Lounge 13 June by HT Media

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

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Saturday, June 13, 2009

Vol. 3 No. 23

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

Amitav Ghosh at his home in Aldona, Goa, photographed by Dayanita Singh.

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH HONDA’S MASAHIRO TAKEDAGAWA >Page 8

IN INDIA BY DESIGN Twenty years ago, a lost young American came to India and found the future in old Delhi >Page 6

CAJU AND CONVERSATION

SHIFT CONTROL, AND TWITTER The dangers of the alwaysnetworked human being; and how to use one such network >Page 14

Once a hippie wonderland, wonderland, then then aa tourist tourist haven haven and and now a creative creative idyll. idyll. Zac O’Yeah hobnobbed with Goa’s new literary set—in set—in Amitav Ghosh’s beautiful home where where Orhan Pamuk exchanged notes notes with local writers >Page 10

HIGH WINDOWS

THE GOOD LIFE

MUKUL KESAVAN

HOW TO ACT YOUR AGE IN MIDDLE AGE

’m considering writing a self-help pamphlet called ‘How to be Middle-aged’. I know there’s a market for it: all those 40-somethings who haven’t learnt how to acknowledge midlife. Middle age is a stage of life that you have to train for, it’s a learnt condition, not one that you grow into spontaneously. In my teens we’d go as a family to a neighbourhood movie theatre and by an odd coincidence we always bumped into a greying man in a ponytail whose... >Page 4

SHOBA NARAYAN

WHEN THE ‘HELP’ NEEDS HELP

his column is about the household help. Servants, maids, staff, call them what you will. Servant problems are ubiquitous not only in India but everywhere. One elderly lady I know routinely refuses invitations—to family weddings and births—citing “servant problems”. Whether it is an excuse or genuine, only she knows, but I suspect the latter. I have sat at soirées in Mumbai, Manhattan and Singapore where ladies flaunting Cartier watches, Kelly bags and Kasliwal solitaires... >Page 4

READING ROOM

TABISH KHAIR

CONNECTING WITH ‘THE OTHER’

hen I first read Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights in high school, I found Heathcliff and Catherine nauseating: Their great love was too close to the romanticism I was then growing out of, and the “metaphysics” of the novel irked the rationalist and teenage agnostic in me. Rereading the novel some years ago, I discovered a new world (and text) altogether. I discovered a work of undoubted genius and immense complexity. >Page 15

THE TRANSFORMERS Merchant brothers Salim and Sulaiman talk OST, geek secrets and maxing their server load for their Emmynominated music >Page 17

DON’T MISS

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

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SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

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

FIRST CUT

PRIYA RAMANI

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (MANAGING EDITOR)

10 RANDOM THOUGHTS ON A HOT SUMMER’S DAY

t’s too hot to focus on one topic for this column. Summer always enhances my ADD (attention deficit disorder). Here are some of the unconnected thoughts that are flitting through my head these days:

1. Dad heads to certain death as his baby boy is born. “What will we name him?” is his last question to his wife before he is blown to smithereens. Cut to movie title: Star Trek. Director J.J. Abrams has clearly been watching Hindi movies. I know I’ve seen this sequence several times over in Bollywood but movie encyclopaedia Jerry Pinto reminded me of a particularly funny one. “Mard. The titles run on the baby’s chest, where STAY COOL Dara Singh has carved the word mard in Hindi with his knife, and the child has not wept.” Too good. ultimate summer accessory—a mist fan. For those of you who haven’t seen one, it’s a pedestal fan that sprays water on its targets. Note to self: Must get one with adjustable “misting volume”.

3. Aamir Khan may be the thinking woman’s Khan and Shah Rukh Khan may be the trendy girl’s favourite Khan but Salman Khan is clearly the most charismatic Khan on the small screen. Anyone who can get Daler Mehndi to crack a wicked joke on national television has got my vote. Did you see last week’s episode of 10 Ka Dum with Daler and his brother Mika? Mehndi had to answer a question about kissing. It’s only now that they give so much importance to kiss-

WAKEUP CALL

don’t own your own apartment, but after visiting a friend’s bungalow in Himachal Pradesh and devouring vast quantities of home-made plum jam, I’m convinced that everyone needs a second home.

Aakar Patel’s column, ‘Wali vs Modi: the tale of two poets’, 6 June, brought tears to my eyes. I am an Indian Muslim and like most secularminded Indians I have been shocked, distraught and completely aghast at the free run Narendra Modi has had in Gujarat. Let us hope more people like Patel take it upon themselves to wake up secular Indians.

Airtel harasses their clients before the due date of their phone bill? Can’t wait for number portability.

8. Wimbledon. Why we love it more than the IPL. Read Lounge next week.

9. Last week, an Indian court actually asked the police to register an FIR against a woman and her family for giving dowry. Good job, I say. Both the givers and receivers of dowry are equally at fault. Do it: Have you created your equivalent of Pyaasa?

10. Just a few months after ing, he pointed out, making a reference to Indian men and their lack of foreplay. Salman, of course, got the joke immediately. asphyxiation. Why you shouldn’t try it. Look it up.

launching Hoegaarden on tap, the Select Citywalk, New Delhi outlet of Spaghetti Kitchen has discontinued it. InBev’s India CEO says the tap ran dry because the customs department plans to increase prices of all imported liquor in Delhi. Oh the joys of living in the capital city.

5. I’m the same age that Guru Dutt was

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4. D a v i d C a r r a d i n e . A u t o e r o t i c

when he died. And I haven’t even come close to creating my equivalent of Pyaasa. For those of you who are younger, Raj Kapoor made his first movie at 23.

www.livemint.com Priya Ramani blogs at blogs.livemint.com/firstcut

LOUNGE REVIEW | FLIP VIDEO CAMCORDER

he most challenging part of owning a Flip Video camcorder is the stage known as “convincing the missus to let you buy it”. The Flip Video’s many merits are all entirely impossible to convey without actually owning one of the beauties. So best of luck with the convincing: “No, it does nothing except record video. Well, it records for an entire hour. At best. Nope, no zoom really. No flash. No fancy effects. And no, you really can’t shoot anything in poor light. Yes, but it will look smashing inside this new handbag no?... I thought as much.” The Flip Video camcorder may look deceptively simple. The one we recently procured via a relative abroad has all of one button and two switches on it. But there is a reason why, according to some estimates, that the brand has cornered around 13% of the world camcorder market. The Flip Video is ridiculously easy to use. Complete tech novices will be shooting clips and uploading them on YouTube within moments of unpacking the shiny device. That’s because the Flip is a complete video production studio in one ultra-compact package.

The good stuff The Flip Video is not much larger or heavier than a small candy-bar cellphone. On one side is a video camera lens behind a nice protective shield. And on the other is the control panel which comprises the abovementioned button and a small matchboxsized display screen. Push the switch and your Flip is ready to record. One push of the red button to start recording and one more to stop. The version we use, the Flip Mino, has a few touch-sensitive points around the central red button that let you flip through

While the video quality is passable, you can opt for one of the high-definition Flip models for TV-quality clips.

The notsogood The very simplicity of the Flip means that you don’t get strong zooms or digitial effects while recording and though you can shoot in all light conditions, you have no chance of shooting sinister lounge-bar goings-on. Also even the most roomy Flip model, the Ultra, can only hold up to 2 hours of video. So if you intend to use it to record all-nighter weddings, you’ll have to lug around a laptop to empty it every hour or so. And desktop computer users should buy a cable to connect it. You can’t have the Flip hanging from your CPU by the USB connector.

Talk plastic

clips, play or delete them, toggle volume and do some rudimentary zooming. All the functions are extremely intuitive and require no prior postgraduation in any engineering majors to understand. But the best part is yet to come. Once you are done shooting your little clips of video, flip the other switch on the side and—what is this little thing!—a USB connector pops out. Yes, it’s actually built into the camcorder. Insert it into the USB port on your computer, run the software on the camcorder and you are all set to edit, title, add background music and upload your clips to YouTube. All with just a few simple clicks. No need for extra software, complicated editing or complex file format conversions.

Write to us at lounge@livemint.com

6. It doesn’t matter if you

7. Does anyone know why

2. I have got to get my hands on that

inbox

There are four models in the series, starting with the chunky, older Flip Ultra at $149.99 (around Rs7,110) to the newer, sleek Flip Mino HD, at $229.99, which gives an hour of HD video (shop around on eBay and Amazon for better prices. You’ll have to get it shipped to India). The Flip Video is great for anyone—video bloggers and citizen journalists come to mind—who wants a better recording option than a mobile phone but doesn’t want to lug around an orthodox camcorder. This one slips nicely into the above-mentioned handbag. Sidin Vadukut www.livemint.com See a video review of the Flip Mino at www.livemint.com/flipvideo.htm

IMRAAN

SINGLED OUT The first part of Aakar Patel’s column ‘Wali vs Modi: the tale of two poets’, 6 June, was very refreshing, with the lineage of Urdu poetry. However, even if what you have written is true, singling out Narendra Modi from the crowd of other politicians is not correct. Look at the 1984 antiSikh riots in New Delhi, and let us not leave out the antinorth Indian tirade carried out by Raj Thackeray—Indian politicians remain beyond the bounds of law. ANKUR JAIN

CITY OF JOY The way Shamik Bag grabbed the nottoosacred spaces between the “sacrosanct” lines of Kolkata’s timeless though contemporary history is just great (‘My name was red’, 31 May). I hope to read more insights into Kolkata like this one. SARBAJIT

THE WORLD OF CANINES

WO IT! N

I read Shoba Narayan’s column, ‘How my canine taught me equanimity’, 6 June, with interest. Let me tell you before going further—I love ‘Lounge’. I am not sure what makes it appealing: maybe its cover stories, or maybe the design. Saturday mornings are quite lively with Mint and ‘Lounge’. Narayan’s column reminded me of a story told by one of my uncles about a Malayali writer, M.P. Narayana Pillai, who got himself a puppy. Like Inji, the puppy refused to go outdoors. Pillai tried every trick in the book, but the puppy would refuse to come out of the tiny room in his flat in Mumbai. To get it out of the room, Pillai decided to fill the room with newspapers. The puppy would cuddle happily among the stack of papers. Slowly, Pillai started removing one newspaper daily from the stack. As the days passed, the number of papers started declining and the puppy started panicking about losing his kingdom, i.e. the stack of newspapers. Finally, the day came when Pillai took the last newspaper out of the room. Reluctantly, the puppy walked out of the room, hunting for his stack of newspapers, and found a new world. Perhaps that turn of events gave Pillai the idea of writing a book called ‘Parinamam’—a very intriguing and puzzling book on the life of dogs. If a translation is available, please try and read the book. It really opens up a new world of dogs. RAJANEESH VILAKUDY (The writer of this week’s winning letter wins a gift voucher worth Rs3,500 from Wills Lifestyle, redeemable at any of their outlets countrywide. Wills Lifestyle offers a complete lifestyle wardrobe incorporating the latest fashion trends. Choose from Wills Classic workwear, Wills Sport relaxed wear, Wills Clublife evening wear and Wills Signature designer wear.)

TAMIL SIDELINED It was a pleasure to read Samanth Subramanian’s column ‘The Tamil invasion’, 6 June, as always. Long before Thyagaraja there were Tamil songs in concerts. I was hoping for some detailed insight into why songs in Tamil were omitted from Carnatic music concerts. How did the Trinity hijack Carnatic music? For 150 years, Tamilians were denied the privilege of listening to works of great Tamil composers. There is a saying that if four Indians stand and talk in English they must be Tamilians. It was the Tamilians who did not sing in Tamil to begin with. I request the writer to spend some time and do more research on the music of Tamilians in today’s Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam. He should not give popular explanations only. NEDUNTHEEVU PONN SUHIR ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: DAYANITA SINGH CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS: In ‘Costuming the First Lady’, 6 June, to purchase Pieter Erasmus’ jewellery, log on to www.sterasmus.com

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

Cherry Mascarpone Mousse

Chicken in a Pot

Burmese Chicken Curry

Eggplant Bake

Tempting Tempura

L4 COLUMNS SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

MUKUL KESAVAN HIGH WINDOWS

When midlife hits, don’t hold back time

VINCENT KESSLER/REUTERS

LAURENT REBOURS/AP

one that you grow into spontaneously. In my teens we’d go as a family to a neighbourhood movie theatre and by an odd coincidence we always bumped into a greying man in a ponytail whose movie-going costume was a pair of black denims and a sleeveless vest. I can remember thinking, with youthful scorn, “Why doesn’t the man act his age?” I was more right than I knew. Every age of man is a performance that has to be acted out. My children, for example, act out youth. This is a role based on the principle of negation: not this, not this, not this. It consists of avoiding all the habits and things associated with old people. Like T-shirts with collars and any sort of shirt that’s tucked into the waist of your trousers. The list of non-young things seems arbitrary to my middle-aged eyes, but it is very long, very detailed and very precise. There are, for example, young fabrics and middle-aged fabrics. Thus, no sensible boy under the age of 16 will wear corduroy trousers. I spent $50 buying my son two pairs of Gap cords in a New York store. I brought them back to Delhi in triumph (I had guessed the waist/length measurements perfectly) and presented them to him; he accepted them politely and never wore them, not even to try them on. In vain did I explain that the label

inside the trousers clearly indicated that they had been specifically made for 14-year-olds: At this time in his life, youthful style was defined by the ensemble young, black Americans allegedly wore in prison. So for three years or so, the collar-less, oversized T-shirt down to the knees and belt-less trousers worn so low that their crotches ended up suspended between the knees, made up the uniform of the young teen. The other day, I heard him announce that he quite liked Rafa Nadal’s new on-court uniform. Nadal had switched from scoop-necked sleeveless vests to more conventional T-shirts with collars. While I welcomed this foray into normalcy, I also felt a pang: My boy was being assimilated into an adult world. Roger Federer, on the other hand, is the mascot of the middle-aged. You and I think of Federer as the embodiment of physical grace, as an example of non-muscle-bound athleticism. Everyone under 18 thinks Federer is absurd: My children screamed with laughter the first time they saw him strolling on to court in Wimbledon in his Great Gatsby toggery: white blazer and white trousers with golden accents and that little gold crest. For them and their cohorts, he is a narcissistic has-been, desperately trying

Hero worship: (left) Federer, with his physical grace, is a mascot for the middleaged; Nadal’s casual style appeals to teenagers. to hold on to primacy when Time—in the knobbly shape of Rafa Nadal—has passed him by. This was a shock. I had always thought of Nadal as Godzilla, a freak of nature that one could marvel at, but this new take on him as a symbol of generational change—even though Federer was all of 25 at the time—forced me to review my complacent belief that the Swiss champion was universally regarded as a tennis immortal. For the generation that grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, it’s peculiarly hard to accept that opinions age and that we age along with them. So to make our way through middle life without embarrassing ourselves or our children, it’s useful not to do some things. We shouldn’t talk about working out even if we do. There’s

nothing quite as poignant as listening to people of a certain age explain their routines on something called the “elliptical”. Or spell out the things they don’t eat. It’s also crucial not to take stairs two at a time. In the eyes of the world, a lad falling over doing something physically ambitious merely takes a boyish tumble whereas a 50-year-old tripping over a step while making like a gazelle gets what he deserves. To be sensibly middle-aged is to shun public discussion of our commendable but fundamentally uninteresting attempts to hold back time. To age durably or to look younger than we actually are is nice so long as the effort invested in achieving that effect remains invisible. The moment

we begin to talk about being only as old as we feel is the moment we begin to seem even older than we are. We can agree with Wilde that “(t)he tragedy of old age is not that one is old but that one is young”, so long as we don’t say it out aloud, in anyone’s hearing. Mukul Kesavan, a professor of social history at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, is the author of The Ugliness of the Indian Male and Other Propositions. Write to Mukul at highwindows@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Mukul’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/mukulkesavan

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

What ensues when the ‘help’ wants your help

weddings and births—citing “servant problems”. Whether it is an excuse or genuine, only she knows, but I suspect the latter. I have sat at soirées in Mumbai, Manhattan and Singapore where ladies flaunting Cartier watches, Kelly bags and Kasliwal solitaires complained ad nauseum about servants. Get a life, I felt like telling them, except that I am no exception. I too vent about my servants, usually to my brother. His response, to this and my other complaints, is the same: “Eat more fibre.” I didn’t have servants for years in the US. But that was before I had children. Once the babies arrived, I got off my high horse about Gandhian self-sufficiency and Marxist equality of classes very quickly. In Manhattan, the going rate for nannies started at $400 (around Rs18,850) a week. My nanny, Chokpa, a Nepali who lived in Queens, occasionally mentioned missing her husband and daughter but kept her distance. In England, housekeepers are as professional as plumbers, accountants or lawyers. Or not. Choice of job doesn’t reduce dignity of labour. In Singapore, maids undergo a full medical check-up, including an AIDS test. I had to pay the government a

“levy” of S$265 per month (around Rs8,670), which was sort of like minimum wage. The expectation was that you would pay your maid at least that much as salary. Most people paid more—S$300-600 per month. India is a wild card; a game changer. Servant wages are all over the map, depending on city and locality. One commonality is how little maids are paid relative to the household income. My neighbour has an enviable diamond collection but thinks twice about paying the maid Rs3,000 versus Rs2,500 per month. We underpay our servants, even though they are essential to our lives—more essential than, say, our husbands. As proof, I point to the panic that women undergo when their maids don’t show up. It is not just the salary. While throwing money at this problem does help, it doesn’t solve all servant crises. Consider my own. Last week, my maid said she wanted to go from working full days to half days. I was shocked, devastated even. You know, I need you till 5pm, I said. How can I let you go at 1pm? I’ll pay you more, I offered. Double your salary. I’ll cut your wage in half if you work half days, I threatened. I cajoled and pleaded. Finally, my maid

this a win-win for both parties? In India, the women (and they are largely women) who come into our homes to work have problems that are hard to fathom, let alone negotiate around. The lady who works in my friend’s house had a husband who was set on fire by his own mother. He died. She needs a new house and an advance of Rs50,000 after two months of work. Should my friend give or not? Bharti Aunty is my Bangalore guru in matters of home. Daughter of the late great C.S. Venkatachar and mother of my friend, Gauri, Bharti Aunty is who I call for advice on matters ranging from pest control to crafts shops. Her maid, Kamlamma, has been with her for 45 years. I wanted to know why and how. Let me insert a disclaimer here. Whenever I include friends in this column, I feel a Handson: Abroad, it’s much more professional. pang of disquiet. As journalists, we are taught to value spoke. You know, last week, my sons objectivity above all. Writing about and I were preparing to consume someone you know is seen as a conflict poison, she said. My husband has of interest. Columnists are given a little started drinking again. My sons are more leeway, but I still think twice failing in school. My sister’s son ran before including anyone I know—and away and we haven’t seen him for 15 then feel the need to explain myself. So, years. I don’t want that to happen to my here goes. In an ideal world, would I boys. So I want to pick them up from have found a stranger who was school at 2pm, which is why I need to successful at managing servants as a leave at 1pm. source for this column? Yes. Does my To every HR professional out there, I deadline permit such a search? No. Is want to ask: How do you negotiate in a Bharti Aunty getting something out of situation like this? How do you make being included here? No. Moral of the

story: If you want your name in this column, don’t be my friend. Bharti Aunty was wise and soothing when I asked her for tips on how to manage help. She also didn’t have a solution. “I think Kamlamma has an affection and loyalty that existed in those days and doesn’t seem to exist in the new breed of servants,” she said. I considered calling my friend who obsesses—and helps set policy—on labour reform and ask him for a solution for the nation’s servant problems. But given what I have just said, I can’t. My own take is that the chasm between servants and their employers—in means, circumstances, lifestyle and mindset—has to be bridged. I don’t mean paying our servants more or educating them, although that will certainly help. I mean the reverse. Educating and sensitizing the employers to the plight of servants and imbuing the maids with self-esteem so they don’t have to resort to lying to get their way. Only when there is dignity of labour, only when the “staff” see themselves as professionals can negotiation begin. Until then, we working women who employ other working women are doomed to guilt, bitterness and cynicism. Shoba Narayan’s maid works half days now. For about the same pay. She wants to learn to negotiate better with her help. Write to Shoba at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shobanarayan

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SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009

Parenting SPORT

Little cliff hangers Two very young adventurers on what they get out of their thrilling trips to the mountains

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

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Mihika Hegde, trekker This nine-year-old Mumbai girl has been trekking with her parents since she was two. Her parents would often hire porters and she would be carried in a cane basket. But when she was seven, Hegde trekked up to Kala Pathar (18,000ft, Everest Base Camp) with her parents. Last month, the little trekker completed a nine-day stint at an adventure camp at Solang, Manali, where she learnt how to cross a river on a rope pulley, skiing and rappelling. Edited excerpts from an interview: What did you like at the camp? I liked river crossing because I was hung upside down while doing that. Rappelling was tough because my grip on the rope kept slipping. I also liked skiing. What do you like best about a trek? Being out in the open. And knowing I can see lots of animals like bharals (Himalayan wild sheep), mountain asses. I hope to see a panther some day. What kind of chores are you assigned when you trek with your parents? I make sure I don’t litter. If there are any plastic or paper wrappers, I either put them in my bag or in my pocket. I collect firewood, sometimes help out in cooking, setting up the tent and laying out the sleeping bags. Do you know of other nineyear-olds who go on treks? I have been on six Himalayan treks and many treks through the Sahyadri mountains, but nobody from my class in Mumbai has been on a trek. Tell us about the Kala Pathar trek. I was seven and I did that trek without being carried by anyone. It took my parents a little longer than usual to complete it because of me, but otherwise I don’t think it was tough.

Climber: Mihika Hegde abseiling down a rock in Pachmarhi, Madhya Pradesh. What are the three most important things to keep in mind on a trek? Don’t talk loudly or too much. It can be distracting for other trekkers and can cause accidents. Don’t be overconfident while rock climbing. Look down when you trek up or down a mountain. Drink fluids to avoid dehydration. Is there anything you miss when you go trekking? I miss TV, video games and my friends. Sometimes I get bored. Mum only allows books on the trek and I guess that is a good way to catch up on my reading.

The best skiing destination in India is... Gulmarg. The golf course here becomes the practice range for skiers during winters. The quality of snow is top-tier from the skiing point of view. The snow powder is soft and dry, making it perfect to ski here. Best time to be in Gulmarg is from end-December to March-beginning. I would rate Manali second and Auli third. What makes skiing interesting? It’s like being on a roller-coaster ride. It’s the thrill you get when

Sumer Kohli, skier This 15-year-old Delhi boy plays golf, tennis and has been on skiing holidays (once to Auli, twice to Manali and thrice to Gulmarg) six years in a row. In January, Kohli was at Gulmarg during the Republic Day weekend for a ski break and was able to complete eight runs down from phase I of the Alphathar ridge (the ridge is 4,000ft and has two phases— one at 2,000ft and another at 4000ft). “It takes me about 20 minutes to cross-country down the ridge, dodging trees and other obstacles, and 10 minutes to go up in the gondola (ski lift) to start the downhill adventure again,” says Kohli. “In the next two or three years I want to be able to conquer phase II as well.” Edited excerpts from an interview:

Cool: Kohli has been on skiing holidays for the past six years.

you go down a slope on speed. What other adventure sports have you tried? Rappelling, kayaking and zorbing. I don’t like kayaking much and zorbing was boring. You just tumble down in a ball. What is your routine on a ski holiday? Our trip is usually for three-four days. The first day or two is spent on practising the moves and then on the third day, I get to go on the slopes. Initially, when I was learning, I had to have not just an instructor but a pick-up caddy (someone who picks you up when you fall. Skis are heavy and it is tough to get up on your own) too. What other sports have you tried on snow or ice? Snowboarding. I don’t like that much either because your feet are glued to a board and there is not much freedom of movement. What advice would you give teenagers who want to ski? Learn when you are young, it is much easier to pick up the moves, and learn from a qualified instructor. And most importantly, a sportsperson takes care of his equipment even if it is rented. When I am in Gulmarg, I make it a point to wax my skis on my own. The Himalayan Club will host a talk on ‘Adventure Sports are cool’ on 21 June at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

LEARNING CURVE

GOURI DANGE

‘MY SON’S A BIG EATER. IS THAT GOOD OR BAD?’ My six-year-old son loves to eat. He’s tall for his age and active enough, so it’s never really been a concern in the family. Recently, a friend noted that in the space of an hour, Watch it: he had put away a Help your plate of paani-puris, child avoid shared his junk food. grandmother’s evening snack and had had a full dinner. Since he’s always been on the large side, I am used to buying him clothes that would fit an eight-year-old—but I am getting worried about things such as childhood obesity and diseases brought on by sedentary habits. He now plays cricket and runs up and down stairs and does all the things a six-year-old should do—but how does one control a child’s diet? It seems so cruel to tell a child he can’t have a banana or a chocolate pastry! There must be many parents with children who are poor eaters reading your question with some degree of envy. Your concern, however, is understandable. Yet I would like to know if your doctor has said your child is obese or overweight. From what you describe, he is a large child, but not necessarily a fat boy. I would say that at six, you should let him eat what he likes. One must only draw the line if there is identifiable and recurring greedy behaviour—eating when not hungry, grabbing food from granny just for fun and, most important, eating too many sweets. He seems to be an active child, so sedentary lifestyle-related diseases are not something you need to fear. Maybe your friend thought his chain of snacks and then a full dinner was surprising because, yes, lots of children today tend to be picky and fussy. Your son’s appetite may stand out in this context. But it is important for you to consult your doctor about his height-weight ratio. If it is fine, then you can attribute his eating to his metabolism, which may be different from most other children his age. However, the question of how to tell a child to go easy on food, should that child be tending towards being overweight, is something we need to look at. First, there needs to be a subtle change towards healthier food choices around him. You don’t have to grimly shut out all the fun kiddy foods, but watching the fried and sweet food intake is important. And good meal and snack planning can ensure that healthy as well as tasty food options are available to your children. Most things that come out of packets and bottles will have to be rationed strictly. Of course, don’t nag, as that only makes children (or any obese person) tune out, and possibly eat more just to make a point. Urban Indians have also started buying tremendous amounts of food, and stocking the house with unending choices, turning it into a mini-supermarket. This encourages children and adults to snack and use food as “time pass” or entertainment. Eating while doing something else—watching TV, playing on the computer, etc.—also leads to children wanting to constantly pop something into their mouths. While it’s not easy to follow this completely, it is a good idea to make the main meals, as well as a big snack, into a sit-down meal, where the children could be chatting, not simply gobbling food while their attention is held by something else. Gouri Dange is the author of The ABCs of Parenting. Send your queries to Gouri at learningcurve@livemint.com

UNDER 15 | M VENKATESH

The final prophecy Percy Jackson prepares for the worstcase scenario

t is highly unlikely that this is the first time you are hearing about Percy Jackson. But if it is, rush and get hold of The Last Olympian and its four predecessors. Rick Riordan’s character is every boy’s dream come true. Jackson is a demi-god. It means that one of his parents is a god—a Greek god—or goddess, and the other a human, or “mortal”, as the creator of the series would call them. What started with a 12-year-old Perseus (Percy) Jackson in the Lightning Thief has culminated in five thrilling adventures of the boy hero, so far. Percy’s 16th birthday comes with a prophecy that says: A

Hero’s Soul, Cursed Blade Shall Reap. Percy automatically assumes the worst since he is the one who gets to decide the fate of the entire world. It starts on a quiet afternoon, with Percy taking his friend Rachel out for a spin in the car. Halfway through the drive, Blackjack, a Pegasus, carrying Charles Beckendorf, senior counsellor for the Hephaestus Cabin at Camp Half-Blood, lands on the hood of the car. Percy has to leave abruptly since he has to stop the evil Kronos, Lord of the Titans, and save the world. Camp Half-Blood (situated on Long Island) is a school where the offspring of mortals and gods

Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian: By Rick Riordan, Puffin, 361 pages, Rs 350.

can live and study in peace without being spotted by humans. It has cabins such as Ares, Hephaestus, Demetar, Apollo and Poseidon (which is Percy’s). America is the location for all of Percy’s adventures. In fact, the series is a crash course in Greek mythology set in a contemporary world. For instance, the entry to Mount Olympus is through a lift in the Empire State Building. And Hades can be accessed through Los Angeles. Beckendorf tells Percy that Kronos is on his way to New York to take over Mount Olympus. The two fly out and intercept the enemy on his ship, the Andromeda. Unfortunately, before they can blow it up and flee, Beckendorf is caught. He urges Percy to get away and blows up the ship and himself. Back at Camp Half-Blood,

Percy gathers his companions, Annabeth, Grover, Mrs O’Leary (a friendly hell-hound), Chiron, Silena (Beckendorf’s girlfriend) and Nico di Angelo (the son of Hades) to fight off the invasion and destroy the enemy. Mission “Stop Kronos” gets tougher when they discover that the dreaded monster Typhon is heading towards the Big Apple, which is causing storms of unprecedented fury. Shockingly, Mount Olympus is virtually unguarded. Can they pull off a task that seems impossible? Riordan knows how to tell a gripping tale. More importantly, he knows his audience and what they like. The writer is the editor of Heek, a children’s magazine. Write to lounge@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009

Insider PROFILE

In India by design HARIKRISHNA KATRAGADDA/MINT

It’s been 20 years since a lost young American came to India and found the future in old Delhi

p Mughal tea set: $2,970.

q Twigware: $82.50 for a set of 5 pieces. B Y M ELISSA A . B ELL melissa.b@livemint.com

···························· or a hundred dollars, I would have been an artist,” Michael Aram chuckles. The high-end dinnerware designer seems to be living a gilded life, with a department in Harrods and a contract with Waterford Crystal. He flits between his stylish home in New York’s West Village to his open, airy apartment in New Delhi’s Sujan Singh Park (where he tells us the abridged story of his life over cold coffees). And he is feted by American magazines and newspapers alike. Yet 20 years ago, he was a nearly-broke, confused 25-year-old, unable to pursue a career in painting because he couldn’t afford an apartment $100 above his budget. As so many others before and after him have done, he bought a ticket to India in search of something. His sister worked in fashion here and perhaps inspiration would strike. And strike it did. In the galis of old Delhi, Aram stumbled across a street of metal workers, casting molten iron into scissors, buckets and shovels. “When I saw what they were doing, it caught my imagination.” Aram had caught the Indian bug. “(India) is an incredible collage and a pastiche of things and they are always so divergent. It gets under your skin.” Aram spent the next two months with the craftsmen, using “a lot of hand gesticulation”, making sketches in the dirt, and learning the trade. “We come from such a manufactured world in America,” he says. “Where you just imagine everything pops out of a machine…because everything does pop out of a machine. There is so little hand process in any of it.” He returned to the US only to pack up and move fulltime to India in the fall of 1988 to start a business. “This was all Rajiv Gandhi, economic liberalization coming; it was a very heady time. It was all this young government and looking abroad and encouraging investment.” But Aram did not have it easy when he arrived. There was no

t Wisteria vase: $129.

Indiainspired: At his factory in Noida, Michael Aram with pieces from his dinnerware line.

network of metal workers. People saw handcrafted textiles as something worth preserving, but casting metal products would soon be outmoded, replaced by plastic goods. But he forged ahead anyway. “Thankfully, I had youth and ignorance on my side,” Aram says. “I had the energy and I didn’t know any better.” In 1989 Aram took his second collection of hand-beaten dinnerware to the New York furniture fair. The Twig collection looked as if silver sticks had suddenly sprouted spoons, forks and knives. Nieman Marcus, a large department store chain, put the collection on the cover of its fall catalogue and the Michael Aram line became an instant hit. His designs, many inspired by nature, have an ornate feel to

INSIDER ALERT | DESIGN FAIRS

Festival season Set your sights on two international festivals for the latest trends in innovative design State of Design, Melbourne

Volume: Fantasma Light.

This four-year-old festival offers 80-plus events, ranging from the useful and informative to the fun and frivolous. Enrol for a workshop on sustainable fashion, visit an exhibition of architectural models created out of food, compete in an Iron Chef-style “design-off”, take a bus tour of Melbourne’s more notable architecture, or attend

t Olive branch dish: $75.

them, with the rustic charm of slight handcrafted imperfections. The line, though, did not have a distinct Indian feel. “What was inspiring for me was the craft(s) tradition,” Aram says, “but the (Indian) design I pushed away.” He says that coming from a fine arts background, he took a “militant” approach to inspiration. His inspiration stemmed from his Armenian heritage and his American childhood—and wasn’t slapped on because he was in India for a few years. “I can’t just arrive someplace and have it influence me. I am someone who feels

he has to assimilate.” To explain his fear of assimilating too fast, he relates a story of travelling to Armenia as a 17-year-old and finding an amazing pair of cotton trousers. “I knew that they were long underwear in Armenia, but they were so cool and comfortable and I was just like, I’m going to wear them.” He chose church as the place to debut his new style. “I was ushered out of the church so fast. They must have thought I was this crazy person, ‘He’s wearing his underwear in church!’”

an interior design workshop. The festival’s underlying theme is that good design will pave the way for a better future, through generating innovation and promoting sustainability. State of Design also features events specifically designed for businesses and industry professionals. Organized by the Victoria state government, the festival is slated to run from 15-25 July in Melbourne and around Victoria. Tickets: Most of the events are individually priced and cost around AUD25-65 (around Rs960-2,500). Some are free and open to the public. For more details of schedules and prices, log on to www.stateofdesign.com.au

Dwell on Design, Los Angeles This festival focuses largely on sustainable design and will feature designers speaking on green topics, ranging from how to cultivate gardens in the city to strategies for making your home more sustainable. Curated exhibits include Kitchen Ecology: Recipes for Good Design, a group show which will explore ways to make kitchens eco-friendly and energy-efficient, and Reclaimed Design, a joint effort of the Los Angeles Times and Dwell magazine to create a modern furnished room out of second-hand pieces discovered through the

When he came to India, he vowed not to repeat the same mistake. “My paranoia was, if I don’t understand this, I’m not going to do this.” Today, Aram laughs at his attitude then: “I’m like, you know, I can own that. It’s been half my life and of course, of course it’s influenced me, even if I don’t realize that!” To celebrate the Indian half of his life, he’s coming out with a 20th anniversary collection dubbed Mughal Garden, featuring botanical motifs and inlaid marble detailing. There have been difficult periods during Aram’s 20-year stint. In 2005, an article in the Tehelka magazine published grainy black and white photos of Aram’s factory and accused him of running a sweatshop. At the time, a small number of the workmen were protesting outside the factory, as their salaries had stopped suddenly. Aram does not want to dwell on the incident. He says the issues arose from a dispute with his Indian business partner and that “it was a horrible, horrible time. It was the most horrendous moment of my life”. He says the same men

who protested now work with him at a new company he created, independent of his former partner, and the Indian courts eventually sided with Aram. Despite that dispute, he says, “I’ve never had a problem with the craftsmen— ever.” And he and the craftsmen have developed a strong bond even though, “in the old days, they really had no idea what I was doing”. At one point, he found some “lovely south Indian bowls” that he asked his employees to polish; he then served food in them. Nobody ate from them. Finally a friend admitted why: They were kolambi (bedpans). “As an outsider you get excited about everything: look what I found!” But though his employees didn’t question polishing the bedpans, they do question many other design choices. “It’s a real tug-and-pull.” But the craftsmen may have exerted more influence on Aram than he on them. He started as a fine arts painter, but since “they were making functional objects, my head went right to functional objects. I said, ‘Oh, if you’re making a bucket, you could make a bowl’.” He says what finally gave him the confidence to forgo painting was an exhibit of Alexander Calder’s work at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York. “I discovered Calder’s universe. Everything was done in the same breath—whether it was a carpert or an airplane or an ashtray or a toy or a spoon in the kitchen. It was all done with the same expression. I think for me that was very liberating… I think design and art is about taking nothing and making something. If we can broaden our definition of what creation is, whether you’re binding a book, or refinishing an antique or making a Christmas card, it’s all the same act.” Aram’s pieces cost $29-2,800 (around Rs1,360-1.31 lakh) and can be purchased directly from his site www.michaelaram.com www.livemint.com Melissa A. Bell blogs at blogs.livemint.com/theexpatblog

paper’s classified columns. The event gets bonus points for offering LA home tours. Although you’ll have to drive yourself, you get to peek inside homes such as the 1958-built Pasinetti house, designed by architect Haralamb Georgescu and later renovated by Aaron Torrence. The festival is organized by Dwell and will be on at the LA Convention Centre from 25-28 June. Tickets: Dwell conference plus ticket retails for $149 (around Rs7,020). The pass will give you access to all events except the house tours. For details, log on to www.dwellondesign.com Paper tiger: Paperstool.

Saabira Chaudhuri saabira.c@livemint.com

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009

Style t Swarovski: ‘Erika’ pendant with green and red crystals, at all Swarovski stores, Rs14,000.

RETAIL THERAPY

Playthings

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

t Mango: Pink graffiti Tshirt with crystals, at Mango stores in Bangalore, Mumbai, Gurgaon and New Delhi, Rs1,590.

Gingerbreadhouse bags and bright plastic watches—revisit your childhood with fashion products that look right out of a playhouse B Y R ACHANA N AKRA rachana.n@livemint.com

u Leiber: Appleshaped minaudiere with crystals, at Xess, Atria mall, Mumbai; Claridges Hotel and DLF Emporio mall, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, Rs2.4 lakh.

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t Swatch: ‘Dancing Hands’ watch in plastic from the Manish Arora Collection, at all Swatch stores and kiosks in Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi, Rs5,250.

uEsbeda: Red telephonehandbag, at Esbeda stores in Mumbai, Gurgaon, New Delhi and Pune, Rs2,880.

p Louis Vuitton: Patent leather flats from Stephen Sprouse Roses collection, at Louis Vuitton stores, The Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, Mumbai; UB City Mall, Bangalore; and The Oberoi, New Delhi, Rs37,100.

p MAC: Limited edition Hello Kitty summer collection of the MAC range of makeup, including lip colours, nail lacquer, eyeshadow, blush, in candy colours, glitter and shine, at MAC stores in Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi, Rs7002,940.

p Marc Jacobs: Miss Marc PVC and leather tote, Rs32,000; and Miss Marc denim hat, Rs9,990, at Marc by Marc Jacobs boutique, DLF Emporio mall, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi.

p Braccialini: Gingerbreadhouse bag, at Ministry of Fashion, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, Rs1.89 lakh.

High time From underwater species and bird plumage to NYC and Asia, these enamelled watches are the season’s latest works of art B Y P ARIZAAD K HAN parizaad.k@livemint.com

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p Jaeger LeCoultre: Master Grand Tourbillon Continents, available on order in platinum, pink gold or yellow gold, at Exclusive Lines, Camac Street, Kolkata; Time Avenue, Bandra, Mumbai; Jaeger LeCoultre Boutique, DLF Emporio mall, Vasant Kunj, and Johnson and Co., C–16, Connaught Place, New Delhi, Rs45 lakh.

p Harry Winston: Avenue Exotic Birds, a white gold case with enamel detailing and adorned with diamonds and precious gems, with a satin strap, at the Harry Winston boutique, DLF Emporio mall, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, Rs21 lakh onwards.

p Cartier: Cartier Santos 100 Fish Décor, available on order at Time Avenue, Bandra, Mumbai; Cartier Boutique, DLF Emporio mall, Vasant Kunj, Johnson and Co, C–16, Connaught Place, and Kapoor Watch Co, South Extension PartI, New Delhi, $99,500 or around Rs46lakh (price for US market only).

p Titan: ‘Freya’ watch in rose gold and enamel, by Raga Diva, at all World of Titan stores, Rs8,000.

p Piaget: Piaget Protocole XXL New York, 18carat white gold and enamel case, with enamel dial representing the architecture of New York, at the Piaget boutique, The Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, Mumbai; Johnson and Co., C–16, Connaught Place, and Kapoor Watch Co., South Extension, PartI, New Delhi; The Helvetica Swiss Watch Boutique, F49, Spencer Plaza, Anna Salai, Chennai; BC Sen Jewellers, 4, Lee Road, Kolkata; The Helvetica, Bangalore, Rs1.03 crore.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009

Business Lounge MASAHIRO TAKEDAGAWA

Made in Greater Noida Honda’s India chief weathers economic ups and downs with the patience of a veteran B Y S AMAR S RIVASTAVA samar.s@livemint.com

···························· hese aren’t the best of times for Indian car makers. As sales fell by nearly a fifth last November, manufacturers fought debilitating price wars that severely dented profits. Sales have since begun to recover somewhat, but the slump has left in its wake a scarred industry and a wounded ecosystem of component makers, logistics partners and dealers. It was in those difficult months, when I first met Masahiro Takedagawa, the chief executive officer of Honda Siel Cars India Ltd, that I realized how different he is from his peers. For one, Takedagawa refused to reduce the prices of Honda cars even as the competition scrambled to drop theirs. “(This is) Honda’s global policy,” Takedagawa, dressed in his grey company overalls, explains when we next meet in a large conference room at the Honda factory in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, that doubles up as the company’s India headquarters. “We’re not a trader. We’re in manufacturing. Once our customer purchases the cars, he or she will enjoy the car for threefive years. It becomes a customer’s asset. Considering they’re a customer’s asset, we don’t want to damage the asset value. So we try to be patient, not to make a big discount, which we know damages your residual value.” This is one reason, Takedagawa says, that Honda’s customers tend to stick to the company every time they plan to buy a new car. It was in 2005 that Takedagawa, then head of Honda’s global planning division, was asked to head its India operations by Takeo Fukui, the company president. “His order to me: to make our car business in India expand with acceleration,” he says. It’s a brief he has executed to near perfection. Sales have grown steadily from the time he took over—the company currently tots up about 4,000 cars a month, up

from the 2,500 cars it used to sell when Takedagawa took over—and customer surveys consistently rank its products among the top. Having been at the helm of Honda’s operations in India for a little over four years now, Takedagawa is one of the longest-serving non-Indian chiefs of a car company in the country. With stints in other key overseas markets, he’s also ideally suited for the job. In recognition of this, about a year after he arrived in India in April 2005, he was given the overall responsibility of Honda’s automobile, motorcycle and power product businesses in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. India initially proved to be a cakewalk as sales rose by double digits every year. Taking advantage of this, Honda boosted the portfolio and in 2006, started selling the Civic model in addition to the City and Accord. Aided by easy credit and growing sales, production capacity at Honda’s Noida plant was expanded from 30,000 cars per year to 50,000, and then 100,000. And late last year, when sales slowed, Takedagawa was able to draw on his vast global experience and keep the company on course. “It is not first time for me or the company to face such a recession. Personally, this is the fourth time,” he says. In 1985, as a young sales manager in Honda’s US subsidiary, Takedagawa saw his first slump. The Plaza Accord between the world’s five largest economies then had resulted in the dollar depreciating by over 20%. Foreign cars became expensive overnight. In 1990, his job took him to Italy, where he saw another recession. In 1992, sales fell after a currency crisis caused by the UK joining and then pulling out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism. And in 1997, a year after he was sent to Thailand, the Asian financial crisis jolted sales in what had been one of the company’s fastest growing markets. “In April 1996, we had launched the first

generation of the (Honda) City and we were very excited. However, in July 1997, the Asian financial crisis hit,” he says with an animated laugh. So what does he think of the present slowdown in sales? Takedagawa firmly believes there’s very little point in fighting slowdowns. One just has to wait for them to end. He is using this time to overhaul systems, processes and cut costs so that the company is able to benefit once sales pick up. For instance, when demand slackened, Honda did not shy away from cutting production at its Greater Noida plant in December. Due to the countermeasures he took, “once the market rebounds we’re in a much better position,” he says. All this requires discipline and commitment. Like most Japanese office goers of his generation, Takedagawa has dedicated himself to his company. Ask him what he does in his free time, and the answer is “nothing really”. “Last year, I worked 303 days and there was just one Sunday for rest,” he says with a sigh. That Sunday is spent mainly in his hotel room as his wife and two children—a son and daughter—continue to live in Tokyo. When he has to travel on business, he prefers to start on Sunday and save time on Monday, a working day. This year has been different. With car sales slowing, Takedagawa has decided to give his employees 11 Saturdays off—he’s using the additional time off to get back to playing golf after a gap of many years. For someone so deeply invested in his job and company, I wonder if Takedagawa always wanted to join the auto industry and Honda. Among his generation of Japanese workers, a job was a job for life, with almost no chance of leaving a company midway to join a competitor. It’s a contract, Takedagawa concedes, that is fraying. “Now 30-40% of workers switch jobs,” he says. But after studying economics, he says, he always wanted to work in a car company. In those days, Honda was smaller and less known than rivals Toyota and Nis-

san. But two factors swung his decision in favour of Honda. In 1965, Honda became the first Asian company to win a Formula One championship—the Mexican Grand Prix. “A tiny Asian country winning the Grand Prix! That encouraged me to apply to Honda,” he exclaims. And in 1978, the company announced it would build the first Japanese car factory in America, ahead of Toyota. A year later, Takedagawa started his career as a trainee at the Honda factory in Sayama, Japan. It’s a decision he has never

regretted. After a stint painting Accords on the shop floor, he spent the next three decades in sales positions in America, Italy and Thailand before being sent back to the company’s headquarters in Tokyo to head the global product planning division. The division plans for products five years ahead and his stint there helped Takedagawa take a step back from frontline sales and understand customer insights and tastes. It’s also a stint that prepared him for his India job, which he says has been “exciting and enjoyable”.

Along the way, Takedagawa taught himself English, a key requirement for overseas postings at many Japanese companies. His first overseas stint in the US helped him polish the language, which he speaks like a native, but with an unmistakable Japanese accent. Honda works hard at promoting language training among employees. There are several Japanese managers in India who speak Hindi, as there are Indians who speak Japanese. Lastly, I check with him how the Japanese, known for their punctuality, have managed to work in India—where the fabric of time is at its most flexible. “Oh, it’s been no problem at all,” he says. The plant and suppliers work with clockwork precision. “But when I go for an Indian wedding, I never show up on time,” he says with a grin.

Handson: Takedagawa began his professional life on the Honda shop floor, painting Accords.

CURRICULUM VITAE

MASAHIRO TAKEDAGAWA BORN

26 April 1955

EDUCATION

BA in economics from Rikkyo University, Japan

CURRENT DESIGNATION

President and CEO, Honda Siel Cars Ltd., and head, Southwest Asia, Honda Motor Co. Ltd

WORK PROFILE

Started off as a Honda salesman in Japan: “I’ve been selling Civics and Accords for 30 years”

CARS HE’S OWNED OVER THE YEARS

A firstgeneration Accord hatchback when he was a student. As a salesman, he changed cars every year. Currently, has another Accord. “Made in Greater Noida,” he says proudly JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

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SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009

Play GAMING

A hattrick at the Cannes of gaming Ronnie Screwvala’s UTV group made a big splash at the E3 show in Los Angeles with a slew of topend games

B Y S IDIN V ADUKUT sidin.v@livemint.com

···························· n 2007, Ronnie Screwvala’s UTV group acquired Ignition Entertainment, a multi-location developer and publisher of games for several console platforms, from the PlayStation, Xbox and Wii families. Last week, Ignition unveiled three big games at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, one of the biggest events in the annual gaming calendar. We spoke to Screwvala, via email, about his experience at E3, the new games that were announced and UTV’s long-term strategy for the gaming business. Edited excerpts:

Give us an idea of the announcement that UTV made at E3. E3 is literally the Cannes of the gaming industry. This was a big one for the UTV group as firstly, this was our first showcase for the console gaming space. Secondly, while most global content games companies were revealing one or two games, we were, for the first time, providing a look at three properties. And all three are very high-end—in terms of graphics and gameplay. WarDevil is a third-person shooter, Reich is a first-person shooter and El Shadai is an action and adventure game. Contemporary game development has become as expensive a proposition as producing fulllength films. What is the amount of investment in terms of time and money that has gone into the games? Well, console games development is on the high end—but I believe our competitive edge is that we have assimilated three fantastic teams in our creative studios in London, Tokyo and Florida, and our costs are much more efficient than if one of the major game

First person: Screwvala’s UTV group saw almost a fifth of its revenue come from the gaming business last year.

PHOTOIMAGING

companies were to do this. Our investment into Ignition overall and into the three games is close to $75 million (around Rs357 crore). Since you asked about films, the market for games worldwide is much bigger than a main line Hollywood movie. And the sequel cost is where you strike big. That’s much lower, so games are as much about outright hits as about generating demand for sequels. Post-acquisition, has UTV been able to bring in any of its own experience with content creation into the game development process at Ignition? Well, to start with, Ignition was a games publishing company when we invested in it. Its transformation into an IP creation company came with the UTV group’s core vision of creating content for the 16- to 34-year-old demographic. And that too for a worldwide

audience, both on TV and big screen. We have also brought our worldwide marketing and distribution prowess to the fore here. The current financial crisis notwithstanding, making and selling games has become a challenging proposition. Several large publishers such as EA have suffered huge losses. What is Ignition’s strategy? I believe the challenge has really been with the bigger and more established companies—where creative ideas have dried up. So they have all paid top dollar to acquire creative hotshot studios to create fresh content. For Ignition, on the other hand, this is just the beginning. And at each of our studios we have great entrepreneurs and gamers who are obsessed with what they create 24/7. What is the company’s strategy regarding console platforms? We are creating for all platforms.

Of course these are for the platforms that support the highest visual experience—the PS3 and Xbox. And we work closely with our potential partners like Microsoft or Sony. And if we were made a good proposition in order to make a game exclusive to a particular console, we’d be open to that. Does Ignition currently have a base in India? Are there plans to have a captive facility in India as well? Console games are an international play. For UTV, the key markets are the US, Japan and EU. India will not be a significant market for console games for quite some time but for Ignition, India is a base for both selling and outsourcing. A launch at E3 is really the epitome of gaming. What were your thoughts on this occasion. Well, I think this was the best place to premiere a product and

DEVAJIT BORA/MINT

get all the feedback. I think it’s even more special as we unveiled three games. That will have quite an impact. Furthermore, we have been very quiet about our development work till date and so I believe the surprise and awe factor was even bigger. Finally, from a long-term perspective, how does gaming content figure in UTV’s plans? Do you see sizeable revenues from the business? It’s a very critical vertical—to our growth story as well as to our overall vision of being a content company with a worldwide footprint. The gaming vertical in 2008-09 has already contributed 18% to UTV’s total revenue and with the launches of our new games and new online massive multi-player online role-playing game platform, we see this growing tremendously. www.livemint.com Screwvala talks gaming at www.livemint.com/utvgame.htm

MY ONLINE LIFE | GAUTAM JOHN

The nonprofit motive Use nocost online solutions to keep your charity organization running smoothly

eing a non-profit organization with offices in multiple locations, we tend to gravitate towards hosted applications that are either free or have special rates for non-profits. Also, being in the publishing space means that we tend to use a lot of websitesor platforms to share content.

to keep track of our ongoing software projects and other strategic work.

Outreach and publicity www.blogger.com

We use a blog to talk about our work and to write about the industry in general—Blogspot is less than ideal but it serves our purpose.

www.youtube.com

www.flickr.com Again, serves as a platform for us to share pictures and source pictures for our blog. We’re a big fan of the Creative Commons and upload pictures with a CC-BY licence, and only use pictures with similar licence. See Pratham Books’ Flickr stream here: www.flickr.com/ photos/prathambooks/

www.scribd.com We use this to display and distribute some of our books. It’s easier than asking people to download big PDF files. You can check a collection of our work here: www.scribd.com/prathambooks

Surf worthy: Cricinfo hosts cricket analysis and match commentary.

Project management

Social networking

Leisure

This is pretty much the crux of our working life—email, internal wikis, shared documents and chat. It’s easy to set up, reliable, has a very easy learning curve and has the advantage of untethering a user from any one computer.

Serves as a personal and organizational networking platform. It allows us to interact with our fans. Personally, I’m an unabashed Facebook addict. Supporters of our organization interact here: www.facebook.com/pages/ Pratham-Books/9307274926

No working day is complete without a peek at cricket scores, and where else but at Cricinfo—they have the best commentary!

www.salesforce.com We use Salesforce to track leads and accounts and to assist in donor management.

Again, for all the video content that we produce. It’s a great way to share stuff that otherwise couldn’t be shared.

www.google.com/apps/

www.facebook.com

www.basecamphq.com/ Without Basecamp, coordination would be a mess. We use it

www.twitter.com Easy tips: Salesforce.com is a fullfledged customer management tool.

I use this both in my personal and

work capacity, with distinct identities. As with Facebook, I’m a fan! And an addict. The power of oneto-many communication at its best.

www.cricinfo.com

News and information www.google.com/reader/

It’s my one source of news, views and analysis (to steal a phrase) both for my personal and work lives. It makes it so much easier to

collate and share from one central location. Gautam John works in Bangalore at Pratham Books, a not-for-profit trust that publishes high-quality children’s books in several Indian languages at affordable prices, and at the Akshara Foundation, an NGO working in the field of education. John handles legal, technological and strategic issues for Pratham and data operations for Akshara. He is also a trained lawyer and is involved with several entrepreneurial projects. Write to lounge@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

GOA

PHOTOGRAPHS

SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

Once a hippie wonderland, then a tourist haven and now a creative idyll. We hobnobbed with Goa’s new literary set—in Amitav Ghosh’s beautiful home where Orhan Pamuk exchanged notes with local writers

Caju and conversation S

novel Karmelin won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1983, and the veteran journalist Victor RangelRibeiro, author of Tivolem—one of those novels which, like R.K. Narayan’s, are deceptively simple but seem to encompass an entire universe. Besides, Goa has its great non-fiction writers too, most notably Maria Couto, who wrote the monumental Goa: A Daughter’s Story. The multicultural traditions run far back, as proven by the fact that Goan literature is written in Konkani, Marathi, Portuguese as well as English, and that Goans are prominent in the Indian diaspora from Africa to New York. Yet, few visitors are aware that one such “expat”, Abbe Faria, born in Candolim in 1755, developed a method for “hipnotismo scientifico” way back before hypnotism was officially invented, and became so famous in Paris that Alexandre Dumas even based a character on him in his swashbuckling, pseudo-historical, massmarket best-seller, The Count of Monte Cristo (1845). If Goan soil is so fertile, it might make sense for new writers to put down roots and perhaps crossfertilize, I thought, as the propeller plane made hesitant loops over the tiny Dabolim airfield. I carried, in my head, images of 1800s Berlin or fin-desiècle Paris, times when artists from around the world were pulled to the cabarets; or the Car-

mel-Big Sur stretch of Californian coast that attracted Robert Heinlein, Henry Miller and even, for a short while, the perpetual hitch-hiker Jack Kerouac, who wrote the documentary novel Big Sur (1962). And then there was this fascinating research that I’d come across: Recent studies suggest that in a global economy, creative milieus—measured by the number of artists per capita, ethnic variety in the population, general educational level and the number of forums for self-expression—have high competitive potential. And hence, attract

Hypnotic: A statue of Abbe Faria in Panjim.

even more talent. Interestingly, two years in a row, Swedish and Indian writers have come together for easy-going workshops in Calangute—among prominent participants have been novelists Manjula Padmanabhan and Anjum Hasan, children’s writer Paro Anand, and Malayalam poet K. Satchidanandan, a former secretary of the Sahitya Akademi. Among them were also Swedish poet laureate Arne Johnsson, who visited Goa for the first time in February, leaving an icy Scandinavian climate behind. He felt deeply stimulated by Goa’s mix of cultures and the many creative people he came across. Being in India was “like being in the eye of a storm”, he told me, and shared his thought that Goa would be a perfect place to sit and write a book. Workshop organizer Tomas Löfström, who promotes Indian literature in translation through the Indian Library in Stockholm, is a frequent visitor to Goa. Calangute, according to him, is “India Light” and conditions are optimal for a literary workshop—you have all the necessary facilities without the hassles of a big city. He says, “Cultural or literary

ZAC O’YEAH

B Y Z AC O ’Y EAH ···························· omehow, Goa had been filed away at the back of my mind as the quintessential tourist spot with its hippies, who still hope that The Beatles are going to reunite for one last gig in Anjuna, with George Harrison and John Lennon playing the Ouija board. And its beaches, where shacks innovate in permutations of German, British, Swedish, Italian, Israeli and French cuisines, and also, of course, due to the fact that it was recently used as a backdrop by Hollywood as the perfect hideaway for Matt Damon in the thriller Bourne Supremacy. Simply, a place for going underground, letting loose and getting tight. But I had to rethink my preconceived notions when I heard of a mysterious migratory trend. Somebody mentioned that my favourite author, Amitav Ghosh, had moved there and that many of the other writers I find interesting, from Sudhir Kakar to Sunil Khilnani, have homes in Goa. When an old Mumbai acquaintance, children’s writer Rahul Srivastava, bought a lovely flat overlooking the Mandovi river at a fraction of the Mumbai rates, I realized that I had to go and find out what was going on. Once you tear your eyes away from the semi-clad tourists littering the beaches, you’ll, of course, discover that Goa has always been a literary hub. Pick up the delightful anthology Ferry Crossings (1996) and you’ll read some of the best Goan fiction, compiled by the renowned Goa-based poet Manohar Shetty. It includes Damodar Mauzo, whose Konkani

‘When a writer like Amitav Ghosh comes here, he enhances our literary environment through his interactions.’

tourism may be worth developing, consider ing tha t man y Indian writers seem to spend part of their year in Goa, and visiting Westerners might look for something beyond the beach life.” He points out that the infrastructural elements are already in place: Kala Academy’s multistage cultural venue, artist Subodh Kerkar’s gallery-cum-restaurant, Gerard da Cunha’s museum of Goan architecture, the new Angelo da Fonseca Museum and last but not least, the friendly book café, Literati. Let’s begin our literary expedition at Literati, run by Diviya Kapur, who decided one day to chuck her job as a lawyer in Delhi and fulfil a dream. A friend found her a 100-year-old bungalow in Calangute, and this charming book café was born in 2005. There are cosy sofas and books ranging from the latest releases to second-hand copies, as well as a shelf devoted to Goan writing for those who want to dip beneath the surface—actually, many of the local publishers are small presses, so the books are rarely found outside the state. But that’s just half the story. Every time I drop in, there is something happening: One day the Commonwealth Prize-shortlisted Shashi Deshpande is participating in a discussion on translation; two days later, a writer of a book on motorcycling is speaking in the serene garden. While I browse, the Booker winner, Kiran Desai, suddenly walks in. It turns out she is renting a house nearby to write for a few winter weeks. Autograph-hunters find themselves in heaven because Literati has, over the last couple of years, hosted events with Ghosh, William Dalrymple, Dayanita Singh,

Booked for good: (clockwise from above) Sudeep Chakravarti says he wants to start a writers’ cooperative in Goa to support literary work in South Asia; Cecil Pinto, a Goan, is a humour columnist and florist; Diviya Kapur, a former lawyer, converted a 100yearold bungalow in Calangute into Literati, a book café.

Ranjit Hoskote, Hasan, Amruta Patil, Zai Whitaker and others. Serious book-shopping always makes me thirsty and luckily, there are many watering holes around, a crucial component of any really creative milieu. I end up at Bomra’s, which serves Burmese nouvelle cuisine—tribal and rural recipes infused with the personal ishtyle of the jolly chef, Bawmra. But what makes it a literary destination is the special Glass Palace Menu of Ghosh’s favourite dishes, ranging from pickled tea leaf salad and home-made chickpea tofu with tamarind soya sauce, to slow-cooked pork belly with apple chutney and a cashew nut crust—food that has also earned Bomra’s a reputation of being among the world’s finest Burmese restaurants. A regular visitor to Literati, author Sudeep Chakravarti has set up house in Panjim. His debut novel was Tin Fish (2005), which some critics have termed “the Indian Catcher in the Rye”. Like

Salinger, who left New York for a cabin in the woods, Chakravarti traded his job as an editor in Delhi for a space to write. And so he is, in fact, the third person, in a short span of time, who tells me about the joy of leaving a metro in favour of a new life in Goa. Chakravarti’s friends, of course, told him he was crazy when he drew up a list of four places he thought might be suitable for a writer: Mussoorie, Puducherry, Goa and Santiniketan. Goa won hands down. It wasn’t an emotional choice, but a practical one—a decision which brought creativity back to him. “In some ways, I had arrived at a time and place in my life when the urge to pursue a lifelong dream to write books couldn’t any longer be put on hold,” he says. Since coming to Goa he has been prolific, publishing three books: Nos. 4 and 5 are on the way. He also wants to start a writers’ cooperative, The East India Writing Company, to support literary work in South

Asia. “You could say Goa and I are in a state of pleasurable cohabitation,” he says. In Goa, writers are so abundant that they seem to grow on trees. One of the first days in February, at a Kala Academy poetry reading, I bumped into Ghosh. At the youthful age of 52, he has written himself into literary history and nowadays spends about half the year in picture-pretty Aldona, in the bucolic interior of Goa. He’d been visiting for decades, until one day he found himself a crumbling old villa which he lovingly restored. One wing was in such a state of disrepair that it had to be almost fully rebuilt, he explains, after inviting me home to a dinner party. Ghosh’s study, which naturally interests me the most, impresses with its large writing desk, his personal range of hidebound Egyptian notebooks, and, right outside, there’s a wide terrace suitable for recreational birdwatching. For Ghosh, one of the pleasures of Goa is that it’s such a liter-

ary place—just down the road lives Maria Couto and he entertains writer colleagues at tremendously pleasant dinners. He also interacts with the Goa Writers Group, a loose association of upand-coming littérateurs. The group’s convener is humour columnist Cecil Pinto, whom I personally find seven times funnier than Woody Allen. Pinto is also a connoisseur of Caju (cashew feni). He’s brought the most exquisite village-distilled brews from his collection to Ghosh’s dinner party, where he takes it upon himself to teach the noble art of imbibing Caju to guests ranging from the lowly yours truly to Nobel laureates such as Orhan Pamuk. Despite rumours that the Turkish novelist might, too, be looking for a house in Goa, he sniffed somewhat sceptically at the booze which had been poured out of a recycled Smirnoff bottle to him at one such dinner party in February. I tried to help by pointing out that Caju tastes sublime

as soon as one gets used to it—only later did it occur to me that any Nobel Prize-winner sticking his nose into a glass of the potent brew might worry about possible brain damage. Pamuk, however, isn’t the kind of writer to waste either brain cells or time, as was discovered when one of the budding littérateurs offered to show him around Old Goa if he could take a morning off from his writing—to which he replied that the number of mornings left in his life were barely enough for the writing he planned to do! I asked Pinto what he thought of all these literary migrants. “That Goa is already becoming a hub for writers is evident. But regarding your question of Goa benefiting from writers moving here, now that is a complicated matter. Writers, like people, come in different types. When a writer like Amitav Ghosh comes here, he enhances our literary environment through his interactions. There are other writers, on the other hand, who have portrayed a totally bizarre image of Goa to the world. This type we could do without.” Another member of the writers group, Savia Viegas, feels that, first of all, Goa needs a writing and storytelling culture among children: “It will help develop Goa as a sustainable literary space.” A teacher by profession, she tries to get visiting creative people to have workshops at schools. On my last day, as if my fascination for Goa let out the genie from a bottle, I walk past a real estate agency with apartments for around Rs20 lakh—swimming

pool included. Before I know it, the efficient staff has me bundled into an AC SUV and I’m driven to a construction site. Most buyers, I’m told, are middle-aged Brits looking for retirement homes, or NRIs who see it as an investment. In the last two years, prices have shot up by 300%. The next-door neighbour at the site is a farmer ploughing his field with a buffalo. As I survey the damp concrete cave of a 2BHK, I wonder if this is realistic. Or have I been imbibing too much? I tell the real estate agent that I might be better off with a town house. He argues that anything I need is on the beach. There’s even going to be a McDonald’s soon. I tell him about the existential insecurity a writer might feel far from urban spaces. He counters: “Our houses have round-theclock guards and the compound is surrounded by 10fthigh walls. If you feel insecure here, you won’t feel safe anywhere in the world.” After that slightly too realistic view on the state of things, I figure that for me, Goa shall remain a place to dream about—a creative space to run away to when I need to sit down with a manuscript in progress. And a Caju on the side. Then some day, with a little help from karma, I may hope to be reincarnated as a Goan in my next life. Zac O’Yeah is a Bangalore-based Swedish writer of crime fiction. Write to lounge@livemint.com www.livemint.com Listen to O’Yeah’s podcast at www.livemint.com/zacgoa.htm

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SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009

Travel PHOTOGRAPHS

SANJUKTA SHARMA

Wall to wall: (above) A secondgeneration artist applies finish ing touches to papier mâché decorative items painted with patta chitra motifs; (left) the house of artist Sarat Chandra Swain; and ganjappa cards.

RAGHURAJPUR

Myths on a cloth Near east India’s most famous seaside pilgrimage town, art thrives under the aegis of a unique initiative. Visit to get inspired

B Y S ANJUKTA S HARMA sanjukta.s@livemint.com

···························· he sea rumbles faintly as we walk down to the beach along Puri’s Chakratirtha Road. Day is yet to break. The red flag on the dome of the Jagannath temple flutters in the cool breeze as freshly bathed priests, devotees and tourists walk barefoot towards its enormous, arched entrance. Beggars, ubiquitous in all Indian pilgrimage towns, are waking up, wearily. It is our third day in Puri, and we plan to spend the day in Raghurajpur, an ancient artists’ village. But I hope to relive a childhood memory before that. The crimson arch appears suddenly on the horizon. The resplendent ball reveals itself slowly, reflecting a shimmering orange path that pierces deep into the sea. Hundreds of fishermen simultaneously push their boats into the water, set to sail the high seas. I have added something more to that memory of a Puri sunrise; what, I am not quite sure. It takes us just about 5 minutes to drive out of town. The road to Raghurajpur is lined on both sides with palm trees. As with most highways in Orissa, this is a beau-

tiful, smooth road. Besides Jagannath, “development” seems to be the state’s new god. Raghurajpur, home to artists who make Orissa’s famous patta chitras (patta, meaning canvas, cloth, screen or veil; and chitra, meaning picture), was upgraded to a cultural tourism site some years ago by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (Intach). It now has an interpretation centre, commissioned artwork on the walls of the artists’ homes and a rest house. As we drive past a signpost saying Raghurajpur Artists’ Village, our companion, a project officer in the state tourism department, says: “Not many domestic tourists come here. Indians are more interested in the beach and other places like the sun temple at Konark or Chilika Lake.” He is a familiar face in Raghurajpur and helps us break the ice with the artists. By the time we reach, the sun is ablaze. Faint sounds of what seems like a chorus of folk music and drumbeats waft through the air. “It is the goti pua artists, they live on the other end of the village,” our guide tells us. Raghurajpur is home to a few families that keep alive this almost extinct tradition of male temple dancers; no accident then that this is the village legendary Odissi dancer Kelucharan Mahapatra called home. We pass the newly built rest house and a community artist centre, and reach the charming hut of artist Sarat Chandra Swain, a leading patta chitra maker in this village of around 120 artist families and 500 artists. Squatting on the bare mud floor, hunched over a large patta, he painstakingly traces a pencil sketch with a thin paintbrush dipped in black ink. It will be days before the story he is painting comes alive. Patta chitras tell stories. Episodes from the Ramayan and the Mahabharat, from mythologies

about Shiva and Durga and, of course, Jagannath, are etched out in miniaturist detail. But buyers and collectors go by the quality of a work rather than what it depicts, because some stories are obscure myths and legends. If an artist likes a story, he fills it with colour and brings it alive on cloth. This art form originated between the seventh and 11th centuries, and went through a renaissance around the 13th century, under the patronage of the Ganga dynasty. The artists painted in the temple, decorating the seat of the deity. It was revived in 1917 by an American researcher named Halina Zealy,

who set up an art and crafts centre at Puri, and an emporium to market the chitras. The patta Swain is working on is for a client in Delhi. “It’s a raasleela painting,” he tells me, taking me through the lines—depicting Krishna and five gopis seated on a swan-mouthed boat. The artist wants the water beneath to be a burst of colours, with pink lotuses and bright green water plants. “You can stay here for a few days and I will make a painting of your choice,” Swain tells me. “Do you have another raasleela?” I ask. I wasn’t lucky. A day earlier, a British cou-

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

ple had picked up his only other raasleela painting, a 6ftx3ft work, for Rs35,000. Swain also travels for his clients. Last year, a Mumbai family invited him to paint a door with patta chitra motifs. “They paid me more than Rs35,000,” he tells me hesitantly. Besides being an art form, it is also a way of life. Swain’s mother, in her 80s, still makes the pattas for her son. She boils tamarind to make a paste. When it cools, she smears it over her old saris, and then coats it with limestone powder. Once dry and hard, the patta is scrubbed and smoothened. Swain’s 10-year-old daughter makes some of his colours, mixing natural ingredients such as tamarind and coal with oil. It’s an art form that the new generation has embraced, at least in this village. Most artists, in their 70s, have passed on the mantle to their children and students from other parts of Orissa, some of whom live in the village with artists. The family of Banamali Mohapatra, besides making patta chitras, also makes ganjappa cards. Ganjappa is a dice game which was common in Orissa in the 14th-18th centuries—it’s played with a pack of 144 cards painted with mythological human and animal figures. Nobody plays the game now, but ganjappa cards are fancied as quaint, popcraft objects (I later discover ganjappa cards are for sale on eBay for Rs470-800. The pack I bought from the Mohapatra family cost Rs200). Like Swain and Mohapatra, Gopal Maharana and his sons also make palm-leaf carvings and sketches, and papier mâché works with motifs similar to that

of patta chitra paintings. All the artists of this village sell their works through state emporiums across the country, and some have their own clients. By sundown, some families walk towards the home of Maguni Das, a goti pua guru who breathed his last a few days before our visit. A congregation of male villagers sings religious hymns. We are ushered into the house next door, where Lakshmana Maharanna and his children live. They are goti pua performers, rehearsing for a performance in Europe. It is a dance form that has found little appreciation in India and is now patronized mostly by European dancers who approach performers to collaborate with them. We spend an hour at their home—Maharanna sings a rhythmic paean to Jagannath, as the children coordinate acrobatic movements with graceful expressions. Like so many other temple art forms, Odissi is a homage to a religious idol—in this case, Jagannath. Goti pua can be described as Odissi performed by men. The hymns of the congregation fade as we prepare to leave Raghurajpur. In the evening light, the artwork on the walls of the artists’ homes looks muted, and more dense. On my next visit to Puri, I hope to spend a few days here, watching my raasleela painting take shape, line by line, arch by arch, in front of my eyes. CHILDFRIENDLY RATING

It might give children a firsthand rural experience of art, but Raghurajpur has only basic infrastructure and no activities for children.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

DETOURS

SALIL TRIPATHI

Those mythcovered mountains AFP

There are stories and legends around the Blue Mountains of Sydney. But their real life magic surpasses all the makebelieve

hey call that range Blue Mountains but those mountains are not really blue, and they call the peaks nearby The Three Sisters, giving them names—Meehni, Wimlah, and Gunnedoo—and creating an elaborate story around their lives. We are in magical terrain, awestruck by the beauty. The charms are real, but the stories are made up. But none of that mattered when we set out to explore the mountains that formed the boundary between Sydney and the vast emptiness beyond. Google Maps rob us of the imagined romance of flying over that stretch of nothingness but, from the sky, the sheer expanse of that vacuity takes your breath away, as if explaining, though not justifying, why the colonizers called this “terra nullis”. And then they decided the entire land was theirs, ignoring the 40,000 years of continuous history the Aborigines remembered, and lived. We left the sparkling city, with its friendly harbour, its Opera House looking like a fluttering swan spreading its wings in the morning light, and the old Harbour Bridge, like a trusty hanger, shining at dawn. And Sydney itself, looking resplendent and colourful, like a Ken Done artwork. Rather than the beaches, we were interested in the mountains where, as Jan Morris pointed out in her eponymous book about Sydney, you could find snow occasionally, when the log fires in

resorts would keep you warm. Once you left Sydney, as Morris noted, you were in frontier territory, “extending mile after mile after mile of scrub, waste and desert into the infinite nevernever of the Aborigines. Nearly all Australia is empty. Emptiness is part of the Australian state of things”. The rough landscape, comprising sheer cliffs and the rainforest around the Blue Mountains, gives the place a primeval quality, and you feel like an intruder, even though there are thousands like you, each weekend, negotiating the narrow paths. And it is the miracle of those mountains that you feel you are the first to discover that little brook, the wild flowers, or the shaft of sunlight that penetrates through the tall trees. My younger son, only five years old at the time, discovers ladybirds (the bugs, not the books), and falls to his knees, crawling behind one, gently letting one of them climb on his little index finger. We enter the limestone caves with stalactites and stalagmites, inching onward, at a pace so slow that even the ladybird thinks of herself as a Ferrari in comparison. They look like a woman’s unkempt tresses magnified a million times as she emerges from a waterfall; or the waterfall itself; or icicles, dangling tantalizingly; or shards of ivory, extending their millions of fingers, as if to clasp the other million fingers thrust upwards, outstretched, and yet,

failing to connect. The caves are cool inside, and when they play choral music and turn on the spectacular lights, the atmosphere gets ethereal and surreal. The mountains are not blue, but you can’t deny the blue haze which envelopes them, giving them a soothing, calming presence. It charms the evening. Scientists have found the way to make this poetry prosaic: The eucalyptus trees that crowd the mountains emit oils, which refract the light, which produces the unique blue tinge. There are even more complicated explanations that challenge the eucalyptus theory. But why bother? In his 1888 poem, Henry Lawson wrote: Now in the west the colours change,

FOOT NOTES | SUMANA MUKHERJEE

Beyond the Mall crawl

The great beyond: (above) The Three Sisters; and a curious kangaroo. The blue with crimson blending; Behind the far Dividing Range, The sun is fast descending. And mellowed day comes o’er the place, And softens ragged edges; The rising moon’s great placid face Looks gravely o’er the ledges. That’s good enough for us. We leave the mountains for The Three Sisters, peaks sculpted by wind and water. The stone is soft, leading to frequent erosion, and water seeps through small

cracks, gradually making the indentations bigger, and the peaks change their shape ever so slightly over time, as if they are reluctant statues, unable to stand still. Some day, the peaks will disappear completely. There is a fake legend built around the peaks—that the three sisters fell in love with men from a different tribe. An elder fought a battle to defend their honour, and to protect them he turned them into stone. He died in the battle; the three sisters remained mute witnesses. In his book, The Artificial Horizon: Imagining the Blue Mountains, Martin Thomas

has reflected on the irony of the colonizers not only disrupting the Aboriginal life, but creating legends they hadn’t dreamt. “As a myth created by the invading colonial culture, it reveals underlying truths about petrifying the Aboriginal sisters and turning them into things you just look at,” he writes, adding a sombre note. For that’s what the powerful outsider does—erasing parts of history he does not like, rewriting the story to suit his world view, destabilizing the past, and affirming a world view that’s entirely mythical. And so the three peaks become The Three Sisters, in a mountain range not quite blue. But that outsider also left behind songs of praise. In the song the poet Alfred Noyes wrote about the mountains, he noted the angelic presence of the Southern Cross, guiding his journey. No stars guide our return journey. Rather, something warmer, more real, more this-worldly, does. As our train races towards the shining city, when we look out of the window I swear I see them—four kangaroos, leaping magnificently, keeping pace. The train would stop where the tracks ended. The kangaroos would go on. It is their mountain, their country. Write to Salil at detours@livemint.com

Cruise uncontrol

Top of the world: (left) Camp Craignano; and biking into the wilderness.

Get out of crowded Shimla and find solitude in the woods

he last time you went to Shimla, you were convinced your precariously perched hotel would topple any moment into the valley. You survived the night, but barely survived the crowds, the pollution and seeing your next-door neighbour at the Mall. This year, abandon the city and head to Camp Craignano, a retreat dating back to the British times and named after an Italian countess. This getaway is 12km from Shimla and had long been popular as a picnic spot with the locals. Now TopCamp, a travel company, has set up base here with family tents, dining areas and toilet

facilities, and offers multiple activity options with all safety precautions in place. From mountain biking (five trails, ranging from 14-39km) and day hikes (3-6 hours) to rafting on the Sutlej, the team at Camp

Craignano can organize it all for you and your children. Besides, there’s rock-climbing, rappelling, star-gazing and wool-gathering too, and the last two are on the house! The camp has four itineraries, from three days/two nights to six days/five nights. Over three days, you could cycle down the Mashobra road towards Baikhalty and back, have a picnic lunch, hike through a 3-hour trail and go river-rafting. The experiences increase exponentially with the number of days, including hiking towards Hatu Peak (3,200m), cycling to Narkanda, lunching by a stream, et al. An economy package (accommodation in tents which can sleep four, sleeping bags and common toilets) costs between Rs8,800 (for three days/two nights) and Rs18,200 (for six days/five nights) per couple. The comfort package (deluxe tents with attached toilets) costs between Rs9,800 (for three days/two nights) and Rs19,800 (for six days/five nights) per couple. There’s is no charge for children below five; for those above five, there’s a flat charge of Rs3,000 per head. For details of packages and bookings, call Baljit on 9212186719 or visit www.indiabeyondtaj.com

Anchors away: Sail along Europe’s great rivers for a new view.

urope. Been there, done that, we know. But have you seen the continent from its waterways? Germany, France, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Belgium, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands are criss-crossed by some of the greatest rivers on earth, and cruising down the Rhine or the Moselle offers a unique

perspective on the multiple countries they run through. Till recently, river voyages were rather crummy affairs. But leading companies have now begun conducting river cruises in ships comparable to ocean liners. Peter Deilmann Cruises, a German company, has seven deluxe river ships with 50-100 cabins each, fitted

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with four- and five-star comforts, multilingual staff and menus that draw from the best of the continent as well as the route of the ship. So what will it be? A four-night, seven-night or 10-night cruise down the Rhine, Moselle and Amstel, with stops in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Basel, Cologne, Mainz and Strasbourg? A seven-night trip on the Elbe, Havel and Moldau, through the Czech Republic and Germany? Or a week-long focus on the Seine, past some of the most magnificent chateaux in Europe? To make a booking, call Rahul Sarin on +919899970646 or email him at rahul@connexons.com. Or check out www.deilmann-cruises.com. Prices start at $1,838 (around Rs88,000) per person on twin-sharing basis for a seven-night cruise.

Nosh, the Nobu way A tlantis the Palm—yes, the very same Dubai hotel that had the whole world talking with its over-the-top opening celebrations in November—is now set to ensure you can have the whole world eating out of your hands. The Nobu at the Atlantis—the first West Asian outpost of arguably the world’s most famous Japanese restaurant—will throw open its kitchen doors to 12 select guests on the first Saturday of each month till December. The bespoke 3-hour cooking class conducted by chef de cuisine Hervé Courtot will begin with

an introduction to the art of sushi-making, move on to a main course, and finish with a dessert: Nobu’s signature chocolate bento box—a molten chocolate cake topped with green-tea ice Roll play: cream. Of course, you eat the meal you cook with a congratulatory glass of champagne as well. Guests need to register for the course in advance by calling Nobu at +97144260760 or by emailing Dxb-nobu@ atlantisthepalm.com. The

Learn the art of making sushi. package, inclusive of the cooking lesson, three-course lunch and a Nobu apron, costs AED1,250 per person (around Rs16,000). Participants need to be at least 16 years of age. Write to lounge@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009

Books TECHNOLOGY

Shift control, and twitter AFP

AFP

The dangers of the alwaysnetworked human being; and how to use one such network

Cyburbia: Little, Brown, 256 pages, Rs495. B Y S IDIN V ADUKUT sidin.v@livemint.com

···························· o make any sense of James Harkin’s Cyburbia—The Dangerous Idea that’s Changing How We Live and Who We Are, one has to begin with a curiously difficult task: defining the concept of cybernetics—the central concept in the book. The best this writer could find online was the transcript of an oftquoted lecture by the late Stafford Beer, a renowned proponent of cybernetics, delivered at the University of Valladolid in Spain in October 2001. And even Beer, early in his lecture, tells this joke: “…it concerns three men who are about to be executed. The prison governor calls them to his office, and explains that each will be granted a last request. The first one confesses that he has led a sinful life, and would like to see a priest. The governor says he thinks he can arrange that. And the second man? The second man explains that he is a professor of cybernetics. His last request is to deliver a final and definitive answer to the question: what is cybernetics? The governor accedes to this request also. And the third man? Well, he is a doctoral student of the professor—his request is to be executed second.”

In the loop: (above) Harkin mentions Cybersyn, a project in Chile; he likens cybernetics to the task of an antiaircraft gunner. Essentially, cybernetics is the study of communication and control within any complex system. The best way to explain this is to use the example Harkin alludes to several times in his book: that of the anti-aircraft gunner. Looking up at the sky, he sees the path of an enemy plane. He must process this information and then aim his gun before he shoots. Depending on the result and the continued flight path, he makes fresh estimations and fires again. Thus the gunner works within a loop of action and feedback in order to achieve his goal: blasting the plane out of the sky. Cybernetics looks at similar feedback loops in all kinds of systems. And I mean all kinds of systems. Beer, for instance, once almost built an entire communication and control system for the Chilean government in the early 1970s, called Project Cybersyn. Managers sitting in Cybersyn’s futuristic control room could, via

a network of telex machines, monitor and send orders to various factories all over Chile instantaneously. What Harkin is trying to do in Cyburbia is to extend the idea of cybernetics to the way in which human beings today are part of a highly socially networked society—where we constantly receive pieces of information via Facebook, YouTube, thousands of blogs, etc. The crux of Harkin’s idea is to speculate on how being part of this always-on, un-curated network is beginning to change us. Harkin’s effort, at first glance, is hugely relevant. As mentioned in the book, most people

already know how newspapers are struggling to survive as readers have several free sources of news and information. Nobody really knows the impact this can have on societies. Or, at a more basic level, how dependence on virtual Facebook-y ways of interacting with friends can affect our more traditional ways of being social. There are at least two ways to tackle these questions. You can either go the pop science, Freakonomics way, and reduce these networks and information loops down to a set of representative anecdotes. Or, you can go the hard core theoretical way, and investigate it for answers using

NOCTURNES | KAZUO ISHIGURO

Twitter Power: John Wiley and Sons, 228 pages, Rs1,100.

ideas such as cybernetics. Harkin wants to do both. And fails. So Cyburbia, while endlessly anecdotal, leaves the reader highly dissatisfied at the end. This is infuriating for a book that is such a challenging read. The author engagingly begins each chapter with an anecdote—about anti-aircraft guns or Project Cybersyn—but what follows is a confusing, semicongealed mess of theory and interpretation. You’ll find yourself flipping back and forth between pages ever so often, trying to make sense of disparate themes. And you are constantly looking, unsuccessfully, for the one thing promised on the cover: “the dangerous idea that’s changing how we live and who we are”. I found no such thing. Joel Comm’s Twitter Power— How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time, thankfully, is a much better read on cyberspace that somewhat helped overcome Cyburbia. Comm’s book is a comprehensive guide for beginners to that thing everyone is talking about: Twitter. The book’s tag line might lead you to think it is targeted at marketing types looking to push their brands. In fact, it is a very accessible guide to personal Twitter usage as well.

Nocturnes: Faber and Faber, 222 pages, Rs499.

B Y C HANDRAHAS C HOUDHURY ···························· n one story in Kazuo Ishiguro’s new book Nocturnes, the narrator, a small-time musician who plays in cafés, looks around at his supporting cast and explains, “Playing together every day like this, you came to think of the band as a kind of family.” Of course, it is not only among musicians that music generates feelings of intimacy, tenderness, brotherhood. To an extent that the rational parts of ourselves can never fully explain, our moods can vault dramatically when we hear a melody, the tremor in a singer’s voice can make a hundred memories and regrets come flooding back, and the shape of a tune can make the most banal phrases appear as if they are exploding with significance. In his new book, Ishiguro—who in his youth nurtured dreams of being a singer-songwriter—conjures up a set of stories about the power of music to bind, console and heal. The word “nocturne” means “a musical composition of a dreamy character”. It struck me

IN SIX WORDS For Internet geeks and novices alike

AFP

The music of our lives Stories about the power of music to bind and heal

Skip Comm’s musings on social media and go straight to Chapter 3: “Getting Started the Right Way on Twitter”. The three following chapters concisely outline everything a novice needs to know to sign up on the microblogging service, build an attractive profile and then nurture a set of followers. Comm’s advice is free of jargon and effective. And best of all, he writes with a jocular simplicity that makes you want to play along. The remainder of the book is targeted at corporate users, but still stays simple and jargon-free. Usually I am loath to recommend any book that promises to teach social networking—Twitter and Facebook are all community-driven platforms that inherently handhold novices when they start. But Comm’s Twitter Power is well worth a look. It won’t take too much of your time, and while all technology guidebooks are prone to rapid obsolescence, I don’t see this one running out of relevance any time soon. And while you are on Twitter, would you please avoid thinking how dangerously cybernetic you are and just have fun?

that the protagonists of the stories here are not just players of nocturnes; their lives themselves are nocturnes. Some of them are young musicians of modest talent who know that they will never be stars; others are middle-aged drifters whose lives are gently washed by regret. Ishiguro explores the implications of this for their marriages, their friendships, their self-perceptions, in a voice that is simultaneously tender and comic. Like a vibrating guitar string, these stories are never stable. There is a twist or turn, usually minor but slowly expanding in significance, on nearly every page, as the narrators (all the stories are told in the first person) work out what is happening in their lives. In the story called Nocturne, we see a middle-aged saxophonist, Steve, whose career has come to a standstill not because he is not good enough, but perhaps because he is not goodlooking. Steve’s wife eventually falls for the charms of a richer and better-looking man, but both of them feel so guilty that her paramour offers, as a kind of

High notes: Ishiguro’s protagonists prefer Broadway hits and classics. compensation, to pay for some plastic surgery for Steve. Steve’s agent thinks this is a good deal, and finally Steve succumbs. Recovering after his operation, Steve finds himself in the room next to Lindy Gardner, who is one of those children of the media age who are famous despite having done nothing of significance. Seeing that he and Lindy are now in the same boat, Steve realizes “the scale of my moral descent”. But the despised Lindy turns out to be surprisingly good company, and eventually turns into a kind of confessor figure for him. Ishiguro’s deceptively light and easy touch draws us in right

away and keeps us hooked. Some of his dialogues are of an exceptionally high order. Another story, Malvern Hills, offers the pleasures of a familiar Ishiguro device seen, for instance, in his novel The Remains of the Day—the unreliable narrator. This kind of story features a complex first-person narration where, although we have no other information than that provided by the person who is telling the story, we can nevertheless tell that he is not interpreting life accurately. When carried out skilfully, this makes fiction more exciting because it is as if

we are reading a story and writing an alternative version of it at the same time. Simultaneously, we come to understand how our sense of the world depends so much on subjective perception. The narrator of Malvern Hills is a young, self-involved, hard-up songwriter who goes to spend the summer in a hotel in the countryside run by his sister and her husband. Although he is the one who is being helped out, he quickly comes to resent the few duties thrust upon him, and feels that the artist in him is being suffocated. “It seemed clear I’d been invited here on false pretences,” he thinks, and we laugh at this and commiserate with him at the same time. At a number of points in Nocturnes, the characters express a preference for evergreen ballads, Broadw ay hits, the w or k of “those old pros (who) knew how to do it”—over more challenging and difficult forms. The implicit idea is that we often overlook the extent to which music we think of as “easy” is itself the result of great craft and discipline. After six novels, Ishiguro is now an old pro, and as these smoothly tossed-off and beguiling stories demonstrate, he too knows just how to do it. Write to lounge@livemint.com

BOOKS L15

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LORDS OF FINANCE | LIAQUAT AHAMED

READING ROOM

Don’t trust the bankers

TABISH KHAIR AFP

An engaging tellall about the who, why and how of the greatest economic disaster of the past century

Indian Heathcliff

B Y N IRANJAN R AJADHYAKSHA niranjan.r@livemint.com

···························· t a gathering to celebrate economist Milton Friedman’s 90th birthday in November 2002, Ben Bernanke turned to Friedman and said: “Let me end my t al k b y ab us in g slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.” Friedman and his collaborator Anna Schwarz had argued in a 1963 tome that the Great Depression had started off as a nasty recession. But central banks led by the US Fed had starved a gasping economy of oxygen when they cut money supply by a third. The economic collapse that followed led to mass unemployment, bank failures and the spread of fascism. Liaquat Ahamed has dealt with this sorry episode in Lords of Finance, which has a powerful blend of piercing insight and gripping narrative. The book retells the story of the greatest economic disaster of the past century through the stories of four powerful and complex men who headed the central banks in their respective countries: Montagu Norman of England, Benjamin Strong of the US, Hjalmar Schacht of Germany, and Emile Moreau of France. These men who, as the subtitle of the book says, were the bankers who broke the world. And never far from the main story is the rebel: John Maynard Keynes, the English economist who became an implacable foe of the orthodoxy that these four men represented in its quintessence. Ahamed begins his story with the convulsions that ripped apart the way economic affairs were managed before World War I. And before these convulsions was

The fall: The New York Exchange on 24 October 1929, also known as ‘Black Thursday’. the first great era of globalization, based on free trade, imperial expansion and the gold standard. Each of these was torn beyond repair during the wanton killing and destruction in Europe between 1914 and 1918. What followed was a series of mistakes, as politicians and financial leaders tried to use the old rules of the game for what was in essence a new world. The first mistake was the decision by the victorious Allies to impose punishing reparations on a defeated Germany, a move that further ruined the country and cleared the way for Hitler and his thugs. Of the many mistakes that followed was the insistence on moving back to the gold standard, an arrangement Keynes had dismissed as a “barbarous relic”. Norman, Strong, Schacht and

Lords of Finance: William Heinemann, 564 pages, £20 (around Rs1,500).

SCIENCE | PATRICIA FARA

Out of reason The luminaries, controversies and gimmicks in the 4,000yearold history of science B Y J ACOB K OSHY jacob.k@livemint.com

···························· o this day, teams of researchers are poring through photographs of Albert Einstein’s brain and its tissue samples to understand how they worked. But Cambridge University professor Patricia Fara in her new book, Science: A Four Thousand Year History, argues that more than unique motor cortexes and rare neurons, it’s clever lobbying, political patronage, self-publicity, plain luck and the occasional lie that often decide which science theory becomes established fact or pseudo science. It is an ambitious attempt at capturing how science has

CONNECTING WITH ‘THE OTHER’

evolved over millennia, and unlike most books of this genre —which typically give a Eurocentric view of science, usually from Aristotle to Galileo, Newton and Einstein—Fara discusses contributions by Islamic and Chinese scholars in inventions such as complex magnetic compasses. The Dark Ages, typically considered a blot in European history when art, literature and science took a back seat, was a flourishing period in China and the Arabic world. Scholars such as Abu Ali al-Husain ibn Sina, whose encyclopaedia on medicine was as important a contribution in the Arab world as Newton’s Principia Mathematica was to Europe, made scientific breakthroughs.

Moreau were at the centre of all this action, and not always in the role of villains, as the title of the book suggests. They did do their best to keep the international financial system working, helped invent the art of modern central banking, were constrained by the rigidities of the gold standard and also saw the need to work together even when their national governments were at daggers drawn (it is called global coordination in our times). Ahamed started writing this book at a time when the Great Depression was a distant memory, almost a curiosity to be studied by economic historians. But the book has been published at a time when the world economy has come dangerously close to a 1930s-style collapse. This gives the book great relevance and it deserves to be read by anybody who has a serious interest in what has happened to the global economy since August 2007. When one sees central bankers pumping trillions of dollars into their economies to avoid a repetition of the 1930s, you know that they are trying to avoid the glaring mistakes made by the four main characters in Ahamed’s book. Bernanke, the foremost contemporary student of the Great Depression, does seem to take his promise to Friedman seriously: “We won’t do it again.” But this book has other attractions as well. I will highlight two in this review. First, it subtly informs us that while monetary

policy is a dry and technical subject, the actions of central bankers have social consequences. Germany’s tryst with hyperinflation in the early 1920s—when a ride in a Berlin street car that cost 1 Deutsche mark before the war eventually cost DM15 billion—helped speculators, companies that had real assets but paper debts, and unionized workers who had indexed salaries. The middle class that had painfully saved money in the bank was wiped out, and all because German central bankers had recklessly printed money. This is a lesson worth remembering at all times: that economic policy helps and harms various groups in different ways. Second, Lords of Finance gives us a wonderful look at a world that now seems quaint. A time when an old boys network ran the world financial system, when information was scarce and when even powerful finance officials who controlled national destinies could take leisurely four-month holidays. It is a world that is a far cry from the meritocratic and workaholic culture of Wall Street and its many variants across the world—but one that is equally prone to hubris and disaster. Niranjan Rajadhyaksha is managing editor, Mint. IN SIX WORDS An old but relevant financial tale

When I first read Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights in high school, I found Heathcliff and Catherine nauseating: Their great love was too close to the romanticism I was then growing out of, and the “metaphysics” of the novel irked the rationalist and teenage agnostic in me. Rereading the novel some years ago, I discovered a new world (and text) altogether. I discovered a work of undoubted genius and immense complexity. Since then I have gone back to the novel once again (in the process of writing a forthcoming book on the Gothic and post-colonialism), and I have come away with my admiration doubled. What is it that makes Wuthering Heights so exceptional? There are many reasons. But for me, Wuthering Heights is essentially about terror, arising from fear of the other. Remember the scene where Lockwood has a nightmare about the dead Catherine, a “waif-ghost”, trying to enter his room from a window unlatched by the storm? Lockwood writes that “terror made me cruel”: He rubs the “creature’s” wrist on the broken glass pane until it bleeds. But still the “ghost” maintains its “tenacious grip”, maddening him with fear. The terror of this scene is intricately connected with displacement. Lockwood is a traveller; Catherine is displaced, banished from her family house and love. Heathcliff, the house’s current owner, is displaced, having usurped the house but only by using the legal and social rules that left him (and Catherine) on the margins. Significantly, Heathcliff’s terrorizing route out of the margins and into brutal power leaves him displaced more deeply—estranged from his “true self”, Catherine, whose “waif-ghost” doesn’t respond to his entreaties. This narrative of terror and otherness is not explicit in the novel; it has to be read between the lines. This is inevitable, AFP given the nature of otherness. In the last count, it is not the narrative power or even the structure of Wuthering Heights that fascinates me, but its tendency to narrate at a tangent. This tendency is lacking in many acclaimed novels, which are premised on excessive transparency, an easy consumption of “stories” floating like dead fish on the surface of the text. Wuthering Heights: A tale of terror.

More Mosley A new novel by Walter Mosley: What more can one want as a summer read? Recipient of the PEN Lifetime Achievement Award and the author of 25 books, Mosley is one of the important American writers of his generation and a major genre writer. His Devil in a Blue Dress is a genre classic, and his Easy Rawlins mysteries (11 novels till date) are the contemporary Black American equivalent of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series. In his latest novel, The Long Fall, Mosley introduces a new detective, a middle-aged coloured man, coping with a splintering marriage and a new conscience. Not very scrupulous as a detective in the past, he gets paid to track down four men, who then start being murdered. In the past, he would not have cared. But personal events have made him face up to his past, and he cannot live with the knowledge. He needs to find out more. But will he be able to? And in the process, will he have the time also to do his duty as a father of three teenagers, at least one of whom seems to be sliding towards crime? Read on, if you like Mosley. Discover him, if you haven’t yet. Tabish Khair is the Bihar-born, Denmark-based author of Filming. Write to Tabish at readingroom@livemint.com

AFP

Rather than glorify the triumvirate of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, she accuses early historians of “selectively highlighting a few brilliant individuals”. Fara argues that unlike today, when science is applied mostly for practical means and commercial research, t h e p e r i o d o f Archimedes and Pythagoras required theories to be elegant, even if they didn’t always fit the facts; it was all right to compile the existing scientific Eureka: Louis Pasteur in his study. knowledge of the time and pass it off as one’s own. Though authorship and attriPtolemy, an influential astrono- bution are the modern-day scienmer, claimed to have invented the tist’s dearest preoccupations, Fara armillary sphere (a mechanical presents accounts from the past. system of interconnected rings to About Louis Pasteur, who is credi l l u s t r a t e h o w t h e p l a n e t s ited as one of the founding fathers r e v o l v e d ) a n d P y t h a g o r a s of microbiology, she says: “...An bequeathed his name to a theo- ambitious, intolerant man, Pasrem, both of which were known to teur was notorious for appropriatBabylonian scholars before them. ing his assistants’ results.”

Science—A Four Thousand Year History: Oxford University Press, 364 pages, Rs795. Fara also cites examples of scientists who used data to validate preconceived ideas. Notable is the incident involving Einstein and Arthur Eddington, an influential Cambridge astronomer. Eddington conducted an experiment during an eclipse to validate Einstein’s results, and it was only after this that Einstein became the celebrity scientist—20 years after his seminal papers on relativity were published. Do established scientists

always give credit where it’s due? No, says Fara, and points fingers at Nobel laureates Francis Crick and James Watson, of DNA-double-helix fame. She says it was Rosalind Frank, who Watson described as a “..badly dressed woman, who refused to wear lipstick and had foolishly intruded into a man’s world..”, who first published photographs of the double helical structure of DNA. And then there’s the myth of scientists as rationalists that Fara shatters. Newton was obsessed with alchemy, and Ernest Rutherford advertised himself as a “modern day alchemist”. This is a fat book, and though aimed at the general reader, certainly isn’t easy reading. Fara stays clear of jargon and trawls through a variety of sources to paint objective portraits of science luminaries. But since her language isn’t riveting, you need to be a serious science history enthusiast to enjoy the book. And yes, a note to Oxford University Press: The tiny font size really doesn’t help.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009

Culture OBITUARY

India’s urbane folklorist PHOTOGRAPHS

COURTESY

THE NATIONAL CENTRE

FOR

PERFORMING ARTS (NCPA) LIBRARY

A FULL LIFE ELICITS RICH PRAISE AND A DISSENTING NOTE

Stylish and pioneering, Habib Tanvir was the grand old man of Indian theatre

B Y P RAGYA T IWARI ···························· ays ago when I spoke with Nageen Tanvir about her father’s health, she said he felt that his time had come. I told her to tell him, it hadn’t. I don’t know if she did, but I was wrong. He lived a full life, worked till his last days, followed his passion to glory and never settled for less than he could dream of. Maybe he could afford to go. But we can ill afford the loss. Tanvir became a legend in his lifetime for his contribution to theatre, but when you watch Agra Bazaar, Charandas Chor and Gaon Ka Naam Sasural Mor Naam Damad, it is unlikely that you will see the weight of the legend—you will only see a thoroughly entertaining play. In a conversation, he once said to me that a director should ideally be invisible. Such was the slickness of his craft that the imprints of his genius would never smudge his work, only illuminate it from within. Similarly, it is not easy to see the extent of theatre’s debt to the man. Post-independence, the country was rife with new ideas, new thoughts and writing. But Indian theatre was in the grip of a colonial hangover, churning out plays that borrowed from English traditions and catered to the rising middle class. In this climate, Tanvir formed his Naya Theatre with wife Moneeka Mishra in 1959. Having trained in India and Europe, Tanvir’s foundations were diverse—but the impact of Bertolt Brecht was singularly important. On his return to the country, Tanvir began his search for a new idiom in theatre. Taking off from the kind of theatre prevalent at the time, he travelled both into the past and the future, to look for ingredients. Bringing together folk artists from his native Chhattisgarh region, he devised a new form incorporating the modern trends of the West. His experimentation didn’t stop at that. Soon he realized that to maximize the potential of his new actors, he must let them speak their own language. He also did away with the formal blocking of movements and plotting of lights, making space for more improvisation. In the second stage of innovation, he

Everyman theatre: Tanvir directs Chhattisgarhi tribals from Bhopal for a performance of Charandas Chor. introduced elements of Pandvani and Nacha, local singing and theatrical traditions, to tell tales by voices as diverse as Shakespeare and Tagore. He didn’t just resurrect a dying art form, he reinvented it. It was not the form alone that benefited. Actors from Tanvir’s troupe were mostly tribals struggling to make ends meet through labour or by tilling the land. Tanvir brought them fame, means of sustenance and most of all, dignity. He took as much as he gave to them. More importantly, he always acknowledged that. Meagre grants from the state and Centre helped him carry on with his artistic mission. But post-Babri Masjid, Tanvir’s Ponga Pandit was attacked by Hindu hardliners. In truth, it was a satire against untouchability that had existed in folk traditions for years before Tanvir picked it up. The government of the time, with its saffron agenda, made him grovel Pioneer: Tanvir was working on his autobiography when he died on 8 June in Bhopal.

for the grant that was his due and finally, abruptly stopped it. When I spoke to him about this, he wasn’t daunted, just quietly determined to fight the system and put forward his ideas for the kind of support theatre in general needs from the government. I saw that trademark quiet determination shake but rarely. Once, a couple of months after his wife’s death, he narrated how he had told a visibly upset troupe to imagine

she was in the chair where she always sat. Then, in a sudden emotional outburst, he cried, “I couldn’t save her”. Moneekadi was a woman of indomitable spirit and energy. The backbone of the group, her efficiency was as remarkable as her kindness and affection. Had she been around, I suspect, Tanvir would have been greedy for more from life. And may have stayed on longer. But even as one grapples with the finality of his exit today, I know that when I remember Habibsaab, I will not instantly recall a legend. I will remember a grand old man—stylish, wry humoured, gentle, with an aura that could envelop you in generous warmth and an old world charm that would make you see they just don’t make men like that any more. Writer, critic and documentary filmmaker, Pragya Tiwari is a friend of the Tanvir family.

he two theatre personalities who have influenced me and my art the most are Badal Sarkar and Habib Tanvir. With Habibsaab, I was fortunate to have spent many, about 50-60, evenings. He would recite Urdu poetry in his sonorous, baritone voice. Now, when I look back, I think he knew every great Urdu poem by heart. I first met him in a place called Sagar in Madhya Pradesh, where I was a college student. He was passing by with his travelling theatre group, performing Charandas Chor with local talent from Chhattisgarh. I was spellbound, and later forged a long relationship with him. He was erudite, but simple enough to understand folk traditions; his sense of humour was wicked and scathing, and he had the fire in his belly to do new things. I cast him in my first film, Yeh Woh Manzil Toh Nahin, and I remember him saying at the shoot, “In the lap of luxury, actors become idiots.” Sudhir Mishra, film-maker

abib Tanvir’s lasting contributions to theatre include the following: 1. He ran a professional theatre company for 50 years. The Naya Theatre was established in 1959. It is not easy to run a theatre company and such dedication is hard to find. 2. He was the quintessential director of modern Indian theatre—he got together the native traditions of Nacha (Chhattisgarhi folk traditions) and fused it with a very modern understanding of Western dramaturgy. 3. As a young man he gravitated towards the Indian People’s Theatre Association in the mid-1940s, and remained committed to progressive and secular causes all his life. 4. The kind of theatrical range he showed was astonishing—from

ancient Sanskrit classical texts, to epics and folk tales, to Shakespeare, Molière and Brecht, to modern Indian playwrights, to the works of Premchand. 5. He worked in several languages, and was equally comfortable in Hindi, Urdu and Chhattisgarhi. 6. He brought the region of Chhattisgarh on to the international map. Sudhanwa Deshpande, theatre actor and director. He directed a documentary film on Habib Tanvir and Naya Theatre

e have lost another giant; in May, Augusto Boal, the Brazilian playwright and director who was associated with the Theatre of the Oppressed, died, and now Habib Tanvir. He was very innovative in the use of the Chhattisgarhi dialect; his actors were real people, very rooted, who expressed themselves physically. It was a refreshing change from the conventional Hindi theatre which was very urbanized or Sanskritized. The kind of theatre that he did will be missed because we have no successor to him. Mahesh Dattani, playwright

saw Habib Tanvir’s Charandas Chor in the last century, and it was riveting. Through Charandas Chor, many theatre practitioners such as myself were able to lead an investigation of what culture is and what modernity is, especially in a country such as ours, wherein centuries of tradition clash with one another. Subsequently, I revisited most of his productions and, as far as I was concerned, they faltered. There was a sense of the faded-jaded about them. Plus, his political alliances in his home state were on a dubious wicket. I interacted with him on three occasions (once in Delhi, once in Bhopal, and once in Mumbai), and I was disappointed to hear his rather uninformed views and dismissive tone about people’s theatre and the working class movement in Mumbai. There are innumerable theatre people who rate him as one of the greats. Other than the first production of Charandas Chor, I didn’t have the opportunity to experience that greatness. Ramu Ramanathan, playwright

CULTURE L17 SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

MUSIC

STALL ORDER

The transformers

NANDINI RAMNATH ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

Merchant brothers Salim and Sulaiman talk OST, geek secrets and maxing their server load for their Emmy nominated score

B Y L ALITHA S UHASINI ···························· t’s a busy day at the studios for Salim and Sulaiman Merchant. They’re wrapping up the background score for Kites, the Hrithik Roshan-Barbara Mori starrer that is slated to release this year. The brothers have been hot property for a decade now, known for their shape-shifting background music and winning soundtracks across an eclectic canvas from Bhoot to Iqbal to Fashion. The Emmy nomination for their score for Nickelodeon’s Wonder Pets: Save The Bengal Tiger, prepped for prime time as a special episode, has given them a global platform. “The whole episode is like a musical opera and we knew this was going to be something special,” says Salim, of the animation show featuring a chick, a turtle and a pup who save endangered animals in every episode. Wonder Pets came along even before Yash Raj’s Roadside Romeo last year, so it turned out to be their maiden score for an animation project. “We had a 30-page script with music for every paragraph. When we started out, it was challenging to figure out how to Indianize it,” adds 38-year-old Sulaiman. So flutes, tablas (but naturally), the sitar and the santoor were incorporated along with vocals, while their Western counterparts in the US were working on adding more classical instruments such as violins, cellos—the works. The composers logged on to iChat and Skype for the next few days to “video conference, re-edit, and correct” and sent all the music online to the studios in the US. “This is the first time that we fully used the potential of the Internet,” says Sulaiman. Salim recalls how schizophrenic it got, with them scoring music for Vipul Shah’s Namaste London simultaneously. “We were pushing the barriers and doing something different, which is why this was so

Brothers grin: Sulaiman (right) and Salim have worked out a harmonious working relationship. fulfilling,” he says of the episode that was wrapped up in 20 days. India, as Salim puts it, is the flavour of the planet. Refashioning music to reach the international audience is an important step, he adds, pointing to the A.R. Rahman-Pussycat Dolls Jai Ho! collaboration. “If you look at iTunes, Indian music is under the World Music genre, while you’ll find Spanish or music from another country have their own category,” Salim says. “Eventually we can give the world our music as it is,” says Sulaiman. The brothers have worked out a pattern over the years. Salim programmes the keys and Sulaiman does the drums. “But we bleed into each other’s space and I might have a rhythm idea or he might have an idea for the keys,” says Salim. The unit is tight—sibling Sulaiman’s easy calm complements Salim’s super-caffeinated energy, and

THEIR HEROES Their big inspirations are Hans Zimmer for his emotive scores, Seal and Sting for their songwriting skills, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for his Sufi magic, electronic whiz BT, producer William Orbit and A.R. Rahman for his pathbreaking music.

while Salim has always been more vocal, Sulaiman now knows how to have his say. This year, they have 13 films lined up for background score alone; 8x10 Tasveer was their first release of the year. “We’re booked till September,” says Salim, sounding incredibly pleased. Kites, they tell us, has a far-out range, from orchestral sounds to flamenco to opera, and Kambakkht Ishq, the Kareena Kapoor-Akshay Kumar starrer with Sylvester Stallone stealing the thunder, has a crazy, spicy soundtrack that includes the Rocky riff. “We have the rights for using it,” Salim adds quickly. The Merchants, if you’ve noticed their background music, love working with silences. “A lot depends on the director and sometimes we have to fight to keep the silences,” says Sulaiman. Salim explains why a director may be wary of keeping it quiet. An intimate scene, say the intense Ash-Hrithik kiss in Dhoom 2 (Salim and Sulaiman scored the background music), could have been destroyed with catcalls in the theatre. “So we find ways to build and balance the intensity on screen even without silences sometimes,” he says. They also have two Yash Raj films in hand this year—Pyaar Impossible, with a “rock/pop sound”, and Rocket

Singh—Salesman of the Year, with Ranbir Kapoor in the lead. “We have an acoustic, unplugged sound planned for Rocket Singh. It’s just an idea right now. We still don’t know how it will be received by Adi (Aditya Chopra) and gang. But it will not be normal,” promises Salim. What’s it like working with some of the biggest directors in the industry? “Adi pushes us the most and is the most vocal, tries to get the sound which is as close to what is in his head,” says Sulaiman. “Karan Johar is an extremely sensitive guy,” says Salim, “He gets into your psyche and gets the work done, which is a beautiful way of working.” Ram Gopal Varma, they tell us, is also completely sure of his music and speaks his mind. “Nagesh (Kukunoor) has his own sensitive approach—he will first show his appreciation and then bring up the ‘but’,” says Sulaiman. Although one film that both composers wish they’d scored for is Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, especially because it seemed like it offered a clean slate and the freedom to experiment. The two are looking forward to a 20-day vacation in the US before the Emmys are announced in August in Los Angeles. “Not together,” says Sulaiman. Holidays are time to get out of each others’ heads.

CULTURE LIST | QUASAR THAKORE PADAMSEE The theatre director talks about his favourite plays over the years AMEET MALLAPUR

hough born to parents steeped in theatre—Dolly Thakore and Alyque Padamsee—the young theatre director Quasar Thakore Padamsee is quick to distance himself from any direct parental influence in his choice of career. Q Theatre Productions (QTP), the production house he launched with friends in 1999, has staged 20 p lay s an d is c urr e n tl y b u sy rehearsing Project S.T.R.I.P., a comic examination of the plight of indigenous people. A theatre veteran of 14 years, the 30-year-old talks about five favourite plays that he has produced and directed. Director’s cut: Q.T. Padamsee.

SPECTACLE CASES

The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail: Being the first play we staged, this play by Jerome Law rence and Robert E. Lee started it all for us and helped estab lish the group. I read

the play in college and it blew my mind. The first to enunciate the con cept of civil disobedience, Henry David Thoreau was very modern for his time.

the Khoja community of Mumbai. It’s a onewoman show about an orphan girl who marries into this wealthy family at age 14 and later becomes its matriarch.

AFP

Lucky One: A British play by Tony

Minorities: We put up three short plays, all of them about the marginali zation of minorities. The first is about a Holocaust survivor. The second, by the Australian playwright Alex Buzo, is about a Pakistani student in the US, and the third is about two students trapped in a toilet in Ahmedabad with the postGodhra riots raging outside. I was feeling vulnerable in Mumbai after the 2002 genocide in Gujarat and this project emerged from there.

Khatijabai of Karmali Terrace: I adapted it from the Singaporean play Emily of Emerald Hill by Stella Kon, and based it on my paternal grandmother, encompassing

Marchant, set in a corporate office which I adapted to Mumbai, it is about four people who have good jobs and are supposedly leading a good life. But actually, they are just pushing paper. I had been working in advertising and had just quit my job, so I could relate to it.

Project S.T.R.I.P: Our current production. I haven’t worked like this before; for five weeks now we have been meeting and rehearsing for 89 hours daily, and developing the script as we go along. Playwright Ram Ganesh Kamatham attends every day, takes notes and writes all night and then we try it out the next day. It’s a heady feeling. Project S.T.R.I.P. will show from 16 June-5 July at the Prithvi Theatre, NCPA Experimental Theatre and Sathaye College auditorium in Mumbai. As told to Himanshu Bhagat

az Luhrmann’s Australia will probably be filed away in the so-silly-it’s-almost-enjoyable category, but it did get me thinking. Not about Hugh Jackman’s torso—I’m more of a Tony Leung person—or about signing up for a tour of Down Under—can’t afford it—but about our very own spectacle cases. Australia, which is being released on DVD next week by Excel Home Video, is the kind of movie that could have been made in Hindi. It’s a grandiloquent film full of widescreen gestures about humanity. In Luhrmann’s notion of the country of his birth, leading men must not only be handsome (and hirsute), but they must also fight for the greater common good. Leading women must be beautiful (and skinny) and cradle half-caste Aboriginal children to their bosoms. Wrong will ultimately be righted and our lovers will ride into a horizon that hasn’t been affected by global warming. We’re well placed to understand Luhrmann’s pursuit. We’ve been drinking in celebrations of the grandness of life for decades. Think of Aan, Naya Daur, Mughal-e-Azam, Mother India, Upkar, Sholay and almost every one of V. Shantaram’s technicoloured escapades. These are movies too big to shrink into a DVD. Their only destiny is to play on a 35mm screen and remind us of cinema’s ability to overwhelm. These days, however, size is defined mostly in relation to money. How much has a movie been sold for? How much has it earned in the first few hours of its release? The bigger question is, how memorable are these movies? Will they survive in public memory the way Mehboob Khan’s Mother India has? However, all is not lost. There remain a few men and women in the industry who can be entrusted with old-school yarns. Rakesh Roshan’s Karan Arjun (1995) is one of the last great masala movies about the triumph of common folk against the powerful. It’s got Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan. It’s got Rakhee, the last great movie mother. It’s got Amrish Puri, the last great kohl-eyed and moustache-twirling personification of evil. Roshan retains a canny ability to make unselfconscious entertainers with something for every member of the family, such as Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai, Koi...Mil Gaya and Krrish. Farah Khan and Raju Hirani have innovated with big-hearted Bollywood-style storytelling. Khan’s Main Hoon Na packs together a family drama, a celebration of good over evil and a plea for Indo-Pak peace. Contained in Om Shanti Om is a movie

Grand dame: Kidman in Australia, a Bollywoodesque saga. about the movies, with elaborate song sequences and Bollywood character types such as weeping mothers, pitch-black villains, faithful sidekicks and ultra-feminine heroines. Hirani’s Munnabhai movies feature modern avatars of the simple and good-natured characters seen in the works of Frank Capra and Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Sanjay Leela Bhansali shares Farah Khan’s love for the Bollywoodian emotional arc, but his less-than-sunny disposition prevents him from enjoying his own excesses. Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Devdas held out the promise that old stories could survive with new costumes and sets and improved lighting. Black and Saawariya banished sunlight and respect for audiences and replaced them with darkness and contempt. Karan Johar also loves bigness, but he equally adores froth. Now froth evaporates. Johar is fine as long as he makes Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, but his sole attempt to get adult about life resulted in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. He’s far better off than poor Subhash Ghai, whose Yaadein and Yuvvraaj compare badly to his gloriously kitschy romps Ram Lakhan and Khal Nayak. If there’s one director we can always rely on to expose several feet of film in pursuit of the spectacle, it’s Ashutosh Gowariker. Gowariker’s Lagaan (2001) took us back to Naya Daur days and reminded us that once upon a time in Hindi cinema, it was all about sinking your differences for the good of your country. Gowariker followed it up with the patriotic Swades and the costume drama Jodhaa Akbar. He’s wrapped up a romantic comedy, What’s Your Raashee?, which opens later this year. However, we can safely predict that Gowariker will soon return to make a movie that lumbers on for over 3 hours and tests the audience’s ability to reconnect with a kind of storytelling that’s all but vanishing. Nandini Ramnath is film editor, Time Out Mumbai. (www.timeoutmumbai.net). Write to Nandini at stallorder@livemint.com

L18 FLAVOURS SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

DELHI’S BELLY | MAYANK AUSTEN SOOFI

TRAVELLING TIFFIN

MARRYAM H RESHII

Intellectuals and watery coffee PHOTOGRAPHS

SPICE IT WITH MYSTERY

MAYANK AUSTEN SOOFI

Caffeine chatter: (above) A waiter at the Indian Coffee House; for regulars it’s an easy place to unwind with friends.

Run by a Sovietera organization and plagued by contro versy, the Indian Coffee House needs a drastic makeover in order to survive

Are you aware that all revolutions came out of coffee houses? Ashok Jain A regular visitor since 1957

he 52-year-old Indian Coffee House in Connaught Place may be shutting down. About a fortnight ago, a national daily broke the news in this oh-tragedy-is-so-beautiful headline: “The coffee aroma is fading away”. The report described the coffee house, situated on the third floor of the rundown Mohan Singh Place shopping complex, as a “thinking man’s favourite haunt”. It is not certain that the coffee shop will actually close. The place is plagued by controversy. The management, run by a Soviet-era organization called the Indian Coffee Workers Cooperative Society, claims the coffee shop is not making enough money. However, quite a few regulars have rejected this argument. Along with charges of financial irregularities, they have accused the cooperative of no longer wanting to run the show. The rumour is that this prime location could be leased to McDonald’s or some such fast-food chain. Another version suggests that it was the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) that asked the cooperative to pay the dues and shut shop. But why so much fuss? After all, this is a rather shabby coffee house frequented by retired old men. Just look at the three sitting areas here—an inside hall, a corridor and a terrace. In the summer, no pedestal fans are provided outside. The corridor, too, remains muggy; there are three manholes just next to it. In the hall, the windows and ventilators are forever closed, fans move slowly, sofas are torn and there are no curtains. “We

may as well die of asthma,” says Naresh Gupta, a retired government employee who has been coming to the coffee house for 20 years. “It’s as stuffy as Tihar jail.” Then what brings him here? “This is something we cannot answer,” says Gupta, sitting with his three friends. Indeed, quite a few regulars confess that they don’t come here for food, which is “just ok”; not even for the coffee, which has “become too watery.” It is probably just a habit for them. “Indian Coffee House has a sociocultural significance,” explains Gupta, “It’s a necessity, a home away from home.” S.K. Mathur, a regular since 1976, fears that if the place closes, it might mean the end of their friends circle too. But if, say, McDonald’s opens in its place, couldn’t they still gather here? “The Indian Coffee House is an institution; it has helped in formulating social and political opinions in the country; it used to be frequented by intellectuals,” says Gupta. “A fast-food joint can’t replace that.” “You know, M.F. Husain would come here,” snaps another gentleman, refusing to give his name. Gupta points out, “Even Lonely Planet has mentioned Indian Coffee House in its India guidebook.” Soon, another regular joins the adda. Ashok Jain has been coming to the coffee house almost daily since 1957. Back then, the café used to be in what is now Palika Bazaar. Later, it moved to Janpath and then shifted to its present site at Mohan Singh Place in 1975. “Are you aware that all

revolutions came out of coffee houses?” Jain asks as he sprawls on the sofa. “Yes, he’s right,” nods the unnamed gentleman. “In 1975, the news of the Emergency first broke out here in this coffee house, even before Indira Gandhi could’ve made an official announcement.” “But why would you care?” he notes sullenly, staring at the slow-moving ceiling fan. “Imagine, they banned smoking in the entire coffee house!” “See, this is how the management is killing the place,” Mathur shakes his head slowly. “In Europe, they even allow people to smoke marijuana in cafés.” Will the coffee shop really close? “No, no, no,” Jain exclaims, his arms flaying. “It’s a conspiracy by some members of the cooperative and we will not let it happen”—a hint at another revolution. Mathur adds, “We’ve met the chief minister; she has said that the coffee house will stay.” In fact, these regulars are also members of an organization called Coffee Consumers Forum, which has sent a letter to Sonia Gandhi urging her that “the Cultural and Intellectual hub of the country be saved and in the meantime the Registrar of Cooperative Societies, Parliament Street, New Delhi & the Joint Secretary Registrar, Agriculture & Cooperation Department, Agriculture Ministry, Krishi Bhawan, New Delhi to dissolve the Indian Coffee Workers Cooperative Society Limited and appoint an administrator”. Somewhere in this bureaucratic gibber jabber, this appears to be a last-ditch effort to turn back the clock and make the coffee house what it once was—a Parisian-style café where writers, painters, musicians, philosophers and politicians engaged in verbal duels, where the sofas were not torn, where the china was not chipped, where windows weren’t closed, where the coffee wasn’t weak, where there were not one but two air coolers. “Each evening, we gather here,” observes Gupta, “and leave only when the waiter comes at 8pm to switch off the lights.” Adds Mathur, “We have nowhere else to go... nowhere to unwind.” Write to lounge@livemint.com

he first time I heard about the mystery spice must have been about 10 years ago. I had just started writing about food when a young chef from Taj Coromandel, Chennai, came visiting Delhi for a Chettinad food festival. He showed me the spices necessary to make the iconic Chettinad chicken, and there it was, nestled amid cinnamon sticks and coriander seeds. Kalpasi—for that is what the spice is called in Tamil—looked like lichen and that is exactly what it turned out to be, but it took me a decade to find out. Back then, the chef admitted to unsuccessfully spending hours in the botany department library of the University of Madras to try and discover an English equivalent of the spice. To say that I was fascinated would be a gross understatement. I had never set eyes on kalpasi, had no idea what it tasted like, and was blown away by the concept of a mystery ingredient. Since then, I’ve encountered kalpasi regularly, but I still think of it as the elusive spice. It is only a few people who knowingly use it; show the vast majority of people a sample, and they’ll rub their eyes in disbelief. Though spice sellers habitually add it to various spice mixes, those buying them are usually unaware that kalpasi is part of the blend. In Maharashtra, where it is called dagad phool, it is vital to Goda masala, the quintessentially Brahmin spice mix. In Uttar Pradesh, it is called patthar ka phool and is used by Lucknow’s chefs in potli masala. In an extremely well-known spice factory in western India, I came across a bag of dagad phool in the laboratory. Apparently, it went into their garam masala, but for some reason that I couldn’t quite figure out, they didn’t want word to get around: It certainly wasn’t in the photograph that is on the package of their garam masala. So, exactly what does this spice taste like? That’s the thing: It has no taste of its own, but adds a deep, dark, mysterious quotient to whatever food it flavours. Once you’ve identified it, you can pick out its flavour from a dozen different spices. When I started to research the all-India uses of kalpasi, no spice dealer seemed to know where it came from. I’d heard that it was cultivated on a farm in Madurai by a friend of a friend, that it grows on the insides of wells in Lucknow, and that rocks partially submerged in the sea grow it over time. Then, a helpful friend introduced me to S.K. Subramanian of Madurai, who had done his doctoral thesis on lichens (or kalpasi in Tamil). Through Subramanian, I discovered that lichens are an important indicator of atmospheric purity: They won’t grow when the air is polluted. They require a slight elevation above sea level, which is why Ooty and Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu are important catchment areas for the spice.

Enhancer: Lichen or kalpasi adds that elusive edge to spice mixes.

Chicken Pepper Fry Serves 1 Ingredients 200g chicken (boneless) 50g onion (large) 30ml refined oil 1 tsp turmeric powder 1 tsp red chilli powder 2 tsp coriander powder ½ tsp garam masala powder ½ tsp black pepper powder 10-12 fresh curry leaves 2 green chillies 2 tsp ginger-garlic paste 5 tsp fresh coriander Salt to taste For tempering 4 cloves 3 green cardamom ½ tsp kalpasi 1-inch cinnamon stick ½ tsp fennel (saunf) Method Cut the chicken pieces into dices, wash with several changes of water. Wash the curry leaves. Chop the fresh coriander and onion finely. Heat oil in a pan and add the cloves, green cardamom, cinnamon and fennel. Saute and then add the kalpasi. Stir it for some time and add the ginger-garlic paste. Add the chopped onion and cook until evenly golden brown. Put in the chicken pieces and cook them until half-done. Add salt and turmeric and after a couple of minutes put in the red chilli powder, coriander powder and green chillies. When the masala is cooked, add the garam masala and black pepper powder. Finally, add the fresh curry leaves and cook until the chicken is done. Garnish with freshly chopped coriander. Recipe courtesy Suddha Kukreja, Ignis restaurant, New Delhi. Write to Marryam at travellingtiffin@livemint.com www.livemint.com Every Monday, catch Cooking With Lounge, a show with video recipes from wellknown chefs, at www.livemint.com/cookingwithlounge