; and 11/2, Haudin Road, Ulsoor Lake, Bangalore, Rs15 each.

Butterfly: At all Swarovski retail outlets, Rs6,800 (for a set of three).

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PICKS

Winging it Bring the outdoors inside your home with these butterfly patterns

Wall clock: At 1BHK, Kamal City, Senapati Bapat Marg, Mumbai, Rs2,185. t

B Y D HARA S ANGHAVI Better Homes and Gardens

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Umbrella: At Moon River, Defence Colony, New Delhi; Minoo Desai Marg, Mumbai; and Vittal Mallya Road, Bangalore, Rs950. u

PHOTOGRAPHS BY PHOTOLINK, STYLED BY SHYISTA MEHRA/BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS

All content on this page powered by Butterfly pitcher: At Tresorie, Linking Road, Mumbai, Rs3,000. p

‘Bandari’ bowl and plate: At Good Earth, Khan Market, and Select Citywalk mall, Saket, New Delhi; Raghuvanshi Mills, Lower Parel, and Juhu Tara Road, Mumbai, Rs415. p

Bag: At The Bombay Store, Western India House, Sir PM Road, Mumbai, Rs400. p

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2009

L9

Style

LOUNGE

Inside out: From thongs to low­rise, button­front briefs, men have a lot more to choose from.

LORI HAWKINS/ELAINE KORN/WSJ

RETAIL THERAPY

High anxiety over underwear Men’s drawers now come in a vexing array of cuts and fabrics; one shopper’s brief tale

B Y C HRISTINA B INKLEY ···························· oxers or briefs? For decades, this choice has been considered a key to a man’s inner self.

No more. Assailing men’s identities are a jumble of underwear options, such as the boxerbrief and the gripper trunk, not to mention the Y-back thong.

As my husband learnt while shopping recently, men’s underwear these days is a whole new fashion segment. Men’s undies come in a variety of silhouettes (such as boxer, brief or trunk), rises (such as low, mid or high), fit options (such as relaxed or

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slim), colours and patterns. The fabrics include not only the traditional woven or knit cotton but also Lycra, spandex and various “microfibre’ synthetics.

Jockey’s 3D-Innovations Seamfree Microfiber undies have “eight-way stretch” and offer the service of “sculpting and supporting muscular movement”— which sounds suspiciously like a men’s version of the Spanx body-shapers. To further flatter the male physique, there are padded briefs and “profile-enhancing” briefs.

“What was once a commodity seems to have become a fashion accessory,” says Alan Feldman, a cotton-boxers man who lives and shops in Las Vegas.

Men’s underwear—now a $3.1 billion (around 15,500 crore) market in the US, according to market researcher NPD Group—was once a staid area.

Fathers passed their habits and brands to sons. A man who wore boxers in his 20s could expect to

meet his maker in the same style.

Today, men are confronted with new styles in nearly every aspect of their lives, from shampoos to shoes. Newfangled materials and fashion-forward silhouettes encourage men to shop more, so the casual clothes department is now a sea of grommets, shrunken jackets and flood-length pants.

The prices have changed too.

The Calvin Klein Steel Gripper Trunk is $24. At Target, a twopack of men’s Merona housebrand boxers is just $4. Many of the new undergarments arrive in fancy packaging such as mirrored cellophane and carry exotic, inscrutable names such as Calvin Klein’s BXR-Matrix line, which sounds like a motorbike but is actually knit boxers.

“We’re doing underwear with all of our energy and all of our creativity,” says Bob Mazzoli, chief creative officer of Calvin Klein Underwear, which was an early leader in introducing stylish

men’s underwear.

Though its best-sellers in the US are the classic brief and the classic boxer-brief, Calvin Klein offers 15 underwear “groups”, such as Steel and Pro-Stretch.

Mazzoli says all the different styles seek to entice different types of customers, such as “comfort men”—likely to go for briefs—and “sports men”—interested in such features as support and stretchy fabrics.

“We want to give him something that he can engage with and not be just that boring choice,” Mazzoli says. “We don’t think of it as just underwear.”

My husband thinks of it as just underwear. When we went shopping, Jim planned to rush to an important meeting after grabbing a handful of his favourite boxerbriefs. He had 30 minutes in Macy’s underwear department, which seemed like plenty of time.

Then he began shopping. He began opening boxes of “bodystretch lo-rise trunks” to ascer-

THE LONG AND SHORT OF MEN’S UNDERWEAR It’s no longer a question of boxers or briefs. Men now face a variety of choices. Here are some of the most common styles  Briefs

 Boxers

 Boxer-briefs

 Trunks

 Thongs

The classic best-seller made unforgettable by Tom Cruise in ‘Risky Business’. These days it comes in all sorts of colours, patterns and knits, from cotton to microfibre.

Some versions come with lifting support.

The originals were made of woven shirting fabric, but boxers these days are also made of knitwear. Perhaps overcompensating for their conservative silhouette, they come in the wildest colours and patterns.

A knitwear cross between boxers and briefs, this is another best-selling category that comes in every material imaginable and with various levels of support.

A big hit in the US.

A newer knitwear entrant, trunks are shorter than boxer-briefs but longer than briefs. They are particularly popular in Europe and Asia.

These come in two varieties—an athletically inspired two-strap version and another designed more like women’s thongs with one strap at the back.

tain whether they looked anything like the grey cotton knits he wears at home. Pondering a pair of trunks, he commented, “Somehow it looks just like a brief, doesn’t it?” For the record, trunks are shorter than a knit boxer but longer than briefs. “I just want something in grey,” he said several times.

Soon, Jim was pacing, brows knitted, with handfuls of underwear. Each rack offered a fresh discovery. Jockey’s low-cut “Echelon” boxers came in grey, which pleased him, but then he began to consider shaking things up with white.

Often, men’s fashion decisions get relegated to the women who love them—women being accustomed to an array of choices. The vast majority of men’s clothing in the US is purchased by women, says Bridget Brennan, chief executive of Female Factor, a consulting agency focused on marketing to women. “In almost every society in the world, women bring procurement into the home,” says Brennan, who buys her husband’s underwear.

This is true in our home, too.

Yet Jim seemed intrigued by the possibilities. Indeed, choice seemed to loosen Jim’s natural reserve. He stopped at a rack of green and yellow Polo Ralph Lauren boxer shorts with hula girls and palm trees.

“Would you get me these?” he asked. “Honestly?”

His attention was also arrested by a line called “sculptured support”. He figured he could wear the undershirts on his daily runs until I blurted that they looked like ladies’ shapewear. He sped away.

Thirty-five minutes later, Jim’s shopping was unfinished and he was running late. He made a mad dash for the cash register.

Later, Jim discovered that a box claiming to contain a thighhugging gripper trunk actually held a pair of low-rise, buttonfront briefs. No matter. I tried them on, and I like them.

Write to wsj@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2009

Eat/Drink

LOUNGE

TASTINGS

Singing the ABCs of wine Bottoms up: (above) A vineyard in the Languedoc region of France; (left) the men of Sideways were determined Merlot snobs; (bottom, left) the Francis Ford Coppola and Marilyn Merlot wines.

Speak vintner: a glossary of the necessary terms and phrases you ought to know

B Y D OROTHY J . G AITER & J OHN B RECHER ···························· hese are words and people whose names are good to know right now for some reason, if only because they are symbols of something larger. We have made tough choices to get each of these down to a single listing. This sometimes entailed arguments, threats and compromise, and in the long run we just couldn’t agree on R, which is why there are two.

fighting for shelf space from all over the world.

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lbariño. Signature white wine from Spain—sunny, peachy, floral and mouthwatering. Spanish wines—red, white, rosé and its sparkling Cava—tend to be excellent value these days.

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ronco Wine Co. Californiabased Bronco grew into one of the biggest wine companies in the US thanks to Two-Buck Chuck and other lower-priced brands. Now its CEO, Fred Franzia, has become increasingly visible as an advocate of inexpensive wine that’s an everyday pleasure.

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elebrity wines. This replaces critter wines, the fading fad in which the cute animal on the label was a bigger selling point than the wine inside the bottle.

Now anybody who’s anybody, living or dead, from golfers to rock stars to actors, has his or her own wine label. In tastings, we have preferred celebrity to critter wines so far, but we’re not sure how long that will be true.

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r Vino. The world is awash in wine bloggers—and we figure the more people who read and write about wine the better—and one good example is Drvino.com, which is well-written, well-researched, calm and, dare we use the word, sober.

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xtracted. It’s hard to avoid this word in any discussion on wines these days. Essentially it means just what it sounds like: a wine that’s concentrated and intense. Even normal people

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rban wineries. Places in cities, from Denver to Brooklyn, New York, to Hong Kong, where vintners are making wine far from the actual vineyard.

V these days like to argue about whether various wines are overly extracted.

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lights. Not long ago, only wine geeks talked about “flights” of wine—that is, several wines tasted against each other because of some common trait, such as Sauvignon Blancs from around the world. Now, because of the explosion of wine bars, flights have taken off.

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rüner Veltliner. Austria’s signature white, far more widely available now than just a short time ago. It’s so trendy that some people, unfortunately, call it GrünVelt, GrünV, GV or even GrüV, but we’d stick with GROOner felt-LEE-ner.

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aw River Valley (North Carolina). A new official wine appellation (known as an AVA, or American Viticultural Area), simply one example of the extraordinary growth of wineries across the US. There are now at least 3,000 wineries that are not in California, including around 80 in North Carolina.

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nterstate shipping. Thanks to the Internet and a 2005 supreme court ruling, the amount of wine moving among US states has grown tremendously. While some states still do not allow interstate (or, in some cases, in-state) shipping, most Americans now can order wine from stores and wineries in other states.

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erk. Because of the increasing confidence and sophistication

of wine drinkers all over the world, more and more people hear an insufferable wine bore and say, “Wow, that guy (it’s always a guy) is a jerk,” instead of saying, “I guess I don’t know anything about wine.” In terms of wine, we think jerk is a term you will be hearing more in the next few years.

isn’t a bad thing in this case and some naked wines are tasty.

K

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abinett. We know it’s probably just wishful thinking, but we think maybe Riesling really is about to turn a corner as consumers realize what a beautiful, food-friendly wine it is. If they do, they are sure to discover lighter German Rieslings that are classified as Kabinett.

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anguedoc. A productive region in southern France that produces an ocean of wine, some of it good. Producers are working hard to improve quality; there is a new, official Languedoc regional appellation as of 2007; and its solid wines are affordable in a time of economic strain, so Languedoc’s profile might rise in the next few years.

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rganic. All things organic are hot these days and wines made from organically grown grapes are no exception, along with wines grown with biodynamic or sustainable agriculture.

They are also improving in quality. rosecco. A delightful bubbly from the Veneto region of Italy that has surged in popularity recently because of its charm and low price.

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uincy. White wine made from Sauvignon Blanc in the Loire Valley of France.

As consumers look for alternatives to Chardonnay and other big whites, they are increasingly discovering wines such as this.

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eduction. A word often used in the heated debate between cork and screw-cap camps, in which some argue that this complex reaction causes offsmells (at least briefly) in wines closed with screw caps.

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albec. Argentina’s signature red. Earthy yet easy to drink, this is very much the red wine of the moment. a ke d . U n o a k e d w i n e s , sometimes called naked, have become trendy because the overuse of oak (or oak chips, or oak staves, or oak flavourings) has become an epidemic. Our feeling is that oak itself isn’t really the villain, that lazy winemaking and inferior grapes are.

Still, a little bit of overreaction

esveratrol. A compound in red wine that researchers believe has positive health effects, in far larger doses than a single bottle of wine. ideways. The 2004 movie that boosted Pinot Noir and the Santa Barbara County wine industry and helped make a joke of Merlot.

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annat. Signature red of Uruguay, one example of the many interesting wines now

aynerchuk, Gary. Wine geek of the moment. His upbeat, charming commentary at Tv.winelibrary.com has made him a star and brought him a huge book deal. His many followers are called Vayniacs.

W

ine doggy bags. Most US states now allow diners to leave a restaurant with an unfinished bottle of wine, though they generally require that the wine be placed in a sealed container, which has inevitably come to be known as a “wine doggy bag” (visit Winedoggybag.com for a listing of state laws).

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inomavro. Indigenous red grape of Greece, pronounced Ksee-NO-ma-vro, according to the website Allaboutgreekwine.com, where you can hear it pronounced. Greek wines are interesting, well-made and often bargain-priced.

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arra Valley. The Australian wine region known for its cooler climate. Australia produced lakes of bad wine over the past few years—especially Chardonnay and Shiraz—and, as a result, saw its industry suffer. But there is too much commitment, too much money and too much history for the bad times to last forever. We’d guess that Australia’s quality comeback will be led by lesser-known regions, such as the Yarra Valley, and, separately, by its lesser-known varietals, such as Riesling.

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weigelt. Austria’s most widely planted red grape, sometimes seen as a rosé. The red is fun, charming and a little peppery.

Write to wsj@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2009

Culture

LOUNGE OBITUARY

The man who made stars BACHCHANALIA/BHAWANA SOMAAYA

AND

OSIAN’S CARD

RAAGTIME

SAMANTH S

THE DELIGHT IN LIGHT

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In an era addicted to big names and over­the­top plots, this director ruled

B Y J ERRY P INTO ···························· look about me at the memorabilia of his past successes.

They are all wrapped in a plastic protective covering to defend them against the relentless Mumbai climate. The plastic is old, brittle and discolouring. They are dead lumps of wood and metal—detritus washed up from the other side of yesterday, specimens in dirty jars of formaldehyde, suspended in death.”

So wrote Jessica Hines when she visited Prakash Mehra as part of the research for Looking for…The Big B; Bollywood, Bachchan and Me, and the image of those “trophies” brought back an old Bollywood of 50 Golden Weeks celebrations and the bizarre mementos handed out on those occasions. At that point Mehra had not made a film in 13 years.

More barren years were to follow.

It seems a long time ago that Manmohan Desai and he shared the same India Today cover with Amitabh Bachchan. That was the time Bachchan was not just the No. 1 star, he was Nos 1-10. That was the time Desai and Mehra made a certain kind of film: 3 hours long, with six-eight songs, a decorative heroine, a larger-thanlife villain, a mother and at the throbbing heart of the melodrama—The Angry Young Man, as he was then known. If they didn’t have Bachchan, their films flopped, never mind how blood donations spiked on Thursday night (this was also the time when blood banks paid for blood; serendipitously, about the price of a ticket to the stalls).

The facts are fairly well known.

Mehra gave Bachchan his first big break in Zanjeer, although it is also well known that he wanted Dev Anand for the role (Anand turned it down because there were no songs for him to sing). Then he “gave” a series of Bachchan hits: Hera Pheri, Laawaaris, Muqaddar ka Sikandar and Namak Halal, before the flop that was Jadugar put an end to the pairing.

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VIJAYANAND GUPTA/HINDUSTAN TIMES

In cinemascope: Mehra (left) directed Bachchan’s early mega­hits such as (above) Muqaddar ka Sikandar.

But for a while there, the two were on to something that could never be replicated. It was old-style Bollywood. It was grotesque but it was intense. Where else could you find Bachchan ripping open his bandhgala to show Smita Patil her face, “floating” in his chest hair, except in a song like Pag ghunghroo baandh Meera naachi thi? Lyrics? By Mehra, of course. Where else could you find a line like “Moochein ho to Nathulal jaisi ho, varna na ho” except in that Arthur knock-off Sharaabi?

It took a huge amount of courage to make a film like Muqaddar ka Sikandar, in which Amjad Khan loves Rekha who loves Bachchan

who loves Rakhee who loves Vinod Khanna. Needless to say, the last two reciprocated and got the rawest deal in the film. Rekha gets to flame and burn and swallow poison. Khan gets to bend bars with the help of rolling eyes and “Ya Ali (Oh, lord)”. Bachchan gets to unite his loved one with his best friend and die at their wedding, thus stealing everyone’s thunder.

But he would have to die. After all, he was an orphan, adopted by a Muslim mother (Nirupa Roy) and given his education in life by a Sufi who lived in a graveyard (Kader Khan, who insists on the boy laughing at his mother’s grave). This stranger without a

genetic past in love with a good upper-caste girl, daughter of a lawyer? It would have to fail.

For grand old Bollywood, the Bollywood of the mastodons, was also hopelessly mired in its own worn-out stories and its addictions to stars. You have only to consider how hopelessly inadequate Jayaprada is in Sharaabi; or Rakhee is in Muqaddar ka Sikandar; or Jaya Bhaduri is in Zanjeer to realize that Mehra was not casting to character, he was casting to the box office.

It is perhaps no tragedy that he was no longer making films. They would have collapsed under the weight of their old-fashioned belief systems, their unwieldy melodrama, their insistence on lengthy expositions and their absurd and epic climaxes.

The nostalgia Mehra’s films conjure up is a poisoned cup.

This is what we were like. Thank the extinguished stars we aren’t like that any more.

Jerry Pinto is a freelance writer and author of Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

ast June, on his then-active, now regrettably dozing blog, the eminent Carnatic vocalist Sanjay Subrahmanyan wrote a series of engaging posts about growing up in a rabidly musical household, and in particular about his grandfather Thyagu. “My grandfather was most happy when I started singing,” Subrahmanyan wrote.

“Every time I sat down to practice he would just wander in and listen.” And not surprisingly, like so many other Carnatic aficionados, Thyagu prized the heavy ragas above all else: “He would make me sing the heavy ragams like Todi, Bhairavi and Kambhoji all the time and keep telling me the choice phrases that he liked.”

The depth of the divide between heavy and light ragas lies partly in the critic’s eye, but the divide itself is an organic one, inherent to the music. The heavy ragas—and there are more in that list, such as Kalyani, Sankarabharanam and Karaharapriya—are complex and academic, and they offer plenty of what Carnatic music writers like to call “scope for elaboration”. They are laden with gamakas, which are microtonal oscillations of notes, variously rendered, and which need to be lavished with attention. They are made up, too, of large batches of classical phrases, to be permuted and combined with aesthetic care. Invariably, these ragas—and the songs set to these ragas—form the monumental centrepieces of a Carnatic music concert.

ARJOON MANOHAR/MINT If, as a performer, you toss a 5-minute alapana of Kalyani, or a superficially explored Bhairavi as your main piece, you must be prepared for the unsettling ripples of discontent that will inevitably follow. But those ripples will turn into waves if, instead, you choose a lighter raga—Behag, Sindhubhairavi, Senjurutti—for your main piece. Only in the latter half of a concert do these ragas traditionally make their appearance. Their notes are less nuanced and their strucWeighty: Sanjay Subrahmanyan. tures less complex, which is the reason some purists shrug them off as lesser ragas.

But in some concerts—and I’m thinking here of the violin maestro T.N. Krishnan in particular—I wait with some impatience for these light ragas. Krishnan plays them with such sweetness and purity that I get goosebumps every time at their simple, unadorned sound. I was struck at one point by a culinary analogy to this. In multi-stage gourmet meals, the main course is often followed by a small serving of lemon sorbet, its sharp citrus intended to cleanse and reset a palate that has been inundated by excesses of rich, complex tastes. The tongue responds to this; in fact, it grasps eagerly at the prospect of only processing one uncomplicated flavour.

A similar phenomenon of sensation guides the ear in a Carnatic music concert. The main course, the Bhairavi, say, carries weighty and intellectual appeal. The Sindhubhairavi sorbet that comes after it, in a sense, resets the ear with its visceral, goosebump-y appeal of just a beautiful arrangement of plain (even plaintive) notes. Neither Bhairavi nor Sindhubhairavi—neither heavy ragas nor light ragas—could be quite as effective without the other. It’s a wonder of sonic balance that rounds off the banquet perfectly.

Write to Samanth Subramanian at raagtime@livemint.com www.livemint.com Samanth blogs at blogs.livemint.com/bookends

TV PREVIEW

World on its feet Watch the show for the sheer variety of dance forms B Y R ACHANA N AKRA rachana.n@livemint.com

···························· f you’ve got used to the high drama and voting appeals that tug at the heart strings—staples of Indian dance shows such as Nach Baliye, Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa and Dance India Dance—then Star World’s latest American import, Superstars of Dance, is bound to disappoint at first. Things get better, though, as the show progresses.

The makers of American Idol are trying to grab more reality television eyeballs with the show that pits professional dancers from eight countries against each other.

I

Its first season just concluded on the NBC network in the US, garnering high viewership but mixed reviews. Each country fields performers in solo, duet and group categories and the winner is decided on the basis of aggregate scores. The judging panel comprises one dance expert from each country who will refrain from judging when his or her country’s contender takes the stage.

The concept is brilliant—but mostly on paper. For a show that calls itself the “biggest dance competition on the planet”, the first dance performance from India in episode 1 was, shockingly— though somewhat predictably—Bollywood. Two American women of Indian origin danced to th e s on g Do l a r e fro m D evdas—supposedly the best that India has to offer. Which makes

The right moves: Tango (left); and Kathak by Amrapali Ambegaokar. you wonder if the contestants from other countries are really showcasing their best either. Shveta Salve and Gauhar Khan, contestants of Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa, would have done a better job. The judges weren’t impressed either—the duo scored in the 6-7 range out of 10, the lowest of the day.

The same episode began with a superb group performance from Ireland. Clogging in perfect uni-

son, the dancers gave the show the perfect start, getting the highest points of the day. The quality of dance doesn’t get much better, but the variety of styles showcased is mindboggling.

The American contestant performed Popping, a street dance that involves contracting and relaxing muscles to make jerky movements. The South Africa contingent showcased a traditional group

dance performed by the Gumboot Dancers—a dance form that miners would entertain themselves with after work. There is no music, only tapping of boots, jangling of trash cans, chanting and clapping.

And what are the odds that the representative of the billion-plus republic of China in this competition would be called Bei Zheng?

The small, smiling woman performed a beautiful solo ribbon dance, twirling a colourful fabric, which, nevertheless, seemed dull when compared with the Argentinian tango. You hold your breath as the couple navigate the stage with intricate footwork and graceful lifts. In addition, you’ll get to see some excellent jazz (Argentina), ballet and ballroom (Russia), tap dancing (Australia) and contemporary fusion dance forms.

But for a show that’s about showcasing cultural dance forms, you don’t find out much about the dancers, their dances or even about the judges (who is Shirish Dayal, the judge representing India? A

Google search did not help, nor did the channel). The judges aren’t given an opportunity to comment or explain, which leaves you wondering why a ballroom cabaret with beautiful acrobatic lifts from a US dancer got 7 from the judge from Argentina, 9 from the Indian judge and 10 from the Irish one.

Nonetheless, we will tune in to Superstars of Dance for the sheer variety of dances. The next performance from India, after the abysmally poor Bollywood number, was by Amrapali Ambegaokar—actor (Grey’s Anatomy, ER and Heroes), Kathak dancer and daughter of Kathak guru Anjani Ambegaokar. The “bells on her feet” intrigued everyone, and at the end of a graceful performance, which concluded with a spin of 15 rounds that she took on her heels, the audience erupted and India went right up there on the scoreboard.

Superstars of Dance will premiere on Star World on Monday, 9pm.

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SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2009

Books

LOUNGE

AUTHOR Q&A | SARITA MANDANNA

‘I wrote in snatched time’

INDIA PICTURE

Closer home: Tiger Hills by Mandanna recreates life in the coffee plantations of Coorg.

The author who got the highest ever advance from an Indian publisher for a debut, on her book and staying away from the ‘desi’ tag

B Y S ANJUKTA S HARMA

book. Edited excerpts:

sanjukta.s@livemint.com

···························· arita Mandanna realized she had an uncontrollable itch to write a novel a few years ago while she was well ensconced in her corporate life in New York. After she completed her first book, Tiger Hills, Mandanna bagged the highest advance paid by Penguin India for a debut novel. The figure, according to industry sources, is Rs35 lakh, which is, of course, an advance against royalties (so far, the highest advance paid by an Indian publisher to an author of fiction is Rs44 lakh to Amitav Ghosh, for his trilogy).

Mandanna, vice-president, Equifin Capital, was born to a book-loving family in Coorg.

Tiger Hills, set in a coffee plantation in Coorg, spans a period beginning in the late 1800s and ending in the 20th century.

In an email interview, Mandanna tells Lounge about juggling private equity and creative writing, how her growing years in Coorg influenced her writing and the logistics of publishing one’s first

S

Clincher: Mandanna is believed to have got a Rs35 lakh advance.

Your book has already been labelled “an Indian epic” that is “The Thorn Birds meets Gone with the Wind”. Do you believe these are fair descriptions?

Gone with the Wind and The Thorn Birds are each cultural watersheds and it is flattering to have Tiger Hills spoken of in the same breath. The similarities likely draw from the period setting of all three, and thickly populated story arcs that span a number of years.

You were born in Coorg. Does your novel draw from your early years there? How autobiographical is it?

Tiger Hills is (from my) imagination and neither the plot nor the characters are autobiographical. As with anything creative, though, its wellspring is afloat with the flotsam and jetsam of memory.

A half-remembered anecdote bobbing here, a turn of phrase heard spoken there. Also, the setting, Coorg, plays a prominent role throughout Tiger Hills to qualify as a minor character in itself. The

mountains, the jungles, the coffee estates—these have each been drawn from experience, with every brushstroke rooted in reality and fondest memory.

Can you describe Tiger Hills in your own words?

Tiger Hills is a period saga set in Coorg and is named after a coffee plantation owned by a particular family. The novel traces their lives, the attendant intertwining of hope and consequence(s) of choice, beginning in the late 1800s through the wartime years of the 20th century.

Most Indian writers living in

Coorg plays a prominent role throughout Tiger Hills to qualify as a minor character in itself.

the West choose to write about their immigrant or desi identity. Did you want to steer clear of that path deliberately?

It wasn’t a conscious decision to steer clear of a particular path as much as the insistent pull of this particular story. One writes the book that one simply must write, and for me, there was no denying Tiger Hills.

Tell us a little about your process of writing. How often did you write, how long did it take you to complete the book? Did you write many drafts?

Tiger Hills has been five years and counting in the crafting. I wrote in snatched time, as often as I could alongside my job, late into the nights and on the weekends when I was not working. I edited as I went along, visiting and revisiting the plot and honing each character until they felt true. Tiger Hills was well into its sixth or seventh draft before I was ready to show it around.

Was the writing the easy part compared to finding a publisher?

I have been very lucky in having it be the other way around. I

Words’ worth

By Ali Sethi

Ali Sethi is a US-based Pakistani journalist who has written for The Nation and leading American publications. His novel The Wish Maker, which comes out in June in the US, is a coming-of-age tale.

Zaki, a teenager, grows up in a Pakistani household during the time of Benazir Bhutto’s government, in a family of bold, outspoken women. Zaki finds a soulmate in his female cousin Samar, with whom he watches American television, memorizes dialogues from Bollywood movies and forms some secret friendships. They are forced to go their separate ways when

adolescence approaches, as he leaves home to discover the world. Years later, Zaki confronts his past and the pain that friendship and betrayal bring.

Arzee the Dwarf

By Chandrahas Choudhury

The Strike

By Anand Mahadevan This book is due to hit bookstores shortly. From the Penguin India stable, Anand Mahadevan’s The Strike is about his experiences while growing up in Tamil Nadu in the 1980s— during the course of the novel, the legendary film-star-turnedpolitician MGR dies. Young Hari, Mahadevan’s protagonist, is shattered when his experiment at eating fish leads to the accidental death of his grandmother;

Tiger Hills will be released worldwide early next year.

Institute of Theory and Research as a personal assistant to a brilliant, insufferable astronomer, obsessed with the theory that microscopic aliens are falling all the time on earth.

A John Murray representative was quoted as saying at the fair that Ayyan will be “remembered as one of the great anti-heroes”.

It’s quite clear from forthcoming titles that publishers have embraced the first novel The Wish Maker

owe a great deal to David Davidar and Penguin India, who expressed a strong and early interest in Tiger Hills.

Why did you choose an agent instead of approaching a publisher directly?

An agent of David Godwin’s calibre is invaluable. He brings a great deal of credibility to bear upon the manuscripts he endorses, opening doors that would not be otherwise accessible.

You are also a finance professional. How do you reconcile both these worlds?

Are they necessarily antithetical?

I am a private equity professional, occupying a one/zero, mostly objective world during the day. The arts, on the other hand, are a thing of subjectivity where there rarely is just one right answer.

Straddling the two has been an alternately fun, satisfying and utterly crazy process. There is some common ground, though—logical, decision tree-based models were, at least for me, a definite asset in plot development.

Tell us a bit about your upbringing. Are you from a literary family?

My maternal grandfather was an inveterate storyteller, regaling us with accounts of thieving princes and houses made from salt, while my paternal grandfather had a deep respect for the written word. My mother is an avid book lover and it is thanks to her that I developed my own reading habit. I did not, however, begin to write in earnest until some years ago. I am still coming to grips with how deep and abiding an itch writing is.

What do you care more about: critical acclaim/awards or popular success? And why?

Both together would be the Holy Grail!

First take: Mahadevan writes on the 1980s; Sethi, on the 1990s; and Choudhury’s book is set in Mumbai. his preference for Hindi over his mother tongue Tamil leads to slanderous graffiti against his family in his home city Chennai (then Madras); and his friendship with the household help lands him in trouble with a militant Tamil film fan. It has been described as a novel laced with eroticism and humour, and a searing portrait of what it meant

to grow up in 1980s India.

Serious Men

By Manu Joseph At this year’s London Book Fair, which concluded on 21 April, Blake Friedmann, the agent for Serious Men by Manu Joseph, a Mumbai-based journalist, auctioned the UK Commonwealth rights of the book to publisher

John Murray for around £100,000 (around Rs73 lakh). HarperCollins India pre-empted the Indian subcontinent rights. Serious Men, to be launched in April-May 2010, is about a man called Ayyan Mani, who realizes he is a bit stranded in life. Purely to entertain himself he begins to play a game, which eventually goes out of control. Ayyan works in the

It took Chandrahas Choudhury, the book critic of Lounge, three years to complete his debut novel, Arzee the Dwarf. Set in Mumbai, where Choudhury lives, it is about two weeks in the life of a “very short man”. The eponymous hero’s view of his surroundings is always from a low angle—in which the big city appears bigger, and more frightening. Arzee’s dreams, fears and suspicions hover around him, as they do for all of us. The book, by HarperCollins, has just come out.

Sanjukta Sharma Write to lounge@livemint.com

BOOKS L15

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

POSTSCRIPT

LAKSHMI CHAUDHRY

THERE’S RARELY A SECOND CHANCE

A

Urban affair: Amit Varma’s novel revolves around two youngsters in Mumbai, and some of P.K. Mehrotra’s stories deal with love and longing in the city.

DEBUT NOVELS

Pain of a first birth A Mumbai novel about a young tabloid journalist’s ruminations; and an uneven buffet of short stories about outcasts Wit attack Among the most jarring bits of any TV sitcom are the dialogues in season-opening episodes.

When the writers make the actors spew long, unwieldy lines just to help viewers catch up with proceedings: “Rachel you have a call from that guy who cheated on you last Christmas because he thought you guys were on a break when in reality you were just spending a little time away from each other.”

It can make the most ardent fan switch channels. Most times, these continuity lines are completely out of character for the actor involved. The less they have to say them, the better. But alas, the new viewers won’t “get it” otherwise.

Such awkward unevenness is really the problem with Abir Ganguly, the protagonist in blogger and journalist Amit Varma’s debut book My Friend Sancho. That and the elusive shadow of a plot.

At the beginning, Ganguly plays his snarky side—a bitter, cynical yet oddly ambitious tabloid journalist—perfectly. Ganguly’s lines, which are unmistakably Varma’s if you’ve ever read his blog India Uncut, are enormously witty. And they are witty in a trite, sometimes cruel way. Ganguly is like the psychotic biology teacher who insults you with shotgun oneliners that make you cry, while everyone else in class is in splits: “Chota Sion is a mid-level don known for extorting money from builders. Was there an interesting angle to this somewhere? I wouldn’t know until I got there.

Maybe a lot of ransom money would be recovered from them.

(Ten Crore Recovered in Ten-Rupee Notes as Sion Gangster Breaks Down After Arrest.)

Maybe I could speak to one of them after the arrest. (Sion Gangster Reveals Childhood Sexual Abuse by Priests.)”

This is wit that encompasses elements of surprise, timing and a certain cadence in the prose.

But behold a very different, whiny Ganguly when he falls in love—gradually, of course—with Muneeza Iqbal.

Muneeza is the daughter of the victim of a dubious Mumbai police encounter that Ganguly was witness to. The Afternoon Mail asks Ganguly to prepare a

My Friend Sancho:

By Amit Varma, Hachette India, 217 pages, Rs195. profile of the deceased —classic “human story”—and this means spending long hours with the daughter, gathering facts. He cannot reveal to Muneeza that he stood by watching while the police gunned down her innocent father. So he is shifty around her. And then he begins to fancy her. Cue, more shiftiness. And when Ganguly gets shifty and thoughtful, he gets very boring indeed.

A third Ganguly hovers in between, trying to hold the plot together and move the simple, rather one-track story along.

And then the book is over.

Well, not as much over as it just runs out of plot, and book and reader decide to part ways amicably. After all nothing really happened. At first I thought this was the biggest joke in My Friend Sancho. The fact that the whole book was about Seinfeldian nothing. Perhaps it was a zen thing; I would get it if I thought about it long enough.

Or perhaps My Friend Sancho is the kind of book that is to be enjoyed a chapter at a time, a joke at a time. (Like a blog you say?!) The bigger picture is irrelevant. You read, laugh, forget and move on. A collection, then, of Abir Ganguly’s thoughts to himself. In which case, it is best to wait for more Ganguly books to be written and then to buy an anthology of Ganguly’s musings.

Oh, and four references to the author’s real-life blog in his book is four too many.

Sidin Vadukut

Deviation point Reviewing Amitava Kumar’s Home Products (2007) for Mint’s sister publication Hindustan Times, Palash Krishna Mehrotra signed off: “It seems that Kumar had a tremendous urge to write a novel but this was not accompanied by any compelling need to tell a story. He might take heart from the fact that he is not the only Indian writer suffering from this affliction.”

Surely Mehrotra didn’t have to compile a whole anthology of short stories to shore up his argument? His debut collection Eunuch Park: Fifteen Stories of Love and Destruction has got to be one of the most uneven fictional buffets to be served in recent times. Self-consciously preoccupied with the so-called fringe elements—the book’s blurb says “Mehrotra writes about prostitutes, cross-dressers, murderers, drug addicts, students (huh?) and stalkers”—the author shows himself to be an ace observer of the seamy side of life but is all too often unable to meld those observations into anything beyond pretentious reportage.

Consider the very first piece (it seems a gross overstatement to call it a short story), Dancing with Men. An account of a young man’s evening in a small town, nothing really happens here. In terms of literary device, that’s a common enough postmodern approach but—unlike, say, Waiting for Godot or Cormac McCarthy’s novels or Raymond Carver’s short stories—nothing much happens in terms of ideas either.

Our protagonist bar-hops, dances on a crowded floor, loses his spectacles (but still manages to discern piles of garbage and read cinema hoardings) and

Eunuch Park—Fifteen Stories of Love and Destruction:

By Palash Krishna Mehrotra, Penguin, 183 pages, Rs250.

watches goldfish being placed in an aquarium. If you don’t turn the page expecting more, you’re obviously Mehrotra himself. The same could be said of The Teacher’s Daughter: Both seem to exist solely to record the author’s observations on certain sections of society and, once those are conveyed, collapse abruptly on to themselves.

After threatening to run the same self-indulgent path, Okhla Basti—recording the teeming life of the slum, from the reticent drug lord to the garrulous truck driver—graduates to a more rewarding level when Angad, who has shoehorned us into the basti (slum), goes for a walk on a winter morning and is mugged and left for dead. No million-dollar rewards for this slum, but the cynicism manages to hold true and rise above the verbiage.

As a rule, Mehrotra fares much better when he keeps his ambit small and his focus sharp. Rubber Band, barely four pages long, succeeds in stretching taut the protagonist’s tortured relationship with a girl given to epileptic fits and infidelity; The Nick of Time, about a cross-dressing desi student in Oxford, too builds up the tension and the discontent to a fine arc; as does Fit of Rage, the story of three losers who conspire to kill an elderly widow and make off with her money.

However, it is with the school/ university settings that Mehrotra is most at ease—something due possibly to his teaching stint at Doon School. Pornography, Eunuch Park, Bloody and the Friendship Club, The Farewell and Freshers Welcome are easily stories that stand out in the collection, each demonstrating a familiarity with the pulls and pressures of student life in a way the family stories or the solitary protagonist do not.

After making rather a point about “owning” the deviant, and variously showcasing the homosexual, the eunuch, the addict, the sadist, the collection ultimately disappoints, however, in its inability to look beyond the surface or use the word “deviation” as something more than a shock-value add. Just as being elected a member of Parliament doesn’t make one a parliamentarian, or getting a tattoo and a Harley doesn’t make a biker, so sex-in-thebushes, climaxes-on-the-quiet and gay fantasies need something more substantial to make the next grade. They need a story.

best-selling first novel is the literary equivalent of a wet dream. It gets everyone in the business very, very excited.

Publishers bask in the glory of having “discovered” the next Salinger, Rushdie, Updike, etc. Journalists get a feel-good Cinderella story that makes their editors happy. All that publicity in turn feeds the fondest hopes of countless wannabe authors, who are essential grist to the vast mill of publishing, ensuring the salaries of book editors, agents and PR hacks everywhere.

Everyone wins, but some more than others. The biggest winner is, of course, the author himself, the new-found wunderkind of fiction. A splashy debut, however, comes with its own baggage: A rising star today is so often the one-hit wonder of tomorrow, when all that envy can find satisfaction in unrestrained Schadenfreude.

The history of literature is littered with examples of those who peaked far too early. Poor Joseph Heller was never able to recreate the magic of Catch-22, Jay McInernay is still trying much too hard to top Bright Lights, Big City, and Laura Weisberger has already exhausted her limited store of talent with The Devil Wears Prada. The Times’ Top 10 list of “Cursed Second Novels” includes some of the best-known names in fiction: Norman Mailer, Charlotte Bronte, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Irvine Welsh.

Others have escaped inclusion by either never attempting another full-length novel—J.D. Salinger, for example, limited himself to novellas and short stories in the wake of Catcher in the Rye—or by simply never writing again, as did Margaret Mitchell, Harper Lee, Emily Bronte and Arundhati Roy (though she recently announced her return to fiction, and is supposedly working on her second novel).

Performance anxiety is part and parcel of a writer’s life, as are the long odds against enduring success. What is new is the inordinate weight now given to a first novel; the splashy debut is now a requirement for a successful literary career. Authors RICK RYCROFT/AP no longer have the room to experiment—and sometimes fail—along the way to that work of staggering genius. Gone are the days when publishing houses would invest in no-name talent, offering the long-term security of a reasonably funded multi-book deal.

With publishing companies less concerned about literature than their balance sheet, most first-time novelists don’t get the nod unless their manuscript looks Following up: (above) Arundhati Roy recently like a sure winner. said she has begun working on her second And those who novel; and Joseph Heller could never recreate strike out on their the magic of his debut Catch­22.

AFP

Sumana Mukherjee

first attempt very rarely merit a second chance. Much as book editors obsess over discovering the next Salman Rushdie, the author whose first novel Grimus sank like a stone would be struggling to get Midnight’s Children published today.

Then there are the chosen few, an elite group of first-time authors anointed as potential geniuses and showered with gargantuan advances by the literary powers-that-be. Gautam Malkani, for example, received £380,000 (around Rs80 lakh) for Londonstani, which was over-hyped and then resoundingly panned by critics. As of last November, it had sold an underwhelming 15,000 copies.

The book has instead become a cautionary tale for industry insiders keen to avoid the “Londonstani effect” created by hyper-inflated advances and expectations.

Malkani luckily has a two-book deal and, therefore, one more shot at redeeming himself, a task now made all the weightier by this very public debacle.

Where great authors in the past were allowed to fail in obscurity, they are no longer afforded such luxury. The feast-or-famine approach to first novels does little service either to the authors or their work. In art, unlike commerce, it is more important to nurture talent than to market it.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

Write to Lakshmi at postscript@livemint.com

L16

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SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2009

Travel

LOUNGE

KANNAUJ

In Ozymandias land

What would Shelley have made of this sleepy town, where emperors ruled and the world came together?

B Y C HITRALEKHA B ASU ···························· he road we drove on was dark, the darkness clogging up the space in front like cobalt-coloured muck in an underground sewer. A half moon beamed through intermittently when the dense canopy of trees arching over the road from either side turned spare. We had left Ghaziabad early in the morning and were driving on terrain which felt like one was jumping on a trampoline. At 9.30pm, we decided to stop.

The next morning, a lost world unravelled itself as we stood near the Gaurishankar temple on the expansive plateau, a misty breeze from the Ganga—invisible from where we stood—rifling through my hair. This raised, slightly crinkly table, covered with wild and

T

TRIP PLANNER/KANNAUJ UTTAR PRADESH Kannauj

NEPAL

Lucknow Kanpur

Madhya Pradesh

New Delhi

INDIA

It makes sense to base yourself in Kanpur and drive down to Kannauj (80km north of Kanpur) for a day trip. Fly Air India to Kanpur from New Delhi (around Rs9,000 for round-trip economy fares) and hire a cab to Kannauj, 4-5 hours away.

A round-trip should cost around Rs7,000. The road is rough, so start early.

Stay

Eat

Do

If you are determined to stay the night at Kannauj, try the UP Tourism-run Rahi Paryatak Aabas Griha (056-94-234275; tariff, Rs400). The few other hotels are pretty rundown establishments.

Kanpur’s most favoured five-star accommodation is The Landmark (www.thehotellandmark.com; 0512-2305305) at The Mall. Standard double bedrooms cost Rs5,500 a night. Decent mid- to high-range hotels can be found around the Coca-Cola Crossing. These include Kanha Continental (0512-2557985/86/87), where the tariff ranges from Rs1,800-4,500.

For meals in Kannauj you will have to depend on roadside restaurants, which serve the standard north Indian vegetarian ‘thali’ meal, comprising tandoori or ‘tawa rotis’ with a vegetable and dal fry or stuffed parathas. A meal with two side dishes will cost Rs50-60. Try the yummy ‘jalebis’ and other sweets in Kannauj’s labyrinthine marketplace.

Visit the temples of Gourishankar and Devi Chimkoli, the mosque of Ibrahim Shah, Siddheshwar temple on the river bank, traditional-style perfumeries and the archaeological museum. To pick up locally-made ‘ittar’ in lovely cut-glass bottles lying inside boxes with gold inlay, scour the alleyways of Vijay Market.

GRAPHIC

BY

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

unrestricted growth, was actually made of bricks, the base of a city built 1,500 years ago. The remains of the brick fortification—part of a crenellated gate, a stubbly pillar base, a fragmented wall, a whole temple (spared miraculously, or probably rebuilt later)—appeared, a chilling reminder of the near-total annihilation of history.

The foundations of King Harshavardhan’s capital (he ruled from 606-647 AD) were perhaps laid earlier, around the time of Chandragupta Maurya II (circa 400 AD), or possibly 800 years earlier than that, when the Nanda dynasty of Magadh held sway. A thriving, bustling metropolis that found mention in the Hindu epics, it was touched by the spirit of the Buddha and finally became an alternative power centre to Delhi under Afghan rulers in the 16th century. Today, it is a sleepy small town caught in a time warp, still dreaming of its exalted moments in history.

“Harsha was a visionary,” says Suryashankar Sharma, a local perfume merchant who noticed us trying to get a fix on the town’s layout and adopted us immediately. “We talk of global peace summits, but this man organized his own G-8 centuries ago. Fa Hien wrote about it.”

“But Sharmaji, didn’t Fa Hien come here earlier, in the early fifth century?”

“Oh, maaf kijiye (forgive me), now I remember, it was Ptolemy.”

“Sharmaji, I believe it was Hiuen Tsang who visited the Sarva Dharma Sammelan held at Harshavardhan’s behest in 637 AD.” “Right you are. Hiuen Tsang said it would take 150 years to build such a magnificent city as Kannauj. It was good while it lasted and then Harsha himself, apprehending defeat at the hands of Mohammad Ghori, planted landmines and blew up his capi-

tal—preferring to destroy it rather than surrender.”

Sharmaji, who rather coyly let it slip that he was also a writer-editor, went about mixing history with fantasy, going back and forth with various events in the tale with practised ease, splicing characters separated by several centuries in the same frame, as if they rode full throttle on a time machine.

For, the razing of Kannauj probably happened much later, around 1539, when Afghan chieftain Sher Shah, having driven away Mughal emperor Humayun’s troops from the area, decided to leave his mark on the newly acquired territory.

The Gourishankar temple, where Harshavardhan would offer prayers every morning (I hope he did stop by a few times, for Sharmaji’s sake!), wears a fresh coat of paint—a repulsive shade of strawberry ice cream. A trickle of devotees troops in all day, ringing the temple bell continuously, filling the compound with ambient sound. A brokennosed marble bust of King Harshavardhan stands passively against a backdrop of a crude map of India, demarcating the area under his rule. A stone’s throw away is the temple of Chimkoli Devi, its courtyard paved with mosaic tiles. There is a cluster of stone tablets, coated with ketchup-red vermillion, almost obscuring the vague lines of the face and figure of the Devi carved on them. This, apparently, was princess Sanjukta’s favourite haunt (her father, King Jaichand, ruled the place in the late 12th century) until Prithviraj Chauhan swept her off her feet.

Not too far away, on an elevated red-stone platform, are two mausoleums. The first, constructed by Ibrahim Shah of Jaunpur in 1406, and the second, in

PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

CHITRALEKHA BASU

Confluence: Kannauj has been won and lost many times by overlords; and an idol in the archaeological museum.

memory of a local pir (Muslim saint), comparatively recently.

The two don’t look that much different from each other in terms of style and antiquity. The place looks like a hang-out for the local boys, coming as it does with a panoramic view of the town.

We almost miss the archaeological museum tucked away in a nondescript alley. We stand knocking on the door for 15 minutes till the curator at this oneman, two-room establishment returns from an errand and ushers us in. This is his lucky day (the last entry in the visitors book is nearly two months old) and he is determined to give us a guided tour of the premises, stepping sideways between rows of exhibits through a passage so narrow and constricted that we could easily have toppled or shattered something. Coins, pottery and metallic ornaments excavated from the ruins of one of India’s earliest civilizations are on display inside dusty glass cases. Too many sculptures have had their

heads bludgeoned. But it is still easy to identify the Sun god, says Mr Curator, as the god always wore a pair of sturdy, sensible shoes.

Fragrances in the city market come with no such pointers. “Hold on, the perfume’s not for applying,” says Mr Tiwari, the proprietor of one of the many ittar shops in the labyrinthine Vijay Market. He extends a dropper, asking me to lick its contents and hold it under the tongue.

About 2 minutes later, a cooling emollient glides down the throat, its aroma overwhelming the senses. This is ittar made from baked clay picked up from a local lake. The essence is extracted through a process of hydro-distillation in giant copper handis (vessels) in traditional perfumeries.

A city with at least two millennia of history behind it, Kannauj might appear no better than a dusty small town to one who is passing through. Like a fine piece of poetry, though, its appeal lies in its missing links, in being able to suggest rather than show and let the viewer conjure up the rest.

Chitralekha Basu works with The China Daily.

Write to lounge@livemint.com CHILD­FRIENDLY RATING

Much of Kannauj’s appeal lies in the imagination. Young children will want to give it a miss.

TRAVEL L17

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

FOOT NOTES | SUMANA MUKHERJEE

Southern sojourns Take advantage of fewer overseas bookings—hop on to a luxury train

DINODIA

V

alue for money—that’s the buzzword among potential travellers nowadays. The Karnataka State Tourism Development Corporation (KSTDC) has learnt this the hard way with the Golden Chariot train, its pet bait for foreigners and non-resident Indian tourists, which has seen a drop of up to 30% in bookings. Priced at Rs1.14 lakh for a week’s luxury trip through Karnataka and Goa, the train ran four full trips in December, but now only two trips are scheduled per month.

“The number of people coming from outside India has come down by 20% in comparison to last year,” says Vinay Luthra, managing director, KSTDC. “To keep the foreigners coming, it’s important to package southern states as one destination rather than stand-alone spots.” It’s something easily done, according to Sabina Chopra, co-founder, Yatra Online. “South India is a well-rounded destination with temples in Tamil Nadu, forests and heritage in Karnataka and the backwaters in Kerala.

Foreign tourists want to see

On board: (above) Fine dining on the Golden Chariot train; and the sun rises over one of the shore temples at Mahabalipuram. by air-conditioned cars. Price: Rs55,000 per person on twin-sharing basis. Contact Cosmovision Tours on 09899095777. u

the best of these three states in one trip,” she says.

Accordingly, KSTDC has decided to float a two-week tour that will cover Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Goa in October. The itinerary for this is yet to be released.

In the meantime, though, tour operators have already packaged locations in different southern states. We shortlist the most exciting:

u

The Golden Chariot tour

Bangalore-Mysore-Kabini-Bandipur-Mysore-Hassan-Shravanabelagola-Hospet-Hampi-HospetBadami-Goa-Bangalore is the present itinerary. Eight days-seven nights, including nights at the Leela Palace Kempinski in Bangalore and on board the Golden Chariot train for the rest of the journey. Price: Around Rs1.08 lakh for single occupancy and Rs78,400 per

head for double occupancy.

Visitwww.thegoldenchariot.co.in for details and bookings. u

The Best of South India

Chennai-Mahabalipuram-Puducherry-Thanjavur-MaduraiKanyakumari-Thiruvananthapuram-Kovalam-KumarakomThekkady-Munnar-Kochi.

Seventeen days-16 nights; accommodation and breakfast at standard or deluxe hotels at all

destinations. Air-conditioned cars for all transfers and sightseeing.

Price: Rs55,500 per person on a twin-sharing basis. Contact Travel Tours (www.traveltours.in) at 080-22287027/028. u

Forests and Hill Stations

Thiruvananthapuram-PeriyarAlleppey-Kochi-Ooty-BandipurMysore-Bangalore. Fourteen days-13 nights; accommodation at three-star properties and travel

DEBOLIN SEN

Pavitra Jayaraman

SAAD BIN JUNG

Jungle royals

H

is uncle still faces charges of poaching. His cousins have had their run-ins with the wildlife police as well. But Saad Bin Jung, nephew of Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi (and descendant of royalty from three different states, as he likes to point out), believes in integrating man and nature by enabling enlightened adventure tourism and ecotourism. After building up the Bush Betta wildlife adventure resort brand, his latest venture is The Bison, a luxury camp on the banks of the Kabini river overlooking the Bandipur and Nagarhole national parks.

Comprising seven double deluxe tents with four-poster beds and step-in baths, the camp has its reception, lounge and dining areas encased in mosquito mesh and raised on stilts to discourage the pesky variety of wildlife. The camp, says Jung, looks to turn the

Along the banks: A bison comes to drink at the Kabini river. clock back by 100 years. “The moment you do that, you return to the glory of the forest and the wildlife, cushioned by a level of service reminiscent of the Raj. Tranquillity, peace and wildlife are the three things people come to us for, but we don’t believe personal luxury needs to be divorced from any of this,” says Jung.

Long way up: Debolin Sen (extreme left) with fellow trekkers on the way to Everest Base Camp, a trip that led to the formation of 18 Days.

Bandipur-Nagarhole, like most other forest regions, witnesses many conflicts between man and animal, local and authoritative. “We believe in taking our guests to the heart of these conflicts,” says Jung.

“So people are welcome to take part in direct and indirect methods of conservation— patrol the nights, learn how to

Two for one

G

Miles to go

E

ighteen days of your life. That’s all advertising and marketing man-turned-travel pro Debolin Sen is asking from you. These 18 days, he promises, will resurrect the adventurer in jaded urbanites. In that time span last year, Sen trekked to Everest Base Camp, and it proved to be a life-changing experience for him: It gave him the impetus to set up his own adventure journeys outfit—appropriately called 18 Days—offering a bouquet of options that beckon the Himalayan traveller. “Take 18 days out and see what I have to offer,” he says, and that includes fixed-departure trips to the Suru, Zanskar and Kargil regions of Ladakh (in July; Rs35,000 per head, ex-Leh), Everest Base Camp (in October; Rs56,500 per head, ex-Kathmandu), Kanchenjunga Base Camp (in October, Rs31,000 per head, ex-Siliguri/Bagdogra), as also road trips to Bhutan and Kailash-Mansarovar (costs on request). All these trips—and more are in the offing—are conducted by experienced and established outdoors outfitters and customized for 18 Days.

“Safety was our prime focus when tying up with the service providers,” says Sen, a self-confessed “average Joe” who now introduces himself simply as a “high-altitude Himalayan trekker”. If you want to be one as well and want to shop for the trip that suits you and your skill-sets best (shorter trips are also available), log on to www.18days.in or call Sen at 09820087629.

Colours of South India

Chennai-MahabalipuramKanchipuram-Chennai-Madurai-Periyar-KumarakomAlleppey-Kochi-Ooty-MysoreHassan-Bangalore-Mumbai.

Seventeen days-16 nights; accommodation in three-star properties at all destinations, travel by air-conditioned cars.

Price: Rs65,000 per person on a twin-sharing basis. Contact Cosmovision Tours at 09899095777.

Fantasy land: Cinderella’s Castle lures visitors to Disneyland Resort.

iant mice, turreted castles and manufactured happiness might not be your idea of a perfect holiday, but you may change your mind when you see your children’s eyes light up in Hong Kong Disneyland.

Located on Lantau island, 20 minutes from the Hong Kong International Airport, the 310-acre resort has four theme parks and two hotels.

And now there’s more reason than ever to make a holiday of it: Guests with park tickets who stay at the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel or at Disney’s Hollywood Hotel are eligible for a “Stay and Play for 2 Days” offer till 30 September (as long as the first day is not a Special Day).

Essentially, this means you get to visit the park two days in a row for the face value of a one-day ticket. The ticket price will depend on your outlay for the

fight forest fires, study the conflicts, educate the locals.

Of course, they can go game-viewing, try a coracle ride, angle (though only outside national park limits), trek through the forests and camp around tribal villages, or even spend a day or two out on a bullock-cart safari.”

Built on inclusionary principles—all staff and service providers are local and guests are welcome to try their hand at management—the camp is best visited between May and August, and in the dry season, till February. Till June, expect superb game-viewing, especially elephants, gaurs, leopards, bears, wild dogs, deer, boars and tigers.

The website’s still under construction, but for bookings contact 080-41278708, 65590271 or call Shambu at 09901667519, or Swamy at 09008648714.

Expect to pay around Rs8,900 per night per tent under an introductory offer, inclusive of accommodation and all meals. first day. So, if the first day is a Regular Day, then only Regular Day prices will be charged even on a Peak Day. Stay and Play tickets can be booked via hotel reservations through the Hong Kong Disneyland reservation centre, or at the respective front desks on checking in or the day of visiting the park. For more details, visit www.hongkongdisneyland.com or call 00852-1-830-800.

If you’re headed to the US, though, a summer offer at Disneyland Resort, California, extends your three-night vacation package to five nights, throwing in two free nights. This includes both accommodation and admission to the theme park. Bookings need to be made by 11 August, and must be availed of starting 26 September, latest. For more details and bookings, log on to Disneyland.disney.go.com Write to lounge@livemint.com

L18 FLAVOURS

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

WHAT’S COOKING | KV SRIDHAR

TRAVELLING TIFFIN

MARRYAM H RESHII

His master’s spice PHOTOGRAPHS

SWEET TRUTHS BY

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

For this ad man and Andhra food lover, a good day begins and ends with chillies

B Y R ACHANA N AKRA rachana.n@livemint.com

···························· t’s the first time I am meeting K.V. Sridhar, and I have been reduced to tears. “See, not spicy at all,” he says, coming out of the kitchen as my eyes and nose water and I gulp down a glass of water. He is referring to the fried red chillies that lose their pungency to a large extent after being alternately soaked in curd and dried several times over.

But that surely applies only to Andhra taste buds used to a regular diet of fried chillies as a side dish, red chillies in the main dishes that are garnished with green chillies and eaten with red chilli and mustard pickle.

“Chillies are the beginning and end of everything in Andhra food,” says Sridhar, national creative director, Leo Burnett, as we enter his kitchen to prepare some Andhra delicacies made with kairi, or raw mangoes, now in season. In fact, a mix of chilli pickle with rice is a personal breakfast favourite.

Sridhar loves to eat and likes to cook for his family on weekends. His favourite, of course, is Andhra cuisine.

Sridhar is a vegetarian who hates salads—“make me feel like a cow”—and mushrooms and avoids certain other foods because he is diabetic. When he travels to exotic locales around the world for advertising festivals and meetings, he boils ready-to-eat packets of MTR sambhar rice or pongal in the hotel room kettle. “I carry a small pressure cooker and frying pan along with masalas and rice,” he laughs.

The maid has set out the ingredients and left and now Pops, as he’s fondly called, is the king of his kitchen. The first dish he’s making is Mamikkaya Pappu, or raw mango dal. He pours oil in a small saucepan for the seasoning—something he does for all the three dishes he prepares—and soon the kitchen fills with the smells and sounds of chillies frying and mustard seeds popping.

Growing up in Andhra Pradesh, Sridhar recalls, he “hated to eat”. Later, as a chain smoker going through 80 cigarettes a day, his sense of taste and smell went numb. “While travelling abroad, lunch was beer and dinner was rum with coke,” he laughs.

But after he was diagnosed as a diabetic six years ago, cigarettes and alcohol made way for an actual diet and love for good food—“now that I had no other passion or debauchery left,” he says. Having grown up helping his mother in the kitchen, he always knew his way around it (he says she brainwashed him into it, telling him that cooking was an art and science and since he had an aptitude for both, he would make a great cook).

I

All rice: (from top) Sridhar says he can make around 300 Andhra­style rice preparations; the coconut and raw mango chutney can be eaten with rice; Mamidikaya Pulihora is the Andhra version of Chennai’s tamarind rice.

B

lack pepper in an ice cream? Anywhere else in the habitable world, it may sound outrageous. In Gujarat, it is but one of the eye-popping ingredients in one of the many brands of ice cream that the state is famous for.

Try and part the denizens of Gujarat from their ice cream, and you’ll have a riot on your hands. They love their sweets, so much so that every katori (bowl) in a thali (plate) has varying amounts of sweetness in it. It is possible, however, to feed them pasta, pizzas and vegetarian burgers with zero trace of sugar, if there’s going to be ice cream to round it all off.

Ice cream is one of the state’s most overriding obsessions. The other one is mukhwas (mouth fresheners), in a sense the effective antidote to ice cream. But ice cream occupies mind space in Gujarat that you won’t encounter elsewhere in the country. I wondered why, as my host, the genial Hetal Dave, deftly navigated his Merc into the space that three smaller cars had been eyeing, discussing all the while the relative merits of Vadilal versus Havmor, two of the most high-profile brands of ice cream in the state.

It wasn’t difficult to make the connection between ice cream and the raw product, milk, for which cooperatives such as Amul are famous. It was even easier to join the dots between ice cream and the local love for sweets, and faster yet to make the connection between the eclectic taste of the average Ahmedabadi and the astonishing range of ice creams that were on offer in the city.

Each member of the Dave family had their favourites. They ranged from lychee ice cream and cookie cream to rajbhog and the curiously named dry fruit katri. As swapping ice creams was part of the fun, I got to taste a surprising variety in my four days in Ahmedabad. The lychee ice cream really did have large chunks of the fruit in it; the rajbhog ice cream was a fusion of the two desserts, the dry fruit katri was studded with industrial quantities of crisp almonds, pistachios and hazelnuts. Even the cookie cream appeared to have been made by the simple expedient of coarsely bruising cookies and lowering them into a base of ice cream, so that the cookie bits were large enough to be both crisp and satisfying.

If we get the politicians we deserve, how much more true is it of ice cream! My friend, chef Daniel Koshy of the Taj, Ahmedabad, told me that ice cream companies in Gujarat had but two overriding concerns: One was to give the product an upmarket appeal, mostly by not stinting on the quality and quantity of nuts and dry fruits; the other was to dream up something completely new and never seen or done before. The Taj itself has little in the way of local food on its menus, but ice-cream counters are, apparently de rigueur at every banquet function in the hotel.

Scoop­erb: Creativity is important to ice­cream making in Gujarat.

Ice cream “Cooking made me realize the pains my mother used to take to prepare those meals,” he says.

Now he cooks on weekends, giving his wife, who is also an expert in Andhra food, a break.

“So how spicy do you want it?” he asks. “As spicy as you usually make it,” I say. “Are you sure?” he looks at me doubtfully. Later, gulping water at the dinner table, I couldn’t say I hadn’t been warned.

Mamidikaya Pulihora, or the Andhra version of Chennai’s tamarind rice, uses raw mango pulp instead of tamarind for the sour touch. “People don’t know much about Andhra food.

Hyderabadi cuisine is Nizami food, which is very different. I can make about 300 preparations of rice the Andhra way,” he says.

He first adds seasoning to the rice, then the mango pulp and then mixes everything with his fingers. The rice is hot out of the pressure cooker but that doesn’t seem to bother him at all.

Sridhar then proceeds to wash his hands. “I cannot touch anything else after I’ve touched rice,” he says, explaining one of his mother’s kitchen superstitions. Nor can he taste the food being served to guests. “It becomes jhootha, my mother would say.”

He needn’t have worried; the salt is just right, as is the chilli.

Sridhar suggests adding ghee to the rice and ending the meal

with lots of curd to settle the stomach. “What you just ate was grade 5, the highest on the scale of hot food,” he says.

Burning tummy and vapourizing palate notwithstanding, it was the best home-made meal I’d had in a long time.

and cut 1 tsp salt 1K tsp chilli powder

Mamidikaya Pulihora (Raw Mango Rice)

Method Cook the raw mango pieces in water to which salt, chilli powder and some curry leaves have been added, till soft. For seasoning, heat the oil, add all the ingredients and fry quickly.

Now add water and mango pulp to the dal and cook till it becomes thick. Garnish with green chillies and coriander.

Serves 2 Ingredients 100g rice K grated raw mango K tsp salt Seasoning 4 tsp oil 4 dry red chillies 1 tsp chana dal (Bengal gram), mustard seeds and hing (asafoetida) powder ½ tsp urad dal (skinned black gram) 6 curry leaves Method Cook the rice till it’s al dente.

Add the raw mango, the seasoning and salt to it and mix.

Mamikkaya Pappu (Raw Mango Dal) Serves 2 Ingredients 100g cooked toor dal (split pigeonpea) 1 small raw mango, peeled

Seasoning Same as for Mamidikaya Pulihora, except halve the quantities of both dals.

The easiest recipe for idiot-proof, fail-safe ice cream that has a dense kulfi-like texture comes from an NRI friend who lives in South-East Asia and makes this for the army of family and friends that descend on her house regularly.

Ingredients 1 can of condensed milk Single cream 1 can of evaporated milk (The only trick is to ensure that each of the three key ingredients weigh the same, so if you have bought a can of condensed milk that weighs 250g, make sure that the other two ingredients weigh the same.)

Method Mix the ingredients together and freeze. You can vary the flavour by adding chopped pistachio nuts, a pounded cardamom pod, or a few strands of saffron that have been soaked in a teaspoon of warm milk for 10 minutes. No cooking required.

Write to Marryam at travellingtiffin@livemint.com

Raw Mango and Coconut Chutney

www.livemint.com

Ingredients K coconut, grated K raw mango, grated

Every Monday, catch Cooking With Lounge, a show with video recipes from well­known chefs, at www.livemint.com/cookingwithlounge

Seasoning 4 tsp oil 4 dry red chillies 2 green chillies K tsp urad dal 1 tsp chana dal K tsp hing powder Method Fry the ingredients for seasoning in the oil. Grind them along with the coconut and mango. Garnish with fried mustard seeds and two fried chillies.

Burmese Chicken Curry

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