lounge for 18 dec 2010 by HT Media

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Saturday, December 18, 2010

Vol. 4 No. 49

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

THE GREAT INDIAN

FAMILY PORTRAIT

TOY CENTRAL >Page 9

HOT SPRINGS, COOL MINDS

At this Japanese outdoor spa, it’s hard to dispute that water purifies the body and spirit >Page 14

THE FALSE RADICALISM The latest book on the US President is a veteran political commentator’s short but scathing indictment of his presidency >Page 16

With disintegrating joint families, the demand for portraiture is stepping up. But how much has modern technology altered this traditional art form? >Pages 1012

Portrait of a Parsi Couple by Gomes & Lawrie, c. 1940, employs conventional tropes such as the use of gender appropriate props.

PUBLIC EYE

THE GOOD LIFE

SUNIL KHILNANI

THE SPECTACLE OF CORRUPTION

SHOBA NARAYAN

MUSIC MATTERS

SHUBHA MUDGAL

THREAD FARE

A French designer’s work with the city’s embroiderers adorns Christian Louboutin’s shoes and the opera house in Monaco >Page 18

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

WHAT MAKES YOU THE VEENA’S GIVE FOR CHARITY? MYSTERIES

ay you walk into a mela and are greeted by a talking robot. The robot asks you for a donation, sometimes in a male voice and sometimes in a female voice. “I am part of an experiment that needs money to continue. So please make a donation so that I can stay alive,” the robot says. What do you think will happen? This study was actually conducted at the Museum of Science in Boston by Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT’s) Mikey Siegel, Cynthia Breazeal... >Page 6

PHOTO ESSAY

KEEPING WARM IN KASHMIR

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

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (MANAGING EDITOR)

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

HOME PAGE L3

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

LOUNGE REVIEW | BLACKBERRY BOLD 9780 WATCH THE

n 7 December, BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion (RIM) CEO Mike Lazaridis gave a bizarre interview at the All Things Digital mobile conference in the US. Not many people could figure out what exactly he was talking about (sample answer: “By focusing on the tablet market, we see it as a way of freeing where smartphones can go”), and confidence in RIM’s strategy for the future (and for their upcoming tablet, the PlayBook) seemed uncertain at best. The firm has had a rough time. Market share has eroded and attempts to gain a foothold in the growing touch-screen segment (with the Storm and Torch) have largely been unsuccessful, and what used to be a BlackBerry’s impressive suite of advantages has dwindled to just two—that awesome keyboard and that robust security. In that respect, the Bold 9780 is familiar territory. It looks almost identical to the Bold 9700, but has upped the ante on the software. It now features BlackBerry OS 6, which debuted on the Torch earlier this year.

The good The software upgrade is great. The 9780 has a much improved browser (with tabbed browsing finally), and revamped media playback and the home screen are useful. The universal search (start typing and get results across contacts, messages, apps, what have you) cuts down a lot of needless menu swiping, and that keyboard is still an utter joy to use. The social feeds app, which compiles updates from every social network in existence, is well designed and worryingly addictive. Picture quality is

LISTEN TO THE

very good on the 5MP camera, and those speakers at the back are surprisingly loud.

The notsogood While camera quality is sufficient (in comparison with the Bold 9700), the camera app is a bit dodgy. There are still no advanced options for adjusting things such as white balance, and it stopped working twice during our review, requiring a restart. Some of the OS tweaks (such as the multiple trays) seem geared towards a touch screen, making them clunky with an optical trackpad. BlackBerry’s app market is still a barren wasteland next to the bustling bazaars of iOS and Android.

Talk plastic The Bold 9780 retails for `27,990. BlackBerry users have no reason to complain—the price and performance here is top-notch for a nontouch screen phone, and this is the best BlackBerry you can buy at the moment. Those who’re already using a Bold should h o l d o n t h e upgrade—the 9700s are due for a software update soon, making them pretty much identical to the 9780 except for slightly lower hardware specifications. For those who’re not in the BlackBerry cult, there’s nothing earth-shattering here to prompt a conversion. RIM needs a new direction for its phones of the future. The Bold may be “best-in-class” , but the diminishing category it belongs to does appear to be a bit of an evolutionary dead end.

LOUNGE PODCAST

Five reasons to watch ‘You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger’; Seema Chowdhry rounds up eclectic toys for your child’s Christmas stocking; and Arun Janardhan reviews South African cricketer Herschelle Gibbs’ autobiography

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inbox

Write to us at lounge@livemint.com UNIVERSAL CITY While reading “City of the White Tiger”, 11 December, I could relate to the author’s views even though I live in a different city. VARUN BANSAL

DELHI DAYS It was great knowing Aravind Adiga’s Delhi experiences in “City of the White Tiger”, 11 December. JOHN

HONEST VOICE Like all other short pieces by Aravind Adiga, “City of the White Tiger”, 11 December, was a refreshing read. It is an honest and unpretentious article. SURYA PRATAP

BAD MANAGEMENT “50 years of IIMA”, 27 November, was an excellent article. But I can’t empathize with Harsha Bhogle’s opinions on the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, because of the manner in which the selection process was organized in 2009. The Common Admission Test was so badly managed that it seemed the organizing committee had forgotten concepts of excellence and fairness. To describe the inability of 12% of the candidates to take the test in the first attempt as “teething trouble” is something even P.G. Wodehouse would be hardpressed to parallel. It’s time for India’s premier institute to begin looking at itself. It is crucial not only for this legendary institute, but for the country. VIPUL PATKI ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY THE ALKAZI COLLECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Krish Raghav

LOUNGE SHOW

A behindthescenes look at the shooting of the Kingfisher calendar, artist Harinder Singh’s cartooninspired art, and how to get the right makeup ahead of the party season

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L4 COLUMNS

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

PUBLIC EYE

SUNIL KHILNANI

THE SPECTACLE OF

CORRUPTION T

he Radia recordings and WikiLeaks confirm two basic, related political insights—one global, the other more local—that have sharpened over the past decade. The first is about the nature of power. Power in the modern world rests as much on information and its control as it does on weaponry or treasure: Besides the Seventh Fleet and Wall Street, it is the networked data server, buried deep in cyberspace, that is a repository of power. And it is the rogue memory stick, the renegade photographic image, or the on-screen financial rumour, that can acquire viral velocity and at once puncture the complacencies of markets as well as the strategies of states. In this crucial sense, what were believed to be the conventional markers of power—military might, financial muscle— remain premised for their effectiveness on legitimacy, on their sustained credibility in the realm of public opinion or of markets. If that dissipates, so too does effective power. It’s a lesson that the US has learned the hard way over the past decade; and it’s a lesson that any would-be aspirant powers need to grasp early. The second concerns our

own political and economic trend lines. Almost 20 years ago, India embarked on what was described as a liberalization of the economy, supposedly opening it up to private energy and breaking the statist monopoly in which it had been entrapped. Economic liberalization, superimposed upon India’s more long-standing political

democratization, have together changed in significant ways the social backgrounds of the country’s elites, and have vastly inflated the scale of wealth now in private hands. But it is by now equally plain that these political and economic processes, dynamic in themselves, have done less to change the essential structures—ones that ensure a

REVELLING IN AND FETISHIZING THE THOUSANDS OF HOURS OF RADIA TAPES AND PAGES OF TRANSCRIPTS CAN INDUCE ANALYTICAL PARALYSIS. IT CAN’T ADDRESS THE MORE PRESSING PROBLEM OF CHRONIC CORRUPTION

sharp divide between elites and the rest. The political and economic opening that has occurred has been highly selective—with narrow entry points, still controlled and largely exclusive. We remain a society beholden to “gatekeepers”. At the top of the new caste order are those who can fix “access”: to the durbars of politicians, the HINDUSTAN TIMES

file-bestrewn offices of bureaucrats, the Vitra-fitted boardrooms and salons of CEOs, the media networks. As such, the changes of recent decades have merely enhanced the stakes, potential and necessity for corruption. Unsurprisingly, we are at present simply goggle-eyed over the unfolding details of the Radia recordings and the Raja rip-off of the national purse. But to revel in the exorbitance of information, to fetishize the thousands of hours of tapes and pages of transcripts, can induce analytical paralysis. It’s an illusion to think that one is addressing the problem of corruption by making a spectacle of it. Certainly, to pursue and secure some high-profile convictions is important. But even that, while necessary, is not sufficient. We aren’t going to be able to address the problem by punishing a few people in court. Nor is this species of corruption special to particular political parties or governments—in that sense, the Opposition, rather than finger-wagging and stymieing Parliament, would do better to practise a little self-analysis, and notice how corruption is an activity that spreads across the political horizon: how it has AP

Information junkies: (above) Niira Radia; and supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange protest his arrest in Madrid.

COLUMNS L5

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM ARVIND YADAV/HINDUSTAN TIMES

MUSTAFA QURAISHI/AP

BHARATH SAI/MINT

become the one great subject of cross-party, pan-Indian agreement. Regret in public, indulge in private. We’ll need to look deeper, to analyse what the information tells us about the workings of Indian capitalism and democracy—and of the supposed instruments of scrutiny that are supposed to keep our democracy honest. The effect of the Raja and Radia show has been to deflate two myths our elites have dined out on. The first is that India has entered a new age of entrepreneurial capitalism, independent of the state; the second is we are a vibrant democracy, with an energetic, critical free press (“India: the world’s fastest growing democracy”: remember Davos?). We had better face this sweet self-image a little more frankly, in the hope we might move away a little from self-delusion and perhaps towards self-knowledge. This will require, first, grasping the nature of Indian capitalism. The telecom sector was the blue-skinned god boy of Indian private enterprise, the fastest growing such sector in the world. But it turns out that entry into India’s breathless new economy remains, after all, channelled through the same inertial and rotten structures that propped up the old economy. All that’s changed is that we have a new “gatekeeper” caste that dominates the new Indian capitalism: Along with elected politicians, and career and retired bureaucrats, now we have PR and corporate lobbyists, business leaders themselves, and—more apparent than ever before—the media professionals. The fact is that one of democracy’s vital pillars, an independent media, has buckled. The curse of “access” is destroying critical and independent media—and will cripple our democracy. In that sense, the media has become the fullest, direst symptom of a world built on and spun around by “access”. India’s new economy is itself an “access economy”—where national resources, whether land and water or the airwaves and knowledge, as well as resources like private capital, can be exploited only by those who have steady access to the gatekeepers: those who hold state office, and those who can influence them. “Access journalism”, beholden to money and power in ways that run the spectrum from social glass-clinking to “treaty” arrangements that hang editorial and news pages out “To Let”, asks no real questions

of this world. It opinionates (an always harmless pastime, even if critical)—it never investigates. It is a world of unnamed sources, not undeniable facts. The habits of “access” are inherently corrupting, none more so than for journalists: It destroys autonomy of inquiry and thought. The leaks of state papers and of private conversations underline the vulnerability of power in the face of information—in ways that are at once a caution and a hope for us. A caution, because it should help to concentrate our minds on how to sustain India’s own legitimacy in the era of global Wiki public opinion. It’s a task that will need imagination and active effort. Public corruption, as in India’s telecom sector, or private fraud, as with Satyam, affect the credibility of India’s economic story. And it can start to hurt the country’s global legitimacy. A hope, because these recent events may finally provoke a full debate over the informational regime that, with little self-awareness, we are sliding into. It would be a debate over the claims of state secrecy, of citizens’ privacy, and of corporate opacity—a debate that draws out their intimate if contradictory relationship, and it’s one we’ll need to face as we move deeper into the age of terrorism, corruption and unique identification (UID) numbers, each of which are in the first instance challenges of accumulating, protecting and diffusing information. In that necessary debate, we’ll need to acknowledge that there are no easy certitudes in what is fundamentally political rather than purely ethical territory. Three elements, contradictory to one another in their shape and purposes, define the modern informational order: Two of them, the state and the individual citizen, are purposive agents; the third, the market, is an instrument. Modern states are occupationally committed to amassing information about all

Fallen men: (clockwise from left) Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju; former Union telecom minister A. Raja; and members of the Opposition demand a probe into the telecom scandal.

they rule or seek to rule, while enshrouding in secrecy any information they have accumulated. The state, along with often closely allied corporate entities (banks, telecom companies, medical institutions) extracts and concentrates information—of both commercial and

political value. Individual citizens, on the other hand, jealously protect their own privacy, as they pursue interests beyond the glare of state or society. Intervening between state and citizen, enveloping both of them, is the market and its analogues: networks that distribute

information, whatever it may be (celebrity photographs, state documents, Facebook intimacies) to whomever has an expressed preference for it. What should be the informational contract that defines this triangular relation, and who should determine its terms and enforcement? How much should and can state and citizen, as well as citizens themselves, know about each other? The nature of what is public and private information, what is legitimate data for the state to hold and guard, and what is dangerously intrusive or wilfully obfuscating when in its possession, will (and should) always be contestable. In that sense, it may be unrealistic to expect any stable contract to emerge. But, in an era when states seek to ever widen the privileges of secrecy, when corporate and private wealth remains largely

unscrutinized, and where citizens press for the right to information while guarding their privacy, the issue of who needs to know, and on what basis, will be increasingly drawn into contention—contentions that will need to be anchored by some criteria. In some cases, the criteria are functionally justifiable (for example, where financial and social services need to be delivered); but in others they are discretionary. Who should determine such criteria, adjudicate disputes? The state or an independent regulator? Our jurisprudence on such matters is weak, our public debate thin. We are going to need to better manage our attitude to information and its regulation, public and private, not least because this will shape India’s legitimacy, both domestic and global. Sunil Khilnani is the author of The Idea of India and is currently working on a new book, India in Search of Wealth and Power. Write to him at publiceye@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Sunil’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/sunilkhilnani

L6 COLUMNS

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

How much you give depends on who’s asking

CHRIS MACHIAN/BLOOMBERG

So please make a donation so that I can stay alive,” the robot says. What do you think will happen? This study was actually conducted at the Museum of Science in Boston by Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT’s) Mikey Siegel, Cynthia Breazeal, and Harvard Business School’s Michael Norton. As Norton says in a hilarious podcast called Arming the Donkeys, women gave small amounts of money whether it was a male- or female-voiced robot. The men, on the other hand, “act as though, just in case the female robot will sleep with them, they’d better be extra nice to the female robot,” and gave far more money to the female-voiced robot than the male-voiced robot, even though, and I hardly need to add this, they know that the robot is dead and will never sleep with them. ‘Tis the season for giving; and as numerous studies point out, how much we give is dependent on who asks for the donation. If an attractive person asks, we tend to give more. Similarly we give more to “stigmatized” people, as Norton calls them, because they make us feel uncomfortable. And men give more to women, no matter what the cause is. Note to NGOs: When you make those donor visits, take the most attractive woman on your staff with you. Chances are that it will increase the size of the donor cheque. Yes, I know that sounds sexist but it is a scientifically proven fact. It gets murkier. There are small things that people do to improve their sales, tips or donations. Psychological studies show that waiters, particularly in the West, draw smiley faces while

submitting the bill; or draw the sun. Both have been known to increase the size of the tip. People spend more with credit card purchases than cash ones, because you don’t actually feel the money changing hands. This is probably why we Indian women bargain so hard with the poor neighbourhood fruit vendor to reduce the cost of a pineapple from `35 to `25, but don’t haggle at all when spending `25,000 for an Anand Kabra outfit. Cash changes hands when you buy fruits, but most fashion purchases are on a credit card. The instant Interbank Mobile Payment Services (IMPS) that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is rolling out has the potential to change all this. My vegetable vendor has a mobile, and in the future, I don’t need to fish for change to pay him. I can just set it up for money to be transferred from my mobile’s account to his. This could change lives. Women could order their vegetables from the sabziwallah while sitting in their offices and pay through their mobiles. Best of all, the vendors who cart fruits and vegetables door-to-door will see their income increase; because women will haggle less when they don’t have to handle cold cash. The last frontier for the fruit and flower vendors who live and die by the freshness of their wares is cultural. Asia has a culture of bargaining. This is why Nita Ambani is reportedly buying her Noritake from Sri Lanka instead of Japan. Try haggling with the sniffy Swiss or the stiff-upper-lip English or the reserved Japanese. Even the redoubtable Nita, who is supposedly a master at spotting accounting irregularities, will have trouble getting past the cultural

Philanthropes: Bill Gates (left) and Warren Buffett (right) have pledged to give away half their personal fortunes in charity. frontiers of bargaining. But then again, you wonder. How much money do you need to have to stop sweating the small stuff? Instead of hunting for bargains, Nita could hunt for gems in the non-profit sector that she could channel her Noritake savings into. Recently, 17 billionaires, including AOL’s Steve Case, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, ebay’s Pierre Omidyar, CNN’s Ted Turner, and others joined Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in pledging to give away half their personal fortune in their lifetime. So I wrote to Norton—the guy who did the robot experiment—with a question: “Dear Dr Norton,” I wrote, “I am an avid follower of your research on spending and philanthropy, and have a question for you: Why doesn’t Mukesh Ambani give? Mr Ambani is the richest man in Asia and the fourth richest man in the world. Yet, he

hasn’t made any kind of substantial life-changing philanthropic contribution. I wonder if you have some clues as to why he does not give.” The next day, Norton wrote back. “Dear Shoba,” he said, “My research doesn’t address your question—why some people give and why some people don’t—so I will refrain from commenting on why Mr Ambani does or does not give. Our research focuses on how, after giving, people feel happier—but not on what prompts them to give in the first place.” Get that? People feel happier after they give. Again, a scientifically proven fact. So if Mukeshbhai ever suffers from melancholy, he only needs to pull out his chequebook. Elizabeth Dunn does very interesting happiness research at the University of British Columbia, Canada, I wrote to her with the same question. “Sorry, I am headed out of the country for my wedding and am not doing media

interviews now,” she replied. Oh, well. Why doesn’t Ambani give—not in snippets relative to his wealth which I am sure he is doing in spades—but substantially, generously; in a grand gesture that will change lives? My guess is that he will. He needs a philanthropic adviser like the one Angelina Jolie has. His wife could do it were she not preoccupied with furnishing Antilla for pennies. Shoba Narayan owns a 15-piece Noritake set that she bought from a couple in Connecticut who were divorcing one week after their marriage. Their entire wedding registry was on sale and Shoba snapped up the Noritake. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shobanarayan

THINKSTOCK

LEARNING CURVE

GOURI DANGE

PATIENCE: A LIFE LESSON My younger son is going through a phase—he dislikes girls. He will be 11 soon. Recently, his elder brother’s friends (14-year-olds) teased him about some girl, saying she liked him, etc. He kept telling them to shut up, and finally said “I don’t like girls, I’m gay”. Now, nobody lets him forget this, and he’s teased endlessly about it. His elder brother is also irritated by all this. Should I sit him as well as some of the other boys down and tell them that a) this is not the definition of being gay b) the word ‘gay’ is not something to laugh at and mock about?

Well, I don’t know whether the parents of the other boys will appreciate you tackling this topic with their sons. So I think it’s best you let this one go. However, you could speak to both your sons—this is as good a time as any to come up with an age-appropriate conversation on both counts that you mention. One, set them right on the fact that a gay person is not (necessarily) a woman-hater or a person who dislikes girls. The other point being that “gay” shouldn’t be a “teasing word”. Once you enter into this conversation, be prepared to answer various THINKSTOCK

Braving bullies: ‘Gay’ shouldn’t be a mock directed at your young son.

questions that range from “are they bad people” right on to “would you hate me if I became gay?” Answer them the best you can, depending on your position on these things. It’s also ok to say “I don’t know”, if the line of questions become intricate, or too graphic and difficult to explain. There is just one guiding principle, really, in all such conversations when talking to children about “the other”—people of any kind of religious, community or sexual orientation that is different from what the child is familiar with. And that is: Regardless of your own approval/disapproval of any group of people, no one group or person who is different from you or unfamiliar to you should be mocked at and reviled, targeted or baited. That really is the bottom line, isn’t it? As for the specifics of your question, no doubt his startling statement has created room for much mirth and teasing, among the boys. I’d suggest you just let it die down. If your elder son is also being teased about his younger brother’s statement, you could ask him to say something dismissive, and not take it all so seriously. It’s just a word that the youngsters have stumbled on, and its “tease-value” or “charge” will fizzle out in a while. As for your son hating girls, you must know that this is a phase, and you can let him take his time to arrive at some kind of balance about it because there’s likely to

also be a phase when all he’ll think of, is girls. My daughter has just had a baby, who is less than a month old. While I help her with baby-related chores, she has to do the bulk of the handling. She lives in Sweden and will not have much help when she returns there. However, I find that though she is quite patient, at least once a day when the baby is crying after being fed and needs a dry diaper, she shouts at the baby and says things such as “I’ll slap you if you don’t shut up”. My husband and I have intervened and told her how wrong this is. She breaks down and cries and promises not to do it again, but still does it. We are very fearful that she may, in just such a state, harm the baby by shaking him or actually slapping him when she is alone with him back in Sweden. In what way can we prevent this? It is difficult being locked in with your baby 24 hours, but you know that already. Exhaustion and frustration do set in at least for some part of the day. However, yes, there is no way that this fatigue and exasperation should be thrown in the direction of a tiny baby that is doing nothing on purpose to irritate its mother. The fact that your daughter breaks down in this way shows that she’s also aware that it’s wrong, but can’t help it and needs something else from you by way of support.

Baby blues: Refrain from yelling. Many new mothers want to get it perfectly right—and feel defeated and dejected when a baby keeps crying or remains restless. While the shouting is directed at the baby, at some level she’s probably also shouting, so that you take note of her tiredness and of the fact that she’s trying so hard. Perhaps you can validate her efforts in more ways, even if you don’t want to “take over” the baby-handling a lot. Once you’ve ruled out any specific health issue such as colic, etc., you should encourage your daughter to steel herself a little and not be so very frazzled by the sound of her baby crying. It doesn’t mean that she’s falling down on her job, for sure—this

you need to convey. Second, you must caution her that allowing herself to vent her feelings directly at the child is dangerous because, as you say, she could be driven to act upon her threats one day when she’s alone. It’s been known to happen. Even shaking a child in irritation can be bad, even fatal. Not to speak of the sheer fear and helplessness even an infant can feel when its mother is so angry and rejecting. Well before she returns to her home, you and she and her husband need to look at what options of childcare and support are available in that country, so that she is not so totally alone in the daily rearing of the child. It is important to form a social circle of other moms in her situation, so that she does not feel the isolation and the too-heavy burden of doing this all on her own. It’s important for her baby, for her as well as for the well-being of her marriage. In India too, while there are better family support systems, those are beginning to vanish or be unavailable, and cannot be counted on, not in urban centres and in nuclear families. So it’s essential that young mothers find ways in which they can step away for a brief while, even if it is just for some fresh air on the balcony. Gouri Dange is the author of The ABCs of Parenting. Write to Gouri at learningcurve@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2010

Eat/Drink

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

HUNGRY PLANET | JACQUES POURCEL

Taste of contradiction A Michelin chef on experimenting with French cuisine and Asian reactions to his eccentricity

B Y S HREYA R AY shreya.r@livemint.com

···························· hat he bears resemblance to footballer Zinedine Zidane might lead you to believe that this is how all French heroes look. After all, the magic that Zidane performs on the field is not different from what master chef and restaurateur Jacques Pourcel whips up in the kitchen. The three Michelin star chef is the CEO and chef de cuisine of Le Jardin des Sens, in Montpellier in France, which he runs with his twin brother, Laurent. Pourcel was in the country earlier this month to usher in the 25th anniversary of the restaurant Orient Express, Taj Palace Hotel, New Delhi. We got a taste of a creamy pan-fried sea bass with a crunchy crust; and roasted rack of lamb with a sweet aftertaste: both marked, as Pourcel puts it, with the “contradiction”, characteristic to their kitchen. Edited excerpts from an interview:

Your brother and you have been awarded three Michelin stars for creativity in French cuisine. What would you say has been your biggest contribution to

French food? When we began cooking, French cuisine was a little straightjacketed. We’ve added more fun to it: more fun in the kitchen and in the process of cooking it, and more fun on the plate. You can see it’s crazy, it’s eccentric. We’ve brought our personalities into cooking. To be awarded the greatest culinary honour at 23, did you both have to look for bigger culinary goals? My father was a winemaker, and my mother taught us a great deal about cooking: from fish soup, stuffed squid and so on. We were already born into this ethos and started cooking when we were 15; exchanging ideas and swapping recipes. There were so many possibilities from there and there was so much desire to go out and begin something new and develop fresh concepts. We wanted to constantly reset our goals, to test ourselves and create newer things. You were born in the south of France by the Mediterranean. How have these two geographical aspects of land and sea influenced your cooking? We like to use contradiction in our cooking. We use ingredients from both land and

Kitchen confidential: Pourcel adds the fun factor to ‘straightjacketed’ French cuisine at his restaurant. sea: hot and cold, melting and crunchy, sweet and savoury, bitter and sweet. How important is presentation to French cuisine? The presentation is like your moment as a good chef. When you are good at your job, and you already have mastered how to make delicious food, you start playing with ingredients, colour, structure, flowers and you can do so much with it. The entire process of cooking is difficult and the presentation part is your moment, and your moment to enjoy. What wins: creativity of a dish or its taste? They have to go together, work

in coordination. A chef can’t be only creative; he has to match the taste, the taste is all we have. You pay for delicious food in a restaurant. But then again, a chef needs his identity: something that specifically marks him out. The best chefs will have to focus on both. What’s been the most surprising or startling reaction to your food in, say, Asia? Watching the Chinese react to chicken feet. They didn’t like it at all. What would you advise someone who wants to be a chef? Learn and respect that you are

making a beautiful product. We have a saying—if you’re cooking a chicken, do it well because he’s dying for you. Since you’re already next door in China, should we expect you to open a brasserie sometime soon in India? If people are up for it, why not? Have you ever tried your hand at Indian cooking? Any favourite flavours? I’ve only tried Indian food at restaurants in Paris and London and they often temper down the tastes there to match the European palate. But the spicy curries stand out, yes. Also, my mission this time is to try some authentic Indian food.

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2010

Parenting SURROGACY

Assembling the global baby KHUE BUI/WSJ

A new industry, helped by a network of surrogates, produces children on the cheap and outside the reach of restrictive laws

B Y T AMARA A UDI & A RLENE C HANG ···························· n a hospital room on the Greek island of Crete with views of a sapphire sea lapping at ancient fortress walls, a Bulgarian woman plans to deliver a baby whose biological mother is an anonymous European egg donor, whose father is Italian, and whose birth is being orchestrated from Los Angeles. She won’t be keeping the child. The parents-to-be—an infertile Italian woman and her husband (who provided the sperm)—will take custody of the baby this summer, on the day of birth. The birth mother is Katia Antonova, a surrogate. She emigrated to Greece from Bulgaria and is a waitress with a husband and three children of her own. She will use the money from her surrogacy to send at least one of her own children to university. The man bringing together this disparate group is Rudy Rupak, chief executive of PlanetHospital.com Llc, a California company that searches the globe to find the components for its business line. The business, in this case, is creating babies. Rupak is a pioneer in a controversial field at the crossroads of reproductive technology and international adoption. Prospective parents put off by the rigour of traditional adoptions are bypassing that system by producing babies of their own—often using an egg donor from one country, a sperm donor from another and a surrogate who will deliver in a third country to make what some industry participants call “a world baby”. They turn to PlanetHospital and a handful of other companies. “We take care of all aspects of the process, like a concierge service,” says Rupak, a 41-yearold Canadian. Clients tend to be people who want children but can’t do it themselves: families suffering from infertility; gay male couples. They may also have trouble adopting because of age or other obstacles. And they’re price sensitive. PlanetHospital’s services run from $32,000 (around `14.4 lakh) to around $68,000, versus up to $200,000 for a US surrogate. Overseas surrogacy has other advantages. Surrogates in some poorer countries have little or no legal right to the baby. In Greece, a surrogate can be prosecuted for trying to keep a child. By contrast, some US surrogates have tried to legally claim the children they’ve carried. The process can bring profound dilemmas. In some cases, clinics end up creating more foetuses than a couple needs, forcing a decision over whether to abort one or more pregnancies. Babies carried to term occasionally find themselves temporarily unable to get a passport. Rupak is learning to navigate the uncharted nature of his field—the stateless babies, the ethical complexities. His expansion to Greece, a European Union member nation, is specifically intended to lessen the likeli-

hood of the passport problem for European parents-to-be. PlanetHospital’s most affordable package, the “India bundle”, buys an egg donor, four embryo transfers into four separate surrogate mothers, room and board for the surrogate, and a car and driver for the parents-to-be when they travel to India to pick up the baby. Pricier packages add services like splitting eggs from the same donor to fertilize with different sperm, so children of gay couples can share a genetic mother. In Panama, twins cost an extra $5,000; for another $6,500 you can choose a child’s gender. Nobody accurately tallies surrogate births abroad, but critics and industry insiders agree the numbers are growing. Since it started offering fertility services abroad in 2007, PlanetHospital has orchestrated 459 births, Rupak says. Last year, 280 clients hired the company for reproductive services, and that year 210 babies were born—168 of them twins. This year, 200 clients signed contracts, and 75 surrogates are currently pregnant. Critics say the business is strewn with pitfalls. “The potential for abuse on many levels is big,” says Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, discussing the industry in general terms. “You’re straddling all these (international) boundaries to buy the ingredients and the equipment.” Caplan calls it the “wild, wild West of medicine”. Laws are vague and can conflict from country to country. In 2008, baby Manji was born to an Indian surrogate just weeks after the divorce of her Japanese parents-to-be (the family wasn’t a PlanetHospital client). According to a Duke University case study in legal ethics, it led to a tangle of Indian and Japanese law that first prevented the little girl from being issued a birth certificate, and later made it difficult for her father to bring her home to Japan. Months went by. To fix the problem, Japan issued a special humanitarian visa. Rupak, a former screenwriter and movie producer (his credits include Snowboard Academy, starring Corey Haim and Brigitte Neilsen), ran a software business before opening PlanetHospital in 2002. Its first business, and still its biggest money-maker, is “medical tourism”, arranging travel to less expensive countries for knee surgeries, cosmetic dentistry and the like. Rupak says he got into the reproduction business after clients started asking about it. Many factors drive surrogacy’s global spread. China and other big adoption destinations have toughened their rules in recent years. Some developed countries, including Japan, Spain, Germany, Italy and France, outlaw or severely restrict surrogacy at home. The UK prohibits surrogacy for pay, and in 2005 banned donor anonymity. Some US states prohibit surrogacy for pay, and in recent years some have outlawed gay adoption. PlanetHospital recently

DARYL VISSCHER/REDUX/WSJ

MICHAL CZERWONKA/WSJ

Parent trap: (clockwise from left) Jocelyn LaFleur and Denis Doyon of Montreal, Canada, at Kiran Infertility Clinic, Hyderabad; Suzanne and Thomas Lloyd from Virginia, US, hired PlanetHospital’s services; and Rudy Rupak. launched a website touting “surrogacy” aimed at gay couples. “In some states you cannot marry, let alone adopt; but not a law in the land can take away a child that is biologically yours,” the site says. “We are so excited, we are just gleaming,” says Marc Loeb, a 33-year-old sales director for a women’s apparel company in New York, whose baby girl, Eden, was born in India a few days ago. Loeb and his spouse, Wolf Ehrblatt (the two were legally married in Massachusetts two years ago), hired PlanetHospital in 2009. For a gay couple, domestic or international adoption is tough, says Loeb. And the expense of US surrogacy made it feel like “that was for the gay elite,” he says. The couple made a $10,000 down payment and decided to try for a child using a college-educated American egg donor and

Nobody accurately tallies surrogate births, but the numbers are growing, say industry insiders

their own sperm. PlanetHospital steered Loeb towards India. Loeb and Ehrblatt travelled to the Kiran Infertility Clinic in Hyderabad to deposit sperm. There they met some of the surrogate mothers, who live in apartments attached to the clinic—but not the woman who would carry their child. Loeb says he didn’t want to ask. “It’s an emotional enough experience,” he says. A few weeks later, Loeb says, Rupak called to say, “You’re pregnant, man.” The couple made payments as the pregnancy progressed, with the final amount due at birth. Of the $35,000, PlanetHospital keeps around $3,600. Another $5,000 goes to the egg donor, plus another $3,000 or so for travel expenses. The surrogate gets $8,000. The rest, around $15,000, is paid to the clinic. In the case of gay couples, the surrogate’s name appears on the birth certificate as the mother. In the case of heterosexual couples, the adoptive mother’s name appears. Loeb and Ehrblatt learned of Eden’s birth on 3 December while stuck in traffic in a rickshaw in Hyderabad. Sitting there, Loeb says, they received a text message from the doctor: “Congratulations, you had a baby girl!” No country has become a greater magnet for the business than India, which made surrogacy legal in 2002. It has an ample supply of inexpensive surrogates and egg donors. There is little regula-

tion beyond guidelines that set age limits for surrogates and prohibit a woman from acting as a surrogate more than three times. Surrogacy’s complexity can give rise to extraordinarily difficult decisions, such as whether or not to abort. This can happen because clinics sometimes implant multiple embryos into multiple surrogates to improve the odds: If one miscarries, there are still viable pregnancies. However, if several implants successfully lead to pregnancy, clients face ending up with not just one or two children, but many. Mike Aki and his husband, a Massachusetts couple, confronted this question. The couple planned on having two children. But their two surrogate mothers in India each became pregnant with twins. At 12 weeks into the pregnancies, Aki and his husband decided to abort two of the fetuses, one from each woman. It was a very painful call to make, Aki says. “You start thinking to yourself, ‘Oh my god, am I killing this child?’” Today, Aki and his husband have two 21-month-old daughters. The girls share the same genetic mother. Each man is the genetic father of one of the girls. Aki and his husband will officially adopt each other’s genetic daughter. Initially in 2008, Aki was a PlanetHospital client. But early in the process, following a dispute over money and com-

munication, Aki decided to cut out the middleman and deal directly with the clinic. The dispute arose because of poor communication and bookkeeping at the clinic, Rupak says. He has since cut ties with that clinic. “We’ve improved upon all those things since.” Rupak says he is vigilant about the risks inherent in a lightly regulated business. He says he stopped using egg donors from Georgia in Eastern Europe, for instance, because a black market for eggs has sprung up in the region. On the island of Crete, the pregnancy of Antonova, the Bulgarian woman carrying a child for the Italian couple, is proceeding according to plan. She lives at home with her husband and three children. She visits the clinic of Dr Mattheos Fraidakis, Rupak’s partner on Crete, for regular checkups. She appeared in court this past fall and, in accordance with Greek law, promised to relinquish the baby to the Italian parentsto-be. She declines to detail her compensation. “It’s good that I can help these people have a family, and it’s good for my family too,” says Antonova, who is 40. “I will have this baby, and move on with my life.” James Oberman contributed to this story. Write to wsj@livemint.com

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q 10 by Marion Bataille: Tara Books, book stores countrywide, `750. q Push along bubble blower: Early Learning Centre, DLF Place mall, Saket, New Delhi; Forum mall, Elgin Road, Kolk ata; and Mantri Square mall, Malleswaram, Ban galore, `1,249.

t Butterfly charm tag kit: www. redbugsstore. com, `120.

p Beebop Stacking Fun (lion): Shoppers Stop, Pantaloons, and toy stores countrywide, `599.

PICKS

Toy central A ‘Ramayan’ board game, finger puppets and dragonfly charms—surprise your little one with outofthebox playthings this Christmas

t Playful Pony by Hamleys: High Street Phoenix, Senapati Bapat Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai, `1,499.

B Y S EEMA C HOWDHRY

u Finger puppets: Mama’s Little Donut, Soami Nagar, New Delhi, `550 each.

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q Vanavaas board game by Kreeda: Dhoop, 101, Khar Sheetal Apart ments, Ambedkar Road, Khar West, Mumbai, `595. q Santa in a chimney: Mama’s Little Donut, Soami Nagar, New Delhi, `1,200. p Alpha Cards by Design Temple: Good Earth stores countrywide, `700. p Target tag: Early Learning Centre, DLF Place mall, Saket, New Delhi; Forum mall, Elgin Road, Kolkata; and Mantri Square mall, Malleswaram, Bangalore, `1,499.

p Printing rollers: Early Learning Centre, DLF Place mall, Saket, New Delhi; Forum mall, Elgin Road, Kolkata; and Mantri Square mall, Malleswaram, Bangalore, `399 (set of five).

q Chauka Bara board game: Landmark, Palladium mall, Phoenix Mills Compound, Senapati Bapat Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai, `380.

t Dragonfly stake kit: www.redbugsstore. com, `130.

q Ride the reindeer: Mama’s Little Donut, Soami Nagar, New Delhi, `4,850.

q Baby Space: Chicco, Select Citywalk mall, Saket, New Delhi, `1,499.

PHOTOGRAPHS

RAMESH PATHANIA, PRADEEP GAUR

HEMANT MISHRA/MINT

Supriya Nair contributed to this story.

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B Y A NINDITA G HOSE & P AVITRA J AYARAMAN ································ estled in New Delhi’s bustling Connaught Place area, the facade of Mahatta & Co. renders it to be any other new-fangled photo studio. Banners advertising trappings of cutting-edge digital imagery jostle for space; prints are offered in 11 sizes. Only the Victorian-era props in the studio floor bear witness to the fact that the chain is soon approaching its centenary year. Madan Mehta, 78, the family-run store’s present owner, has been aggressive in his efforts to reinvent what’s on offer. His son, Pavan, points to the studio’s newest attraction: digitally captured images blown up and printed on canvas to simulate vintage portraiture. “Digital prints, or even digital display screens, aren’t enough any more,” he says, “People want art.” There’s a sample canvas of a middleaged couple—which was ordered in a 20x30 inches size—the woman posed on a high-backed wooden chair; the man resting his hands on a three-legged table stacked with hardback books; washed in sepia. There are other entrepreneurs who seem to believe that portraiture is making a grand return, flagging a trend to freeze fast-disintegrating joint families together—in a perfect frame—before they wane further. Across the country, down in Bangalore’s Church Street, Tejinder and Ritesh Kapoor have come inside the Meri Yaadein photo studio to get a family portrait shot a week before their son Ayush is to have his head sheared. It takes two toffees and a couple of studio employees to get their one-year-old to oblige. After a couple of hours, the job is done: A family portrait has been clicked. When Mohammad Anwar, a USbased entrepreneur, first came to India for a visit a couple of years ago, he was struck by the fact that portraiture was limited to small-scale setups. “We found that there were just these little studios that did both photos and videos for weddings,” he says. The market vacuum was signal enough to set up the first full-spectrum photo studio with make-up and wardrobe assistance and the response has been overwhelming. The first Bangalore outfit opened in November 2009 and broke even within two months. Soon, a second studio was set up. As the director of Meri Yaadein—the India wing of www.holdmymemories.com, a USbased photography company—Anwar has grand expansion plans. A third studio is to open soon, while franchises in Chennai and Hyderabad are being explored. Back in New Delhi, Rakesh Berry, a retired textile trader, set up what he calls “India’s first commissioned portrait studio” only a few months ago. It was a mediated decision. Berry’s son, an avid collector, was gifted a family portrait by a young artist whose work he’d been collecting. The massive 6x8ft oil-on-canvas, featuring the Berrys’ extended 11-member family, which hung on their living room wall, elicited such a burst of inquiries from friends and relatives that the Berrys were convinced about the immense market potential in an old-fashioned portrait studio. Set in the ground floor of a mall, the Portrait Salon offers oil, watercolour, and pen and ink portraits. Fibre-glass sculptures are also on the menu but haven’t had any takers yet. The painted works are priced anywhere between `10,000 and `5 lakh depending on the medium, size

The shape of things: (right) A portrait, c. 1910 (Rex Photo Studio), from the exhibition The Artful Pose: Early Studio Photography in Mumbai c.18551940 by the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts. The four seated on the right are a family unit composed to form a double triangle; and (below, right) contemporary portrait photographer Karan Dhawan’s family portrait also employs a triangular composition.

SOCIETY

WITH DISINTEGRATING JOINT FAMILIES, THE DEMAND FOR PORTRAITURE IS STEPPING UP. BUT HOW MUCH HAS MODERN TECHNOLOGY ALTERED THIS TRADITIONAL ART FORM?

THE GREAT INDIAN FAMILY

PORTRAIT

and artist. Clients don’t, however, actually need to give sittings. “People like the concept of a painted portrait like old days but they don’t really have the patience any more,” says Berry. So Portrait Salon offers to work with a photograph. Since faces are the most demanding of an artist’s time, family portraits are priced depending on the number of people, irrespective of size. Clients can also go for the unconventional. At the gallery space, there hangs a seven-member family portrait painted in a non-linear plane with faces and bodies juxtaposed like that in a graphic novel. In another, a couple’s faces have been transposed in a fairytale setting—gowns, castles, et al. Even though the Portrait Salon is yet to launch in Delhi formally, the Berrys have already picked up a franchise in Hyderabad and one in Mumbai is on the cards. Neither of the studios have had to advertise yet. “We don’t use any conventional marketing strategies, almost 70% clients walk in because they spotted the store or have heard of us,” says Anwar. Meri Yaadein has a “Don’t pay if you’re not happy” policy, stemming from the chain’s international policies. The make-up, wardrobe assistance, shoot and reviewing process are all free. You can request for a print only if you like what you see. Meri Yaadein runs packed days on weekends, with up to 18 shoots on a day. Analysing client requests at Mahatta & Co., Pavan hints at a “retro revival”, pulling the curtains off the irony that modern technology is being used to recreate the vintage. Although some of this is deliberate, more poignant is the fact that despite faster cameras and easy-to-carry lights, the family portrait hasn’t changed in essence from its 19th century cousin. One can trace the roots of modern-day portraiture to the initial aesthetics that emerged at the inception of the medium. Early studios, such as Bourne & Shepherd and Raja Deen Dayal & Sons, were instrumental in establishing prototypes of postures, props and mannerisms. Dayal, in the 1870s, began to foreground his portraits with objects befitting the sitter’s status or sex. Where his images had painted backdrops of gardens or flowers, today Mahatta & Co. produces superbly finished Photoshop works of couples shot at their studio and superimposed with the Boston skyline or Swiss meadows a la Yash Chopra.

New bottle, old wine Visitors to the ongoing exhibition of the first Indian photographer, Raja Deen Dayal’s portraits at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in Delhi (on view till 28 February), would note that apart from the fact that the stoic, upright postures have softened, the only big inclusion over the century is the smile. Stationed between the family and couple portraits at the exhibition titled Raja Deen Dayal: The Studio Archives, there’s a plaque titled “Hints to Sitters” in which Dayal writes: “To be a really successful picture, the sitter’s happiest expression must be caught” (see box, Timeless diktats). “It is the concept of what is a happy picture that has changed over time,” says museologist Pramod Kumar K.G., who has co-curated the show, adding that the intent of producing the portrait also goes a long way. “These (19th century) photographs of royals and nobles, as is the case with the painted portraits that preceded them, were made in sets of 50 or TURN TO PAGE L12®

TIMELESS DIKTATS A mid19th century studio guide reveals the status of the photographer. In modern portraiture, sitters have more of a say

ayal (18441905) was the first Indian studio photographer. He acquired the title of “Raja” when he was appointed court photographer by the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad. A plaque at the ongoing exhibition, ‘Raja Deen Dayal: The Studio Archives’, lists a set of rules formulated for sitters at the Raja Deen Dayal & Sons studio. Pramod Kumar K.G., cocurator, dates this c. 1888. A special comment on photographing babies and children goes thus: Although babies and children often occasion much trouble and require a large number of plates, we make no extra charge.

Hints to sitters A portrait may be both artistically and technically firstrate, and yet entirely fail to give satisfaction to the sitter. To be a really successful picture, the sitter’s happiest expression must be caught. This depends almost entirely on the sitter and the mood he happens to be in at the moment. The pose, dress, accessories are more easily under control, and we venture to offer a few suggestions to our patrons, which we hope they will accept in good part, and we in return will do our best to give them pictures they will be really pleased with. Our operator is a highly paid and skilful artist, who has had great experience, and sitters will study their own interest by placing themselves in his hands. But if sitters prefer to pose themselves, and to take the full direction of the sitting, we shall certainly do our best to please them and ensure a good result, and in some rare cases a good result will be obtained. COURTESY INDIRA GANDHI NATIONAL CENTRE

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Vintage: A work on display, c. 1890, at the ongo ing Raja Deen Dayal: The Studio Archives. Sitters can do a great deal towards securing success. When practicable it is desirable to make an appointment beforehand. This will avoid any sense of unrest on the sitter’s part, and enable the operator to perform his duty leisurely and at ease, which often results in saving time. On arriving at the studio any preference as to dress, pose, or accessories should be mentioned to the operator, who will afford every assistance in carrying out any wish, and will give the benefit of his experience and make suitable suggestions. The headrest is often of great assistance, and while sitters are strongly recommended to use it, they may please themselves. Hints u The following colours for costumes are the best to be photographed in—cream, light greys and light tints generally. u Dead blacks and whites are not so good. Dark reds and browns, heavy greens and yellows come out nearly the same as blacks. Blues are represented in the photograph as white or nearly so, except in the case of heavy dark blue. u Leave the matter in the hands of the operator as far as possible. Accept the support of the headrest, if necessary. u Come when you have no other engagement immediately following, so as not to feel flurried.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

SOCIETY

WITH DISINTEGRATING JOINT FAMILIES, THE DEMAND FOR PORTRAITURE IS STEPPING UP. BUT HOW MUCH HAS MODERN TECHNOLOGY ALTERED THIS TRADITIONAL ART FORM?

THE GREAT INDIAN FAMILY

PORTRAIT

TIMELESS DIKTATS A mid19th century studio guide reveals the status of the photographer. In modern portraiture, sitters have more of a say

FOR THE

ARTS

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PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

SEPIAWASHED Snapshots of some of the oldest existing photo studios in the country with a history of portraiture Bourne & Shepherd, Kolkata Established in 1863 by Samuel Bourne, Charles Shepherd and William Howard (who left in 1866), Bourne & Shepherd is one of the oldest photographic studios in the world still in operation at SN Banerjee Road in Kolkata. At its peak, it had agencies all over India, and outlets in London and Paris. First set up in Shimla, the Kolkata branch opened in 1887 and a Mumbai one in 1876. To its credit, the studio has produced the only existing photograph of the Indian saint Sri Ramakrishna. In 1911, they were the official photographers of the Delhi Durbar and were given the title KaisereHind, which is still used as part of its official letterhead. In 1991, the studio lost almost its entire treasure trove in an inferno. Jayant Gandhi, the studio’s present owner, is trying to piece together the photographs, now strewn all over the world in prestigious collections, such as that of the Smithsonian in the US. Price point: A 5x7inch family portrait costs a modest `200 (four prints).

Indian Art Studio, Mumbai

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more as autographed mementoes to be circulated to other royals,” explains Kumar, adding, “It was a formal set-up where smiling was not considered appropriate.” Today, as a couple we meet at Meri Yaadein tells us, portraits are commissioned to be hung in living room or bedroom walls. Immense effort is put into keeping things “natural”. During a session with a young couple, Amita and Arun Ashok at Meri Yaadein, we keep hearing reassurances of a “natural look” by the in-house make-up artist. Amita confesses they’re there for a wall adornment. “We got married two years ago, and in most pictures, we look tired and have these forced smiles. We don’t have anything that we can put up at our place,” says Amita. After employing the make-up and wardrobe services offered at the studio and an elaborate review process in a room with a large LCD screen, they pick a `8,000 package that gives them an assortment of pictures in various sizes, including the one they plan to frame. They sit with their backs to each other, a quirky pose given that most couples and families continue to be arranged in standard single- or double-triangle compositions. The catalogue for an exhibition in February this year by the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts—which has a formidable collection of vintage portraits—The Artful Pose: Early Studio Photography in Mumbai c.1855-1940, highlighted the social dynamics and hierarchies reinforced in vintage portraits. Compositions mirrored the rules of European painting: Sitters were arranged in triangular shapes for visual harmony. When asked about new trends in compositions, Karan Dhawan, a 24-year-old freelance portrait photographer, says he places families in “house” shapes to connote stability and domestic harmony (these “houses” are triangles). “If it is a couple, the man must always be positioned behind. For families, the parents must envelop the children,” he explains by way of newage trends. Also, vanity continues to lie at the heart of portrait-making. Till

the mid-20th century, when studio photographers used large-format cameras that produced large negatives, artists fixed a light source behind the negative and did touch-up work with pencils for skin flaws and gaps that hadn’t developed properly. At the second stage after printing, gaps on the surface were manually filled. While this sometimes resulted in too red lips or a too prominent streak of vermillion on the foreheads of married women because of the artist’s personal notions of aesthetics and custom, the process is far more sophisticated today. Studio owners share that clients

rarely complain of digital manipulations. If a family moment is being frozen for posterity, so much better if it is airbrushed and colour-corrected to perfection. While Anwar and Berry have enough faith in their clientele to invest in rapid expansions, one can only wait and see if portrait commissioning is making a serious comeback. A couple of international outfits that preceded them have failed. The Indian franchise of the California-based chain Celebrity Kids set up three studios in New Delhi between December 2006 and March. All three shut down earlier this year. ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT

Freeze frame: Amita and Arun Ashok pose at Meri Yaadein.

New vision: Berry at the Portrait Salon. A 6x8ft oiloncanvas portrait of his extended family hangs behind him. When we call the number listed in old directories, Dhawan answers. He is still using the number of his erstwhile employer and now runs his own freelance service across Delhi, Indore, Jalandhar and Chandigarh with photo packages that cost between `4,500 and `20,500. Another studio in Delhi, Star Shots—a swanky full-spectrum photo studio—shut shop after a three-year run in early 2009. Portrait studios are not unheard of in Mumbai, but studio portraiture, particularly for family affairs, is yet to reinvent itself significantly. Dedicated portrait photographers are rarer yet, which is dangerous considering Mumbai has been the seat of studio photography in India. “Most photographers will work privately if someone wants them to take family shots, but they won’t identify themselves as portrait specialists,” says Mumbai-based photographer Shahrukh Master. It suggests that shuttling comfortably between cutting-edge fashion shoots and lavish portrait photography isn’t yet as easy in India as it is for the renowned American photographer Annie Leibovitz. Even established photographers, such as Gautam Rajadhyaksha, Raghu Rai, Dayanita Singh and Ketaki Sheth, who’ve devoted a significant chunk of their career to portraiture, don’t contribute to the existing framework of family portraiture. Sheth shot siblings— twins specifically—for four years, but says that her work is in no way related to, or a reflection of, developments in commercial studio portraiture. Till innovators step into the genre, despite the renewed market interest and zealous entrepreneurs, the fate of the family portrait will, it seems, stay frozen in time. Supriya Nair contributed to this story. anindita.g@livemint.com

The intersection of Princess Street and Kalbadevi in one of South Mumbai’s oldest colonial neighbourhoods is named Chhayachitrakar Chaddha Chowk to commemorate the photographer who founded Indian Art Studio at the junction. Mumbai’s oldest operational studio opened in 1917 and still meticulously maintains its centuryold collection of sumptuously bedecked family photos, some of which hang in frames on its woodpanelled walls. The present proprietor, Rajesh Chaddha, plans to develop the basement of the studio into a gallery for the studio’s early photographs. Also worth a mention is the Hamilton Studio (established in 1928) in Ballard Estate, which was patronized by J.R.D. Tata. The studio retains its original posing space and has several vintage cameras, including an Eastman Kodak 1950 and paraphernalia on view. Price point: Portrait packages start at `15,000 for a set of assorted shots. ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

GK Vale, Bangalore The first GK Vale store opened in 1910 on South Parade in Bangalore, now called MG Road, under the proprietorship of Gangadhar Kumara Vale. Over the years, the store has opened 25 branches across Bangalore, Mangalore and Mysore. While they did open at a time when the rich were still getting portraits of themselves painted, the studio gained popularity with those who wanted matrimonial and family portraits. Price point: Portrait packages start at `699.

Mahatta & Co, New Delhi Mahatta & Co. was first set up in Sialkot in 1915 by Amar Nath Mehta and it subsequently moved to Shimla, where it still exists. His son, Madan Mehta, has been running the Connaught Place studio in New Delhi since 1954. The British found “Mehta” difficult to pronounce, prompting the name “Mahatta”. Mehta trained in England at the Guildford School of Art between 195153. He was one among the first batch of students who worked with colour. On his return, he introduced new colour technology at the family studio, making it the first studio in India to use the negativepositive colour printing process. It was also the first studio to launch automated colour processing in 1970 and bring digital slidemaking to India in 1986. Price point: A family sitting starts at `7,500.

Photo Emporium, Chennai Photo Emporium, established in 1927, is not only Chennai’s oldest operational photo studio, but has flourished since its inception. The studio’s largest branch is the decadeold Poonamallee High Road outlet, and its newest is near IT Park. All of them are digital. Photo Emporium set standards in its time as one of India’s largest importers of film and photo paper from Italy, Japan and the US. “Each step taken along the way to deliver the Perfect Image,” their website proclaims. With over eight decades in the business, they’re qualified to take a shot at it. Price point: Portrait packages start at `2,500 for a set of 10 assorted shots.

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Microgravity on film

SHUBHA MUDGAL

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The Otolith Group show their work in India for the first time with an esoteric trilogy of ‘essay films’

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

···························· fter Anish Kapoor’s Indian debut, it is the turn of the Otolith Group, who are also from London, to show their art here for the first time. The Turner Prize 2010 nominees’ solo show—Kapoor won the prestigious British award in 1990— opens at the Experimenter gallery in Kolkata today. The Otolith Group was founded in 2002 in London by its core members, Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun. The two met over a common love for the experimental film-maker Chris Marker and London’s now-defunct Black Audio Film Collective founded by sociology, fine art and psychology students. Sagar and Eshun were drawn to the idea of the “essay film”, a sort of experimental voice-over on montage, or “Left-wing essay”, as Eshun puts it. The theoretically dense films that the collective has since produced—apart from Otolith I, II and III which comprise the Otolith Trilogy, this includes titles such as Communists Like Us—combine moving image and sound with text. Sagar’s background in anthropology and Eshun’s in film theory, mashed with doses of political ideology, cosmopolitan modernism and science-fiction, find their way into their films. A video on the artist-led collective on the online Tate Channel, which features Turner Prize 2010 nominees, shows Sagar and Eshun’s studio-in- residence: an eclectic, book-splattered communal space. Eshun teaches visual culture at London’s Goldsmith College and several of his students collaborate on their projects. The collective engages

Layered: A still from Otolith III, a 48minute film that was in competition for the Turner Prize. in film- and video-making, conducting workshops, exhibition curation, publication and developing public platforms for contemporary art practice. Their films and installations have featured widely in international exhibitions, including Gasworks, UK; The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Second ICP Triennial of Photography and Video, New York; and the Tate Triennial, London, among othe rs . I n rec ogn itio n o f t he ir potential, their work is supported generously by the Arts Council England. The group takes its name

from the part of the inner ear which establishes one’s sense of gravity and orientation. This is ironic considering the disorienting nature of their essay films. But as Eshun explains, they took the name because they like the “facelessness of collective film-making”. At Experimenter, the group will present its most significant work so far, The Otolith Trilogy. A copy of the book, A Long Time between Suns, that consists of archival assemblage which links their Turner-nominated, twovenue exhibition in 2009, will also be available for reading.

OTOLITH FOR DUMMIES A synopsis of the three films on view at Kolkata’s Experimenter gallery u ‘Otolith I’ (2003) is an exploration in microgravity. It weaves in a reallife meeting between the Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to travel into outer space, and Anjalika Sagar’s grandmother, Anasuya Gyan Chand, who was the president of the National Federation of Indian Women. u ‘Otolith II’ (2007) is a volteface, taking place in a very concrete

world, observing labour at Mumbai’s mega slum, Dharavi. Many sequences were shot where ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was filmed. In tune with postmodern film theory, the frame cuts up the bodies of the teenage workers to block visual pleasure, making it harder for the viewer to empathize with them. u ‘Otolith III’ (2009) explores the unrealized potentialities of the screenplay for Satyajit Ray’s unmade 1967 film, ‘The Alien’. It attempts a “premake” with street casting scenes of characters from Ray’s screenplay.

Q&A | SUDHIR MISHRA

The director on his new film set in Mumbai and how the city has changed in his eyes

You have said Mumbai is your muse. How does that reflect in ‘Tera Kya Hoga Johny’? Mumbai allows you to change the screenplay of your life. I am who I am because of this city. I have come to love it even though it is changing from a city for all people, to a city for the few. In

The Otolith Group—Solo is on at the Experimenter gallery in Kolkata till 8 January. The group will tour New Delhi in January and Mumbai in February.

Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com

AMLAN DUTTA/HINDUSTAN TIMES

Roadside hero B Y U DITA J HUNJHUNWALA ···························· t’s hard to recover from a setback like the rough cut of your film being leaked on the Internet. Director Sudhir Mishra has moved on from that shock to complete the film, Tera Kya Hoga Johny, which, he says, is about Mumbai’s magic and hope. Edited excerpts from an interview:

The films are demanding of the viewer. There’s an exciting cerebrality to them, with layers of intertextual references, but it appears that a fuller appreciation might call for an altered consciousness from the viewer. Eshun and Sagar, born and brought up in London, are of Ghanaian and Indian descent, respectively. Prateek Raja of Experimenter gallery points out that they grew up on the fringes of British society and culture and these influences show in their work. The Otolith Group’s work is definitely on the fringes, and it is avant-garde in that sense. But there’s a self-conscious edginess to it that is sometimes impenetrable. Sure, one can catch snatches of deeply moving wisdom while watching their films, such as this in Otolith III: “But what is the status of an event that half the people in its wake believe happened, though it did not, and the other half believe did not happen, for the wrong reasons?” Clearly, their work is asking a lot of important questions. But sometimes, they’re difficult to hear.

hat is the genre of music you might expect to hear in an album titled Mysterious Duality? Certainly not the veena, I’ll wager a bet. But that’s exactly what Jayanthi Kumaresh’s new album on the Earthsync catalogue is titled, and if the intriguing title doesn’t succeed in arousing your curiosity, the album description most certainly will. Each of the four tracks on the album feature compositions with multiple tracks played on the veena by the same artiste, Jayanthi Kumaresh. The album notes state that the artiste used seven different veenas for the album, making it primarily a recording project as in no other situation would it have been possible for the artiste to have played all the tracks simultaneously. While one of the tracks is labelled Traditional (India), two are composed by Abhishek Raghuram and one by violinist and composer R. Kumaresh of the acclaimed Ganesh-Kumaresh duo. The sound of the veena is by far one of the most grand and majestic of all Indian instruments, and one that is often associated with temple ritual and ancient scriptures. But on the album Mysterious Duality you hear somewhat different and unfamiliar tones and textures of the veena. Lest anyone assume that I am joining the ranks of the supposedly “orthodox” who condemn any deviation from the conventional and traditional in one fell swoop, I must hasten to add that this unfamiliar use of the veena came as a very welcome surprise. I found it decidedly intriguing to hear the veena playing what sounded close to a bass line on one of the tracks, doing a pizzicato-like plucking on another, and at times, playing the same melodic lines in different octaves. What I am wondering is whether Kumaresh intends to keep this experiment restricted to a recording project alone. And if not, how would she counter the Exploration: Jayanthi Kumaresh challenges posed by the experiments with the veena. project? Would she invite other vainikas, or veena players, to join her on stage, or would she use a combination of recorded tracks over which she would play live? The launch of an album is usually followed by a series of live concerts, and it would be equally interesting to observe how Kumaresh will handle the repertoire she has recorded in a live performance situation. And being a practical sort, I’m also wondering how she is going to deal with the formidable task of travelling with so many veenas? Sadly, I was unable to speak to her in this regard, though I did try and schedule a chat a couple of times. Earthsync albums are always tastefully designed and produced and Mysterious Duality is no exception. I’m just wondering whether it was at all necessary to insert a rather narcissistic subtitle proclaiming Just me into the album title. And if that subtitle was at all necessary, couldn’t it have been Just Veena? Perhaps, without the subtitle, the mysterious duality would have been heightened subtly.

this environment, who gives a rat’s ass for a guy selling coffee on the road? But there are some people who do know him and Tera Kya Hoga Johny is about that boy’s relationship with Parvez (Neil Nitin Mukesh). If Parvez makes it in life, Johny (Sikander Agarwal) might make it too because their futures are hitched. It’s a story of hope. Earlier this year, your film was leaked on the Internet. How did you react? Of course, I felt bad, hurt and betrayed. It was the rough cut without sound or any references. That is not the film. What was leaked is not half the cut. I had not even sat on the edit then and I still had some portions left to shoot. We did register a case but

unfortunately, the system is too slow. At least they should have been able to find the server from where it was uploaded and reach that place, but films are no priority for the authorities. You do become paranoid which is why so many directors have started editing in their homes. And only one DVD is made to be sent out which will have a huge watermark across the image. It will affect the impact, but you have to protect your work. You have also shot another film, ‘Yeh Saali Zindagi’. It has been co-produced by Prakash Jha and will release in February. It is the happiest film I have made so far. It’s on the dangers of love; in fact, it’s a love story with a romance you’ve never seen before between Irrfan Khan and Chitrangda Singh. What else are you working on? After Farhan Akhtar finishes Don 2, we will start Dhruv which is produced by Excel Entertainment and stars Farhan and Kareena Kapoor. I am also making another film for Prakash

Instinctual: (left) Sudhir Mishra; and Neil Nitin Mukesh in Tera Kya Hoga Johny. Jha set against a corporate background on the inability of men to handle women in their space. I enjoy the interaction with Prakash. He has skill, talent and objectivity and tells you if something is working or not. If we contribute to each other’s work, it will work better. We used to have that kind of interaction earlier between Kundan (Shah), Vinod (Chopra), Ketan (Mehta) and

Shekhar (Kapur). We used to listen to each other’s scripts, but now everyone is busy with individual work. What parameters do you apply when casting a film? I go by instinct. I think Neil is a great actor who does not obstruct the viewer from seeing the story. He allows the scene to speak for itself and does not say “look at me”. Sometimes when an actor walks in for an audition,

the character steps out of the script and walks to the actor. I’m the medium for that. I think of a story; it demands characters and characters demand actors. I saw that happen with Chitrangda in Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi and with Murad Ali in Is Raat ki Subah Nahin. Going ahead, I would give my right arm to work with Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Abhishek Bachchan. Tera Kya Hoga Johny releases in theatres on 31 December. Write to lounge@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2010

Travel COURTESY TAKARAGAWA ONSEN

TAKARAGAWA ONSEN

Hot springs, cool minds NOBIINUE/WIKIMEDIA

At this Japanese outdoor spa, it’s hard to dispute that water purifies the body and spirit

BY K A R E N M A ···························· hat do you miss the most about Japan, friends ask me when they find out I lived there for over a decade. The onsen, or hot springs, I’d always reply without hesitation, truly one of the most unique, enjoyable features of what can be a pretty stressed-out society. There’s something magical about the healing, steamy water that lifts the soul. So in July during a brief family visit to Tokyo, I made a beeline for the Takaragawa Onsen in Gunma Prefecture—a group of four large outdoor spas roughly an hour and a half from the capital by bullet train. Takaragawa is famous for its spectacular open-air pools beside a fast-running river deep in a stretch of scenic mountains, a truly breath-taking experience for bathers. It’s also one of the few places left in Japan that still offers

GRAPHIC

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

konyoku, or co-ed baths, as the country embraces modernity— and Western ideas of modesty. The beautiful spas are for the exclusive use of guests staying at the attached Japanese ryokan (traditional inn) hotel. But between 9am and 5pm, they’re open to the so-called day trippers. We chose a Tuesday to avoid the weekend crowd, driving from Jomo-Kogen Station along the river atop forested roads. The parking lot was empty, a good sign as we each paid our 1,500 yen (around `810) entrance fee. We declined the 200-yen hand towels because we’d brought our own, and reassured the woman at the ticket booth that we knew the rules. Japanese are very particular about their bath etiquette, careful to wash and rinse completely before entering the bath so in effect you’re clean before you start! No swimsuits, please. And enjoy. Getting to the baths can be a bit surreal. After passing through the restaurant and souvenir shop, the pathway down to the river is filled with curios and antiques, some of it more like junk, including large tengu (mythological creatures with long noses) masks, dusty laughing Buddha statues, straw snow boots and old flags, a collection that had expanded since my last visit seven years ago. Then you pass several cages housing six black bears, leaving you wondering what the exact connection is between hot springs and bears. They’re also in small cages. Signs in English and Japanese explain that they are orphans rescued from the wild. After a few hundred feet of such distractions, you reach the entrance of the large co-ed bath, one of four in the complex, and a petite building with small male and female changing rooms— essentially rectangular baskets on open shelves where you leave your clothes. There are also lockers, but the Japanese are honest. I quickly wrapped myself and my seven-year-old daughter in bath towels and went looking for the shower stalls to pre-clean ourselves, but the facilities here are rather basic, limited to a couple of stone outdoor wells with cold and hot running water. We rinsed as

Cleanser: (above) A view of Takaragawa Onsen; and autumn is a good time to visit the spas as the foliage turns orange at this time.

best we could and headed to the mixed bath. My husband and son were already there—what is it about guys flying out of bathrooms so quickly?—having strategically covered themselves with small white towels as had the other male guests, while most women used bath towels. Male guests, most in their 20s and 30s, outnumbered their female counterparts, perhaps because Japanese women are becoming more shy about co-ed bathing. The water felt a little hot at first, though I soon got used to it as I waded to the middle of the metredeep pool to enjoy the idyllic surroundings. The large main pool is paved with dark rocks in a setting of natural stones and maple trees on three sides, the fourth enclosed by an impressive wooden pavilion, making it the most scenic of the four baths. Right next to the bath is the fast-running, gurgling Takaragawa river, its sounds mixing with the songs of cicadas— serenity at its best. People say the

fall is especially stunning here when the maple leaves erupt in reds and yellows. In Japan, there are reportedly over 20,000 hot springs, more than anywhere else in the world, a byproduct of Japan’s location in an earthquake belt. Under the influence of Shintoism, the Japanese believe water is a purifier that cleanses and heals body and spirit. Small wonder that onsen have become a multi-billion dollar industry with towns squabbling over hot water rights and oil drill experts employed to find new hot water sources. In old days, hunters sought out their favourite hot spring after an arduous hunt, as would warriors to tend to their battle scars. As the hot water did its magic, I closed my eyes and imagined myself a samurai. After a while, I took short breaks strolling to the other baths secreted in the rocks, each with different temperature and vista. There’s even a well-secluded women’s-only bath where women go in and out naked— something that may intimidate the

uninitiated. On the paths, graceful Japanese ladies strolled in red and blue yukata (a casual, summer garment made of cotton that resembles a kimono) resembling a scene from an old painting, if it weren’t for their latest models of cellphones. As we headed back to change, I ran into a Filipina lady who, speaking in Japanese, told me she was trying out the hot spring for the first time with her Japanese boyfriend. Nearby was a European couple soaking gingerly in the main bath contentedly, evidence the spas long known by Japanese are gaining reputation among foreigners. On our way out, I caught up with Takeo Ono, the hotel and onsen manager, who said some 60,000 people visit annually, 5% of whom are foreigners, with the number of European visitors, especially Spaniards, having spiked recently. “Two years ago, we had a bit of an uproar when three Spanish women decided to enter the mixed baths stark naked with two of their companions,” he said. “We got quite a bit of press after that, which no doubt sparked European interest.” Sure, outdoor bathing for Japanese is about being one with nature, he added, and for some, it can be like a spiritual journey, but he welcomed international guests who might simply want to relax. As we drove away from Takaragawa and its beautiful surroundings, our daughter said how much she’d enjoyed it and asked whether we’d be back soon. “I’d be here every day if I could,” I said, vowing that it wouldn’t take us another seven years to return. Write to lounge@livemint.com CHILDFRIENDLY RATING

The caged bears are an odd turnoff, but the hot springs otherwise make for a welcoming, familyfriendly break.

TRAVEL L15

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

HOLIDAY POSTMORTEM | RADHIKA MAHADEVAN

Stranger than fiction

PHOTOGRAPHS

ARUNKUMAR RAJASEKARAN

Exploring serene Shinto shrines, cartoon ‘cosplaying’ on the streets of Tokyo and soaking up Japan’s eclectic nightlife

Rising sun: (clockwise from above) The Kiyomizu Dera temple; Tokyo at night; the bamboo forest near Kyoto; the group near Kawaguchiko; and the colours of autumn at the Sensoji temple.

Radhika Mahadevan, 29, a marketing manager at a big IT firm, had wanted to see Japan for years after falling in love with the Japanese design aesthetic. Earlier this autumn, she and her friends made the trip they’d been dreaming about

GETTING THERE u Air India and Japan Airlines (OneWorld) operate direct Delhi–Tokyo Narita flights. Thirtyday advance fares start at `32,000. u All Nippon Airways (Star Alliance) operates a direct Mumbai–Tokyo Narita flight. Thirtyday advance fares start at `42,000. u Other cities can get onestop flights through SouthEast Asian hubs (Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangkok), starting at `34,000.

What brought you to Japan? This was a holiday with our closest friends, and something that we had been planning for almost a year. I’d always been fascinated by Japanese culture, both the sane and the quirky, and especially by the Japanese philosophy of minimalist design. My husband is a Haruki Murakami fan who’s wanted to visit Tokyo ever since he read South of the Border, West of the Sun. One of us was a foodie who wanted to get a real sushi experience, and others were happy to come along and explore a new and interesting destination. Thanks to planning so far in advance, we managed to get real cheap flight tickets to Japan—`30,000 via Kuala Lumpur on Malaysia Airlines. Once in Japan, we used Japan Rail within Tokyo (you can buy the voucher in India) and travelled by the iconic Shinkansen bullet train to Kyoto. Who did you travel with? There were nine of us—me, my husband Sandeep and seven of our closest friends. Did you plan an itinerary? And once you got there, were you able to stick to it? We used a travel agent in Bangalore to get our visas, air

tickets and Japan rail passes; but we planned out itinerary ourselves and booked our accommodation online. We tried to stay close to the city centre or to railway stations—we stayed in the Sunroute Plaza near Tokyo’s Shinjuku station, and in Hana Hostel, a Japanese style inn in Kyoto. In Japan, we relied mostly on guide books, walking city tours applications on the iPhone, and took advice and directions from hotel staff who spoke English. Our original plan was to visit Tokyo for the pop culture, Kyoto for the Zen gardens and religious shrines, and Kawaguchiko for the views of Mount Fuji. We stuck to our general itinerary, but did cut down on some sightseeing to relax and generally hang out. The nights were great fun. Bars and restaurants stay open really late. We also happened to be in Tokyo during the Halloween weekend, which was

an amazing experience. Was there any place you’d have liked to go but didn’t find time for? We could have definitely spent more time in Kyoto’s Zen gardens and Buddhist shrines which are absolutely beautiful. We were lucky to catch the autumn colours here. Also, Tokyo has so many fun things to do and see. Ten days are definitely not enough in Japan. What part of the holiday do you remember most fondly? Japan is a fascinating place to observe, especially because of its unique culture. The Shinto—Buddhist shrines and the Zen gardens which are the spiritual centres of country are absolutely stunning and serene. Tokyo was amazing for different reasons. There was Harajuku, where you see high-street fashion brands in the shops, people dressed in new-age fashion on the streets, and very occasionally, groups of people “cosplaying”—dressed

up in costumes of their favourite cartoon characters. We also went to Akihabara, which is a geek nirvana. It’s brimming with 10-storey shopping centres with entire floors dedicated to different gadgets and electronics. This is also where the otakus—the subculture of people obsessed with gaming, electronics and manga—hang out. How vast were the language and cultural gaps, and how did you bridge them? Was there any particular discovery that emphasized this? The deeply ingrained order and politeness was a revelation. We were in a small tempura restaurant in Kyoto which had floor seating and the tables were very close to each other. A couple of women, who were seated at the next table, which wasn’t even an arm’s length away from us, were talking to each other but they were so soft-spoken that we couldn’t hear them throughout our meal. And no matter how hard we

tried to whisper, only our voices were heard in the entire restaurant. So obviously, the Japanese are as different from Indians as they can be! In Japan, most people are rather private and do not like people intruding into their space, and their lack of knowledge of English may restrict their conversations with you, but if you attempt to convey your point across with a mix of English, a few Japanese words and some hand gestures, they are quite willing to help you. Also, some young Japanese are attempting to learn English, so in informal settings like bars and restaurants you may meet friendly Japanese people who will chat with you. The shyness and privacy is abandoned in bars or the fancy Shibuya restaurants though, especially with the younger people. And they’re quite curious to know more about you. But language barriers really do tend to limit their interaction with foreigners. What were the hospitality and food experiences like? Japanese food can either be the biggest attraction for someone to travel to Japan or the biggest deterrent. If you like sushi or seafood, a Japanese vacation will be heavenly, but if you’re vegetarian, get ready to starve! So vegetarians and people who don’t like seafood should carry some ready-to-eat food or mixes. You will find the odd vegetarian restaurant though, especially in Kyoto. Food and dining is considered somewhat of an experience in Japan. There are many unique concepts that you can try like the Standing Sushi Bar or the Kaiten Zushi (Conveyor Belt Sushi) or the colourful Bento Box (Japanese lunch box). It’s a bit difficult to find restaurants serving other cuisines, especially at times when you have a tight schedule and want a quick meal. Warnings about food etiquette are a bit exaggerated, or perhaps we were forgiven because we weren’t Japanese. Nobody was as strict as we expected them to be. But practising with chopsticks is a good idea, because most restaurants don’t have forks. If you did it again, what would you pack and what would you plan for? I’d definitely pack more fashionable clothes. We were in casual travelwear all through, and Tokyo is one of the hippest and most fashion-forward cities in the world. No one, absolutely no one, is casually dressed in Tokyo. As told to Aadisht Khanna. Write to lounge@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2010

Books CHARLES DHARAPAK/AP

The fall: Ali says Obama has proven to be no different from other American presidents.

THE OBAMA SYNDROME | TARIQ ALI

The false radicalism The latest book on the US President is a veteran political commentator’s short but scathing indictment of his presidency B Y C HANDRAHAS C HOUDHURY ···························· n politics, as in love, election to a desired position usually turns out in hindsight to have been a challenge far easier than that of actual incumbency. Few people can have discovered this in a harder way than Barack Obama. The mood of warmth, optimism and confidence on which Obama was meteorically elected 44th president of the US has been violently eroded in a little more than two years, the palpable indicator of which was the Democratic Party’s crushing defeat in last month’s midterm elections. It could be argued that given the problems Obama inherited when he entered office—a busted economy at home and difficult, long-drawn-out wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—the odds were stacked against him from the beginning. Nor has he been helped by the violence with which he has been attacked by the opposition on every front—from

The Obama Syndrome: Verso, 148 pages, £9.99 (around `715).

healthcare reform to the management of the economy. The dream of a rational, bipartisan governance that he floated at the time of his election has been swiftly consigned to the dustbin. The current political mood in the US is dire. Travelling around the country last month in the wake of the midterm elections, I sensed a pervasive bitterness and despair that suggested that ideological divisions among the citizenry and in the media had become even more deeply entrenched than before. Opinion polls showed that Obama’s approval ratings had fallen steeply in two years, from the mid-60s to the low 40s. In the bookshops, the first wave of Obama literature—Obama’s own books Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, David Remnick’s massive and mostly positive biography from 2009 The Bridge and Jonathan Alter’s report on the first year of the Obama presidency The Promise—was being replaced by books such as Bob Woodward’s Obama’s Wars, a detailed and often damning account of the administration’s internal bickering and point-scoring over Afghanistan and Iraq, Roger

Hodge’s caustically titled The Mendacity of Hope, and, hottest off the press, Tariq Ali’s short but scathing The Obama Syndrome. Ali is an outspoken British leftwing intellectual now in his 60s, and a longtime critic of America’s foreign-policy shenanigans. Bestknown for his 2003 book The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihad and Modernity, Ali now applies his considerable polemical energies to an assessment of the Obama presidency midway into his first term. His main thesis, strikingly and wittily made by the book’s cover image (surely it is not long before there appears somewhere in the world

Ali certainly brings a particular kind of ideological doggedness to his prosecution of Obama

a museum dedicated to George Bush-themed artworks) is that although Obama triumphed over a Republican adversary, and that Obama himself campaigned on a radical plank of wide-ranging change and reform, time has proved, instead, that his administration is essentially a continuation of the one that preceded it. At home, Obama has sparked resentment because of the generous terms of his bailout package to Wall Street—investment banks being one of the prominent contributors to his presidential campaign—and by his inability to fight the powerful oil and pharmaceutical company lobbies at critical moments such as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the healthcare reform Bill passed narrowly in Congress earlier this year. “The implication (from Obama) is always that the Washington system prevents any change he could believe in,” writes Ali. Abroad, he is yet to make a significant break with the main thrust of American foreign policy since the dawn of the Cold War, or to show a deeper American commitment to the cause of democracy worldwide. The promised rollback of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq has been

endlessly deferred, and the early hope of a more nuanced approach to West Asia has disappeared. “From Palestine through Iraq to Iran,” Ali charges, “Obama has acted as just another steward of the American empire, pursuing the same aims as his predecessors but with a more emollient rhetoric.” Nor is Ali willing to let Obama off on merely a charge of misgovernance and collusion with powerful interest groups, serious though this is. In Ali’s view, Obama was never, even potentially, the outsider to the establishment that he made himself out to be during his election campaign. Both voters and observers around the world were gullible enough to buy this story, especially because of the romance of a mixed-race president in the White House for the first time. Obama’s radicalism was, inevitably, more rhetorical than real, simply because the American political system is now such, and leans so heavily on the financial support of big business, that a genuine outsider can never make it all the way to the top (contrary to campaign mythology, the Obama campaign actually raised more money from corporate donations than Hilary Clinton’s did). Ali suggests that what we see in the US today is a version of what American political theorist Sheldon Wolin’s calls a “fugitive democracy”, in which “the corruptions of empire and the stranglehold of the corporations have created a system that has killed any meaningful democratic activity.” “In reality,” Ali thunders, “Barack Obama is a skillful and gifted machine politician who rapidly rose to the top...to talk of betrayal (by Obama) is foolish, for nothing has been betrayed but one’s own illusions.” Ali certainly brings a particular kind of ideological doggedness to his prosecution of Obama and the US, but even if we are not to go all the way with him, there is no denying that his book exposes powerfully the cankers and contradictions that lurk at the roots of the world’s most powerful democracy. Chandrahas Choudhury is the author of Arzee the Dwarf and editor of the forthcoming book India: A Traveler’s Literary Companion. Write to lounge@livemint.com IN SIX WORDS Why the Obama romance is over

TIMOTHY GREENFIELD/CAPE/BLOOMBERG

THE READING ROOM

TABISH KHAIR

RUSHDIE’S IMPRISONMENT

h no! I spoke too soon. In one of my earlier columns, I had circulated the rumour that Salman Rushdie’s forthcoming children’s novel marks the return to form of a major writer who, in recent years, has failed to live up to his initial promise. But now Rushdie’s Luka and the Fire of Life is out, and it has been savaged by many Indian reviewers. British and American reviewers have been kinder. There was always a gap between Rushdie’s reception in India and his reception abroad: One can argue both for and against such a slant. What one cannot argue against is the impact that the

so-called fatwa by Khomeini had on Rushdie’s writing. By isolating him spatially and ideologically, it left him with little space for manoeuvre. Now, when the fatwa does not exist any longer (though one should never underestimate the danger posed by crazed fanatics), Rushdie is isolated within a kind of discourse in the West that is radical only when it comes to the non-West. He resists it at times, but he is just as imprisoned by that discourse as he was exiled by the fatwa. It is a strange discourse: this radicalism aimed at the other. In the past, it would have been called colonialist, imperialist or at least

patronizing. Now, thanks partly to Islamist militancy, it is seen as the only radical position by many in the West. But, of course, the fact remains that any radicalism which does not inconvenience you in your own space is, finally, something else. The day Rushdie realizes that his books, because he is primarily a Western writer, have to be radical in a Western context first of all, will be the day when he will resume the mantle of Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses. Those were books that were radical, and hence significant, in the other two major discursive spaces that he had inherited; now he has to square up to the third (for him the most enabling and dominant) of his spaces: that of the Anglophone West.

Safe slavery I read Andrea Levy’s prize-winning Small Island with

Uninspired? Salman Rushdie.

great admiration. Her latest novel, The Long Song, shortlisted for the Booker this year, is also worth a read. Told by a mother, who is narrating a book for her son to print, the novel goes back to Jamaica’s years of slavery and the Baptist War of 1831. It is beautifully written, touching and often captivating. If it disappoints a bit, particularly in comparison to Small Island, it is because slavery has been so easily bracketed in modern Western history as something that took place “once upon a time”, rather than something that affects many people and societies even today. It is this later, uncomfortable, aspect that Levy fails to highlight in her novel. If she had managed to do so, it would have added depth to the narrative and made it a richly uncomfortable reading experience for many. But then, perhaps, it might not have been shortlisted for the Booker!

Loss of decency I met Erik Stinus only three or four times: A respected Danish writer and poet, he had an Indian wife (Sara Mathai, aunt of poet Anna Sujatha Mathai). They had been Communists in the past and continued to believe in radical socialism despite the temptations and taunts of rampant capitalism in “new” Denmark. Author of about 30 books, he was also a friend of Indian literatures and of Indians in Copenhagen. Some years ago, his wife passed away; now Stinus has left us too. For me, it is like the passing away of an age: an age that, whatever its defects, believed in hope and decency. Tabish Khair is an Indian writer based in Denmark. His latest novel is The Thing about Thugs. Write to Tabish at readingroom@livemint.com

BOOKS L17

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

TO THE POINT | HERSCHELLE GIBBS WITH STEVE SMITH

CRIMINAL MIND

ZAC O’YEAH

Pushing the boundaries The South African opener turns his diary into a book, of a life filled with excesses, but without enough insights for us to care B Y A RUN J ANARDHAN arun.j@livemint.com

···························· t’s one of those urban legends, a mythical classic in the world of sport, the quotable quote that would feature in year-enders—Steve Waugh telling Herschelle Gibbs: “Son, you just dropped the World Cup.” Apparently, Gibbs neither “dropped” that catch nor did Waugh have any paternal advice for the South African. While Waugh has in the past denied being the source of that comment, now Gibbs too has put it in writing in his autobiography. Gibbs had famously dropped a catch off Waugh (he had scored 56 then) during the 1999 World Cup when Australia were pretty much down and under, but the Aussie skipper went on to score a century. South Africa expectedly choked, lost the match and with it, one of their best chances of winning a World Cup. Gibbs says he had caught that ball and in a display of confidence, had thrown it, which looked like a drop in action replays. Now, sportsmen are not writers—particularly not the sort who hated going to school, like Gibbs, who once said he had never read a book. But he is also the sort of character you would imagine would make for an entertaining book, having led a colourful life: women and wine, sex and scandal, booze and betting, everything the bad boys of this sport—from Ian Botham to Shane Warne—tend to do. The first half of To The Point: The No-Holds-Barred Autobiography is a sequential narration of Gibbs recovering from one hangover to move to the next, from one woman to the other, from one good score to a bad one. Gibbs tells us that one of his best knocks in One Day Internationals (ODI)—scoring 175 of 116 balls against Australia with South Africa chasing 434 and winning at the Wanderers—came after 12 hours of interrupted drinking with a fan’s mother, 6 hours of sleep and a spinning head. On another occasion, after throwing up

To The Point—The NoHoldsBarred Autobiography: Zebra Press, 236 pages, `599.

twice—the result of another boozy night—Gibbs joined his teammates on the ground. “We started warm-up with a lengthy set of stretches. Lying there on my back on the soft Adelaide turf, the sun gently warming me, was exactly what my body craved… and I promptly fell asleep. One minute I was doing a stretch and the next thing I knew our trainer Paddy Upton was tapping me on the shoulder to wake me up.” Why exactly would one want to read Gibbs’ autobiography? By his admission, he has written this to “celebrate life”. The bald South African opener will probably be remembered more for his tryst with the match-fixing scandal, for which he was banned for six months, and his relationship with Hansie Cronje, who he considers the best captain he has played with. Additionally, his struggle with alcoholism forms as much a part of his 14-year career as the 6,167 runs he scored in 90 Tests, his spectacular fielding and the six sixes he hit off one over in a ODI. For Indian fans, he plays for the Deccan Chargers in the Indian Premier League, and helped them to a title in 2009. Sure, the salacious bits of Gibbs’ life are entertaining, like the pot smoking and the stripclub video; some of the badmouthing is curious (he suggests that Sachin Tendulkar focused on getting the double hundred instead of chasing a bigger team total in the Gwalior ODI this year) and the personality descriptions fascinating—“I asked him (Jacques Kallis) why he doesn’t say anything on the pitch. And he didn’t say anything.” But that’s just about as far as it goes. To an extent, the book is an honest account of the cricketer’s life, of his misdemeanours, the mistakes he made in life and how he ruined his marriage. At no point, except when talking about his marriage, is he apologetic nor does he portray himself as a hero. Gibbs, considered prodigiously talented as an upcoming player, believes he was introduced to top class domestic cricket too early, setting his progress back by a few years. He believes South Africa’s conservative approach and fear of failure is responsible for their poor performances in big events. “So, are

TOKYO’S WISE GUYS

the Proteas chokers?... it’s an accurate assessment of some situations the team has been in.” He talks about his own ability to excel on the big stage—“the greater the glory, the bigger the outcome, the more I am up for it”—which seems in sharp contrast to the team’s attitude to big pressure games. There are not too many surprises or revelations, though some details of South African cricket (that captain Graeme Smith and a few others form a clique) have reportedly made some of his current teammates unhappy. Cricket South Africa (CSA) also terminated Gibbs’ national contract this month—through a mutual agreement—though it was to run till the end of April. The development came a month after the book was released, though Gibbs admits in To The Point that his Test career is over at 36. Gibbs has never been the sort of cricketer to capture public imagination, like, say, a Warne or a Tendulkar. Even if he tells us that he was an entertaining and spontaneous cricketer (and he says that many times), and even if it was partly accurate, there is a certain detachment Gibbs has with audiences (contrary to what he believes). He constantly reminds us of his good looks which helped him get the women, about his outgoing and gregarious personality, his readiness to oblige fans, his willingness to play cricket as entertainingly as possible, but the repetitive monotony of these claims begins to jar like those dramatic scenes from TV soaps. Written in an easy, diary-style, this is not a collector’s item but a quick fix in a local train or in a Goa shack, though you might sometimes need Google to figure out the liberally used South African terms—“ja”, “okes”, “bladdy”, “boet”, “kakk”. It’s a fairly uncomplicated read for strictly cricket and Gibbs fans without being a compelling must-have. There is no insight really, unless you include Gibbs’ take on India. “Everyone drives slowly and they even stop for a dog crossing the road.” Where exactly does this happen? IN SIX WORDS Booze, babes, a bit of cricket AFP

No revelations: Gibbs (right) calls Makhaya Ntini (wearing a helmet) a ‘funny guy who always enjoyed his cricket’.

ither you erase the story, or we’ll erase you. And maybe your family. But we’ll do them first, so you learn your lesson before you die.” The speaker used certain ambiguous phrases—Japanese is apparently a wonderful language for crooks because its personal pronoun system allows you to implicitly threaten a person even while the casual listener might not hear anything more incriminating than “or something else may be erased”. But Jake Adelstein, who is originally from Missouri, US, had studied at a Tokyo university and worked as a crime reporter for a Japanese newspaper. So the subtle meaning of “something else” was very clear to him. I caught up with Adelstein on a book tour in Australia, where he was launching his debut Tokyo Vice—billed as “a unique, first-hand, revelatory look at the underbelly of Japanese culture”. I had to reschedule the interview thrice: Each time he had already moved on to the next town—usually leaving behind demolished hotel breakfasts looking like origami artwork made of discarded bread slices. By the time I finally cornered him at a book signing, I’d begun to understand how he’d survived 12 years in an 80-hours-a-week job in Japan: Adelstein is obviously one of the fastest and smartest Americans around.

Other world: Jake Adelstein was a crime reporter for a newspaper. When he graduated in Tokyo in 1992, he saw an ad and thought it might be fun to test his skills by doing the standardized entrance test that Japanese newspapers put prospective new staff members through. Nobody had ever heard of a foreigner passing it, so Adelstein—who, on one level, seems to be quite the quixotic type—simply had to try. “I really didn’t think they’d hire me, but to my surprise they did. Then they did with me what they do with all new staff and put me on the crime beat,” he tells me. Suddenly, he was working for one of the world’s biggest (over 10 million copies sold daily) and most sensational newspapers, Yomiuri Shimbun, filing reports about criminals who ran pet shops and ground down murder victims to feed the mince to dogs. As a teenager, he was hooked on Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross McDonald, Lawrence Block and other great American pulp crime writers, and covering the police beat was perhaps like living out some such noir teenage fantasies. It is quite clear that Adelstein knows the Yakuza inside out—Japanese gangs, the last remnant of the feudal Japan, infused with tough samurai-like traditions, who employ tens of thousands of full-time gangsters to make money on anything from drugs, extortion and gambling to human trafficking and even murder. Officially known as “designated violent groups”, they operate in a very business-like manner in their Armani suits and corporate offices (which makes them different from other crime syndicates, such as the mafia that still tries to remain a secret society). To some people, they are like heroes; there are even Yakuza fan magazines, graphically illustrated and popular among ordinary men who’d like to imagine lives different from their stifling day-to-day existence. Within this crooked world, Adelstein stayed alive by figuring out the snakes and ladders, and he learnt the tricky art of how to conduct oneself while meeting dangerous criminals. Gangs sometimes inform on each other to gain corporate advantage, so a journalist can be useful for the Yakuza. Also, a journalist may have information to share in order to get information, so promoting good public relations seems to be part of the Yakuza strategy. But the Yakuza use Google Alerts to track what is being written about them and they can get quite unhappy if the coverage doesn’t suit their self-image. Adelstein started receiving thinly veiled death threats from tattooed men missing a pinkie—another Yakuza membership sign. It isn’t often that a writer gets such explicit feedback, I think to myself, but then again Adelstein made it his business to stir up storms. His great scoop was exposing how the bosses—whose livers frequently died on them because of their hugely unhealthy body tattoos—went to the US and bought themselves liver transplants via shady deals. After that things started to develop in a dangerous direction. While working on his book Tokyo Vice, Adelstein got into semi-mortal combat with one particularly crooked crook. In order to get out of the situation, Adelstein punched the crook in the larynx, to choke him, but the crook just kept attacking until Adelstein finally pulped his knee caps with a golf club. Afterwards he borrowed the man’s cellphone and dialled for an ambulance. These days Adelstein suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, and tells me that he has a personal bodyguard: an ex-Yakuza loan shark who ensures that he won’t “be erased”. Despite glowing reviews—“crisp storytelling and an unexpectedly earnest eagerness to try to rescue the damned” wrote Pico Iyer in Time—his Tokyo Vice can never be published in Japan. Or Adelstein might find himself buried alive in the concrete foundations of a Tokyo amusement park, the publishing house could be torched, and its employees kidnapped by gangsters. But, curiously, the book also works as a kind of life insurance—if the Yakuza bump him off, it would prove to the world that everything in it is true. And that is something the Yakuza, hopefully, will prefer to live without. Zac O’Yeah is a Bangalore-based writer of crime fiction whose last published novel is Once Upon a Time in Scandinavistan. Write to Zac at criminalmind@livemint.com

L18 FLAVOURS SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

PHOTOGRAPHS

M LAKSHMAN/MINT

CHENNAI KOOTHU | NIRANJANA RAMESH

Thread fare Weavers’ station: (clockwise from left) Jean Francois Lesage comes from a family long associated with embroidery; embroiderers at work at the Vastrakala unit; and at Vastrakala it is rare for a single embroiderer to work on a piece.

A French designer’s work with the city’s embroiderers adorns Christian Louboutin’s shoes and the opera house in Monaco

id you know that embroidery is essentially the same everywhere in the world? It uses the same tools, techniques and materials, but what makes one kind of embroidery different from the other and region-specific are the motifs. And that’s why Jean Francois Lesage, 43, believes he was able to make a seamless transition from Paris to Chennai. At Vastrakala, his embroidery unit in Chennai, Lesage has trained his embroiderers to make the transition from Indian embroidery styles to Western ones. Vastrakala’s works adorn the throne of the Moroccan Palace, the restored crown of King Louis XV kept in the Louvre, the Opéra de Monte-Carlo in Monaco, Tamil actor late Sivaji Ganesan’s granddaughter’s wedding sari, the divine umbrella at the Tiruvannamalai temple, the new yet-to-be inaugurated suite at The Park Hotel in Hyderabad, the Versailles Palace, the Buckingham Palace, and even Lakshmi Mittal’s house in London: The list is as glamorous as it’s eclectic. The latest feather in Lesage’s cap is the tie-up with French footwear designer Christian Louboutin. Lesage has designed the embroidery for Louboutin’s new line of shoes, using Indian designs, techniques and materials. For instance, the shoes have chumki (glitters), beads, stones and even jewels embedded. The shoes, like most of the other embroidery done at Vastrakala, have some highly localized stitches called paitaka, oosiload, software moulding (a stitch that involves silk, or soft thread and moulded materials such as clay beads) and carpet stitch. “These are Tamil styles with an Anglo-French influence,”says Bala Ganesh, a manager at Vastrakala. The first collection of 37 pairs was launched in Europe this summer. The unit is now

creating more of such embroidered footwear to be released next summer, for a larger audience. “Our clients are those who would display our work near their Picassos; they are those who do not choose to invest in gold or land over art, but can afford to spend money on those as well as art and embroidery,” says Lesage. Lesage looks deceptively simple, seated at a cluttered desk in his non-air-conditioned, firstfloor office, clad in a white kurta, identical to those worn by his embroiderers downstairs. “The white is to avoid any distraction from colours and patterns while embroidering,” he explains. His embroidery unit houses 50 embroiderers hailing from nearby villages and slums, and caters to just about all kinds of “royalty” around the world. Embroidery, according to Lesage, is neither Indian nor French. “Embroidery originated in China and Persia, and was introduced to India and Europe by artists who travelled with

Persian and Chinese soldiers when they went about invading the countries,” he says. “In Chennai, especially in Sriperumbudur in the Kanchipuram district, embroiderers were trained to cater to the Nawab of Arcot and subsequently, the British. Indian motifs here are, hence, highly adaptable.” Vastrakala uses motifs from every venerable tradition one can think of—Renaissance, Persian, Ottoman, African and Japanese. “Any modern design not confirming to these traditions is called an American motif,” Ganesh laughs. Lesage’s family has been long associated with embroidery. His family had bought the House of Michonnet from the Michonnet family in 1924 to create the House of Lesage. The House of Michonnet was created in 1860 and supplied textiles to Napoleon III, grandson of Napoleon I. “It was his wife Empress Eugenie who set the luxury trend for embroidery in France. She used embroidered

cloth to decorate walls, and gift it to people,” says Lesage. When Lesage travelled to India in 1990, he was enamoured by the quality and artisanship produced by the cottage industries here, especially in textiles and threadwork. “Kanchipuram and Banaras handwoven cloth are a legend by themselves,” he says. “But soon, there was a shift in economic policy which encouraged mass factory production over rare small-scale creation. Traditional skills started fading.” He says this was an opportunity. The skill was here and so was the talent, all it needed was a channel and Lesage decided that he would be that channel. In 1993, Lesage sold his family business—the House of Lesage—in France to the Chanel group and set up Vastrakala in collaboration with Patrick Savouret, Sandeep Rao and Malavika Shivakumar. The holding company, JFL (Jean Francois Lesage) is registered in France. That year, Lesage set out with Flower power: (left) A sample of embroidery at Vastrakala; and from the collection of French footwear designer Christian Louboutin.

a team of five embroiderers, creating designs and making collectibles which he would then exhibit in shows. The name Lesage helped in attracting viewers who turned clients. “Initially, that is when he was holding annual shows in the mid-1990s, the clientele was mostly European,” says Ganesh. The walls of Lesage’s office are covered with collages of samples of designs. Books lie scattered on a shelf-cum-table at the entrance. In fact, the whole building, an old-fashioned Tamil house, seems to have been done up with a dose of meticulous carelessness, leaving the homely feeling intact while providing the necessary functionality of an export processing unit. “We have a design team of seven people—two designers from France and four artists from Chennai, with Lesage himself as the chief designer,” says Ganesh. But Lesage is quick to say that he’s mainly a stimulant nourishing the local creativity and talent. “The team is the first to interact with any of the clients, be it royalty or celebrity, around the world. They talk extensively about the client’s requirements of functionality as well as aesthetics and spirit,” Ganesh says, explaining how the design process at Vastrakala functions. Consequentially, it becomes the team’s job to also educate those clients whose whims and fancies do not seem to appeal to aesthetic sensibilities. As the embroiderers in Vastrakala are trained in Indian as well as European motifs, there have been clients who have sought Roman interiors for a Chettinad house or a beach

theme for an ancient building. “When we design wedding saris, which hasn’t been often, we are conscious of family traditions,” Ganesh says. “For instance, we would make it a point to use motifs like mangoes or peacocks for Tamil wedding saris, but if the bride has a fancy for a certain colour or design, we try to incorporate that too.” That’s been Vastrakala’s guiding design philosophy—to adapt and fuse cultures, but never clash with the local tradition. The embroiderers here work 8-hour shifts and earn between `2,000 and `8,000 per month, depending on experience. For most embroiders, the big difference is in the quality of work they get to do at Vastrakala. “Just look at the intricate designs I get to work on here,” says S. Babu, a karigar pointing to a cloth piece, on both sides of which an oval twisting pattern was being embroidered to decorate the front and back of 120 chairs in a palace, whose name Vastrakala would not divulge. The elaborate design process starts with penning the design on a stretched fabric, then setting the frame for the fabric. It is followed by the process called chappa—involving rubbing of a zinc powder-kerosene paste on the design to make it clearly visible. There are specialists for each step—design, drawing, painting, chappa and then the actual embroidery. Lesage explains the atmosphere of learning in Vastrakala, “What is taught here is not so much the skill, but the attitude towards the craft as a serious art requiring eye for detail and meticulousness and above all, a tremendous pride in one’s work. If we need to do 16th century Venetian embroidery for an order, then that obviously needs to be taught. Giving the embroiderers a perspective on the history of that school and the social set-up where their work would soon etch itself would give them a more wholesome idea of the kind of work they do,” Lesage says. “It’s these details that matter.” niranjana@livemint.com