Lounge for 12 Feb 2011

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

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Saturday, February 12, 2011

Vol. 5 No. 7

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

THE INDIAN TIGER MOM >Page 7

PUNK FUNCTIONALITY

Singer­actor Monica Dogra’s style icons are Ani DiFranco and Bjork and her wardrobe is hippie, punk and androgynous >Page 8

FULL FILLING

Ever thought of spending Valentine’s Day at Koh Laoliang? The region is a lovers’ paradise, to be discovered only by venturing into the unknown >Page 12

THE ‘CENTRE’ OF A NOVEL Orhan Pamuk’s musings on the art form tend to get woolly; what shines through is his passion for reading novels >Page 15

REPLY TO ALL

THE GOOD LIFE

AAKAR PATEL

BJP’S CURRENCY IS ITS ANGER

T

he Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is sneeringly called the Brahmin-Baniya party, but this isn’t true. It is actually the party of Brahmins. BJP president Nitin Gadkari is Brahmin and so are the party’s leaders in both Lok Sabha (Sushma Swaraj) and Rajya Sabha (Arun Jaitley). The BJP has always been a party of Brahmins. Founded in 1951 as Jana Sangh, the BJP’s first leader was Brahmin (Syama Prasad Mookerjee), its most important thinker was Brahmin (Deendayal Upadhyaya)... >Page 4

LUXURY CULT

SHOBA NARAYAN

RADHA CHADHA

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

PODCASTS YOU WHAT TIES THE SHOULD LISTEN TO DAVOS ELITE

I

t started with children’s audiobooks —abundantly available on the Web. Storynory.com offers free podcasts, in which a chirpy woman named Natasha tells stories suitable for children aged 6-16. Try it when your children come home from school.

Along with their tiffin, you can serve them up a story. I have become hooked to podcasts.

As someone who spends a lot of time staring at the computer, listening to stuff gives my eyes a rest... >Page 6

I

t is surreal. I feel I am inside a TV channel.

People I have only seen on the small screen are right here in flesh and blood.

Bill Clinton, and the other Bill, Gates. And his wife Melinda—I love her, she has this amazing glow as she speaks about vaccines and disease eradication with such passion, clarity and intimate knowledge of the poorer corners of our world. There’s Bono and A.R. Rahman.

President Medvedev, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy... >Page 6

PHOTO ESSAY

YOUR WEDDING IS A WONDERLAND

HOME PAGE L3

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

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (MANAGING EDITOR)

ANIL PADMANABHAN TAMAL BANDYOPADHYAY NABEEL MOHIDEEN MANAS CHAKRAVARTY MONIKA HALAN VENKATESHA BABU SHUCHI BANSAL SIDIN VADUKUT (MANAGING EDITOR, LIVEMINT)

FOUNDING EDITOR RAJU NARISETTI ©2011 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

VIR SANGHVI REVIEWS | FOOD TALK, SELECT CITYWALK MALL, & PLOOF DELI, LODHI COLONY MARKET, NEW DELHI

O

ne measure of how much India is changing is the vast expansion in the restaurant sector. Till about four years ago, you either had proper restaurants or fast food outlets like McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. Now, mall dining has become the rage in our cities. Such brands as Asia 7, Punjab Grill and Spaghetti Kitchen will soon have an all-India presence because they are ubiquitous in the new shopping malls. At Select Citywalk mall in Delhi’s Saket, the eating options abound (including branches of such Khan Market favourites as Amici and Mamagoto) but I was drawn to the food court on the grounds that malls and food courts are meant to go together.

Though the Select Citywalk food court has ice cream, doughnuts, etc., I was intrigued by the chaat corner.

As far as I know, only Rohit Khattar has managed to provide decent chaat in food court-type surroundings (at Eatopia at Delhi’s Habitat Centre) so I wondered whether Rohit’s success could be replicated in a fancier location (and Select Citywalk is very nouveau fancy Punjabi).

I ordered a dahi batata puri (`53), a bhel (`53), a raj kachori (`57) and tawa aloo tikki (`57). The process was complicated by the reluctance of my order-taker, a short man in a baseball cap, to take much interest in what I wanted. He repeated my order at super-speed, forgot the bhel, and then looked surly when I pointed this out.

As is inevitable when there is one chef executing four orders, the dishes came sequentially. I asked the man at the counter if I could take the bhel while the tikki was being made. No, he said, all the food goes together or not at all. As I had already paid (you

Not so delightful: Ploof Deli (above) has a good selection of sandwich fillings, though (left) the bread could be better. pay when you order), I saw no reason to listen to him and collected the bhel anyway. He retaliated by refusing to hand over the plastic spoons with which I was meant to eat the bhel. In his view, I had to wait for the bhel to become soggy before he would let me collect it.

Finally the order was ready. The aloo tikki was a little under-salted but was fine apart from that. The dahi batata puri was acceptable if unmemorable. I had problems with the other two dishes. My companion, who is from Kolkata, loved the bhel with its crunchy peanuts (!) because it reminded her of the jhaal muri of her childhood. When I protested that bhel should never taste like jhaal muri, she said sniffily, “There’s no one recipe for bhel. Why should it taste like the stuff you guys have in Bombay?”

It was a silly question (bhel is the quintessential Mumbai dish, stupid!) but the name settled the argument.

The bhel/jhaal muri was described as “Bombay Bhel Puri” on the

menu—which it was clearly not. The raj kachori, on the other hand, would not appeal to anyone who ate the Kolkata version (tasteless mush for filling) and more important, was impossible to eat with the cheap plastic spoons provided because the spoons could not break the outside of the kachori.

Rohit Khattar can rest easy; this place comes nowhere near Eatopia.

I wandered around the other stalls at the food court. Despite the surly attendant at the chaat counter, the rest of the service was helpful and efficient. The chaat guy said he had no Diet Coke so I went to the pasta counter. Though the order-taker was busy, a chef stopped what he was doing to serve me. At the coffee counter (Georgia), the Americano (`40) was thin and disgusting but the service was excellent.

If mall dining is a recent development in India, then the concept of a deli-restaurant is even more novel. The Oberoi runs a massively successful deli and,

perhaps inspired by its example, Ploof, a one-time fish restaurant in Delhi’s Lodhi Colony, has turned itself into a deli too.

I never worked out why the restaurant was called Ploof in its original avatar. Ploof sounds like the sort of thing a Chinese detective would look for while solving a crime.

But this was never a Chinese restaurant. When it first opened, Ploof was part of Sudha “Dolly” Kuckreja’s empire (Blanco, Chilli Seasons, Kitchen, etc.).

Perhaps Dolly is still involved but the manager acted as though he had never heard of her (“the owner is Mr Rohan Gupta”) and it transpired that the first floor, where the original restaurant was located, had been sealed by the municipal corporation (you can’t run restaurants on the first floor in Lodhi Colony by law) so the deli format offered a chance to use the

small ground floor space creatively.

I liked the vast range of hams and salamis on sale and was impressed with the selection of ready-to-cook meats on offer. New Zealand lamb chops are `2,250 per kg, premium pork chops are `620 per kg and steak is `600 per kg. I bought good quality chorizo at `1,450 a kg and saw that the options included scallops (`2,800 per kg), lobster (`1,450 per kg) and crab (`1,300 per kg). The sauces were less impressive. A pesto rosso was terrible and the basic pesto was curiously feeble.

On the other hand, the deli sandwiches were good. I had the Don Corleone (`360), a large sandwich packed with cold meat and peppers and the others on the menu also seemed worth investigating. The problem with the sandwich was the bread. Though Ploof sells bakery products, the baking is God-awful. A lemon cheesecake had the consistency of partly solidified toothpaste with too much lemon and the bread they put on the tables had a nasty maida and sugar taste.

I applaud the idea of a deli-restaurant. But Ploof needs to get the baking right, especially if it hopes to sell bread and cakes.

Food Talk, Second floor, Select Citywalk mall, Saket, New Delhi; call 011-42658431.

Ploof Deli, 13, Lodhi Colony, Main Market, New Delhi; call 011-24634666.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

ON THE COVER: IMAGING: MANOJ MADHAVAN/MINT CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS: In “An unfinished business”, 5 February, the memorable partnership referred to was the 318­run stand by Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid against Sri Lanka at Taunton in 1999.

In “Adventures of a backpacking Ninja”, 29 January, the single­column picture is of Aparna Shekar Roy’s friends Neesha and Aarti.

L4 COLUMNS

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

AAKAR PATEL REPLY TO ALL

BJP’s sole currency is its anger ATUL YADAV/PTI

T

R SENTHIL KUMAR/PTI

he Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is sneeringly called the Brahmin-Baniya party, but this isn’t true. It is actually the party of Brahmins.

BJP president Nitin Gadkari is Brahmin and so are the party’s leaders in both Lok Sabha

(Sushma Swaraj) and Rajya Sabha (Arun Jaitley).

The BJP has always been a party of Brahmins. Founded in 1951 as Jana Sangh, the BJP’s first leader was Brahmin (Syama Prasad Mookerjee), its most important thinker was Brahmin (Deendayal Upadhyaya) and its most successful leader was Brahmin (Vajpayee).

The party’s top leadership is peppered with Brahmins (Murli Manohar Joshi, Ananth Kumar, Seshadri Chari, Kalraj Mishra, Bal Apte).

L.K. Advani is different, and from the same Lohana caste as Jinnah.

The Brahmin gene is coded into the BJP by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose founder (Hedgewar), most important thinker (Golwalkar), current leader (Bhagwat), and previous leader (Sudarshan) were Brahmin, as was the author of Hindutva (Savarkar).

Except for one man (Rajendra Singh), every RSS sarsanghchalak since its formation in 1925 has been Brahmin.

The RSS’ Hindi weekly Panchjanya is run by a Brahmin (Baldev Sharma) while English weekly Organiser stars the Brahmin duo of Jay Dubashi and M.V. Kamath. The BJP newspaper Kamal Sandesh is also edited by a Brahmin (Prabhat Jha).

The Bajrang Dal’s warriors are led by a Brahmin (Prakash Sharma). Even Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh’s labourers are led by a Brahmin (Girish Awasthi).

The Mazdoor Sangh’s leadership (see www.bms.org.in/representative.htm) is dominated by Brahmins, which is quite remarkable given India’s reality of caste in labour.

The RSS takes its Brahmins seriously

and grooms them young. Student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is run by two Brahmins (Milind Marathe and Vishnudutt Sharma).

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is run by a Baniya (Ashok Singhal). This is because the VHP’s primary issue, cow slaughter, is a Baniya concern.

Before Singhal, the VHP was headed by another Baniya (V.H. Dalmia). The organization’s female wing, Durga Vahini, is however run by a Brahmin (Mala Rawal).

This concentration of Brahmins in central positions is for one reason: The Brahmin is the intellectual keeper of the Hindutva flame.

In India, electoral politics is actually not ideological, and caste is more important than ideology. This is why Brahmins, who are only 6% of the population, don’t dominate the BJP’s state units.

The Brahmin in caricature is wily when seen from the non-Brahmin perspective, and principled and uncompromising when seen from the Brahmin perspective. The Brahmin is also thought to be intellectual. But if intellectual means being open to ideas, he isn’t.

The word “ideologue” that our media uses for BJP leaders is correct. It must be understood in the narrow sense of holding a belief and not letting it go despite evidence. What is that belief? It is that India has one problem: Muslims.

What about the

Privileged club: (from top) The BJP top brass and Karnataka MPs after a meeting with President Pratibha Patil in New Delhi in January; party president Nitin Gadkari (centre); and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

PANKAJ NANGIA/BLOOMBERG

Congress? Is there a caste theme to the party’s leadership? Before the Nehru-Gandhi stranglehold over the party, the annual presidency was held by men from diverse castes, including peasants (Kamaraj and Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy), Brahmins (Shankar Dayal Sharma and Narasimha Rao), Dalits (Jagjivan Ram) and Khatris (P.D. Tandon).

The Congress has always tried to be inclusive. Look at Nehru’s cabinet. It had Brahmins (Nehru, N.V. Gadgil and S.P. Mookerjee), Muslims (Maulana Azad and R.A. Kidwai), peasants

(Vallabhbhai and P. Deshmukh), Dalits (Dr Ambedkar and Jagjivan Ram), a Christian (John Mathai), a Vaish (R.K.S. Chetty), a Sikh (Baldev Singh) and a woman (Rajkumari Amrit Kaur).

Curiously, Nehru’s defence minister was a warrior (Singh), his agriculture minister was a peasant (Deshmukh), his finance minister was Vaish (Chetty) and his education minister was a scholar (Azad), following Manusmriti.

Does the Congress leadership have a theme today?

I think so. It is the mercantile castes. Let’s look at the most important ministries.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a trading Khatri, home minister P. Chidambaram is a trading Chettiar and telecom minister Kapil Sibal is a trading Khatri. Information and broadcasting minister Ambika Soni’s maiden name according to the Lok Sabha website is Sen, indicating she is Kayasth. Soni is a Khatri name.

Corporate affairs minister and former petroleum minister Murli Deora is a Baniya. Of the other senior leaders, foreign minister S.M. Krishna is a peasant Gowda and defence minister Antony is Syrian Christian.

There is only one Brahmin of seniority in the Congress hierarchy

COLUMNS L5

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM R SENTHIL KUMAR/PTI

and that is finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.

It is unlikely Sonia Gandhi picked these people for their caste, and it’s possible she does not even know what their caste is. However, it is clear she is attracted to a particular sort of person. And we can speculate, looking at our list, what qualities attract her. Sobriety, pragmatism and compromise: the qualities of the Baniya.

The difference in orientation—Brahmin versus Baniya—shows in the priorities of the BJP and Congress.

The three big Congress ministers—Manmohan, Pranab and Chidambaram—are all economists.

The three big BJP leaders—Advani, Swaraj and Jaitley—are none economically inclined.

We can read all 986 pages of Advani’s My Country, My Life and not encounter a thought or idea about his country’s illiteracy and poverty.

Someone else will worry about them.

Advani’s concerns are emotional—how Mother India is being ravaged by Muslims and Christians in Kashmir, Assam, North-East and so on.

The BJP isn’t interested in economics as a subject of politics, because Hindutva is not constructive but sullen. Though both Manu and Kautilya weigh in on it in their texts, economics has not been a Brahmin concern. The Brahmin’s concern has been keeping his identity pure.

The BJP’s electoral issues—Babri Masjid, Pakistan, uniform civil code and Article 370—are about identity.

Specifically, about how Muslims must alter their behaviour. BJP social reform means demanding that others change.

The BJP’s ideology is not positive, in that it does not seek to create, but negative: Muslims should not keep that mosque, Muslims should not keep their civil law, Kashmir should not keep special status.

The BJP is the party of anger, and it represents our sentiment against Muslims, which is deep and universal.

In that sense, the BJP has and will always have a larger constituency than the fifth it gets as its share of the vote.

The BJP represents Hindu chauvinism, which is quite ugly and which, as India grows muscular through the economy, the world will encounter with shock.

Like all parties in history that keep pointing to a minority as being the majority’s problem, the BJP’s leaders make their argument in reasonable terms.

The BJP’s rhetoric is calibrated and it always operates one notch below violence, though it understands what the consequences are. The BJP does the mischief and then steps back while violence visits Muslims and Christians.

In his autobiography Advani acquits himself of the murder of 3,000 Indians after his Rath Yatra by saying that the riots happened not along the Yatra’s trail, but elsewhere in India. The BJP sleeps comfortably with its actions, and the great Brahmin Kautilya teaches us in Arthashastra’s eighth chapter that citizens are expendable in the larger interest.

The Congress had a problem with Sikhs, but it solved it through compromise: softening and reaching out with an apology first, and then, on taking power, making a most magnificent gesture. But the BJP does not compromise and does not step back even after the violence because it clings to ideology over wisdom.

The Baniya of caricature is a coward, but a survivor. He is unconcerned with absolutes and always alert to self-interest. He is unwilling to damage himself to gain honour. This is wisdom.

All of us contain a Brahmin side and a Baniya side in ourselves. It is culture and, less often, intellect that determines which takes the stronger hold.

The Baniya side is always preferable to the Brahmin one.

Aakar Patel is a director with Hill Road Media.

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

Saffron brigade: BJP party workers congregating for a rally in Chennai in January. Most BJP leaders are known to appeal to emotions in their speeches.

L6 COLUMNS

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

Podcasts you should listen to

I

t started with children’s audiobooks—abundantly available on the Web. Storynory.com offers free podcasts, in which a chirpy woman named Natasha tells stories suitable for children aged 6-16. Try it when your children come home from school. Along with

their tiffin, you can serve them up a story.

I have become hooked to podcasts.

As someone who spends a lot of time staring at the computer, listening to stuff gives my eyes a rest and gets me moving. I wear my earphones as I walk my dog, or do chores. Here then are some of my recommendations— not objective, or comprehensive but interesting nevertheless. All are accessible by googling the title.

1. Arming the Donkeys: Behavioural economist Dan Ariely interviews scientists about one of their projects or studies and how it affects our lives. Its virtue is brevity. Each podcast is just 15 minutes and they touch on a variety of themes. One scientist talks about how the people we eat with will influence how much or how little we eat. Another talks about “what makes us happy”. Giving people hugs is one answer; as is writing a gratitude letter to someone who means something to you. We all knew this intuitively but it’s nice to hear it being scientifically proven.

2. Justice with Michael Sandel: Justice is Harvard University’s most popular

class. I stumbled on it when I was searching the iTunes store for a jazz album whose name I didn’t know but whose tune I did. Is there an application where you can hum a song that’s in your head and it will magically tell you who sang it, which movie, and its provenance? That would be a useful app. In Justice, also available on YouTube, Prof. Sandel walks you through Western political philosophy in an engrossing, lively, interactive way.

He starts with a story: would you kill five people or one, and takes it from there. It isn’t easy. You have to pay attention and many times, you have to listen to the same episode twice to get it. But I learnt a lot.

I learnt, for instance, that Immanuel Kant, whom Sandel calls the greatest Western philosopher of our times, espouses a philosophy that is very similar to what we call dharma. I learned that Kant’s moral views are very similar to Vedanta. All of which led me to the next couple of podcasts.

3. Vedic Mythology, Music, and Mantras: There are a number of podcasts offering courses on Western philosophy. Yale University’s iTunes U section has a nice one on Western

political philosophy as does Oxford University’s Marianne Talbot on critical reasoning, philosophy and logic. All these focus on Western philosophy but then I thought about Indian philosophy and began searching for podcasts on nyaya, Arthashastra, Manusmriti and jyothish. Very few exist but I came upon a couple. This one is at Puja.net (it has a blog, horoscopes and other stuff too). I just listen to the podcast. It is hosted by Ben Collins. I have no idea who he is but to hear an American guy talk about rahu and ketu; about the dialogue between Gargi and Yajnavalkya from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, is mind-bending. Collins connects current events, Western figures and Eastern philosophy in an accessible, chatty format. An example: When talking about rahu and ketu, the planets, and how they influence our lives, obsessions and careers, he says that Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King and Jimmy Carter all had ketu’s influence in different “houses”, which took them to power and also hurt them. Collins is deeply knowledgeable about Hinduism. His podcast is quite simply the best there is on Hinduism. I am hooked.

4. Mahabharata Podcast, by Lawrence Manzo: Based in Felton, California, Manzo is a software developer by day and a podcast storyteller by night, it seems. I have just started listening to him and like the chatty tone. An example: Parikshit was “hanging out” in his ivory tower, pretty sure that no snake could get to him… Some of you will be put off by the wrong pronunciation of Sanskrit words and

ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG

BLOOMBERG

Tune in: Economist Dan Ariely (left) and Harvard professor Michael Sandel host excellent podcasts.

Indian names. I wasn’t. Both these American guys apologize in advance about it. And quite frankly, if you want free podcasts about Indian philosophy on the Internet, that’s all we have. The Art of Living Foundation has a series too but I didn’t download that.

5. The Great War of Mahabharata: Bheeshma Parva by Soota G. Kameshwar. The Charsur Arts Foundation does a lot of interesting things in audio recordings. Carnatic singer Sanjay Subrahmanyan, I think, collaborated with them for this podcast. In this paid audio series, either downloadable from Charsur or shipped to you as a CD—Kameshwar recites the Bheeshma Parva as it was done by Indian storytellers of yore. The cadences of his voice, the music in between, are all Indian. The CD costs `500, and all the proceeds go to special-needs children. I think I paid with a credit card or bank transfer

using Charsur.com and they shipped it to me. Buy it. Worth it.

6. Ted Talks, the audio version: ’Nuff said.

7. 60-second mind: Latest scientific research in one minute. Got a minute?

8. The Psych Files: Each episode takes an hour and while the tone is chatty, it takes too long sometimes to get to the point. Listen to it only if you are interested in psychology. I like it a lot.

A columnist’s currency is the world of ideas. Podcasts are one way to get them. Happy listening.

Shoba Narayan has started enjoying mindless chores, just so she can listen to her podcasts. 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

What ties the global Davos elite together

I

JOHANNES EISELE/AFP

t is surreal. I feel I am inside a TV channel. People I have only seen on the small screen are right here in flesh and blood. Bill Clinton, and the other Bill, Gates. And his wife Melinda—I love her, she has this amazing glow as she speaks about vaccines and

disease eradication with such passion, clarity and intimate knowledge of the poorer corners of our world. There’s Bono and A.R. Rahman. President Medvedev, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, the Japanese Prime Minister, it’s like a mini-G8 walking around. Ban Ki-moon and Kofi Annan. President Zuma and several other African heads of state. Mike Duke of Walmart, which is bigger than any African economy. Indra Nooyi. Michael Porter. Nitin Nohria. Thomas Friedman.

P. Chidambaram. Sunil Mittal.

Mukesh Ambani.

You get the drift—the world’s most influential people are packed in close proximity for five days at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the isolated alpine town of Davos, and like a round of speed dating, you are bound to interact with a fair number of the 2,500 people assembled here.

At the panel discussions, at your dinner table, at small private meetings, at 7am breakfasts and 11pm drinks, at the India Adda over masala chai and hot samosas.

While the stated purpose of this high-powered meet is to discuss ideas that shape the world—this year’s theme was Shared Norms for the New Reality, referring to the post-globalized, hyper-connected, uber-complex world we now live in—I got the distinct sense it was more about the people who shape the world. Simply put, this is an

elite global tribe, and the annual conference is where existing bonds are reinforced (some have attended 30 conferences in a row) and new members are initiated into the fold.

Klaus Schwab, the founder of WEF, presides over the gathering like a chieftain. Instead of grass skirts and sharp arrows, the Davos Tribe’s dress code is sharp suits accessorized with iPads—even BlackBerrys look hopelessly last season in the new reality—and the unifying war cry is “improving the state of the world”.

As a Davos newbie (I got lucky, went along on a spouse invitation), and as a person who studies the elite, I have been wondering what is the glue that holds the Davos Tribe together? My take: It is a combination of WEF-specific rituals and a rich collective learning experience. All staged in an utterly down-to-earth atmosphere—surprising, given the celebrity-and-power mega-wattage under one roof.

Let me explain what I mean by WEF rituals. For example, even before you catch the plane to Davos, you have an inch-thick bunch of papers to go through—the programme and the participant list, both will leave you gasping. This is the first time that I have spent serious hours trying to figure out which sessions to book—the options are so many and so mouth-watering that I always wanted to be in three places at

Tribesmen: Bill and Melinda Gates with David Cameron (right) at the WEF. the same time. Then there’s your ID badge, which you place regularly before a hi-tech green symbol—very Starship Enterprise—that allows you entry into each hall. Congress Center, the main conference venue, is dotted with sleek computer kiosks and you will find yourself in front of one every now and then—changing your session, communicating with other delegates, printing your personal schedule. Every day, you head out to one of the hotels for your chosen lunch and dinner sessions. The meals have a set format—at each table there is an eminent speaker followed by a table discussion on the topic. By Day 2 of these oft-repeated acts, some very mundane, become shared rituals. Even checking your coat in every morning—and swapping snowshoes for formal ones—becomes a bonding ritual.

There is nothing mundane about the collective learning experience though—I found it intense, exhilarating, linking ideas from one field into another,

stretching your mind to the brink of new possibilities. Business, politics, health, technology, environment, values, food, arts—there is an expansive intellectual buffet to choose from. I specially appreciated the opportunity to learn about topics I didn’t know a thing about. For example, the session Digital Art blew my mind away—the 20-something artist, Aaron Koblin, who heads Google’s “Data Art” team, showed how collaborating with thousands of Internet users can yield stunning artworks. Sure, there were eminent speakers that didn’t live up to your expectation, who batted away legitimate questions, padded the truth, refused to touch the elephant in the room, or demonstrated how out of touch they were with the new reality—but this was still invaluable, giving you an insight into the minds of the people who influence our lives.

Interestingly, India was a Davos Tribe binding factor too. Under the theme India Inclusive the government

and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) put up quite a show. Billboards all over town. A packed India-focused programme with breakfasts, lunches, cocktails, receptions, nightcaps. A hefty presence of 100-plus Indian participants. Two things in particular stood out for me: the Indian Art Exhibition and the India Soiree. A stunning collection of contemporary art took over the walls of the Congress Center. It was thoughtfully curated—the artworks collectively exuded a sense of internationalism and confidence that I had not experienced before. As for the India Soiree, it was a class act. The food alone was to die for. The décor, the music, the entertainment, the gift of the Indian shawl—everything was beautifully done.

But it was the enthusiastic response of the Davos Tribe that intrigued me.

The massive Congress Hall was jam-packed, and the entertainment venue set up by the poolside was overflowing. People of various nationalities climbed onstage to dance to Bollywood tunes. And that’s when it struck me—India’s colourful joie de vivre could be a universal balm for the stressed out Davos Tribe dealing with the grim complexities of a post-globalized world.

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

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011

L7

Parenting OPINION

LEARNING CURVE

The Indian tiger mom

GOURI DANGE

HOW A CHILD DEALS WITH LOSS AND FAILURE

Amy Chua’s book on Chinese mothers has stirred parents worldwide. An Indian mom weighs in on the debate

B Y K IRAN M ANRAL ···························· he blurb, right at the start of the book, was interesting. “This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. It’s also about Mozart and Mendelssohn, the piano and the violin, and how we made it to Carnegie Hall.”

I looked at my seven-and-ahalf-year-old conducting ferocious, universe-shaking Beyblade battles with a steel plate surreptitiously filched from the kitchen, his mouth open wide enough for flies to wander in, and I knew that I was never going to be a piano or violin mother. A Bollywood dance mother maybe, but definitely not the Indian “Chinese” mother that Amy Chua talks about.

According to Yale professor Amy Chua, as written in her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, the unique style of boot camp parenting practised by most Chinese parents (and Indian parents, among others, she adds) is what ensures their children are the ones acing the tests, winning spelling bees and becoming musical prodigies before they’re out of diapers, and cracking all professional entrance exams and landing obscene pay packages. As for the rest of the un-Chinese moms, their offspring struggle to discover the meaning of life and vacillate through careers, and have us parents tearing our greying hair out and demanding they settle down in career and life before we go to the playground in the sky.

Her book, I must admit, had all my quills up and quivering.

But it doesn’t take much to get my quills up and quivering.

Her list of what her children were not allowed to do, which made it to every parenting blog discussion ever since The Wall Street Journal excerpt last month, did the job.

Her daughters were not allowed to attend a sleepover, have a play date, be in a school play, nor complain about not being in a school play, watch TV or play computer games, nor allowed to choose their own extracurricular activities, get any grade less than A+, not be the No. 1 student in anything except gym and drama, and it went on. I gasped in horror the first time I read it. I gasped again and reread it.

Where were the children

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JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

expected to have a childhood in the midst of all these dos and don’ts? I did some frothing at the mouth on my blog, and on a BBC World live discussion on the topic, being the Indian mom who didn’t fit into the “Chinese Mom” stereotype.

Albeit admittedly I hadn’t read the book yet. And then I did. There was a method to Chua’s madness which got me questioning my parenting style which has been, err, laissezfaire at best. Reading the accounts of how she got her daughters to train at the violin and piano, instruments she had picked for them incidentally, had me wondering in bits whether, horrors, I had got it wrong. Whether I was setting my son up for a lifetime of failure given his report card was an unblinking procession of Bs and Cs. And I wasn’t spending more than an hour each day with him on his classwork, and we watched Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa (on Sony TV) and Rocky Balboa movies together. Blasphemy!

After all, I could see it all around me. Mothers who had “devoted” themselves to their children, mothers who sat teaching their children for a good 3-4 hours every single day before the child was allowed any downtime, and these are pre-primary children. Children who go to mental math, spelling bee, science and memory classes, in addition to regular tuitions. These are my son’s peers. Mothers who go through their child’s assessment sheets at parentteacher association (PTA) meets with a marker and berate the hapless pintsizes on “silly mistakes” and losing “a mark” and then quibble with the teachers on the grading.

I looked at my son, looking as weed-like as the way he was growing up, and despaired.

Would he grow up and need years of therapy because he had a mom who didn’t believe in “pushing” him enough?

Being a “Chinese Mom”, let’s face it, is a lot of hard

work. You need to be singularly focused on your child’s academic performance, and if like Chua you have your child take up a musical instrument, that requires more hours of practice than a child might enjoy unless, of course, the child is internally motivated.

That takes up a lot of time.

I am a lazy mom. The only thing my son has done apart from studying at will is Bollywood dance and drawing classes, these too because the teachers come to the complex and he is the best thing to happen to dance since Michael Jackson. I kid you not. Some months ago, he decided he had had enough of dance and quit the dance class. In typical unChua fashion, I agreed instantly, much to his surprise; he had anticipated I would put up a fight of sorts and drag him kicking and screaming to the dance class and sit there grim-faced until the hour was up. He stayed without dance class for a couple of months, and then came up to me shamefacedly last month asking if he could rejoin. Of course, Chua might have an apoplectic fit about dance class to begin with, and definitely no Carnegie Hall invites will be sent out by me ever, but rejoin dance class he did. The other day, he went on an all out begging and pleading endeavour to be allowed to join karate classes, and so he began karate yesterday. He spent all evening after his first class kicking and practising the moves he had learnt, much to my exasperation, and some nifty saving of about-to-crash artefacts.

Chua’s narrative of how she trained her children and tried to adopt the same principles with her Samoyed dogs made me really rub my eyes in wonder. And when her younger daughter rebelled and gave up the violin for, gasp, blasphemy, tennis, I silently cheered for the child.

Thankfully for her, Chua has added a coda at the end of the book which tells us that we as readers will never be able to really get the complete picture, so I am hoping that there were good times, and that the girls did have a childhood apart from academics and music practice.

But no. I’m never going to be able to call my son “garbage” nor reject anything he makes for me, even if he calls me “The Best Mutter in the World” on a tinsel tiara. I would rather see him mediocre and bursting with confidence the way he is right now, than see him excel academically but with an ego that I have battered down relentlessly in a bid to make him excel. Plus, since he gets to choose my old-age home, I better ensure he has nice memories of his childhood and doesn’t grow up resenting me.

I am 41 and father of two daughters, aged 10 and 6. Four months ago, my wife died of cancer. Ours was a very loving and happy family. I intend to remarry and have found a suitable match. She is 36, with a son, 13, and daughter, 8. Her husband too died of cancer 18 months ago. We plan to marry during Diwali. We meet often and things are comfortable. Our children have also become well-acquainted, and all of us have met three times for fun and food. Everyone seems happy except my elder daughter, which worries me. Please guide me on how to make her understand.

The loss of her mother is still very new and raw for your little girl.

Perhaps things have moved forward too fast for her on the family front. However, that does not mean you should feel guilty or stay away from your new potential partner. It only means that it is very important that you should not try to actively convince your daughter about anything. Give her time. Also, do not insist that she call the new lady “mummy” or refer to the new children in your life as her brothers or sisters. It is also important that the lady not try too hard to be her mom.

Find some way to assure your daughter that you too miss her mother. However, tell her sensitively that you will all learn to be with the new people in your lives, and ultimately, that is a good thing. Your daughter is in the early stages of grieving and still coming to terms with her loss. Give her the time and space to do this, at her own pace. Let her talk about her mother, and you too, even with your “new family”, should feel free to talk about your late wife, just a few mentions here and there. This will probably help in getting your child to “stitch together” the recent past, and the immediate future. The other children perhaps have some doubts and anxieties too. See if you can, along with some of the fun and food kind of activities, have one session devoted to remembering the departed in some nice, light way, and not in mourning mode.

I would urge you not to be anxious about your daughter coming round to the new situation at a pace you would prefer. It will be a difficult time, and you may find that you are making progress, but on some days she may seem to be deeply unhappy or troubled, and withdrawn from you or others. Just let her know and feel that you understand, and are there for her. I would advise you not to “sell” the idea of the new family very hard to her. If there are other elders, aunts and uncles or grandparents, who can smooth the way for your child in small ways, that would be good too.

Given that you seem to be moving ahead in a healthy and loving way with your future spouse and her children, it is likely that you will all be good for each other. All the best.

THINKSTOCK

Cathartic: The process of a child grieving over a parent’s death is essential to her healing and may take a long time.

Our daughter’s playschool teacher tells us that she just gives up if she can’t do something very easily (such as learning to tie shoelaces), gets angry when things don’t go her way, and does not take on new tasks, preferring to do the easy things she has already mastered. The teacher does not seem to have any strategies for us to change this. Any suggestions?

Your child is possibly displaying signs of low frustration tolerance.

Adults too suffer from it. In the case of adults, low frustration tolerance is often associated with taking every setback as a personal failure. And every such situation is built up in the mind as a conspiracy meant specifically to thwart or insult them!

Of course, some children will have low frustration tolerance as part of their personality make-up, and you cannot change it a whole lot; however, you can insert some steps or strategies by which your child will not be so overwhelmed by things not going her way.

Find ways to praise her efforts, not the achievements. Ultimately you will build up to her going for the achievement (say, tying a shoelace fully), but for now you could reduce the pressure that she seems to have put on herself on “getting it right”.

You will need to break down tasks into their composite bits—however simple the task is. However, remember not to simplify to such an extent that your child feels bored. Avoid giving her too many repetitive things to do.

Gently stop meltdowns in which she shouts or throws the thing she is working with, by ignoring the behaviour, and moving on to something else. And yet, don’t noisily and frantically distract her with other things, because that allows her to feel that you are now part of the meltdown, rather than part of a calmer, alternative way of doing things outside the tantrum.

If this persists, have your child evaluated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or any other issues that may be the cause of her inability to focus and persist with a task till she masters it.

Restrict her sugar intake, especially before school or when you’re about to work on a project that involves her concentrating and working consistently on it.

Kiran Manral is a writer, blogger and founder of India Helps.

Gouri Dange is the author of ABCs of Parenting.

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Write to Gouri at learningcurve@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011

Style ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

OUT OF THE CLOSET | MONICA DOGRA

Punk functionality The singer­actor’s style icons are Ani DiFranco and Bjork and her wardrobe is hippie, punk and androgynous

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

···························· n screen she is Shai from Dhobi Ghat, on stage she is Shaa’ir from Shaa’ir + Func, and at her apartment in Mumbai’s Bandra suburb, dressed in a casual blue playsuit, she is Monica Dogra.

The lead singer of one of the most popular indie bands in the country, Dogra is strong, sexy and engaging on stage as a music performer.

Just as it is difficult to slot the band’s music in one clearly defined genre, so it is with Dogra’s sense of style. She is usually seen rocking the stage in skirts or shorts and boots that have become her trademark. Off stage she prefers organic fabrics and loose silhouettes in independent labels such as Kimchi and Blue and Miz Mooz.

Dogra says she likes her clothes to match her state of mind.

“And I love kajal. Everything in life can be fixed with a little bit of kajal,” she laughs. We spoke to the singer-actor to find out how music has influenced her sense of style and her look in Dhobi Ghat. Edited excerpts:

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How different is Shai’s style from your personal style?

My character Shai is a freethinking but corporatized woman, completely unlike how I am. She’ll wear a tank top with business slacks and her clothes will be crisp. You can tell her class only if you really know your brands. She doesn’t flaunt her designer clothes. I am a lot funkier in my sensibility. For example, I would wear a tank top but with something fatigued, and add boots instead of the comfortable heels that Shai would wear.

What was fashion to you when you were growing up?

I grew up in Maryland, US, and was that girl who was cutting up her dad’s old 1960s clothes and wearing her mum’s sunglasses. I

really enjoyed creating my own stuff. I would buy things and then alter them. I took my mum’s dresses, cut off the top and made it into a skirt. I would often steal my father’s pants from when he was thin. They fit me perfectly. I would rub them with rocks to make them even softer.

How has your sense of style evolved through the years?

In my college years in New York, I wore tight-fitting clothes and was constantly dressed up.

I was subsequently insecure because I was only defined by the way I looked. I followed every trend. Now, I own the bare necessities, six pairs of shoes and three bags. I really like clothes so I have a lot of clothes. I like collecting rare things. Vintage garments, or shoes made by artisans who make their own designs. My style has become more free.

I buy organic clothing and make an effort not to wear brands that stand for a way of life I don’t agree with. I do have punk tendencies. I wear flowing stuff such as long skirts or loose tops with denim cut-offs. I’m not a brand person.

You’ll never see me waste a $1,000 (around `45,600) on Chanel or Louis Vuitton.

Do you have separate sections for on-stage and off-stage clothes in your wardrobe?

Yes. You dress up a bit more when you perform. My clothes on stage are defined keeping our music in mind. The very premise of Shaa’ir + Func is that it is exploration and bending people’s definition of things. We actually style our sets.

Sometimes I wear long skirts, shorts, boots that I can jump around in. I have started using paint on my face. It’s a more striking look and better on stage than wearing accessories that might fall or hurt me. I’m learning Indian classical dance and inspired from that I wear long skirts and sari blouses.

What are your style influences?

I’ve always been very attracted to strong women. Since a young age I have been impressed by Ani DiFranco; her style has changed over the years so much. She has been sexy, androgynous, hippie, punk.

Now, I admire Bjork. Just the way she looks is a work of art.

In the modern day, I think Lady

Gaga is just killing it. She’s so innovative and if so many people can identify with something that strange, it says something about where the world is at right now.

Where do you shop?

I really like Bombay Electric but I don’t go there too often because I cannot afford it. I go to Attic, Golmaal, and export surplus stores in Bandra. I really like flea markets in Goa and collect clothes wherever I travel.

New York is the best shopping on the planet. I go to H&M for basics. Otherwise I like going to SoHo and to the smaller designers. But my favourite store on the planet is Urban Outfitters in the US. They source vintage pieces, redo them and restyle them, and sell them at affordable prices. I love

Spring in your step Get floral printed shoes to match the season B Y R ACHANA N AKRA K OMAL S HARMA

Bandwidth: (clockwise from left) One of the few pairs of heels that Dogra owns; she is a fan of colourful beads and loves these shoes; the jacket and long skirt are two of her favourite performance outfits; her bright sunglasses; and in her favourite pair of boots, which she continues to wear even though they now have holes.

Manish Arora, Narendra Kumar, and Kunal Rawal’s stuff too.

Any skeletons in your closet?

I give away stuff that I don’t wear and things that I love I wear till they fall apart. These boots by Miz Mooz are my favourite. I have worn them so often they have holes in them but I keep repairing and wearing them.

How has music influenced your style?

Music and fashion go hand in hand. You are going to a rock concert, you put on your distressed jeans, wear boots and a studded belt and get ready to bang your head in the mosh pit.

When you’re in a club, with low ceilings and banging sound systems, you’ll naturally

t Taramay: Nude leather ballet flats with black floral lace overlay and bow with pearl detail, at Ensemble, Lions Gate, Mumbai; and White, Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi, `7,000.

&

rachana.n@livemint.com

····························

u s.Oliver: Blue suede slingback shoes with floral print, at Inorbit mall, Malad, Mumbai; and Select Citywalk mall, Saket, New Delhi, `4,599. u Nine West: Floral peep­toe heels with slingback, at all Nine West stores in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi, `4,000.

u Aldo: Floral pumps, at all Aldo stores in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi `4,500.

gravitate towards darker colours. You go to Glastonbury and everyone’s rocking in their gumboots. It’s a mud pit and you are with 250,000 people, it’s crazy and even then fashion changes. Stores in London start supplying interesting stuff right before June. Those supplying us with fashion have to know what’s going on musically.

So what do you plan to wear for your first Bollywood red carpet season next year?

I have a couple of designers in mind. I like Nor Black Nor White because they present old textiles in modern silhouettes.

Otherwise I really like Masaba Gupta and Gaurav Gupta. I hope they give me their clothes to wear for free on the red carpet. I don’t believe in buying expensive clothes and hoarding them.

q Promod: Canvas shoes with floral print, at Promod, Select Citywalk mall, Saket, Delhi, `2,450.

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SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011

L9

Eat/Drink PIECE OF CAKE

PAMELA TIMMS

The season of sweet seduction PHOTOGRAPHS

Freshly baked strawberry macarons can charm the most heartless Valentine

BY

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

colourings and flavourings should be added to the meringue mixture while dried ingredients should be added to the ground almonds.

It won’t be easy but if ecstatic squealing is what you’re after this Valentine’s Day, you’ll just have to persevere.

Strawberry Macarons Makes 20-24 super seductive macarons

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t must be their fairy-tale appearance, ethereal delicacy and tantalizing flavours but I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t squeal with delight when presented with a plate of macarons. They’re the latest craze in the capricious world of patisserie although making them at home can induce meltdown in a way the good-natured cupcake never could.

A few golden rules. Firstly, in macaron-making, precision is everything in order to achieve the correct consistency—this is no time for a dash of this, pinch of that. Once you’ve nailed the basic mixture, most problems are oven-related—gas ovens in particular. The oven needs to be just hot enough to bake the macarons without browning them. I use a small electric oven which has quite precise temperatures but even so I’ve had my share of disappointments. This recipe is based on my own trial and error and for me is now pretty much infallible. To start with, I recommend baking small amounts, perhaps four macarons at a time, to see how your oven behaves, adjusting temperatures between batches.

Before you start experimenting with Wasabi, Green Tea and Salted Caramel, go easy on the colours and flavours. When you’re ready to experiment, the general rule is that liquid

Ingredients For the macaron shells 140g icing sugar 70g finely ground almonds 80g egg white 70g caster sugar A pinch of cream of tartar Pink food colouring For the filling 100g cream cheese 1 tbsp icing sugar 3 tbsp good strawberry jam Method You will need digital scales, a baking tray, parchment paper and a piping bag.

A couple of days before you plan to make the macarons, separate the eggs—you will need approximately two-three eggs to give you 80g of egg white—leaving the whites in a bowl on the work surface to “age”. This helps the consistency of the macaron mixture. I cover mine with a net to keep flies off.

Use ready-ground almonds if you can find them; if not, peel and grind whole almonds. Cut a piece of parchment paper to fit your baking tray and draw 3.5mm circles about 2cm apart (I used the base of a chai glass as a guide).

Carefully weigh all the ingredients. Put the ground almonds and icing sugar in an electric grinder and blitz to combine thoroughly, then sieve the mixture into a bowl to

Love bites: (clockwise from left) A box of macarons makes for a sexy gift; blitz together sugar and ground almonds; the macaron mixture should be gloopy; and sandwich two macarons with strawberry filling. remove any larger pieces of almond—this will ensure a perfectly smooth shell.

Tip the egg whites into a large stainless steel bowl. Add the cream of tartar and with an electric hand-held whisk set to medium start to whisk the eggs.

When the meringue is puffed up but still with tiny air bubbles in it, add the caster sugar and food colouring. For these moderately sexy strawberry macarons, I used a tiny amount of pink

concentrate but only you can decide how brazen you want to be. Continue to whisk until the meringue looks dense, smooth and glossy.

Now, sprinkle the almond/icing sugar over the meringue and start to fold with a spatula. Getting the mixture to the right consistency takes a little bit of practice—you need to mix firmly until the almonds are totally blended with the meringue without knocking the life out of it.

HUNGRY PLANET | CHEF FADI KALKOSH

Perfect macaron mixture is supposed to resemble molten lava but as most of us have never been near a volcano in full flow, we’ll just have to imagine something thick and gloopy moving slowly down a mountainside. Spoon the mixture into the piping bag and carefully

BY VARUNI KHOSLA ······························· adi Kalkosh has had an extensive tryst with sweets—the 30-year-old began his career as a baker’s assistant when he was only 13. Under the watchful eyes of the head chef at a local bakery in a Syrian market, he perfected the art of making baklava, the iconic crispy puff pastry steeped in centuries-old history.

In the last five years, Kalkosh has worked at the Park Hyatt in Dubai, where one of his signature creations is a chocolate and hazelnut baklava, as if the traditional pistachio-laden one wasn’t sinful enough. The chef was at the Hyatt Regency in New Delhi recently. Edited excerpts from an interview:

F

Tell us about modern Syrian cuisine.

Syrian food hasn’t changed at all in years. We have just started to use better oils. Our breakfasts are

similar to the English. Lunch usually comprises of different kinds of rice (cooked with ghee and green beans—very much like the Indian pulao). Even though it’s nothing too special, we eat it with lamb and chicken. One of the most important parts of the Syrian meal is kabah moehae or lamb meat roasted and eaten with soup and salad.

Since there’s close proximity with Turkey, we also have a lot of humus, falafel and baba ganoush.

I’ve noticed that many Indian places serve moutabbal as baba ganoush, which is Syrian-Lebanese. Vegetables like tomato, pepper and onions go into moutabbal.

Which dessert is representative of West Asia, and Syria in particular?

Baklava. It oozes tradition. The dessert came up in Turkey centuries ago, and spread to the entire Middle East. While the original one (from Turkey) is a puff pastry made with walnuts,

Pamela Timms is a Delhi-based journalist and food writer. She blogs at http://eatanddust.wordpress.com Write to Pamela at pieceofcake@livemint.com

www.livemint.com For a slide show on how to bake macarons, go to www.livemint.com/macaron.htm Read Pamela’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/pieceofcake

JAVEED SHAH/MINT

Layered and puffed ‘Ghee’, baklava, chocolate variations and other sugary traditions of a Syrian kitchen

pipe the mixture to fit into the circles you’ve drawn (do this on the reverse side of the parchment paper so you don’t get pen marks on your macarons).

Next, hold your baking tray firmly and bash it on the work surface—this settles the macarons—then leave for about 30 minutes to dry out slightly.

Heat your oven—I set mine to 170 degrees Celsius with both top and bottom elements on, but you may find this too hot and need to adjust once you’ve done a trial batch. After the macarons have rested, put them into the oven on the middle shelf.

My oven has a glass door and I love watching the macarons on their journey from gloop to haute patisserie. After about 5 minutes, the distinctive “feet” (the little frill around the bottom of the macarons) will appear—this is the moment you’ll feel like applying for jobs with Pierre Hermé. After about 7 minutes, I move the baking tray nearer to the bottom of the oven so that the top of the shells don’t brown but the bottoms are perfectly baked. At 10 minutes, the macarons should be perfectly cooked.

Take the tray from the oven and after a couple of minutes the macarons should be cool enough to peel away from the parchment.

Leave to cool completely before sandwiching with the strawberry filling. The filled macarons keep well for a few days in the fridge.

ghee and sugar syrup, in Syria we make it with different nuts, like pistachio. The most challenging bit about making baklava is the puff pastry made with white flour, corn flour and salt. I make my own version of the baklava with chocolate. I mix chocolate in the dough and also add cooking chocolate with the hazelnuts. It tastes a lot like Ferrero Rocher (chocolates).

Do dates figure in desserts?

They are popular in Saudi Arabia. The variety that comes from there is usually very sweet and dry. In Syria, we put them in a cookie, mamoul.

What are the must-haves in a Syrian kitchen?

Ghee is one of the most important and main ingredients. We don’t add any sugar to our food. We use sesame generously. Our recipes haven’t changed over many, many years. Everyone’s recipes are universal.

Syria is well known for its cheese. Any desserts that are made with it?

In the winters most people like to eat kunafa cheese. It is a kind of puff pastry filled with unsalted cheese. We add sugar syrup to the

Mamoul Ingredients 300g flour 250g ghee 150g fine sugar 230g deseeded dates or pistachio 100ml water 20g yeast 100g confectioner’s sugar

Sinfully rich: Kalkosh has been making baklavas since he was 13. cheese and steam it. It’s eaten hot, with the cheese oozing out.

Syrians also make halvat (like halwa), which is made from semolina flour except that it’s filled with cheese. Again the cheese is not salted (soaked in water overnight) and different varieties of cheese can be used.

Most commonly used is the white cheese, which is dipped in water for one day to remove its saltiness.

Which other cuisines are popular?

Italian is popular, we prefer to eat breads. Pizzas are everywhere. We don’t have any (East) Asian food.

Recently, a few Chinese restaurants have come up.

What are the popular street foods in Syria?

Shawarma and falafel. If you don’t eat shawarma from the

markets of Syria, you haven’t eaten the real shawarma at all! I don’t eat shawarma from anywhere else. The first thing I do when I reach home is eat Syrian falafal and humus. For dinner, I buy some shawarma from street vendors. I don’t even like the idea of eating shawarma from an Egyptian chef!

Do any of the desserts use local spirits?

Since it is a Muslim state, not many people drink alcohol.

Some Christians, and Muslims like me (laughs), do. But we don’t add any alcohol to our foods or desserts. But whenever anyone is out in the markets, they’ll drink this popular non-alcoholic drink, kumet handi (dried apricot juice). It’s a great cooler.

Method In a bowl, mix flour, ghee, sugar, yeast and knead to a dough. Keep aside for a while. For the filling, boil water in a pan and put in the dates. Cook till the dates form a pulp. If using pistachios, mix with icing sugar and a little rosewater.

Take a lump of dough and mould it into a cup that fits the palm of your hand. Stuff with the date or pistachio mixture. Pinch the edges of the cup together to seal the filling in, and gently roll the dough into a smooth ball. Flatten the ball like a cookie and place smoothest side down on a greased baking tray. You can also draw a design on the cookies with a fork. Bake at 250 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes. Take the cookies out before they turn brown. Serve fresh off the oven after liberally dusting confectioner’s sugar.

Store the mamoul in an airtight jar when completely cool.

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Extreme philatelia HOBBIES

COURTESY PRASHANT PANDYA

On the eve of the country’s biggest gathering of stamp collectors in two decades, we explore the eccentric, fascinating world of three Indians who are archiving our postal history B Y S HRUTI C HAKRABORTY & K RISH R AGHAV ········································· ike all the best artefacts of the Indian postal system, this special stamp tells a story in a 39x39mm frame. There’s a charkha in the centre, with a thread spinning outwards to form Gandhi in silhouette. Unlike every other Indian stamp, however, this one isn’t completely printed at the India Security Press in Nashik. Part of it is stitched out of a special grade of khadi. Designed after a rigorous six-month production process, a run of 100,000 “Khadi stamps” will be launched today at Indipex 2011, a global philatelic exhibition organized by India Post. The department, says India Post’s Kavery Banerjee, died “a million deaths” to get every detail on the stamp perfect.

The Khadi stamp is the centrepiece of the exhibition that opens today at Delhi’s Pragati Maidan.

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Over the next week, philatelists from over 70 countries will gather here. It’s been 13 years since the last one in India, and the breadth of promised displays is immense—postmarks from Victorian-era Lahore, stamps on the Trans-Siberian Railway and revenue documents from 17th century Bengal. The organizers see it as more than just an exhibition—they hope Indipex will revitalize Indian philately.

“Stamp collecting used to be everyone’s hobby,” says Banerjee, Indipex 2011’s chairperson. “Almost all of us had letters coming home, and we encountered them in our daily lives.” The rise of the courier service and email has led to a marked decline in personal mail over the last decade, she says, and the hobby has moved to the fringes. Banerjee reckons that India’s practitioners are “mostly elderly”. Prem Chand Jaiswal, the Kolkata-based president of the All-India Philatelic Traders’ Association, agrees.

“Most people either take it (philately) up when in

The Gandhian imperative Nikhil Mundra is an excavator of philatelic incongrui­ ties. Since 2003, when he was in class IX, he’s been unearthing postal artefacts that tell “an interesting story” of Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy, and the often remarkable ways in which his message has spread across the world.

Gandhi is to stamps what Che Guevara is to pop culture, an iconic transnational image that tran­ scends political differences. He’s been honoured with stamps in over 100 countries, a feat no other historical figure comes close to, says Mundra.

“I read an article that mentioned this, and it got me inspired,” says the 21­year­old engineering stu­ dent. “I thought it was a good hobby—you learn a lot, and I’ve now made friends across the world, thanks to it.”

Mundra began his quest by putting up his con­ tact details on stamp exchange sites, and helping people acquire Indian stamps in return for ones featuring Gandhi from around the world. “Later, I started approaching dealers and auctioneers, and I tried selling items in my collection to finance rare purchases,” he says.

Mundra spent close to €200 (around `12,360) to acquire a rare first­day envelope cover from the US. Issued on 30 January 1948, it pays tribute to the two people who died that day—Mahatma Gandhi and Orville Wright of the Wright brothers. “It’s pos­ sibly the only postal item that mentions both peo­ ple, and I find it fascinating,” says Mundra. “Gandhi had always expressed a desire to meet Wright.”

It’s these chance philatelic encounters and over­ laps Mundra is most interested in. “These are things that happen by accident, by complete chance, but reveal something interesting.”

There is, for example, the set of commemorative stamps issued by Burkina Faso in the 1970s that feature Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. “You don’t see the two of them together very often,” Mundra says. He also owns a stamp issued in Nica­

Animal collective

CHHAVI MITTAL | DELHI

Till a family visit to her uncle’s south Delhi house in 2005, 13­year­old Chhavi Mittal didn’t know that there existed a world, in stamps, beyond Mahatma Gandhi. “I’d seen only Gandhi stamps being used at home and elsewhere,” she says. “I didn’t know that there were so many beautiful stamps with different colours, designs and images. I never expected a stamp to smell of sandalwood!” Now 18, and the proud owner of an award­winning collection of pecu­ liar postal items called “maxima cards”, she says it was “kind of love at first sight between me and those stamps at the time”.

Maxima cards, short for “maximum cards”, involve taking a picture postcard with a certain image, such as the Taj Mahal, affixed with a stamp of the same Taj Mahal photo, and then preferably cancelled with a Taj Mahal stamp issued by the local postal depart­ ment. Any card with all three elements is a maximum

school, up to class VIII, or after their 40s, when they have the time and money to invest,” he says.

But a new generation of collectors are rediscovering the philatelic urge, and beginning to archive the staggering quantity of Indian postal history. “Indian stamps are highly valued internationally,” Banerjee says. “A lot of thought goes into an India stamp.

They’re representative of the history and consciousness of this country.” She remembers how, in 1994, when India Post introduced a sandalwood-scented stamp, they locked it up in a cupboard for a year before launch to make sure the scent didn’t fade.

We spoke to three collectors across the country about the joy of collecting, their roles as amateur historians and how even they have died a million deaths in anticipation of owning that perfect piece of philatelic history. shruti.c@livemint.com Old hand: Pandya with his postal stationery exhibit; and (below) an item from his ‘milk’­themed collection.

NIKHIL MUNDRA | CHENNAI

ragua in 1979­80 that features Albert Einstein with Gandhi, at a time the country was going through a revolution. The following year, the same stamp was reissued with the new regime’s symbols.

But Mundra is not content with merely collecting “accidents” of philatelic history. He also actively engineers it. In 2005, when India issued a special Dandi March stamp with a footprint­shaped first­ day cancellation mark (the stamp put on envelopes to indicate that they have been processed and to prevent reuse), he sent it to friends across the world, asking them to return the footprint­laden envelope to him. “It was like a symbolic journey,” he laughs. “Just adding a little twist to the usual tale.”

On 2 October 2009, Gandhi’s 140th birth anniver­ sary, he designed and bought a set of about 250 personalized stamps through a friend in The Netherlands. The country’s postal authority allows people to create legal stamps with their own designs, and Mundra chose a stylized black and white drawing of Gandhi with the word ‘Bapu’ below it. “I’m always on the look­ out for these opportu­ nities,” he says, “that’s what keeps things exciting.”

Trivia pursuit: Mundra (right) with a part of his collection; and a rare 1948 first­day cover that mentions both Gandhi and Orville Wright.

The postmaster PRASHANT PANDYA | VADODARA

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

In 2005, microbiologist Prashant Pandya wanted to do something the philatelic world had never done before.

“I wanted to start something new, innovative and challenging,” the 49­year­old says over the phone from Vadodara. “To be the only person in the world working in that area.”

He found inspiration in an unlikely source, a stamp exhibition he remembers on the theme of “water”, and salvation in an even unlikelier one—milk.

“I collect philatelic items—stamps, covers, enve­ lopes—that relate to milk,” he says, rattling off a list.

“Could be milk by­products or processing machinery or chemical constituents.” It’s a process he calls “edutain­ ment”, a combination of delving into the history and etymology of a chosen theme, and the joy of dis­ covering and sifting through postal material from the last 150 years in order to tell a story.

Pandya’s been a philate­ list for nearly four decades now, having started accu­ mulating stamps in class IV. “I started like everyone else did,” he says. “Gathering stamps by country, putting every­ thing in an album.” He began to attend meetings of Vado­ dara’s local philatelic societies when in college, and learnt the intricacies of the hobby. “I became much more organ­ ized and focused on specific themes or time periods.”

Most philatelists don’t measure their collection by size or number—they define them by “exhibits” and “frames”.

A “frame” consists of up to 16 sheets (each roughly A4 size, about 22x29cm) which hold about two or three items each. An “exhibit” is a collection of frames, arranged according to a particular theme or narrative.

Pandya’s first speciality was postal stationery (enve­ lopes, covers) from pre­independence India. “There’s a lot you can learn,” he says. “You get great insights into how information flowed in a particular society during that era.” Pandya reckons he can put together eight­frame exhibits on pre­independence postal stationery. Among the rare items in his possession are a series of pictorial postcards released by the North­Eastern Railway and a unique slice of postal history called “Airgraph”.

Airgraphs were a short­lived system of mail deliv­ ery introduced during World War II. The British gov­ ernment needed more space on mail­burdened planes to transport ammunition to the war’s front lines, and encour­ aged people to use the Airgraph system instead of envelopes. “You went to the Airgraph office, filled up a pre­printed form and they would take a microfilm photo­ graph of it,” Pandya says.

These films were then transported on the planes, and the roll developed and printed on the receiving end. “The service was stopped soon after the war, so these items are rare,” he says.

Pandya’s current obsession is developing his “milk” theme collection. “It’s a tough subject,” he admits glumly, “But I’m putting together a one­frame exhibit.”

He also wants to get back to http://www.indianphilately.net/, a Hindi blog he started in 2009 as an information resource for school­ children and non­English speaking enthusiasts. “I hope non­philatelists read it too…they might understand why this subject is so fascinating to us.”

card, but more often than not, most philatelists man­ age to get only the postcard picture and stamp to match. The cancellation may be just a regular one, but preferably from the same city as the photograph.

It’s the challenge of getting all the elements in per­ fect combination that interests most “maximaphily” collectors, and Mittal is no different. In 2008, she recalls spending days convincing her parents to allow her to participate in the 6th Delhi Philatelic Exhibition.

“I doubled my studying hours so that I could partici­

pate,” she says. Her maxima card collection on pet and domesticated animals won her the bronze medal, and the doubled studying hours got her an enviable 87.8% in her class X board examination the same year. Even now, balancing her hobby and studies is a challenge.

But the first­year psychology student at Delhi Univer­ sity still tries to do her research over weekends and attend as many philatelic meets as possible.

Her first card was a gift from her uncle, Ajay Kumar Mittal, a veteran philatelist. “Every time I met him I would ask him about his collection, what every­ thing meant, and how I could win all those medals that were displayed at his home,” she says. When her uncle realized Mittal was serious about the hobby, he gave her a rare, 1813­dated German mark card with pictures of horses on it to get her started. “That was my first card,” Mittal says. “The most valuable too (the card is estimated to have an individual value of a couple of thousand rupees, though nei­ ther Mittal nor her uncle have got it evaluated).” Her choice of subject was aided by her fondness for animals. “I am scared of wild animals, but I love animals, especially those one can keep as pets, so I started collecting cards on dogs, cats, horses and even cattle,” she says. At first, Mittal would buy picture postcards, affix the stamp and then mail it to herself in order to get the cancellation, but now she gets a lot of her cards from family, friends and the treasure trove that is eBay. “I don’t have to spend much right now, I just have generous friends,” she laughs. Mittal’s success as a young philatelist has got her friends, class­ mates and even teachers interested.

So much so that many started their own collections and one of her class teachers even presented her with a rare 1935 Canada picture postcard of a cowboy, with a 1982 stamp with the identical picture.

After all the time Mittal spends looking at the “pretty pictures” in her collection, she hopes to have a pet dog of her own soon too. But, of course, the parents would need to be convinced first.

Dogged: Mittal (below) at her residence in New Delhi; and one of her stamps from Switzerland.

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

GOING POSTAL

The history of Indian mail is filled with mysterious occurrences, bizarre experiments and unbelievable trivia. We dig up three of the strangest COURTESY AJAY KUMAR MITTAL

A Brahmini Dak (combination cover) envelope from Mahatpur to Indore.

COURTESY SUPERIOR GALLERIES

COURTESY AVINASH JAGTAP

Chittormaryaka Paap

Brahmini Dak

In the late 18th century, the king of Mewar started a private postal system that employed Brahmins to carry mail across the state. The reason? Dacoits. Bands of them plagued the border lands, regularly killing postmen for money, valuables or even the information in the mail.

But Hindu religious norms labelled killing a Brahmin the most heinous of sins, an act that “banished” the soul of the killer to hell.

The belief worked like a charm—the Brahmin postmen could walk or ride across the land without any trouble.

The system was so successful that other states, such as Indore and Malwa, signed agreements with Mewar to use the service. Up to 1873, Indore had a contract with “Brahmini Dak”, paying `3,600 a year for the service and permission for the establishment of post offices.

Private letters were carried at 0.5 anna each, irrespective of weight—this was considerably cheaper than the Imperial Post, which charged that much for packages up to 0.75 ‘tolas’, approximately 8g.

An 1876 cover with the ‘74K’ warning (marked with a red arrow).

In the late 16th century, the Mughals invaded Chittor (now in Rajasthan). The Rajput prince of Chittor, Udai Singh, refused to surrender despite the stiff odds. He ordered his army to the battlefield, while the women in the palace performed ‘jau­ har’, offering themselves to the fire to “protect their honour”.

The Mughals won; around 30,000 Rajputs were killed in battle.

After the battle, the Mughals collected the sacred threads—‘yadnyopavit’ or ‘janau’, which is worn across the upper torso—from the bodies of the dead soldiers and weighed them. The collective weight was 74K ‘maunds’ (around 2,700kg).

Merchants in Rajasthan began using the number “74K” before the address on envelopes. This number or mark was a warning to those who might want to violate the contents of a letter not meant for them—warning of a curse. This system usually ensured safe passage in the predominantly Hindu provinces.

Sikkim Rocket Mail

A Rocket Mail cover used in the first despatch of 1934.

Stephen Hector Taylor­Smith may well have been the first person in the world to launch live chickens across a river.

Taylor­Smith, an Anglo­Indian, was the secretary of the Indian Airmail Society in the 1930s, and a pioneer of “rocketgrams”—mails delivered by firing crude, improvised rockets towards their destinations, where they would touch down by releasing an internal parachute.

On 29 June 1935, two chickens—Adam and Eve—were transported via a rocket across the Damodar river near Burnpur in West Bengal. It was the first successful “Rocket Livestock Dispatch”. The following year, he would transport more than a thousand letters through around 20 officially sanctioned “rocketgram” flights in Sikkim. The rockets were more than just experimental curiosities—Taylor­Smith was attempting to gauge their effectiveness in transporting aid and supplies to flood­ and earthquake­affected areas.

He died in 1951, and was commemorated in a stamp released by India Post in 1992.

Source: Ajay Kumar Mittal, philatelist; Pradip Jain; Superior Galleries and Prem Chand Jaiswal, president, All­India Philatelic Traders’ Association.

The baby steps It’s not just about collecting stamps from different countries.

Two veteran philatelists tell you how to start your own collection B Y S HRUTI C HAKRABORTY shruti.c@livemint.com

·········································· allab Bose, 42, is the founder of Facelift Foundation, an events management company, and the philatelist father of 17-year-old philatelist Sameera. “(The hobby) starts off when you’re a kid in school. But after a while, the interest just starts going because you don’t know what’s to be done with all those stamps,” he says. Bose and Ajay Kumar Mittal, 54, a veteran, award-winning philatelist and stamp dealer, tell us how to start with philately and avoid its two major pitfalls—boredom and a lack of direction.

P

What do I need to know before I start?

For those who want to seriously venture into philately, Mittal lists the several types to choose from: traditional philately (collection of definitive stamps—the stamps that are usually used as postage—by date and series), postal history (cancellation and used envelopes), postal stationery (printed envelopes, postcards, cancellations, etc.), maximaphily (picture postcards with the same/similar picture on the stamp and cancellation—this category is fast becoming a favourite with philatelists for its sheer challenge and uniqueness), fiscal philately (stamp paper, revenue stamps, etc.), thematic (stamps of a particular theme, such as flowers, plants, architecture, commemorative stamps and first-day covers—most young philatelists start in this segment), aero-tely (stamps with an airmail cancellation, labels, first-flight covers) and astro (stamps with images related to outer space—this kind of philately is rarely taken up since there are few stamps and stationery in this category).

Once I pick a category, how do I start building up a collection?

“Just collecting stamps isn’t philately,” says Bose.

Usually, children blindly collect whatever stamps and first-day covers that they find, little realizing that “in terms of philately, both these collections have no value,” he says.

Definitive stamps, says Mittal, are only valuable when they’re collected in a series, or when they are extremely rare (such as the 1854, 4 anna Queen Victoria stamp in which the image of the Queen’s head was inverted due to a printing error).

Most people usually start with thematic collections and then move on to more specific categories as they get serious. For instance, Mittal has been collecting stamps since he was 11. Like everyone else, he started with the general stamps that came with letters; soon after, his interest in the sea led him to collect stamps on aquatic life, which formed the basis of his first real collection. After 43 years, thousands of stamps and postal stationery, around 20 international awards and a book (Stamp Collecting: A Fascinating Hobby), Mittal’s collection is worth several crores, and growing.

If I’m not getting anywhere, where do I turn for help?

Both Mittal and Bose attribute the lack of any guidance as the foremost reason for children giving up the hobby, but they also agree that this is the right time for it to thrive. “The Internet has made it much easier to gather information, and eBay is the most easy way to get hold of many of them.” Bose also suggests enthusiasts get in touch with philatelic clubs both within the country and abroad. In India, the South India Philatelists’ Association (www.sipa.org.in), Baroda Philately Society (www.vadophil.org), Philatelic Society of Rajasthan and West Delhi Philatelic Club are some of the more active clubs. Then there are blogs such as Indian Stamp Ghar (www.indianstampghar.com) and senior philatelists such as Mittal, who are forever ready to promote the hobby.

Indipex 2011 opens today in Halls 8-11 at Pragati Maidan, Delhi.

www.livemint.com For an overview of Indipex 2011, log on to www.livemint.com/indipex2011.htm

L10 COVER

COVER L11

LOUNGE

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

Extreme philatelia HOBBIES

COURTESY PRASHANT PANDYA

On the eve of the country’s biggest gathering of stamp collectors in two decades, we explore the eccentric, fascinating world of three Indians who are archiving our postal history B Y S HRUTI C HAKRABORTY & K RISH R AGHAV ········································· ike all the best artefacts of the Indian postal system, this special stamp tells a story in a 39x39mm frame. There’s a charkha in the centre, with a thread spinning outwards to form Gandhi in silhouette. Unlike every other Indian stamp, however, this one isn’t completely printed at the India Security Press in Nashik. Part of it is stitched out of a special grade of khadi. Designed after a rigorous six-month production process, a run of 100,000 “Khadi stamps” will be launched today at Indipex 2011, a global philatelic exhibition organized by India Post. The department, says India Post’s Kavery Banerjee, died “a million deaths” to get every detail on the stamp perfect.

The Khadi stamp is the centrepiece of the exhibition that opens today at Delhi’s Pragati Maidan.

L

Over the next week, philatelists from over 70 countries will gather here. It’s been 13 years since the last one in India, and the breadth of promised displays is immense—postmarks from Victorian-era Lahore, stamps on the Trans-Siberian Railway and revenue documents from 17th century Bengal. The organizers see it as more than just an exhibition—they hope Indipex will revitalize Indian philately.

“Stamp collecting used to be everyone’s hobby,” says Banerjee, Indipex 2011’s chairperson. “Almost all of us had letters coming home, and we encountered them in our daily lives.” The rise of the courier service and email has led to a marked decline in personal mail over the last decade, she says, and the hobby has moved to the fringes. Banerjee reckons that India’s practitioners are “mostly elderly”. Prem Chand Jaiswal, the Kolkata-based president of the All-India Philatelic Traders’ Association, agrees.

“Most people either take it (philately) up when in

The Gandhian imperative Nikhil Mundra is an excavator of philatelic incongrui­ ties. Since 2003, when he was in class IX, he’s been unearthing postal artefacts that tell “an interesting story” of Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy, and the often remarkable ways in which his message has spread across the world.

Gandhi is to stamps what Che Guevara is to pop culture, an iconic transnational image that tran­ scends political differences. He’s been honoured with stamps in over 100 countries, a feat no other historical figure comes close to, says Mundra.

“I read an article that mentioned this, and it got me inspired,” says the 21­year­old engineering stu­ dent. “I thought it was a good hobby—you learn a lot, and I’ve now made friends across the world, thanks to it.”

Mundra began his quest by putting up his con­ tact details on stamp exchange sites, and helping people acquire Indian stamps in return for ones featuring Gandhi from around the world. “Later, I started approaching dealers and auctioneers, and I tried selling items in my collection to finance rare purchases,” he says.

Mundra spent close to €200 (around `12,360) to acquire a rare first­day envelope cover from the US. Issued on 30 January 1948, it pays tribute to the two people who died that day—Mahatma Gandhi and Orville Wright of the Wright brothers. “It’s pos­ sibly the only postal item that mentions both peo­ ple, and I find it fascinating,” says Mundra. “Gandhi had always expressed a desire to meet Wright.”

It’s these chance philatelic encounters and over­ laps Mundra is most interested in. “These are things that happen by accident, by complete chance, but reveal something interesting.”

There is, for example, the set of commemorative stamps issued by Burkina Faso in the 1970s that feature Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. “You don’t see the two of them together very often,” Mundra says. He also owns a stamp issued in Nica­

Animal collective

CHHAVI MITTAL | DELHI

Till a family visit to her uncle’s south Delhi house in 2005, 13­year­old Chhavi Mittal didn’t know that there existed a world, in stamps, beyond Mahatma Gandhi. “I’d seen only Gandhi stamps being used at home and elsewhere,” she says. “I didn’t know that there were so many beautiful stamps with different colours, designs and images. I never expected a stamp to smell of sandalwood!” Now 18, and the proud owner of an award­winning collection of pecu­ liar postal items called “maxima cards”, she says it was “kind of love at first sight between me and those stamps at the time”.

Maxima cards, short for “maximum cards”, involve taking a picture postcard with a certain image, such as the Taj Mahal, affixed with a stamp of the same Taj Mahal photo, and then preferably cancelled with a Taj Mahal stamp issued by the local postal depart­ ment. Any card with all three elements is a maximum

school, up to class VIII, or after their 40s, when they have the time and money to invest,” he says.

But a new generation of collectors are rediscovering the philatelic urge, and beginning to archive the staggering quantity of Indian postal history. “Indian stamps are highly valued internationally,” Banerjee says. “A lot of thought goes into an India stamp.

They’re representative of the history and consciousness of this country.” She remembers how, in 1994, when India Post introduced a sandalwood-scented stamp, they locked it up in a cupboard for a year before launch to make sure the scent didn’t fade.

We spoke to three collectors across the country about the joy of collecting, their roles as amateur historians and how even they have died a million deaths in anticipation of owning that perfect piece of philatelic history. shruti.c@livemint.com Old hand: Pandya with his postal stationery exhibit; and (below) an item from his ‘milk’­themed collection.

NIKHIL MUNDRA | CHENNAI

ragua in 1979­80 that features Albert Einstein with Gandhi, at a time the country was going through a revolution. The following year, the same stamp was reissued with the new regime’s symbols.

But Mundra is not content with merely collecting “accidents” of philatelic history. He also actively engineers it. In 2005, when India issued a special Dandi March stamp with a footprint­shaped first­ day cancellation mark (the stamp put on envelopes to indicate that they have been processed and to prevent reuse), he sent it to friends across the world, asking them to return the footprint­laden envelope to him. “It was like a symbolic journey,” he laughs. “Just adding a little twist to the usual tale.”

On 2 October 2009, Gandhi’s 140th birth anniver­ sary, he designed and bought a set of about 250 personalized stamps through a friend in The Netherlands. The country’s postal authority allows people to create legal stamps with their own designs, and Mundra chose a stylized black and white drawing of Gandhi with the word ‘Bapu’ below it. “I’m always on the look­ out for these opportu­ nities,” he says, “that’s what keeps things exciting.”

Trivia pursuit: Mundra (right) with a part of his collection; and a rare 1948 first­day cover that mentions both Gandhi and Orville Wright.

The postmaster PRASHANT PANDYA | VADODARA

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

In 2005, microbiologist Prashant Pandya wanted to do something the philatelic world had never done before.

“I wanted to start something new, innovative and challenging,” the 49­year­old says over the phone from Vadodara. “To be the only person in the world working in that area.”

He found inspiration in an unlikely source, a stamp exhibition he remembers on the theme of “water”, and salvation in an even unlikelier one—milk.

“I collect philatelic items—stamps, covers, enve­ lopes—that relate to milk,” he says, rattling off a list.

“Could be milk by­products or processing machinery or chemical constituents.” It’s a process he calls “edutain­ ment”, a combination of delving into the history and etymology of a chosen theme, and the joy of dis­ covering and sifting through postal material from the last 150 years in order to tell a story.

Pandya’s been a philate­ list for nearly four decades now, having started accu­ mulating stamps in class IV. “I started like everyone else did,” he says. “Gathering stamps by country, putting every­ thing in an album.” He began to attend meetings of Vado­ dara’s local philatelic societies when in college, and learnt the intricacies of the hobby. “I became much more organ­ ized and focused on specific themes or time periods.”

Most philatelists don’t measure their collection by size or number—they define them by “exhibits” and “frames”.

A “frame” consists of up to 16 sheets (each roughly A4 size, about 22x29cm) which hold about two or three items each. An “exhibit” is a collection of frames, arranged according to a particular theme or narrative.

Pandya’s first speciality was postal stationery (enve­ lopes, covers) from pre­independence India. “There’s a lot you can learn,” he says. “You get great insights into how information flowed in a particular society during that era.” Pandya reckons he can put together eight­frame exhibits on pre­independence postal stationery. Among the rare items in his possession are a series of pictorial postcards released by the North­Eastern Railway and a unique slice of postal history called “Airgraph”.

Airgraphs were a short­lived system of mail deliv­ ery introduced during World War II. The British gov­ ernment needed more space on mail­burdened planes to transport ammunition to the war’s front lines, and encour­ aged people to use the Airgraph system instead of envelopes. “You went to the Airgraph office, filled up a pre­printed form and they would take a microfilm photo­ graph of it,” Pandya says.

These films were then transported on the planes, and the roll developed and printed on the receiving end. “The service was stopped soon after the war, so these items are rare,” he says.

Pandya’s current obsession is developing his “milk” theme collection. “It’s a tough subject,” he admits glumly, “But I’m putting together a one­frame exhibit.”

He also wants to get back to http://www.indianphilately.net/, a Hindi blog he started in 2009 as an information resource for school­ children and non­English speaking enthusiasts. “I hope non­philatelists read it too…they might understand why this subject is so fascinating to us.”

card, but more often than not, most philatelists man­ age to get only the postcard picture and stamp to match. The cancellation may be just a regular one, but preferably from the same city as the photograph.

It’s the challenge of getting all the elements in per­ fect combination that interests most “maximaphily” collectors, and Mittal is no different. In 2008, she recalls spending days convincing her parents to allow her to participate in the 6th Delhi Philatelic Exhibition.

“I doubled my studying hours so that I could partici­

pate,” she says. Her maxima card collection on pet and domesticated animals won her the bronze medal, and the doubled studying hours got her an enviable 87.8% in her class X board examination the same year. Even now, balancing her hobby and studies is a challenge.

But the first­year psychology student at Delhi Univer­ sity still tries to do her research over weekends and attend as many philatelic meets as possible.

Her first card was a gift from her uncle, Ajay Kumar Mittal, a veteran philatelist. “Every time I met him I would ask him about his collection, what every­ thing meant, and how I could win all those medals that were displayed at his home,” she says. When her uncle realized Mittal was serious about the hobby, he gave her a rare, 1813­dated German mark card with pictures of horses on it to get her started. “That was my first card,” Mittal says. “The most valuable too (the card is estimated to have an individual value of a couple of thousand rupees, though nei­ ther Mittal nor her uncle have got it evaluated).” Her choice of subject was aided by her fondness for animals. “I am scared of wild animals, but I love animals, especially those one can keep as pets, so I started collecting cards on dogs, cats, horses and even cattle,” she says. At first, Mittal would buy picture postcards, affix the stamp and then mail it to herself in order to get the cancellation, but now she gets a lot of her cards from family, friends and the treasure trove that is eBay. “I don’t have to spend much right now, I just have generous friends,” she laughs. Mittal’s success as a young philatelist has got her friends, class­ mates and even teachers interested.

So much so that many started their own collections and one of her class teachers even presented her with a rare 1935 Canada picture postcard of a cowboy, with a 1982 stamp with the identical picture.

After all the time Mittal spends looking at the “pretty pictures” in her collection, she hopes to have a pet dog of her own soon too. But, of course, the parents would need to be convinced first.

Dogged: Mittal (below) at her residence in New Delhi; and one of her stamps from Switzerland.

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

GOING POSTAL

The history of Indian mail is filled with mysterious occurrences, bizarre experiments and unbelievable trivia. We dig up three of the strangest COURTESY AJAY KUMAR MITTAL

A Brahmini Dak (combination cover) envelope from Mahatpur to Indore.

COURTESY SUPERIOR GALLERIES

COURTESY AVINASH JAGTAP

Chittormaryaka Paap

Brahmini Dak

In the late 18th century, the king of Mewar started a private postal system that employed Brahmins to carry mail across the state. The reason? Dacoits. Bands of them plagued the border lands, regularly killing postmen for money, valuables or even the information in the mail.

But Hindu religious norms labelled killing a Brahmin the most heinous of sins, an act that “banished” the soul of the killer to hell.

The belief worked like a charm—the Brahmin postmen could walk or ride across the land without any trouble.

The system was so successful that other states, such as Indore and Malwa, signed agreements with Mewar to use the service. Up to 1873, Indore had a contract with “Brahmini Dak”, paying `3,600 a year for the service and permission for the establishment of post offices.

Private letters were carried at 0.5 anna each, irrespective of weight—this was considerably cheaper than the Imperial Post, which charged that much for packages up to 0.75 ‘tolas’, approximately 8g.

An 1876 cover with the ‘74K’ warning (marked with a red arrow).

In the late 16th century, the Mughals invaded Chittor (now in Rajasthan). The Rajput prince of Chittor, Udai Singh, refused to surrender despite the stiff odds. He ordered his army to the battlefield, while the women in the palace performed ‘jau­ har’, offering themselves to the fire to “protect their honour”.

The Mughals won; around 30,000 Rajputs were killed in battle.

After the battle, the Mughals collected the sacred threads—‘yadnyopavit’ or ‘janau’, which is worn across the upper torso—from the bodies of the dead soldiers and weighed them. The collective weight was 74K ‘maunds’ (around 2,700kg).

Merchants in Rajasthan began using the number “74K” before the address on envelopes. This number or mark was a warning to those who might want to violate the contents of a letter not meant for them—warning of a curse. This system usually ensured safe passage in the predominantly Hindu provinces.

Sikkim Rocket Mail

A Rocket Mail cover used in the first despatch of 1934.

Stephen Hector Taylor­Smith may well have been the first person in the world to launch live chickens across a river.

Taylor­Smith, an Anglo­Indian, was the secretary of the Indian Airmail Society in the 1930s, and a pioneer of “rocketgrams”—mails delivered by firing crude, improvised rockets towards their destinations, where they would touch down by releasing an internal parachute.

On 29 June 1935, two chickens—Adam and Eve—were transported via a rocket across the Damodar river near Burnpur in West Bengal. It was the first successful “Rocket Livestock Dispatch”. The following year, he would transport more than a thousand letters through around 20 officially sanctioned “rocketgram” flights in Sikkim. The rockets were more than just experimental curiosities—Taylor­Smith was attempting to gauge their effectiveness in transporting aid and supplies to flood­ and earthquake­affected areas.

He died in 1951, and was commemorated in a stamp released by India Post in 1992.

Source: Ajay Kumar Mittal, philatelist; Pradip Jain; Superior Galleries and Prem Chand Jaiswal, president, All­India Philatelic Traders’ Association.

The baby steps It’s not just about collecting stamps from different countries.

Two veteran philatelists tell you how to start your own collection B Y S HRUTI C HAKRABORTY shruti.c@livemint.com

·········································· allab Bose, 42, is the founder of Facelift Foundation, an events management company, and the philatelist father of 17-year-old philatelist Sameera. “(The hobby) starts off when you’re a kid in school. But after a while, the interest just starts going because you don’t know what’s to be done with all those stamps,” he says. Bose and Ajay Kumar Mittal, 54, a veteran, award-winning philatelist and stamp dealer, tell us how to start with philately and avoid its two major pitfalls—boredom and a lack of direction.

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What do I need to know before I start?

For those who want to seriously venture into philately, Mittal lists the several types to choose from: traditional philately (collection of definitive stamps—the stamps that are usually used as postage—by date and series), postal history (cancellation and used envelopes), postal stationery (printed envelopes, postcards, cancellations, etc.), maximaphily (picture postcards with the same/similar picture on the stamp and cancellation—this category is fast becoming a favourite with philatelists for its sheer challenge and uniqueness), fiscal philately (stamp paper, revenue stamps, etc.), thematic (stamps of a particular theme, such as flowers, plants, architecture, commemorative stamps and first-day covers—most young philatelists start in this segment), aero-tely (stamps with an airmail cancellation, labels, first-flight covers) and astro (stamps with images related to outer space—this kind of philately is rarely taken up since there are few stamps and stationery in this category).

Once I pick a category, how do I start building up a collection?

“Just collecting stamps isn’t philately,” says Bose.

Usually, children blindly collect whatever stamps and first-day covers that they find, little realizing that “in terms of philately, both these collections have no value,” he says.

Definitive stamps, says Mittal, are only valuable when they’re collected in a series, or when they are extremely rare (such as the 1854, 4 anna Queen Victoria stamp in which the image of the Queen’s head was inverted due to a printing error).

Most people usually start with thematic collections and then move on to more specific categories as they get serious. For instance, Mittal has been collecting stamps since he was 11. Like everyone else, he started with the general stamps that came with letters; soon after, his interest in the sea led him to collect stamps on aquatic life, which formed the basis of his first real collection. After 43 years, thousands of stamps and postal stationery, around 20 international awards and a book (Stamp Collecting: A Fascinating Hobby), Mittal’s collection is worth several crores, and growing.

If I’m not getting anywhere, where do I turn for help?

Both Mittal and Bose attribute the lack of any guidance as the foremost reason for children giving up the hobby, but they also agree that this is the right time for it to thrive. “The Internet has made it much easier to gather information, and eBay is the most easy way to get hold of many of them.” Bose also suggests enthusiasts get in touch with philatelic clubs both within the country and abroad. In India, the South India Philatelists’ Association (www.sipa.org.in), Baroda Philately Society (www.vadophil.org), Philatelic Society of Rajasthan and West Delhi Philatelic Club are some of the more active clubs. Then there are blogs such as Indian Stamp Ghar (www.indianstampghar.com) and senior philatelists such as Mittal, who are forever ready to promote the hobby.

Indipex 2011 opens today in Halls 8-11 at Pragati Maidan, Delhi.

www.livemint.com For an overview of Indipex 2011, log on to www.livemint.com/indipex2011.htm

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SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011

Travel ADRIANNA TAN/WWW.POPAGANDHI.COM

SOUTH­EAST ASIA

Full filling

Eat, eat, eat: (clockwise from left) Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love; learn to cook Malay dishes, such as ayam percik, in Kuala Lumpur; roadside stalls in Bangkok; and the island of Koh Lipe.

Ever thought of spending Valentine’s Day at Koh Laoliang? The region is a lovers’ paradise, to be discovered only by venturing into the unknown

ADRIANNA TAN/WWW.POPAGANDHI.COM

DAVID LONGSTREATH/AP

B Y A DRIANNA T AN ···························· here I was, sipping my welcome drink in a posh Ubud resort, when I almost choked on it.

I was accompanying friends as they sought the best wedding venue in Bali. Concerned about the monsoon, they asked the hotel manager why it hadn’t rained at all in the week we were there.

Without batting an eyelid, she informed us there would be no rain for the entire month. “You see, Julia Roberts is in town.”

The Hollywood leading lady has many accomplishments to her name, I get that, but the ability to control weather surely could not be one of them. As it turned out, one of the most popular myths in 2009 went something like this: Roberts came to Bali to shoot Eat Pray Love. To minimize interruption on the set, traditional rain-makers were hired to cast spells over the skies to keep the rains at bay.

One can never be too sure about these things in a mystical country like Indonesia (and I say this as a committed, practical Singaporean), but what’s certain is Bali—and by virtue of proximity, South-East Asia at large—has had an indelible spell cast on it by the Eat Pray Love marketing machine.

You can now go on Eat Pray Love tours to trace Elizabeth Gilbert’s footsteps around the island. You can meet the medicine man she consulted, at $25 (around `1,145) a pop. You can meditate at a beautiful beach resort, learn yoga, and wander around Bali in search of the enlightenment that Gilbert and Roberts popularized in print and on the big screen, respectively. I love Bali, yet I could not

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help feeling like I wanted to eat, pray and hurl.

I trotted off instead to my beloved Thailand, into Bangkok’s chaos and the hidden order beneath it, and the secrets of the Andaman islands.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands may be too remote and too inaccessible, even from major Indian metros, but most of the islands on the Thai side of the Andaman Sea have the right amount of seclusion and infrastructure. A short flight or an overnight train from Bangkok into the southern cities of Trang or Hat Yai, followed by a bus and boat transfer, will take you into the increasingly popular but still pristine waters of the southern islands. My favourites in the bunch include the Tarutao islands that border Malaysia: Koh Tarutao, Koh Lipe, Koh Rawi, and Koh Adang; a season of Survivor was famously shot on location on Tarutao. In centuries past, the Tarutao islands were known for pirates and prisoners.

Today, they are home to some charming islands which are getting more popular, as travellers flee the commercialism of betterknown Phuket and Koh Samui.

Using Koh Lipe as my base, I opted for a bamboo house on the beach, and hired a boat to take us around the islands of the Tarutao National Park for a day of sun and snorkelling.

Just a few years ago, Koh Lipe was barely on the radar: The immigration building, for those entering by speedboat from Malaysia, was a wooden shack on the beach. There were a handful of budget accommodation options, with no mid-range or luxury option to speak of. Today, it is visibly more popular, with its brand

new concrete hotels and more frequent ferry services, but the noshoes, no-stress experience still has its charms. The sand on each of its beaches, including the biggest one, Pattaya beach, is still soft, white and powdery; the waters a clear blue-green shimmer.

The more adventurous would probably do better at the private island of Koh Laoliang. At Laoliang Island Resort, cars, boat traffic and bikes are banned. Travellers are treated instead to the “luxe camping” experience, staying in sturdy, well-furnished tents instead of huts or bungalows.

Climbing, snorkelling, diving, fishing, kayaking, and daily seafood barbecues are on the menu at Koh Laoliang. Just you, your tent and the open sea—it rarely gets better than that.

Then there’s the food, glorious food, of South-East Asia. Born in this part of the world, I can safely vouch: There is no life without our food. No South-East Asian journey

is complete without a comprehensive itinerary devoted to both street food and fine dining.

Nearly all the Thai food in Bangkok is phenomenal. Everywhere you turn, from a street vendor with her som tam poo, spicy raw papaya salad with freshwater crab, to the Michelin-starred Nahm in the fancy Metropolitan Hotel, to the famous pork satay man on the edge of Convent Road, gives you the feeling that this is a city where nobody sleeps, and nobody goes hungry.

Wake up to lunch in Bangkok, queuing up as all the locals do, to have the opportunity to eat at the simple, humble restaurant Krua Apsorn, said to be the Thai princess’ favourite restaurant, with its plastic chairs and oldtime Thai favourites.

But you’d be a fool to go to Bangkok and miss a meal at its most spectacular restaurant of the moment, Bo.lan. At once cutting edge and painfully tradi-

tional, at Bo.lan the husband and wife team of Duangporn Songvisava and Dylan Jones does everything from scratch. They believe in the power of the old school so much that they pore devotedly through ancient books, hoping to come across something new in the very old; such that they may then translate the best of the old world into modern, well-executed plates that can easily take their place among the top tables of New York or Paris. “It’s Thai food like you’ll never have anywhere else,” is the common refrain. I dined here many evenings, in the romantic Thai house tucked deep into a soi in downtown Bangkok, slowly working my way through the gut-busting Bo.lan Balance degustation menu that epitomizes the perfect Thai meal from start to finish.

If the way to your lover’s heart is through his or her stomach, then learning to cook South-East Asian food will help you take things up a

few notches. For this you will have to make the trek to Kuala Lumpur, where Rohani Jelani inspires even the unmotivated with her brilliant instruction. Thirty minutes outside the city, the culinary retreat she calls Bayan Indah plays host to students who come to stay and cook. Pick from courses such as Typically Thai, Easy Japanese, Festive Indonesia or Malaysian village food; learn to handle crabs, Asian vegetarian and noodles, with ease and expertise. It helps that the onsite guest house, where she also lives, is a stunning, elegant respite from the chaotic downtown of Malaysia’s capital city.

Then eat your way around Malaysia. Venture into the unlikely territory of Kampung Baru, just a little outside the Twin Towers, for down-to-earth Malay and Indonesian fare at rock bottom prices, in the little shacks that dot the “village”. Sit down with some of the best Chinese fare in the world— think salt-baked chicken, roast pork, char kway teow, chicken rice noodles with bean sprouts, in the Chinese enclaves around the city, and in the old Chinese mining town of Ipoh, near historic Penang where colonialism and Chineseness have always mixed well.

Peninsular South-East Asia may not be quite as sexy, or as “on the radar”, as any Bali experience, but can easily be as beautiful, and certainly as tasty. The key, as with any form of romance, is to look beyond the well-trodden path, and to venture into fresh, unknown territory with a giant leap of faith—because in the end, why we eat and why we travel is more or less the same as why we love.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

THINKSTOCK

DETOURS

SALIL TRIPATHI

Tuscan springtime

In the enchanting city, time stops for a perfect kiss, but there’s much joy also in being alone

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e stood on the cliffs surrounding the town, taking in what Florence offered. There was nothing but blue sky above us, just as E.M. Forster had described. We saw the Arno meander through the town, languorous and unhurried, and the bridge, Ponte Vecchio, connecting the city. There, the previous afternoon we had bargained with a persistent artist who was trying to convince us that somehow the canvas on which he had painted the old bridge, and which looked identical to the hundreds of other canvases painted by other artists looking for tourists, was in some way different, and more beautiful, than theirs. We smiled as we left him.

And the best way to see that medieval bridge was from the cliff, though we were surrounded by visitors, all training their lenses, taking photographs which would look exactly like those others took, and yet, each image would be different, because each

image had a special meaning for the one who took it, capturing not just the bridge in its physical state—its age, its vulnerability— but as the symbol of a special moment with someone the photographer loved.

I was in Florence, my enchantress by my side, as we walked its old cobbled-stones streets, with cheerful cherubs and scary gargoyles protruding from the buildings, as if about to take off. We walked through the sensuous city, whose seductive charm Salman Rushdie describes in The Enchantress of Florence as: “Imagine a pair of woman’s lips, puckering for a kiss. That is the city of Florence, narrow at the edges, swelling at the centre, with the Arno flowing through between, parting the two lips, the upper and the lower. The city is an enchantress. When it kisses you, you are lost...”

Each town has a centre, where all roads lead, and Florence has its Duomo, the magnificent dome atop the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, completed by Brunelleschi in the 15th century, some 150 years after it was first designed.

Giotto’s tall bell tower is next to it, and the piazza nearby has been made pedestrian-friendly.

This is Italy, so you guard your wallets, you feed the birds, and you kiss in full view of strangers, and then you go to taverns for fresh Chianti. Italian families stroll by, ignoring you, paying attention to Ghiberti’s bronze

doors of the baptistery nearby (which Michelangelo described as the gates of paradise), and the black and white marble exterior of the Basilica, which of course suits you fine.

In A Room with a View, Forster insisted you go to Florence and throw away the guidebook. Indeed, Lucy Honeychurch begins to enjoy the city only after she has put aside the Baedeker, a reference to a popular guidebook of the time.

Without that guidebook telling her what to think, she immerses herself in the charms of the city, and Forster nods approvingly, writing: “The pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and instead of acquiring information, she began to be happy.” For Forster knew where joy lay: “Over such trivialities as these many a valuable hours may slip away, and the traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it.”

The Basilica di Santa Croce where Honeychurch put aside her guidebook conceals its charms. Its interior looks stern and austere, and the atmosphere is not warm. But the city’s history surrounds you, with the tombs of Michelangelo and Galileo.

Other memorials remember Dante and Machiavelli. There is no escape from Italy’s rich past

FOOT NOTES | SEEMA CHOWDHRY

Enchantress: (left) The Ponte Vecchio straddles the Arno; and the Duomo dominates the Florence skyline. and history. There is none from tourists either—so if you see a guide carrying a flag followed by camera-toting crowds, wait.

Forget their commentary— there’s no need to take a free ride; facts become irrelevant, this is Florence, emotions are everything.

There is a joy in being left alone, in discovering Florence on your own.

And we were younger and happy when we went there, and under that blue sky that refused to turn gloomy, we discovered the joy of being alone in a crowd. They were tourists, and we felt snooty: They were in shorts and T-shirts, water bottles in one hand, cellphones in the other, taking more photographs of the walls and the statues and

the cathedrals that dotted the old town; we let our eyes capture—and preserve—the fragile memories. The days, we knew, would not end soon, with the bars coming alive at night, and you never felt alone. And you began to realize how this town, which banished solitude, made more of you, and how the presence of the crowd reinforces your sense of self.

On our last day we went to Fiesole. That is where Honeychurch kissed, confirming her love. In Forster’s time, you needed a horse carriage to take you there and it took an hour; a bus or a car ride makes the journey quicker.

And in that modest town, after a meal of lasagne made of eggplant and cheese

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eady for a journey, but don’t want the usual anthology of guidebooks to help you plan your itinerary? Yellowleg.com, a four-month-old online book store named after a migratory bird, might just be the place you need to visit if you are a “discerning traveller”.

“The idea of setting up a travel-books-only store came from my own experience. When I moved back to India in 2006, and wanted books on travel, I found stores here had little variety. I could order what I wanted online from sites, such as Amazon, but the shipping charges are so heavy. I decided to set up a facility in India where you can buy not just guidebooks,

but also literature about unusual destinations across the world,” says Aashish Gupta, the founder of the site. Gupta, 32, a software developer, worked with Microsoft in Seattle, US, and Amazon, Seattle, US, and Hyderabad, before he decided to give up his job and start this venture. “I have tie-ups with publishers in various countries and since I import books in bulk, the prices stay under control, unlike when you order a single book online,” he says.

The site is hierarchically organized, and lets you search for books about specific places. For example, if you’re travelling to Indonesia, you’ll navigate through the section on Asia, then the South-East Asia region, then Indonesia, and finally choose a book listed under the three cities—Bali, Jakarta or Borneo.

Under Bali, you get the usual Lonely Planet Indonesian Phrasebook and also find the Phaic Tan: Sunstroke on a Shoestring (Jetlag Travel Guide),

Write to Salil at detours@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Salil’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/detours

ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT

Going with a plan A new online book store and ‘travel consultancy’ that can help you plan your next holiday

accompanied by more Tuscan wine and foccacia dipped in olive oil, we walked up to the high point, from where you can see almost forever—the valley in its splendour: the lazy river, the even heights of the houses, and there, rising unexpectedly, and astonishingly, the massive Duomo. The sky was bright, the Tuscan sun comforting. How could you not kiss?

We didn’t want this Florentine interlude to end, and we hoped to return.

and My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with an Indonesian Islamist by Sadanand Dhume.

As this online book store expands, Gupta has announced a trade-a-book service, which allows you to sell a book back to the website after you’re done with it and earn store credit.

Another value-added service that the site offers is personalized travel consulting. “No, this is not a place where you can get discounts on air tickets or hotel deals. We help you plan a trip or answer any questions that you may have,” explains Gupta.

Yellowleg offers various packages for personalized consulting: If you purchase books worth `599, you can ask five questions; for `999, you can ask up to 10 questions. “We archive many articles from various sources, besides which we have access to many travel books from where we pull out this information.”

A sample of questions Gupta has answered in the last few months: “What can you do in

London with young children if you don’t want to go to an amusement park?”; “Where can I hire a babysitter?”; “Which hotels are the most child-friendly?”

Yellowleg usually answers queries in less than 24 hours, but sometimes Gupta does get stumped. “Recently, someone was travelling to Kenya with their parents and wanted to know if there were any safaris that were elderly friendly. There was hardly any information available about this and we had to contact lots of hotels and travel agents to figure this one out.”

Most of the queries and book requests Gupta has received are about travel in Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka or Myanmar. “Perhaps because this is the season when these countries pull crowds, or maybe because there are so few books available on them.”

Gupta is looking forward to further growth, perhaps helping travellers to self-publish. He won’t do this at the expense of quality, though. “This is a book store for the serious traveller and I don’t want to carry any book or article that isn’t top of the line.”

Travel solutions: Yellowleg.com founder Aashish Gupta at work.

seema.c@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011

Books CINEMA

A movie in Venn diagram?

In two new instalments of a series, ‘Disco Dancer’ turns into a long and tedious joke and ‘Deewaar’ into a dense academic treatise B Y J ERRY P INTO ···························· he three books in this series constitute three different ways of looking at cinema. First was Jai Arjun Singh on Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (directed by Kundan Shah, 1983). Singh’s was a journalist’s account of the success of the film that can lay claim to be the first Hindi film to aspire to the status of black comedy. To hand here are Anubav Pal’s take on Disco Dancer (B. Subhash, 1982) and Vinay Lal on Deewaar (Yash Chopra, 1975).

Pal’s book is a disappointment. The basic conceit: that there lies in the shooting script of the iconic movie a full-length comedy only waiting to be translated into English. This means you get nothing much more than a long and somewhat tedious joke (however, we must all be grateful to Pal for discovering that one of the chief assistant directors is credited as Vinod Vermin). At the end, however, there are two interviews which somewhat redeem the book.

Bappi Lahiri tells us he “brought the ho to Bollywood” with Rambha ho in the sleeper hit Armaan and Mithun Chakraborty stakes his claim to immortality on the fact that his “pelvic movement had an Indian style in it”.

Vinay Lal’s take on Deewaar is standard issue academic. You get one chapter on the history of the country around the 1970s.

You get the context neatly set up.

You get a chapter on the film itself, if you haven’t seen it (although why you would want to read a book about a film that you have not seen, this reviewer cannot figure).

Lal’s prose is efficient although every once in a while he gives in to the desire to write in Academese, the dire prose style of the academics of the world: “Writing is the harbinger of a hermeneutics of suspi-

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cion…”; “…the footpath takes ontological precedence over the skyscraper…”; “Deewaar…may be interpreted as having created concentric circles of dyadic relationships—among these, the relationship of Vijay and Ravi, and of each to his mother, are only the most prominent.”

Let us look for a moment at the third remark, just for its geometric logic. If there are two points chosen in space, whatever kind, Euclidean or otherwise, an infinity of circles can pass through them. But concentric circles? Ah, that begins to make sense. But only for a moment.

There are six dyadic relationships in Deewaar: u Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) and Sumitra Devi (Nirupa Roy) u Ravi (Shashi Kapoor) and Sumitra Devi u Vijay and Anita (Parveen Babi) u Ravi and Leena (Neetu Singh) u Vijay and Davar (Iftikhar; the surrogate father figure, his mob boss) u Vijay and God (in the saguna roopa of Lord Shiva).

Who is the centre of these concentric circles? How do they fit into each other? (If they are concentric, they must fit into each other, one into the next, each

Disco Dancer; Deewaar: HarperCollins India, 200 pages, `250 each.

Academic: Vinay Lal’s book on Deewaar, one of a series on Bollywood cult classics, evokes little of the magic that was the film. scooping up what the earlier relationship implies.) What Lal probably meant is that they represent a Venn diagram in which various relationships intersect each other, overlapping at certain areas: Vijay’s relationship with God is a problem with his mother but Anita and Sumitra Devi do not turn up in the same frame ever.

This next step was taken by Ramesh Sippy in Shakti (1982), where the outsider woman (this time Smita Patil in one of her few civilized outings in the commercial world of Bollywood) is actually drawn into the family circle and thus allowed some measure of “legitimacy” in the way that is defined by a patriarchal society not intent on dyadic relationships (the dyad is always trouble; the joint family is the model to look to).

Shakti is the stepchild of Deewaar. The Oedipal world of

Bachchan is played out to its full here, down to the famous meeting scene over the mother (Raakhee). Lal also suggests that Raakhee and Roy had simultaneous careers. In Shakti, Raakhee was persuaded to play Bachchan’s mother, moving from his bhabhi in Reshma aur Shera to his beloved (in the largest number of films) to his mother. She became one of the first star mothers to emerge and take work away from the likes of Roy and Dulari (who plays the mother of the boy killed by Ravi in one of his first acts as protector of the law).

Lal does not seem to have bothered with his background reading. He ignores almost studiously the work of Dr Rachel Dwyer on Yash Chopra. He mentions Haji Mastan but does not tell us that the gangster went on record to say that the film was “too violent”. He misses one of

the strangest scenes in the film: When Vijay proposes marriage to Anita, he does so in a roomful of red. And as soon as the word marriage is mentioned, all the red is leached and replaced with white. At every screening I have attended, the symbolism of this shot has been greeted with cheers. He misses the antecedents to the film too: Aradhana (Shakti Samanta, 1969) has the first ninda stuti aimed at God. And it does not come from the mouth of the hero.

His placement of the city is unclear. In Deewaar, he acknowledges that “Sumitra Devi’s prospects are better in the metropolis” but in his analysis of Do Bigha Zameen (Bimal Roy, 1953) he says the city “unambiguously stood for self-aggrandizement, sophistication, unsuppressed greed, and utter lack of moral restraints”. It did, still does; but it was also clear that

Shambhu’s only chance of getting his do bigha back would lie in the city.

Of course, a book such as this cannot be expected to scoop up all the details that have been lying around for years. The writer must pick and choose what he thinks will add to his thesis. And after years of general books on Bollywood, it is good to know that we now have specific texts addressing specific films.

And we hope that more are coming, jald se jald, aap ke sheher mein, action aur emotion aur writing ka milan.

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

Write to lounge@livemint.com IN SIX WORDS Iconic films, less than iconic books

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN, VOLUME I | EDITED BY HARRIET ELINOR SMITH WITH OTHERS

A grave man The first volume of Mark Twain’s posthumous auto­ biography lacks the charm of his novels

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: University of California Press, 736 pages, $34.95 (around `1,600).

B Y S UPRIYA N AIR supriya.n@livemint.com

···························· ver the last year, the relevance of Mark Twain’s writing to modern America has been thrown into sharp focus. The first volume of his Autobiography, anticipated for a century now (under his instructions, it has been officially published a hundred years after his death), became one of 2010’s best-selling books in the US. Over the last month, a controversy erupted in the US over an edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, prepared for American high school readers, that eliminated all instances of the racist slur “nigger” from the text. The question of whether children can—or should—be protected from a painful national history by rendering it invisible has neither died down, nor been resolved satisfactorily.

The fiercely political Twain offers no definitive opinion on the

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UNDERWOOD

matter as he “speaks from the grave” (his notion of his autobiography) in this first volume, a monumental academic effort from the Mark Twain Project of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. His wideranging liberalism is an undercurrent of this book, not its dominant motif— although it can be difficult to find a dominant motif in 736 pages of dense (if beautiful) type.

The editors’ work encompasses preliminary manuscripts, “scraps”, explanatory notes on the text and an index and catalogue of references in this doorstopper volume. Its meticulousness varies somewhat with the effect of the Autobiography— which takes up 268 pages of the entire volume and is essentially composed of Twain’s reminiscences, taken down in dictation by his range of amanuenses. It has the fragmented, somewhat rambling effect of an impromptu monologue.

Twain’s sardonism runs constantly through the text. On his first sweetheart: “I fell in love with her when she was eighteen and I was nine, but she scorned me, and I recognised that this was a cold

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UNDERWOOD/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Sardonic: Twain’s memoirs read somewhat like a rambling monologue.

world. I had not noticed that temperature before.” To a friend arranging for Twain to speak at Carnegie Hall: “Mark all the advertisements ‘Private and Confidential’, otherwise the people will never read them.”

On Grover Cleveland: “I do not call to mind any other President of the United States—there may

have been one or two—perhaps one or two, who were not always and persistently presidents of the Republican party, but were now and then for a brief interval really Presidents of the United States.”

Twain’s life, as told here, was marked by both a deep domestic happiness, and the tragedy of outliving both his beloved wife

Livy and his young daughter Susy. His friends and family numbered several, across the breadth of the US. As he memorializes them—and attacks his enemies with unforgiving and often hilarious rancour—it’s possible to see the great chronicler of the American South-West as a character in one of his own sprawling fictions, or the narrator of a serial that meanders back and forth from his present at an unsteady pace.

But the monologuist, though a great one, often speaks with no audience in mind—and who could successfully imagine an audience for a book reading it a hundred years after creation? The resultant ramble can frequently bore and alienate readers, particularly those who know of Twain only through his novels, which have very much the opposite effect.

It’s hard to ignore the flat notes in Twain’s foghorn call from the Beyond, but it may also be premature to consider them definitive problems. The whole may well assemble itself much more coherently once the final twothirds of the book are published: Volume II comes later this year, and the last one in 2012.

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THE NAIVE AND THE SENTIMENTAL NOVELIST | ORHAN PAMUK

The ‘centre’ of a novel

CULT FICTION

R. SUKUMAR

THE BIRTHRIGHT TOUR

PRASAD GORI/HINDUSTAN TIMES

O

The artist: Pamuk views the novelist’s art as a form of painting with words.

Musings of the Nobel laureate on the art form tend to get woolly; what shines through is his passion for reading novels

The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist: Penguin India, 200 pages, `450.

B Y S ANJAY S IPAHIMALANI ···························· olstoy’s Anna Karenina.

Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.

Robbe-Grillet’s The Voyeur. That these disparate works can be classified under the common heading of a novel speaks volumes about the form’s chameleon-like nature.

This is one of the reasons that, as Orhan Pamuk points out in The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist, it has become our dominant literary form: “Now, in every corner of the world, the vast majority of those who want to express themselves through literature write novels.”

It would take a brave soul, then, to “explore the effect that novels have on their readers, how novelists work, and how novels are written”. This is what Pamuk attempts in the six essays that make up this volume, the text of the Charles Eliot Norton lectures that he delivered in Harvard in 2009. The title is derived from an 18th century essay by German litterateur Friedrich Schiller, On Naive and Sentimental Poetry.

As Pamuk points out, Schiller’s use of the words “naive” and “sentimental” differ from the ways in which we use them.

“Naive poets are one with nature…They write poetry spontaneously… (and) have no doubt that they will adequately and thoroughly describe and reveal the meaning of the world.” In

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contrast, the sentimental writer is emotional and reflective: “he is unsure whether his words will encompass reality…So he is extremely aware of the poem he writes, the methods and techniques he uses, and the artifice involved in his endeavour.” After more than three decades of being a novelist, Pamuk writes, he has managed to find equilibrium between his naive and sentimental sides (certainly, it’s instructive to reread his The Museum of Innocence keeping this in mind).

Things become woolly, however, when he elaborates on his conception of a novel’s “centre”: “a profound opinion of insight about life, a deeply embedded point of mystery, whether real or imagined”. Every novel, he says, has such a centre: The act of writing becomes a way to crystallize it, and that of reading, a way to uncover it. How this centre is different from what’s referred to as a novel’s theme or subject is not touched upon, and such musings leave one more mystified than enlightened.

Pamuk is more sure-footed when he updates E.M. Forster’s classic definition of flat and round characters in fiction.

“People do not actually have as much character as we find portrayed in novels,” he says. “Furthermore, human character is not nearly as important in the shaping of our lives as it is made out to be in the novels and literary criticism of the West.” This is

one of the few instances where Pamuk moves away from the verities of the novel in its 19th century realist avatar, one we are in thrall of till today.

With numerous references and allusions peppered through these lectures, what shines through is the dedication and passion of Pamuk, the reader.

The excitement and insight with which he speaks of some of his favourite authors—Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, among others—is palpable. There is the additional pleasure of tracing how his reading informed his own journey as a novelist, from the traditional template of Cevdet Bey to the more experimental My Name is Red to an alliance of the two in The Museum of Innocence. Other personal reflections find a place too, some of which he has touched upon earlier in Istanbul and in his Nobel lecture. His decision to give up painting for writing in his early 20s, for instance, and how this led him to conceive of the novelist’s art as a form of painting with words.

Art, Picasso once said, is a lie that tells the truth. The Naive and Sentimental Novelist is a pleasant and informed excursion into the lies and truth of the novelist’s art.

ne of the best comic books/graphic novels I read in 2010 (late 2010) was Sarah Glidden’s How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less.

The book tells the story of Glidden’s visit to Israel, her homeland, on a Birthright tour (a free tour for young Jews to discover their roots). In some ways, the book is a bit like Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang; then, any book about a place that is at once both humorous and sharp would be.

But Glidden’s book is more.

As Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Joe Sacco’s Palestine (and several other books) have shown, a comic book is a great way to address and depict serious issues. It is as if the simplicity of the medium and the sheer incongruence of having serious issues depicted in a medium associated with men in tights and the funnies somehow increases the poignancy of the story being told.

Glidden’s book combines both influences into a tale of Israel and Palestine told through beautifully constructed watercolours.

And it’s a very personal story.

As a Jew who grew up in the US, Glidden’s perception of Traveller: Glidden goes to Israel. both Israelis and Arabs is stereotypical. As is her understanding of the conflict. Her initial feelings about the Birthright tour (that it would be heavy on the propaganda) lend the story a neo-modern touch—the comic is a reflection of her changed understanding of the conflict, but also about how she comes to this understanding, through a tour about which itself she undergoes a similar change of heart.

Interestingly, Glidden has told interviewers that she went through the Birthright tour hoping that it would provide her with material for a comic.

All of this works for How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, but what works most in favour of the book is the personal and intimate story that plays out on its pages. Few writers, in any medium, are as honest about their feelings as Glidden is in her autobiographical tale. And this honesty and intimacy makes the reader feel as if he (or she) knows Glidden really well. That, in the final reckoning, makes this a book about the Palestine-Israel conflict that people will remember (which is something because enough books have been written on the subject). It is also this factor that probably keeps the reader’s interest alive through 200 pages of the comic.

I am keenly looking forward to Glidden’s next book. She has hinted in an interview that this could possibly be on Syria and Iraq, and based on a reporting trip she was to take in these countries. Bring it on.

R. Sukumar is editor, Mint.

Write to him at cultfiction@livemint.com

Write to lounge@livemint.com IN SIX WORDS Pamuk, mystifying and enthralling in turns

QUICK LIT | SUPRIYA NAIR

The butterfly effect Lahore’s socialite grapples with marriages, mothers and the military­industrial complex

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e have no electricity,” writes Moni Mohsin’s unnamed narrator in her Lahore diary.

“Oho, baba, I know the whole country has no electricity, but I mean we, us.”

The protagonist of Tender Hooks, whom we last met in Mohsin’s The Diary of a Social Butterfly, is increasingly suspicious of the new Pakistan she lives in, where “fundos” have come to stay, apparently for good, and weddings are now held in exclusive clubs and not five-star hotels (“Anyone can walk into a hotel and blow themselves up. Not like clubs where only members can blow themselves up”). Don’t even ask; the sich is bad.

At least there are some problems the Butterfly can confront directly, if not a little reluctantly.

Her cousin Jehangir is 37 years of age, shy, unprepossessing and already divorced from a “cheapster type” who ran away with the family jewellery and a Toyota car.

His family nickname, Jonkers, is almost the least distressing thing about his life. To marry him to a suitable bride before Muharram is not a task for the faint-hearted.

Nonetheless, the Butterfly, who knows herself to be a “soft headed, charitable” soul, must wrangle with it.

So through various circles of Lahore high society—and its peripheries—she must go, a Virgil

to Jonkers’ helpless Dante, eliminating the poor, the dark and the ill-bred from his path. The rich girl who’s “a gay”? Unthinkable, even if it’s just a phase. The mousy divorcee whose father is a powder pasha, as drug smugglers are known in polite society? Out of the question: Her mother serves them flat soda. And when it comes to a teenager whose mother just wants to break up her affair with the local DVD-wallah, it’s almost enough to make the Butterfly want to move to Dubai.

The malapropism-filled, selfsatirizing style, which also marked the Butterfly’s first outing, may be the most irritating thing about this novel. Mohsin has a keen ear for the language of the social class she writes about, but the degree to which she chooses to replace conventional usage with spellings such as “bag-

Wry: Mohsin lampoons the swish set. ground” and “stuppid” tips into an unpleasant sort of condescension for her characters. Still more puzzling is the narrator’s steadfast incompetence with brand names she loves. If a Social Butterfly can’t say “Miu Miu” correctly,

Tender Hooks: Random House India, 199 pages, `250. what hope do the rest of us have?

Mohsin is otherwise a sympathetic writer, and many of her characters will be familiar to readers anywhere on the subcontinent. The fierce matriarchs, the desperate housewives

and the hollow-eyed husbands of the business class are all imagined deftly; Mohsin infuses the novel with warmth even as she lampoons their political and social attitudes.

So the bride wars over Jonkers thunder towards resolution, but the most interesting relationship in the book is the Butterfly’s own.

Years of married life have exposed the chasm of understanding between her and her thoughtful, morally serious husband. As she rushes about trying to fix up the lives of others, we are also allowed wry, tender glimpses into the way she and “Janoo” live together. Perhaps things might have turned out this way for Bridget Jones if Mark Darcy were a landowning Lahori.

Or perhaps not. Whatever the case may be with the Oxonian Janoo, Mohsin’s writing makes it clear that it would take more than just atrocious spelling and heirloom jewellery to make Bridget Jones a Pakistani. The Butterfly, as we are led to discover, could hardly be anything else. supriya.n@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011

Culture ART

The museum of ‘wow’

PHOTOGRAPHS

SURPRISE FACTORS BY

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Absence of God VIII, 2008 (acrylic, glitter, enamel and rhinestones) Raqib Shaw

How one collector’s showpieces might make the country’s largest museum of contemporary art accessible to all kinds of art lovers

Raised in Kashmir and based in London since 1998, Raqib Shaw currently holds the record for the most expensive Indian contemporary work to sell at auction (‘Garden of Earthly Delights III’ sold for almost $5 million, or around `22.8 crore, at Sotheby’s in 2007).

At first, Shaw’s visually deceptive canvas leaves the viewer dazzled with its enamelled, gemstone­studded surface (a detail that is lost in photographs). A deeper engagement reveals gory details of a world in a state of collapse.

The work—which can be read as a metaphor for his childhood in Kashmir—has never been exhibited in India.

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

···························· he first work one encounters on entering the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) is artist Bharti Kher’s lifesize elephant sculpture. The Skin Speaks a Language Not its Own, which depicts a fibreglass elephant down on its knees with over 100,000 sperm-shaped bindis arranged in whorls on its skin, made auction history at Sotheby’s in London in June when it sold for around `7 crore.

Walking through the 20,000 sq. ft space, one comes across several such newsmakers of the art world—from S.H. Raza’s painting Saurashtra to Jitish Kallat’s iconic skeletal car sculpture. They are all here, on the ground floor of a Delhi shopping mall.

The KNMA opened its new premises at DLF Place, Saket, with a grand party during the India Art Summit last month. Art world moguls were in attendance, as were politicians such as Sheila Dikshit and P. Chidambaram. The museum had been operating temporarily out of the HCL campus in Noida over the last year. Nadar’s husband Shiv Nadar is the founder of HCL. Nadar’s private venture makes for the largest museum of contemporary and modern art in the country. Open 8 hours a day, six days a week, at no entry charge for visitors, her initiative is at the vanguard of a new brand of cultural philanthropy in India. She is preceded by art collectors Lekha and Anupam Poddar, who run the non-profit Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon. The foundation was established in 2008, and its multilevel exhibition space hosts wellcurated rotating exhibitions. But it is the location of Nadar’s museum —in a shopping complex with thousands of visitors everyday—that works to serve Nadar’s vision. She puts it simply, as she walks us through the art she’s been collecting for close to 20 years: “I want art to be accessible to the public.”

The opening exhibition of the museum, Time Unfolded, traces a visual trajectory of modern and contemporary Indian art, featuring 70 paintings and sculptures that span works by early Bengal School artists such as Jamini Roy to contemporary multimedia practitioners such as Vishal Dar. A museum shop stocks books, prints and art memorabilia, and two docents are available to conduct guided tours for groups, especially schoolchildren, who Nadar hopes will form a large chunk of the visitors.

When Nadar started collecting in the 1980s, it was mostly for home decor. She would buy directly from artists such as M.F. Husain, even commissioning them to create specific works.

When her walls were full, she started using the HCL office as a repository. Around 2003, she decided she had to do something with her bourgeoning collection.

Putting works into storage didn’t seem reasonable. “I thought if I’m

The KNMA has several works that have barely been in the public sphere. Director Roobina Karode lists a few

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Blue Abstract, 1965 (oil on canvas) VS Gaitonde

Monumental: (from top) Nadar in front of Sudarshan Shetty’s Taj Mahal installation (2008) at the KNMA; A. Ramachandran’s Genesis of Kurukshetra (2005); and Subodh Gupta’s Family on Scooter (2006).

going to continue buying art, I should do something more substantial or I should stop collecting,” she says.

What started out largely as a conundrum of space, broadened into a philanthropic vision. Nadar cites how parents and children come in pairs to museums in New York; how experiencing art is an easy weekend activity. “We need to reacquaint ourselves with the art we are producing as a country,” she says, “and there are few avenues for that.”

Nadar, 60, is an ambitious woman who started her career in advertising and is an international competitive bridge player, among other things. “Given what museums such as the Guggenheim have done for Bilbao or what the Museum of Islamic Art is doing for Doha, Qatar, we hope to build a definitive world-class museum that will add to the splendour of the city of Delhi,” she says in her public statement for the museum’s launch.

Since she decided to set up the museum in 2005, she has been travelling to auctions around the world to bid and buy, a dream for any art collector, and one that Nadar has the resources to realize.

She campaigned to have the ministry of culture give her tax benefits and is one of the first to benefit from an import duty waiver for artworks brought into the country for public display. She’s now rooting to make artist donations commercially viable. In the years to come, the KNMA, she says, will transform into more than an exhibition space, to a site of confluence. There will be room for art

appreciation discourses, workshops for children, for the lay public and the specially abled, global exhibitions, performing arts and other ingredients that go into making an art hub. In the first week after it opened, the museum had an average of a hundred visitors a day. Nadar’s four-staff team hopes to hit at least 300-400 through promotional activities over the coming year.

A criticism levelled against the KNMA collection is that it is an assemblage of trophy art pieces. By way of contrast, take what Mallika Advani, former head of Christie’s in India and now an independent art dealer, has to say about Delhibased entrepreneur Rajiv Sawara’s collection of pre-modern and modern Indian art: “It’s unusual to find a collection with such depth.

They have selected works that best represent the artist, which is critical to being a good collector.”

The exhibition at KNMA is broad rather than deep, with buzzy works by many artists rather than an in-depth study of any. While the show does have thematics, spread across eight categories such as “landscapes in the city” and “the body”, they come across as an attempt to string together all the major works that Nadar has happened to acquire.

According to Roobina Karode, director of KNMA and the exhibition’s curator, over half the exhibits were acquired in the last year. “We had to

have all the great works. The museum must have the wow factor,” she says.

The KNMA is a peek into a private collector’s impulses, but it does present a valuable opportunity for the average Indian museum-goer. Where else can someone who doesn’t go to art fairs, museums and galleries abroad get to see an Anish Kapoor sculpture, an enamelled jewelstudded Raqib Shaw canvas and Sudarshan Shetty’s Taj M a h a l installation, all at once?

This, how-

ever, is yet another temporary repository for Nadar. She plans to move to an 80,000 sq. ft space in the next five years and is scouting for what she calls a “permanent, iconic resting spot”. She also wants to double her 300-work collection in that period. “This can’t be it,” she says, indicating that one woman’s showing cupboard might really become the country’s largest contemporary art museum.

This is a rare painting by the reclusive modern artist that hasn’t been exhibited in India in recent years. V.S. Gaitonde’s abstract art prompts the viewer to make connections between the tangible and the intangible.

This particular canvas is a brilliant treatment of form and colour. The deep hues of blue, nuanced and raised in parts, evoke a strange tranquillity.

Birth of Blindness, 2007 (fibreglass and cloth) GR Iranna Iranna’s sculptural installation has 10 naked, blindfolded men in a posture of complete submission. Their overworked bodies are tense with impending torture. The installation is unsettling because of its implicit power dynamic. It was shown at the Aicon Gallery in London with only a short preview in New Delhi two years ago.

Genesis of Kurukshetra, 2005 (bronze) A Ramachandran This installation by the Padma Bhushan­winning artist A. Ramachandran is inspired by the Mahabharat. His interpretation of the epic is unusual, focused on the genesis, as the title suggests. It shows the two mothers, Kunti and Gandhari, orchestrating the tale. The sons of both mothers are pawns, the five Pandavas in gold and a hundred Kauravas in silver. With each wrong move, the mothers can lose their sons. Combining aspects of architecture, sculpture and theatre, the installation is something that must be seen in person. It was the last part of a two­week­long exhibition at the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi in 2009.

Kaayam, 2008 (fibreglass, wood and acrylic) A Balasubramaniam The artist was one of the three finalists for the inaugural edition of the Skoda Prize this year. Though this sculptural work was shown at New Delhi’s Talwar Gallery a couple of years ago, it is worth a longer look.

The Bangalore­based artist is more interested in the mystery of the creative process rather than the end product. In ‘Kaayam’, selfhood is elusive. A row of crumpled casts of human figures on a wall are caught mid­air, inert yet floating. The sculpture attempts to capture the absent form of something essential, like the human shadow.

CULTURE L17

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

MUSIC

The author of his tunes GOUTAM ROY/MINT

Amit Chaudhuri is a musician and a music theorist in his new album

B Y S HAMIK B AG ···························· aintings by F.N. Souza, Jamini Roy and Bikash Bhattacharjee hang on the walls of the well-appointed drawing room. Artefacts, books, classic furniture and a sweeping view of south Kolkata add to the visual effect. Occasionally, street sounds waft up to Amit Chaudhuri’s eighth-floor apartment.

Next door is the Calcutta School of Music, established in 1915, which often sends its tidings of choral singing and orchestral movements along the street. And at ordained hours, the piercing sound of the amplified azaan from a nearby mosque intrudes into the household’s quiet domesticity.

There is also a framed black and white photograph of Chaudhuri when he was the quintessential carrier of 1970s folk-rock rebel fire—the guitar-strumming, Neil Young and Paul Simon singing student of Mumbai’s Elphinstone College, sporting longish hair and burnt denim. These days, an acoustic guitar and a couple of tanpuras—reminders of three decades of taleem (education) in Hindustani classical music—occupy the corners at the author-musician’s home.

One could call this the backdrop for Chaudhuri’s latest album, Found Music (EMI). For the concept that underlies the songs in the album, he relies on the French pop-art pioneer Marcel Duchamp’s theory of finding art among commonplace, conventional and fundamentally non-artistic objects. In addition, Chaudhuri has attempted to lend to the songs and sounds a sense of belonging to their origin, even while re-contextualizing them within a consciously crafted musical mishmash.

It could be the newspaper vendor’s sing-song voice, the frosty woman announcer on Berlin’s U-Bahn, or “Mind the Gap” warnings at the London Underground. Or it could be conchblowing, the dissonant twang of the cotton-fluffing instrument dhunuri heard on Kolkata streets, or audio renderings of the “OK Tata” legend seen

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Found sounds: Chaudhuri practises on the tanpura at his residence. behind Indian trucks. Chaudhuri has recharged—revived even— these everyday sounds and visual templates through new meaning.

Chaudhuri’s creative appropriation extends to musical cultures too. It seems logical. Growing up in the box-wallah settings of Mumbai, where his father worked as a senior executive in Britannia, Chaudhuri took up Hindustani classical music as a mark of rebellion against his “own class”—people at home with Western rock music and, to an extent, with Hindustani classical music. (He means in a faddish and, as he puts it, “in a roundabout way, partly because of the Beatles or Ravi Shankar.”)

Having studied under the late Pandit Govind Prasad Jaipurwale and Pandit A. Kanan, these days Chaudhuri maintains a equidistance intellectually from both ritualistic Hindustani classical music (“it has been appropriated as pan-Indian national music; avant-garde work can’t take place without laughing at nation-

alism”) and what is referred to as fusion music. “What I’ve heard of fusion—Shakti, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Zakir Hussain, John McLaughlin, L. Shankar—didn’t interest me for these short-term reasons of getting virtuosos from different traditions playing with each other,” he says.

All of which led to This is Not Fusion, a project introduced to a curious Kolkata concert audience in 2005 and the title of his debut album released two years later. The project, as Chaudhuri recalls, was catalysed by a sudden discovery: One morning while doing riyaaz of Raga Todi, Chaudhuri chanced upon Eric Clapton’s classic Layla riff.

Chaudhuri’s search for musical syncretism took him to highprofile stages in Berlin, Beijing, Frankfurt and other international venues, and was rewarded by affirmative reviews in the Western media. In Found Music, he continues to be the music omnivore: chewing up varied yet common musical coordinates;

China under the lens China is under deep scrutiny at a travelling show of the V&A Museum now in Bangalore

B Y R AHUL J AYARAM rahul.j@livemint.com

···························· horizontally extended picture that is part of the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum’s travelling exhibition, now showing at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in Bangalore, depicts a high-profile do with beautiful people in attendance. Men and women are looking at each other furtively, assessing each others’ worth.

The accompanying note explains that the image is a 20th century take on what happened in

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China in the ninth century. Back then, a Chinese king asked a famous artist to infiltrate parties being thrown by the reformist court minister, Han Xizai and paint what he saw there. The painting, titled Night Banquet of HanXiZai, became an iconic work in Chinese cultural history, and is regarded as an enduring sign of the curtailed freedom of the Chinese people.

The photograph hanging at NGMA, taken by Chinese photographer Wang Qingsong, is titled Night Revels of Lao Li. It depicts the fortunes of Li Xianting, a pre-

eschewing the mandatory bundling of sundry sounds and musical milieus often witnessed in fusion music—seen as a gold mine by many but a minefield by Chaudhuri.

Numbers such as the skilfully reworked version of Norwegian Wood by the Beatles set to Raga Bageshri, and Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys based on two “pentatonic” ragas, reflect the music theorist in Chaudhuri. As does the “found title” So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star, borrowed from the Byrds and sharpened by Chaudhuri’s brooding recreation of a story about an unfulfilled rock ‘n’ roll dream.

And the Barry Mann-Cynthia Weil composition On Broadway made memorable by the jazz great, George Benson. Chaudhuri spreads his version on Raga Gavati, a tabla and trumpet base and a characteristic singing style that is unmistakably Indian in mood and modulation. The song isn’t a random selection.

Through lines such as …But when you’re walkin’ down the street/And you ain’t had enough to eat/The magic rubs right off and you’re nowhere, Chaudhuri traces the life of a wistful immigrant Indian cook in New York.

Fittingly, the inlay card calls Chaudhuri’s On Broadway a post-colonial version.

Chaudhuri nails his point in the 15-minute final track: Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat Suite, which delicately interlinks the first movement of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with Raga Mishra Kafi with the Cohen song, and surprise, with the Dilli ka Thug classic tune, Yeh raatein, yeh mausam, nadi ka kinara— socially disparate, but conjoined melody twins. The album leaves behind a question: Was the Cohen song (1971) inspired by the Dilli ka Thug (1958) number, or is it a case of common scales and melodies thriving beyond genres and geographical limits?

Found Music is not quite easy, drive-time music. It is enriched—or burdened—by layers of academic thought. It doesn’t help that Chaudhuri’s singing is unassuming, bordering on the staid, and the album is instrumentally stripped of any flash.

So when it comes to the work of an author-musician whose books such as A Strange and Sublime Address, Afternoon Raag and The Immortals have variously registered music-society interconnections, letting go easily of Found Music would be akin to judging a book by its cover.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

mier art critic in the 1980s who promoted new and experimental artists taking on the taboos in Chinese society and who was barred by the Chinese establishment from airing his views on art. “I reenacted the old painting into a modern version, trying to say the same story: Over the centuries, the destiny of intellectuals who were very eager to cultivate their countries into a stronger nation, can seldom fulfil their ambitions and dreams. They were suspected and not trusted,” Wang said over email from Fuzhou in China.

Wang’s picture is among 40 works by photographers from across the world; these include photos as well as photo-based artworks. But China comes in for

STALL ORDER

NANDINI RAMNATH

THE QUEST FOR COOL

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ishal Bhardwaj is Bollywood’s unlikeliest dark knight. He started his career in the 1990s composing mellifluous and memorable music scores that provided the only real alternative to A.R. Rahman’s synth-pop juggernaut. His self-declared guide into Hindi cinema was Gulzar, the lyricist and occasional maker of gentle, poetic films. But Bhardwaj’s own film tastes proved to be nothing like Gulzar’s. From Maqbool to 7 Khoon Maaf via Omkara and Kaminey, Bhardwaj is living proof that in Bollywood, you find cool in the unlikeliest of places.

Bhardwaj packs his films with twisted men and women who are unafraid to cross over to the dark side. In the way in which he embraces characters with more black than white in their souls, Bhardwaj is the closest thing Bollywood has to Mani Ratnam, the Tamil director whose love for lawless men has resulted in such films as Nayakan, Thalapathi and most recently Raavanan. Like Ratnam, he has managed to find a sweet spot between realism and make-believe.

He extracts natural performances from his actors, but the gritty spell is broken ever so often by the insertion of songs.

Increasingly, he has started running the songs in the background rather than getting his actors to lip-sync the words—a wise decision, given his poor song picturization skills. The term song picturization is unique to our film industry—and a dying art.

Bhardwaj has nostalgia by the spadefuls, but he isn’t interested in making 1970s-style films like Farah Khan or Farhan Akhtar. His gaze is turned westwards towards Hollywood and Europe. Maqbool, Omkara and Kaminey are all gangster films in one way or another—all of them are about people who inhabit the fringes of the law, follow rules of their own making, and kill at will. Bhardwaj manages to fuse the crime genre with uniquely Indian traits. In Kaminey, he localized the crime film and found Mumbai equivalents of the low-life who populate the movies of Martin Scorsese and Guy Ritchie. Kaminey flitted from one amoral thug to the next without caring much for sociology or criminal psychology, resulting in an immensely entertaining but ultimately empty movie. Compared with Kaminey’s strutting, Omkara, Bhardwaj’s version of William Shakespeare’s Othello, feels like a brooding epic about masculinity and caste, but that film too is little more than a pared down and simplistic version of a great text.

Bhardwaj shares with his fellow traveller Anurag Kashyap a love for deviance, but the similarity ends there. Kashyap’s decidedly off-kilter approach to cinema results in dark and often dire films.

Bhardwaj has the gift of the feather touch. He is many notches above regular Bollywood fare, but not so deep as to alienate the average sophisticated viewer. That’s what early Ratnam used to be all about: slick, well-made genre films that smoothly melded together foreign and Indian sensibilities and never forgot to entertain viewers.

Go West: Priyanka Chopra and Irrfan Khan in 7 Khoon Maaf.

Ratnam’s brand of film-making has been undermined of late by recent developments in Tamil cinema. Young Tamil film-makers are increasingly making dark and violent films that experiment with camera techniques, untested actors and innovative locations.

Bhardwaj, on the other hand, is only beginning.

7 Khoon Maaf will release on 18 February.

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

Write to Nandini at stallorder@livemint.com

some more critique. In Yang Huang’s photo, a Chinese woman has trees and plums painted on her face, in what is a dig at the Chinese scholastic tradition emphasizing proximity to nature. In Yang’s view, the exhortation to a good Chinese citizen to be close to nature means that it is practically thrust on one’s countenance.

“The recent popularity of photography within contemporary art can be understood by looking at several interrelated changes in the field,” explains Martin Barnes, senior curator at V&A Museum.

“Practitioners increasingly have understood, with growing sophistication, their position in the history of the medium. Their works have become aligned with the

concerns of contemporary fine art practice, focusing more on the illustration of an idea rather than on demonstrations of skill or mere aesthetic pleasure.”

This explains the title of the show, Something that I’ll Never Really See. As the noted South African photographer Roger Ballen said over the phone from Johannesburg about his abstract work depicting rural South Africa: “I want to get a reaction out of the audience. Whether it is positive or negative, the picture needs to evoke a response.”

Something that I’ll Never Really See is on display at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bangalore, until 27 February.

COURTESY NATIONAL GALLERY

Is the Party happy?

Night Revels of Lao Li by Wang Qingsong.

OF

MODERN ART

L18 FLAVOURS SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

MUMBAI MULTIPLEX | PABLO BARTHOLOMEW

Bombay through Delhi eyes The celebrated photographer’s gaze on the city in the 1970s and 1980s was defined by a wonderment over its spirit

I

n 1976, I moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) from Delhi to make a living as a photographer. I was 21. Delhi was provincial and bureaucratic —all it had was Connaught Place; the Defence Colony market had a halwai (sweets seller), some grocery shops and many estate agents. Bombay, on the other hand, was rock ‘n’ roll—it was a real, densely packed city where, to my great relief, no one cared whose son you were.

I found work in the film industry as a stills photographer through friends such as Jalal Agha and Tinnu Anand. The masala movies being made required photographs to ensure there was visual consistency in scenes shot over a number of

days, and also for publicity purposes. Later, I expanded on my stills work out of Bombay on films such as Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi and Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj ke Khiladi.

Bombay was an escape from the drudgery of Delhi. With buses, taxis and suburban trains, you could navigate the city swiftly. From downtown, I could go home for lunch near Haji Ali and be back in Colaba after a nap. In Delhi, people normally ask: Where do you live? What do you do? How much do you earn? It was, and is, stratified.

Whereas in Bombay, at an industrialist’s party, you could spot secretaries—nice-looking girls—who worked in offices. It was hard not to like the city’s

texture and cosmopolitanism.

Like Paris or New York, people flocked here for economic opportunities.

Between jobs and assignments, I took the pictures that are in this—discovering a city and engaging with it with my camera. Taken between 1976 and 1983, the photographs of Bombay are of the same vintage as the images in my earlier show, Outside in, 70s & 80s, A Tale of 3 Cities, which featured photos taken mostly in Delhi.

Those photos were about my inner or private world, capturing my friends and family, whereas the Bombay images are about the outer world—mostly street photography in documentary style, of places and people on the margins such as street

children, hijras (eunuchs), film extras and opium dens.

The marginalized and the minorities attracted me.

As did the new world of different communities— Anglo-Indians, Parsis, Gujaratis and Maharashtrians.

The camera slung around my neck, I would navigate the Parsi enclaves of Dadar, the Jewish community in Byculla or the Christian village of Khotachiwadi in Girgaum.

When taking pictures, I was seeking the visual spirit of a certain time that we were going to lose. Now, 25-30 years later, some of them have a time-warp aspect to them—the architecture has moved on; the shape of cars has changed.

I finally left Bombay in 1988

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COURTESY

for two reasons—my father had died in 1985 and the world of photojournalism beckoned.

Wanting to exit advertising, I was doing more magazine, editorial work and the big news stories were all happening in north India—the Khalistan movement, Mrs Gandhi’s assassination, Bhopal. While the money in advertising was good, it just didn’t feel right any more.

So I found myself back in Delhi.

Bombay: Chronicles from a Past Life will be on display at Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, from 19 February-7 March. For details, log on to www.sakshigallery.com As told to Himanshu Bhagat.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

PABLO BARTHOLOMEW

In the passing: (clockwise from left) Film extras take a break between shots at a film studio in Bombay.

These were daily wage earners, always on the margins of the industry. Their plumper look and old­world dressing style offer a contrast to today’s super­trim bodies and attire.

Everything related to photography fascinates me. I used to pass by a set of small roadside studios at the end of Grant Road. One day, I spotted these three people who had just been photographed and were happy to pose for me too.

Somewhere time had stopped for this old watch repair­wallah. The irony of his age and how time was ticking away took my breath away.

So much of the street photography that I did then was about recognizing and capturing such elements. Especially in the Princess Street area, with its old buildings and streets, and institutions such as the Parsi dairy and the fire temples.

Only in India can one see such sights—a truck overloaded with heavy metal sheets being pulled down so that it does not go off balance. A lucky grab­shot of an image I chanced upon, passing by in a taxi.

Mohammed Ali Road was a beehive of activity during the Muslim festive period. Mosques would be lit up in the evening, with great street food in the lanes around, creating the magic of sight, smell and taste.