lounge for 15 jan 2011 updated by HT Media

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Saturday, January 15, 2011

Vol. 5 No. 3

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH GLOBOSPORT’S MAHESH BHUPATHI >Page 6

CROSSOVER INTELLECTUALS Two winners of the 2010 Infosys Prize tell us about their journeys and what it means to be a public intellectual in India >Page 8

TO DRESS WELL, SHOP LIKE A MAN

In the 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index, India is where it was 15 years ago. Does that mean we are culturally inclined to be a corrupt nation? >Page 10

Women can learn how to shop for both comfort and quality from men. The first step: Start from the inside out >Page 9

‘RAHUL GANDHI IS A SYMPTOM’ The 2010 Commonwealth Games organized in New Delhi were marred by charges of largescale corruption.

THE GOOD LIFE

PIECE OF CAKE

SHOBA NARAYAN

WHEN MAMMA ROCKS THE FLOOR

ave you ever been embarrassed by your parents? I confess that I have. The time when I was 18, for instance, and my father came searching for me at Mardi Gras (IIT Madras’ annual cultural festival). There I was, acting cool around those IIT guys. When my dad showed up to take me back home, the smoky independence that I affected came crashing down. Now, of course, my kids are embarrassed by me. The last time this happened was this past New Year’s Eve. >Page 4

CULT FICTION

PAMELA TIMMS

ARE YOU A ‘LOCAVORE’?

R. SUKUMAR

Author Patrick French on his new book on postliberalization India and his deep interest in Hindutva >Page 14

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

WHEN SILENCE SPEAKS IN COMICS

PHOTO ESSAY

GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS

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

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (MANAGING EDITOR)

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

HOME PAGE L3

SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

LOUNGE REVIEWS Le Pain Quotidien, Colaba, Mumbai

After a long delay, this Belgian bakery chain has opened its doors to Mumbai—and what a welcome it received. There wasn’t a table empty at lunch on the second day of the opening. South Mumbai’s glamour set came for a first dekko. The wooden interiors, reminiscent of bread crust, could transport you to a European fantasy on a busy Colaba street. A standardized chain rarely exudes such character. It was pure pleasure walking in to the aroma and sight of freshly baked bread loaves on wooden shelves. A wooden cabinet with jars of paté, fruit preserves and chocolate spreads stood nearby, and on a marble-top counter, in a glass enclosure, rested muffins and fruit tarts. The restaurant brings its signature long tables, meant to evoke a com-

munal dining culture—those who come in with a newspaper for company can break bread with other guests at the table.

The good stuff The split-level eatery has individual tables but it’s quite likely that you will be directed to the communal table if you walk in during peak meal hours. Don’t think you have walked into the wrong restaurant if you spot Indigo Deli’s manager here. He has moved across the street and you can expect a warm welcome if he remembers you as a regular there. The service, efficient and attentive, is actually one of the best features here. The selection of wheat, rye, fivegrain baguettes and brioches is baked daily. Expect the freshest supply at breakfast. You will be introduced to the variety right at the entrance. When the bread basket arrived on our table, we realized

the breads were as “hearty and wholesome, with a firm slice and a good crust”, as the restaurant’s founder, Alain Coumont, intended. The climax to our meal was just as good. I mention dessert first because the apple crumble was inarguably the best thing we ate there—warm, wonderfully crumbly and fragrant with cinnamon. The crust cracked under slight pressure and the piquant apples and sweet raisins were a perfect pair to the buttery crust. Before that came the tartines or triangles of bread with toppings. Squeeze some lemon on the smoked salmon tartine for a juicy bite. Among the hot dishes, the blue cheese polenta rates high. The polenta was creamy, with the subtle flavour of the sharp cheese, and was served with sautéed mushrooms and fresh green salad. Wash it down with the in-house mint lemonade. Seafood lovers can go for the subtly flavoured grilled salmon that’s served over a layer of porridge-like creamy potato purée.

The notsogood With avocado and fresh greens, the prawn salad was a perfect mix of smooth and crunchy in every tangy bite. But the prawns were too soft and mealy, so we ignored it for the most part. The tenderloin steak was good but lacked the heartiness of the medium-rare meat served across the street. The Quiche Vegetarienne reminded me of airline meals and the crème brûlée tasted eggy and flat. The communal tables were packed, but might defeat the purpose till people take to the concept—chairs were moved closer to friends and backs subtly turned to fellow diners.

Talk plastic The salads and tartines start at `275. The hot dishes are priced `350 onwards and the desserts, at `175. Rachana Nakra

HTC 7 Mozart Baked delights: Le Pain Quotidien is a breadlover’s paradise.

inbox

Write to us at lounge@livemint.com RIGHT NOTES I really loved Shoba Narayan’s “Robert Parker is obsolete, wine is in vogue”, 8 January. This will help wine lovers break free from the shackles of wine ratings. Wine ratings are not completely misleading but to blindly follow them is not advisable as individual tastes matter most. As rightly indicated, the notion of expensive wines being perceived to be better has to change. In the Indian market, people often gift imported wines priced at `1,500 rather than a `600 Indian version just because it’s imported—they don’t realize that it may actually be a 50cent wine of poor character (it’s the taxes and duties that inflate the price). As I always say, “The best wine in the world is the one you like, it may cost `100 or a million, doesn’t matter.” AJIT BALGI

SELECTOR’S CHOICE Unfortunately, I see about a dozen articles such as Shoba Narayan’s “Robert Parker is obsolete, wine is in vogue”, 8 January, a week. The main problem is, they are just too generic. For example, were the wines selected (for the study) offered at their best time for drinking? Cheaper wines are usually made with immediate consumption in mind whereas many expensive wines are made to be consumed in 10, 20 or 30 years’ time, therefore making them less pleasant when drunk early. A small factor like this could greatly vary the results of any tasting. Everyone wants to criticize the ratings system but the fact is, the general public needs some indicator. Wines vary so much that it makes it impossible to select something you will like when faced with a wall of wines that are unfamiliar. So what is the alternative? Articles like this would have you believe that the best option is to close your eyes, spin three times, point at a wine and then select the one bottle to the left and one shelf up! Then just pray that you will like it! DEAN ASLIN ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP

I’ll say this right up front: Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s shiny new mobile operating system is, in certain use cases, more beautiful, more elegant and more intuitive than the iPhone. This is not an attentiongrabbing opener. Microsoft’s Metro

The capacitive touch screen is responsive (pinch-zoom works like a charm) and the 1 Ghz processor buzzing underneath ensures everything zips. Windows Phone 7 is an utter joy to use for everyday tasks. The basics are all spot on. Syncing contacts was a breeze, and the Email and Office integration (you can create and edit Word and Excel documents) is excellent (special mention must be made of OneNote, Microsoft’s note-taking service). The onscreen keyboard is second only to the iPhone. The Zune app is a great music player, and its desktop client (featuring more of that Metro UI) even syncs music wirelessly. More than functionality, it’s worth mentioning just how smooth and fast everything operates. There’s nary a hint of sl ow dow n, a nd the screens drop away and reappear with animations you’ll watch again and again.

The notsogood Calling in: The HTC 7 Mozart looks striking. interface, full of primary colours and stark typography, is a bold reimagining of what mobile interfaces can be like, and a fantastic gauntlet thrown at the feet of Apple’s dominant design aesthetic. With that out of the way, let’s talk about the HTC 7 Mozart. HTC’s recently launched phone is among the first Windows Phones available in India. The Mozart, with its 8-megapixel, flash-endowed camera and anodized aluminium exoskeleton, is an excellent piece of engineering. However, Microsoft is yet to open the Windows Phone 7 marketplace in India. What that means is that there is really no way of downloading apps, updating software or syncing your notes with the Internet (more on that later). The company estimates that activating the marketplace will take anywhere between a month and a quarter. Unfortunately, this affects the phone in a significant, deal-breaking manner—making it, at present, only tenuously a smartphone.

The good The Mozart’s looks are striking, and the phone’s crisp 3.7-inch WVGA display is just the right size. Voice and call quality is excellent, and the onboard speakers are adequately loud.

On the hardware front, the 8-megapixel camera performs badly in low light. Most pictures appear slightly washed out and the onboard camera doesn’t allow you to fiddle with the settings too much. On the software side, the bundled Bing Maps have poor detail for Indian cities and are next to useless for navigation. The current build of the software is missing some odd basics—you can’t save SMS drafts and there’s no quickfire way of switching Wi-Fi or Bluetooth on and off. Multitasking is limited and there’s no copy-paste. But all these are minor concerns in front of the big bogey—the lack of marketplace functionality. The inability to download apps destroys this phone. Even syncing your OneNote notes is not possible, which is utterly maddening.

Talk plastic The Mozart is priced interestingly at `26,490. It’s a lovely phone on many counts, and the Windows Phone software is a fantastic piece of work. But in its present state, this is not a smartphone. It’s a glorified dumbphone with restrained functionality that dissipates an otherwise easy recommendation. As much as it’s a joy to use, the Mozart is, heartbreakingly, just not ready yet. Krish Raghav

L4 COLUMNS SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

When your mamma rocks the floor

ave you ever been embarrassed by your parents? I confess that I have. The time when I was 18, for instance, and my father came searching for me at Mardi Gras (IIT Madras’ annual cultural

festival). There I was, acting cool around those IIT guys. When my dad showed up to take me back home, the smoky independence that I affected came crashing down. Now, of course, my kids are embarrassed by me. The last time this happened was this past New Year’s Eve. We were three generations—my brother’s family, mine, and my parents—and decided to make a night of it at the ITC Royal Gardenia’s year-end bash. The situation was ripe for embarrassment. The kids were dressed in slinky strapless numbers and stiletto heels. The middle generation did our best with blazers or dresses, ties or scarves. And then there was my mother. It was her first New Year’s “out on the tiles”, as Bertie Wooster would say, and she looked beautiful in her pink Kanjeevaram sari, bright red bindi, diamond nose ring and earrings to match. But was she dressed appropriately for a New Year’s Eve party? Frankly, I thought not. I wondered if the evening would work. I wondered if my parents would feel out of place amid the party-hopping crowd. And truth be told, I wished that my parents, particularly my mother, were Goan—equally at ease in a Western or Indian milieu; able to carry off a dress or a sari; able to hold a drink or two without being fastidious, judgemental or ignorant about it. My mom drinks champagne, wrinkles her nose, and

says: “Too tart. Give me some pineapple juice.” When my daughter and niece dragged my mom to the dance floor, the most unexpected thing happened. Four hunky guys gravitated towards her. I couldn’t understand it. There was my mom doing her Bharatanatyam-like steps to a pumped-up version of Kajra Re, and these four guys surrounded her—shaking their shoulders, waving their hands, dancing Kajra Re like it ought to be danced. My mom was doing a Madhubala or Vyjayanthimala version of it. I mean, you can’t do Madhubala to remixed Bollywood rap. Doesn’t work. But it seemed like they couldn’t get enough of her. Were they missing their mothers? Was this some sort of Oedipal complex playing out on New Year’s Eve? Why were they dancing with my mom instead of all the lovely young women in little black dresses? Who would have thought? Certainly didn’t happen at SOB’s in New York. You see those handsome guys dancing with your grandmother and making her feel part of the evening, I told my children. That’s the beauty of India. It is called filial piety and it is common in Asian cultures, particularly Korea and China… But they were gone to Rise Up, to Yves Larock. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world slept, and those of us gyrating at the Gardenia rose to claim

Family tree: We’re often a reflection of our parents, as in the movie Meet the Fockers. the remaining champagne, not wholly or in full measure, but whatever was left, we hugged each other and shook hands with perfect strangers. Two of the strangers who had been dancing with my mom fell at her feet to get her blessing. Right there amid the smoke machine and surround sound. This is India, I thought. Would not have happened at Moulin Rouge. I doubt if grandmothers frequented Moulin Rouge on New Year’s Eve anyhow. Or five-year-olds, who were also present on the dance floor that night. I asked one of the young men who was dancing with my mom who he was. His name was Harsha, he said, and he was a Kannada film actor. I didn’t recognize him but his muscular, clean-cut demeanour did indicate “hero” material. The man he

was dancing with was a producer, he said, but he looked far too young. I asked them if I could be an extra in one of their movies, which, after being a stand-up comic, is one of my life goals. They were noncommittal. My dad danced too, but his moves mostly involved clapping his hands in time to a song he had never heard: Pappu can’t Dance, Saala. Do you think I can have another Bloody Mary, he asked me? You know you are all grown up when your dad asks you for permission for a second drink. Why are we embarrassed by the people we love? I don’t mean occasions where our loved ones do something inappropriate—your brother or sister shows up drunk to a funeral; as it happens oftentime in the movies; or your child spills her milk

on your host’s new sofa. Those are embarrassing situations. I mean those instances when we are embarrassed not by what our dear ones did but because of who they are, or seem to be. This happens frequently to immigrants settled abroad. Children in the UK or the US are embarrassed when their parents come to parent-teacher meetings, their Indianness making them acutely different from the white parents. It happens here too. You are discussing Raza and Iqbal with some long-haired artsy types over Suleimani chai at Prithvi Theatre. Your clean-cut spouse shows up in a business suit and tie. Do you squirm? Why? Is it because of who he is or because of who you are trying to be? You invite your friends to brunch at Olive—strappy sundresses, champagne, antipasti, the usual. Your beloved mausi (aunt) appears in her Kota sari Gujarati style, with her wide smile and broken English, wanting to make sure that “all you youngsters eat properly”. Do you squirm? Why? Is it because of who your mausi is, who your friends are, or because of who you are? Every now and then, however, our loved ones surprise us. You take your dad to a snooty friend’s Page 3 party and instead of being sidelined as an old-timer, he is serenaded. He becomes the life of the party. And try as you might, you cannot stop grinning. Shoba Narayan was grinning on New Year’s Eve. And trying to elbow out four guys to dance with her mom. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shobanarayan

THINKSTOCK

LEARNING CURVE

GOURI DANGE

LOOK BEYOND THE LIES My 11-year-old has begun to lie a lot. While he lies about things that could get him into trouble, what worries me is that he also lies when he doesn’t need to. Sometimes it becomes quite elaborate and convoluted. To add to it, his 13-year-old sister catches him out, literally playing detective. I have tried to let some of his lies pass, but she simply will not. How do I deal with both of them? One, I want to get him to stop lying, and two, I want her to let it go and not play judge-jury with him. Okay, you have a bit of a double whammy to deal with. Quite naturally, your older child

feels that “something has to be done” about her brother’s lying, as she has a well-developed sense of truth and falsehood—something we want our children to possess. However, as an adult, you must be aware that you have to let some of those whoppers go past, else you end up “catching out” and “cross-examining” him all the time. First, let’s talk about your son’s lying. Children lie, as you said, to cover up mistakes and faults, but they lie also as part of an evolving inner universe—this is where the convoluted stories come from. They’re discovering new things in the outside world, THINKSTOCK

Let go: Make light of some of your child’s lies.

and somehow want to make it their own. So, for instance, one 10-year-old who was fascinated with the circus would routinely tell people that she had “an uncle” in the circus. Or that her “friend’s uncle” was in the circus, or that an aunt could tame lions, etc. It’s all part of discovering the outer world and wanting to “own” part of it. It’s something that will pass, I can assure you. So you have to pick which of the tall tales you will let go and which of them you will laughingly tell him are lies he should stop telling. If you keep trying to “get to the bottom” of each lie, it just turns into a catch-me-if-you-can game with the child, which is exhausting for you. You could also sometimes give him a “ya, right” kind of look, which says that you don’t believe him. Ignoring also helps a child realize that the stories are not getting him anywhere. Another thing is that you could lead your child to take this “lying” and weave it into stories, perhaps for children a little younger than him. This way, you signal that his claims are in the area of falsehood, but can be taken to the level of make-believe and become a healthier activity. As for your daughter, you would need to take her aside and tell her that you are aware that he’s lying, and that you’re dealing with it in your own way. Assure her that you are not taken in by his stories—her concern must be that he’s “getting away” with the tall claims. Do reiterate to her that you need her help in handling this, and she should not jump on him each time if you are to steer him away from this habit.

Perhaps then she will not feel that she has to police him all the time. My 15-year-old son is extremely dependent on my wife and wants her around all the time. I travel a lot, so she is the more hands-on parent, but now that I see other boys his age, I feel he is turning into a real mama’s boy. Sometimes I feel he’s simply using her not only as an emotional crutch but also as a secretary-driver. She does his project work for him, way beyond just helping; she goes for haircuts with him; she even buys his clothes and underclothes. I have tried to bring this up with them but both say “we don’t mind, so what’s your problem?”. Isn’t this unhealthy? What can I do about it? You seem to have become quite an outsider in this equation—a predicament that many travel-for-work dads face. In your home, things seem to have overtaken you in a way, and now you find yourself being firmly told to “mind your own business”! Perhaps your son needed you to be more involved and hands-on, but that does not seem to have happened. The cocoon is so complete, currently, between mother and son that you are finding it difficult to be heard and taken seriously. This is not a great position to be in for you as a father, and also for your son, where he has had such sketchy access to you as a parent. You seem to be mainly a provider, and not a parent right now, to him as well as to your wife. However, that does not mean you don’t have a say in what you may see as a parenting

Pampered: After an age, being a ‘mama’s boy’ is not appropriate. issue that needs addressing. There are many such families, where the roles are sharply etched, and while this may work on many counts, it is precisely situations like this that quite urgently and seriously need the emotional perspective and intervention of the father. While your wife and son seem to be comfortable in this co-dependence—she feels needed and indispensable and he feels mollycoddled and cosseted—you have rightly felt that this is not appropriate and needs to change. How do you go about intervening? First, you need to be more present in your son’s life on a daily basis. You would have to find ways to do this, ideally by cutting down on travel, or at least start by being in daily contact with him. Also, when you are in town, perhaps you can schedule things so that you gently but firmly take some of his mother’s chores away from her and do them yourself—you can take him shopping for his underclothes,

and you can make it clear that it’s just not on that he goes with his mother any more. The argument that “it’s been done this way up to now, so why change anything” does not hold, because he is a young male now, and that’s the simple reason why his mom can’t and shouldn’t be doing this kind of stuff for him. Second, get involved and find out how much of his school work he is simply being lazy about because he has secretary-mom to do it for him. Find ways to get involved in a loving and sensitive way, and avoid labelling him a sissy or mama’s boy. Simply get on with reworking your way systematically and meaningfully into your boy’s life, and also getting your wife to let go of him in some key areas of his daily routine and general needs. Gouri Dange is the author of ABCs of Parenting. Write to Gouri at learningcurve@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 2011

Eat/Drink PHOTOGRAPHS

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

PIECE OF CAKE

PAMELA TIMMS

Are you a ‘locavore’? The ubiquitous ‘gajar ka halwa’ adds a deeply satisfying richness to English muffins

ne of my resolutions for 2011 is to join the “locavores”, an international foodie movement urging people to eat food produced “within a leisurely day’s drive of home”. The unpredictable nature of road travel in India notwithstanding, I’m willing to do my bit to reduce the environmental impact of our increasingly globalized food industry; pledging to eat more seasonally and locally and cut out obscenely priced imports. In the US and Europe, locavorism has led to an upsurge in farmers’ markets, and even supermarket giants urging customers to “buy local”. Here, in India, most people have never been anything but locavores, relying on the local sabziwallah to bring whatever is picked on the farm that morning, but I have noticed a creeping trend towards winter mangoes and year-round salad. The science and politics of it all are endlessly debatable but eating local food feels right to me. Beans and peas that arrive on the ghoda gaadi (horse cart) in my neighbourhood every day look and taste far better than those which have been on a dusty truck from Bangalore or a fuel-guzzling plane from Kenya. I’m kicking off today by turning the beautiful red desi carrots which are in season right now, into these magnificent muffins, using everyone’s winter favourite, gajar ka halwa (carrot halwa). The process for making muffins differs from other sponge cakes in the mixing of ingredients. Whereas a cupcake is generally made by first creaming the sugar and butter, muffins require the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients to be mixed separately before gently folding

A dash of orange: (clockwise from left) Take care not to overmix the batter; the dry and wet ingredients should be mixed separately; be gentle while spooning the batter into the moulds; and serve fresh from the oven.

the two mixtures together. The most important thing to remember when making muffins is not to over-mix, stir only until you can’t see the flour. The batter should look fairly lumpy when it goes into the oven—this is what keeps the muffins light. If you want to skip the egg, just add a little more milk. The result here is a rich, spicy, creamy marvel; locavore-ish without an ounce of holier-than-thou preachiness. The muffins hint at carrot cake but the halwa gives them a tantalizing and mysterious depth. The carrots are local; I’ve used oil and milk rather than my usual imported unsalted butter and the kwark (Dutch curd cheese) in the icing which is from the innovative Flanders Dairy outside Delhi. Baby steps, I admit—I’m not milling my own flour just yet and this week’s adventure in butter churning was a fiasco—but a start.

Warm spirits When toasty seems more appealing than chilled, sip on one of these cocktails B Y R ACHANA N AKRA rachana.n@livemint.com

···························· ith the end of the festive season, the Eggnog has been replaced by the Bonfire. “The name Bonfire immediately reminds you of winter,” says Raj Khan Pathan, bar supervisor of Aer at the Four Seasons Hotel Mumbai, when talking about the season’s most popular cocktail on his menu. This cocktail, poured from a teapot, is fragrant and comforting, he says. Pathan prefers to make his warm cocktails with dark spirits and has mixed Scotch with

Muffins need to be eaten on the day you make them, ideally still a little warm. I can’t think of a good reason not to eat a whole batch of these muffins at one sitting but if you do, freeze them, un-iced, until you need them. At the risk of teaching grannies to suck eggs, I’m also including my recipe for carrot halwa, although you could, if pressed, use shop-bought. I’ve added walnuts because that’s the nut usually found in carrot cake but you could also use pistachios or almonds.

Carrot Halwa (Gajar ka Halwa) Ingredients Kkg red, desi carrots 1 litre full-cream milk 6 dessertspoons caster sugar (or to taste) 4 dessertspoons ghee Seeds of 4 green cardamom (elaichi) pods, ground

Assam tea for Bonfire. Deepak Singh Koranga, bartender at Wink, Mumbai, says requests for warm cocktails are at an all-time high now, especially from those who come in with the sniffles. Concoctions with rum, cognac, brandy, Scotch, vodka, spices and liqueurs make for some exciting options to sip on this winter. Four bar managers give us their signature mixes.

A handful of sultanas A handful of chopped walnuts 100g khoya (milk solids), finely grated Method Finely grate the carrots and place in a thick-bottomed pan. Add the milk and bring to a boil over medium heat until the milk has evaporated and the carrots are soft and dry. Stir regularly so the carrots don’t stick to the pan. This can take an hour or so. Add the sugar and ghee and cook again until the sugar has dissolved and the carrots are bright reddish orange. Stir in the cardamom, sultanas and walnuts and leave to cool slightly before stirring in the khoya.

Carrot Halwa Muffins Makes about 12 large muffins Ingredients 250g plain flour (maida)

15ml lime juice 45ml Assam tea 15ml honey Method Take a Boston glass, add mint leaves and muddle well. Add Grand Marnier, Scotch,

For cream cheese frosting 50g cream cheese or kwark 100g sifted icing sugar A squeeze of lemon juice Method Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Line a large muffin tin with paper muffin cases. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt

Aer, Four Seasons Hotel, Mumbai

lime juice and honey. Stir well. Add Assam tea, ensure it is hot, stir well again and double-strain in a cognac glass.

Ingredients 45ml vanilla-flavoured vodka 15ml Grand Marnier 45ml hot chocolate

Hot Buttered Rum

Method Mix all the ingredients together and serve in a Martini glass.

Dome, InterContinental Marine Drive, Mumbai

Grand Chocolat ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

Write to Pamela at pieceofcake@livemint.com

For a slide show on how to make muffins, log on to www.livemint.com/muffins.htm Read Pamela’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/pieceofcake

Method Place the butter, sugar and cinnamon at the bottom of an Irish coffee glass and mix well. Pour in the rum and hot water, and serve.

Ingredients 45ml Scotch 15ml Grand Marnier A few mint leaves

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

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Ingredients 60ml dark rum 1 tsp soft butter 1 tsp brown sugar 1 stick ground cinnamon 125ml hot water

Bonfire

Cheers: Hot buttered rum; and (extreme right) Bonfire.

1 tsp baking powder K tsp salt 1 tsp ground cinnamon 1 egg 1 tsp vanilla extract 100ml milk 100ml sunflower oil 100g vanilla or caster sugar 400g carrot halwa

and cinnamon. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the egg with the vanilla, milk and sunflower oil. Stir in the sugar. Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ones and stir gently until there is no visible flour. For the last few strokes, lightly stir in the carrot halwa until the mixture is just combined. Gently spoon the mixture into the paper cases. Bake for about 20 minutes, until the surface of the muffins springs back when pressed. For the cream cheese icing, beat together the cream cheese, icing sugar and lemon juice until soft but not runny. When the muffins are cool, spread a generous teaspoonful of icing on top.

Wink, Vivanta by Taj-President, Mumbai

Citrus Mulled Wine Opium Den, Trident, Mumbai Ingredients 1 bottle red wine K cup brandy 8-10 cloves 3 cinnamon sticks M cup honey 2 tsp ginger, thinly sliced One peeled and one sliced orange Method Cook the ingredients for 25 minutes. Don’t boil the mixture. Strain and serve warm in a wine glass.

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SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 2011

Business Lounge MAHESH BHUPATHI

The straight serve The tennis star moves to new business ventures while renewing old professional partnerships

B Y A NUSHREE C HANDRAN & S APNA A GARWAL ···························· ahesh Bhupathi speaks the way he plays tennis. The 36-year-old chooses his strokes (read words) carefully. Sometimes, the answer comes in a quick monosyllable, like an overhead smash; or it’s a forehand down the line—a sharp retort delivered with a straight face; and then there is the aggressive volley, when he cuts our question midway before we can get into his comfort zone, leaving us struggling to set the pace for the interview. After three weeks of negotiation on the meeting venue—the choices being Taj Lands End in Bandra, Mumbai, and his Bandra office—we settle for the latter owing to the heightened security and number of permissions required to shoot in a luxury hotel. It’s a Friday; Bhupathi’s Globosport business office wears a deserted look because it’s a holiday. The 6ft 2 inches tall athlete breezes in 15 minutes past the appointed time and showers us with effusive apologies for making us wait. We do the same, sharing our feeling of guilt for dragging him to office on a holiday. Bhupathi says he doesn’t mind working on holidays—his role as an entrepreneur demands it. After all, he travels 40 weeks in a year for tennis tournaments. The meeting takes place two weeks before the start of the Chennai Open on 3 January, which he and doubles partner Leander Paes went on to win. The duo, who famously got together on the professional circuit after nine years for the Chennai event, will also play in the Australian Open starting Monday. “There is a friendship deep down and there is respect that has grown over the years,”

Bhupathi says of his relationship with Paes. “The maturity and respect has brought the friendship back.” While Bhupathi, who has won 11 Grand Slam doubles and mixed doubles titles with different partners, has been in the news for developments in his professional and personal life—the Chennai Open win, an upcoming wedding to Bollywood actor Lara Dutta next month—his sports and celebrity management company, Globosport India Pvt. Ltd, is also diversifying steadily. Last year, the company moved into areas such as television and film content production, new media, casting for films and public relations. The strategy, Bhupathi says, is to exploit the long-term relationships the company has built with celebrities, for shows for a “win-win” result. The diversifications have also attracted investor attention—Globosport got funding of under $7 million (around `31.6 crore) for a 10% equity dilution. Under Big Daddy Productions, Globosport launched Making the Cut in 2009, a television search for India’s most talented designer and next supermodel. Season 2 of Making the Cut is currently on air on MTV. There’s also The Pitch—a business reality show with Boman Irani, currently on air on UTV Bloomberg. In the offing is a movie Chalo Dilli starring fiancée Dutta with Vinay Pathak, with a possible April-May release. Globosport has also partnered with Soundarya Rajinikanth’s Ocher Studios to get a slice of the action in the buzzing southern market. “Celebrities are not stars, but gods down south,” says Bhupathi, whose company has also signed up acting talent such as R. Madhavan, Nag Chaitanya and Trisha. It’s not been an easy eightyear ride for Bhupathi’s business dream. What started initially as a sports management initiative—they had names such as tennis player Sania Mirza and badminton star Saina Nehwal on their rolls at one point—now has few names from the athletic world, notably rising talent Somdev Devvarman. “The business of celebrity management is g ettin g h ig h ly u n sc a l ab l e ,” admits Bhupathi. That’s the reason, he says, they have stayed off the Indian Premier League (IPL) bandwagon. “Cricketers require a hefty fee and we don’t believe in taking up that kind of liabil-

ity. Also, cricketers have suffered in the endorsement business with IPL. Brands feel they are better off sponsoring a team where they can get four-five players than one single cricketer,” he says. Globosport’s core business, the `1,500-crore celebrity management industry, is highly competitive. There are five serious players in the market, says Bhupathi. “While they compete for new talent, brand marketeers see no differentiation between two stars and pick them up on their availability and price. It’s a price-sensitive market. If you charge more, then another celebrity will come in and take the deal away. For instance, a big shampoo brand may be negotiating with Katrina (Kaif) or Kareena (Kapoor). It turns into a price war. Whichever girl is willing to go as per what the brand wants to spend becomes the face of the brand.” Besides being a tennis star and entrepreneur, Bhupathi takes his role as a tennis mentor seriously. The Mahesh Bhupathi Tennis Academies was launched in 2005 to professionalize tennis coaching in India. The company has tied up with schools, such as the Ryan Group of Institutions and Jubilee Hills Public School in Hyderabad, to make the game accessible to schoolchildren. It is also expanding the 30-strong chain in India and West Asia. The centres, which have 7,000-10,000 aspirants at any given point, have produced players such as Yuki Bhambri, junior Australian Open champion, and Kyra Shroff, a silver medallist at the Commonwealth Youth Games. Explains Bhupathi: “Tennis is still a young sport and land is sold at a premium. We have a billion-plus population and not enough infrastructure. But a bunch of our academies today target schools, and set up practice after school hours. That should hopefully take away the elitist perception (the sport has).” He tries to open a new academy every few months. “Obviously, I will have my hands full when I retire,” he says, with a hint of a smile. anushree.m @livemint.com

Comfort food: Bhupathi has tried different cuisines from all over the world but still prefers a plain dosa over all else.

IN PARENTHESIS Mahesh Bhupathi picked up a tennis racquet at the age of 3. His father C.G. Krishna Bhupathi introduced him to the game and would take him for early morning practice sessions. On one occasion, the senior Bhupathi dropped him off at a tennis club in Dubai and forgot to pick him up, recounts Bhupathi. He had to wait 6 hours to be picked up. But little Mahesh, wedded to the game, did not even realize how much time had gone by.

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

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Play ROCK CLIMBING

Between a rock and a hard place ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

It is a sport with dedicated followers who, like the hero of ‘127 Hours’, choose adventure over risks and steep costs Up the wall: Chea Ame lia Marak scaling the wall at the Kanteerava Stadium, Bangalore; (left, below) a still from the forthcoming film 127 Hours; and children practise at the Arun Samant Climbing Wall in Goregaon, Mumbai.

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

···························· hea Amelia Marak belongs to the Garo tribe in Meghalaya. The Garos are mountainfolk known for their climbing skills. As a child, Marak’s mother used to scramble up the arecanut trees that punctuate the ragged terrain of the North-Eastern state. Now, it appears, the legacy of climbing has been passed on. At 15, Marak is set to scale new peaks. In 2010, she won two gold medals at the National Sports Climbing Competition organized by the Indian Mountaineering Foundation. In 2009, she won two bronze medals at the Asian Youth Climbing Championship in Kazakhstan. She is among India’s finest young climbers in a sport that appears to be an obsession in secret nooks and corners of cities such as Bangalore and Mumbai. Ironically, it was when Marak was on a break due to a fall while climbing two years ago, that she realized her passion for the sport. “Even when I was injured, I would come to the climbing wall (at Kanteerava Stadium in Bangalore) to see how others climbed,” she says. So what does it take to scale rugged peaks? What about the fear factor? Are climbers born or made? “For all the natural skill one may have, climbing requires determination, courage, power and commitment,” says Marak. “I have no fear of heights. I don’t think any climber does.” The fear of climbing, if any, comes from tales retold of horrific accidents. Hollywood films, such as Vertical Limit, have not just captured the pure adrenalin rush of scaling scenic mountains but the inherent perils surrounding it. In February, Danny Boyle’s latest offering, 127 Hours, based on a true story, will release in India—it’s about a climber who is trapped among boulders in Utah, US, and has to take drastic steps to save himself. But most avid climbers say, if seen in terms of percentages, that road accidents are more frequent than climbing incidents. Enthusiast Jay Sheth, who is headed to Uttarakhand in a few months, hopes to climb the Ranglana pinnacle, which is over 5,500m high, alone. Sheth, who organizes events in Mumbai, started climbing only in 2006 and has never done a solo ascent. Temperatures will be sub-zero, something he has never experienced before, “99%” of the people he has spoken to discouraged him, his climbing hero Cyrus Shroff failed in five attempts at the same peak and no Indian has ever reached this summit. So why would Sheth, carrying 25kg of equipment and supplies, make a

climb that would require him to spend a night on a ledge? “It’s an adrenalin rush—some need to take out their frustrations with their boss, some like to punish themselves, some like the heights…it makes you tough,” he says. “People ask me why some people take up climbing,” says Dinesh K.S., who runs Bangalore-based adventure sports gear manufacturing company Wildcraft Inc. “Some want to come close to danger. But some others look at it as fun: a way of solving problems with skills while scaling up different kinds of surfaces. I see it as gymnastics on a vertical plane.” The passion for climbing, at least in Maharashtra, has historical precedence. Iconic Maratha king Chhatrapati Shivaji’s forts dot the rugged terrain of the Sahyadri mountains in the Western Ghats. In stories retold across generations, Shivaji’s trusted general Tanaji Malusare, also known as Simha (lion), scaled the rock surface to capture the fortress of Kondana near Pune. Malusare died in battle, leading Shivaji to name the fortress Sinhagad. Arun Sawant, who was the first to summit the “virgin” Duke’s Nose in the Sahyadris in 1985, says his passion for climbing comes from his love for the wild and inspiration from Malusare. “Sitting alone on the summit, I have never felt alone with nature,” says Sawant, who leaves a Ganpati idol on top of every pinnacle he climbs. In the over 30 years that he has been climbing, Sawant has witnessed only one fatality—among another group of climbers—in 1987. He says this happens when people take undue risks. Fortunately, the majority of climbers take calculated ones.

Keeping it under control Marak reels off the fundamental instructions and the dos and don’ts of climbing: You can’t afford to put on weight; you need strong, flexible limbs; you need good climbing shoes; ropes; you need to acclimatize to different rocks and keep track of sweat on your palms while climbing; you need holds and harnesses; you cannot afford to eat junk; you need to do lots of push-ups; and most importantly, you need to concentrate on “just getting to the next level…one step at a time”. Dinesh, who is a climbing coach accredited by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), a US-based school that’s a world leader in “wilderness education”, explains that there are largely two different forms of climbing—“aid” and “free” climbing. Aid climbing is scaling rocks, boulders, walls and hills with protection, such as holds and harnesses, that prevent falls. Free climbing or “pure” climbing depends wholly on the climber’s skill. Dinesh and his group of fellow climbers have tried to popularize the sport in Bangalore. Indeed, one of the first stores of Wildcraft in Bangalore even had a climbing wall at the back of the showroom in the Jayanagar area. In the mid-1990s, they helped install the climbing wall at the Kanteerava Stadium. “We set (up) this climbing wall to popularize the sport. We thought it was a good way to get people interested so they go out of the city to places like Ramanagaram and Tumkur to get the real experience of pure climbing in the wilderness. But the opposite has happened. Unfortunately, people only climb within the city,” Dinesh says. Kishor Chavan, a distributor for mountaineering equipment man-

ufacturer Petzl in India, bemoans the lack of “pinnacle” climbers in Mumbai and Maharashtra. Watching a bunch of children over the age of 9 scamper up the Arun Samant Climbing Wall in Nandadeep High School, Goregaon, he says the urban Indian has become too lazy to attempt something that requires roughing it out. “There are a handful of serious climbers in Mumbai who chase summits and the untried, which is an irony considering the amount of safety gear available now,” he says, adding that the steep cost (a complete set of necessary gear can cost anything from `10,000-12,000) does not help. The sport survives on optimism and the passion of a few—like 15-year-old Marak and the 53-year-old Sawant who is still “searching for new spots”. Arun Janardhan contributed to this story.

ASK THEM If you feel like an adventure, start from here Trekking and climbing expeditions are organized by, among others, the Bangalore Mountaineering Club and outdoor adventure companies such as Outback India (www.outbackindia.com), Ozone Adventures (www.ozoneadventures.com) and Getoff ur ass (www.getoffurass.com), which have specialized climbing as a highlight for their outdoor packages. Mumbai has groups such as Odati Adventures (www.odati.com), Proboscis (www.proboscis.co.in) and Girivihar (www.girivihar.org). ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT

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Spotlight PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Double impact: Baviskar and Sundar (below) have worked with the Adivasis of central India as research scholars and activists.

Hall of fame

The other winners of the 2010 Infosys Prize PHYSICAL SCIENCES

Sandip Trivedi Sandip Trivedi has found an inge nious way to solve two of the most outstanding puzzles of the Superstring Theory simultaneously: What is the origin of the dark energy of the universe? Why is there no massless scalar particle? Trivedi is a professor in the theo retical physics department of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, and pursues research in the fields of string the ory, cosmology and particle physics. ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE

ACADEMIA

Crossover intellectuals Two winners of the 2010 Infosys Prize tell us about their journeys and what it means to be a public intellectual in India B Y H IMANSHU B HAGAT himanshu.b@livemint.com

···························· he difference between an activist and a public intellectual is the difference between Medha Patkar and Arundhati Roy. Patkar is the activist, wedded to the cause of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), whereas Roy is the influential voice, generating support, controversies and raising awareness about NBA through her writings and public appearances. Public intellectuals, in India or elsewhere, come in all shapes and sizes, depending on how they combine the two sets of skills required for the job—knowledge and the ability to communicate. They usually hold liberal or “progressive” views, which often puts them at odds with the prevailing majority or “nationalist” sentiment, but even their detractors pay keen attention to what they have to say. The more well-known among them are celebrities; the causes they back can become cause célèbre—we all know about Amartya Sen’s support for activist Dr Binayak Sen, about Roy’s long tracts on dams and Kashmir, and who historian Ramachandra Guha thinks deserves the Bharat Ratna. Then there are the less well-known intellectuals, admired for their commitment to a cause, backed by grass-roots activism and impressive scholarship. Sociologists Nandini Sundar and Amita Baviskar fall in this category—both are among the six winners of the Infosys Prize for 2010 that was awarded on 6 January in Mumbai. The award is given out every year by the Bangalore-based Infosys Science Foundation for “outstanding contributions to scientific research”. Sundar and Baviskar got a cash prize of `25 lakh each—unlike the winners in other pure science categories, who

got `50 lakh each—for their academic work, but both are also known for their public activism. Sundar teaches at the Delhi School of Economics and is the head of the department of sociology, Delhi University. Since late 2005, she has been campaigning against the controversial “people’s militia” Salwa Judum (SJ) that has been armed by the Chhattisgarh government to take on the Maoists in the state. Baviskar, who teaches at the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi, has also worked for Adivasi rights and other civil liberty causes over the years with organizations such as NBA and People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). She is currently associated with the NGO Sanjha Manch, which is dedicated to environmental sustainability. Sundar has been doing research work on Adivasis and caste identity in central India for 20 years. “I knew the area really well and was devastated (by what SJ were doing) so I became involved,” she says. She found out about SJ’s “excesses” when she went to Chhattisgarh in November 2005 as part of a fact-finding team sent by PUCL and four other civil liberties organizations. “Salwa Judum had begun burning villages on a large scale,” she says. Sundar feels her background knowledge of the place has enabled her to “contextualize” the problem. “I know what normal life is like in those places,” she says. “I have historical knowledge of the region. I know the terrain.” But she maintains that she is first a n academic: “Scholarly work is important in the long run and needs to be sustained. If only others had been doing their jobs, I wouldn’t

have to do this (activism). It takes me away from my research that I want and am paid to do.” Sundarfeelsthat part of the solution lies in making the comfortable middle class see the link between what is happening in places such as Chhattisgarh and its lifestyle. But she has no illusions about her place vis-à-vis the establishment. “As a dean in Delhi University, I am the establishment,” she admits. “Universities in India are meant to do three things—train people for human resources that can power the economic growth; provide social mobility through education in order to reduce inequality, and push the frontiers of research. My day job is to do these things; and my night job is to file PILs.” “There is a contrast in Nandini’s and my work,” says Baviskar, pointing out that Sundar arrived at public activism through her study of the past, while she did so by examining a problem as it was unfolding. “Her research in the Bastar area was a work of historical anthropology…whereas my early work was about a contemporary struggle—the Adivasi politics around forest and dams.”

Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath (KMCS) is a trade union operating in western Madhya Pradesh (MP) that works for the rights of Adivasis to forests and state welfare. It is also associated with the NBA. Baviskar’s association with KMCS began in 1990 when she arrived in MP’s Jhabua district to do the fieldwork for her doctorate degree. After getting her PhD, she joined the movement and worked as a full-time activist in 1992-93. In the course of her work with the NBA, Baviskar found herself in the middle of a violent scene of conflict between the police and tribals. “A number of my comrades were being beaten and all of us were charged with attempt to murder and possession of weapons.” She escaped imprisonment as she had secured anticipatory bail, but her husband, who had come visiting from Delhi, was arrested and jailed for nine days. In 1995, Baviskar wrote In the Belly of the River, which she describes as a book about the Adivasi relationship with land, forest and river that looks at the wider politics of tribal oppression by the dominant Hindu society, as well as the state and the market. The NBA activists had mixed feelings about it. “Medha Patkar termed the book inappropriate,” recalls Baviskar. “They expected a hagiography of their struggle and that I cleave to the party line.” “So basically I had to choose—either I write manifestos or I retain that critical detachment, while continuing to be sympathetic to progressive ca use s,” she s a ys. In 1994, Baviskar began teaching at the Delhi School of Economics while being associated with civil liberty organizations and NGOs such

as the PUCL and now, Sanjha Manch. “I wanted to give priority to academic writing and teaching,” she says. “I wasn’t doing justice to being an activist. You have to be good at what you do and be able to support people from a position of strength.” Proof for Baviskar that her decision was right has come in the form of a seat on the Forest Advisory Committee, which is under the Union ministry of environment and forests. If anyone anywhere in India has to use 40 ha. or more of forest land for any project, the committee’s clearance is mandatory and final. Baviskar, who obtained her doctorate from Cornell University in the US, finds being in the academia in India ideal. “One doesn’t have to compromise on research,” she says. “There is no pressure to raise money unlike, say, in the US or the UK… As you are not writing for funding agencies, you have time to write books and for newspapers… We have the freedom where the academy is seen as a place for (an) engaged social role.” Public intellectuals interact at different levels, she points out, giving examples of four fellow Delhi academics. There is Andre Béteille, who writes for newspapers, making sociological debates on topics such as the Mandal reservations accessible to the general public. “Béteille’s generation engages in the public sphere as sociologists, whereas Nandini and I are sociologists but intervene (in the public sphere) as citizens,” Baviskar adds. She then cites Dipankar Gupta, whose books on subjects such as conspicuous consumption or the rise of the middle class address a broader audience, where the sociology is far more in the background. Then there is someone like Ravinder Kaur, who is working directly with the government as a member of the Srikrishna Committee on Telangana. And lastly, there is the activist, like Sundar. Baviskar is keenly aware of the intellectual-activist milieu in India but feels that it is confined to select pockets. For an academic who is not in a place like Delhi and does not use English, things can be quite limiting. It wasn’t always like that. “Karnataka, for instance, used to be a leading, intellectually vibrant place in the 1970s and 1980s, with the likes of Shivaram Karanth and U.R. Ananthamurthy involving themselves

Ashutosh Sharma Currently an Institute chair profes sor, JC Bose fellow and coordinator of the nanosciences centre at IIT Kanpur, Ashutosh Sharma’s contributions are in the fields of surfaces and interfaces, adhesion, pattern formation, nanocomposites, materials science and hydrodynam ics, which have practical applica tions in such areas as energy storage, filtration and micro electromechanical systems. MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES

Chandrashekhar B Khare The prize was awarded to Chan drashekhar B. Khare for his funda mental contributions to Number Theory, particularly his solution of the Serre conjecture. Khare is cur rently a professor of mathematics at the University of California in Los Angeles. BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

Chetan E Chitnis Chetan E. Chitnis has done pioneer ing work in understanding the interactions of the malarial parasite and its host, leading to the devel opment of a viable malaria vaccine. Chitnis is currently a principal investigator with the malaria research group at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, New Delhi.

in environmental causes. The Kannada culture has become muted now,” she says. For Baviskar, the public intellectual par excellence is the economist Jean Dreze—known for his spartan living and deep engagement with social issues—who helped draft the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act programme. “In his case, it is the social concern that is driving the research,” she says.

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Style GUIDE

To dress well, shop like a man Women can learn how to shop for both comfort and quality from men. The first step: start from the inside out

B Y C HRISTINA B INKLEY ···························· hen it comes to shopping for fashion, women usually dominate, buying clothing for their men as well as themselves. But ladies, I have a gauntlet to throw down: Women have a lot to learn from the way men shop. I first sensed this when menswear designer Thom Browne told me that he couldn’t use a fabric unless it felt good “to the hand”, because men won’t buy uncomfortable clothing. Come again? If comfort were the top criterion for selling womenswear, Jimmy Choo would be out of business. Unlike men, women frequently settle for garments that don’t fit well and don’t feel good. Sometimes, women have little choice. It has long been an irritating truth that men are offered better-quality clothes for lower prices. Many fashionable women’s clothes—including plenty sold at luxury prices—are made relatively cheaply. “Women do get short-changed in the market,” says Patrick Gigliotti, a menswear salesman at the venerable Boyd’s Philadelphia department store. Some women who value well-made clothing have even resorted to shopping in menswear departments. One reason for the quality difference is trendiness: Because womenswear is more faddish, there’s a perception in the fashion industry that the clothes will be thrown away more quickly. Indeed, fast fashion has trained a generation to seek out throwaway styles.

When it comes to the place of manufacture, Italy still counts in menswear. Some other countries famous for quality are Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain and the US

They should be substantial, with no loose threads

The inside seams of the waistband should have taping and lining for strength and durability

It should work and hang smoothly They should be ‘finished’—the fabric rolled together or taped, with no loose thread. The best clothes leave extra fabric in seams to allow for alterations

Be sure the waist, shoulder and other parts of the garment sit correctly and comfortably on the body. It should be alterable as well

It should be supple and tightly woven

ROB SHEPPERSON/WSJ

Yet tailoring should matter. Women are always looking for clothes that will lift their bottoms and smooth their bulges. That’s exactly the kind of magic that tailoring works. Luckily, with a little education about the way sophisti-

cated men shop, it is possible to buy good quality womenswear. What does it mean to think like a man? Consider the way Jay Kos bought himself a pair of pants in New York sometime back. Kos, himself a clothier and the owner of the Jay Kos store on Park Avenue, found a pair of olive wool pants at SoHo’s Blue in Green shop. But the pants had to pass a few tests before he took them to the dressing room. First, he felt the wool with his hand to ascertain its weight and softness. He checked the seams for clean stitching—no loose threads. In the dressing room, he squatted to be sure they fit comfortably. Only then did he step out to take a careful look in the store’s biggest mirror and ask the salesman if the pants fit well. This isn’t the way most women shop. But it can be. A first step is to put less focus on the brand. Logos don’t guarantee fine craftsmanship. Dozens of luxury womenswear brands make high-quality fashions— Dolce & Gabbana and Akris among them. But I’ve found excellently sewn clothes at Zara (though not universally so). Some

PATRICK KOVARIK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

A cut above: A spring look by Roland Mouret, known for his well cut and quality clothes; and (extreme right) the Jil Sander label by Uniqlo is known for its welltailored pants, available at affordable prices.

When you like a garment, grab the fabric and crunch it up— ignoring any gasps you hear from the staff YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/ AFP/GETTY IMAGES

brands, such as Ralph Lauren, have varying quality levels among a dizzying array of sub-brands. Akris offers well-made but lowerquality clothes under the “Akris punto” label. Rather than being blinded by branding, use it only as a starting point. When you like a garment, grab the fabric and crunch it up—ignoring any gasps you hear from the womenswear sales staff, who are not accustomed to these manoeuvres. If the cloth stays wrinkled or feels scratchy, considering moving on. You should start from the inside out,” says Debi Greenberg, owner of Louis, a high-end store in Boston that caters to both men and women. Loose threads and ragged seams are signs of poor construction. Look for seams that have been carefully rolled and folded before being stitched down or have been “taped”, or sewn over with a narrow strip of fabric. In pants, the waistband is particularly important, as it provides structure and must hold up to sweat, pressure and twisting. In well-tailored pants, the waistband will have two layers of lining, with some structural seams in between. When it comes to pants, Greenberg recommends Proenza Schouler and Marni at the high end of the price range and Jil Sander for Uniqlo at the more affordable end. A good jacket starts with a shoulder that permits comfortable movement and isn’t so stuffed with foam padding that it looks awkward with the arm raised. While you’re peering inside the garment, check out the width of the fabric in the seams. Is there enough to allow the garment to be let out, if necessary? While good men’s clothing is manufactured to be altered, women often have to buy a size larger and then cut the garment down—which can be more costly and difficult. It’s a good idea to ask where the garment—and sometimes the fabric—were manufactured. “Men love the story,” says Kos. “If you’re going to spend the money, then it should come from a place with a respect for quality.” The country of origin can be an indicator of quality, and it’s certainly a fair indicator of price. Italy, France and Japan are famous for their high manufacturing standards, but their prices are higher than those of lower labour cost nations. Still, “made in Italy” is no guarantee, and it’s possible to buy well-made clothes from many parts of the world. The 3.1 Phillip Lim brand makes some highquality clothing in China with taped inner seams and alterable waistbands. J. Crew buys many quality shirting fabrics and cashmere yarns from Italian factories and then cuts and sews the clothes in less expensive countries. Kos believes that garments and accessories that use a logo as the dominant design feature are more likely to take short cuts with materials or manufacturing. Only after a garment has passed all these tests is it time to try it on. Be sure you can raise your arm in a shirt or jacket and that you can squat (without making the knees baggy) in pants. See if you can breathe easily. There should be no stretch marks across the torso and no gaping buttons. When in doubt, remember what Gigliotti of Boyd’s says about men’s priorities: “Comfort is paramount.” Write to wsj@livemint.com

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Travel

CALGARY

Rocky mountain high PHOTOGRAPHS

On one of the best drives in the world, the scenery is a slide show of picture postcards, changing with every bend

B Y R ISHAD S AAM M EHTA ···························· roject Habbakuk—the name suggested that it was an archaeological dig on a native Indian site. But Brent Gavin, director of operations at the Jasper Adventure Centre, told me it was a top secret military project. Wars, conflicts and bloodshed seem a world away when you’re floating on a canoe on the tranquil Pyramid Lake in the Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada. Okay, maybe not bloodshed—come face to face with a hungry grizzly and five will get you 10 that there’s going to be bloodshed. But at that moment, Gavin was taking me on a leisurely paddle around the lake, and when I asked him about the possibility of scuba diving the lakes around Jasper, he brought up Project Habbakuk. During World War II, Winston Churchill wanted to make an unsinkable aircraft carrier, and his military scientists decided to make one out of ice and wood. They built a scale model in Lake Patricia in 1943. But although the technology kept the boat itself afloat, skyhigh refrigeration costs sank the project. The Habbakuk prototype now lies on the bed of the lake, and anybody curious and adventurous enough can dive down to see its remains. Spring was bursting upon the astonishingly pretty Canadian Rockies when I started my driving holiday at Calgary. Alberta Highway No. 93, also called the Icelands Parkway, is rated one of the best drives in the world. On the way to Jasper, I would go through two national parks—Banff and Jasper. If you look at the map, the drive is like a slanting “L”—with Calgary at the bottom, Jasper at the top and 416km of jaw-dropping scenic overdose between the two. I realized within the first 23km that there was no way I was going to make it in the recommended five-

and-a-half hours. I remember constantly stopping and pulling out my camera for a picture. Here, one needs mass media storage—a fistful of memory cards. There was stunning viewpoint after viewpoint, each prettier than the previous. My Chevy jeep’s windscreen was like a slide show of picture postcards that changed with every bend in the road. On the way, there are lakes right along the highway like Bow Lake, that reflects the entire world above and around its still surface; and other, hidden lakes that you have to trudge to (through 800m kneedeep snow if you’re there early in the season). One of these, Peyto Lake, is so blue that your Facebook friends will think you’ve photoshopped the pictures. The colour is that stunning because glacial rock flour (silt-sized particles of rock generated by glacial erosion) flows into the lake and paints it bright turquoise. And there’s Lake Louise, where the glacier that feeds it remained frozen right up to the surface. Ice perched dramatically over water, and heavy clouds hung low. Right on the edge of this lake is the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise hotel, where you can stay if you have a heavy wallet. Marilyn Monroe stayed here once and no one there has forgotten yet. On a good summer’s day, it’s definitely worth dining on the patio that overlooks the lake. It’s not just lakes and mountains. There’s wildlife to be spotted too. I saw two bears, then a coyote and rams with a massive head of horn. When rams clash their horns to fight for females, it sounds like the drum roll from Richard Strauss’ Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Banff, about a quarter of t h e w a y along the drive from Calgary to Jasper, is pretty but preens for visitors a little too much—souvenir shops, shopping centres, street-side cafés and ice-cream parlours lend it the air of a mountain tourist town. But it was in Jasper that I was won over by the Canadian Rockies. Jasper is a village that can’t seem to make up its mind whether it wants to grow up to be a town. It’s immensely popu-

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

lar but thankfully, lacks that tourist sheen. Travellers come here for adrenalin highs, not retail rushes; and families grab cycle handlebars, not icecream cones, and set out to explore a wooded forest trail. I wanted a bird’s-eye perspective of Jasper. Gavin asked me to go to the Jasper Tramway the next morning and meet Todd Noble

there. The tramway is a cable car that starts at 4,279ft above sea level, and takes passengers on a scenic 7-minute ride up to the Upper Station, which is 7,472ft high on Whistler Mountain. Todd, who accompanied me up the mountain, told me visitors were usually free to explore Whistler Mountain but some areas had been cordoned off recently since a grizzly bear had often been seen feeding on the carcass of a ram. The first thing that you’re told when you’re about to set off for a hike in the Rockies is that if you walk into a grizzly bear he could very well eat you on the spot. From Whistler Mountain, Jasper looks “J”-shaped and handsome. The lakes around Jasper—Patricia,

Pyramid, Annette, Edith and Maligne—can be seen as dimples of deep blue on a land speckled with snow-capped peaks, and they seem to surround Jasper like maidens vying for an eligible bachelor’s attention. I had only two days in Jasper, which is a shame since there are so many trails to explore, overnight camping trips to indulge in and other outdoor activities that will send an adrenalin junkie trippin’. But in the two days I had, I managed a paddle around Pyramid Lake, a cruise on Maligne Lake to Spirit Island and a 4.9km hike around Edith Lake. Since I had done my bit to burn calories, I could justify the huge and juicy rib-eye steak at Nick’s Bar and Grill and drinks at the Dead Dog Saloon, where the locals hang out. That evening, I realized that Jasper hikes the outdoors hard and parties even harder. I made it back to my hotel at around 1am. The morning after, I visited another local Jasper institution—the Bear’s Paw Bakery. Its coffee is brewed fresh at 6 in the morning, and helped me get over the previous night’s excesses. I also got myself a muffin and a slice of quiche for my drive back to Calgary. Spring was starting to fade, and when I stopped to stretch my legs and munch on the muffin, I saw a black bear walk

RISHAD SAAM MEHTA

Picture perfect: (clockwise from top) The Canadian Rockies; a snowedout bridge; a grizzly bear; and a canoe on Pyramid Lake. drowsily out of the forest on to the road. It seemed to have just emerged from hibernation, since it looked thin and rather disoriented. Campsites along the way no longer wore a deserted look and traffic on the road was decidedly more than I had encountered on my drive to Jasper. Summer was coming, and with it would come wild flowers, lakes brimming with snow melt, blue skies and warmer days. There’s never a better time to be here. Write to lounge@livemint.com CHILDFRIENDLY RATING

Children will love the scenic vistas and the adventure aspects of canoeing, cycling and walking. ADULTFRIENDLY RATING

Some trails with ice, snow or broken rock might be difficult to traverse. Exercise caution and seek advice before picking any outdoor activity.

TRAVEL L13

SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

Home is where the art is PHOTOGRAPHS

From Lonely Planet’s ‘Best in Travel 2011’, we list the cities where history’s best artistic talents left behind a legacy

FROM

THINKSTOCK

ST PETERSBURG, RUSSIA If street names sound familiar on your first visit to St Petersburg, it’s because they feature so heavily in Russian novels. Gogol, Dostoevsky and Turgenev all lived along grand thoroughfare Nevsky Prospekt and the city’s heart was frequently at the core of their work. There are more literary museums here than you can shake a ballpoint at, from the house of Pushkin (whose writing tackled the snobby superficiality of the St Petersburg wealthy) through to the digs of Dostoevsky (whose novel Crime and Punishment contrastingly focused on the city’s deprived). Continue jaunting through literary history at the Nabokov Museum (www.nabokovmuseum.org), the writer’s birthplace and subject of several of his books. Elegant: A view of Buenos Aires by night. BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA It’s easy to tap into BA’s surging literary vibe: mainly because it’s so cheap to while away hours in the elegant cafes where the city’s best writers hung (and still hang) out. The San Telmo and Palermo coffee houses are ideal for espresso-sipping with the artsy in-crowd today whilst the city centre’s glam Café Tortoni was formerly frequented by famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. Borges’ house lies in Recoleta; his fictional El Aleph, the spot encompassing all other points in the universe, is supposedly located on San Telmo’s Juan de Garay St Finish your literary tour at Palermo’s Garden of the Poets, bursting with writerly busts from Borges to Dante. Treat yourself to San Telmo’s tango-themed Mansion Dandi Royal Hotel (www.mansiondandiroyal.com), and learn Argentina’s national dance at the attached Tango Academy.

Best in Travel 2011: Lonely Planet Publications, 208 pages, $14.99 (around `680). PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC As you might expect in a country whose first president was a renowned playwright, the Czech capital is a literary hot spot. Franz Kafka is among Prague’s most influential exports: Don’t look any further than the Kafka Museum to get to the crux of the writer’s relationship with the city. The capital has spurned a book store’s worth of authors besides, including Milan Kundera, who writes about Prague politics and love during the 1960s and 1970s. The best spot for smooching with today’s top writerly talent? Try Tynska Literary Café—a favourite with Czech writers promoting work. Get the low-down on Kafka’s life and times in Prague at Kafka Museum (www.kafkamuseum.cz).

Mixed bag: Mumbai’s Gateway of India.

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO “The bottom of the road” exclaims Jack Kerouac of Mexico City in On the Road and for a bunch of beatniks, Mexico’s main metropolis was the ultimate inspiration. The beatniks had riotous times here; not least in the Zona Rosa bar where William S. Burroughs accidentally shot his wife in a William Tell–type stunt with a champagne glass. Artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo lived in the capital, creating a clutch of attractions: Start with Rivera’s bright Aztec-influenced mural at the Museo de San Ildefonso, Kahlo’s Coyoacán house, or Museo de Arte Moderno (Museum of Modern Art), with works by both. Party with the city’s chic at Zona Rosa’s Bar Milán (Calle Milán 18). VALPARAÍSO, CHILE Chilean poet Pablo Neruda arguably did more than any other poet to preserve his country in words and Valparaíso, his home for many years, inspired him to plenty. He even dedicated a poem to his La Sebastiana house here, now a museum to the poet’s life. Valparaíso is a visual stunner and others too have been moved to make art by its colourful twisting alleyways. Novelist Isabel Allende has set fiction here whilst cartoonist Renzo Pecchenino (aka Lukas) adored the cityscape so much he recommended every aspiring architect should study there. Valparaíso has a museum devoted to his works (www.lukas.cl). Gran Hotel Gervasoni (www.hotelgervasoni.com) is a throwback to Neruda’s Valparaíso: full of haughty period furnishings and perched high up in the city’s hills.

Imposing: The Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood in St Petersburg.

Landmark: London’s Tower Bridge.

LONDON, ENGLAND You could plot a long, long literary pilgrimage around London, a city immortalized by writers from Charles Dickens to John Betjeman. In Bloomsbury, check out the Charles Dickens Museum in the author’s former dwellings; the Bloomsbury Group, including Virginia Woolf, later frequented the district. Make Marylebone your mecca for a detective fiction foray. Sherlock Holmes’ fictional house is at 221B Baker St, with a museum to the sleuth nearby; up at Regent’s Park, Wilkie Collins was inspired to write The Woman in White after witnessing a lady screaming from a balcony. Drink like the artistic greats in East London’s riverside pubs: Whistler and Turner patronized Wapping’s Prospect of Whitby whilst Dickens sang for his supper at The Grapes. Start your literary pub crawl at The Prospect of Whitby (57 Wapping Wall); continue downriver to The Grapes (76 Narrow Street).

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND Scotland’s literary output is phenomenal and most of its notable writers have been influenced by the capital. Famous resident Robert Louis Stevenson enthused that Edinburgh was “what Paris ought to be”. Off the Royal Mile, the Writers Museum presents a personal side to the lives of Scotland’s authors: exhibits include Robert Burns’ writing desk. City writers had fingers in other bowls besides the inkwell however: Sir Walter Scott even helped rediscover Edinburgh Castle’s Crown Jewels. Native artist Harry Raeburn preferred the city to both London and Rome: His The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch is one of Scotland’s most iconic artworks. More recently, J.K. Rowling spent time in cafes such as the Elephant House drafting tales about a certain boy magician. Drop into bizarre Surgeons’ Hall Museum (www.rcsed.ac.uk) and discover Arthur Conan Doyle’s inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, among other medical oddities.

Historic: Edin burgh’s Balmoral Hotel clock tower.

MUMBAI, INDIA Being Bollywood’s capital hasn’t deviated Mumbai’s sizzling cultural scene from its strong literary traditions and legacy of cutting-edge art. The city’s love affair with literature dates back some way: In 1804 Scottish historian James Mackintosh founded the Literary Society of Bombay, now located in the neoclassical Town Hall. Renowned writers reared here include Salman Rushdie: His Midnight’s Children is partly set in Mumbai. Ever since independence the city has nurtured India’s most important art movements: Savour Fort and Colaba district’s snazzy galleries, featuring the country’s prominent artists. Gallery Chemould (www.gallerychemould.com) has long showcased top contemporary talent including the Progressive Arts Movement, which shaped modern Indian artistic identity.

Vibrant: A bird’seye view of Havana, Cuba.

HAVANA, CUBA Without mentioning all that jazz, Cuba’s capital has been a big artistic draw. The American author Ernest Hemingway spent much of his later life in Havana. His former home here is now a museum—even the gin bottles used to make his cocktails are on display. Track the writer’s drinking trail to La Bodeguita del Medio, the bar where Hemingway liked to take his mojitos. Graham Greene visited Havana both before and after Castro’s takeover—his spy thriller Our Man in Havana is partly based on experiences there. Check into Graham Greene’s favoured Havana hotel, the ornate 130-year-old Hotel Inglaterra (www.hotelinglaterracuba.com). This is an extract from Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2011, ©Lonely Planet, 2010.

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SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 2011

Books Q&A | PATRICK FRENCH

‘Rahul Gandhi is a symptom’

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

The author on his new book on postliberali zation India and his deep interest in Hindutva B Y H IMANSHU B HAGAT himanshu.b@livemint.com

···························· n varying degrees, India has featured in all of British writer and historian Patrick French’s books, including the acclaimed Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division. The jacket of his latest title, India: A Portrait, describes it as an “intimate biography” of contemporary India; the book is divided into three sections called “Rashtra”, “Lakshmi” and “Samaj”, which examine the country’s political, economic and social realities, respectively, in accessible prose that combines objectivity with empathy. Edited excerpts from a conversation in the course of which French observed, “India is the most interesting place in the world”:

What made you write this book? I began writing in 2000. The essence of the book is the socially transformative effect of the economic reforms. When people have fresh opportunities and possibilities, that creates social change. I was at the DLF mall (in Delhi) yesterday and you would never have seen 20 years ago the way in which people were shopping. I also noticed that the prices in designer shops like Armani and Gucci were double of that in London. The shoppers looked like agricultural money from Punjab and mining money from Chhattisgarh—obviously a lot of new money. What other changes have you observed? I first came to India as a teenager in 1986 and it was a completely different country. Consumerism is the outward symptom of something substantial changing. Politics has

India—A Portrait: Penguin/Allen Lane, 436 pages, `699. changed—you have incredibly powerful grass-roots, caste-based parties. At the same time, it has become dynastic in a way it wasn’t 25 years ago. In the past, there was an expectation that the parliamentarian would rise on merit. Who is the book addressed to, Indians or non-Indians? It is for everybody. Part of the reason that I wrote the book is that people in foreign countries are much more interested in India. In the past, they saw India as more about religion and suffering, whereas now people are very, very aware of India as a major economic competitor. People from different parts of India might be intrigued by things they learn about life in other areas, (for instance), the quietness of the south; and the subtlety of some business operations in the south. I think in Delhi everyone tends to make more noise whereas if you are in Chennai, they don’t feel the need to impress you in the first

Indophile: Through stories of a diverse group of people, French illustrates the transformative effect of the economic reforms. 10 seconds. You have tried to look deeper into the reasons behind Hindutva. The liberal consensus or the pro-Congress sentiment rejects the impulses behind Hindu nationalism and dismisses the 100 million who vote for the BJP and its allies. But they are an important force in Indian political life. The way I see it, Hinduism is the main uniting force in the Indian identity. You can’t ignore the past excesses of the Hindutva movement…but politics has moved on from the Hindutva agenda. Good and efficient government is more important to people. Any India books written in recent years that you liked? I spent 10 years visiting India before I wrote one word about the country. After Liberty and Death, I spent another 10 years thinking and looking. The reason I wrote this book is I wanted to read it. It hadn’t been written— the process of change since the

1990s from the inside and the historical roots of the process. If you read American journalists about India, it is like India in 2011 dropped out of the sky. Wasn’t economic liberalization prompted by external causes? No. A lot of Indian bureaucrats in the 1970s and 1980s wanted the unshackling to happen but probably thought that it was impractical. Don’t forget how bad it was in the 1970s. Emergency and the JP movement (named after its leader Jayaprakash Narayan) have their roots in economic failure—people forget that now. The years 1900-47 were the worst period of British rule in terms of poverty. But during 1970-79, the per capita GDP was even lower than that. Not everything has changed. Despite economic transformation there are attitudes that endure. On the road outside the DLF mall yesterday, guys were pulling and dragging a cement mixer in

the dark. Why isn’t a tractor pulling it? Economic benefits are genuine, but they don’t extend to several hundred millions of Indians. You are quite sympathetic to Rahul Gandhi. The tendency is always to pin everything on the Gandhi family. That is the wrong thing to do. Rahul is a symptom. The issue is growth in dynastic families in constituency after constituency. He is fundamentally well motivated. Remember, the job chose him; he didn’t choose the job. Out of ‘Rashtra’, ‘Lakshmi’ and ‘Samaj’, which section do you consider most important? “Lakshmi”. And the reason is that, as a writer or a historian your tendency is to write only about personalities and ideas. But if you are doing just that, you are missing the central story. There are two questions—why did the centralized state seem like such a great idea in the 1940s and 1950s? And how has

the economic unshackling affected people’s lives? Any people in the book you met who stand out? C.K. Ranganathan from Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu, a chemistry graduate who sold shampoo packaged in a sachet. Now, he employs a thousand people. And Venkatesh and his wife, who worked in a stone quarry in Mysore and who were chained (by their employer) just 100 miles from Bangalore. There was no action from the local police or bureaucracy. Describe your method of working on the book. I searched for people who would illustrate particular points I wanted to make—about business dynamism, caste exploitation, political ambition, and intellectual creativity which I often found more in business than in academics. That was a surprise; how ideas are coming out of people involved in business. This is an optimistic book.

THE TELLTALE BRAIN | VS RAMACHANDRAN THINKSTOCK

Action replay The star neuro scientist explains in pithy, engaging prose why we do what we do B Y J ACOB K OSHY jacob.k@livemint.com

···························· ne of the inevitable consequences of scientific progress is the creation of silos. Early pioneers discover—usually by accident—a curious, intriguing aspect of nature which defies extant theory. The allure of the puzzle draws bright minds from unrelated disciplines who propose solutions that divide them into immiscible factions until the answers seem too complex and the original question remains mysterious. The workings of the mind, its unity and relationship with the body and brain, and its evolution have throughout history been the focus of the very best of human minds. It has occupied the waking hours of physicians, linguists,

philosophers and neuroscientists and has resulted in a thicket of theories—Freudianism, behaviourism, the computational theory of the mind—yet the essential mystery of why the mind is the way it is continues to be beyond full comprehension. Out of these befuddling bushes emerge scientists such as Vilayanur S. Ramachandran. The neuroscientist, who leads the psychology and neurosciences programme at the Centre for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, is among that rare breed of active researchers who write general interest books describing their work. His new book, The Tell-Tale Brain: Unlocking the Mystery of Human Nature, is packed with intriguing case studies of the neurologically afflicted. From the Sartre-spouting Yusof Ali, who believes that he’s dead, or the peculiarly handicapped John, who can perfectly copy an engraving of St Paul’s Cathedral in spite of being unable to recognize what he is drawing, Ramachandran—like physicians Oliver S a c k s a n d A n t o n i o

Mind games: Ramachandran delves into the world of mirror neurons. Damasio—skilfully uses these instances to illustrate how the various parts of the brain synchronize to conjure a mind and, therefore, our perception of reality. Fans of his previous books— Phantoms in the Brain and the more recent A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness—may sense a creeping déjà vu, with descriptions of brain anatomy and phantom limbs (those illusory hands and legs that amputees continue to regard as part of their anatomy). However, it’s in this work that Ramachandran bores into the mesmerizing world of

mirror neurons, a class of brain cells originally discovered in monkeys that not only fire when they reach out for an object but also when they watch another monkey do the same. Ramachandran is among those who believe that these mirror neurons—lots of which have been found in humans—are an important step towards the species’ ability to empathize and imitate, thereby acquiring culture and colonizing the modern environment. He buffers his beliefs with the experimental evidence of autistics, who are known to

The TellTale Brain: Random House India, 357 pages, `499. lack empathy and an inability to read motives in the actions of others, as having a distinct lack of mirror neurons in specific regions of the brain. Rather than be the staid scientist who only describes what has been personally verified and what can be conservatively inferred, Ramachandran makes bold hypotheses that connect the disparate fields of brain imaging, evolution and neurological ailments to give the non-specialist some insight into questions such as what makes our visual system respond to beauty and why our

sense of self, consciousness and “free will” is so inextricably linked—and thus determined—by the structure of our brains and its connection to organs of the body. While his theories are plausible, they are only useful inasmuch as they trigger future experiments. They are not the absolute last word on the issue—a point Ramachandran emphasizes. His prose may not be in the league of Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins but it is nevertheless pithy and—because it’s penned by a first-rate mind with the sole intent of a sweeping overview of the subject—largely devoid of abstruse technicalities. However, frequent trips to the 15-page glossary (which is about 5% of the book length) are inevitable considering that this is at heart a book on neuroanatomy. For those who only know Ramachandran from the entertaining video on TED, a non-profit devoted to ideas worth spreading, or an oblique reference from the TV series House MD, the book is also a great way to begin learning about the burgeoning discipline of cognitive neuroscience, its Sherlock Holmes-like methods and the epiphanies that its practitioners having been reporting with accelerating frequency over the last two decades.

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SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES | SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE

A biography of cancer BLOOMBERG

Through personal accounts, a doctor traces the awful and majestic his tory of the disease

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

···························· owards the end of Siddhartha Mukherjee’s remarkable exploration of cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies, he brings up the figure of Atossa, queen of Persia circa 500 BC, who recurs through his book. On being diagnosed with cancer, Atossa bid her Greek slave to carve the malignance out of her breast, thus performing a primitive mastectomy that had more than a hint of self-destruction about it. “Pitch Atossa backward in time to Imhotep’s clinic in Egypt in 2500 BC,” Mukherjee writes, recalling the earliest recognized mention of cancer in recorded history. “Imhotep has a name for her illness, a hieroglyph that we cannot pronounce. He provides a diagnosis, but ‘there is no treatment’, he says humbly, closing the case.” In 300 BC, Hippocrates would have identified her tumour, naming it karkinos after observing its crab-like features. Greeks after Hippocrates would identify cancer as an illness of the humours, the fluids they believed governed the human body. Medieval European surgeons would chip away at it to no avail; their counterparts in the post-Enlightenment flowering of surgical science would devise radical, but ultimately futile, experiments to eliminate it from the human body. A patient like Atossa would be cancer’s Dorian Gray, says Mukherjee: The world around her and she herself might change, but the tumour would remain the same. Throughout his comprehensive attempt to understand this most stubborn and deadly of diseases, Mukherjee builds an awareness of this layered history into his narrative. He explains his decision to call his book a

Survivor: Cyclist Lance Armstrong has survived testicular cancer. biography of cancer, rather than a history, because the character it assumes is almost human. Cancer cells do what ordinary human cells must do to survive. They adapt, grow, mutate and cling stubbornly to their collective life; but cancer cells do it with far more resilience than normal cells. To understand

The Emperor of all Maladies: HarperCollins India, 512 pages, `499.

cancer, Mukherjee suggests elegantly, is to understand a malevolent, distorted mirror of humanity itself. Sometimes he takes us as close as we can get to the disease through a book, by creating characters out of the patients that he—a cancer researcher at Columbia University, and a practising oncologist—meets. Mukherjee paints in broad strokes, but we perceive these portraits as vividly human. His patients are no avatars of Atossa. Still, the most literally human—and social—history in Mukherjee’s book comes from its brightest, most morally ambivalent characters: the doctors who changed the history of cancer diagnostics and treatment over the last couple of centuries in the Western world. Men—and sometimes women—of their time, these obsessive, nimble thinkers tested, experimented, operated and often quite literally went to war with cancer. Sometimes, as in the case of 1950s cancer researcher Min

Chiu Li at the US’ National Cancer Institute, it meant reducing cancer treatment to a horrifying war of attrition in which he administered a toxic course of chemotherapy long after tumours seemed to disappear, thus reducing treatment to a fight against invisible values. It cost Li his job—the institutional board worried that he was “experimenting on people”—but it turned out to be the first chemotherapeutic cure of adult cancer. Mukherjee is magnificent as he draws and redraws the contours of the fight against cancer by describing its principal combatants, battling not just a deadly and endlessly inventive enemy in the illness itself, but also public and bureaucratic indifference, ignorance, and sometimes, as in the case of the American tobacco industry and its refusal to acknowledge its product as the principal modern cause of cancer, plain injustice. Mukherjee demonstrates that cancer is not the curse of civilization that it is sometimes assumed to be. Unlike AIDS or malaria, it resists being defined by any one population. But the study of cancer has a more specific history than the illness itself. The sterile complexes of labs and treatment rooms, where much of the medical discovery described here takes place, may bear no resemblance to the charitable hospitals of the developing world, overflowing with cancer patients of every age and background. But Mukherjee is too erudite and too sincere to aim for a false universality. The specificity of his story reveals, instead, a fundamental truth of modern science: There are no Eureka moments here. Discovery is measured incrementally, over the work of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of different minds. Cancer’s biography may have no end before humanity itself ceases to be, but in infinitesimal ways, patient by patient and doctor by doctor, it has built itself an awful, majestic history. Mukherjee’s fairy-tale title respects that terror; his learned, compassionate book also does it a fair measure of justice. IN SIX WORDS Monstrous and human faces of cancer

CHINESE WHISKERS | PALLAVI AIYAR

CULT FICTION

R. SUKUMAR

WHEN SILENCE SPEAKS

his isn’t the first comic called Hush I have read (there is the Batman comic of the same name, and I enjoyed reading it too) but it is the first comic called Hush about which I have a backstory. Almost a year ago, maybe even further back, two young men, Pratheek Thomas and Dileep Cherian, wrote to me (after reading this column) about their comic book publishing venture Manta Ray. We exchanged a few mails and Thomas and Cherian promised to come and meet me with a copy of their first book. A few months later, much to my surprise, they did. The book they came with was Hush, though I’d personally like to call it Hush Lite because the format was much smaller than the current one that has been published. I liked Hush Lite for several reasons. One, I like it when young people try to do things like publish comics. It reminds me of all the things I wanted to do but never did. Two, I liked Pratheek and Dileep. They seemed like good kids. Three, I liked the simplicity of their text-less plot (the story was by Pratheek). And finally, I loved the illustrations (by Rajiv Eipe). But I hated the format of the book that made it look like a propaganda brochure from some activist organization. I told Thomas and Cherian as much and, since they are still at an impressionable age, they decided to change the format. Bless them.

Angular: There is subtle geometry in the way the panels are laid out. The new Hush is almost the same size as other comics, and the bigger size merely serves to make the story even more compelling (despite the fact that it isn’t different from some other stories we have read) and the illustrations even more striking. The plot is dark and it is apt that the illustrations bring to mind elegant charcoal drawings. They are original in style, not borrowing their look from the sources most Indian comic book illustrators turn to—mythology, the funnies, American superhero comics, manga, even heavy metal. And, either by design or accident, Manta Ray has mastered the elusive art of panel play. There is a subtle geometry to how the panels are laid out. Some pages have multiple longitudinal strip panels, in sequence, across the middle of the page. Others try other things. The result—which was probably the first thing about the book that appealed to me, although I didn’t realize it till much later—is among the best designed comic books I have seen in a long time. It is a bit pricey at `195, and, in the interests of full disclosure, I am one of the people the writers and publishers thank at the beginning of the book, but I would still recommend that you go out and get a copy of Hush—if only to ensure that Messrs Thomas and Cherian have reason to publish more comics. R. Sukumar is editor, Mint. Write to him at cultfiction@livemint.com FREDERIC J BROWN/AFP

Feline vision A fable of modern China, hobbled by a weak plot line and dry, stilted prose

Chinese Whiskers: HarperCollins India, 223 pages, `399.

B Y S OUTIK B ISWAS ······························ rom the squalid alleys of Beijing, two cats with cutesy names end up as coddled pets of foreigners. All is well till one of them takes up a job to model for cat food, much to the consternation of the other. The two cats drift apart only to come together in the end by a fortuitous twist of circumstances. Nothing exceptional about this, but journalist Pallavi Aiyar uses the stories of the felines deftly to tell the story of the conundrum that is China in her new book Chinese Whiskers. Aiyar, who worked as a reporter in Beijing and is a cat lover, is also not short of experience. Through the stories of Soyabean and Tofu, Aiyar touches upon China’s well-known fault lines, quirks, follies and scandals: a xenophobic underbelly, an iniquitous society, the outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and irrational fears about the virus’ origins, rampag-

Portraiture: Through a story of two cats, Aiyar touches upon China’s wealth and its xenophobic underbelly. ing capitalism, one-child policy, tainted cat food and Mao’s catastrophic experiments with cultural indoctrination and backyard industrialization. And there are the humans, mostly greedy, unscrupulous slaves to Mammon pitted against the few good people, notably Nai Nai, a kind, cat-loving septuagenarian widow who is predictably disillusioned with, and estranged from, the go-go world of modern China. “All that is good in China and noble about being Chinese they reject,” she says of the young-

sters, before descending to banalities about generation gap—the young laugh at classics, find poetry boring and calligraphy a waste of time, watch too much TV, prefer the discotheque to the theatre. Her son tells her that the Chinese “need to be more practical”—calligraphy doesn’t make money, and poetry doesn’t buy cars. “But what is the value of money without poetry? What use is a fancy car when you lack a soul? Is practicality of more value than beauty?” wonders Nai Nai. These are valid, but unexceptional concerns in

most societies, and to single out the Chinese is a tad unfair. There is nothing redeeming about the bad humans, like Nai Nai’s son Xiao Xu—he yanks cats’ tails, pinches them, there is no “kindness in his eyes”, he smiles in a “disturbing way”, and has endless mobile phone conversations about “real estate and deals”. In sum, he is a stereotype of China’s spoilt new rich, whom the poor detest. So a dishevelled migrant worker building a giant Olympic stadium in Beijing tells one of the cats that Deng Xiao-

ping’s history-altering aphorism that the colour of the cat didn’t matter as long as it catches the mice hasn’t quite worked for a lot of citizens—or cats, if you will. “You will see there are no mice to catch for the peasant cat at all,” says the worker. “The fat cats in the city gobble them all up, leaving nothing for the rest.” Chinese Whiskers is a limpid and slight fable of modern China, hobbled by a weak plot line and dry prose. In parts endearing and almost always earnest, its characters are unambiguous, and the story bereft of atmosphere and drama. The stilted dialogue, and a denouement which promises much and delivers little, make it a tepid offering. Aiyar—and her cats’—bleak vision of China as a soulless capitalist haven is not nuanced enough to make the novel a gripping fable of one of the world’s most complex societies, which has oscillated from one extreme to another with wide-ranging consequences. Soutik Biswas is the India editor of BBC News online. Write to lounge@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 2011

Culture PREVIEW

(New) Solo Projects Section t

Feast on art

This section will enable dedicated viewing of powerhouse contemporary artists Thukral & Tagra (shown here) and modern artist F.N. Souza.

We tell you what you should not miss at the India Art Summit in the Capital next week

t anindita.g@livemint.com

···························· ndia’s art junta will have its black books full next weekend. Galleries in both New Delhi and Mumbai will remain open late into the night to serve aesthetes flying into the country to attend the third instalment of the India Art Summit that will run in the Capital from 20-23 January. Judging from the VIP events diary that lists the art openings, art book launches and networking events planned in and around the summit, it promises to be one big art frat party. The summit spells business, however. Spread over 8,000 sq. ft, it will have 570 artists and 84 galleries from 20 countries exhibiting paintings, sculptures, photographs, mixed media, prints, installations, drawings, video art and performances. These numbers are double in every count from the numbers of its last edition in 2009. The organizers are expecting close to 40,000 visitors. Not only has the summit grown in size and market potential, it has come of age in other ways too. This year, it includes several public art interventions—a staple of art fairs globally—that go beyond the commercial trappings of the art bazaar. The curated art projects section, for instance, will have delights such as French graffiti duo L’Atlas & Tanc, who will work live at the venue. Artist Abhishek Hazra will engage unassuming visitors in a multimedia art experiment and graphic novelist Sarnath Banerjee will lead a group of artists to

Live Grafitti Art

L’Atlas & Tanc, Alliance Française de Delhi

B Y A NINDITA G HOSE

L’Atlas & Tanc met in 2002 and have since collaborated on modern artwork posters that are stuck on 3x4m billboards in the streets of Paris. Their joint exhibition, carried out live at different parts of the venue, seeks to offer insights into the vibrant narrative of contemporary French art.

p (New) Art Store explore a parallel universe of urban fantasies specific to the Capital, on two large 7x8ft panels. One of the most intriguing of these projects appears to be photographer Gauri Gill’s exhibition titled Hall of Technology, created over the many months Gill spent visiting Hall No. 18, the Hall of Technology where the Art Summit will be held. The photographer has tried to document the transformation of the space. An expansive outdoor sculpture park promises to be the other big draw, with several bigticket artworks in its fold. You won’t have to look too hard to spot the kitschy life-sized Nano sculpture by Singapore-based artist Ketna Patel by the entrance or artist Sudarshan Shetty’s 14ft coin-operated sculpture inside the entry foyer. Head to the speakers’ forum for some intellectual stimulation (although art fair lingo is often more confounding than

The newly launched Art Store at the India Art Summit will have on sale several limitededition art books and merchandise such as stationery, home accessories and clothing, created exclusively for the summit.

explanatory). The forum will be led by veteran curators, museum directors, historians, artists and collectors. Star speakers this year include artist Anish Kapoor and Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of the Serpentine Gallery in London. New additions this year comprise a dedicated solo projects section where galleries will host artists such as Thukral & Tagra (Nature Morte) and F.N. Souza (Rob Dean Art). This section will have smaller stalls than the rest of the summit but will enable collectors and visitors to engage with an artist’s work at a more intimate level. The summit’s director, Neha Kirpal, believes this small but significant section will be the “soul” of the summit. If that doesn’t stir you, what surely will is the art store, another new inclusion, which will have limited-edition art books and merchandise that is sure to talk to your wallets.

‘Untitled’ sculpture from the ‘This too Shall Pass’ series t

Sudarshan Shetty, GallerySKE

Sudarshan Shetty’s 14ft goldleaf and fibreglass statue of himself balances precariously at an angle on a system of levers and chains. An attached donation box acts as a pulley system—the more coins visitors deposit, the more upright the statue becomes, a potent metaphor for some politicians’ pompous tributes to themselves.

www.livemint.com To view a detailed floor plan of India Art Summit 2011 with our highlights, log on to www.livemint.com/indiaart.htm

Erased from history ‘Dara’ is the story of a prince who could be the role model Islamic society urgently needs B Y S HREYA R AY shreya.r@livemint.com

···························· dancing girl has just learnt of Mughal prince Aurangzeb’s ultimatum to all dancers: Marry within the next 24 hours or leave the capital. Dejected, she goes up to a group of commoners in the village, who comfort her by talking about the other prince, Dara Shikoh. Dara, a lover of the arts, a poet and Sufi, an ally of the masses, a face of Islam so different that his political success might have charted an entirely different course in the subcontinent’s—and potentially world— history. At a time when Pakistani liberal society finds itself—yet again—under attack, a failed Mughal prince might just be the hero it needs to cling on to for survival. Dara, the latest offering from the Lahore-based Ajoka theatre group, is the story of

Dara Shikoh, son of Shah Jahan, who lost the battle for supremacy to his brother Aurangzeb. Travelling to India for the National School of Drama’s (NSD) ongoing 13th Bharat Rang Mahotsav, the play is a constant counterpoint between the two brothers, two ways of viewing the arts, two ways of interpreting Islam and two ways of being. “While Mughal history is always a fascinating subject for dramatic exploration, the contemporary—and more pressing motivation—to doing this play was the situation in present-day Pakistan, in fact all of the Muslim world,” says playwright-director Shahid Nadeem. “This is the struggle between Sufi Islam and Wahabi Islam; and that the latter seems to be overpowering the former in influence. Extremists are interpreting it, contrary to how Sufis or moderate voices interpret it. The recent assassination of governor Salman

Taseer bears prime testimony to this form of extremism. The real battle is one within Islam itself, not Islam and Western civilization,” says the founder of the Ajoka group, which is known for its anti-establishment work. Nadeem talks of how, in the past few decades, there has been an organized attempt in Pakistan to erase the secular prince from history books. “Muslim clerics justify the creation of Pakistan based on the fear of the enemy, more specifically, the fear of India,” he says. “Having figures like Dara Shikoh or Bulleh Shah, who spoke of universal brotherhood and syncretic cultures, will hamper their project. There is, naturally, the need to obliterate them from public memory.” Dara was a champion of religion and cultural syncretism who constantly strove to bridge Hinduism and Islam (he translated 50 Upanishads from Sanskrit into Persian and suggested that the Kitab al-maknun, or hidden book, referred to in the Quran was in fact the Upanishads). Dara’s journey, meeting scholars from Christianity and

Moves of history: Dara uses qawwali and other musical forms from the subcontinent as vehicles for action. Hinduism in order to develop his philosophy, is one of the critical scenes in the play. Although popular with the masses and his father’s favourite, Dara lost out to Aurangzeb. While the play ends on this factually accurate note, it does suggest that had Dara won, the subcontinent’s history might have been very different; in fact, Islam itself might have been viewed differently. “Islam is a religion of peace, love and understanding, and a promoter of the arts and har-

mony between different classes and communities,” says Nadeem. Given that the protagonist and his interpretation of Islam both favoured the arts, music and dance are integral to the play. “A lot of qawwalis, dance and other subcontinental musical forms are vehicles for action in the play, especially since culture is also a tool for communal harmony,” says Nadeem. The scene between the dancer and the commoners, for instance, ends with the group breaking into a song.

Dara, according to Nadeem, is a “role model for the true face of Islam” that Pakistan and Islamic society as a whole need. “He needs to be brought back into the history books, and that is the only way forward for Muslims in Pakistan and Muslims everywhere,” he says. Dara will be staged on 21 January at Kamani Auditorium as part of NSD’s Bharat Rang Mahotsav. The festival is on till 22 January. For details and bookings, log on to www.nsdtheatrefest.com

CULTURE L17

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FILM

Tradition with a twist

STALL ORDER

NANDINI RAMNATH INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

‘HYPERLINK’ FREEDOM

What makes the enfant terrible of Bengali cinema a force who can no longer be ignored

B Y S HAMIK B AG ···························· nside the main auditorium of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI) in Kolkata, the air of expectation is a palpable, seditious being. The hall is filled to near capacity with film students, cinema and theatre professionals, writers, musicians and others from Kolkata’s young, freethinking set. Within moments, the black and white Bengali feature film has the audience engrossed in its conscious and consistent chronicle of the coarse and the confrontational. There are some early walkouts, but the audience, by and large, remains seated as the film unspools the life of its young protagonist, the rapper Gandu, and his passage through petty larceny, domestic abuse, drugs, sex, hallucination, multiple realities and final musical consummation. The making is in the vérité mould and distinctly stylized. The narrative is so delightfully perched that one doesn’t even mind when it falls off the edge with the filmmaker introducing himself in the film and the conventional script format going for a toss. The acting is top drawer, especially by Anubrata who plays Gandu, and acts like he is playing out his own life

in the film. tary film Love in India (2009). FolGandu, released in the festival l o w i n g t h e s i m i l a r c o n n e c t circuit in 2010, ends with an between Indian heritage and sexextended and brightly lit vivid sex uality, Q’s upcoming documensequence in colour, a riotous tary film Sari will study the “spirinaked dance by its three primary tual, textural and sexual” connotaactors, accompanied by a volatile tions attached with “the world’s score. As the team gathers on oldest fabric”, now reduced to stage after the 80-minute film, the mere ceremonial attire. audience takes its time to Love in India boldly reviewed applaud. When it does, it comes in the film-maker’s relationship with spontaneous bursts. his actor-girlfriend Rii (who gives For self-taught film-maker an audacious performance in Quashik Mukherjee, who goes by Gandu), while studying the the moniker Q, Gandu is a score mythology of passion in ancient settled at multiple levels. It was India against the current social some SRFTI students who had order defined by dichotomies, earlier derided Q’s work on his moral and physical policing. unfinished film Tepantorer Mathe It provides a peep into the mind (2003). Q replied with Le Pocha of the film-maker, which pokes, (2004), a documentary on Bengali probes and unsettles every rigidly alternative music with a cock-a- held moral and social apple cart, s n o o k s t y l e a n d a t i t l e t h a t not unlike the films of Lars von mocked the Bengali penchant for Trier, Gaspar Noe and French and all things classically French. Now, Japanese shock cinema—all of he has returned with Gandu. which Q owns up to. After a clutch of screenings in “Internationally, shock cinema the international festival circuit, has existed for 50 years. We’ve the film is slated to appear at the adjusted it according to our Slamdance Film Festival in Utah, morality. But it can be readUS, later this month and, accord- justed,” says Q, with the confiing to Q, is a riposte to the “sexual dence of an artiste who has now hypocrisy of Indian society, which earned his spurs. “I like the way refuses to acknowledge the cen- Gasper Noe treats cinema as a trality of sexuality in all philoso- physical tool where the audience phies”. provides the third dimension.” The 37-year-old film-maker In Gandu too, the film-maker admits that his unabashed portrayal of sex is a tool for audience “titillation”. “It’s a banana shown to an audience before letting them into a bigger cinematic plot,” says Q, in his dimly lit studio in Lake Gardens, overseen by a wall of complex graffiti art. “It’s also about overcoming self-censorship. For me, sexuality provides personal insight.” Erotic art is our heritage, the narrator says in Q’s documen- Shock and awe: A still from Gandu.

Q for controversy: Q (centre) with Rii and Anubrata in his Kolkata studio. experiments by turning the camera on the ordinary public, quizzing them on their understanding of the Bengali street slang gandu and “pornography”. “Stupid”, “f*****”, “loser”, “moron” and “delightful propaganda”, “necessity”, “I’m an Indian” are the sets of answers we get respectively. Viewers are left to decide for themselves. Post-screening, as the SRFTI audience discusses the creative opportunities that the film can prise open, Q knows what is most “liberating”: the fact that the low-budget, digital SLR-shot film was funded through a close-knit cooperative model; that it wasn’t made keeping in mind the censor board certificate or commercial release; and his rejection of most sociocultural norms. His earlier Bengali feature film Bishh (2009)—on three women turning sexual predators for a night—was made with external funds and for theatrical release; reasons, Q says, why its “form was extremely constrained”. “Gandu binds me no longer to the ground rules,” he says, reflecting on the viral buzz the indie film’s trailer has generated online. “Multiple marketing platforms are available. It has thrown up endless possibilities.” Gandu will be screened at the Slamdance Film Festival in Utah, US, 22 January; in the Panorama section at the Berlin Film Festival, 10-20 February; and Bring Your Own Film Festival, Puri, 21-25 February. Write to lounge@livemint.com

ike many wonderful terms, “hyperlinked cinema” was coined by a film critic. American writer Alissa Quart first used the expression in 2005 to describe movies that contained interconnected plot lines and that moved back and forth in time between various characters. Hyperlinked movies such as Amores Perros (2000), Traffic (2000), Crash (2004), Syriana (2005) and Gomorrah (2008) offer the thrill of throwing different stories at viewers and teasing out the connections along the way, often openly but also sometimes subtly. Interconnected narratives are not new—Robert Altman’s Short Cuts (1993), based on Raymond Carver’s short stories about various Los Angeles denizens, as well as Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express (1994), which maps love, loss and loneliness across two separate stories, predate Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Amores Perros (2000). However, hyperlinked cinema has come into its own in the age of the global city. By its very nature, a hyperlink film is perfectly suited to express the multiplicity of characters and worlds that exists cheek by jowl in cities. Such films allow film-makers to make sense of the often contradictory and oppositional movements of people and ideas in modern megapolises. Amores Perros, for instance, used a car accident to yoke together the stories of a model, a dog fighter and a hitman. The movie spawned countless imitations, including Mani Ratnam’s Yuva (2004). It’s no surprise that hyperlinked films have become popular in India at a time when our cities are experiencing massive upheavals. The Delhi Metro connects various corners of the city, making it possible to move from a tony part of the Capital to an ancient quarter and then to the still-developing fringes in a matter of minutes. In Mumbai, changed urban development regulations mean that older notions of an inner city and its suburbs have been reduced to rubble. Real estate now costs a lifetime’s savings regardless of the neighbourhood you live in. Advertising executives share space with blue-collar workers in the mill district. Retired government employees are neighbours with young film professionals in the northern parts of the city. Only films with interconnected narratives, can, perhaps, make sense of the clamour and the glamour of the new Indian metropolis. As the modern city transforms itself, the genre of the city film is undergoing various nips and tucks. Kiran Rao’s upcoming Dhobi Ghat explores the interlinked Urban maze: Babbar in Dhobi Ghat. lives of four characters, including a washerman and an artist. Before Rao, film-makers such as Anurag Basu (Life in a...Metro; 2007), Nishikant Kamat (Mumbai Meri Jaan; 2008) and Dibakar Banerjee (Love Sex aur Dhokha; 2010) have used common themes—love in the city, violence, voyeurism—to connect seemingly disparate individuals. A response to the global city is to try and suggest that a grand narrative exists beneath the chaos. A more convenient solution can be to take A, connect him to B, make B fall in love with C, who, in turn, is using D to get back at A. Hyperlink films liberate film-makers, especially young and restless ones who want to address several stories in a short span of time, from having to follow the emotional and psychological arc of a character from beginning to end. As several turkeys from the last few years prove, it seems simpler to hold on to one’s identity in a bustling city than to make audiences care for the fortunes of a few good men and women for a 2-hour duration. Dhobi Ghat releases on 21 January. Nandini Ramnath is the film critic of Time Out Mumbai (www.timeoutmumbai.net). Write to Nandini at stallorder@livemint.com

MUSIC REVIEW | MENWHOPAUSE & BAREFACED LIAR

Capital records New albums by two Delhi bands— a raucous debut and a broody sophomore effort

B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com

···························· Menwhopause—Easy After four years and plenty of globetrotting, Delhi band Menwhopause are ready with their second album. Called Easy, it’s the band’s major label debut—coming out on EMI later this month. Opener Time is a sprawling, laid-back epic, driven by a loopy riff. The song’s second section breaks into an interlude that wouldn’t be out of place in an Indian Ocean album. Track 2, Can’t we be dreaming, sounds like Malayalam rockers Avial’s Aadu Pambe crossed with Bangalore

Easy: EMI, `199. band Lounge Piranha at their darkest. Floating is reminiscent of the Beatles track Across the universe, and maintains that floaty, ethereal quality throughout. There’s the slightest hint of bloopy electronica in Brimful. Miti Adhikari, who previously worked with the erstwhile Kolkata band, The Supersonics, produced this album—and his influence is visible. Like Maby Baking, The

Supersonics’ debut album, there’s a consistency to the sound that gives the album a cohesive feel—and a unified conceptual underpinning. Most of the songs in Easy are driven by a metronomic acoustic guitar, and vocalist Sarabjit Chadha’s precise vocals. There’s a quiet intensity to much of Easy that lets the songs grow on you—no gratuitous guitar solos or attempts at epic choruses clamour for your attention. Just solid songwriting and a set of great tunes (including three bonus tracks from Home, the band’s debut). The album’s title, you realize, isn’t a description of the songs themselves but how simple the band makes it all seem. Menwhopause play at the Hard Rock Café in Delhi on 27 January.

Barefaced Liar Everything Menwhopause build in quiet minimalism in Easy, Barefaced Liar demolish within the first 30 seconds of their debut album of the same name. Crunchy riffs explode out of your speakers, guitar solos scream out of most songs and loud choruses jump out of every corner. Barefaced Liar is loud, rau-

Scream: Barefaced Liar.

cous and lots of fun. The vocals have nice harmonies to them and the lead vocalist has an endearing vocal tic that he exploits to the maximum (words such as “right” and “tonight” are pronounced “ra-yet” and “tonigh-yet”, with a stress on the last syllable). Barefaced Liar has no conceptual thread running through the album; neither is one necessary. This is straight-up rock, served with catchy tunes (To the Alamo) and pointless lyrics (Turismo) and pleasingly complex guitar solos (Free Radical). Barefaced Liar are best experienced live, but their album works as a competent marker of their talent—there’s plenty of energy on display, and gleams of songwriting talent that make them a band to watch with interest.

L18 FLAVOURS SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

BANGALORE BHATH | PAVITRA JAYARAMAN

Persian durbar The city’s favourite haunt for magazine lovers has a new, sprawling avatar. But the cats still play a big part in its shifting fortunes

n 1968, Mohammed Hussain Sait and his wife sat on a low wall after a leisurely evening walk down Bangalore’s Church Street. Staring at a building that was being constructed, Sait casually asked his wife what she’d think if he sold magazines and newspapers from the small passage in that building. She nodded. Soon afterwards, the couple started Variety Book House. The hole-in-the-wall store remained just that until three months ago, when it moved to a new location on Church Street—an 1,800 sq. ft store. It is one—or perhaps the only—store of its size in the country which sells just magazines, both current and old issues. Vintage issues of The New Yorker (`699), Pen World (`600), a magazine about pens, QP (`1,500), the watch magazine, High Times (`600), a magazine dedicated to marijuana, Guitarist (`900), Book Moda (`5,700), the Italian fashion magazine, Sight & Sound (`600), the film magazine, Computer Music (`1,000) and Yoga (`550)—the shelves have

an eclectic look. At the other end of the same street is a 2,000 sq. ft store, Magazines, started by the family six years ago. It sells—you guessed it—magazines, but it’s also popularly known as “the cat store” because it is home to 10 cats. The original site of the Facebook page, “I love the cats at the magazine store”, is indeed this. A third store in Koramangala is on the cards. When Sait started Variety, he did double duty, working the night shift at the finishing department of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd for 15 years. Sait’s youngest son, Yahya, 40, narrates his father’s story at the Variety Book Store, sipping on his “20th cup of tea for the day”. He greets his customers with familiarity as they walk into the swank store. “His business made him some great friends and made me some too,” he says. The founder-owner died in 2009 at the age of 85. For a family that has sold magazines and newspapers for close to 42 years now, Yahya still smiles when asked what

makes them tick. “There were times when we introduced a small lending library and even a stationery section, but what has survived is just the magazines,” says Noor Hussain (56), Yahya’s older brother, who has been working at Variety from the time he was in school. The family began by selling local magazines, but 15 years into the business, Mohammad Hussain diversified into international magazines after a trip to Mumbai, where he chanced upon old foreign magazines going cheap. He contacted agents and asked for supplies of a bunch of labels, including Elle and Vogue, giving

Bangaloreans a chance to get their hands on magazines they would otherwise only get to read outside of India. In 2004, on another trip to Mumbai, Yahya and Noor met more agents and returned with 25,000 issues of international magazines. This forced them to keep changing locations till the new, permanent second store Magazines came into being. “Initially, we thought that we were doing sales only because of my father’s loyal customers, but at the new location, new customers walked in and bought piles of magazines,” says Yahya. He infers Bangaloreans have an insatiable appetite for PHOTOGRAPHS

ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT

magazines. “Every time we open a consignment, it’s like a Pandora’s box. We find new titles all the time,” he says, adding that somehow most of them seem to have takers. Their best-selling category: music magazines, because of the posters and CDs they come with, closely followed by old issues of computer magazines. “But customers surprise us all the time,” he says. A few customers only buy Italian fashion magazines, paying as much as `3,000-4,000. The two brothers maintain that readers can broadly be categorized as book readers and magazine readers. Magazine lovers are a different breed altogether. So the couple of shelves where the brothers stack some best-sellers and comic books don’t have many takers. There are more takers, in fact, for Magazines’ feline residents. The cats, the owners suspect, are responsible for drawing in people and turning them into customers. Yahya’s love for cats began 18 years ago when Minnah, an Indo-Persian cat, strayed into his house. “She became the centre of my life,” he says. In 15 years, Minnah gave birth to around 55 kittens. While Minnah had to be given away, Yahya’s love for cats remained. “From an advertisement in the newspaper, I impulsively bought a family of five Persian cats, but couldn’t keep them at home,” he says. He went around Bangalore looking for a place to rent just to shelter them. “While I was house hunting, I kept them at the store for one evening. The customers were so taken by them that I decided to keep them (there),” he says. Magazines now has 10 cats—Persian and Maine Coon. Some people walk in just to see them. Once, a lady named Laila, who had three Persian cats, came to the store asking if they would keep her cats as she was moving to another city. Yahya accepted gladly. Laila, now back in the city, often drops in to visit her former pets. “I rarely buy magazines here,” she says, holding her favourite brown Persian. pavitra.j@livemint.com

Book covers: (clockwise from above) The shut tered, original Variety Book House is a stark contrast to its new, swanky avatar on the right; Yahya Sait at the store; and Snowbell and Sugar, adopted by Yahya Sait.