Lounge for 05 Nov 2011

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

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Saturday, November 5, 2011

Vol. 5 No. 45

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

Tintin, played by Jamie Bell, and Captain Haddock, played by Andy Serkis, in The Adventures of Tin­ tin: The Secret of the Unicorn, which releases in India on 11 November.

DORK IN DARK TIMES >Pages 6­7

THE TELANGANA TEMPERING

It’s the dusty, arid region that lends ‘Hyderabadi khana’ its searing intensity >Page 5

PEACE IN WATER WORLD

In the middle of the South Pacific, it’s all about gazing at corals, lazing in hammocks and sipping ‘kava’ >Page 14

Steven Spielberg’s mega project dulls the comic icon while promising to expand his legacy. But there was never a dearth of Tintin fans in India.

In the age of violent, edgy superheroes, what’s the appeal of Hergé’s intrepid reporter? >Pages 10­12 LUXURY CULT

THE GOOD LIFE

RADHA CHADHA

DEAD CELLS AND THE DEAD SEA

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leopatra did it and now it is my turn. I am in Jordan, floating in the Dead Sea, which I am told is the ultimate beauty treatment for your skin. It is surreal—the Dead Sea is pretty dead—no waves lapping up to the shore, just a huge expanse of very dense water sitting quietly, surrounded by what I can only describe as lunar landscape, stark, barren, craggy, strangely undulating. Think of a crater on the moon, fill it up with very salty water, and that’s what the Dead Sea looks like. >Page 4

PIECE OF CAKE

SHOBA NARAYAN

PAMELA TIMMS

OH MY GOD, I RODE THE LIGHTNING

A fangirl’s account of the Metallica concert reiterates why Bangalore is India’s rock capital >Page 18

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

ART & ARTICULATION MELLOW DON’T GO TOGETHER FRUITFULNESS

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have a trick question for Pratiti Basu Sarkar, who runs the Centre of International Modern Art (Cima) in Kolkata. It’s a fair question but there really is no good answer—or so I think. I find Sarkar through a chain of friends, and phone her with a request: Could she introduce me to some artists who are emblematic of Kolkata?

Sarkar names two from Cima’s roster. She arranges for me to meet them at her gallery.

Here’s my trick question: Why did she pick these two out of the dozens of artists... >Page 4

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oday’s dessert really needs no preamble, and not just because the recipe itself takes up most of the space. To see (and to taste) this Toffee Apple Walnut Cheesecake Tart is to love it. But as the Diwali fireworks fade like a retreating army, the nights turn nippy and our food thoughts turn to comfort and warmth, it would be remiss of me not to point out that the flavours of today’s recipe simply scream rustling leaves and woolly hats. That the walnut-laced pastry shouts autumn... > Page 5

PHOTO ESSAY

TO CARTERPURI

HOME PAGE L3

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

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

PREVIEW

Gathering of the Do­arists JAVIER SALCEDO RICO

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (EXECUTIVE EDITOR)

ANIL PADMANABHAN TAMAL BANDYOPADHYAY NABEEL MOHIDEEN MANAS CHAKRAVARTY MONIKA HALAN SHUCHI BANSAL SIDIN VADUKUT JASBIR LADI ©2011 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved

transgender) and women.

You can register at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011/Registration. The cost is `1,550, plus `50 processing fee for individuals. The venue is Mumbai University. Registration will be open till the available 700 seats are filled.

Tired of all the talking? Hear about change from those who have made a difference

TEDxGateway Mumbai, 27 November

B Y G AYATRI J AYARAMAN gayatri.j@livemint.com

································ here are those who talk, and those who do. And thankfully, then, those who do and then talk about what they do. The festival season has just begun, with some powerful thinkers debating everything from medicine to film. There are some usual suspects, duplications and out-of-the-box invitees.

Wordsmith: Germaine Greer will speak at The Alchemist Hay Festival.

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north Goa. For schedules, visit www.goathinkfest.com

The Alchemist Hay Festival Thiruvananthapuram, 17­19 November Politician Shashi Tharoor will be here too! For this multilingual poetry and culture fest’s second year in India come poets in Spanish, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Welsh, Icelandic and English, as well as Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans and biographer of Mao Zedong, and Germaine Greer, who will speak on Shakespeare’s lovers.

The venue will be the stunning Kanakakunnu Palace in Thiruvananthapuram. Last year, Sting ended the fest, jamming with Bob Geldof, so Hay is definitely one to watch out for.

Delegate passes of `2,500 (which will buy you lunches and dinners with the invitees) are available at the venue.

There is no charge for attending the fest.

For details, visit http://www.hayfestival.com/kerala/

Tehelka THINK Bambolim, Goa, till 6 November “Any thriving democracy is nurtured by ideas, and we needed to create a space to take ideas beyond the everyday debates of cricket and Bollywood,” says Shoma Chaudhury, managing editor, Tehelka magazine. The thought behind the THINK fest ensures anyone above the age of 18 can attend for free; it seeks to draw the world to India as an ideation destination, and creates a cocoon of Goa’s susegad, which sets the tone for the fest. The flavour of the month definitely seems to be Siddhartha Mukherjee, writer of The Emperor of All Maladies (who will also make an appearance at Literature Live! also on till 6 November at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, or NCPA, in Mumbai). The highlights at THINK are Nobel Peace Prizewinner Leymah Gbowee, architect Frank Gehry, Sherbanoo Taseer, daughter of slain Pakistani governor Salman Taseer, and Chinese blogger Hu Shuli. There will also be the Bollywood triad of actor Aamir Khan, wife Kiran Rao and nephew Imran Khan, and an interesting artists’ corner where you can watch artists such as Yusuf Arakkal paint canvases. THINK is being held at the Grand Hyatt Goa, Bambolim,

WikiConference India Mumbai, 18­20 November WikiConference India is a wonderland for new technology geeks. It will feature sessions on integration of OpenStreetMaps, crowd sourcing, operating Ajax and Jquery systems, and on incorporating Wiki’s research abilities in Marathi, Telugu and other Indian languages. It will also address issues relating to gender, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and

inbox

Write to us at lounge@livemint.com BITTER TASTE I greatly enjoyed reading the wine stories, both on Bordeaux (“The Bordeaux basics”, 29 October) and the status of the Indian wine industry (“Heard it on the grapevine”, 29 October). We only hear of the “sparkle”, as you call it, but never of the ugly backstories. The Maharashtra government has been blowing its trumpet about a success story that seems unfounded.

KANAK

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

Saturday, October 29, 2011

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

Close Close to to 500 500 labels labels are are registered registered with with the the All All India India Wine Wine Producers Producers Association.

Association.

SHOESHINE >Page 6

THE AGE OF KAEL

A new anthology and a biography of Pauline Kael reassess her influence on film criticism >Page 12

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

IT’S THE TERROIR Apropos Anindita Ghose’s cover story “Heard it on the grapevine”, 29 October, wine making and wine drinking tend to be deeply embedded in the history, heritage and culture of a country. It’s there in European nations, large and small. It’s not an intrinsic part of Indian culture and it’s not going to become an intrinsic part overnight.

Indian lovers of alcohol are more into hard drinks such as whisky and rum. Does wine go well with Indian food? Wine is a perfect accompaniment to the otherwise bland European dishes. Indian food is full of spices and not at all bland.

SACHI

BILLED TO FAIL Aakar Patel’s “Why the honour killing Bill won’t work”, 29 October, was, once again, mesmerizing: clear in its logic and direct in its delivery to the reader. I subscribe to ‘Mint’ for one reason only—Patel’s column. No one else I have read is able to take a scimitar to a subject as incisively as Patel. My guess is that this time, for a change, he will receive more kudos than brickbats as the average ‘Mint’ reader is not of the “honour killing” persuasion.

ANANDA

FIGHT BACK Apropos Priya Ramani’s edit “A girl’s guide to public speaking”, 29 October, as the father of two girls, violence against women is a matter close to my heart. As many neighbourhoods fought against drug dealers, one block at a time, we can take back our streets too, one street at a time. Of course, the optimism that

Vol. 5 No. 44

The editor of ‘National Geographic’ on travelling and photographing the untamed >Pages 14­15

The great Indian wine boom was short­lived. Ten years after the green flag, the Indian wine industry is still looking for that sparkle >Pages 9­11

REPLY TO ALL

OPERA AROUND THE CORNER

We revisit the Royal Opera House under restoration. Can it again become a usable cultural space in Mumbai? >Pages 17­18

THE GOOD LIFE

AAKAR PATEL

CULT FICTION

SHOBA NARAYAN

R. SUKUMAR

WILL THE HONOUR HOW TO LISTEN KILLING BILL WORK? TO A GUEST

MAGIC (COMIC) REALISM

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he Congress government has drafted a Bill against honour killing. It is called “The Prevention of Crimes in the Name of ‘Honour’ and Tradition Bill”. Strangely, all the acts which find mention in this Bill—murder, coercion, abetting murder—are already punishable. What is new is that soon we will be prosecuting people specifically for doing honour killing. Will it work? No. It will in fact promote honour killing. Let us see why. On 10 July 2010, Surat’s Pooja Rathod, 21, was killed... >Page 4

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t was 12.45 when I walked into the new Leela in Delhi to check in. I had scheduled a business lunch at the hotel’s Qube restaurant at 1pm and was worried I’d be late.

All I wanted to do was go to my room, drop my bag, wash my face and get to the restaurant in 10 minutes. I said as much to the smiling young lady who came to greet me. “Sure, ma’am.

Please sit down and make yourself comfortable. I’ll get the check-in form.”

Minutes ticked by. >Page 5

2, 21, 28, 41, 11, 33, 38, 47, 76. Brás de Oliva Domingos, an obituary writer, dies nine times, at different ages (mentioned above) in Daytripper, a book that’s a bit about life and a lot about death (but not in a morbid way), written and illustrated by Brazilian twins Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá. Between his deaths, he manages to live, love, realize his lifelong ambition of emulating his father Benedito, a famous writer, and becomes a good friend/husband/father. >Page 13

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

PHOTO ESSAY

THE TWITTER PEOPLE

we can do it is as critical as dealing with the misanthropes and misogynists in our midst.

Yes, it will be daunting, and at times we will feel dispirited, but pigheadedness helps. Let’s keep on fighting!

K SRIKRISHNA

A DAUGHTER’S LOVE As I read Natasha Badhwar’s “Tomorrow is here”, 29 October, it is snowing in New York. As I look out of my living room window, I’m reminded of those December nights when I had to drive through billowing snow to take first my daughter and then my son to the hospital to be cared for by our family paediatrician. Both my children were “preemies”, fragile, tender 4lbs­plus (around 1.8kg) babies who taught me what it means to love and care for a newborn unconditionally. I always say that I’m so blessed to have had a girl child first to be taught exactly what loving a girl child is supposed to mean. Of course, your boys deserve and should get the same kind of unconditional love, and mine do. I’m so glad not to be part of a culture that worships sons over daughters.

EDGAR W HOPPER

TEDx’s day-long Gateway, a think fest advised by Sangita Jindal, Ralph Simon (father of the ringtone), Anant Rangaswami (editor at Firstpost.com, a digital newsroom) and music mogul Seymour Stein, has compellingly interesting speakers, such as Suneet Singh Tuli, creator of the $35 (around `1,715) tablet “Aakash”, Shabnam Virmani, who runs the Kabir Project, Anu Sridharan, who works in water purification technologies, and Kranthi Kiran Vistakula, founder of the Litre of Light movement. Yashraj Akashi, curator, TEDxGateway, explains that those wanting to attend will be screened based on submitted essays. Only 150 fellows will be selected. The venue is Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, NCPA, Mumbai. TEDx is a part of the nonprofit organization TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design). For registrations, visit www.tedxgateway/ticketing till 15 November. Passes cost `2,100.

To apply for a TEDx sponsorship, visit www.tedxgateway/attend.aspx

INK Jaipur, 8­11 December The posher version of the fests is the INK Conference 2011, in association with TED, from 8-11 December at the Jaipur Marriott Hotel. Themed “Power of the Journey”, it includes an impressive line-up of speakers from the first female space tourist Anousheh Ansari to oceanographer David Gallo, music conductor Italy Talgam and perfumer Yann Vasnier. You can register (it also has a screening process) till 20 November. The fee is `1 lakh for Indians. To register, visit http://www.inktalks.com

WINNERS OF THE DIWALI WIN WIN CONTEST 2011 Canali silk tie and pocket scarf: Ashutosh Pradhan, Mumbai Good Earth Scotch glasses and coasters: Tanmay Varshney, Noida Sony Ericsson cellphone: George Chacko, Bangalore Paul Smith money clip: Kamal Nayan, Kolkata Sennheiser headphones: Chitra Tunk, Chennai Philips media player: Rajeev Pathak, Ahmedabad Fabindia organic products: Krupali Gaynar, New Delhi Zaza Home wall clock: Amit Bhatia, Delhi Apartment9 gift voucher: Mitchelle Desilva, Mumbai Titan watch: Nivedita Ganapathy, Bangalore Patchi chocolates: D.N. Saksena, Gurgaon Microsoft touch mouse: Sajeev Vallat, Chennai William Penn money clip: Amar Chaphekar, Ahmedabad Episode bowls: Mohan Murali, Bangalore Address Home champagne flutes: Vivan Marwah, New Delhi L’Occitane soap, gel and cream: Anitha Kumari, Hyderabad

L4 COLUMNS

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SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

Art and articulation often don’t go together

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

have a trick question for Pratiti Basu Sarkar, who runs the Centre of International Modern Art (Cima) in Kolkata. It’s a fair question but there really is no good answer—or so I think. I find Sarkar through a chain of friends, and phone her with a request:

Could she introduce me to some artists who are emblematic of Kolkata? Sarkar names two from Cima’s roster. She arranges for me to meet them at her gallery. Here’s my trick question: Why did she pick these two out of the dozens of artists that Cima represents? She can’t say that she likes them. It would upset the others in her stable. If she says that she chose them because they are gaining ground in the art world, I will suspect commercial motives and discount her picks. You see why I think this is a question with no good answer.

Sarkar greets me at her gallery wearing a white linen shirt, trousers and a dupatta.

Beside her stands a smiling woman with kindly eyes. She looks like my childhood image of Enid Blyton, but is, in fact, Sarkar’s sister, Rakhi. Artists Shreyasi Chatterjee and Sumitro Basak walk in.

Their work is part of a group show in Norway at the Trondheim Kunstmuseum.

Basak tells me he was in Bangalore, doing a residency at the 1.Shanthiroad gallery.

We adjourn to the lounge for a chat.

Sarkar sends in masala dosa and dhokla.

Basak shows me photographs that he took in Bangalore. The dramatic, colourful images of my hometown look like his paintings. I am more impressed by his three-dimensional books. They are vibrant, playful and thoughtful—like the best children’s books.

Chatterjee stitches on canvas—a more original take on kantha embroidery. She teaches art history at a local university, and was the subject of a French photographer. The vertical storytelling in her large canvases reminds me of Chinese watercolours—they make the eye move upward.

I ask the usual questions—what inspires them, how do they work—and receive uninspiring answers. We try to find common ground. Chatterjee and Basak talk shop and exchange notes on Charles Wallace grants.

Sarkar joins us after an hour. I spring my question on her, right in front of the two artists. Why did she recommend them, out of all the artists that Cima represents?

Basak and Chatterjee are all ears too.

There is silence. “Mainly because they are articulate,” says Sarkar after a moment. It is a brave answer because it does not pander to the two artists sitting with us. “One of the challenges that faces a lot of artists, particularly in Bengal, is that they cannot articulate about their work in English.”

She tells me about a poor, self-taught artist called Shakeela, who is represented

by Cima. Shakeela works in paper collages and later I see her work in the back room. “But she simply cannot talk about her work,” says Sarkar.

Do artists need to talk about their work?

“Yes, the world now knows that there is such a thing as Indian contemporary art but I don’t think they are convinced by it,” Sarkar continues. “The main buyers are still buying our ancient art. Except for a small handful of mainstream, foreign art collectors, contemporary Indian art is mostly being acquired by NRIs. Because what a lot of the contemporary artists are doing in India now has been done in the West 30, 40, 50 years ago. It is not new. It is what the West wants to see of India—the kitsch, the colour, the street scenes, the exoticism. To me, that is untruthful and insincere.”

A stinging critique stated in a soft voice. I turn to look at the artists sitting with us but they don’t seem offended by it.

Chatterjee asks Sarkar to repeat the three things emblematic of Indian art and Sarkar obliges: Rarity: Husain was both articulate and worldly. kitsch, colour, exotic street scenes.

Isn’t it enough that the work speaks for What do we art lovers expect from our itself? Years ago, I lost a master’s of fine artists? Do we want them to be worldly arts degree trying to prove this point—my and articulate like the late M.F. Husain or professors failed me when I couldn’t reclusive and free from market influences, articulate what my sculpture installation like the late Tyeb Mehta or Biren De? was about—so I have strong views on this Should artists engage with the market or subject. We all do. Basak and Chatterjee be removed from it? talk about how “cumbersome” it is to Sarkar believes that artists ought to write pages of fellowship applications. engage with the real world but not the “You have to prove what you are doing market. She believes they should study like a lawyer,” says Basak. philosophy, read books, form “I think the auction houses and the communities. “There is a correlation market have been very detrimental between artists who read and the influences on Indian art,” Sarkar says. I thoughtfulness of their work. Artists today wonder if I should tell Sarkar that the come to openings to figure out not content person who pointed me to her was but technique… They have become too Maithili Parekh, director and country head involved in the wheeling-dealing. In the of Sotheby’s India.

West, the galleries do that for you.”

Artists, of course, believe that the galleries don’t do nearly enough. I tell Sarkar about a Delhi art couple who attend openings, parties and deal with media. They complain that it is boring to repeat the same things about their art; but see it as necessary.

“Oh, come on,” Sarkar scoffs. “There is such a word as ‘No’.”

“Yes, but artists are afraid to use this word,” says Basak softly.

Are there any successful artists who are reclusive, I ask.

They all think for a minute and come up with one name: Ganesh Pyne. Need to check him out.

The difficult truth is that the world views artists like we Indians view women. They are the repositories of our integrity and emblems of our better selves. We hold artists to higher standards because they are engaged in what we believe is a profound pursuit. As Sarkar says, “If art is about anything, it is about a truth. Somewhere in that work, there has to be a truth. It’s why we read literature: to find a truth.”

Sarkar is a romantic. The more interesting question is, why is she engaged with the market? When I was an art student, Leonard DeLonga, my sculpture professor who I revered, told me I had to “hustle” to sell my work. The question for Cima’s artists is: Do you want a romantic or a hustler to represent your work?

Shoba Narayan thanks Cima for a wonderful lunch but is compelled to inform them that south Indians don’t put carrots in their masala dosa. Thanks, though.

Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shoba­narayan

RADHA CHADHA LUXURY CULT THINKSTOCK

Dead cells and the Dead Sea

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leopatra did it and now it is my turn. I am in Jordan, floating in the Dead Sea, which I am told is the ultimate beauty treatment for your skin. It is surreal—the Dead Sea is pretty dead—no waves lapping up to the

shore, just a huge expanse of very dense water sitting quietly, surrounded by what I can only describe as lunar landscape, stark, barren, craggy, strangely undulating. Think of a crater on the moon, fill it up with very salty water, and that’s what the Dead Sea looks like. It is the lowest point on earth—some 400m below sea level—and as I bob effortlessly, there’s a sense of immense stillness, as if I have hit the pause button on my life. I feel a sense of history, of Jesus who was baptized just 10km from here, of Moses whose final stop was Mt Nebo just 30km to the east, and I can’t help wondering if these men found time to come down for a little soak in these same waters. Cleopatra certainly did, apparently setting up the first personal spa on its shores, using the area’s rich natural resources to pretty up.

In fact, the natural resources are packed in so generously that the area functions like one big open-air spa. The sea has 21 kinds of salts, 11 more than any other sea, and that’s what gives the water that therapeutic edge. The salts come in intense concentration—30% salinity, nine times more than other seas—and of course, it is this super-high salt content that gives it that magical buoyancy. The mud from the Dead Sea

too has healing properties—cake it on your body and it is believed to suck out all the toxins from your skin. The air is supposed to be high on oxygen, with a good dose of ozone thrown in. Locals say that the sunlight here is devoid of harmful ultra-violet rays. What more can you ask for—even one of the hoity-toity high-end spas would find it hard to lay out such a power-packed wellness treat.

I figured this was my chance to finally get that glowing skin I have hankered after all my life, that too for free. I started with a 20-minute float-about in the sea. It is a bit scary because you can’t really swim in this water, the sea stretches out forever and without doing a thing I found I had floated out some distance from the shore. Then I got the hang of navigating around and was soon sitting, yes sitting, comfortably, legs bent, chest up, using the sea like an imaginary chair tilting back at 45 degrees. I was happily soaking in the goodness when it suddenly occurred to me that my face was totally dry—it wasn’t getting the benefit of the nutrient-loaded Dead Sea water—so I promptly patted some on. Big mistake, my eyes were stinging like crazy, and I had to get out in a hurry.

Next came the mud massage, utterly wonderful, lying flat on the beach while

one of the hotel staff rubbed you top to bottom—face included, leaving goggle-shaped holes for the eyes—with fresh mud from the Dead Sea. It’s slimy, it’s smelly, it’s pitch black, and you look like an idiot with it on, but with the prize of instant skin nirvana within reach, I happily submitted. Then I lay in the sun to dry it up, and watched in horror as the skin shrivelled up and looked like an elephant’s with charcoal grey wrinkles and folds. Have faith, I said to myself, this is Cleopatra-tested stuff, as I went back into the Dead Sea to wash it off, trying to keep my balance in the over-buoyant water while scrubbing the over-sticky goo from all over the body. The skin didn’t feel that good either—dry, thirsty, uncomfortable.

Cleopatra obviously was made of sterner stuff—and she must have had an army of slave girls rubbing her down with more secret potions—as for me, I had abandoned all notions of a glowing skin and was hankering instead for the luxuries of a modern hoity-toity high-end spa. Fortunately the Anantara Spa (at the Kempinski Hotel) was a short buggy-ride away, and I heaved a sigh of relief as I got out of my stinking swimsuit, showered, and slipped into one of their crisp clean robes. I wasn’t done with the Dead Sea though—I was pre-booked into a Dead Sea Salt scrub—but this time it was different. I lay face down on a massage table, soothing music flowing in, while Su, the expert Thai masseuse, scrubbed a pleasant-smelling, salt-rich secret potion into limb after limb, hopefully scraping away all the dead cells, while I relaxed and dozed off. I showered off the salt and was back on the massage table for a round of moisturizing massage.

Cleopatra’s secret: The Egyptian empress treated the Dead Sea as a giant spa.

“Skin feel like a baby?” Su asked expectantly, as she settled me down with a cup of ginger tea. I stroked my arm and smiled. It sure did. The Dead Sea had finally worked its magic. Just had to be repackaged for modern-day Cleopatras who need air conditioning and all the comforts of a luxury spa.

Radha Chadha is one of Asia’s leading marketing and consumer insight experts.

She is the author of the best-selling book The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia’s Love Affair with Luxury.

Write to Radha at luxurycult@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Radha’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/radha­chadha

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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2011

L5

Eat/Drink

LOUNGE CUISINE

The Telangana tempering It’s the dusty, arid region that lends ‘Hyderabadi khana’ its searing intensity

ADITYA MOPUR/MINT

water perked up with cumin, coriander, mustard and chillies as a delicious salve in the hot summer months. But the slightest of tweaks, such as a sprinkling of sesame seeds or a pinch of jaggery, gives it a refreshingly different flavour in Telangana homes.

Mutton Dalcha Serves 10 B Y A PARNA A LLURI ···························· yderabad has long been famous for its versions of rich pilafs and slowcooked stews of meat. While much of the credit goes to a medley of Muslim kitchens of varied provenance, from Iran to Delhi, a source closer home is often unacknowledged. The city, after all, lies at the heart of Telangana, which has lent its distinct flavour to Hyderabadi khana. The searing chillies, the tart tamarind, the piquant mustard seeds are unmistakable in many original recipes—such as dalcha, a spicy soup of lamb and lentils, tomato kut, a purée laced with garlic, or mirchi ka salan, a pickle of green chillies and peanuts.

In 1956, the fertile coastal plains watered by the Krishna and Godavari rivers were merged with the parched plateau regions of Telangana and Rayalaseema. And Hyderabad, the erstwhile home of the lavish Asaf Jahi court, became the capital of a largely Teluguspeaking state. Ambitious, enterprising or merely curious, families arrived from the coastal districts and from drought-prone Rayalaseema. These “settlers”, as they are now known, have been accused of wresting the region’s resources and, most of all, its identity. Smarting from decades of ridicule, Telangana’s supporters say Hyderabad belongs to them. As political parties quarrel over the city’s fate, Telangana’s obscure yet delicious recipes may be a great guide to its recent thorny past.

In the memorable A Taste of India, Madhur Jaffrey wrote: “India hides its real food in millions of private homes, both rich and poor.” So the best way to go in search of it is to visit house-

H

hold chefs, humble cooks and those women who are willing to part with their cooking secrets.

The lumpy, green bitter gourd is a popular vegetable in south India.

In some parts of Andhra Pradesh, it’s cooked with jaggery to sweeten the flavour. In other parts, it’s deep-fried with groundnuts to dispel its strong taste. Adabala Lakshmi says a common Telangana way is to boil slices of the gourd with tamarind and turmeric before frying it brown.

“It’s oily but that’s why it’s so tasty,” she says.

Lakshmi arrived in Hyderabad 40 years ago to work for a Telangana family. She learnt her trade from older cooks—pounding doughs of sorghum into slim, round breads, simmering chicken, dum-style, over hot coals, and crafting delicately layered sweets stuffed with sesame and jaggery. “I learnt how to cook adavi pandi koora (wild boar curry). It’s still my speciality,” she says proudly.

Telangana hasn’t been immune to six centuries of Muslim rule. The result is a meld of flavours—flaky breads, fiery powders and aromatic, pungent curries with a generous dose of meaty fare. Raita, which usually accompanies biryani, is similar to the spicy yogurt chutneys of Telangana—snake gourd (parwal) or bottle gourd (louki) drenched in a tangy dip of yogurt and tempered with cumin,

Meaty meals: Telangana recipes show a distinct preference for non­vegetarian food.

green chillies and mustard seeds.

Dalcha itself is a Telangana variation of sambhar—a tadka of dal that also has ginger-garlic paste.

In Telangana Hindu families, the slender bits of mutton in the soup are replaced by chunkier pieces with their cartilage intact, which gives them a crunchy bite. “I grew up eating venison, wild boar and quail,” says Shekhar Reddy, a venture capitalist. He spent much of his childhood in a hilly village in Nalgonda, less than 150km from Hyderabad. “Hunting was a way of life because growing enough food was always hard in these parts.”

Arid Telangana never supported intensive agriculture. Yields improved, especially in Nalgonda, only after the colossal Nagarjunasagar Dam was built. Rather than rice, breads baked from sorghum or pearl millets have been the staple. And game meat was a big part of meals. “My grandfather and his friends would go out to hunt and return with a wild boar in the back of the jeep,” remembers Reddy.

“The butcher would get to work immediately so the meat could be

divide d among my grandfather and his friends. And one-third would be distributed among people in the village.”

Lamb too was a precious commodity. Strips of the meat would, for instance, be dried in the sun to preserve them. Sometimes these strips would be crushed to a podi (powder) and served with hot rice and ghee. Reddy, who enjoys cooking, says one of his favourite family recipes is madisina karam or burnt gunpowder—roasted red chillies, rice and coriander are pounded by hand with other condiments into a gritty mixture, which is served with ghee-soaked rice. “But it’s very potent,” he warns.

When families from other parts of Andhra Pradesh came to Hyderabad, they brought with them their varied ways of cooking.

From the prosperous villages skirting the coast, steaming plates of rice served with jaggery-flavoured gravies, spicy, red crab curry, minced shark meat cooked dry or horse-gram seeds boiled to a thick brown sauce called ulava chaaru.

From the dry tracts of Rayalaseema, stews of mango, meat or vegetables soaked in tamarind and red chillies, millet-rich meals

served with hot chicken curry or nutty chutneys to go with dosas and idlis. Telangana offered to the table its unusual partiality to nonvegetarian fare, including the irreverently named head meat curry or talakaya mamsam. Across these regions, castes remained the same and, in Hyderabad, many families intermarried. Recipes were swapped, cooking processes were tweaked and flavours intensified.

“When I got married, I was surprised that dosas and idlis were not common breakfast food,” says Ikebana expert Rekha Reddy, whose husband is from Telangana—she herself is from Chittoor in Rayalaseema. “Khichdi with keema or chapatti and puri with chicken curry are usually eaten for breakfast. It’s only natural, since they grow millets and grains rather than rice or wheat.”

Avakaya, the famed mango pickle from Andhra Pradesh, is also uncommon in Telangana homes.

Instead, they are known for their pickles of lamb and fish, yet another way of preserving food, according to Rekha. Yellow cucumber, often pickled, is also cooked with lamb. She even recollects a recipe for chicken curry that calls for a generous dose of rum!

One of the few things that Telangana has in common with other parts of the state is the soothing, mildly sour pachi pulusu or, literally, raw soup—cool tamarind

Ingredients For marinating the mutton 1kg seena mutton (pieces of meat with cartilage) 2 medium-sized onions, sliced 2 tsp red chilli powder 1 tsp caraway seeds (shahi zeera) 1 tsp ginger-garlic paste 1 tsp turmeric 1 tsp salt 1 tsp oil For the ‘dal’ 1 cup toor dal 4-5 dry red chillies, each sliced into four pieces 1 tamarind (preferably big, the size of a lemon) 3-4 drumsticks, cut and peeled A handful of bottle gourd pieces 2-3 sprigs of curry leaves 1 medium-sized bunch of green coriander 1 tomato 1 tsp each of cumin, turmeric and mustard for tempering Salt to taste Method Marinate the seena mutton with salt, chilli powder, ginger-garlic paste and turmeric. Keep aside.

Heat oil in a pressure cooker and add caraway seeds and onions. When the onions change colour, add the meat. Fry for 10-15 minutes and pressure-cook for two-three whistles. Keep aside.

Now pressure-cook the dal till it becomes soft. Add tamarind juice.

Heat oil in a pan and add cumin, mustard, dry chillies, drumsticks and bottle gourd. Fry for 10 minutes. Add tomato, turmeric, tamarind-flavoured dal, curry leaves and coriander. Cook for 15 minutes. Add the marinated and cooked meat. Simmer for 5-10 minutes. Serve hot with rice.

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PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

PIECE OF CAKE

PAMELA TIMMS

Making it easy: The pastry case can be prepared the day before.

MELLOW FRUITFULNESS

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oday’s dessert really needs no preamble, and not just because the recipe itself takes up most of the space. To see (and to taste) this Toffee Apple Walnut Cheesecake Tart is to love it. But as the Diwali fireworks fade like a retreating army, the nights turn nippy and our food thoughts turn to comfort and warmth, it would be remiss of me not to point out that the flavours of today’s recipe simply scream rustling leaves and woolly hats. That the walnut-laced pastry shouts autumn windfalls high in the Himalayas, while the toffee apple recalls rosy cheeks around childhood bonfires. If that wasn’t enough, the soft, creamy filling brings all the cheese, vanilla and citrus flavours, not to mention the moreishness, of a classic cheesecake.

Together, they produce a beautiful flourish at the end of a special dinner. Also, despite the rather daunting-looking

ingredients list, this is a straightforward recipe. Nothing, apart from the pastry case, which can be made the day before, has to be baked. The apples and cream too can be made ahead.

Then all you have to do is assemble the tart. By the time you serve up, you might feel as if you’ve used every bowl and ingredient in the kitchen, but the dreamy look on your guests’ faces will be worth it. Give it a go—an autumnal dessert that (almost) speaks for itself.

Toffee Apple Walnut Cheesecake Tart Serves 4-6 Ingredients

Cheesecake Cream 100ml double cream 300g cream cheese, or kwark 90g icing sugar, sifted The seeds from one vanilla pod Finely grated zest of one orange and one lemon

Pastry

180g plain flour 60g icing sugar 2 tbsp walnuts, finely ground 100g cold butter, cut into small pieces 1 egg, lightly beaten 1-2 tbsp iced water

Toffee Apple Topping 3-4 green apples 50g butter 3 tbsp of demerara sugar or powdered jaggery 2 tbsp white sugar 150g golden syrup

125ml double cream Method Sift the flour and icing sugar into a large bowl. Stir in the ground walnuts. Rub the butter into the flour mixture until it looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the egg and enough iced water to bring the mixture together.

Form into a ball, wrap in cling film, then put in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

Take a baking tin about 20cm wide, preferably with a

removable bottom. On a floured surface, roll out the pastry to about 5mm thick. Carefully lift into the tin and press into the corners. Put in the fridge to chill for 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Bake blind the pastry—this means baking the pastry shell on its own before adding the filling. Put a piece of parchment paper or foil over the pastry, then tip in some dried lentils to weigh it down—this ensures the pastry doesn’t bubble up during baking. Bake the pastry in the oven for 15 minutes. Take the tin out of the oven and remove the paper and lentils.

Bake the pastry again for about 5-10 minutes until cooked and golden brown.

The pastry case can now keep until you’re ready to make your dessert.

To make the cheesecake cream, put the cream, cream cheese, icing sugar, vanilla seeds, orange and lemon zest into a bowl and mix until all the ingredients are well mixed. Chill for about 30 minutes to let the flavours infuse.

To make the toffee sauce, melt the butter, both sugars and golden syrup in a saucepan. Let it boil for 2 minutes to thicken slightly, pour in the cream and boil for another minute. Leave to cool slightly.

Peel, halve and core the apples, then slice each half into four lengthways and each slice into two. Squeeze some lemon over the apple pieces to stop them browning.

Melt a little butter in a frying pan, then add the apple pieces.

Sprinkle with some brown sugar and cook for a few moments to caramelize the apples.

When ready to serve the tart, spoon the cheesecake cream into the pastry. Arrange the caramelized apple pieces on top of the cream and pour a little of the sauce. Pour the remainder of the sauce in a jug and serve alongside slices of tart.

Pamela Timms is a Delhi-based journalist and food writer. She blogs at Eatanddust.com Write to Pamela at pieceofcake@livemint.com

www.livemint.com For a video on how to make this tart, visit www.livemint.com/cheesecakes.htm Read Pamela’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/pieceofcake

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Excerpt

LOUNGE

DORK IN DARK TIMES FICTION

ILLUSTRATIONS

BY

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

In this exclusive extract from Sidin Vadukut’s second ‘Dork’ novel, Einstein is unfortunately introduced to the many riches of the US housing market EXCLUSIVE!

Sugandh continues to roam around the office from morning to evening minding everybody’s business.

Thankfully he ignores me mostly except for occasional LLTLF expense reports. Which anyways Jenny files in full without any errors or issues.

BRUSSELS!!!

God Save the Dork: Penguin, 248 pages, R199.

14 May 2007 7.44 p.m.

Woo hoo! Finally a business trip!!!

Dominic wants me to go to Brussels on the 24th and attend a one-day workshop at the Dufresne office. As soon as he told me about it this morning I told him that I was fully enthusiastic and was sure I would learn a lot from the trip because the topic was something very close to my heart. Then he reminded me that he still hadn’t told me about the topic. (Minor goof up due to over-enthusiasm.) I told him that I heard ‘someone discuss it somewhere’ and somehow avoided embarrassment.

The workshop is on ‘US Housing Market: Growth and profit opportunities for Dufresne’. Dominic thinks that the workshop is on an obvious topic and entirely useless. But every Dufresne team working for a bank has been asked to send a rep.

I have no idea about the US housing market. But how complicated can it be? People need houses. Someone will sell the houses. Where will they sell it? At a housing market.

Finished. I am sure I’ll manage.

He asked me to coordinate with Valentina for my Schengen visa. I flatly told him I would not.

He told me that the secret was to email her everything. She would use a dictionary to translate and then do the correct thing. Telling her orally, apparently, is pointless.

So I quickly wrote her an email. The workshop is in two weeks and there is just about enough time to get a Belgian visa. I wrote the email to Valentina in plain English and used small words.

I also cc’d it to Dominic.

Excited!!! I’ve never been to Belgium. It will be nice to get away from London for a while.

LLTLF update: The first charity show is on the 25th.

Budgeted at a total cost of 245,000 pounds. Tom has already transferred half a million into the LLTLF account. I don’t know what I am supposed to do. He will tell me at some point.

15 May 2007 11.45 p.m.

Almost midnight! Man! Dominic is making me work like a maniac before I leave for Belgium.

Travel agent came and picked up my passport. He should be submitting forms tomorrow. And I should be getting the visa latest in five days. Provided there is no goof up. But the travel agent seemed like a professional chap.

Going to Madame Tussauds this weekend to take a photo with the Shah Rukh Khan statue. Not only am I going to send it to Gouri, I am also going to print it, frame it and then courier the frame to her. Now that I have enough liquidity in the bank, as a boyfriend I think I should fulfil her requests.

She will be very excited.

By the way notice how I have stopped talking about Jenny? To me she is nothing.

Just an attractive intern with excellent skin and an outstanding figure.

She means nothing to me. I have moved on 100%.

19 May 2007 2.25 p.m.

So where am I supposed to go? Brussels. Which country is Brussels in? Belgium. What visa do you need to go to Belgium? Schengen. Who did I ask to help me get a Schengen visa?

Valentina. What visa did she get me

five days before I need to travel? A FUCKING CHINESE VISA! Why did she get me a Chinese visa? Because she thought I asked for a ‘Shanghai visa’. Is there such a thing as Shanghai visa? No. But why did Valentina think that? Because she cannot speak English, is unqualified to do her job, and has brains made of diarrhoea.

YENTHORU KASHTAM! Scrambling now to reapply for a Schengen. Horrible mood. Horrible.

24 May 2007 11.04 p.m.

Hello hello hello hello Diary. I am back after a spectacular visit to Brussels. I have so much to say. So sit down somewhere comfortable and listen. Now first of all I may have gotten a little carried away in the duty free section.

The workshop got over at 5 p.m. and my flight was only at 7.30 p.m. So I came straight to the airport and thought of buying something small for Gouri and some chocolates for me. I was going to buy Toblerone when I saw that they were giving a small bag free with 7 boxes of Ferrero Rocher. Then I bought a box of some cheap local brand chocolates for the Dufresne project team. I know I have decided never to talk or interact with Jenny again. But on the outside chance that she comes back begging for attention I have bought her a box of raspberry liqueur filled chocolates. There was a special offer here also—two boxes free if you buy two boxes. So I bought two boxes.

For Gouri I decided that something like perfume or cosmetics will be nice. The shop had an excellent special offer here also. For just 115 euros they were selling a huge bag full of assorted

EXCERPT L7

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

cosmetics from L’Oreal. And if you also bought a men’s assorted bag you got 20% discount on the total. Which is an excellent deal.

By this time I had too much to carry. The Ferrero Rocher bag was only big enough to hold the Ferrero Rocher boxes. So I went to the luggage shop and bought a small suitcase with wheels (neck pillow free). By this time I had finished my shopping and still had enough time to roam around.

Which is when I realized that I had completely forgotten to get Toblerone. (How can you come back from abroad without Toblerone?) Excellent discount on the biggest size bar. So bought one.

In order to avoid boredom I decided to buy a magazine or a newspaper. Sadly the bookshop is closing down and they had a clearance sale. It was madness Diary. They were just putting five books inside a plastic bag and selling the whole thing for 20 euros. I am not a voracious reader. But books are always good to have at home. So I bought two bags of books and one football magazine.

(Overall everything is almost half the price in UK after conversion. Superb.)

So now I was set with everything except dinner.

Dinner? Why dinner? Won’t I get dinner on the plane? This is what you are thinking Diary?

BIM is the shit licker’s official airlines.

BIM business class is exactly the same as BIM economy.

Exactly the same seats. Exactly the same service and exactly the same food. Exactly the same air hostess. The only difference is that you get the food for free while the poor people in economy have to pay for it. Despite this the BIM thieves will pull a curtain across the two classes and make a big drama. Bastards.

The food in the morning was shit.

So I went to a cafe in the duty free and bought a sandwich and coffee. Then at the very last moment, just before they began boarding, I noticed that the electronics store had a superb offer on hairdryers. (I need to replace the one in the apartment which Gouri destroyed.) So I bought one and got a nice spike buster for free.

So far so good. I did a lot of shopping. But not too much.

But just as I was about to enter the plane the woman at the gate told me that I had too many bags and had to put some along with the luggage.

Nonsense. I argued for two minutes and made a lot of noise so that the airline fellows will try to avoid a scene and let me go. But then they said that I was free to go on another flight if I wanted to.

So I agreed and warned them that BIM’s London office would get a complaint from me. They asked me to pack my shopping into one or two bags and give it to them.

FAAAAAAAAACK. I went back to the duty free to get a new bigger bag. I just grabbed a big bag, put everything inside it and gave it to the BMI staff.

Thankfully everything reached London safely. No chocolate has melted and no bottles have broken. Relieved.

I tried to remove the life jacket from the plane and bring it with me. As revenge.

But it got stuck under the seat and wouldn’t come out.

Now for the workshop itself.

Diary I was genuinely impressed with it. Usually workshops are a complete pain in the ass. You get a lot of stationery and free food.

But otherwise useless.

But this was very good.

Dufresne flew down a banker called Andre Spelcik from Briar Atlantic who gave us a complete overview of the US housing market. There was a lot of data and analysis in his presentation. And some of it was very complicated. But truly the opportunities in the US are insane. Briar Atlantic made a profit—YES A PROFIT—of 1.3 billion dollars just on the US housing market last year. You should have seen my face when he said that. Then he explained how they made this money.

They used something called a Credit Derivate Something where the underlying asset is housing loans. And then people buy and sell this and everyone makes money.

I won’t bore you with the details. But he said that there is still a LOT of money to be made. And Dufresne could help a lot of clients to invest in the market.

During lunch I tried to network with him. Turns out that some of the guys on his team in New York also studied at

WIMWI. He said they were very good and really intelligent.

Andre asked me why I was doing consulting instead of banking. I told him that I personally wanted to try consulting for a few years, get a taste of all sectors and then diversify into banking at a later date. My dream, I told him (please note the gentle cut down legside for sneaky four) was to eventually work for a profitable bank in New York, preferably involved in the US housing market, where I could hopefully work with WIMWI alumni and develop a long and successful career. He laughed so much and told me I was a ‘wise ass’. ‘Then hire me!’ I said half playfully. He walked away smiling.

Imagine if I could invest in US housing Diary. Hmmm...

After lunch we had a short technical session where Andre taught us how these Credit Default Somethings are structured and priced and bought and sold. Whenever he made eye contact I nodded vigorously. But I did not understand anything. After that came the best part. He showed us how to use things like graphs and analyst reports and Bloomberg Terminals to do basic investing. Some of my hair on the back of my head are still standing up. I think they will be like that permanently now.

When the taxi came to take me to Brussels airport I left very half-heartedly. (I asked Andre for his visiting card. But apparently he forgot to bring them to Brussels. So I asked him for his email address or phone number. At that very moment he got a silent call on his phone. It looked like a very important call. So I gave him my card and he has promised to drop me a line later.)

Even now I can feel a bolt of energy and excitement running through my body. Seldom have I wanted more to work as an investment banker trading in the US housing market. It is not that I want to make that much money. That is a welcome side benefit. But imagine the power to generate that much profit...

Sigh. Should have joined Goldman Sachs when I had

the chance.

Sugandh saw me in the lobby as I dragged my bags inside. He was really surprised when I told him I’d bought all this from Brussels. He asked me how much all of it cost me. I told him that I really don’t keep track of how much I am spending when I get into one of my high-end shopping moods.

Was that jealously I saw in his eyes as I got into the lift?

Poor fellow.

12.05 a.m.

MAJOR GOOF UP! I was so engrossed in the US housing

market that I got my mathematics completely mixed up in Brussels airport. I was under the impression that an euro is approximately equal to an US dollar.

Actually it is equal to a pound! WHAT THE FUCK! AND THAT TOO AFTER SPENDING AN ENTIRE DAY IN FRONT OF A BLOODY BLOOMBERG TERMINAL WHERE THE EXCHANGE RATES FLASH ALL THE BLOODY TIME!!!

So this means I am replacing the apartment’s hairdryer with a new one that is probably

more expensive than all the other furniture here.

Damn damn damn pissed off.

And on top of all that Gouri is acting up as well. As usual she has managed to destroy my peace of mind with a single SMS message: ‘Robby, I would like an Apple laptop. Love, G.’ Because, you know, my grandfather is the owner of Apple company. So I sent her this message back: ‘G, that is an excellent idea.

Go ahead, Einsty.’

I am not an ATM. The woman needs to understand that.

No reply so far. Hopefully things will stay like that.

Good night. A mixed day overall in the light of this exchange rate fluctuation.

Packing chocolates for office now.

12.12 a.m.

Not packing chocolates for office. I am not spending an average of 7 euros per head on a bunch of robots and arrogant bastards. They can buy their own chocolates.

Sidin Vadukut is the London correspondent for Mint.

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Play

LOUNGE

PROJECTORS

Cinema on the wall The latest developments in projectors make them an excellent option for your home theatre B Y G OPAL S ATHE gopal.s@livemint.com

·························· ntil now projectors have mostly been sold to the education industry and to enterprise buyers. But a number of factors, such as the rising average size (and, therefore, cost) of televisions and a range of affordable new projectors, are making the technology a good buy for home users today.

If you’re looking to upgrade or set up a home theatre system, you should consider a projector.

A projector brings in several advantages. First, with the right lighting conditions, the black performance (contrast) is as good as any TV. Second, most projectors have a better refresh rate than LCD TVs, and are usually free from visual distortions that affect flat-panel TVs, such as motion blur and ghosting.

It is also a cost-effective option. For example, the NEC V300XG 3D projector can create a clear 72-inch screen and costs approx. `48,500. TVs of the same size are hard to come by, and a 32-inch LED from Sony costs approx. `53,950. You can get a 50-inch plasma TV from LG for approx. `45,300. Simply put, with a projector, you’re paying approx. `673 per inch, while while for a plasma TV you pay approx. `906 , and approx. `1,685 for an LED TV. There are a few downsides though. Proper lighting makes a big difference. New projectors like the V300XG perform well even with some ambient light, unlike older models. With a single tubelight on in the room, the image is still pretty watchable, but notably washed out

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compared with a plasma TV. Most new projectors are also 3D-ready. But this doesn’t mean you can watch Avatar in 3D at home with just the projector. You need to check which 3D formats work with your 3D projector.

There are four basic formats—frame sequential, frame packing, side-by-side and checkerboard—and a projector needs to support any one of these.

The most common option among projectors is frame sequential, which is supported by the NEC V300 projector too.

It’s a technique developed by NVIDIA, the leading graphics card maker in the world today, where the image is played at 120 Hz, twice the usual frame speed, so that alternate frames are left and right, and active shutter glasses are needed for the 3D effect.

The 3D on this projector only works with computers that have NVIDIA 3D vision graphics cards. Without one of those, you’re only getting a nice projector. With one though, gaming can be pretty amazing because toprated games such as Batman: Arkham Asylum, Civilization V and Super Street Fighter IV already support the technology.

The NEC is an excellent example of new projectors, and has a maximum display resolution of 1,600x1,200 pixels, more than full-HD. The bulb is rated at 3000 ANSI lumens, which in normal English means it’s really bright. Seriously, don’t look directly at the bulb when it’s on.

With a growing number of HD channels becoming available gradually, the TVwatching experience can be enhanced, but the best way to make the most of the 2D

capability is to connect your Blu-ray player via HDMI for movies.

The only drawback is that a projector needs around 8ft of empty space between it and the wall. Without that, you’re getting a much smaller picture, and the cost-to-size ratio starts tilting in favour of LCD TVs. If you don’t have the space, then a good workaround is the short-throw projector. As the name suggests, a shortthrow projector requires less distance to create a large image, using a special lens. It works just like a regular projector, but the special lens adds to the cost.

The advantage of such a projector is that there is much less likelihood of the viewer being between the projector and the screen, so shadows are less of a concern.

An excellent new shortthrow projector is the BenQ W710ST, available for approx. `61,000. It needs only 3ft to make a 72-inch screen, so people need to see if the short-throw is worth the extra money for them. In other specifications, it is highly similar to the NEC projector, with similar performance, but its fan is a little louder, which is a minor irritant.

Also recently available in India is a wholly new type of projector set-up—the pico projector. These tiny devices are highly portable, fitting in the palm of your hand, but aren’t meant for big-screen experiences. Instead, they are meant to be partnered with netbooks or smartphones to perform as medium-sized screens that can be carried around easily.

If you need to make a presentation or want to watch movies while you travel, pico projectors work really

NEC V300XG: 3D and HD, for `48,500.

Acer C110: A projector in your pocket, `15,000.

BenQ W710ST: 72 inches from 3ft with this `61,000 projector. well. One of the first available in India is the Acer C110, launched in September for approx. `15,000. The Acer C110 receives power and the video signal via a single USB port, making it an excellent netbook companion. It weighs just 175g and can fit easily into your pocket. It has a 1000:1 contrast ratio that falls far short of full-size projectors, but is still quite impressive, and is able to create a 25-inch screen with an approximate

2ft throw distance.

Whether you want to create a home theatre or an excellent gaming set-up, full-size projectors have a lot to offer at affordable rates, while pico projectors are game changers for mobile display. The projector market has not seen many consumer buyers yet, but with flat panels being even more expensive today, going for a projector seems like a great idea for anyone who has the space to support the set-up.

GAME REVIEW | BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY

I am Batman The closest anyone can get to feeling like the Dark Knight. The action is visceral B Y G OPAL S ATHE gopal.s@livemint.com

···························· am not Batman. If you had asked me that question while I was running Rocksteady Studio’s latest game, Batman: Arkham City, I would have had a harder time answering. For the duration of the game, you are undeniably Batman.

The designers know the caped crusader’s strengths and weaknesses, and play on them both, leaving you feeling like the invulnerable avatar of justice, and at the same time a man, as vulnerable as any other, who chooses to pit himself against impossible foes simply because it is the right thing to do.

The reason the game works so well is, of course, Batman himself—the developers h a v e a s t r o n g insight into what makes the

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character work, and the game reflects this.

Batman is the master detective, and the designers want the players to put their minds to work as well.

You’re going to be solving crimes and carrying out forensic studies, even as you work your way through thugs employed by some of Batman’s most famous enemies, such as Two-Face, The Penguin and The Joker.

The game’s script has been written by Paul Dini, whose previous writing credits include the TV shows Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond, for which he won Emmy Awards; he has also received the Eisner and Harvey awards for work on the Batman comics.

Right at the start, you’re being beaten up by The Penguin, and you have to fight off his thugs to survive. A radio stolen from a security guard lets you talk to Alfred and arrange for an airdrop of the Batsuit—on top of the Ace Chemicals building, the same building where a nameless young thug would become The Joker.

Voice artistes from the TV series, such as Mark Hamill, are voicing their characters in the game as well, and the whole put together results in a rich world that feels complete.

Taking down thugs is easy enough, but if you pay attention to the rhythm of the action, then you turn the brawl into a balletic symphony of broken bones and beat up the bad guys with so much style that it’s a treat to watch.

While the combat is enjoyable, the game shines in mixing things up. At times you’re a predator, lurking in the shadows, picking off enemies one by one. Moving around, zooming to vantage points using the grappling hook, you place yourself out of sight and take out enemies with a single strike.

Batman villain Riddler has placed trophies all over Arkham City, for some unknown, fiendish purpose. Solving these puzzles requires logic and creativity, and involves no fighting. You can also track the assassin Deadshot, who has been killing political prisoners in Arkham City. These cases require you to search for clues such as bullet fragments to try and track down the killer.

You can keep yourself busy with many side missions, but the story itself is interesting enough to keep you on the main quest.

There’s a good blend of puzzle solving and combat, and the level endings are proper climaxes for each phase of the narrative.

Heroes and villains: Batman fights one of The Joker’s minions; and (left) artwork from the game.

This is also leavened by sections where you are playing as Catwoman. These sections come by a few times in the game, and don’t intrude on the experience of being Batman. Playing as Catwoman is an entirely different game. You’re not gliding and using your grappling hook to get around any more; Catwoman leaps and scrambles up walls and rakes past thugs with devastating speed.

Batman: Arkham City is an excellent game—the best based on a comic book. It recreates the sensation of being Batman, and touches the landmarks of Batman’s canon satisfyingly. The only drawback is that the game

becomes very complicated. You start with a huge number of gadgets and tactics, and keep adding to them; and all of them have to be used.

Meanwhile, the Catwoman chapters of the game are locked—to access them, you have to connect to the Internet and enter a code.

There is still a very good game on the disc, but forcing legitimate buyers of content to jump through hoops unnecessarily in the name of piracy is wrong.

Batman: Arkham City, which released on 21 October, is available on PS3 and Xbox 360 for `2,599.

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L9

Business Lounge

LOUNGE MICHAEL BONEHAM

Small change, big difference The managing director of Ford India on Figo, travelling the world and cultural identity

B Y R UDRANEIL S ENGUPTA rudraneil.s@livemint.com

···························· ichael Boneham, president and managing director of Ford India, has no time to waste. He is spending his 54th birthday giving interviews and visiting showrooms to take stock of how they are coping with the accelerated sales of Ford’s first “small car”, the Figo.

We meet in an insipid beige and grey office in a Ford showroom, and Boneham fits in lunch (a McDonald’s burger and fries) during the session.

The showroom is in Kirti Nagar, an industrial area in west Delhi that looks like a strip mall of car showrooms. It’s a place symbolic of urban India’s rush to acquire a car, fuelled by increasing economic affluence, and the reason why Boneham is in perpetual haste. According to industry estimates, 3.2-3.4 million Indians will buy cars this year, and that number is expected to grow to five million by 2015, and nine million by 2020.

“Somewhere between 10-14 per 1,000 people in India own a

M

vehicle,” Boneham says between quick bites of the birthday burger. “Relative to developed markets like Europe or the US, that’s a low number. Even if the sales jump from 10 to 20 per 1,000 in the next five years, it will be a huge jump.”

For 15 years, Ford struggled to make inroads into this bristling market. Between 1996 and 2010, Ford launched six passenger vehicles, four of which were discontinued after poor sales. The US car manufacturer was desperate to get it right, produce that one car that would stick. To do that, Ford had to step outside its comfort zone and make an affordable small car, the segment where more than 70% of all car sales happen in India.

Enter the Figo, a hatchback that costs almost half that of Ford’s next most affordable car in India, and compares favourably with Maruti’s compact cars, considered the most modestly priced in the country.

“We needed the Figo to take us to a different dimension and I believe we have delivered on that,” Boneham says. “What the Figo has done for us is (it has) brought Ford into the mindsets of first-time car buyers. So far, over 50% of Figo buyers are firsttime car buyers, and that is an amazing thing.”

What it means is that Ford is finally part of the rising middleclass economic ambition—you come in a two-wheeler, and leave in a car.

In 2009, Ford sold just 29,488 cars across all segments. But six months after the launch of the Figo in March 2010, Ford had

sold more than 50,000 units of just the hatchback, and the firm’s overall sales for the year nearly tripled. To achieve this phenomenal jump, Ford had to restructure all its major operational procedures—from design, engineering and manufacturing, to sales and servicing.

This year, from January-September, it has sold 90,612 cars across all segments.

To sell the base model of the Figo at `3.76 lakh, Ford localized 85% of the manufacturing process. The company invested $500 million (around `2,450 crore) in its Chennai manufacturing plant to upgrade it and increase capacity; it laid the foundations for a $1 billion manufacturing plant in Gujarat; and began expanding sales and service outlets so aggressively that since January, it has opened a new outlet every week.

Flush with the success of the small car, Ford has announced that it will launch eight new vehicles in India by 2015. “I don’t think I’ve been involved in so many important decisions in such a short span of time in my 27 years with Ford,” Boneham says. That coming from a man who supervised the manufacture of the third generation of the iconic Range Rover when Ford took over Land Rover from BMW in 2000, and was the plant manager for the Michigan, US, factory that rolled out the latest generation of Mustangs, the legendary stock racing vehicle.

Boneham though is neither an engineer, nor an MBA. He taught in a primary school in Australia for five years before

IN PARENTHESIS Boneham’s three children, who have now lived and grown up in four different countries, have seen both the trials and pleasures of adapting to different cultures. Boneham recalls the first day his family landed in England: “We had gone from a beautiful Australian summer to a cold, miserable, wet England and it was just absolutely shocking. We were all jet­lagged, and not in good shape when we went down for breakfast in the morning at our hotel. We sat down and the kids, who were 9 and 10, ordered eggs. What we didn’t realize was that everything served for breakfast in England comes with baked beans. They brought out eggs with baked beans on top, and my kids, who had never seen baked beans before, just collapsed in tears. It was all just too much! And you know what? They have never ever touched baked beans since! Just shows you how little cultural differences can mean so much.”

losing the motivation to teach, and setting off on a backpacking trip to Europe in 1984. When he returned to Australia, he responded, on a whim, to a newspaper ad by Ford, which was looking to fill a human resources position. “I was really surprised when I got the job,” Boneham says. “I was an education and training officer in a plant in Sydney, looking at the workers’ learning challenges. I knew nothing about body shops, power trains or how cars worked.”

But he picked up that knowledge on the job, and within a year, he had moved to vehicle operations. Soon, he was being transferred around Australia to various Ford plants, and then to England, US and Thailand.

Through this serial globetrotting, his wife, whom Boneham met when he was 20 and she 19, kept the family grounded. “We have three sons and the family moved with me every time we changed countries,” says Boneham. “It was always more of a challenge for her and our children than it was for me

Fordable: Ford is finally part of the rising middle­class economic ambition.

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

because I would just go to work to a Ford plant, which followed a common language and common processes around the world. But my family had to adjust to a new school and education system, a new social structure, adapt to the different lifestyle.”

Inevitably, there were issues with cultural identity.

Boneham says he learnt, watching his children, that “being different” was the last thing they wanted.

It was much easier to blend in, to assimilate. In the US, his children came home one day and declared they were going to change their accents to an American accent “as of tomorrow”.

“They weren’t becoming more global, just more American, or more British,” Boneham says.

“They had little idea about Australian history. I wanted them to understand what being an Australian was all about, but obviously, it was wonderful to have the family together.”

His eldest son put an end to the dilemma in 2005 when the family was preparing to move to Thailand from the US. Just 13 then, he came up to Boneham and told him he did not want to move around any more.

“He told me he needed to go back to the place where he belonged,” recalls Boneham. “It was tremendously mature.”

Eventually, all three children went back to Australia to boarding schools, with Boneham’s wife taking on the complicated task of dividing her time between the children in Australia and her husband in Thailand, and later, India.

Every chance they get, Boneham and his family spend time together. Most recently, they holidayed in Kashmir, but more often than not, the reunions happen in a family house on the beach, just 2 hours from Sydney.

“Sun, sea, surf and family—it’s the place I think about and miss the most,” Boneham says.

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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

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COMICS

OLOGY

Steven Spielberg’s mega project dulls the timeless comic icon while promising to expand his legacy. But there was never a dearth of Tintin fans in India, especially Bengal. In the age of violent, edgy superheroes, what’s the appeal of Hergé’s intrepid reporter?

YVES HERMAN/REUTERS

BY S A N J U K T A S H A R M A sanjukta.s@livemint.com

···························· n Steven Spielberg’s “motioncaptured” 3D riot The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, actor Jamie Bell makes a dull Tintin, unsuccessfully armed with a glazed exterior.

The most loyal of Tintin fans can’t dispute the intrepid boy’s innate dullness—although the worlds he inhabits and the characters he is after more than compensate for it. But in Spielberg’s cinematic showpiece, which is a breathless, drummed-up and conveniently cobbled together introduction to Tintin, the European boy-hero icon appears almost naive. Belgian creator Hergé’s wit is lost in the spectacle. The 3D skill in the film, possibly the best you’ve seen in the genre of live animation, can’t quite replace the visual intricacy of Hergé’s coloured panels.

A fan who watched a preview of the film early last month came out of the theatre, puzzled. “Great 3D, but I am offended,” he said.

He is a Bengali.

In The Adventures of Tintin, co-produced by Peter Jackson with Spielberg, the leaps from 1930s’ Brussels to a tramp steamer to the Sahara desert to the Moroccan port of Bagghar and back to idyllic Belgium have weak explanations. Spielberg combines three books—The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure—into one movie of breakneck speed and spectacular visual gimmickry.

Not a film for fans.

There has never been a dearth

I

Comic art: (from top) A still from The Adven­ tures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn; actor Jamie Bell (extreme left) and director Steven Spielberg (right) at the world premiere of the film in Brussels; and Tintin comics in Bengali.

of Tintin fandom in India, especially Bengal. The film’s distributors realize this, and will release it in Asia and India (with 350 prints, a fairly large number for English films; Avatar has had one of the widest releases ever of a Hollywood film in India, with 800 p rin t s) t wo wee ks af ter th e Europe release and three weeks before its release in the US. Tintin, a pre-World War II creation

by Hergé, is a comic icon. It has been translated into around 80 languages in the world, each new translator adopting new names for characters (Milou, Tintin’s constant canine companion, became Snowy in English and Kuttush in Bengali. Tintin became Dindin in Chinese).

American audiences, unfamiliar with Tintin, will be introduced to a stripped-down, Hollywoodized version of this European hero.

For a generation, will that alter the way Tintin has been perceived? Will US acceptance further consolidate his popularity and place him alongside the edgier, violent, technologically armed and more complex American superheroes of today?

Simon Doyle, a Tintinologist and forum moderator with Tintinologist.org, an online platform for Tintin fans and scholars, echoes what Tintin’s most wellknown scholar Michael Farr recently told the British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph. “I think Hergé’s legacy is secure already.

It doesn’t require any further validation from America to know that Hergé has a secure position in the history of comic art, indeed in the history of art. Comic-book professionals, artists and historians are aware of Hergé wherever they are in the world. Walt Disney gave Hergé an award in 1969 to celebrate the joint success of Tintin and Mickey Mouse; Andy Warhol was an admirer. It may add further admirers, but the legacy is assured,” Doyle told Lounge.

Tintin was the ideal comic hero in post-World War II Europe. His simple textbook heroism, belief in fair play and the courage to stand up to bullies was almost a moral voice for the sinning continent. He does not even acknowledge sex and active violence, although when he does have to pick up a gun in dire circumstances, he wields it like a pro. Read today, Hergé’s racism is striking. One of his earliest books, which was published in English just about a decade ago, Tintin in the Congo, stinks of racist portraits of African life and people—curly-haired,

pouty-lipped men are shown sprawling at the feet of the small European hero. Hergé himself acknowledged a few years before his death that he was a product of 1940s’ enlightened Europe, which was ignorant and biased about most parts of the world.

The only Indian references in the comics are brainless clichés, such as a reference to “The Maharaja of Gaipajama” (cow’s pyjamas). In Tintin in Tibet, in which there’s a detour through Delhi, Haddock tries to move a cow in the middle of a street, which leads to a hilarious ride ending in a taxi driven by, who else, a sardar.

So what is Tintin’s enduring appeal for us? Book-store managers say the perennial demand for Tintin comics in India never dips (see Market Report). In 2010, 35 years after the first Indian translation of Tintin in Bengali appeared in the children’s magazine Anandamela, it was translated into Hindi by film-maker and writer Puneet Arora for Om Books International. Haddock’s “billions of blue blistering barnacles” became “karodon karod kaale kasmasate kachhuwe” (millions and millions of black squirming tortoises)—and in a year, says Ajay Mago, publisher, Om Books International, all the 5,000 copies of the 14 titles that went to book stores had been sold. Kolkata’s Ananda Publishers, part of the Anandabazar Patrika group, has sold around 500,000 titles of each of the 23 books since 1984, when it launched the Tintin comic books in Bengali. “Bengali Tintins are a part of every Bengali child’s growing up. Our books are everywhere, in all book stores in Bengal,” says Subir Mitra, editor, Ananda Publishers.

The first Tintin comics arrived in a few cities in India in the early 1970s, about a decade before Doordarshan brought the world to our homes. Batman, Superman and other American comics were already available, besides phenomenally popular Indian comics such as Pran’s Chacha Choudhary, which found readers instantly after it launched in 1971.

Tintin, then priced at around `20 per comic, was confined to a few in some cities, and wasn’t commonly stocked in book stores. But Tintin arrived quietly in Kolkata when Anandamela acquired the rights to serialize the comic.

Abhijit Gupta, a professor of English at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, says: “As a young boy, I was already into Batman and Superman. I remember the first few strips of Tintin in Anan-

Market report There’s a new set of hardcover books in stores, and the demand for ‘Tintin’ has been rising in the past two months

A

set of eight titles in hardcover, with three­volume titles in a box, has just arrived at Indian book stores. Egmont, the UK­ based publisher which has the rights to the ‘Tintin’ books in English, timed the launch of the set to the film’s Europe release in October. The entire set of eight books, with original illustrations and matt paper covers, costs `6,600. Bookworm in Bangalore is selling the set for a discounted price of `4,750 and in Flipkart, ‘The Tintin Collection’, a set of 22 titles, is available for `6,083.

Egmont has also launched a new version of British Tintinologist Michael Farr’s ‘Tintin: The Complete Companion’, available in the UK. At book stores, and on Flipkart, the demand for ‘Tintin’ books, especially the sets, has always been high.

Flipkart says the sale of DVDs of ‘Tintin’ cartoon films has gone up in the past few months.

Crossword has been selling approximately 175 sets of ‘Tintin’ books every year for the past three years, says Vatsala Bisen, deputy buyer, children’s books, Crossword. This is next only to ‘Asterix’ comics, around 250 sets of which are sold every year at Crossword stores.

“The sales have increased by at least 20% in the past month, after the buzz around the movie,” Bisen says. During this time, the price of one ‘Tintin’ comic has gone up from `375 to `425.

Sanjukta Sharma

damela. They blew my mind. It was a world of exotic locations and a boy who was quite ordinary, a contrast to the other superheroes. The drawings were a great hook. This was a seminal moment in Bengali childhood.”

It’s not only because of the Bengali’s fascination for strange sounds that Tintin is not an uncommon pet name in Bengal.

Ajit Sarkar, 89, a Tintin fan, christened his restaurant on Kolkata’s SP Mukherjee Road six years ago.

A huge poster of the reporter-detective and Snowy welcomes guests to this restaurant of Chinese food called Tintin Economic Chinese Restaurant. “I am still a fan and read the books whenever I can. Not many people thought it was a good idea but after the change in name, it was an instant success. It became much popular,” Sarkar says. On the menu is Tintin special chowmein and fried rice. Sarkar also named his granddaughter Tintin, which, he says, is sometimes shortened to Tina.

The magazine finished serializing the 23 comics around 2004.

The monthly magazine’s staff translated Tintin and often covered one book in two long instalments. Editor Paulami Sengupta says, “Our group editor Aveek Sarkar personally met Hergé in Brussels and acquired the rights to serialize the comic, first from French to Bengali.” Ananda Pub-

lishers’ showroom at College Street stocks numerous copies of all the 23 comics, priced between `100 and `200.

For the generation of Indian children and teenagers growing up in the mid-1970s, Tintin became a window to the world.

Many in this generation later found more complex heroes and heroines in comics and graphic novels, but the appeal of Tintin remains. Arindam Adhikari, a 33-year-old graphic designer based in Singapore, and a collector of Tintin books and memorabilia, says: “I grew up in Bardhaman in Bengal and Tintin was an adventure in those days. The world became smaller for me and there was always that reassurance with Tintin that he was an ordinary guy and he always returned home after big adventures to small Belgium.”

Tintin was never really a journalist; in all the 23 books, he hardly ever files a report. He often takes sides with the establishment and even in the hurly-burly of geopolitics and space, he never has an ideological stand. He is a safe superhero, if at all one. Mago says that more than children, Tintin’s appeal is to the 1970s’ generation, which introduced Tintin to their children. “There’s a whole nostalgia value attached to Tintin comics and that’s why it is never a poor seller,” he says.

But any comic lover will tell

you that it is easy to admire Hergé’s work purely on the basis of his extraordinary artwork. The clear, colourful panels with clean lines are busy but never vague in what they are trying to say.

Depiction of movement is vividly cinematic. Doyle says: “He is acknowledged as the founding father of a school of comic art: the style known as ‘clear line’, and it has had a deep impact on the continental European comic world. However, that would be to overlook the fact that first and foremost, Hergé was a superb storyteller. There are other superlative exponents of comic art who have fallen by the wayside... This is best shown by the fact that his books have been turned into audio adventures in many languages, such being put on the radio by the BBC, and they still make excellent listening without the printed page!”

Spielberg’s film, unfortunately, is a perfunctory homage to both Tintin and his creator. The Americanizing is like an arriviste’s desire to introduce Tintin at home. Spielberg read his first Tintin after a critic compared his last Indiana Jones instalment with the comic book. He explains in his production notes how the little guy enamoured him and he became obsessed with him until the filming began. Hergé is reported to have said a few months before his death in 1983 that Spielberg was his choice of film-maker to take Tintin to the big screen.

Ironically, the artist expressed serious doubts about extreme American capitalism in his books.

In Tintin in America, there’s moral exultation in Tintin refusing money for an oilfield, a journey in which he stands up for Indians expelled from their oilrich lands.

Farr writes in Tintin: The Complete Companion: “Although later in life he would display some enthusiasm for America, developing, for instance, a friendship with Andy Warhol, this was by no means yet apparent. Even several Tintin adventures, like in The Shooting Star—significantly written during the oppressive war years—Hergé pits a European expedition led by Tintin against unscrupulous American rivals.”

It’s safe to assume that Tintin’s new journey to the US, in mindboggling technological garb, will be easier and a lot less meaningful than that.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn will release in theatres on 11 November.

FIRST PERSON

When Tintin ceased to please By the late 1960s, comics had gone supernova in the US and the edgy superhero changed everything B Y A BHIJIT G UPTA But perhaps that’s not the whole story. In the ···································· 1960s, as Hergé was labouring over ‘The Castafiore t has taken ‘Tintin’ a long time to cross the Emerald’ and ‘Flight 714’, comics had gone Atlantic. A small matter of nearly 80 years till supernova in the US. In New York, the he has been finally Spielbergized. Some will cavil incomparable Will Eisner had already been and say, no, he’s already been there, in ‘Tintin in producing a wholly new and edgy superhero series America’, in 1930s’ Chicago, when Al Capone and called ‘The Spirit’, about the first—and probably his thugs dropped him through a trapdoor. But only—middle­class superhero. In Cleveland, Ohio, a did they read him in the US? Remember, manic flower child called Robert this was 1932, before the Crumb was lighting the powder appearance of caped keg of the underground comix crusaders. No Flash Gordon, movement. In San Francisco, Phantom, Superman, or Trina Robbins was busy Batman. In fact, no creating the ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe superheroes at all.

Comix’, the first all­woman Is Tintin the first comic anthology. And indeed, superhero then? No and yes. in Bengal, there was the No in the sense that he has unjustly forgotten Mayukh no superpowers. Yes in the Choudhury, bringing a bit of sense that his adventures are the dark into the fledgling full of derring­do, good world of Bengali comics. triumphing over evil, Next to these, ‘Tintin’ one­person vigilantism, etc. seemed to be an What would have happened if anachronism from the Cold Tintin had taken root in the War years, a kind of US? Would he have been sanitized James Bond from allowed to remain the the ‘Boy’s Own Paper’.

Of course, I didn’t simple, boy­man figure he know all these while I started out as? Or would was growing up in the the dark shadows of 1970s, first on Bengali Gotham City have translations of ‘Tintin’ in the converted him into magazine ‘Anandamela’, and something more then the English versions. And complex, a creature of even if I had known, I wouldn’t light and shade? have been allowed to read Well, that didn’t them, since they were all adult happen, and Tintin comics with a capital A, or stayed exactly the way what is now called “for mature he has, while the world readers”. But there came a around him changed time, I think, when ‘Tintin’ beyond recognition. ceased to please and there was While the first dozen nothing to take its place in the Tintin adventures Exhausted Eighties, till, a decade were published over later, on a rainy day in Brighton, only 15 years I opened the pages of a comic (1929­44), the next book called ‘The Sandman’. But dozen took nearly that’s another story… thrice as long Pathbreaking: Will Eisner created (1943­86). Despite Abhijit Gupta teaches English at acquiring the services of a middle­class superhero.

Jadavpur University, Kolkata, Edgar Jacobs and the and specializes in comics. He was setting up of Hergé Studios in 1950, Hergé christened Tintin by his friends in school slowed down appreciably in the 1960s and and is still known by that name.

1970s. There were personal problems, and forays into film and merchandising, which Write to lounge@livemint.com account for the reduced pace.

I

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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

COMICS

OLOGY

Steven Spielberg’s mega project dulls the timeless comic icon while promising to expand his legacy. But there was never a dearth of Tintin fans in India, especially Bengal. In the age of violent, edgy superheroes, what’s the appeal of Hergé’s intrepid reporter?

YVES HERMAN/REUTERS

BY S A N J U K T A S H A R M A sanjukta.s@livemint.com

···························· n Steven Spielberg’s “motioncaptured” 3D riot The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, actor Jamie Bell makes a dull Tintin, unsuccessfully armed with a glazed exterior.

The most loyal of Tintin fans can’t dispute the intrepid boy’s innate dullness—although the worlds he inhabits and the characters he is after more than compensate for it. But in Spielberg’s cinematic showpiece, which is a breathless, drummed-up and conveniently cobbled together introduction to Tintin, the European boy-hero icon appears almost naive. Belgian creator Hergé’s wit is lost in the spectacle. The 3D skill in the film, possibly the best you’ve seen in the genre of live animation, can’t quite replace the visual intricacy of Hergé’s coloured panels.

A fan who watched a preview of the film early last month came out of the theatre, puzzled. “Great 3D, but I am offended,” he said.

He is a Bengali.

In The Adventures of Tintin, co-produced by Peter Jackson with Spielberg, the leaps from 1930s’ Brussels to a tramp steamer to the Sahara desert to the Moroccan port of Bagghar and back to idyllic Belgium have weak explanations. Spielberg combines three books—The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure—into one movie of breakneck speed and spectacular visual gimmickry.

Not a film for fans.

There has never been a dearth

I

Comic art: (from top) A still from The Adven­ tures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn; actor Jamie Bell (extreme left) and director Steven Spielberg (right) at the world premiere of the film in Brussels; and Tintin comics in Bengali.

of Tintin fandom in India, especially Bengal. The film’s distributors realize this, and will release it in Asia and India (with 350 prints, a fairly large number for English films; Avatar has had one of the widest releases ever of a Hollywood film in India, with 800 p rin t s) t wo wee ks af ter th e Europe release and three weeks before its release in the US. Tintin, a pre-World War II creation

by Hergé, is a comic icon. It has been translated into around 80 languages in the world, each new translator adopting new names for characters (Milou, Tintin’s constant canine companion, became Snowy in English and Kuttush in Bengali. Tintin became Dindin in Chinese).

American audiences, unfamiliar with Tintin, will be introduced to a stripped-down, Hollywoodized version of this European hero.

For a generation, will that alter the way Tintin has been perceived? Will US acceptance further consolidate his popularity and place him alongside the edgier, violent, technologically armed and more complex American superheroes of today?

Simon Doyle, a Tintinologist and forum moderator with Tintinologist.org, an online platform for Tintin fans and scholars, echoes what Tintin’s most wellknown scholar Michael Farr recently told the British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph. “I think Hergé’s legacy is secure already.

It doesn’t require any further validation from America to know that Hergé has a secure position in the history of comic art, indeed in the history of art. Comic-book professionals, artists and historians are aware of Hergé wherever they are in the world. Walt Disney gave Hergé an award in 1969 to celebrate the joint success of Tintin and Mickey Mouse; Andy Warhol was an admirer. It may add further admirers, but the legacy is assured,” Doyle told Lounge.

Tintin was the ideal comic hero in post-World War II Europe. His simple textbook heroism, belief in fair play and the courage to stand up to bullies was almost a moral voice for the sinning continent. He does not even acknowledge sex and active violence, although when he does have to pick up a gun in dire circumstances, he wields it like a pro. Read today, Hergé’s racism is striking. One of his earliest books, which was published in English just about a decade ago, Tintin in the Congo, stinks of racist portraits of African life and people—curly-haired,

pouty-lipped men are shown sprawling at the feet of the small European hero. Hergé himself acknowledged a few years before his death that he was a product of 1940s’ enlightened Europe, which was ignorant and biased about most parts of the world.

The only Indian references in the comics are brainless clichés, such as a reference to “The Maharaja of Gaipajama” (cow’s pyjamas). In Tintin in Tibet, in which there’s a detour through Delhi, Haddock tries to move a cow in the middle of a street, which leads to a hilarious ride ending in a taxi driven by, who else, a sardar.

So what is Tintin’s enduring appeal for us? Book-store managers say the perennial demand for Tintin comics in India never dips (see Market Report). In 2010, 35 years after the first Indian translation of Tintin in Bengali appeared in the children’s magazine Anandamela, it was translated into Hindi by film-maker and writer Puneet Arora for Om Books International. Haddock’s “billions of blue blistering barnacles” became “karodon karod kaale kasmasate kachhuwe” (millions and millions of black squirming tortoises)—and in a year, says Ajay Mago, publisher, Om Books International, all the 5,000 copies of the 14 titles that went to book stores had been sold. Kolkata’s Ananda Publishers, part of the Anandabazar Patrika group, has sold around 500,000 titles of each of the 23 books since 1984, when it launched the Tintin comic books in Bengali. “Bengali Tintins are a part of every Bengali child’s growing up. Our books are everywhere, in all book stores in Bengal,” says Subir Mitra, editor, Ananda Publishers.

The first Tintin comics arrived in a few cities in India in the early 1970s, about a decade before Doordarshan brought the world to our homes. Batman, Superman and other American comics were already available, besides phenomenally popular Indian comics such as Pran’s Chacha Choudhary, which found readers instantly after it launched in 1971.

Tintin, then priced at around `20 per comic, was confined to a few in some cities, and wasn’t commonly stocked in book stores. But Tintin arrived quietly in Kolkata when Anandamela acquired the rights to serialize the comic.

Abhijit Gupta, a professor of English at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, says: “As a young boy, I was already into Batman and Superman. I remember the first few strips of Tintin in Anan-

Market report There’s a new set of hardcover books in stores, and the demand for ‘Tintin’ has been rising in the past two months

A

set of eight titles in hardcover, with three­volume titles in a box, has just arrived at Indian book stores. Egmont, the UK­ based publisher which has the rights to the ‘Tintin’ books in English, timed the launch of the set to the film’s Europe release in October. The entire set of eight books, with original illustrations and matt paper covers, costs `6,600. Bookworm in Bangalore is selling the set for a discounted price of `4,750 and in Flipkart, ‘The Tintin Collection’, a set of 22 titles, is available for `6,083.

Egmont has also launched a new version of British Tintinologist Michael Farr’s ‘Tintin: The Complete Companion’, available in the UK. At book stores, and on Flipkart, the demand for ‘Tintin’ books, especially the sets, has always been high.

Flipkart says the sale of DVDs of ‘Tintin’ cartoon films has gone up in the past few months.

Crossword has been selling approximately 175 sets of ‘Tintin’ books every year for the past three years, says Vatsala Bisen, deputy buyer, children’s books, Crossword. This is next only to ‘Asterix’ comics, around 250 sets of which are sold every year at Crossword stores.

“The sales have increased by at least 20% in the past month, after the buzz around the movie,” Bisen says. During this time, the price of one ‘Tintin’ comic has gone up from `375 to `425.

Sanjukta Sharma

damela. They blew my mind. It was a world of exotic locations and a boy who was quite ordinary, a contrast to the other superheroes. The drawings were a great hook. This was a seminal moment in Bengali childhood.”

It’s not only because of the Bengali’s fascination for strange sounds that Tintin is not an uncommon pet name in Bengal.

Ajit Sarkar, 89, a Tintin fan, christened his restaurant on Kolkata’s SP Mukherjee Road six years ago.

A huge poster of the reporter-detective and Snowy welcomes guests to this restaurant of Chinese food called Tintin Economic Chinese Restaurant. “I am still a fan and read the books whenever I can. Not many people thought it was a good idea but after the change in name, it was an instant success. It became much popular,” Sarkar says. On the menu is Tintin special chowmein and fried rice. Sarkar also named his granddaughter Tintin, which, he says, is sometimes shortened to Tina.

The magazine finished serializing the 23 comics around 2004.

The monthly magazine’s staff translated Tintin and often covered one book in two long instalments. Editor Paulami Sengupta says, “Our group editor Aveek Sarkar personally met Hergé in Brussels and acquired the rights to serialize the comic, first from French to Bengali.” Ananda Pub-

lishers’ showroom at College Street stocks numerous copies of all the 23 comics, priced between `100 and `200.

For the generation of Indian children and teenagers growing up in the mid-1970s, Tintin became a window to the world.

Many in this generation later found more complex heroes and heroines in comics and graphic novels, but the appeal of Tintin remains. Arindam Adhikari, a 33-year-old graphic designer based in Singapore, and a collector of Tintin books and memorabilia, says: “I grew up in Bardhaman in Bengal and Tintin was an adventure in those days. The world became smaller for me and there was always that reassurance with Tintin that he was an ordinary guy and he always returned home after big adventures to small Belgium.”

Tintin was never really a journalist; in all the 23 books, he hardly ever files a report. He often takes sides with the establishment and even in the hurly-burly of geopolitics and space, he never has an ideological stand. He is a safe superhero, if at all one. Mago says that more than children, Tintin’s appeal is to the 1970s’ generation, which introduced Tintin to their children. “There’s a whole nostalgia value attached to Tintin comics and that’s why it is never a poor seller,” he says.

But any comic lover will tell

you that it is easy to admire Hergé’s work purely on the basis of his extraordinary artwork. The clear, colourful panels with clean lines are busy but never vague in what they are trying to say.

Depiction of movement is vividly cinematic. Doyle says: “He is acknowledged as the founding father of a school of comic art: the style known as ‘clear line’, and it has had a deep impact on the continental European comic world. However, that would be to overlook the fact that first and foremost, Hergé was a superb storyteller. There are other superlative exponents of comic art who have fallen by the wayside... This is best shown by the fact that his books have been turned into audio adventures in many languages, such being put on the radio by the BBC, and they still make excellent listening without the printed page!”

Spielberg’s film, unfortunately, is a perfunctory homage to both Tintin and his creator. The Americanizing is like an arriviste’s desire to introduce Tintin at home. Spielberg read his first Tintin after a critic compared his last Indiana Jones instalment with the comic book. He explains in his production notes how the little guy enamoured him and he became obsessed with him until the filming began. Hergé is reported to have said a few months before his death in 1983 that Spielberg was his choice of film-maker to take Tintin to the big screen.

Ironically, the artist expressed serious doubts about extreme American capitalism in his books.

In Tintin in America, there’s moral exultation in Tintin refusing money for an oilfield, a journey in which he stands up for Indians expelled from their oilrich lands.

Farr writes in Tintin: The Complete Companion: “Although later in life he would display some enthusiasm for America, developing, for instance, a friendship with Andy Warhol, this was by no means yet apparent. Even several Tintin adventures, like in The Shooting Star—significantly written during the oppressive war years—Hergé pits a European expedition led by Tintin against unscrupulous American rivals.”

It’s safe to assume that Tintin’s new journey to the US, in mindboggling technological garb, will be easier and a lot less meaningful than that.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn will release in theatres on 11 November.

FIRST PERSON

When Tintin ceased to please By the late 1960s, comics had gone supernova in the US and the edgy superhero changed everything B Y A BHIJIT G UPTA But perhaps that’s not the whole story. In the ···································· 1960s, as Hergé was labouring over ‘The Castafiore t has taken ‘Tintin’ a long time to cross the Emerald’ and ‘Flight 714’, comics had gone Atlantic. A small matter of nearly 80 years till supernova in the US. In New York, the he has been finally Spielbergized. Some will cavil incomparable Will Eisner had already been and say, no, he’s already been there, in ‘Tintin in producing a wholly new and edgy superhero series America’, in 1930s’ Chicago, when Al Capone and called ‘The Spirit’, about the first—and probably his thugs dropped him through a trapdoor. But only—middle­class superhero. In Cleveland, Ohio, a did they read him in the US? Remember, manic flower child called Robert this was 1932, before the Crumb was lighting the powder appearance of caped keg of the underground comix crusaders. No Flash Gordon, movement. In San Francisco, Phantom, Superman, or Trina Robbins was busy Batman. In fact, no creating the ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe superheroes at all.

Comix’, the first all­woman Is Tintin the first comic anthology. And indeed, superhero then? No and yes. in Bengal, there was the No in the sense that he has unjustly forgotten Mayukh no superpowers. Yes in the Choudhury, bringing a bit of sense that his adventures are the dark into the fledgling full of derring­do, good world of Bengali comics. triumphing over evil, Next to these, ‘Tintin’ one­person vigilantism, etc. seemed to be an What would have happened if anachronism from the Cold Tintin had taken root in the War years, a kind of US? Would he have been sanitized James Bond from allowed to remain the the ‘Boy’s Own Paper’.

Of course, I didn’t simple, boy­man figure he know all these while I started out as? Or would was growing up in the the dark shadows of 1970s, first on Bengali Gotham City have translations of ‘Tintin’ in the converted him into magazine ‘Anandamela’, and something more then the English versions. And complex, a creature of even if I had known, I wouldn’t light and shade? have been allowed to read Well, that didn’t them, since they were all adult happen, and Tintin comics with a capital A, or stayed exactly the way what is now called “for mature he has, while the world readers”. But there came a around him changed time, I think, when ‘Tintin’ beyond recognition. ceased to please and there was While the first dozen nothing to take its place in the Tintin adventures Exhausted Eighties, till, a decade were published over later, on a rainy day in Brighton, only 15 years I opened the pages of a comic (1929­44), the next book called ‘The Sandman’. But dozen took nearly that’s another story… thrice as long Pathbreaking: Will Eisner created (1943­86). Despite Abhijit Gupta teaches English at acquiring the services of a middle­class superhero.

Jadavpur University, Kolkata, Edgar Jacobs and the and specializes in comics. He was setting up of Hergé Studios in 1950, Hergé christened Tintin by his friends in school slowed down appreciably in the 1960s and and is still known by that name.

1970s. There were personal problems, and forays into film and merchandising, which Write to lounge@livemint.com account for the reduced pace.

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L12 COVER

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

ANIMATION

ON THE EDGE OF THE The ‘Tintin’ movie could have the same effect on motion capture as ‘Avatar’ did on 3D films, as one of the first convincing outings of the technology

B Y G OPAL S ATHE gopal.s@livemint.com

··························· hy is it that earlier movies with 3D computer-generated animation, such as The Polar Express or A Christmas Carol, left people feeling slightly uncomfortable, while The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn has garnered praise for its looks?

The answer comes from the field of robotics. In 1970, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori discovered that robots with human-like features, made people uncomfortable—something he termed the uncanny valley.

Mori’s concept of the uncanny valley is simple—as the appearance of an object becomes more human, our empathy for it increases, but only up to a point. Beyond that, the empathy drops sharply, and only slowly moves back towards the positive after reaching the lowest point—a corpse.

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In early 3D work, the characters and models did not look lively enough, lacking fluid motion. The net result, of stiff characters with flat, unmoving eyes, and faces that lacked expression, is in line with the lowest point on Mori’s chart, a zombie.

This is why 2D animation could feature humans while 3D animation has largely been about toys, robots or animals.

The 3D style is close enough to being human to fall squarely inside the uncanny valley, so 3D animation, as popularized by Pixar, stayed away from human protagonists that had been a staple of the Disney era.

The visual effects of The Adventures of Tintin have been created by Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital studio, which also created effects for The Lord of the Rings films, King Kong and Avatar.

Aside from Jackson and Steven Spielberg (co-producer and

director), the film also has inputs from James Cameron and Robert Zemeckis, who have made a number of motion-capture movies.

Like the animation studios, Weta has also stayed away from creating humans, until now. So what exactly makes Tintin different from films like Mars Needs Moms?

Shiven Sharma, PhD in machine learning, the University of Ottawa, Canada, has been working on video games, where the same concerns about the uncanny valley are at play. He says: “As fidelity improves, from simple blocky polygons to textured faces, it continued to get better and better, but beyond a point, we aren’t able to recreate a person yet. The fine details are what give these things away. The eyes, and the small movements around the mouth, are hard to animate perfectly, as is flow.”

While animation was moving on a different path, games con-

tinued to try and improve the look of human characters.

Sharma says: “There are a lot of tricks that animators would use—such as having bald heroes or making them wear a helmet.

This is because flowing elements like hair are very hard to show properly. This is also why the ‘space marine’ is such a popular design style—it’s an obvious exaggeration, and isn’t supposed to be real, per se.”

Sharma says: “Our mind is more accepting of stylized representations. That’s why the Tintin movie looks so good. They’ve made photorealistic people out of the comic books. But they’re Tintin people—the way they’re shaded, and the way they’re proportioned, is all made to have the same visual style that Hergé created in the comic.”

According to Sharma, by intentionally exaggerating some features and movements, the mind is able to accept that the image in front of it is not, in fact, human.

These visual tricks, coupled with the same motion-capture technology from Avatar, use a mind-boggling array of capture points to detect the most minute movement and translate that on to the screen for fluid animation of characters moving, talking or reacting to scenes and create a far more realistic world than other motion-capture movies have accomplished before.

Thanks to the huge advances in computer technology year on year, the processing power that can be thrown into carrying out these calculations is now at a point where small movements below the skin, such as the way muscles shift when a person walks or smiles, can be tracked.

In games too, Sharma points out, the character models are getting more detailed than ever before as computing power increases. Games such as Crysis, Uncharted and Rage have reached never-before levels of fidelity and each new game has been launched with photos comparing in-game graphics with the real-world objects they represent.

Given that both Jackson and Spielberg have been involved in video-game production, it’s safe to say they have brought a few tricks over to film-making, and might well have revived the motion-capture genre of movies along the way.

Interestingly, Hergé pioneered the ligne claire (clear line) art style that did away with cross-hatching and other attempts at realism, instead focusing on a cleaner art style that flowed across the page.

Many others in the Franco-Belgian comic school, most notably Spirou and Asterix, would use this as well, so it’s only fitting for the Tintin movie to break new ground visually.

Down to details: Animators must get the smallest detail right or their art becomes unsettling.

STALL ORDER

NANDINI RAMNATH

HOLLYWOOD ‘SEQUELITIS’

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or the past few years, one part of the US has been in the grip of a seemingly incurable disease. Advice has been dispensed and solutions have been suggested, but the ailment persists. No popular resistance movement or international summit can fix the problem.

Hollywood simply cannot overcome “sequelitis” and its cousin, “remakitis”. Movies, especially bad movies, never go away but return to haunt us simply by adding a number to their titles. Older films we hoped we had outgrown come back in newer forms.

Predator returned in the plural; Happy Feet is going to dance back in view—in 3D—and there is simply no end to the mystifying bunch of films called Resident Evil (Part 5 will invade us, in 3D, in 2012). The Twilight series has spawned three films, and Breaking Dawn, the first of a two-part

finale, will release on 18 November. No. 4 in the Mission: Impossible series will break over us in December.

Robert Downey Jr’s craggy, baggy face seems to suit the superhero antics of Iron Man just fine—wait for the third instalment next year. His Americanness is no barrier to his being cast as the very British detective Sherlock Holmes, a role he will reprise in December in the follow-up to Guy Ritchie’s movie adaptation.

Talented and good-looking actors seem to grow in the English countryside along with potatoes and sugar beet, but Ritchie simply couldn’t find one suitable local face to play the brainy private investigator.

This fortnight’s major Hollywood release, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, should, then, be a cause for celebration. Its roots lie not in a popular video

game or an older Hollywood movie, but Hergé’s brilliant comics. The hype surrounding the animated picture, which relies on motion-capture technology, flows from the men behind the camera rather than the talent in front of it.

Directed by Steven Spielberg and co-produced by Peter Jackson—that declaration seems to be enough to guarantee a quickening of breath.

Hergé reportedly said Spielberg would be the best person to adapt Tintin for the screen, but it’s worth remembering that old Chinese proverb—be careful what you wish for. Two follow-ups are already being planned for The Secret of the Unicorn.

Spielberg may be a self-professed Tintin fan, but he has made sure that his investment in fanboy behaviour is protected. Hollywood blurred

Animated: Tintin (played by Jamie Bell), Captain Haddock (played by Andy Serkis) and Snowy await rescue in The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. the line between film and fast-moving consumer goods many years ago, but it would have been nice if Tintin were spared that treatment.

The echo effect in Hollywood has severely influenced the kinds of American movies being released in India. The Indian offices of Hollywood studios realize that a franchise is less risky than a brand new drama.

The No. 2s and 4s play to

audiences familiar with the mythology built around the movies. Some of us will never tire of watching Johnny Depp sashay about in his ridiculous Jack Sparrow get-up, but even diehard Sparrowologists baulked at the idea of Depp sailing forth for the fourth time in On Stranger Tides. To see Depp as he really looks, without the kohl hiding his eyes and make-up masking his sharp

features, catch the 4 November release The Rum Diary before it is blown out of cinemas by the first of a potential trilogy and the fourth in a two-part climax to another trilogy.

Nandini Ramnath is the film critic of Time Out Mumbai (www.timeoutmumbai.net).

Write to Nandini at stallorder@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2011

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Culture

LOUNGE EXHIBITION

‘The ugliest man on the China coast’ COURTESY ASIA HOUSE

Unlike other Orien­ talists, George Chinnery never returned to London.

He died painting daily scenes in India and China

B Y A NINDITA G HOSE anindita.g@livemint.com

···························· riting from late 18th century London, British statesman Lord Chatham marvelled that “the riches of Asia have been poured in upon us”. Tea, spices, fabrics and other luxury goods brought in by the East India Company had transformed everyday life in Britain.

Among the “riches of Asia” exported to Europe were paintings and drawings produced by the many British artists, draughtsmen, and surveyors who travelled to the Indian subcontinent in search of patronage and inspiration. But while most of these artists returned to make a living back home, one of them never did.

Sailing to India in 1802, George Chinnery spent 23 years in Madras (now Chennai) and Calcutta (Kolkata), where he became the leading artist of British India.

Later, he moved to China and lived for 27 years in the cities of Canton (now Guangzhou), Hong Kong and Macau—where he now lies buried.

The art of George Chinnery (1774-1852) is little known in his native Britain, though substantial exhibitions have been devoted to him in Europe and Asia. His works have been shown in Lisbon (1995), Tokyo (1996), Hong Kong (2005) and Macau (2010), but there has been no public exhibition in the UK since an Arts Council show in 1957, and before that, a retrospective at the Tate in 1932.

With a reassessment of his legacy long overdue, Asia House, a pan-Asian organization in the UK, is hosting the first major loan exhibition of his works in Britain in

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over 50 years. The exhibition, The Flamboyant Mr Chinnery: An English Artist in India and China, opened in London on Friday.

A forgotten painter?

“Most of the so-called ‘Orientalist’ artists spent a few years in the East and then returned to Europe, where they exhibited ‘exotic’ subjects to their countrymen,” says Patrick Conner, the show’s curator and the director of the Martyn Gregory Gallery in London. Chinnery, on the other hand, became a permanent expat, severing all ties with home, although he did send back a few paintings to be hung in the Royal Academy of Arts in London to keep his reputation alive.

Conner believes that the neglect is partly due to the fact that Chinnery’s best works are based abroad (notably in the HSBC collection in Hong Kong; it is also sponsoring the exhibition).

At his prime, Chinnery was a splendid artist, portraying Chinese dignitaries, Parsi merchants, Western sea captains and their families. He produced delicate watercolours of Bengal and Macau and a wealth of lively sketches of the fishermen, boatwomen, barbers, food vendors and gamblers. His drawings and watercolours of local people and their daily activities are his most compelling work: crowded market scenes, fishermen landing on the beach, blacksmiths working at their bellows. The paintings depicted the social mores and customs of the time. Many are historically significant. In Madras, for example, he painted the original catamarans—from the Tamil kattu maram or bound wood—consisting of three logs lashed together, which should

Pina’s last act A photo exhibition of Pina Bausch’s visits to the country calls on her Indian influences B Y A NINDITA G HOSE anindita.g@livemint.com

···························· t is well known now that the German demigoddess of dance, Philippina “Pina” Bausch, conceived her last dance theatre work in India. Bamboo Blues, which was inspired by her travels across Kerala and Kolkata—and first performed in Kolkata in 2007—is a medley of colours and tropes so uniquely Indian that it is surprising Pina transported them to the global stage the way she did.

During a three-month residency in India put together by the Goethe-Institut in 2006, Pina and around 30 dancers and crew members from her Tanztheater Wuppertal dance company collaborated with 10 Indian artistes from different fields: The popular singer and film-maker Anjan Dutta and

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Odissi dancer Sharmila Biswas were among them. For the visual arts, she was put in touch with a local photographer Dev Nayak, then 32.

Nayak is not a dance photographer; he spent the greater part of his photography career shooting for Time magazine in eastern India. But, as he says, the point of the collaboration was to “interact and bounce ideas off each other”—which is what he did, taking the world’s most celebrated contemporary dance choreographer to Kolkata’s creative districts along Chitpur Road, debating matters of art, and facilitating visits to historic areas such as Kumartuli.

During the course of their interactions, Nayak took some photographs as well. And now, around 50 of his images are on show in an exhibition titled Memories of a

Eastern palette: (clockwise from left) Street Traders, Macau (oil on canvas); a self­portrait in old age; and Figures at the Water’s Edge by a Ruined Tomb, Bengal (both pencil and watercolour). rest other claims to the origin of these ingenious sea vessels.

The Asia House exhibition comprises 100 works spanning Chinnery’s range, from oils and watercolours to landscapes and portraits. Also included are a group of self-portraits, presenting “the ugliest man on the China coast”, as the eccentric artist called himself, at varying ages.

The works have been drawn from 20 different lenders, including public institutions such as the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, National Portrait Gallery and British Library, as well as private collections such as the HSBC’s in Hong Kong. While there are no concrete plans, Conner doesn’t rule out a Chinnery exhibition in India in future.

The man and the myths While in Asia, Chinnery became something of an exotic creature himself. In India, Chinnery smoked the hookah and had an Indian mistress, but as an artist

Beautiful Mind, presented by the German consulate general, Kolkata, and the Harrington Street Arts Centre as part of the ongoing “Year of Germany in India”.

Pina’s style of blending movements, sounds, stage sets, and her elaborate collaborations with performers during the composition of a piece (a style now known as Tanztheater), resulted in largescale multimedia productions which always translated to highly charged photographs. However, her managers usually discouraged photography during performances. “She put in a word for me,” says Nayak, adding that months of being embedded with the troupe helped.

His pictures from the first-ever performance of Bamboo Blues capture its sensual content; the brightly swirling colours and fluid movements. When a lone woman describes an arc with her arm, abruptly stops, and then launches into a crystalline solo—all power and light—Nayak captures the flurry of red satin in his photograph.

But even more precious than his pictures of the performance are the six portraits of Pina herself that

he largely maintained the techniques he had learnt in London’s Royal Academy Schools. He was known as a droll genius, a man of volatile temperament, so extravagant that despite many lucrative commissions, he was hopelessly in debt for much of his life.

Unable to return home, he had sailed from India to China to evade his creditors.

Because of the fragmented nature of his career, there is no Chinnery estate; the contents of his studio were auctioned in Macau shortly after his death.

“The proceeds were no doubt put towards the payment of his large debts! His three sons (one legitimate, two illegitimate) all died before him,” says Conner.

During his lifetime, Chinnery was sought out by travellers who wanted to meet the genius of the east China coast. Now, those with an academic curiosity in the region and period, such as author Amitav Ghosh, are trying to revive his legacy. In River of Smoke, the second book of Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy, one of Chinnery’s illegitimate half-Indian sons is a central character. “Yes, he did have two sons with an Indian woman, but very little is known about them. The character Robin Chinnery in my book is my imaginary version of one of them,” says Ghosh in an email.

In a June blogpost, Ghosh recounts his visit to Chinnery’s Madras home. “The Victoria Memorial in Kolkata is rumoured to possess two Chinnery paintings, but no one seems to have actually set eyes on them,” he writes. In Macau, says Ghosh, there is a street named after him.

Chinnery painted India at a time when relations between the Indians and the British were changing rapidly, and China at the time of the First Opium War and the colonization of Hong Kong.

While his drawings and paintings continue to be delightful as works of art, they also raise historical questions about the legitimacy of the British empire and its farreaching effects—issues that are very much alive today.

The Flamboyant Mr Chinnery: An English Artist in India and China will run till 21 January at the Asia House, London (www.asiahouse.org).

The The city city,, the the stage: stage: Pina Pina (left) (left) with with one one of of her her dancers dancers in in Kolkata.

Kolkata. are part of the exhibition. These photographs, in black and white, chronicle Pina’s time in India: Here she is sitting in a cycle rickshaw; there, posing in an old photo studio; and there again, smoking a cigarette almost meditatively amid the chaos of Kolkata.

Nayak describes her as “a very stylish woman”, ever curious and energetic. “You knew that she was really enjoying her time in the

world,” he says. And though she was 65 at the time of her trip, being surrounded by young men and women from around the world as she always was—her dancers came from Latin America, Europe, even India—gave her a youthful aura.

Not too long after her trip to India, Pina died in 2009 of an unstated form of cancer.

Earlier this year, Wim Wenders’ 3D documentary Pina immortal-

ized the legend of the world of dance. This exhibition freezeframes her links with India.

Memories of a Beautiful Mind will run at The Harrington Street Arts Centre, Kolkata, till 26 November. www.livemint.com For images, visit www.livemint.com/pinabausch.htm

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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2011

Travel

LOUNGE

FIJI

Peace in water world PHOTOGRAPHS

In the middle of the South Pacific, it’s all about gazing at corals, lazing in hammocks and sipping ‘kava’

BY

BHASKAR DK

TRIP PLANNER/FIJI VANUA LEVU

FIJI VITI LEVU

Koro Sea

Suva

Indian passport holders are issued visas on arrival, provided their passports are valid for another six months, and they have return tickets and proof of sufficient funds for their stay in the country.

It is difficult to get a through ticket to Fiji, and return fares start at R1.6 lakh. Speak to travel agents to see if they can find ways to combine your trip with other concessional offers as you will have to fly through at least one hub—probably Hong Kong.

Stay

Do

Eat

There are plenty of resorts and budget accommodations throughout the Fijian islands. For couples, there is the intimate, India romantic and truly exotic Matangi resort (www.matangiisland.com), which does not admit children below 16. Rates start at $610 (or around R29,890) plus taxes a night, and go up to $900 plus taxes a night for a tree house. Beqa Island resort Fiji Australia (www.beqalagoonresort.com) is a divers’ paradise. The diving sites offer spectacular shark sightings. The resort offers a seven-day dive package at $2,649 plus taxes per person. Rates for shorter stays are available on request.

South Pacific Ocean

B Y B HASKAR D .K . ···························· our fins, snorkel and goggles are ready. The water is a bit choppy, but we will go,” says my guide, Alice, as I feast on the tropical fruits in Matangi Island’s Oceanfront dining lounge. Then off we go, five diving and snorkelling enthusiasts from different parts of the world, for a 30-minute ride to the middle of the South Pacific.

“Oh, it’s absolutely fun and you will see some great coral and sharks don’t even bother you,” offers 16-year-old Molly Monohan, who has travelled all the way from Alaska for a diving adventure in the Fijian island.

I get ready, adjusting my snorkel, fins, mask and then jump into the Horseshoe Bay. Adventurers travel from afar to take a peek beneath the warm waters of this iconic destination, often featured on lists of places to go before you die. After a few minutes of discomfort, as I accustom myself to breathing through an external pipe, I start to enjoy the breathtaking beauty only a few feet below the surface of the water. The weather keeps changing, the sea becomes calmer and the corals become more visible. I remember Mrs Douglas at the resort saying, “Bright sunshine means bright coral viewing.”

Fiji boasts hundreds of reefs around its numerous islands. These vary in type from fringing reefs and barrier reefs to atolls. Home to more than 400 species of coral, Fiji’s waters also host a plethora of other marine life: more than a thousand species of fish, anemone and sea snakes. Fiji is determined to act as a responsible custodian to this ecosystem, and strictly monitors and manages its coastline.

Half an hour passes as I marvel at the ocean valleys and the surrounding underwater mountains.

My feeble attempt at picking up a blue starfish results in a mouthful of seawater, and I quickly readjust my snorkel mask.

We go a little deeper and look at one of the shipwrecks and my thoughts go back to the movie Titanic. As I literally gasp

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Picture­postcard setting: (from top) Breathtakingly beautiful flora and fauna dot the island; firewalkers perform a traditional dance; and kava, the social lubricant of Fijian life.

Ask your hotel to arrange scuba certification for you. You can rent snorkelling and scuba-diving gear for your adventure. You can also rent equipment for Fijian dollars (FJD) 40 (or around R1,115), or take a beginner PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors; www.padi.com) course for FJD 170. Also ask for village visits and possible Sunday church services. Experience the making of ‘tapa’ (cloth made from the inner bark of paper mulberry trees or breadfruit trees) by villagers.

Food is a big part of daily Fijian life, and the country has a wide variety of dining options. Fijian cuisine relies heavily on seafood, pork, chicken and root vegetables (dalo and tapioca) often cooked in ‘lolo’ (coconut milk). ‘Kokoda’ (pronounced “kokonda"), raw fish marinated in coconut milk and lime juice, ‘duruka’ (an asparagus-like delicacy creamy in colour), ‘lovo’ (fish boiled in thick coconut cream, with onions and tomatoes) and ‘rourou’ (taro leaves in a coconut sauce) are some of the much sought after specialities.

GRAPHIC

at the colours of the ocean denizens, Alice pulls my leg and points to a fast-moving, stealthlike species closing in on us.

SHARK! I freeze for a moment, just metres away from this magnificent creature. My instant panic is followed by thoughts of escape. Where can I go?

“Relax, they won’t come near you,” Alice says. Barely a minute later, another shark comes from behind us, and sails right between my floating tummy and the coral reef I had been admiring.

And lo, a third shark appears on the scene, directly in front of us, and we have three sharks circling barely 10ft away. My snorkelling partner says, with a calmness that belies the situation, “Look at that coral, it’s breathing fresh!” This at a moment when I’m not even sure that I’m breathing.

Experiencing the ‘kava’ ceremony…

Later, on dry land, and safe from sharks, I visit a Fijian village. The village, or koro, is fundamental to Fijian culture. Christine at the Matangi resort tells me: “Village homes have no defined boundaries and doors are seldom closed.

It is unusual to find a Fijian family living on land outside of a village.”

On an invitation from the village chief Tomolo, I visit Tomo, on the farthest corner of Fiji, the Taveuni Island. It is customary

BY

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

for guests to carry kava root, or Yaqona, a cousin of the pepper plant, and sold in the local markets as a gift for the village chief.

Returning a garland made of local plant leaves, they welcome me to the village. I marvel at the painstaking attention with which the village is kept clean.

Tomolo, the village chief, gives us a tour of coconut trees, tropical flower plants and a 360-degree view of the bay, a picture-postcard setting. At the village, the women spend their day fishing, gathering firewood for cooking and doing laundry by hand, while the men work in the fields.

At night, if not at church, Fijians will be drinking Yaqona, discussing village affairs and playing guitars. Fijians walk everywhere—up into the hills to work their plantations, along the roads to gather bananas, mangoes and breadfruit, and from village to village for Saturday rugby games and night-time social gatherings.

Just as “Bula” is the traditional greeting, you won’t leave Fiji without experiencing a kava ceremony and getting the taste of kava.

“Where there is a village, there is kava,” Mrs Douglas said across the dinner table that night. This elaborate ceremony is laden with rituals and occupies a central place in everyday life in Fiji. Looking like muddy water, a mild analgesic and a diuretic, it will make your body

lethargic, tongue tingly, and leave you fuzzy-headed. Although nonalcoholic, it is the social lubricant, the deal sealer, the friend maker.

Kava drinkers don’t get rowdy, they just fall asleep.

Walking on hot stones…

On the other side of the Fiji landscape is the circular, forest-clad, mountainous Beqa (pronounced Benga) Island on the southern coast of Viti Levu. A massive fringing reef 30km wide, it is renowned for its shark-feeding and deep-sea game fishing. But more unique are the firewalkers from the surrounding villages of Rukua, Naceva and Dakuibeqa.

Dressed in traditional warrior grass skirts, the firewalkers step on heated rocks with ease and a radiant smile. “It’s a tradition passed on for generations and it doesn’t hurt,” says the tribal leader Wai-

sake Ratuloaloa. Strange as it may be, the group of firewalkers has to abstain from sex and coconuts for two weeks before the ritual. While the stones are heated, the group chants and walks around the burning stones. In my curiosity, I check the feet of Ratuloaloa, and find no trace of blisters! The ceremony is performed purely for entertainment and, unlike its Indian counterpart, has no spiritual significance.

Fiji can be enjoyed only at the Fijian pace. As my bartender at the Bula Bar, Beqa Lagoon Resort, said: “We want you to relax and feel at home. For us, home is everywhere and belongs to everyone.” Indeed, Fiji is all about kava, coral and hammocks stretched under the bright orange lichen on the coconut trees.

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CHILD­FRIENDLY RATING

Many resorts have children’s clubs and other facilities and activities geared towards families.

SENIOR­FRIENDLY RATING

Fiji is a paradise for relaxation and exhilaration. It offers innumerable opportunities for seniors. Most resorts are wheelchair­accessible and offer support to the elderly.

LGBT­FRIENDLY RATING

Fijian people are fairly conservative and reserved in displays of public affection.

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LOST WORLDS

Scandinavian despair Faced with a lack of art, culture or love, a feminist descends into a quiet loneliness B Y A ADISHT K HANNA ···························· o be slightly ahead of your time is exciting, for you get the opportunity to see the world change into your vision of it; but to be far in advance of your time leaves you lonely and miserable. This was the unhappy position Mary Wollstonecraft found herself in. Born in England in 1759, Wollstonecraft grew up to become a republican inspired by Rousseau and the French Revolution, and a feminist.

In the 18th century, republicanism was an unpopular opinion in British society at large, but you could find other like-minded people. Wollstonecraft’s feminism, however, was so avantgarde that it found practically no

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sympathizers. She wrote and published tracts claiming that women were equal to men, but were pushed into subservient roles in society because they had been denied education.

Wollstonecraft worked across genres, though. She also wrote two novels which depicted the cruelty of unequal marriages, a book of children’s stories in which she preached middle-class and Enlightenment virtues such as thrift, education and rationality; and also published her letters from her travels in Scandinavia, which are excerpted below.

As with much of her other work, Wollstonecraft’s letters are imbued with her thoughts on politics, education and social refinement. Her letters do contain some

description of natural beauty, but they are far more preoccupied with the people she encounters.

A century later, Victorian Britons would fan across the world, expressing horror and disgust at the customs of “savages”. Wollstonecraft never quite achieves disgust, but her letters remain filled with despair at the Scandinavian society she encounters and its lack of engagement with the arts, sciences or politics. Unlike her successor travellers, she lays the blame not on heathen worship, but on geography, explaining that when a land is not fertile or rich enough to support dense populations or intensive food production, its people will be unconcerned with anything except basic survival.

These complaints are more personal than clinical, but never quite descend into whining. The letters are filled instead with a quiet—and very moving—loneliness and melancholy.

There was a happy sequel to these melancholy letters though.

Reading them after they were published, the anarchist philosopher William Godwin became a fan of Wollstonecraft, and then fell in love with her. They married, and lived in adjoining houses to maintain their independence. Tragically, the happiness did not last long. While giving birth to their daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin—who would grow up to write Frankenstein—Wollstonecraft contracted septicaemia, and died 10 days later. She remained reviled after her death, until her books returned to prominence a century later.

Letters on Sweden, Norway and Denmark is in the public domain and can be downloaded from Google Books, Project Gutenberg or Amazon for free.

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A woman’s gaze: A drawing of Mary Wollstonecraft by A.S. Merritt.

HENRY GUTTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

On the free way: Copenhagen, circa 1750. Wollstonecraft found contemporary Denmark and Norway to have the least oppressive government in Europe.

Mary Wollstonecraft v/s the public sector My attention was particularly directed to the lighthouse, and you can scarcely imagine with what anxiety I watched two long hours for a boat to emancipate me; still no one appeared. Every cloud that flitted on the horizon was hailed as a liberator, till approaching nearer, like most of the prospects sketched by hope, it dissolved under the eye into disappointment.

Weary of expectation, I then began to converse with the captain on the subject, and from the tenor of the information my questions drew forth I soon concluded that if I waited for a boat I had little chance of getting on shore at this place.

Despotism, as is usually the case, I found had here cramped the industry of man. The pilots being paid by the king, and

scantily, they will not run into any danger, or even quit their hovels, if they can possibly avoid it, only to fulfil what is termed their duty. How different is it on the English coast, where, in the most stormy weather, boats immediately hail you, brought out by the expectation of extraordinary profit.

remarkable for fine forms. They have, however, mostly fine complexions; but indolence makes the lily soon displace the rose. The quantity of coffee, spices, and other things of that kind, with want of care, almost universally spoil their teeth, which contrast but ill with their ruby lips.

On Swedish women

The Scandinavian Enlightenment

Health and idleness will always account for promiscuous amours; and in some degree I term every person idle, the exercise of whose mind does not bear some proportion to that of the body.

The Swedish ladies exercise neither sufficiently; of course, grow very fat at an early age; and when they have not this downy appearance, a comfortable idea, you will say, in a cold climate, they are not

… everything seems to suggest that the prince really cherishes the laudable ambition of fulfilling the duties of his station… The happiness of the people is a substantial eulogium; and, from all I can gather, the inhabitants of Denmark and Norway are the least oppressed people of Europe. The press is free. They translate any of the French publications of the day, deliver their opinion on the

subject, and discuss those it leads to with great freedom, and without fearing to displease the Government.

On the subject of religion they are likewise becoming tolerant, at least, and perhaps have advanced a step further in free-thinking. One writer has ventured to deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, and to question the necessity or utility of the Christian system, without being considered universally as a monster, which would have been the case a few years ago.

Wollstonecraft on architecture Christiania is a clean, neat city; but it has none of the graces of architecture, which ought to keep pace with the refining manners of a people—or the outside of a house will disgrace the inside, giving the beholder

an idea of overgrown wealth devoid of taste. Large square wooden houses offend the eye, displaying more than Gothic barbarism. Huge Gothic piles, indeed, exhibit a characteristic sublimity, and a wildness of fancy peculiar to the period when they were erected; but size, without grandeur or elegance, has an emphatical stamp of meanness, of poverty of conception, which only a commercial spirit could give.

On marital relations The Swedes are in general attached to their families, yet a divorce may be obtained by either party on proving the infidelity of the other or acknowledging it themselves.

The women do not often recur to this equal privilege, for they either retaliate on their husbands by following their own

devices or sink into the merest domestic drudges, worn down by tyranny to servile submission.

Do not term me severe if I add, that after youth is flown the husband becomes a sot, and the wife amuses herself by scolding her servants. In fact, what is to be expected in any country where taste and cultivation of mind do not supply the place of youthful beauty and animal spirits? Affection requires a firmer foundation than sympathy, and few people have a principle of action sufficiently stable to produce rectitude of feeling; for in spite of all the arguments I have heard to justify deviations from duty, I am persuaded that even the most spontaneous sensations are more under the direction of principle than weak people are willing to allow.

But adieu to moralising.

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Books

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The religious write New books by two sublime exponents of the graphic form reveal opposite approaches to the West’s relationship with Islam B Y A BHIMANYU D AS ···························· ew manifestations of cognitive dissonance are as discomfiting as the realization that a much-admired artist might possibly be an unpleasant madman. Often, the revelation is abrupt; the casual reveal that a literary idol spends his nights goose-stepping around his kitchen in a little moustache. At other times, one can cling desperately to the hope that said idol is just a Chaplin aficionado off his game until the evidence piles too high to ignore. Such is the tragic arc of the average Frank Miller fan, starting at the dizzying heights of genre-defining classics like The Dark Knight Returns and culminating in the denial-destroying ignominy of Holy Terror, Miller’s newest release.

Editors have been backing away from this propaganda piece since 2006, when it was announced as Holy Terror, Batman!, a DC Comics publication that was to pit Bruce Wayne against the Al Qaeda. Miller eventually concluded that Batman was not right for the job (or DC recognized Islamophobia when they saw it) and the result is now on bookshelves as Legendary Comics’ Holy Terror. The story is as irrelevant as the one in Miller’s übermensch manifesto 300. Not-Batman vigilante the Fixer’s tryst with un-Catwoman Natalie Stack is interrupted by explosions around their home turf of almostGotham Empire City. With the righteous, trailer-friendly tag line of “not on my turf”—delivered sans irony, hipster or otherwise—the duo begin their indiscriminate war against Islam.

Make no mistake, it is Islam that the Fixer (and Miller) is declaring war on, not the debased “theology” of groups like Al Qaeda. There are no shades of grey; the moral underpinnings of Miller’s rant are as black and white as his signature visual style.

The terrorists are all subhuman representatives of Muslims as a whole, with Islam portrayed as a belief system more suited to the Dark Ages than 2011. The toxic “us versus them” aesthetic reaches Rocky Horror levels of camp hysteria with the appearance of the Fixer’s ally David, an ex-Mossad agent with the Star of David tattooed on his face. But what is terrifying about all this cartoonish hate-mongering is how seriously Miller takes it. Torturing people has not come this easily to a protagonist since Jack Bauer took up pliers in 24. Those on the receiving end were not stereotyped in so ugly a fashion even on that paragon of interrogation TV. The tragedy of this book’s existence is enhanced by the occasional flashes of inspiration that bring back dim memories of Miller’s once-genius. Most are moments of visual sublime; black and white tone poems reminiscent of his best work from the 1980s and illustrative of how much mileage he can still get from a splash of black ink.

There are some genuinely beautiful pages floating in this puddle of ugliness; a resplendent double spread of a terrorist, a minimalist night-time mosque scene, entire cityscapes sketched in silhouette. Miller seems truly

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Habibi: Pantheon Books, 672 pages, $35 (around `1,725).

Holy Terror: Legendary Comics, 120 pages, $29.95.

Bad comics, good comics: Where Holy Terror (left) is ill­considered and nasty, Habibi is impeccably researched and beautiful.

happy drawing grotesque people running across rooftops; few readers could be blamed for wishing that he’d stuck with variations on that theme instead of trying to go socio-political. Holy Terror is a shrill, vulgar screed against Islam, uninterested in real consideration of the post-9/ 11 world Miller claims to be inspired by.

The lack of irony in Miller’s work was partly compensated for by the release schedule of Pantheon Books, the publisher of Blankets auteur Craig Thompson’s latest masterpiece Habibi.

Released in the same week as Holy Terror, they ended up next to each other on bookshelves, Thompson’s work the delicate Bach fugue to Miller’s Wagnerian bombast, the Professor X to his Magneto. Habibi also represents its creator’s engagement with Islamic culture but this is where the commonality ends. Where Holy Terror is ill-considered and nasty, Habibi is impeccably researched and beautiful.

Habibi is all the argument one might need to come down on the side of physical artefacts in the e-book wars. A 672-page opus, it is a wonder of book design and production that rivals the sensual overload of the best of Chris Ware or David Mazzucchelli. If a critic must inhabit the role of consumer guide, I can safely advocate buying this book on aesthetic considerations alone.

Intellectually, the waters are slightly more muddied. Habibi is, on one level, a surreal love story between refugee child slaves

Dodola and Zam, spanning several centuries as the protagonists shift bodies and identities. On another level, in true Alan Moore/ Neil Gaiman form, it is a story about storytelling, the world and everything. On yet another, it is a knotty intellectual engagement with a culture that is simultaneously alien and fascinating to Craig Thompson, brought up fundamentalist Christian in rural Wisconsin. Here lie the troubling aspects of the book.

Set in what Thompson describes as a “mythical landscape”, large chunks of Habibi function as heavily stylized fantasy. Mythical or not, the Orientalist tropes that are paraded throughout the book tend to weigh heavy after a while. Child slavery, eunuchs, rape and sexual degradation—it’s all accounted for.

No individual element feels too gratuitous. If anything, it is all suffused with Thompson’s deeply humanist personal philosophy and feels grounded in his stated ideology of positing Habibi as a counter-argument to Western vilification of Islamic culture. Yet, these are still tenuous grounds for his Orientalism. The erotic imagery borders on the hysterical at points, as the harem baths and

pleasure palaces start to run into each other. One can almost imagine the riotous graduate seminars that will result from pairing Habibi with a dose of Edward Said.

That said, it is a fount of delight for the attentive reader; a work of staggering ambition. The feverishly detailed art is a welcome change from the minimalist, semiscrawly look that is in vogue with “literary graphic novels” of this nature (Persepolis and Maus come to mind). Every page is the result of obsessive research and planning followed through with meticulous execution in a distinctly Eisnerian mode. The images are loaded with diverse elements drawn from history, mythology, Arab numerology and calligraphy.

Thompson’s preoccupation with the visual qualities of Arab letters is worked into the narrative continually, both in symbolic terms (similar to Moore’s incorporation of magical symbols into From Hell and Promethea) and as building blocks for panels. A transcendent example arrives on Page 405, where Zam is reunited with long-lost companion

Dodola and his perception of her morphs into a white silhouette fleshed out with calligraphy. It is a moment of great beauty, tempered with an oddly appealing note of melodrama. The virtuoso brushwork that represents Thompson at the height of his abilities. As good as Blankets looked, it is not a raggedy patch on the rich tapestry of Habibi.

The story, too, is gripping. The interplay between digressive religious fables and the mythicized main plot is handled deftly and paced well for a 600-page comic.

More than anything, however, its success hangs on Thompson’s success at pulling off that most primal of tales: the discovery and loss of a beloved. As with Blankets, Thompson equates the loss of a loved one with the loss of God (or, perhaps, faith); only this time, he is looking for the divine in places far removed from the American Midwest.

Habibi was not just written or drawn; it reads like it was practically birthed in a tremendous effort of will. It is the perfect response to those who would suggest that the venality, superficiality and stupidity of books like Holy Terror are representative of comics as a whole. There are no “graphic novels” and “comic books”, just good comics and bad comics.

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STEVE JOBS | WALTER ISAACSON

THE READING ROOM

TABISH KHAIR

Jobs for all

FULL MARX Man from Marx

The new biography is flat in the telling, but big on painstaking research KIMBERLY WHITE/CORBIS

B Y S IDIN V ADUKUT ···························· or a large part of his life, maybe half, Steve Jobs was an insufferable asshole. And for the rest of it he was perhaps, at best, a sufferable one.

They say you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. But then this is the single overwhelming truth about the man, and it dominates Walter Isaacson’s biography, a work that shines more for its painstaking research and fascinating minutiae than it does for its shining prose. It is also perhaps the least disputed Jobs fact: Controversies over the originality of Jobs’ innovations and ideas, about how he wrote Steve Wozniak out of the Apple saga, about how the unabashedly commercial and closed nature of his products is the antithesis of the open Buddhist philosophy he espoused, and much more will all rage on for years, if not longer. At least until Jobs, the man, and Apple, the company, have ceased to amaze us.

Till that happens, fans and detractors will disagree about everything except one thing: For almost all the people in his life, Jobs was usually a very, very unpleasant man to know.

Unlike many popular biographies over the last few years, Isaacson’s book has no obvious agenda. It seeks to neither lionize Jobs nor diminish him.

Instead it merely seeks to tell his story. Which is fine as far as neutrality is concerned, but it robs the book of a sense of urgency and intent. In a sense, it is like trying to appreciate the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan by reading the screenplay: Everything sounds exciting... but it just doesn’t feel exciting.

Still the substance more than makes up for the flagging style.

After being adopted as a child, Steve Jobs grew up being fascinated by technology, but not necessarily in the way that his Apple co-founder Wozniak was.

Wozniak knew how to make things. Jobs knew how to sell them. But not immediately. In fact, in the early years of his career it is not entirely clear what Jobs was about. There are the years of seeking self and meditation, and freak dieting.

And, of course, the body odour

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Karl Marx, despite the misfortune of having “followers” who have mostly harmed and misread him as much as his opponents, remains highly valid today. If more people read Marx, they would not go about looking so bewildered in the face of the current economic crisis. It is this that makes Terry Eagleton’s Why Marx was Right a must-read.

Eagleton points out that Marx was not the originator of the idea of social class, revolution, economic exploitation, social conflict, historical “progress” (or “regress”) and of either socialism or communism. He notes that “two doctrines lie at the heart of Marx’s thought”: “One of them is the primary role played by the economic in social life; the other is the idea of a succession of modes of production throughout history.” But these two doctrines, Eagleton points out, were not Marx’s own innovation either. Instead, what is unique about Marx’s thought is that “he locks these two ideas—class struggle and mode of production—together, to provide a historical scenario which is indeed genuinely new”.

As every intellectual knew three decades ago and some still recall in hiding, for Marx a mode of production was the combination of certain forces of production with certain relations of production. This was not some narrow “economic reductionism”—among other things, Marx wanted more leisure for all, not more labour—but an attempt to face the material facts of a complex and obscuring system. In different ways, Eagleton’s book returns again and again to this core perception, and argues—quite convincingly— that we cannot avoid employing this perception of Marx in order to understand the world of capitalism in which we live.

Bookies’ Booker

and refusal to bathe, quirks that persisted well into his entrepreneurial period.

But if Wozniak was the technological prodigy, what was Jobs? This is not a question Isaacson answers directly. But the reader is left with the enduring feeling that Jobs’ great strengths were manipulating people, identifying great ideas and then obsessing over people and ideas until they generated products. And because Jobs made himself a super-proxy for all consumers, he refused to ship anything till he was convinced about the product himself.

The first half of the book is also a whirlwind history of the early years of the personal computer industry. It is remarkable how small that early ecosystem was, and how many moments of serendipity led to the computers we use today. For instance, both Jobs and Bill Gates were spurred on to create their early innovations by the same January 1975 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine that featured the first personal computer kit, the Altair, on the cover. Also remarkable is the fact that Hewlett-Packard once turned down an offer to use the technology of the first Apple computer.

Myth maker: (top) Walter Isaacson does a better job of telling the Jobs story than explaining his genius; and Jobs speaks in front of an older photo of him and Apple co­founder Steve Wozniak at a conference in January 2010.

Steve Jobs: Little Brown/ Hachette India, 630 pages, `799.

Throughout this section it is a real challenge to figure out what was going on in Jobs’ head. Even though Isaacson allows Jobs to vindicate himself every few pages, his explanations don’t really shed much light. Things get better as the story progresses, but not substantially.

Which is why this book tells the story of Jobs much better than it explains Jobs himself.

Why did Jobs do the things he did? Why was he so hard on so many people? Why, decades later, did he still hold such hostility for some people?

Isaacson quotes Jobs on Gates: “Bill is basically unimag-

inative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology.

He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”

And this from a man who happily, even proudly, admits he copied several ideas himself.

Isaacson’s work is a meticulous portrait of one of the great personalities of our age. The author, the protagonists and the subject of his biography himself seem to struggle to explain how a man of such obvious weaknesses achieved such enduring greatness.

Did Jobs leave a “dent in the universe”, as he always wanted to, despite being an asshole? Or precisely because he was one?

We will perhaps never know.

Write to lounge@livemint.com IN SIX WORDS An insufferable genius keeps his secrets

The bookies were right about the Booker this time: Julian Barnes was tipped to win for The Sense of An Ending, and he did. Shortlisted thrice before for the Booker, it was time that Barnes—to my mind England’s most important living fiction writer—won the prize. The Sense of An Ending is a well-crafted and beautifully written novella: a compelling read and a subtle meditation on love, envy, responsibility, memory and, in general, the “great unrest” of life.

And yet, it is somewhat sad that Barnes won the Booker for this particular novella. One can argue that it is neither his best work, nor typical of the vast body of his previous work. It also marks—and this might be significant—a clear moving away from postmodernism (while retaining full awareness of it) by Barnes, who was arguably England’s leading postmodernist too. Both Flaubert’s Parrot and England, England, shortlisted earlier, would have been more apt individual winners. There is some irony in the fact that Julian Barnes has won a long-due Booker for a novella that is more Coetzee than vintage Barnes!

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Poetry time Two interesting and different collections of poems have come my way. The Allahabad-based Smita Agarwal’s new collection, Mofussil Notebook: Poems of Small-Town India, is a reminder of the neglected fact that Indian poetry in English continues to find fertile ground in small towns.

Actually, the fact that even Arun Kolatkar’s great collection, Jejuri, took the Mumbai-based poet to a Relevant: Read Marx to small town should be considered understand the current crisis. more than a historical anecdote by critics. These days, when the spaces of Indian English creativity seem filled almost solely by cosmopolitan voices, this is worth highlighting.

The other collection, Radha Says: Last Poems, belongs to one of these cosmopolitan voices, but a highly remarkable one: Reetika Vazirani. Despite a promising and prize-winning career, Vazirani committed suicide at an early age. This collection of her manuscript poems, lovingly edited by Leslie McGrath and Ravi Shankar, is evidence of the extent of our loss in the realms of poetry.

Tabish Khair is the Denmark-based author of The Thing about Thugs.

Write to Tabish at readingroom@livemint.com

SECRETS | RUSKIN BOND

Seen better days The author re­imagines the Anglo­Indian community of 1940s’ Dehradun B Y M AYANK A USTEN S OOFI mayank.s@livemint.com

···························· uskin Bond’s new collection of seven short stories, Secrets, is set in Dehradun, a town around 250km north of Delhi.

Derived from his own childhood experiences, the stories recall the Anglo-Indians and the “countryborn British” stationmasters, civil servants, irritable spinsters and widows with grandchildren.

Theirs was a civilization that had mutton kofta for lunch and Irish stew for dinner. A colony of tea and small talk; people dropped in at each other’s bungalows for badminton parties. The drawing room gramophones played Deanna Durbin, George Formby and

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Gracie Fields.

Set in the mid-1940s, Bond’s stories give a vivid sense of those times. Dehradun had more than 300 horse-driven tongas. The town had no local newspaper, and news of crime was spread by word of mouth. The local magician ended each show by once again sawing his daughter in half. There were six cinema halls; three showed English films. Those who had short-wave sets tuned the frequencies to Radio Hilversum, Radio Ceylon, Radio Vienna and the Overseas service of the BBC. Bond’s narrator religiously listened to Much-Binding-in-theMarsh, a comedy show. Anglo-Indian children of his age were obsessed with the “4Cs: the cin-

ema, comics, chaat and Crime Club thrillers”. They went to boarding schools in the hills and spent vacations with their families in the railway colonies of the plains. Here they played with the children of Indian shopkeepers and clerks who, as the narrator points out, “when they grew up, would be the backbone of the prosperous middle class”.

Bond keeps to a class that was becoming less prosperous with every passing year. In Gracie, about a club singer who migrates to London and becomes a pavement prostitute, the narrator hints at Dehradun’s shifting world: “Sometimes I accompanied Bhim or Ranbir to a Hindi movie, but most of the time I haunted the English cinemas which were still running, although to smaller audiences.”

In Over the Wall, the narrator is spending a holiday with “Granny”: “She hadn’t changed much, but the world was changing fast, and India was now an independent nation. Most of the British, AngloIndian and European residents of Dehra had left and gone ‘home’ to

Secrets: Penguin India, 150 pages, `250.

England or some other country.

Granny wasn’t going anywhere—not unless her home and garden was taken from her.”

The story has another AngloIndian character who never returns “home”. Just across Granny’s house is the bungalow of Mr Johnson, a retired civil servant. His younger brother lives in seclusion in an attached cottage; his body is disfigured with lep-

rosy. Twice a day the servant goes in with a “thermos or a tiffin-carrier, and sometimes fruit in a small basket.” After India is free, Mr Johnson sells the house to a certain Major Yadav and leaves town. His brother joins the Indian beggars in the town’s “leper colony”.

A few stories are set during the last years of World War II. Dehradun was designated a “recreational centre” for Allied troops. In the evening, American GIs walked down the tony Rajpur Road singing Sweet Rosie O’Grady. Occasionally there were drunken brawls with the British troops, who would get homesick in the nightclub each time the crooner sang The White Cliffs of Dover. The Italian prisoners of war, who were allowed to walk through Rajpur Road only once a week, were the best behaved. After the war ended, all the soldiers returned home. “A few war-brides went with them.

A few illegitimate children were left behind.”

At Green’s Hotel is the collection’s most important story. Not

for its serial killer who strangles wealthy women and leaves behind a note saying, “Die in a ditch, you rich bitch”, but because it offers a perfect metaphor for the collapsing Anglo-Indian society.

The hotel is a “bungalow-type single-storey building, standing in fairly extensive grounds, with a neglected garden and a tennis court overrun by dandelions, thistles, and marigolds gone wild”. A way of life has been taken over by contemporary events and is being packed into history.

In the same story the narrator advises, “… if you want to study human nature, stay in a small hotel that had seen better days”. That could be Bond talking about a world he was born into and which he has so effortlessly conjured up in this book.

His is not the kind of English we connect with ad jingles and call centres, or with magic realism and stream of consciousness. It is the English of a charming old uncle sitting on a park bench and telling the neighbourhood teens about his sad, carefree and mischievous early life.

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ANANTHA SUBRAMANYAM

BANGALORE BHATH | SABBAH HAJI

Oh my God, I rode the lightning

GIREESH GV/AP

A fangirl’s account of the Metallica concert reiterates why Bangalore is India’s rock capital

I

t is only fitting that months of planning, excitement, long-distance travel and pre-show jitters came to fruition with a very satisfactory attendance of the Metallica concert, followed by temporary deafness in the left ear. Yes. Metallica. I was there.

The magic of attending any live gig lies mostly in its tremendous build-up. What goes down at the concert is only the culmination of everything up to that point—scrambling to get initial information, shrieky high-five behaviour with other fanboys and fangirls, huddling with friends to plan attendance and logistics, procuring tickets, travelling to concert city, rendezvous, make-up, costume, emotions, excitement, and… BAM! Final body frisk at the venue.

Anyway. Here is the full personal account.

A few days ago, in my village in the mountains of Doda, Jammu and Kashmir, a full day’s travel away from the nearest city, I sheepishly told the parents I had to head to Bangalore.

“Why? It’s very far away.”

“I know. Music concert.”

“Whose?”

“Metallica.” (awkward silence followed by quick exit stage right) Early next morning, I was packed and ready to leave for the city. Downhill walk for a couple of hours, then on horseback for some time till we got to a motorable road, and finally, the highway to Jammu. Overnight on a near-empty train to Delhi, then the last easy bit—a plane hop to Bangalore. Two full days of travel (nearly 2,900km) concluded, I was there.

Bangalore has rock concert vintage. We have had the best of the best there over the years (and we have also had the other sort).

When jokes are made about the city’s “knowledgeable crowd”, it’s not all jokes, let me tell you.

More than anything else, Bangalore is known for its rock.

From school and college level up, you get a good schooling in indigenous and global rock music. The underground scene is booming. Teenagers and their coolth infest garages and makeshift studios across the city.

High-quality local bands like Thermal And A Quarter, Galeej Gurus, Kryptos, Synapse have made it big across the country.

Let us look proudly at the city’s modern concert history, in no particular order: Mr Big, Scorpions, Elton John, the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Sting, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Jethro Tull, Mark Knopfler, Roger Waters, Megadeth, Lamb of God, and IRON MAIDEN for the love of God (phraseology to be noted)—have all played there.

Big-ticket organizer DNA Networks says Bangalore has hosted the majority of their concerts and it will always be the most favoured venue. And so, on a hot July afternoon in Jammu, this writer purchased concert tickets for 30 October at the Palace Grounds, Bangalore.

Cometh the hour, cometh the band. With great trepidation one watched news of the Gurgaon fiasco and Metallica’s cancellation there. Bangalore waited. The gig was still on!

Celebrations! By the morning of the 30th, the interwebs resounded with many variations of: “In Bangalore, Metallican.”

One knows that good people from all over India had descended there to see the band perform. The most obvious travelling fans were identifiable across the city by their unique appearance—grungy tees, dirty jeans, long, greasy hair and a certain look—thronging MG Road, loafing in malls, being sullen in pubs. Complete strangers would glance at one another, exchange a slight nod, or alternatively, show the finger affectionately in a spirit of oneness with Metallica. It was almost spiritual.

By noon on the 30th, we were ready to leave. We had decided we’d watch India’s first F1 race before heading to the concert venue. Popular craft brewery The Biere Club was packed with other Metallicans, and smug, knowing looks were being thrown around like it was someone’s coming-out party. It was all quite silly, and quite beautiful.

By midday, well before the gates opened at 3pm, an ocean of black T-shirts, jeans and otherwise comfortable attire was slowly making its way across to the Palace Grounds. “No drinks at the venue” was the rule for this heavy metal gig, so enterprising concert goers planned an early start and tanked up at various watering holes across the city before staggering to the concert.

At 5pm we pushed out towards the Palace Grounds.

Nodding and grinning at all fellow concert goers in other vehicles headed the same way.

What a sight. Thousands of black T-shirts inching their way along roads and in vehicles, and streaming in through the gates. A crush at the beginning where tickets were being checked, and then the final walk towards the stage grounds.

The high-level security at the

GIREESH GV/AP

entrance deserves special mention (organizers say there were 700-800 police personnel, 550 private security types and 150 bouncers that day). We had the faintest of pat-downs, and the lady checking asked apologetically, “Cigarette toh nahin hai? (You’re not carrying cigarettes, right?)”. “Maachis?

(Matches?)”. All we had to do was shake head in the negative, and we were politely allowed entry. Let me tell you, a LOT of stuff got in.

There we were. After decades of fandom and adoration, we were going to watch Metallica live. Everyone was smiling.

Everyone was ready, all 28,000 of us.

And so into the crush of bodies, in the rain, trying to find our sweet spot. By this time the opening acts had kicked in. We walked in on Biffy Clyro, a Scottish rock band, warming the crowd up. It was past 6 now, lightly raining and everything was most enjoyable, even the minor scuffles and shoving that is natural in huge crowds of very drunk, quite stoned people. Biffy Clyro were tight, impressive and did not get booed off stage. That is saying a lot when you’re opening for Metallica.

Then. A lull. Tense moments in between as organizers asked the crowd near the stage to move back a little. “We need you to move back so the security can move in.” “Come on, guys, cooperate.” “Safety first.” What, after the opening acts they realized this needed to be done?

I can tell you we were pretty nervous about things turning fugly again. Obviously it took a while, but the knowledgeable Bangalore crowd worked it out in time, much to the chagrin of many people who were hoping for a second cancellation. Ha to you! Ha! For almost an hour there was nothing except music playing on the speakers. And amusing incidents, with policemen chasing down people from the

The memory remains: (from top) Fans at the Metallica concert on 30 October; lead vocalist James Hetfield; and fans were identifiable across the city by their unique appearance.

scaffoldings and sound towers.

We waited.

And just past 8, the lights went out, the crowd roared, drums and a familiar riff screamed through the air… AND METALLICA TOOK THE STAGE! Starting their set with Creeping Death and right through the 2-plus hours they played, IT-WAS-ON. Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett and Trujillo (My heroes! My heroes!) blazed through a mix of their best songs from all albums—Fuel, Ride the Lightning, Sanitarium, Sad but True, One, Master of Puppets, The Memory Remains, Cyanide, Nothing Else Matters and the performance of the evening —Enter Sandman—pyrotechnics and all. The encore closed with Battery and Seek and Destroy.

The older music definitely took

it, especially songs from The Black Album, because people of a certain vintage (like me) know that music better.

So the kids enjoyed the newer numbers more, but the classics were for everyone. The opening riff of Enter Sandman caused a near-frenzy, and the crowd sang as one. Roaring, headbanging, smoking, drinking—it was a true-blue concert. Great sound on the speakers (though we lost audio on one set for a couple of numbers in the beginning—fixed soon) and enough big-screen projectors for those who couldn’t see the stage that well. From just past 8 till about 10.30, Metallica gave us heavy. For me, Hetfield’s clear vocals, Ulrich’s crazy drumming and Hammett’s guitars-from-the-gut always win it. The gig of the year wound up

with the band thanking us, us thanking them, them throwing souvenirs into the crowd, emotions running high and overall awesomeness.

As the band disappeared, we hung around on the grounds taking it all in. Thousands of happy fans with our once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Metallica’s first-ever gig in India.

In Hetfield’s words, “Bangalore you’re beautiful.” With the promise of more as they left. All of us were mud-stained, tired and happy. Feet killing us. Many smiles. The throng moved out slowly. There was the long trudge out to the gates, and then the horror of exiting the car park. By the time we worked our way out it was well past midnight.

As always after a late night, Bangalore headed to the few restaurant chains it knew would still be open—the most popular being Empire. We picked the Infantry Road outlet and one hears that all the Empires were hit alike. So also those comfortable eats in the heart of Shivajinagar that value nocturnal life. It was like a spillover from the concert. Hundreds of hungry rock fans laid siege to these restaurants, some eating outside on the street, some seated, some waiting. Everyone was served, the entire black sea of concert goers—it was slightly surreal.

That was a special day.

Completely worth the long pilgrimage from my mountains.

As the deafness in my left ear wanes, let me end with a suitable smarmy something I read online: “If you like Metallica, raise your hand. If you don’t, raise your standards.”

Write to lounge@livemint.com

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