Lounge 17 October 2009

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

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Saturday, October 17, 2009

Vol. 3 No. 41

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

ON A PLATTER >Page 18

TRAVEL QUEST The CNN reporter talks about business hotels and the mind­altering effects of economy flights >Page 19

THE

GIVING ISSUE

A WORLD WRITER’S CANVAS

A novel by last year’s Nobel winner proves that literature can come from the most unlikely places >Page 20

Why the girl child needs your help and how you can change her life

FIRST PERSON

I

developed a keen interest in the cause of the girl child in the mid-1980s. I had returned from the US after my studies there and this was the period immediately after the restoration of democracy following the brief spell of Emergency in India. Though I was in agreement in principle with the idea of population control, I was deeply disturbed by the measures used to enforce this decision. Besides population control, I realized that there was a strong co-relation between most societal ills and... >Page 4

Taking turns on the neighbourhood swing is Asmina Shah’s (left) favourite activity.

THE GOOD LIFE

ANAND MAHINDRA

POWER IS WHAT MEN UNDERSTAND

THE SHOW MUST GO ON

REPLY TO ALL

SHOBA NARAYAN

WHY ARE WE WARY OF ‘GIVING’?

R

ecently, I received many emails and phone calls urging me to contribute during the Joy of Giving week. By the end of the week, I came to the reluctant conclusion that the whole notion of the “joy of giving” was based on a false premise. It is a catchy line for sure, but it is based on what Freud called the “pleasure principle”, rather than its counterpart: the reality principle. If giving was indeed joyous, we’d be doing it to get our pleasure fix. >Page 5

In search of the girls who were stars of an Oscar­winning film about Kolkata’s red light district >Page 22

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

AAKAR PATEL

HINDUISM’S STAMP ON INDIAN MUSLIMS

T

his year, again, the world’s Muslims celebrated Eid al-Fitr twice. Eid was on Sunday, 20 September, for 850 million Muslims—350 million Arabs, 235 million Indonesians, 16 million Malaysians, Somalis, Nigerians, Chinese, Turks, Kurds, Iranians, Kosovans, Uzbeks, Afghans and Chechens. Eid was Monday, 21 September, for the world’s other 480 million Muslims—Pakistanis, Indians and Bangladeshis. The second group fasted when the first was feasting. >Page 17

THE BEACHES ARE MISSING

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

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (MANAGING EDITOR)

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

FOUNDING EDITOR RAJU NARISETTI

©2009 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved

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THE INDIAN GIRL CHILD NEEDS YOU

Å Shreya Ashok: Wins a set of 10 DVDs from NDTV Lumiere.

Y

ou never treat your daughter any differently from your son. You honour her right to education and a free life and respect her choices.

You will certainly ensure that her marriage is about love and respect, not negotiation. You abhor female foeticide, don’t employ child labour and, hell, you’ve even pledged you won’t watch that child bride serial that airs on television.

If the description fits you, our second Diwali issue (we hope you enjoyed last week’s Gifting Issue) is meant just for you. We know you’ll love the 13 inspirational stories that show you what a girl child can achieve if she’s given a chance. We know you will understand why she needs that chance.

And after reading these stories, we hope you will be the one to give her that chance.

Have you ever wondered what it must be like to grow up in a less privileged house (and privilege isn’t always about money in the Indian context) and survive the nonsense this country throws in the way of the girl child? One-third of the world’s child brides come from India, Unicef noted last week. Of Asia’s 44 million child labourers, half are from India.

We are beginning this issue with someone who’s been helping girl children for more than a decade now. Industrialist Anand Mahindra has been devoted to the cause since the 1980s. In 1996, he set up Nanhi Kali, an organization which hopes to educate 100,000 girls by 2010. Mahindra says his interest in the issue arose because he comes from a family of strong women. Each of the stories of the girl children featured here tells you how you can help empower Indian woman. This issue is a keeper.

PS: Don’t forget to write to us and tell us about the chance you gave a girl child.

Write to lounge@livemint.com ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: HARIKRISHNA KATRAGADDA/MINT CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS: Punj Lloyd Group says Peter Punj, featured in ‘A sound and light show’, 10 October, is not associated with the Punj Lloyd Group.

In ‘The Gifting Issue’, 10 October, product photographs were shot by Ramesh Pathania, Harikrishna Katragadda, Hemant Mishra and Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint.

In the ‘Win­Win Contest’, 10 October, Bella shoes will be giving the gift voucher.

Å Parikshit Jain: Wins a sterling silver Moon Ganesh from Episode.

È Alhad Narkhede and Suma P: Win one shopping bag each from Play Clan.

Å Bhavani Arumbakkam: Wins a gift pack from Sula. Å Dinesh Kumar and Huzefa Millwala: Win one postcard set each from CMYK.

Ç Anuradha Palkar: Wins Acqua Di Gio perfumes from Armani.

Ç Narendran AM: Wins a gift voucher from Wills Lifestyle.

Ç Sudha Raghuram and Shobana Jaiganesh: Win one 5­Minute Makeup Kit each from ColorBar.

Æ Saurabh Jindal: Wins a vase and a tea­light candle from Varya.

È Gunjan Malviya: Wins a gift voucher redeemable at Delhi from Bella.

Æ Iwin Edith Aranha: Wins a Polo Double Black cologne for men and Notorious perfume for women from Ralph Lauren. Å Neha Agarwal: Wins a gift voucher from Marks & Spencer. Ç Shinil Payamal: Wins a Lotus candle stand from Devi Designs.

Æ Debosmita Ghosh: Wins a gift pack from Miazma.

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Power is the only language some men seem to understand Why the cause of the girl child is close to this industrialist’s heart and how Nanhi Kali, the education programme he started, became a success BHARATH SAI/MINT

COURTESY KC MAHINDRA EDUCATION TRUST

I FIRST PERSON ANAND MAHINDRA

developed a keen interest in the cause of the girl child in the mid-1980s. I had returned from the US after my studies there and this was the period immediately after the restoration of democracy following the brief spell of Emergency in India.

Though I was in agreement in principle with the idea of population control, I was deeply disturbed by the measures used to enforce this decision. Besides population control, I realized that there was a strong co-relation between most societal ills and no education for the girl child. By empowering her with education, we could begin to put an end to ailments such as the spiralling population rate, caste system and dowry deaths. In that sense, one of the foundations of a secular, modern society is the education of its women.

On a more emotive level, I come from a family where women are very strong personalities. I am the father of two daughters and the son of a feminist, who is also an author, and was, therefore, naturally inclined towards the girl child.

This concern for the upliftment of the girl child translated into Nanhi Kali. My stay in the US had revealed to me that the US is one of the most charitable societies in the world, and an average citizen gives 5-10% of his earning to charity. On the contrary, for most of us in India, charity begins and ends with our gods and religions. So my next thought was: How could I play a role in encouraging others to begin that very worthwhile individual habit of “giving”?

At this time, the yuppie boom had just commenced with the onset of the leasing industry in the mid-1980s and it brought wealth to a large number of young finance

Thumbs up: (above) Nanhi Kali students at GSM, Kulsumpura, a primary school in Hyderabad; Nanhi Kali girls braving floods to go to school in Udaipur—it is one of Mahindra’s favourite photographs.

professionals. This generation of newly affluent young people yearned to give back to society, but was unable to locate an appropriate medium.

They had little knowledge of the NGOs that existed at that time and these existing bodies were unable to demonstrate a direct consequence of individual contributions.

So I started to think about putting together a system where people had a direct connect with who they were helping, where they could see the results of their contributions. I borrowed the Nanhi Kali model from a couple of charity organizations I had seen abroad.

We adopted from the best practices of several NGOs. A Nanhi Kali’s sponsor is sent progress reports on the child, which also has her photograph, but is not given her contact details. I believe that this helps develop a personal bond with the child, which is difficult to break, and which also ensures

that the sponsorship continues.

I suppose I could have chosen to donate money directly to NGOs, which in turn could have passed it on to needy girls. The other choice was to create an avenue for more interested young people such as myself to donate for the cause of the girl child. I chose to do the latter. I gave a corpus to the KC Mahindra Education Trust, which has been in existence since 1953, and asked them to manage this programme. This money was used to create the infrastructure to solicit donations. I funded the ads, the staff and the infrastructure.

When Sheetal Mehta, the present trustee and executive director of the KC Mahindra Education Trust, took over in 2005, Nanhi Kali was catapulted into another orbit. We tied up with Naandi Foundation, who are the implementation partners for the project. Nanhi Kali is now present in seven states across the country, and if

Sheetal’s vision for Nanhi Kali comes true, we will be able to educate 100,000 girls by 2010.

Interestingly, we did not face any initial hurdles when setting up this programme. Nanhi Kali commenced operations with an ad, which featured a little girl with the tag line, “I am Shreya”.

We still use that ad as it has tremendous mass appeal.

Among all the girls that Nanhi Kali has supported, I distinctly remember three girls from our programme in Udaipur (Rajasthan) who braved floods to go to school.

My daughters have forgotten how many times I’ve shown this photo to them and exhorted them to understand “…what people have to go through to get an education that you take for granted!”

I understand that my effort for this cause is a drop in the ocean, but I am optimistic that it does make a difference in the overall scheme of things. We have a long way to traverse

before we eliminate all the roadblocks in the way of the girl child. In India, the discrimination and injustice often begins even before birth.

Though I cannot offer a simplistic solution to the ills that plague the girl child, it is my firm belief that the key to this problem lies in the economic empowerment of women. An independent source of income seems to have a magical effect on women. Their confidence soars, they can take the right decisions and say no to abuses such as infanticide, female foeticide and abusive spouses.

Education and economic empowerment also lead to political power, and sometimes, power is the only language that some men seem to understand.

As a culture, Indians are prone towards philanthropy, though historically, this has been linked to religion, for instance, giving of alms to beggars. However, I believe that as our society evolves and our sense of civic duty evolves, we will witness a rapid acceleration of philanthropic behaviour. Like in the West, it will soon be fashionable to start “giving”.

And as far as I am concerned, so long as we are able to contribute to make a difference in the lives of those who need it the most, that is all that matters.

Anand Mahindra is the vice-chairman and managing director of the Mahindra Group.

As told to Sanjukta Sharma Write to lounge@livemint.com

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www.cry.org

BAL VIKAS DHARA, NEW DELHI Bal Vikas Dhara (BVD), supported by Child Rights and You (CRY), works with marginalized, nomadic urban communities, with the aim of spreading awareness and educating people about their rights and duties, and addressing the issues that face women and children. BVD works out of Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, and has projects in the ‘bastis’ near Rangpuri Pahari. Besides non­formal education, it deals with aspects of “creation of community assets, economic empowerment, training and capacity building of the parents of working children, gender sensitization, networking, campaigns and awareness building on child rights”.

Rs5,000

FOR THIS CHARITY CAN

All funds raised by CRY are pooled and disbursed to projects/child rights initiatives across the country, which focus on addressing the “root causes that keep children uneducated, unhealthy and unprotected”.

Asmina Shah: penning a future F

rom a balcony vantage point in the Kabadi Basti (ragpickers slum) in Rangpuri Pahari, the view is obscured by a billowing curtain of heat and dust. A Boeing 737 flies low over the area, located a few kilometres beyond Vasant Kunj, past a winding dirt road shadowed by one of Delhi’s landfills, where garbage mounds rise like sand dunes. To the left is the urban sprawl of Mahipalpur where, in galis 2, 3 and 4, 12-year-old Asmina Shah’s father, Mohammed Nazir Shah, collects garbage every day from 7am.

It takes him 6 hours to cover the lanes, knocking from door to door, and collecting garbage for segregation back home.

It’s a job that fetches this father of five Rs50-100 a day on an average.

Asmina is Shah’s eldest child. Four years ago, Asmina, like many of the children in Rangpuri Pahari, was brought into the occupational fold—ragpicking, segregating waste or just engaged in odd jobs at home. Tall for her age, wiry and dressed in a red and yellow salwarkameez (her favourite colours), she chats about her life while absent-mindedly playing with the tiny pigtails that loop behind her head. “I used to wake up, greet my mother, wash my hands, say my prayers, and then I worked…helping my father segregate the garbage,” she says matter-of-factly. The courtyard of her one-room residence has discrete hills of plastic bags, cardboard boxes and empty alcohol bottles. Asmina was around 6 when she started working.

In 2005, a local NGO called Bal Vikas Dhara decided to intervene in the area with support from Child Rights and You (CRY). At the time, they estimated there were around 2,000 families in the slum, and started two non-formal education centres for children in 2006. Asmina was one of the first children in the slum to enrol in the facility. She stopped working with her father after getting admission in a municipal school nearby, at the age of 9. She now studies in class V. Dressed in a faded red cap and khaki shirt, Shah looks visibly tired after his daily shift. He holds his youngest son Peer Mohammed on his lap, periodically wiping the trail of mucus emerg-

IF YOU WANT TO VOLUNTEER CRY has volunteer options in Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai.

You can either choose to be part of citywide campaigns or join a ‘public action group’ of a locality ing from the boy’s nose with a handkerchief. “The minute my children were born, I decided I would beg, ragpick, do whatever… But my children would sign with a pen, and not a thumb impression. It was my most fervent wish. I’m glad Bal Vikas Dhara has helped make it possible,” he says.

Community coordinator Anita Jha was one of the first teachers to start work in the area and has been with the project since 2005. “In the beginning, I went door to door, identifying families and kids. Pleading with them to send children to our centre,” she says. The nonformal centres had a basic curriculum of Hindi, math and English and were designed as a bridge programme to help the children join a municipal school.

“We had much trouble in the beginning.

The kids ran away, cried when they had to come here. The teachers were eveteased by the men. We also had to convince the principals of the schools to take these children.” In its first year, nearly 190 students in the 6-14 age group attended the non-formal centres.

Asmina enjoys school, especially her uniform: sky-blue shirt, navy-blue skirt and black canvas shoes she polishes to a shine. “The dress makes me look smart,” she says. The school provides midday meals, whose quality is uncertain. “Sometimes it’s good, like when

they have rice…other times they have sookhi (dry) puri.” Once or twice a month, they also feature Asmina’s favourite: rajma rice.

Attending school has freed Asmina from having to work through the afternoons, time she now devotes to her two pets: She points to a puppy curiously sniffing a mound of plastic bags. “That’s Dolly the dog,” she says, “And this…,” she runs into the dark room, emerging with a cardboard box, “…is my pet mouse.” The unnamed mouse is white, with patches of brown, and a present from her father. “I found it during my rounds about a month ago, and she’s been taking care of it ever since,” says Shah. School holidays are spent in the shade of a nearby mulberry tree, where old saris are hung from branches to make swings.

By the end of 2008, at least 350 children from the neighbourhood had been admitted to the local municipal school.

“We moved the ward commissioner and the local MLA to force the schools to admit these children, ” says text by krish raghav Nisha Verma, commit- krish.r@livemint.com tee organizer with Bal photograph by harikrishna Vikas Dhara. Dropout katragadda rates in this particular community are now less than 20%.

However, the constitution of Asmina’s slum is changing constantly, and regularity in residence and job is proving increasingly difficult for the residents.

“Rents have been on the rise here, rising to over six times their amount three years ago. Evictions and land disputes have intensified,” says Sunita, a field coordinator with Bal Vikas Dhara.

Asmina’s family pays Rs1,500 for its single-room residence. It’s no surprise then that Asmina sees her future elsewhere.

Her ambition is to teach English.

It is her favourite subject at school. “I want to go somewhere far away,” she says. “I want to be a teacher in my father’s village.” Why there? “Because there are people in that village who don’t go to school yet.” When asked where this village is, she shrugs. “I don’t know. But my father does. He’ll take me there.”

School time: Asmina Shah (seated) wants to become an English teacher in her father’s village when she grows up.

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Babita: a will to speak her mind

w w w. c h i l d s u r v i v a l ­ i n d i a . o r g

CHILD SURVIVAL INDIA (CSI), NEW DELHI CSI works among the slum and rural communities of Delhi, Haryana, Chandigarh and Punjab. Its work revolves around HIV prevention among vulnerable and high­risk behaviour groups, in­patient and community care and support for HIV patients, and life skills for street and working children. For women and girls, it runs programmes that include comprehensive maternal and child healthcare, legal literacy and empowerment. The NGO is funded by grants from the Delhi Commission for Women, department of women and child development and international agencies such as The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Rs5,000 FOR THIS CHARITY CAN Help conduct six sessions on reproductive health for 30 girls u Organize a one­day health camp for 100 street and working children u Help three girls take a six­month course on computer skills u Buy milk and nutritious food for one HIV­positive child for one year u

Mind opener: Babita (centre) and some other girls in Holambi Kalan can speak confidently about issues such as AIDS.

I

n our cities, ever so often, when a sprawling slum becomes a festering eyesore, the authorities just shift it out. It’s simple enough, one night’s work, a couple of bulldozers and a dozen lathi-wielding policemen. When we wake up in the morning, we see the empty plot, perhaps a few things strewn about, a shoe missing its pair or a shred of old cloth. We shrug and move on, our scenery restored.

Holambi Kalan is a village, 40 minutes from New Delhi’s bustling ITO junction. It is text by veena venugopal here, tucked veena.v@livemint.com on one side of photograph by harikrishna N a t i o n a l katragadda H i g h w a y - 1 , far away for the city to see or smell, that large clusters of these slum dwellers have relocated. At the final turn to Holambi Kalan, as the gates of the railway crossing close behind you, you realize that it’s not just Delhi that has forgotten Holambi Kalan’s residents—time has forgotten them too.

Babita, with no last name or any real fixed address, is aware of this. She reckons she is

around 17. She remembers being married, she cannot recall how old she was. “My sister was about 15 then and when a good proposal came for her, my parents decided that they would get me married on the same day too. That way, they wouldn’t have to incur the expenses of a wedding party twice,” she says in Hindi. Marriage of all the girls in the family on the same day is common in Holambi Kalan.

Now, it’s time for Babita to move in with her husband. But she does not want to go. The news that has been dripping in through the years is that her husband has grown up to be nogood, an alcoholic who hasn’t held a job down for too long.

She has told her father that she will not go to live with her husband, and if he forces her she will just run away.

This is a new phenomenon in Holambi Kalan; this emergence of girls who dare to know their mind and, horror of horrors, speak it. It’s a small flicker of modernity in a place stuck in the past. Most parents abhor it, but a few of them are indulging their daughters’ protests. Babita says that attending the meetings at Child Survival India (CSI) has

IF YOU WANT TO VOLUNTEER CSI is looking for volunteers across areas—running creative workshops, help in documenta­ tion, marketing inputs, etc changed her life in ways she could not even imagine. For the last nine years, CSI has been working actively with the community at Holambi Kalan. They talk to adolescent girls and teach them the rudiments of life that most of us take for granted.

“I started coming to the CSI meetings and realized they were talking openly about things like menstruation, pregnancy, HIV, etc., and telling us what to do and what to avoid. I was happy that there was a place I could take my doubts and problems to,” says Babita.

Life’s big lessons can only be taught in small steps, and no

one is more aware of this than Deepa Bajaj, who heads CSI. “When we first started working in these communities, people used to abuse us. They thought we were filling their children’s heads with rubbish. But today we see such a huge improvement in their lives,” she says.

Babita and other girls don’t just talk confidently of issues such as AIDS, they have even evolved to be the mouths of CSI—taking their message to others like them through street plays. The plays effortlessly weave modern messages with traditional folk songs. They address the perils of child marriages, early and frequent deliveries, and the threat of disease.

“What I realized after working in these communities is that in cities, because we have access to schools and books, we get a lot of information. These girls don’t go to school, they are stuck at home all the time and there is no one to teach them even the basics of life. But we have to package it in a way that does not threaten their way of life,” says Bajaj. For instance, girls are told that once they marry and get pregnant, they should eat with the rest of the

family. They believe it is because their husbands will feel good about it. But in reality, it ensures that the mother-to-be gets a decent share of the food.

If she eats last, as is the tradition, she often gets the least, or sometimes nothing at all. While CSI members do not interfere in the decisions about life that these girls make, they explain the consequences of their actions in detail.

CSI also imparts life skills— teaching the girls computer skills, tailoring, or training them to be beauticians. Babita used to attend the tailoring classes, but gave up when her mother fell ill. She plans to resume them soon. She knows her future is not going to be easy and that it’s essential for her to be self-reliant. If she breaks up the marriage, her father would have to compensate the groom’s family with money he does not have. And the taint that she was once married will stay. If she’s lucky, she says, her father will find a divorcee or a widower for her to marry. But she doesn’t want to take any chances.

She now dares to believe that it’s possible to bet on herself.

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w w w. d e e p a l a ya . o r g

DEEPALAYA, NEW DELHI

Ruby Kumari: on a bus to a new life

For 30 years, Deepalaya has been working in the slums of New Delhi. It started with five children, two teachers and an investment of Rs17,500. Now, Deepalaya educates 50,000 children across 76 slums in Delhi and 84 villages in Mewat, Haryana. The NGO believes that “educating the girl is equivalent to educating the family”. “Four years ago we noticed that the admission requests for girls were dropping, so now we have mandated that if you bring a boy, you should also bring a girl for admission,” says Gitanjali Krishnan, principal, Deepalaya, Panchsheel Vihar, New Delhi.

Rs5,000

FOR THIS CHARITY CAN Help educate a child for one year. This includes u Fees: Rs3,000 u Books, etc.: Rs1,500 u Extra­curricular activities: Rs1,000 u Sponsorship administration: Rs500 (20% of the total of Rs6,000 is paid by the parents of the child)

Step forward: Ruby Kumari juggled home and school, and is now enrolling in a nursing course.

S

outh Delhi to Faridabad is not a long distance. By bus, it would take about 90 minutes, give or take some. But for Ruby Kumari, it’s going to be the journey of a lifetime; one she never imagined she would have the good fortune to undertake.

She’s understandably nervous. She’s leaving the familiarity of her Khirki Village home, the comfort of her five siblings and the security of her school. In Faridabad, she will get off the bus text by veena venugopal and walk into the veena.v@livemint.com SOS Children’s photograph by madhu V i l l a g e w h e r e kapparath over the next 18 months she will learn how to be a nurse. It’s no small achievement and Ruby is aware of it. She calls herself lucky.

Khirki Village is south Delhi’s blind spot. The gates to it are, ironically, right across the road from Select Citywalk mall, an airconditioned cocoon where Mango is not a fruit and Tommy does not refer to the ubiquitous name for the Indian pet dog.

Entering the village is like taking a giant step back in time. The roads are narrow, a small car can

barely squeeze through. The buildings on both sides are tired and saggy. And the rubbish dumps often come feebly alive with the sound of a baby girl, just born and soon forsaken. When Ruby counts her blessings, she begins here.

The teachers of Deepalaya School routinely visit Khirki to persuade poor families to send their daughters to school. Since Ruby was too young for housework at that time, her father allowed her to go, assuming that when she was 8 and old enough to cook and clean, she would stay home and do her duty. But Gitanjali Krishnan, the principal of Deepalaya School’s Panchsheel Vihar branch, would have none of it. She saw a spark in Ruby. “She was not the brightest child in the class, but she was the hardest worker,” says Krishnan.

So Ruby struck a deal with her father. She would continue to study, but she would also do all the housework.

On a typical day she is up by 5am, finishes the chores at home, then works as a domestic helper, sweeping, swabbing and doing the dishes at a kothi (bungalow) in Chirag Dilli. She rushes back home, cooks, and

IF YOU WANT TO VOLUNTEER You can help out with anything from teaching to fund­ raising. Deepalaya is in Delhi and some projects are in Haryana’s Mewat district, 20km from Gurgaon gets her siblings and herself ready for school. She finishes school at 5.30pm, goes back to her employer’s bungalow to do the dishes, gets home, cleans, cooks, washes clothes, serves dinner, washes up and goes to bed to wake up the next morning and do it all over again.

“Working as a domestic help is the worst option. But for the school, I would be cleaning utensils and others’ houses for the rest of my life. When I was in class VIII, my class teacher, Saroj

sir, used to ask me what I want to be when I grow up, and I always used to tell him that I would end up as a kaamwali (domestic help). I was very, very lucky to get this opportunity and I want to make the most of it,” Ruby says.

Adding to her parents’ worry about sending her away and not having any help at home, is the scorn of the neighbours, she says.

“They tell my father that he is foolish to permit me to study further. They say that if I work in someone’s house, at least I would be able to pay for my own wedding. But I don’t ever want to get married,” she says.

Ruby hopes to finish her course and come back to Khirki Village, where she can help treat ill children. And if she gets an opportunity to study further, she would like to be a doctor, she says.

Ruby gives the entire credit to Deepalaya and Krishnan for taking her off the path of domestic chores and abusive marriages.

They even saved her life. When she was in class V, she had tuberculosis and because her family could not afford nutritious food, she had a relapse. Krishnan worked the phones and got sponsors who contributed money so

she could have some milk, Horlicks and eggs every day. If she sent the money home, she knew Ruby would not get any of it. “I thought I must help this little girl who never complains. I was worried we would lose her otherwise,” Krishnan says.

When she passed her class X examination with 58%, Krishnan sat Ruby down and discussed options for her future. “Because she is very gentle and empathetic, I thought she would make either a good teacher or a good nurse. She chose nursing. We found this college, she passed the entrance tests and then I worked the phones again to find someone to help pay her fees there,” she says. The course and other expenses, such as hostel fees, books and clothes, will cost about Rs1.5 lakh. Some donors have been found and Deepalaya is trying various ways to raise funds for the rest. “Something will come up,” Krishnan says—“hopefully”.

Hope and luck are two crucial factors that led Ruby to the seat on that bus. And she’s grateful for that, for she knows there are scores of Ruby Kumaris who will never be fortunate enough to make that journey.

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Janee Redekar: the power to dream big J

anee Ashok Redekar wants to be a cop when she grows up. The 12-year-old can’t help admiring the policewomen she sees every day at her neighbourhood police station. “They can solve any problem, they are so brave,” Redekar says. But her two teachers, Vinaya Vidyadhar Shirdharkar and Geeta Rao Bugare, believe Redekar can do even better, that she will have different goals in another four years.

Redekar spends most of her day at her school, the NM Joshi Marg High School in Mumbai, where she is one of the oldest among more than 100 girls sponsored by Project Nanhi Kali, the education programme for underprivileged girls run by the KC Mahindra Education Trust. This is Redekar’s third year as a nanhi kali, which translates roughly as young bud.

This class V student’s enthusiasm for studies is obvious the first time I meet her after her academic support class. After nortext by sanjukta sharma mal school hours, she sanjukta.s@livemint.com works on her weak areas, photograph by abhijit bhatlekar math and English, in this class. Math, Marathi and drawing are her favourites, she says.

Redekar’s school uniform is a neatly ironed and starched blue striped kurta, a white churidaar and a blue cotton dupatta. Every few minutes, she looks at her wristwatch; it has a big dial and a thick faux leather strap that covers her thin wrist. Redekar responds to every question with a smile, and thinks before she answers.

Around 15 years ago, her grandfather moved from Kolhapur, Maharashtra, to Mumbai in search of work.

The family just about manages to survive in the city. Redekar’s father doesn’t have a permanent job. Maya, her mother, sells vegetables on a pavement near her school. She says the Nanhi Kali sponsorship was a dream come true for her family. “As a child, Janee was never interested in studies. When we first came here, she would just roam around all day with children from the chawl (area)

IF YOU WANT TO VOLUNTEER Nanhi Kali has no volunteer options whereby you can sign up to teach or mentor the girls. But it accepts volunteers from corporate houses.

Companies that want to contribute money and allow their employees to volunteer can visit the Nanhi Kali website where we live, and not attend school,” Maya says.

At the time, the family’s income was an average of Rs400-600 a month.

The other two children—a son and another daughter—were also spending little time in school, with the parents away from home all day looking for work.

When the state government identified girls from this school for the Nanhi Kali programme, and informed the family that Redekar had been selected, they were thrilled, but Maya still did not expect her daughter to like going to school.

“But in a few months she started spending more and more time in school, she would do her homework in the evenings, and she started developing other interests like dancing,” Maya recalls. Now, she says, her two other children, who go to the same school, too take their studies more seriously. “I was happy because I got a nice school bag,” Redekar says.

Her day usually begins early in the

morning—she helps her mother with household chores. She is in school by 9am, and after regular classes until noon, she spends 1-2 hours at the academic support class. In the special class, students are divided into smaller groups, according to their competency levels. Teachers use visual tools, made by the field workers of Nanhi Kali, to make the learning experience more interesting.

The rest of Redekar’s day is spent practising dance or sports. “When I started school, I was very bad at remembering numbers. I was scared of math, but now I am doing much better. In the last exam, I got 17 out of 30,” she says.

Redekar qualified for a state scholarship through an exam this year—it tested her in math and language, and she was among three who got selected from her school in her age group. She is entitled to a yearly sum of Rs1,200 for her education.

Sheetal Mehta, executive director, Nanhi Kali, attributes a large part of the success of this programme—and the success of someone such as Redekar—to the teachers’ training programme in collaboration with Naandi Foundation. “Most of the teachers are from the same community and neighbourhood. We choose educated people for training students in the academic support class from similar social and economic backgrounds. They can speak to the girls in the language that they understand, and it is also an avenue for employment for educated people.”

Redekar often tries to teach her mother what she learns at school.

Most days, for about a couple of hours after she finishes school, she sits next to her mother on the pavement where they sell vegetables. Amid the bustle of traffic, pedestrians, vendors and shops, she can be seen going through the day’s lessons.

“I can’t imagine this is the same Janee. Now I have hopes that she can join the police one day. I don’t want her to grow up and just get married and look after her family like I do,” says Maya.

www.nanhikali.org

NANHI KALI, MUMBAI Nanhi Kali is an education programme for girls studying in government­run schools in 14 cities and towns across seven states. In collaboration with the state governments, girls are chosen for this programme on the basis of the family’s economic status. Funded and managed

by Anand Mahindra, of the Mahindra Group, and the KC Mahindra Education Trust, Nanhi Kali is implemented in schools by the Naandi Foundation, a charity organization working for the improvement of health and education infrastructure. If you choose to sponsor a girl’s education, you will receive a profile of the girl and her parents, their living environment and her photograph.

Sponsors also receive a progress report every six months.

Rs5,000 FOR THIS CHARITY CAN Help educate two girls studying in classes VIII­X for a year u Rs5,400 can educate three girls in classes I­VII for a year. This includes tuition fees, academic support classes, two sets of uniforms, a pair of shoes, notebooks, stationery and a school bag u

Girl power: Janee Redekar spends some time after school helping her mother sell vegetables.

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www.udayancare.org

UDAYAN CARE, NEW DELHI For the last 15 years, Udayan Care has been caring for disadvantaged children and women. Along with outreach programmes and 10 foster­care homes in and around Delhi, the organization conducts the Udayan Shalini fellowship programme, which provides monetary aid and mentoring to girls from disadvantaged socio­economic backgrounds who want to pursue higher studies. Kiran Modi, founder and managing trustee, says that since its inception in 2002, the programme has helped around 1,500 girls, in the 16­24 age group, in five cities.

Rs5,000

FOR THIS CHARITY CAN

Partly fund the Udayan Shalini programme. The money is used to support a high school, college or professional degree student. Annual donations are typically accepted in denominations of Rs10,000 (high school), Rs15,000 (college) and Rs25,000 (professional degree). Donors are expected to ‘adopt’ a girl and commit to a six­year period. They are sent reports on the girls they have sponsored.

Smita Verma: on a success trail J

ust two weeks ago, 22-year-old Smita Verma helped her family move from their one-room tenement in Old Delhi’s Chandni Chowk—the house that she was born and brought up in—to a two-floor stand-alone house in Shastri Park, a couple of Metro stops away. In the new home, houses don’t meld into one giant housing block and windows open out to real roads instead of other tenements.

Her job as a piping design engineer at an American construction company that consistently features in the Fortune 500 list pays well over Rs20,000 a month. She is the first engineer in her extended family, and thanks to her, the Verma family is the first in the extended lot to have moved out of the crowded bylanes of one of Delhi’s most congested neighbourhoods.

Verma realized her dream of studying engineering with the help of an Udayan Shalini fellowship. She graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from the Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology in 2006, and was one of the four graduates to be picked up by General Electric’s (GE) prestigious training programme that took her on a three-month paid stint to Bangalore. She got a job soon after.

Till class X, Verma, like most other girls in her neighbourhood, went to a Hindi-medium girls’ school that didn’t offer science in classes XI and XII. The reasoning was practical: Few girls who attended that school had aspirations to go to medical or engineering college.

Verma pleaded with her parents to be moved to an English-medium school so that she could better prepare for engineering college. She spent the threemonth break after her class X board exams acquainting herself with the scientific terminology in English.

Despite discouragement from those around her, she determinedly went ahead and educated herself in English.

“They said I wouldn’t be able to do it; that it is difficult to break out of what one is conditioned for,” she says. “It sure was, but in the end it was worth it.”

Every day, she’d read the same chapter in her old Hindi textbook and then

IF YOU WANT TO VOLUNTEER Udayan Care seeks long­term mentors who will be available to counsel Udayan Shalini fellows round the year. The programme currently works with 85 such mentors across the country reread it in her newly acquired English version. “Once I learnt that ‘acceleration’ simply meant what I knew to be twaran, studying science in English didn’t seem so intimidating,” she says.

On a relative scale, Verma didn’t grow up in abject poverty. Her father, Rajender Kumar, owns a school uniform shop in Chandni Chowk. He sent all his three children to school: Smita, her younger sister Priyanka (21) and brother Vaibhav (16). But an engineering degree, that costs around Rs35,000 annually, would have been difficult to fund. The Rs18,000 Udayan Shalini fellowship sponsored half of Verma’s tuition annually and that made things much easier.

The Udayan Shalini fellowship is awarded on the basis of need, talent and aspiration, and is designed for girls like Verma who have had their basic school education, but are limited by resources in breaking the socio-economic barrier that keeps them from realizing their full potential.

The financial criterion dictates that the combined family income of the applicant has to be under Rs8,000 per month. Verma is from the first batch of 72 Udayan Shalini fellows who were inducted in 2002, with each girl selected

after two rounds of testing.

Both Kiran Modi, founder and managing trustee of Udayan Care, and Vikram Dutt, former vice-chairperson of the Forum of Public Schools, who directs the fellowship programme, count Verma among their brightest mentees.

“She went beyond what was expected of her. She stayed up nights to brush (up) her language skills and today she is a bright, confident young woman,” says Dutt. “I keep telling her chuhiya banke aayi thi, sherni banke ja rahi hai (she was so timid when she came and she has so much confidence now).”

What makes Verma a success story is that she’s come full circle. Today, she is a donor to the Udayan Shalini fellowship programme, something that Modi says she hopes ever y fel l ow w il l become. She also exudes an aura that compels those around her to take her seriously. On her advice, her parents shifted both her younger siblings to English-medium schools in order to improve their higher text by anindita ghose anindita.g@livemint.com education prospects.

Verma’s life today is photograph by harikrishna far removed from what katragadda her family had imagined. Other girls from her milieu would have either been married by now or would be thinking about it. Verma shrugs off all marriage-related talk: “Well, there are proposals but I haven’t settled into my career yet,” she says. A master’s degree is on the cards.

Does she wonder how things would have panned out if the fellowship hadn’t happened? She says, almost dismissively, that she never thinks of the “ifs”.

“What’s the point?” she asks.

When she was in class III, Verma recalls a knitting assignment. All her classmates had their mothers or grandmothers finish their assignment for them. “Those were perfect,” she says.

But her mother, Manju, refused to finish hers for her. “She did half of it and asked me to follow it up.”

Verma marks this as her most valuable life lesson: “Standing on my own feet and following up on my own success.”

Full circle: Smita Verma, an engineer, is now a donor to the Udayan Shalini fellowship programme, which funded her education.

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Pramila: a trendsetter in her conservative community

Kanaka & Laxmi: surviving HIV

Being positive: ASHA Foundation gave new life to this HIV­positive mother and daughter.

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eated in the office of Glory Alexander, the founder of ASHA (Action Service Hope for AIDS) Foundation, Kanaka* and Laxmi* giggle as Aishwarya* explores the world under Dr Alexander’s desk. Laxmi, 12, and her mother Kanaka, 35, are HIV-positive but the youngest in the family, four-year-old Aishwarya, is not. “Laxmi and I tested positive for HIV less than a year after she was text by pavitra jayaraman born, but with the pavitra.j@livemint.com help of medication, Aishwarya photograph by hemant mishra was born negative,” says Kanaka.

Kanaka moved to Bangalore after completing her BCom at a college close to her village in Karnataka. She worked as an apprentice at a bank and within a year met her husband Ashok. “He was very good-looking,” she says, pulling out his picture from her purse. “Laxmi was born a year after our marriage in 1997. It was around this time that I noticed lesions on his neck. I assumed it must be some growth and left it as I had other worries.”

By then Ashok had become an

Rs5,000

FOR THIS CHARITY CAN u Support primary education for four children for one year (it costs Plan Rs1,200 per child annually). The sum is used to run educational programmes, which include teachers’ training, material/stationery support, educational aids, educational trips and tuition support u Support two children at a children’s shelter (it costs Plan Rs2,400 per child per year) and help provide regular meals for them for a year

www.youthforseva.org Generation gap: Pramila’s mother Soma worries that her ‘over­qualified’ daughter will not find a good match within their community.

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ASHA FOUNDATION, BANGALORE

The Indian chapter of Plan started its operations in 1979 and has established partnerships with local and community­based organizations to implement programmes across several states. Over the years, Plan’s approach has moved from providing direct benefits, to sponsoring children, to providing more comprehensive child­centred community development programmes. Two years ago it launched a campaign ‘Because I am a girl’ to empower the girl child through quality education, adequate and nutritious food, and end the practice of female foeticide and child marriage.

n the border of Delhi, en route to Faridabad, lies the township of Badarpur. It is home to many migrant communities, among them the saperas (or snake charmers). Known locally as the Sapera Basti (snake charmers’ colony), the small settlement of single-room shanties, made mostly of loose bricks piled together, houses about 150 families. The primary occupation was to catch snakes and use them to provide entertainment.

But all that has changed. text by seema chowdhry Strict laws and seema.c@livemint.com the fear of fines photograph by harikrishna have ensured katragadda t h a t s n a k e s have all but disappeared from the wicker baskets and the beens (flutes) have been packed away.

The snake charmers have now turned dholwallahs (drummers) who only get work during the wedding season.

A tight-knit community, the saperas live by their own rules and are governed by their own panchayat. Girls, once they reach puberty, are hardly allowed out of the house and that’s why most

www.ashaf.org

are schooled only up to class V. In such a conservative community, bringing about change can be a Herculean task—one that Plan India, in association with Community Aid and Sponsorship Programme (CASP), has taken up. “Our biggest challenge has been changing the attitude of the parents towards their daughters. Girls as young as seven or eight years are laden with the responsibility of looking after household chores and managing younger siblings. The parents from these communities have no concept that their child has a right to a better life,” says Ashok Sharma, project director, CASP Plan project, Delhi.

But one spunky 18-year-old girl has managed to break free of these oppressive traditions.

Pramila is the only girl from the basti who has passed her class XII examination and hopes to pursue a bachelor’s degree in social work from the Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou). “In my community girls are usually married early. Most parents want them to work in the house and have kids. But I never wanted that life for myself,” she says.

Pramila is slim, has an unwa-

IF YOU WANT TO VOLUNTEER Plan seeks those who can make a long­term commitment and are oriented towards child protection vering gaze and once had a black snake for a pet. She recalls that when she turned 11, her parents, elder sisters and brothers-in-law wanted her to stay at home. “I had seen what happens to most girls—their husbands are wastrels, usually drunkards and wife-beaters to boot. I was determined not to be married off young and meet the same fate as my friends.”

She remembers urging her mentor at the CASP Plan project to come home to speak to her parents. “I was lucky that Dharamveer sir could convince my father that I be allowed to study beyond class V.” It took lots of persuasion and some

hard talk before Pramila was allowed to leave her pallu-clad existence within the house and carry on at school. “My parents wanted to know what benefit education would bring to the family. When Dharamveer sir explained that education would make me self-reliant and that I could stay at home and still earn money by taking tuitions, they were finally convinced.”

The fourth child among six, Pramila become a sponsored child at the age of 5 under the CASP Plan project that began in the Badarpur area in 1995-96. At the time, children under this plan were provided regular counselling, given life skills training, helped with tuition fees at schools and made members of the local Bal Panchayat. “Now the CASP Plan project works with the community on educating them as a whole rather than doling out monetary benefits,” says Sharma.

As a member of the Bal Panchayat, Pramila got a chance to attend a children’s meet in Barcelona in 2004, making her the only girl from her community to have travelled overseas. “The sea was so beautiful there. I wrote a story there about a saint

and a rainbow-coloured parrot which was published in the magazine we made.”

Lately, Pramila has secured a temporary position at one of CASP Plan’s Badarpur units (she earns about Rs2,000 a month) as a peer educator trained to speak about adolescent health issues.

She is working towards fulfilling her dream of teaching children and eventually becoming a social worker and has even applied for aid for her bachelor’s degree.

Every evening, when she returns from the CASP Plan centre, she teaches English, math and general knowledge to about 10 children from the basti. “I can teach children in class V or VI with ease. In fact, I teach my younger brother, who is in class VI.” To help out her family, she pays Rs400 for coaching classes for her two younger brothers. The rest of the money is saved so that she can fund her plans in case the aid doesn’t come through. “Most girls, my friends from the area, are envious of the way my life is progressing. They often tell their parents that if they had been allowed to study instead of being married off early, they too could have been self-reliant.”

YOUTH FOR SEVA, BANGALORE Youth for Seva aims to take education to the slums of Bangalore. The organization conducts classes in spoken English, math and computer in various localities. In January 2008, it started a sponsor­a­child programme that provides financial aid to good students through individual donors and assigns them mentors for guidance. At present, Youth for Seva sponsors 322 children.

Rs5,000

FOR THIS CHARITY CAN Fund the education and basic medication of one child for 10 months u Fund 25 school kits which include a bag, notebooks and stationery u

IF YOU WANT TO VOLUNTEER ASHA Foundation trains volunteers to organize awareness­ creating programmes alcoholic and had to be enrolled with a de-addiction group. That’s when Kanaka came to know that he was HIV-positive. “I didn’t think it was the end of the world, but my husband worried himself sick,” she says.

In 2005, when she was pregnant with her second child, Kanaka was referred to the ASHA Foundation by her gynaecologist as both she and her husband were HIV-positive. This, she says, was the turning point in her life.

She was put on the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTC) programme, which included going on medication from the seventh month of pregnancy. Aishwarya was born a healthy, HIV-negative baby. “I hoped the baby would be a boy,

but Laxmi prayed for a sister. Her prayers were stronger,” she says, as Laxmi giggles.

The next three years were spent helping Ashok battle tuberculosis, and then a heart condition. He died in May last year.

Once again the foundation came to Kanaka’s rescue. With monetary assistance from it, Kanaka completed a Tally computer course in 2007 and got a job as a data entry operator in a government hospital last year. “We are just beginning to get our lives back on track,” she says.

The foundation, present in the four southern states, works with a network of around 24 hospitals that test expectant mothers for HIV. “ASHA Foundation understands that dealing with HIV and AIDS is more testing than other health ailments because of the stigma attached. We try to ensure that the families we work with get frequent medication and also attend support group workshops and counselling sessions,” says Dr Alexander, who founded ASHA in 1998. The foundation also provides vocational training in tailoring and embroidery for women who

don’t have basic education, yet are the bread-earners.

Laxmi, who is aware of her condition, dreams of becoming an IAS officer. “So what if I am HIVpositive, I run the fastest in my class and am beginning to do well in my studies also,” she says. This confidence, Kanaka explains, comes from the monthly meetings Laxmi and she have with other infected people and the counselling sessions conducted by the foundation. The only thing that bothers Kanaka is what will happen when Laxmi grows up. “I am afraid that people will assume she contracted the disease through sexual contact. No one knows of our condition, but just for her sake I have let my brother and my sister know that she was infected at birth,” says Kanaka.

The foundation pays for the girls’ education and provides the family with dry rations every month. “Since we get rice, wheat, etc., I ensure we eat healthy, with lots of vegetables. Will anybody look at either of us and guess we are infected?” Kanaka asks.

ASHA Foundation (Action Service Hope for AIDS), which was established in 1998, helps people with HIV/AIDS and their families. Apart from counselling and providing the infected with free or discounted lifelong medication, depending on their financial status, the foundation conducts awareness workshops, runs support groups, provides vocational training to infected women or the wives of infected men and sponsors education for children in infected families.

Rs5,000 FOR THIS CHARITY CAN Help educate one child from an affected family. This includes school tuition fees for a year, books, shoes and school uniform u Provide dry ration for 15 families for a month. This includes 5kg rice, 2kg ‘ragi’, Kkg ‘toor dal’, Kkg green gram ‘dal’, 1 packet of cooking oil and washing soap u

* Names have been changed on request to protect identity.

Bhavani: guided to succeed

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havani pecks at her tiffin during lunch at college as she and her friends pore over a mock common entrance test (CET) paper. She has most of the answers on her fingertips, but the few she has to ponder over make her nervous. “I have to score well in both the entrance test and my pre-university exam,” says the 17-year-old, who hopes to secure a mechanical engineering seat in her home state of Karnataka next year.

The dream of becoming a mechanical engineer took hold in school when an older cousin opted for the subject. “Before that point, all I knew was that I wanted to support myself,” says Bhavani. But the dream was in danger of remaining unfulfilled when her father died two years ago. “I was very disturbed and could barely concentrate,” she says. She did manage to secure a seat at the NMKRV College for Women, a pre-university coll e g e i n B a n g a l o r e , b ut h e r mother, who works as a domestic help earning Rs3,000 a month, threw up her hands, saying she couldn’t afford to pay the college fees. She suggested Bhavani find a job and support the family instead.

It was at this point that Youth for Seva entered Bhavani’s life. A relative who worked with the

Power of two: Parimala Krishnan (right) has been mentoring Bhavani for more than a year.

association referred Bhavani and her sisters to it. “I was told that they might help me but I really didn’t believe it could be true,” says Bhavani.

Impressed with her dedication, the foundation decided to sponsor her pre-university

IF YOU WANT TO VOLUNTEER You can mentor children by visiting and talking to them once or twice a month

education and assigned her a mentor. Youth for Seva is also sponsoring and mentoring the education of Bhavani’s younger sisters, Latha (15) and Ramaya (12).

The NGO, founded in 2007, is now helping 322 children, even organizing regular health checkups and funding basic medication. It has around 4,000 registered volunteers. “We realized that the youth of India are very keen on doing their bit, especially on weekends,” says Venkatesh Murthy, co-founder, Youth for Seva.

Bhavani certainly shares a special bond with her mentor Parimala Krishnan, who has been visiting her twice a month

for over a year now. Krishnan keeps tabs on Bhavani’s college reports and sends out monthly reports to the individual sponsoring her education. That way her sponsor can have the satisfaction of having spent money for a good cause. “Bhavani has always been quiet, but I now see some confidence in her,” says Krishnan, who also works as a spoken English trainer with Youth for Seva. “I enjoy seeing her study hard,” she says.

B h a v a n i text by pavitra jayaraman w a k e s u p a t pavitra.j@livemint.com 5 a m , s t u d i e s , photograph by hemant mishra then cooks, rushes to college, goes for her CET coaching classes, which end at 7pm, and is back home by 7.30pm. She then studies until 10pm. “She rarely goes out with her friends for a movie or an ice cream.

Sometimes it’s tempting to just give her a treat, but in that way I will be overstepping my role as a mentor,” says Krishnan, who holds Bhavani’s skinny arms and points out that her one concern for her student is that she doesn’t eat properly.

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PRERANA, MUMBAI

Lakshmi: secure in a new family

Prerana started working in Kamathipura, Mumbai’s red light area, in 1986 with a focus on ending second­generation trafficking of children. It tries to prevent commercial sexual exploitation of children and young women, and has also worked with children who are HIV­positive.

Prerana also runs day and night care centres and educational support programmes.

Rs5,000

FOR THIS CHARITY CAN Fund a child’s education for a year Pay for extra tuition for high school dropouts and their senior secondary exam application procedure u

u

New beginnings: Lakshmi wants to get a master’s degree in social work so that she can help other girls like herself.

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wenty-three-year old Lakshmi was born in Kamathipura, Mumbai’s famous red light district.

She has met her father just once and doesn’t remember the last time she spent the night with her mother and siblings in the same house as a family. But she still considers herself lucky.

At least she was never drugged or given alcohol by her mother as a child just so she would fall asleep before it was time for business, the last resort of women working in Kamathipura.

Her mother was divorced and worked at Kamathipura text by rachana nakra t o s u p p o r t rachana.n@livemint.com t h e m , b u t photograph by abhijit bhatlekar L a k s h m i didn’t have to live there or bear the stigma attached to it. She now has a new name, a loving husband, an adorable three-yearold son and is about to graduate from Mumbai University.

In a small one-room flat on the fourth floor of house in Dharavi, Lakshmi is smiling as her hyperactive boy plays drums on the dustbin. There’s a bed and a television in the room that serves as both the living room and the

bedroom. The kitchen has a fridge and a gas connection. Four generations share this space—Lakshmi and her husband, their son, her mother-inlaw and her husband’s grandmother. Having moved from one boarding school to another all her life, Lakshmi has finally found a home.

“In my life if there’s anyone else I love and respect as my own mother, it’s the women at Prerana,” says Lakshmi as she pulls her son towards her and hands him his colouring book. Prerana started a night care centre at the Kamathipura Municipal School in 1986. The centre opens at 5.30pm and children are provided food, shelter and tuitions until their mothers pick them up the next morning. Preeti Iyer, project director, Prerana, says: “It’s a dangerous and exploitative environment to grow up in. For mothers who feel their children are unsafe even in our shelter, we provide them with options outside the area.”

Lakshmi’s mother wanted her children as far away from Kamathipura as possible. Lakshmi and her younger brother and sister studied in an Englishmedium school and lived at a

IF YOU WANT TO VOLUNTEER Prerana is looking for professionals to participate in its career counselling sessions and expose the children of this area to a world they have not seen, but hope to be a part of rented house in Thane with a caretaker, till Lakshmi was 6. But as they grew older, expenses increased. “My mother had no choice but to bring us with her to Kamathipura. But she wanted to get us out of there as soon as possible,” says Lakshmi.

A friend of Lakshmi’s mother who worked at Prerana suggested she take the children to the night care centre at Kamathipura. That was Lakshmi’s first introduction to her new mothers—the Prerana didis. “Didi

came to our house, met all of us and I spent a year there,” says Lakshmi. By then all three siblings knew their way around Kamathipura and would sometimes go out looking for their mother. Lakshmi’s mother did not want her children exposed to that aspect of her life and enrolled them in a boarding school in Nashik.

“We hated it there. The food wasn’t good and even the studies were not very nice,” says Lakshmi. Education for girls was limited to class VII. Once again, Prerana came to the rescue. Lakshmi was enrolled in Shraddhanand Mahila Ashram in Matunga. Lakshmi spent six years of her life there and counts them among her best. “When I look back I realize I was lucky. They used to take good care of our diet and education. We got proper meals, milk, fruit, and even salads.

There was a full-time doctor, social worker and a psychologist.

My mother had no idea about this place. Without the help from Prerana I don’t know what would have happened to us.”

It was in class X that Lakshmi first spoke to the boy in school who later became her husband.

Her husband and his family were

aware of her background but they accepted her unconditionally. But when it was time for her to tell her family, Lakshmi called the Prerana didis first. “I was so scared initially but everyone at Prerana was supportive,” says Lakshmi. Later, with the blessings of her mother, she was engaged. She waited until she was 18 to marry.

But Lakshmi still wanted to pursue her studies. On her first day at SNDT College, she waited for her mother to come and meet her. She didn’t. “She hadn’t even called to cancel. I got very worried and spoke to didi to find out about her.” The women at Prerana found out that Lakshmi’s mother was suffering from tuberculosis and that it was at a terminal stage. “Didi admitted her to Sewri hospital and I went to meet her. She died five days later.”

In fact, Prerana had to fight with Lakshmi’s mother’s employer for the small belongings that were left behind for Lakshmi and her siblings.

Whenever Lakshmi talks about her Prerana didis, she gets emotional. “They were a godsend for me. I think they have spent more time with us than their own children.”

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www.makkalajagriti.org

Durga: kick­off to a new life

MAKKALA T JAGRITI, BANGALORE Makkala Jagriti has been working in the slums of Bangalore for six years. It began by motivating children to go to school and sponsoring their tuition fees. It has built three learning centres that provide books, computers, games and toys, youth leadership and civic awareness programmes and educational tours to children. It supports the overall education of 500 children.

Rs5,000

FOR THIS CHARITY CAN Help fund facilities at the three learning centres. u Rs2,500 per month can fund books, activity sheets, craft material, crayons and educational toys for one learning centre u Rs2,000 can pay a month’s salary of one karate teacher, who conducts eight classes for around 20 students at one centre u Rs500 can pay for a monthly fun­day outing (travel and stay) per child

he idea of playing football in front of a crowd doesn’t bother 13-yearold Durga. One of three girls in a team of 25 who play at the Makkala Jagriti centre in Adugodi, Bangalore, the otherwise reserved Durga is transformed on the field.

Durga’s thrice-a-week practice sessions make a bolder statement than any woman in her family would have dared to. Her mother, Kantamma, works as an ayah (maid) at the local corporation school and earns Rs2,000. Durga’s father, Kantamma says, is unemployed and an alcoholic. She is the only earning member in a family that includes Durga’s two younger sisters, Ashwini and Saraswati.

“A few years ago, I didn’t see sense in my daughters going to study. I did send them to The goal: Durga wants to be a policewoman when she grows up. school because it was free, but never insisted they go regu- school because she was scared she enrolled out of curiosity. larly,” says Kantamma. So to cross the road. “We found “They didn’t say only boys can Durga and her sisters played that she was staying at a rela- join, so I signed up,” she says. truant from school and hung tive’s place, doing odd jobs,” Initially, Kantamma refused around the streets of Adugodi, says Joy Srinivasan, who to let her play. “My neighbours running errands for a few founded Makkala Jagriti in 2003. said the boys might misbehave rupees for people in the neighSrinivasan persuaded Durga with her and that it isn’t good bouring colony. to rejoin school, this time one for a girl to run around and Members of Makkala Jagriti, closer to home. In addition to play.” But the liitle girl held her which tries to create different day school, the three sisters ground. For Durga, who has learning opportunities for chil- were also encouraged to visit witnessed the violent outbursts dren, adults and communities the Makkala Jagriti learning of an alcoholic father and lived from economically disadvan- centre in Adugodi after school in a male-dominated commutaged backgrounds, met Durga hours. “We run to the centre nity, playing football was a huge in the slum three years ago. She after school. Many of my class- act of self-assertion. “I used to was in class V then and was mates come there. We read, get very bothered by the things enrolled in a government-aided play, talk and totally enjoy my neighbours used to say to school about 2km from home. A ourselves,” says Durga. my mother; now I realize they year later, they saw no sign of It was at this centre that don’t matter,” Durga says. the girl in the locality and Durga was introduced to footOver the past year, Madhu enquired with her mother. It ball. Having had little opportu- Shukla, programme manager, turned out that Durga had quit nity to play any sport previously, Makkala Jagriti, has seen Durga

Ilavarasi & Divya: the ball is in their court K

annagi Sivakumaran, 29, has been working as a domestic help since the age of 16 and has two children.

She earns about Rs1,000 a month sweeping floors, cleaning utensils and washing clothes.

She lives with her family of four in a 10x10 sq. ft room in a facility set up by the Tamil Nadu slum clearance board.

But the story of Divya Sivakumaran, her 10-year-old daughter, could be different. Five days a week, at 6am, before going to a local municipal school, this medium-built girl with bright expressive eyes enters a squash court larger than the size of her shanty with a racket half her height to score a change in her life. “I want to be a doctor when I grow up but would also love text by anupama chandrasekaran to be a squash anupama.c@livemint.com champion.”

Divya and photograph courtesy sharp image her friend and neighbour, 11-year-old Ilavarasi Aruldas, are part of a squad run and funded by the Squash Rackets Federation of India and its Chennai-based training school, Indian Squash Academy (ISA), under the National Squash Development Programme.

Both Divya and Ilavarasi live in box-like single rooms with leaky roofs and shared bathrooms—but the location worked to their advantage.

Their homes overlook the ISA—where their mothers used to clean the courts.

Three years ago, one of the coaches asked the two women if

Big shots: Ilavarasi (left) and Divya hope that squash will be their ticket to scholarships and higher studies. they were interested in enrolling their children at the academy.

Both mothers thought their boys would benefit from the opportunity, but when the sons were deemed too old to start training, they asked if their daughters could be given a chance.

The programme, launched in 2002, has 40 children (10 of these are girls). For the underprivileged children who are trained under this programme, the ISA waives the monthly coaching fees, provides rackets, goggles, shoes and clothes (at a total cost of about Rs7,500). “We want to give these children a chance to excel in sports,” says Srivatsan Subramaniam, the Malaysia-born international coach at the academy. “Due to the lack of exposure these children tend to be hesitant in the initial stages, but once they understand the game they are as good as anyone else.” The

coaches say that the children are extremely shy. “We didn’t even hear Ilavarasi’s voice when she started,” says K. Vinod, a coach.

“She and Divya, like other kids, were sensitive to criticism, but gradually they lowered their guard. That’s when we saw their fighting spirit.”

The twice-a-day weekly training comprises fitness exercises as well as game practice.

Girls get to train with boys, who tend to hit the ball harder, to up the power quotient of their game. “Now there’s a discipline instilled in her (Divya’s) routine,” says Kannagi. “I didn’t have an inclination to study and had to quit school but I want my daughter to get ahead in life and this game could give her that opportunity.”

Ilavarasi’s father Aruldas makes sure she wakes up at 5.30am on days she has to train.

A contract painter, 40-year-old

Aruldas, who now works at a museum for a salary of Rs3,000, says: “I get a peek into the other world out there through my daughter. But I don’t have the confidence to watch her play.”

Divya and Ilavarasi are aware that squash could well be their ticket to college via a sports scholarship and could even lift their family above the poverty line. “They learn not just about squash but also through their travels (they) have learnt how to eat, introduce themselves to others and how to keep clean,” Subramaniam says. “They pick up life skills.” Ilavarasi has shed her nervousness and loves to hang out with her friends during training. She hopes to study computer engineering one day.

The coaches, however, don’t yet see signs of the girls making it to the top of their sport. One reason is diet. Poor eating habits often leave the girls breathless on court and they are low on stamina. Divya is unable to sustain her powerful shots and although Ilavarasi is able to cover ground on court, her returns are weak.

“They come from families where their parents cannot afford or enforce good eating habits,” says coach Vinod. While the academy provides nutrition supplements, there’s little it can do to compel parents to provide hearty meals.

“Diet is always an issue since we are unable to afford fruits or meat,” says Aruldas.

For now, the girls are regular at the academy and are eager participants in intergroup matches.

And, hopefully, their parents will worry less about their future.

become more focused on the tasks she has given herself—and it shows in her performance at school as well. “Her demeanour has gradually become more adult-like,” says Shukla.

Durga’s day begins with school. She then heads to the learning centre, where she stays until it closes. Back home, she sometimes reads books borrowed from the centre’s library or helps her mother with chores. She wants to become a policewoman when she grows up. “Makkala Jagriti uses a twopronged method for families like these. On the one hand, we make school and learning an interesting concept for the children, and simultaneously, include text by pavitra jayaraman p a r e n t s i n pavitra.j@livemint.com workshops that photograph by hemant mishra encourage them to speak about their problems and tell them that education can be the solution to several of their problems,” says Srinivasan. It took over a year before there was noticeable change in Kantamma’s outlook. The NGO also conducts training sessions for government schoolteachers on how to make the classroom interactive and informative.

“I have handed over the responsibility of guiding my children to Joy madam,” says Kantamma. When quizzed if she will get Durga married when she turns 18, she retorts: “That’s her choice, isn’t it? If she wants to get married she can find her groom or she can be single and rise to a good position.”

INDIAN SQUASH ACADEMY (ISA), CHENNAI The National Squash Development Programme’s squad for underprivileged children is supported by the Chennai­based Indian Squash Academy and the Squash Rackets Federation of India. Children below the age of 12 from low­income families are eligible for free training—10 sessions per week—and are also provided rackets, goggles, shoes and clothes. For enquiries, write to squashsecretariat@gmail.com

Rs5,000 FOR THIS ACADEMY CAN Cover the training costs of a child for two months or provide the equipment and gear. If the child qualifies for international events, then travel and accommodation costs are also borne by the academy.

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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

Ganga, the universal girl A

t 62, seated beside her 87-year-old mother in her art-heavy house in New Delhi, with three dogs and a cat nestling by her feet, Nimi Khanna is bustling with life. And with ideas.

She wants to tell the world that the girl child is not a burden if she isn’t seen as one. This message comes in a little 18-inch doll, Ganga, who wears two smiles and layers of embroidered silks.

Khanna drew from her own life story to create Ganga. As an infant, she almost didn’t make it through after Partition. The reasons, however, were more social than political. Her mother, Surinder Chopra, was eight months pregnant when she boarded one of the last trains carrying Hindus from Pakistan to India in August 1947. Khanna’s father was already in India, making inquiries about his next bank posting, trying to set up a base for his young family.

The journey was rife with danger. Chopra was travelling with two sons—aged 6 and 4—and a widowed sister-in-law in her 50s. En route to her husband in Kolkata Chopra and her sister-in-law managed to reach Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, where Chopra delivered her baby in a makeshift room above a cow stable.

Minutes after Khanna’s birth, her aunt bundled her up in a jute sack and dumped her by a nallah (a drain).

Those were difficult text by anindita ghose times and the aunt anindita.g@livemint.com believed a girl child photographs by harikrishna w a s n ’ t w o r t h t h e katragadda strain on their meagre resources.

When Khanna’s mother regained consciousness, her sister-in-law—also the midwife—told her the baby had been stillborn.

A barely conscious Chopra still pressed to see the dead child. Because she became maniacal, her sister-in-law reluctantly brought back the bundled infant. Miraculously, the girl was still breathing.

Today, that baby girl—Nimi Khanna—is married, with two sons and a flourishing career as an interior designer for luxury hotels. Khanna, who learnt about the story of her birth in bits and pieces, has forgiven her aunt, understanding that desperate times prompted such savagery. Her mother is less forgiving. As she recalls the horrific story, Chopra says that a baby boy would never have suffered a similar fate, even under tougher circumstances. “Kehte hain, chahe ladka hi tang kar le,” she trails off in Hindi—essentially summing up the prevalent belief that bringing up boys is worth the trouble no matter how tough the situation.

Chopra, however, saved her girl. And now her daughter, Nimi, wants to save other baby girls.

The story of Ganga Since she first thought of the doll eight years ago, her plans for the Ganga Project keep expanding every day.

“It’s a flowing energy, like the river that she is named after,” says Khanna.

Much like the red ribbon is synonymous with HIV the world

GANGA Once upon a time, I descended upon earth to nourish and purify the essence of all beings…plants, animals and mankind. Every Indian calls me Mother Ganga, the eternal mother and the first guru.

I serve millions of people of every race, religion and caste as I bring them the cool waters of the snowy Himalayas. Although my pristine purity is being polluted by thoughtless people, I have the steadfast power of natural energy to teach them better ways. This resolute power of nature gives me confidence that people will learn to value the girl child, my daughter, who often suffers as I do.

We must unite to make her strong.

I give her my name Ganga, as she is the symbol of the Universal Girl Child. You must nourish her in body and spirit so that she becomes an equal.

Nimi Khanna, 2008

Doll’s­eye view: Designer Nimi Khanna at her residence in New Delhi with the Ganga doll on her lap.

over, Khanna is working towards making Ganga synonymous with the issue of the girl child in India. The doll isn’t up for sale.

Khanna’s goal is to have the Indian government or a body such as the United Nations adopt Ganga as a symbol of the girl child movement. She is already working on poetry that will accompany the doll and envisions documentaries, films, theatre, outreach events and more literature.

She wants the doll to be adopted by every household and Ganga’s simple graphic form—a doll with two smiles—to become something every child can sketch.

Khanna believes that Ganga as a symbol will be able to penetrate the deeper consciousness of society. “We read reports of abandoned baby girls found in garbage bins ever so often. But these are just numbers. Ganga will give the millions of abandoned and underprivileged girl children in India a name, a face and an identity.”

It is evident that she has cerebralized every aspect of Ganga’s design. Ganga is an organic doll.

Every part of her body holds a message: Her spine is filled with mustard seeds to signify heaven, her body is stuffed with cotton and neem leaves to connote ten-

Nimi Khanna survived attempted infanticide.

Drawing from her own life, she has created a symbol for baby girls facing a similar fate derness and purity, her sevenlayered skirts connote different emotions with their colours. She represents not just the cause of the girl child and her survival, but that of the Indian artisans who weave the silk she wears and the destitute women who embroider her zardozi jackets.

Her underskirt is a needlework sampler in white muslin. “It’s the basic stitches of life, what mothers teach their daughters.”

Endorsement by companies

such as ITC Welcomgroup has been a stepping stone for what Khanna envisions as the bigger Ganga initiative. For the last few months, Ganga has been greeting visitors at ITC lobbies.

Gautam Anand, vice-president, ITC Hotels, says that interested visitors can “adopt” a Ganga for Rs5,100. The proceeds go to the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay trust which conducts workshops for destitute women at Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg, New Delhi, where the dolls are handmade.

The project also has several high-profile supporters, such as film-maker Shekhar Kapur, who is related to Khanna, and Gaj Singh, the erstwhile maharaja of Jodhpur.

Over email, Kapur says that he loves the simplicity of Khanna’s message. He mentions possible plans for a film based on Ganga, adding that he’s keen on giving Ganga a platform wherever possible. In a way, he already has. His very poignant blog post on Khanna’s life story (in January) has drawn several more potential supporters to the project.

The maharaja of Jodhpur believes the campaign will work because symbols are emotive.

“If projected sincerely and imaginatively, they (symbols)

can have the desired effect,” he says. He has introduced Khanna to a couple of possible endorsers, in the hope that with more supporters Ganga can gather enough momentum to flow nationwide.

Khanna believes that not much will change for the girl child—her right to live, her nutrition, education and development—until Indian society internalizes the notion of a girl child as a gift. Kapur agrees in spirit. He believes that Ganga is a manifestation of the heart.

“You have to adopt Ganga in your emotional being and think about these issues, talk about them and spread the word,” he says in an email interview.

The Ganga doll comes in varied avatars. The one we meet at Khanna’s house is a sun-worshipping Ganga dressed in the orange and red silks of Varanasi.

Khanna speaks of another avatar—the ahimsa (non-violent) Ganga, which comes dressed in khadi and ahimsa silk. But there are several others in the making, and even more brewing inside Khanna’s head.

She wants people to create their own stories of Ganga. But essentially, Ganga’s story is Khanna’s own. The doll comes wrapped in a knit bag, much like the one she was thrown away in.

COLUMNS L17 SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

AAKAR PATEL REPLY TO ALL

The subcontinent’s Muslim is influenced more by Hinduism than Islam

T

his year, again, the world’s Muslims celebrated Eid al-Fitr twice. Eid was on Sunday, 20 September, for 850 million Muslims—350 million Arabs, 235 million Indonesians, 16 million Malaysians, Somalis,

Nigerians, Chinese, Turks, Kurds, Iranians, Kosovans, Uzbeks, Afghans and Chechens.

Eid was Monday, 21 September, for the world’s other 480 million Muslims—Pakistanis, Indians and Bangladeshis.

The second group fasted when the first was feasting. Only Satan fasts on Eid, so this is a serious matter. And Muslims love their ummah, so what explains the split?

The first group anticipated Eid. They consulted science to know when the lunar month of Ramzan ended, and when the first moon of Shawwal would appear. The second group would not end Ramzan till they physically saw the moon. The difference isn’t trivial. On 19 January 1998, two Muslims preaching rationalism in Mumbai’s Jama Masjid were killed in a dispute over the Shawwal moon. Without this visual satisfaction, every year, desi Muslims refuse to end their fast.

Why? Their culture isn’t really Islamic; it’s Hindu. That explains the idolatry towards the moon. Only one group of South Asian Muslims celebrated Eid on Sunday with the rest of the world, and that was the Pashtuns of the Frontier. We instinctively know they are different: more Afghan than Indian.

Indian Islam, like Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism and the animism of the scheduled tribes, is really an aspect of Hindu culture. Muslims bow to a different deity, but in India that means little. The Patels of Charotar worship Krishna as Rannchhod. The word

means “he who ran from battle”. It refers to Krishna’s fleeing the ferocious attacks of Jarasandh and his general Kalyavan, abandoning the people of Mathura for Dwarka. Patels are not an insignificant community: Vallabhbhai, Praful and half of America’s motels.

They worship Krishna’s instinct of self-preservation because it saves his life. But it will put off other Hindus who venerate the war-like Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita, a very different deity from Rannchhod.

Muslims might see themselves as having two identities, Muslim and Indian. But the first is quite superficial, and the second is really Hindu.

In his Vijayadashami address on 27 September, RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat said this: “The word ‘Hindu’

does not symbolize any particular way of worship, language, province, creed or religion. Actually it signifies an ancient culture, a way of life that has come down to us through (the) ages.”

He’s right, and the RSS is wrong to oppose reservations for Muslim OBCs. Reservation is inclusive, and ends separatism because it fragments identity. That reservations are also opposed by puritanical Muslim groups should be a giveaway to the RSS. But it’s not a body of intellectuals and hasn’t had an original thinker since the great Golwalkar.

The source of European culture is Christianity. The source of South Asian culture is Hinduism.

The Hindu-Muslim divide on the subcontinent is quite artificial. Outsiders cannot separate us easily because we behave identically. Culture is how we behave in traffic, how clean we keep our streets and our neighbourhood, how we spice our food, whether we live as independent men or with our father, how tax-compliant we are, how intrusively we pray and celebrate and how corrupt we are. Muslims show no difference on these counts. Civilization is to be found in a nation’s thana (jail) AFP

and kutchehri (court). The Pakistani police station and post office is run with exactly the same incompetence as the Indian. The two-nation theory is bogus.

Jinnah founded Pakistan, but a brilliant man from Maharashtra made it Islamic. Abul Ala Mawdudi was the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, the modernist end of Islamism if Taliban and Deoband represent the conservative end.

Mawdudi is the intellectual source of Al Qaeda’s ideology, a matter of pride and shame for Indians, depending on how one looks at it. American writers usually trace Osama bin Laden’s ideas to the Egyptians Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb. Both men lifted the work of Mawdudi, starting with his Al-Jihad Fil Islam written in the 1930s, and followed by a succession of very readable tracts on Sunni Islam in the modern world.

Under Mawdudi’s guidance and with Saudi assistance, in the late 1970s, Pakistan legislated fierce Shariah laws: stoning to death for adultery, beheading for murder, cutting off hands for theft.

But Pakistanis are too afraid to execute these laws. Why? Because they are foreign, even if they are Islamic.

In Pakistan nobody has ever been stoned to death or beheaded or amputated, unlike in Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran. The laws exist only to make Pakistanis feel more Muslim; to separate them from Indians, because otherwise very little does. Like Hindus, however, Muslims are quite good at discrimination. Pakistan has apostatized the Ahmedis, who cannot call themselves Muslim, recite the kalima, or go to mosques. Just like Dalits. In India, the ulema of Deoband and Nadwa pass fatwas asking Muslims to not give starving Ahmedis food or water.

Pakistan discourages Hindu culture—khayal, dhrupad and kathak—but it’s the only culture they have, there being no such thing as Muslim music or dance. That is why Pakistan is a cultural wasteland; that is AAMIR QURESHI/AFP

A question of faith: Eid al­Fitr prayers at the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi (above), held a day before prayers at Islamabad’s Faisal Mosque.

why Muslims are comfortable in Bollywood. Ghulam Ali and Mehdi Hassan sang to illiterate audiences in Lahore and Karachi who could not identify a raga, because they were taught to deny their own culture. That is why Pakistani singers love India.

Zakat, charity, is one of the five pillars of Islam. It is obligatory, not optional, on Muslims. The Pakistani state debits 2.5% from all Sunni bank accounts (Shias are exempt) in Ramzan and spends it on the poor. In 2004, it collected Rs141 crore. This fell to Rs107 crore in 2008 and to Rs70 crore this year. Why? Sunnis withdraw their cash before Ramzan and then re-deposit it later. Many temporarily declare themselves as Shia. This opportunism is not unfamiliar to Hindus, and will not sit well with the idea India’s Muslims themselves have of their uncompromising beliefs.

Mawdudi’s heir in India is Jamaat-e-Islami’s Syed Geelani of Kashmir.

The Hurriyat Conference constitution promises (liberals, please note) to “make endeavours, in keeping with the Muslim majority character of the state, for promoting the build up of a society based on Islamic values, while safeguarding the rights and interests of the non-Muslims”.

But Muslims have failed to build “a society of Islamic values”, there being no such thing, or give equality to Hindus and Christians.

South Asian Muslims pine for more Islam but once they get it, like they have in Pakistan, they don’t know what to do with it because they’re not Arabs.

Pakistanis keep succumbing to dictatorship because of their identity crisis. Mawdudi’s Islamic state is utopian but deliverable only by a dictator. And so all coup-making generals are welcomed on arrival by Pakistanis.

But their essentially Hindu character ensures that Pakistanis keep lapsing out of dictatorship, unlike the Arabs.

Gaddafi has ruled 40 years, Mubarak 28 years, Saudis 82 years. Saddam ruled 24 years, Assad 30 years.

Indian and Pakistani Muslims love Arabs, and Urdu papers are marked by an obsession with Palestine and Jews. India’s Sunnis and Shias were also once loved by Arabs and Persians. For centuries under the Mughals, Haj ships leaving from Surat funded the tribal economy of the Hejaz. Lucknow’s Shias funded Iran’s waterworks till the 19th century.

But then both nations discovered oil, the Saudis in 1938 and the Persians in 1908.

Now their per capita income is six times that of ours. The love is gone, and we are irritants, not one of their own.

A Pakistani acquaintance of mine, a retired colonel from Musharraf’s batch, discovered this during the siege of Mecca in 1979. The Saudis imported soldiers of many nationalities, some from the West, to retake the Kaaba from fanatics. A Saudi peasant inquired about Iftikhar’s identity. “I’m Muslim,” Iftikhar announced proudly. From where, asked the Saudi. “Pakistan”. Where’s that, the peasant asked. Iftikhar explained the geography. The Saudi finally understood: “Hadha Hindi!” he thundered, using the Arabic word for both the people of the subcontinent and those who follow its faith.

Aakar Patel is a director with Hill Road Media.

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

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L19

Travel MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT

Q&A | RICHARD QUEST

JUDGEMENT QUEST

Travel quest The CNN reporter talks about business hotels, shepherd’s pie and mind­altering economy flights

B Y V ARUNI K HOSLA varuni.k@livemint.com

···························· ichard Quest is a veteran of the business travel trade. He has stayed in five-star suites, houseboats and motor lodges, and in the flats of complete strangers. He spoke to Lounge about grading airline food, the trippy side effects of long flights and where €1,000-a-night is money well spent. Edited excerpts:

R

What’s the most bizarre journey that you’ve taken?

Around the world in economy.

I’m not kidding: These long-distance flights across the world, where you cross multiple time zones in a very short time period, really mess with your head. I had a bizarre one last week, actually. I went to New York for a day. There you are, you’re working on the aircraft, filming, and I land in New York and spot a friend waiting for me at the airport. Then my mind starts playing tricks on me. “Am

I in New York? Is that Katie?

There’s a yellow cab there, so this is definitely New York. Why am I in New York?” So when I get back on a plane and fly back to London, I’m like “Was I just in New York? Was that Katie? What was I doing in New York?”

Which is the worst place to do business and why?

There is absolutely no way I’m answering that!

Let’s rephrase it then. What’s the most challenging place to do business?

Well, okay, I think it all depends on the kind of business you’re trying to do. Obviously, there are parts of Africa that pose unique challenges— infrastructure doesn’t work, “unauthorized” payments may be required. But then there are also places like Japan, where your mobile phone won’t work, and people hardly speak your language, even in places like Tokyo. Then you go to Los Angeles, and they’re speaking this strange language, but it’s the same language! You have no idea what they’re talking about.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be a developing nation where things can go wrong. Your Wi-Fi may not connect, BlackBerrys may break down. Getting money out, now there’s another huge challenge. I was in…where was I, in Venice, yes…and I’m walking up to this bank machine, and I realize it’s the only one around. If this one isn’t going to give me money, I’m in the s***.

TV’s most manic anchor gives us a travel cheat sheet The best/worst airports and airport lounges in the world u Heathrow is the best. It’s big, it’s noisy, a bit dirty, but it’s home. JFK (New York) is good. Frankfurt is deliciously efficient, as you’d expect from the Germans. Singapore is superb u Cairo, Charles de Gaulle (Paris)—not so good. But the worst airport in the world has to be Miami. Immigration there is truly horrendous

Request granted: Richard Quest (centre) adds ‘concierge trolley’ to the list of vehicles he has travelled in.

Thank the gods it did.

The tackiest hotel you’ve stayed in.

You’re determined to put me in trouble, aren’t you?

All right, the most “challenging” hotel you’ve stayed in.

Let me remember…it wasn’t a hotel at all, and it was in Switzerland…or was it Germany? Wherever it was…we were there for this event, and the place is so big, and there are so many people there, that the hotels can’t cope. So they put people into flats, and there we were, in somebody else’s flat…and it was disgusting. It was…dirty, and the towels looked like they had been used to clean the toilets. This other time, and it was the same event (God, I hate doing that event),

they put us on a houseboat, where the sewage backed up against our abode.

What’s the mark of a good business hotel? Which ones do you love?

I think a good business hotel recognizes why you’re there—you’re not there for your health but for your wealth. But no hotel ever gets it right. In Japan, for example, you need a degree in electronics to open the curtains and figure out how the light switches work.

All right. My favourite hotel?

It’s a lovely little hotel in Los Angeles called the Le Parc.

Why? Because when I arrive, they know who I am. They’ve got the suite ready (all the rooms are suites). I go down to breakfast in the morning, and they know I want the Le Parc

breakfast with a café latte. Faxes and couriers, no problem.

Other hotels that will do the same—The InterContinental in Singapore (I love that hotel) and The Intercon (InterContinental) in Hong Kong (a wonderful hotel. Huge windows, and a great view of the harbour).

But Paris. Aaah, the George Cinq. I went there once, and I could have moved in…except it was €1,000 (around Rs69,000) a night. My belt broke while I was there, and I put it aside. When I came back a few hours later, they’d repaired it! Yeah, wow.

Even at €1,000 a night…please if there’s a God up there listening, please let me stay there.

Krish Raghav contributed to this story.

The best/worst airline food u Qatar Airways’ foie gras is unbelievable u British Airways’ shepherd’s pie. u United Airlines’ steak—on a good day, brilliant, and on a bad day—put it on the soles of your shoes u Lufthansa’s food is just…Lufthansa’s food. Which means…it’s Lufthansa’s food The most invigorating city for an after­work drink u New York. The Rainbow Room restaurant, or any other place on top of the Peninsula u London. If you’re posh, go to the bar at Claridges. If you’re not, go to a local pub. If you’re in between, stand around in Soho somewhere u Sydney, any place with a view of the Harbour Bridge, and Raffles, in Singapore The liveliest business lunches u The 21 Club in New York. u The Ambassador restaurant in London u The Ivy in London u Fred Segal in Los Angeles

FOOT NOTES | SUMANA MUKHERJEE

Gawk at your own risk Escaping cities, dodging pickpockets and diving into the world of popular fiction

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ot “developing” Asia or impoverished Africa, it’s European capitals that feature on TripAdvisor’s list of 10 places to be most wary of pickpockets. While the list obviously reflects the travel predilections of the website’s reader/contributor community, it still makes for enlightening reading—and may possibly save you euros and much agony the next time you’re soaking in the sights in Barcelona or Rome. u Las Ramblas, Barcelona, Spain: A reviewer actually compared pickpocketing on the jampacked walkway to an accepted sport, such as soccer. u Rome, Italy: The plethora of outdoor art and ancient buildings makes it incredibly easy for smooth operators to use their scissors or work their magic on bag zippers. u Prague, Czech Republic: The famously beautiful Charles Bridge is lined with 30 baroque-style statues, thousands of tourists and, possibly, scores of pickpockets. u Madrid, Spain: El Rastro flea market and the crowded metro are often cited as spots where pickpockets have an almost free run. Crowded museums are another favourite spot. u Paris, France: From the Eiffel Tower to the steps of Sacré-Coeur and the underground Metro system, anywhere the crowds congregate, the pickpockets will too. u Florence, Italy: Distractions abound here, from Michelangelo’s David at the Accademia to its replica

Literally: Steig Larsson’s Stockholm comes alive in a museum­organized book tour.

Not quite by the book Y Friendly warning: In Buenos Aires, Argentina, be wary of those overeager to help. at the Piazza della Signoria.

Unfortunately, so do pickpockets. u Buenos Aires, Argentina: Not stealthy stealing, beware of over-friendly locals who use mustard to fake bird-droppings on your clothes, and then offer to clean it up. u Amsterdam, Netherlands: Fall for the canals and the friendly, laid-back atmosphere at your own risk: Pickpockets have been known to take advantage of countless tourists in this enchanting city. u Athens, Greece: Countless ancient monuments make it a perfect destination not only for tourists but also sticky-fingered thieves. u Hanoi, Vietnam: The charming Old Quarter is packed with monuments and colonial architecture. The city also features 600 temples and pagodas. All of these make for a perfect hunting ground for

pickpockets.

To avoid getting your pocket picked, TripAdvisor suggests: 1. Never keep your wallet or valuables in your rear pocket. It’s by far the easiest target.

2. Beware of being distracted by a dropped hanky or money, or a mark on your clothes. If you lose focus, you can lose your belongings.

3. Pickpockets often work in pairs or groups. Be cautious with all strangers, including children or the elderly.

4. Stay alert in confined spaces and near passageways. Try to avoid standing near the doorways of trains as groups of pickpockets can rush at you when the doors open.

5. Before you set off on a trip, pare down the contents of your purse or wallet. The smaller the bulge, the less likely pickpockets are to covet it.

ou’ve read the book, now you want to see for yourself all the Washington, DC landmarks Dan Brown mentions in The Lost Symbol. Well, you’re not alone; nor is this the only best-seller to trigger such a desire. Ahead of the launch of the book, the District of Columbia began running a series of ads, luring the legions of fans to explore the capital’s “secret side”.

Many of the sites mentioned in The Lost Symbol, however, are not secret at all: From the United States Capitol (also home to the Statuary Hall and the Apotheosis of Washington fresco) to the Library of Congress Reading Room, the National Gallery of Art, Freedom Plaza and, finally, the Washington National Cathedral and the Washington Monument, a number of them feature on every tourist’s to-do list.

It’s a tactic Brown fine-tuned in The Da Vinci Code, which criss-crossed Europe, from Scotland to France, and had guides facing questions on the number of glass panes in the Louvre pyramid and tourists looking for the 135 bronze discs that supposedly marked the

Paris Meridien.

With the 1 October release of The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, the English translation of the last volume of Steig Larsson’s blockbuster Millennium trilogy, some of the action now shifts to Sweden. The Stockholm City Museum has launched a 2-hour Millennium Tour, which covers the locations for protagonist Mikael Blomkvist’s home, the offices of the fictional Millennium magazine, the luxurious home of the entrancing Lisbeth Salander, et al, in Södermalm, in the southern part of the inner city. The guided tour also covers the places where the first book was filmed; it released in Sweden in February and a Hollywood version is rumoured to be on the cards.

The tour, available Sundays at 11am through May 2010, costs SEK100 (around Rs665). A cheaper option is a DIY tour: Arm yourself with the Millennium map, available in English at the museum for SEK40, and hit the road. To book a guided tour, contact the museum on 0468-50831659 or send an email to bokning@stadsmuseum.stockholm.se

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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2009

Books DESERT | JEAN­MARIE GUSTAVE LE CLÉZIO

READING ROOM

A world writer’s canvas AFP

A novel by last year’s Nobel winner proves that good literature can come from the most unlikely places

B Y C HANDRAHAS C HOUDHURY ···························· glimpse at the list of winners of the Nobel Prize in literature in the last decade shows that the Swedish committee that adjudicates the prize is often willing to honour highly feted, widely read and hotly tipped writers, who for years have had “Nobel Prize” tagged to their names. V.S. Naipaul is one such case, and so are J.M. Coetzee and Orhan Pamuk.

But just as often the committee throws up a name that the vast majority of readers have never heard of, and to my mind this is the more interesting, exploratory side of its work. Who had heard of the Hungarian writer Imre Kertesz or the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek before they won the award in 2002 and 2004, respectively?

Who indeed, at least in the Anglophone world, could claim at the time of announcement to have read anything by last year’s winner, the Frenchman JeanMarie Gustave le Clézio, and who has read anything by the laureate for 2009, Herta Müller?

What the committee is saying, in effect, is that great literature, always being the work of an individual mind, can come from all kinds of unlikely places. Prizes such as the Nobel can be a way of equalizing the iniquities of the literary market and the entrenched power of certain languages and cultures in the world today.

Le Clézio (many of whose works are now available once again in English translation after being out of print for some three decades) is an especially difficult writer to slot because, in addition to the difficulty and often wilful obscurity of his work, there is the difficulty and obscurity of his biography. Although he was born in France, and writes in French, he also claims allegiance to Mauritius, where one side of his fam-

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Wanderers: Parts of Le Clézio’s Desert, about a warrior tribe, is set in Morocco. ily comes from, and where he still lives part of the year. A restless wanderer from the days of his youth, he seems not to have needed a “home” for his work, nor to have cultivated a relationship with a single place or culture as most novelists do.

Indeed, his itinerancy—he has spent time in and written books set in Mauritius, France, Mexico, Panama and Africa, a world writer if there ever was one—might seem to resemble that of Naipaul, except that he mostly writes fiction, and his work is more sympathetic to the marginalized people and cultures who are his subjects than Naipaul, with his glowering eye, is.

Desert: David Godine, 354 pages, $25 (around Rs1,250).

Among the distinctive emphases of Le Clézio’s writing is his engagement with what he has called cultures “broken by the modern world”—all the tribes and people thrown out of joint by the encounter with colonialism, Western rationalism and the power of the nation state (a good parallel in an Indian context might be someone such as Mahasweta Devi or Gopinath Mohanty, both of whom have written extensively about the problems of Indian tribals). This willingness to move across a boundary, to invert a dominant power relationship, and to imagine the life of the “other” sympathetically from within is best seen in Le Clézio’s work in his novel Desert (1980), thought to be one of the central novels in his oeuvre and now translated into English for the first time by C. Dickson.

Set in Morocco and France, and spanning a century in time, Desert is the story of a warrior tribe of the desert, called “the blue men”, and their flight from French occupying forces in the early part of the 20th century. Le Clézio depicts a group of people ceaselessly making their way forward like ants in the vast, arid and spirit-breaking desert, seeking a place of refuge where they can consolidate their resources and turn once again towards the lost homeland. In counterpoint, Le Clézio also tells the story, set in the present day, of a girl from

TABISH KHAIR

THE NOBEL FOR DYLAN? The bard It happened again. Obama got a premature prize for hope which is not as bad as it sounds for hope needs to be premature and the previous US president’s four-letter family name was not exactly spelled. But poor Obama: with such hopes reposed in him, can he avoid disappointing in the years to come?

The literature prize went to the Romanian-German writer Herta Müller cited as someone “who depicts the landscape of the dispossessed. It was good to have a relatively obscure writer highlighted though European obscurity is not the same as, say, Asian, African or South American obscurity and some landscapes of the dispossessed are more legible than other. After all, if Müller powerfully depicts the Orwellian newspeak of vanquished communist Europe, she has yet to document the newspeak of the crusading liberal: words like ‘collateral damage’.

Still, I was relieved the prize did not go to Bob Dylan, a strong candidate this year and undoubtedly one of the greatest living music artists. One would like to have a popular artist win a stuffy prize like the Nobel. But does it have to be at the cost of poets who have written more, and to be FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES/AFP honest, better texts? We still have poets like Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Les Murray and Tony Harrison, all of whom have a more impressive oeuvre: they are yet to win the Nobel. And we have not even started talking of poets who write in languages other than English, or of other literary genres. even in English.

the same tribe, Lalla, who flees the desert to escape a marriage she does not want and arrives in France, a vulnerable immigrant.

A great traveller himself, Le Clézio produces a very close and painstaking description of human beings on the move across a landscape. His attention to the constantly shifting and turning shapes of the universe—no other novelist spends a s m uch t i m e de ta iling the changing colours of the sky, or the particularities of the light—turns his story into a cosmic drama. Le Clézio is also one of those writers who work absolutely on their own terms. His book is slow-moving and often difficult going, but the writing is frequently beautiful and alert, as when he speaks of the wind that “draws the yellow grasses aside like a hand passing over them”, or hears “the faint swish of sand running down the grooves in the rocks” on a cliff. If you consider yourself an ambitious reader, there’s no reason to deny yourself an encounter with this very independent-minded and distinctive sensibility.

Private truths

Chandrahas Choudhury is the author of Arzee the Dwarf.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

Meenakshi Mukherjee, a major scholar of Indian literature and the author of books such as The Twice Born Fiction, has died. She was not only an excellent scholar but also a warm human being who had an inspiring effect on many people like me. Meenakshidi, as we called her, will be sorely missed.

IN SIX WORDS A novel only for ambitious readers

It can be claimed, at the risk of simplification, that British crime A hero: But not for the Nobel. fiction, ranging from Arthur Conan Doyle to Agatha Christie, tends to feature the removed detective, while American crime fiction gravitates towards the hard-boiled, embroiled-in-the-matter private dick, as in Raymond Chandler.

With the same degree of simplification, one can claim that detection in “post-colonial” crime fiction tends towards the light-hearted. I am not just thinking of McCall Smith, who is overrated, but also of Nury Vittachi.

Other “post-colonial” crime writers, such as Sujata Massey, also display this light-hearted touch. As does Shamini Flint, whose latest book, Inspector Singh Investigates a Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder, makes one chuckle. Inspector Singh is pot-bellied, and cast in the standard noir image of the troublesome policeman who is not popular with his superiors. There is nothing new about this novel, but somehow it works. Perhaps more research on the part of the author—getting the Islamic declamation of faith wrong in Malaysia seems a bit sloppy!—and we might be on to a long acquaintance with Inspector Singh.

Poetic prose Keki N. Daruwalla is a leading voice of Indian poetry. One can see aspects of both his poetry and taste for dramatic historical situations in his first novel, For Pepper and Christ, which fictionalizes the arrival of Vasco da Gama in Calicut (now Kozhikode) in the 15th century. Highly readable, it also subverts the colonial centrality of the “European bridge” by fictionalizing on the basis of recent research that suggests, convincingly to my mind, that Vasco’s “discovery” of a “new” sea route depended on prior navigational knowledge by Indian or Arab sailors.

In memoriam

Tabish Khair is the Bihar-born, Denmark-based author of Filming.

Write to Tabish at readingroom@livemint.com

2 STATES | CHETAN BHAGAT

North meets south Campus romance, four wedding rings, and bridging the Tamil­Punjabi divide

BY SEEMA CHOWDHRY seema.c@livemint.com

··························· hetan Bhagat has a new target audience. He is done with IIT geeks and management rookies. It seems he wants women who love soppy romances to join his fan club. That’s why 2 States—The Story of My Marriage, his new book, is cast in the mould of something that Nicholas Sparks is likely to pen.

As a rule, Sparks never wastes

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time building up a romance. The falling-in-love part in most of his books is the easy thing. It’s how his characters sustain the love that he’s interested in. That’s exactly what Bhagat has done in 2 States—no dwelling on campus nostalgia, no build-up to how the lovers meet, no exploring the difficulties of how two people with a really strenuous study schedule manage time for “cuddles”. The first kiss is done with by Page 25, the sex is over by Page 26 and then you are flash-forwarded a year and a half later, when it’s time for the protagonists to get recruited off campus, into the real world.

The plot (or the lack of it) is simple. Boy Krish Anant meets girl Ananya Swaminathan in the canteen of Indian Institute of

Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A). Actually, make that a Punjabi meets Tamilian. Love happens. On graduation day, both sets of parents are told that along with an MBA degree, Krish and Ananya have selected a prospective spouse from IIM-A too.

All hell breaks loose. But instead of Krish and Ananya just telling mummy and amma that the Punjab and Tamil Nadu divide cannot really keep them apart, the duo decide to work at convincing their folks that they have made the right choice.

From four wedding rings (in India we marry the whole family, not just each other), teaching would-be wife’s super intelligent kid brother every day at 5.30am and dodging a qualified prospective Tam-Brahm software engineer groom settled in the US to solving the dowry crisis at a Punjabi wedding, Krish and Ananya

2 States—The Story of My Marriage: Rupa & Co., 269 pages, Rs95. never flinch in the face of trying circumstances that contrive to keep them apart.

Sure, the story starts at IIM-A—that’s because Bhagat is smart enough not to disappoint his existing “campus novel

genre” fans, but the IIM-A campus is out of the story after the first 52 pages. The real action starts in Chennai when Krish sets out to persuade Ananya’s parents that even though he is not “a Tamilian, a Brahmin and an Iyer (all those are separate things and non-compliance in any can get you disqualified)” he is worthy of their daughter. From the usual digs at dumb Punjabi boys not getting Carnatic music, meals on banana leaves, large Rajinikanth posters—the picture that Bhagat paints of Chennai is a clichéd overdose of how a gauche Punjabi would view this city and its people. Delhi and the Punjabis are dealt with in the same manner—silly Dolly, who wants an IIM-A grad for a husband; Pammi aunty, who will buy a son in-law with flats and more flats; Duke, the software engineer bridegroom who does not have

the courage to tell his parents to stop making dowry demands at the wedding mandap.

Krish’s efforts at wooing Ananya’s parents are applauseworthy and stretch over 110 pages.

Ananya, however, gets to convince her mother-in-law and her brigade from Punjabi Bagh (Rajji and Lappa mamaji, Shipra maasi) of her worthiness in less than 30 pages. Bhagat seems to understand that to rope in his new target audience, it is better if a large chunk of the grovelling comes from the guy and the woman pretty much breezes through.

Sometimes, making fun of communities can make for great humour, but when a story is just an overdose of stereotypes, it tires the reader. Would I read 2 States again? No. Would I buy the next Chetan Bhagat book?

Sure, just to find out who he is out to seduce next.

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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2009

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Culture HARIKRISHNA KATRAGADDA/MINT

MUSIC MATTERS

SHUBHA MUDGAL

PALM­HELD TANPURA

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Animated: Roy with one of her creations.

PUPPETRY

With strings attached Puppeteer Anurupa Roy takes a slice of Bollywood, in a very unconventional format, to Europe’s cultural capital

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

···························· n Monday, audiences at this year’s European Capital of Culture—Linz, Austria—will be privy to a multimedia theatre production that will spill the beans on Bollywood. With its 20-character cast, the musical Bollywood Bandwagon will address everything, from impossible plots to the casting couch, to failed ambitions and fading stars.

Thirty-two-year-old Anurupa Roy, whose company Kat-Katha will have shows over Monday and Tuesday, has a big troupe.

They’ve been rehearsing together for 8 hours a day, every day, over the last year. Being invited to perform by the European Union (EU) is a matter of prestige for all involved—Roy and the other four puppeteers in the production. At the near bot-

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tom of the Indian performing arts hierarchy, puppetry seldom enjoys such glamour.

A week before they are set to leave, I watch Kat-Katha’s lively bunch rehearse in their studio in the crowded Delhi neighbourhood of Lajpat Nagar. The entry to the stairway leading to their second floor terrace rooms is by the back door. But atop the narrow flight of stairs, the small rooms breed a capacious world of fantasy. And history: As a tradition that is more than 2,000 years old, puppetry predates several other art forms.

Their 75-minute production will employ what Roy calls humanoids. Dolls, 2ft tall, made of wood, foam and fabric, will hang from the puppeteer’s neck, making his or her face and arms a part of the performance. I watch as two young puppeteers, Mohammad Shameem and Pawan Waghmare, bring alive a doll fashioned as a struggling Bollywood actor—Vicky Kapuur, whose name is spelt numerologically for luck. Kapuur’s nemesis, superstar Jahangir Khan, represents Bollywood’s nepotistic leanings. Other important members of the cast include star actress, Kamini Katyal and “item girl” Maya. The production parodies Bollywood to absurd levels that would have been difficult to achieve with human actors.

Their puppet manoeuvring techniques are not easy to deci-

pher at first. Vicky Kapuur’s body bears Shameem’s face (seen in the picture below). And Waghmare, who stands behind Shameem, works Kapuur’s legs to dance in sync with an original score by Mumbai-based composer Shyam Banerjee.

During the performance at Linz, a static camera will record it all live and project it on an LCD screen above the puppet stage, a technique that evokes the 20th century German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s philosophy and constantly reminds audiences that they’re watching a performance.

As the founder and managing trustee of Kat-Katha Puppet Arts Trust, Roy is always seeking to push artistic boundaries; to nudge the real and the fantastical closer to each other. Her company is dedicated to puppetry research, the therapeutic use of the medium, training new artists and building a plat-

As a tradition that is over 2,000 years old, puppetry predates most other art forms

Action: Shameem (left) and Roy (right) rehearse their Bollywood moves, puppets and camera in tow.

form for practitioners.

Roy’s passion for infusing magic into the inanimate started when she was 9, when her mother gifted her a little fabric monkey to keep her occupied. “I was quite a handful as a child,” says Roy. Judging by her résumé, she still is. By the age of 16, she was already organizing shows at schools and cultural festivals.

Around the time she founded Kat-Katha in 1998, she watched the German-Swedish pioneer Michael Meschke perform in India. Meschke was looking for international students and Roy’s fan mail was well timed. At Meschke’s school, the Dramatiska Institutet at the University of Stockholm, Roy learnt everything from traditional string puppets—marionettes—to carving wood to make her own puppets. To date, Roy has directed 12 productions. Apart from her diploma in puppet theatre from the Dramatiska Institutet, she is also trained in guaratelle—traditional Italian glove puppetry from a school in Naples. In India, she has worked under Dadi Pudumjee, the undisputed father of modern puppetry in the country. She has performed at festivals in Iran, Germany, the Czech Republic, Spain, Croatia, Denmark, the US and Thailand, among others.

With the way that it fuses forms, Bollywood Bandwagon seems part theatre, part puppetry. But Roy dismisses such divisions. She traces the genesis of Indian theatre largely to Kerala’s 2,000-year-old Koodiyattam tradition, where actors do everything from acting and singing to dancing. She feels that the division of performing art forms is artificial. Her Voice, the second production that she did in 2000, was a collaboration with Bharatanatyam dancer Geeta Chandran. And her last production, About Ram, in 2006 was a collaboration with animator Vishal Dar. Kat-Katha will also be performing About Ram at Linz on 21 October.

The young artiste attributes her love for puppetry to its undertones of magic; the way it suspends disbelief. “Not just children, adults come up to us and ask how we did this move or that jump,” she says. “It’s the incredible power that dead material can have over a human being.”

or a Hindustani classical vocalist, life without a tanpura is unimaginable. Having said that, I must clarify that the tanpura, conventionally a four-stringed, hand-crafted acoustic instrument used to provide a drone, now exists in several avatars. Four- or five- or six-stringed, flat, sleek, without the toomba (the rounded hollow bottom), electronic, digital, in MP3 or WAV formats on made-for-riyaaz CDs—the tanpura in all or many of its avatars forms an absolutely essential part of a classical musician’s gear. While tanpuras are made in several parts of the country, Miraj in Maharashtra and Kolkata are two places from where most musicians like to acquire tanpuras. These are usually hand-crafted instruments made by families of highly skilled instrument makers who have honed their craft over many generations.

And today, I write about another brand new avatar of the tanpura, one that can be found and acquired only if you are ready to visit the Apps or Applications section of the Apple online store! Naturally, it is called the iTanpura and has been developed for iPhone and iPod Touch users by Prasad Upasani.

Upasani, who lives in southern California, describes himself on Shrunk: But it works really well. his website www.upasani.org as “a professional musician, teacher and performer who also happens to be a talented programmer with over 15 years in IT as a Project Manager, Software Developer & Technical Architect”.

Over a Skype call, Upasani talked about his painstaking efforts to ensure that the iTanpura sounded as close as possible to the beautiful meditative sound of an actual tanpura. Each of the strings of the tanpura was recorded individually by the developer, with meticulous care given to the tone, timbre and resonance.

And Upasani didn’t just use any old instrument to record the samples that went into the making of the iTanpura—he used Hemraj tanpuras known for their superb tonal quality. He has also taken care to record different samples for women’s and men’s tanpuras as he was not satisfied with merely altering the pitch using a computer software. Upasani continues to modify and improve on the application, and iTanpura version 4 comes with an added Swar Mandal, or harp.

I am still not an iPhone user but I would definitely cast my vote in favour of the iTanpura for many reasons—sheer mobility, the fact that it can be customized using controls that permit fine tuning, panning, tempo control make it well worth the $14.99 (around Rs700) it costs to download the application. Of course, I must reiterate that while I cheer for an innovation such as the iTanpura, at no point would I recommend that students of music or musicians do away entirely with the original acoustic hand-crafted beauties that we know our well-loved tanpuras to be.

But as I recall my pre-frequent flyer days a couple of decades ago, when I would reach the railway station toting a tanpura along to find the local Romeos leering as they remarked through paan-stained teeth—“Dekh Raja dekh!!!

Mirabai jaye rahee hai”, I can’t help but feel a little smug and pleased about the compact iTanpura.

Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com

VERTICAL HORIZONS Bangalore­based photographer Pallon Daruwala is best known for his architectural photographs, and his new exhibition, titled ‘Vertical Horizon’, is a collection of 27 black and white images of architectural and structural forms that reflect the theme of time and space. “I’ve entered the domain of conceptual work for the first time,” says Daruwala, “but I was so inspired by just one thought by (the celebrated physicist) Stephen Hawking, in which he says, ‘What if the world is so strange that we could never hope to understand it and science was wasting its time trying to do so.’”

Vertical Horizons will be on display at the Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi, from 19–21 October.

Pavitra Jayaraman

L22 FLAVOURS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

KOLKATA CHROMOSOME | SHAMIK BAG

The show must go on PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

NILAYAN DUTTA

In the passing: (clockwise from left) Suchitra photographed at her aunt’s house; Briski with a Sonagachi resident; a bylane of Sonagachi.

We walked the bylanes of Kolkata’s famous red light district to meet the girls who were stars of an Oscar­winning film

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t’s been 10 years since British photojournalist Zana Briski began teaching photography to children of sex workers in Kolkata’s Sonagachi red light area, and four years since Born into Brothels, the film Briski co-directed with Ross Kauffman, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Since then, Suchitra’s life has changed. For the better, she admits demurely.

Suchitra was one of the eight children featured prominently in the film—the others being Puja, Manik, Shanti, Abhijit, Kochi, Gour and Tapashi. The film traced their childhood in Kolkata’s biggest red light district through a photography project Briski conducted; we are trying to trace their current status.

Finally, we are face-to-face with Suchitra in her aunt’s minuscule room, having reached it after walking primly through the bylanes of prime evening-time Sonagachi, past hundreds of sex workers and aggressive pimps. Three women—under-dressed, with the almost obligatory loud made-up —sprawl around the building’s entrance. We take care not to step on anyone; the women themselves remain unmoved. Inside, there’s the stench of urine, women in petticoats tied around their chest taking a communal bath, a narrow wet staircase and un-plastered walls.

On the first floor, music floats out of a room, empty

bottles of alcohol lie in a corner and more women lounge around in anticipation of a lucrative evening.

We come to Suchitra. She who had pondered over the question and bluntly said “no” when asked if she sees a solution to Sonagachi’s problems in Born into Brothels. Now, in her escape she’s found a solution. A long streak of vermilion marks her forehead and after initial scepticism, Suchitra’s in-laws have accepted her into their house, which lies many miles—and worlds—away from Sonagachi. “I won them over with my behaviour,” the 22-year-old says. Her education stopped after class VIII, but she married the tuition-mate she fell in love with.

These days, Suchitra works for an NGO that designs greeting cards. A replica of the Oscar statuette given to her, she says, is showcased in the NGO office. “I miss my relatives here, but don’t miss the life,” she says as we leave.

A room away, two middle-aged men are admitted inside by a woman who pulls the curtain tightly behind her.

Children, including Suchitra’s

cousins—seemingly of the same age when she was filmed—huddle together on the terrace. Approximately 3,000 children of sex workers continue to live with their mothers in Sonagachi, according to Durbar Mahila Samanway Committee, a sex workers’ forum active in the area.

A short walk away, when we eventually trace her after a week of searching, Puja Mukherjee is now Priti Gupta, young and inviting at Sonagachi. Puja, the chirpy kid whose reasonably well-off Bengali Brahmin family included three generations of sex workers, according to Briski’s film, was 11 when she featured as one of the eight children in Born into Brothels. At the Masjid Bari Street brothel, we walk through a corridor that is tiled and styled akin to a pay-and-use toilet, minus the stink.

Magenta-coloured lights glow in rooms where young women sit on beds; cleavage and legs both complementing and competing with each other.

When she emerges from her room, Puja carries with her a draught of cool conditioned air and perfume—this, seemingly, is an expensive place, a category A

brothel in Sonagachi’s hierarchical terms.

Puja is no longer dusky. She is fair and lithe in make-up, push-up bra and hot pants. Her constant on-screen innocent prattle has been replaced by smart business talk. Rs1,600 for an hour’s dancing, she tells us. Extra for extras. Most of our questions have been answered anyway and as we walk back, Puja gets busy arguing with a Hindi-speaking middleman. “I paid you Rs700 yesterday. Of that Rs625 is your dalali (commission). Where is the balance?”

Unlike Puja, Manik Das, the bright-eyed child who, along with elder sister Shanti, was a central character in the film, didn’t pass up the opportunity to break away from the bustling sex district. As we wait for Manik to come for his daily round of evening tea a block away from his south Kolkata hostel, a particularly harrowing sequence from the film returns to me: Ten-year-old Manik cowering and covering his ears to shut out the spew of invectives directed by his mother towards an unseen person in the brothel.

Along with the calming thought of Manik’s fondness for flying

kites, an eternal embodiment of the free and unfettered.

Manik loves playing rugby these days. In the dark blue T-shirt with a rugby team emblem on the chest, he looks dapper. Shanti, he says, stays in a girls’ hostel in a fashionable part of the city and is studying for her higher secondary examination. Manik’s mother, as mentioned in the film, fretted over the girl’s future—the nagging poverty contrasted by the prospect of easy money through prostitution being a real danger in Sonagachi, home to an estimated 9,000 sex workers working out of 6,500 brothel-residences.

“Shanti wants to study hotel management,” Manik updates us as we sip tea at the roadside stall. Outsiders are prohibited at the hostel and the siblings only occasionally visit their parents’ home in Sonagachi. “If Zana aunty and Ross uncle hadn’t supported us, we would have been there. I could have been sucked into the sphere of violence, alcohol and drugs.”

Today, Manik plans to pursue photography as a career like Abhijit Halder, the most promising student in Briski’s photography class, who was invited to be on the World Press Photo Foundation’s children’s jury in Amsterdam in 2002 and is currently studying films in New York University. Like Kochi, the 10-year-old girl in the film who is now a promising student in the US, he wouldn’t mind

relocating if required.

Says a member of the Kids with Cameras project, where Briski provided a select group of Sonagachi children with cameras to document their world: “Only those who utilized the opportunity to study provided by Zana aunty and Ross could move out.”

Gour couldn’t. Minutes after his mother lays out a large plastic sack for us to sit on, Gour, now 22, returns home from the nearby office where he is a peon on a monthly salary of Rs2,200. The family has moved out of the Sethbagan sex quarters and stays in a building opposite them.

As we walk through the Sethbagan lane, Gour exchanges familiar smiles with residents, but refrains from detailing his past. “The film people wanted me to go to the US, but I couldn’t leave my family. We don’t have contact any more,” he says. “Those three years of learning photography have meant nothing.” He offers to help us find the other children—but soon goes incommunicado altogether.

Common knowledge indicates that Tapasi, who became a dancer in the raunchy showbiz arena of rural Bihar, is lost to the wider world. Oblivious, obviously, to the citations and censures that have followed a film script that continues beyond its show time.

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