Louneg 19 December

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

www.livemint.com

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Vol. 3 No. 50

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

YOUR SHOPPING SECRETS DECODED Which day of the week are you least likely to shop? What makes the Indian man special?

Why do our stores look crowded? Lounge unravels the art and science of how we shop

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH GURURAJ DESHPANDE >Page 9

BANGALORE BOYS GO RADIO GA GA

Remote­controlled car racing revs up in the city, with new tracks, a growing number of enthusiasts, and a national championship >Page 8

SANTA LIVES HERE

For a Christmas with the big man and reindeers, there’s only one place to go >Page 12

>Page 10

THE PAN­INDIAN PULSE Raju Hirani on his new film, turning big ideas into films, and Aamir Khan’s perfectionism >Page 17

REPLY TO ALL

AAKAR PATEL

WHY WE DON’T PAY FOR CULTURE

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s India an ancient civilization on the cusp of modernity? Or is it actually a 3,500-year-old civilization in an advanced state of decay? We believe it’s the former, and middle-class Indians take pride in their belief that we are living in one of the world’s great cultures. Manmohan Singh loves to quote the famous lines of Iqbal: Yunan-o-Misr-o-Roma, sab mitt gayay jahan se: Ab tak magar hai baqi naam-o-nishan hamara (ancient Greece, Pharaonic Egypt and Imperial Rome are all dust, but India lives on). >Page 4

THE GOOD LIFE

GAME THEORY

SHOBA NARAYAN

A CHAOS THEORY OF FESTIVALS

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ore than the national flag; more than debates about immigration such as the one France is having; more than how elections are run and won; the way a nation celebrates and condoles reflects—I would argue—the way its citizens live and die.

American celebrations are programmed, demonstrating its belief in and expertise with systems. Weddings have rehearsals. Can you imagine an Indian wedding with a “rehearsal” the day earlier? >Page 4

ROHIT BRIJNATH

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

OF CHAMPIONS AND HEROES

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had heroes once as a boy. Posters Scotch taped to my walls, athletes fastened to my heart. How did they do those things? The footballer running with ball glued to foot, the helmet-less cricketer walking out to fast bowler, the twisting diver. I stood on the couch. God, I said; Gods, I thought. Then I grew up and became a sportswriter and crossed that line that separates us from them.

It was a fine education because I am intrigued by what... >Page 5

COPENSTOCK

HOME PAGE L3

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

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

FIRST CUT

LOUNGE REVIEWS

PRIYA RAMANI

LOUNGE EDITOR

Flavoured popcorn,

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (MANAGING EDITOR)

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

FOUNDING EDITOR RAJU NARISETTI ©2009 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved

Odeon Big Cinemas, New Delhi

GIVE THEM TELANGANA, GIVE ME NIRVANA

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ive them Vidarbha, Gorkhaland and Telangana. But give me (and people like me) Nirvana.

Geographical location doesn’t matter. And since there won’t be too many of us, we won’t need too much space. I know we can’t have floating mountains and brilliant, multicoloured flying reptiles like Na’vi land in Avatar, but a sea view would be lovely.

The state of Nirvana will be defined by whom it doesn’t belong to. We’ll keep out the paanwallahs for sure (yes, even Breach Candy’s dapper Mucchad Panwala). No public spitters and shaggers allowed. So it’s no entry for all those men who surrepUTOPIA t i t i o u s l y r u b t h e i r crotches as they lurk around couples in parks.

No Hindi general entertainment channels please—certainly no one from Colors (though the channel’s CEO is a lovely man) or anyone who watches, acts or advertises on Balika Vadhu and Bairi Piya. And we can manage quite nicely without Breaking News too.

No burqas or ghunghats. And we’ll keep out those who think sati was a way for a woman to prove herself in society (that’s most of Rajasthan gone). We’ll keep out Advani, Uma and Liberhan. And we definitely don’t want Modi.

We’ll be happy to take Manmohan Singh if Khalistan doesn’t want him (but minus the Gandhis, please).

We’ll keep out The Times of India and all the celebrities associated with it. They can form their own republic of Glitterpur that is bound to be more glamorous and economically viable than ours. We’ll send them all the luxury malls and

those who shop at them too.

We’ll keep out the ageing actors who never stop playing teenagers.

We’ll definitely keep out Sanjay Dutt. We can easily do without Madhur Bhandarkar. We’d love to take Yash Chopra, but not his love factory. We’ll take the cast and crew of 3 Idiots (with spouses).

We’ll keep out the drunken idiots who sit behind their four-wheel drives and blast their way through our narrow roads. In fact let’s keep out all Delhi drivers, the Marathi manoos (except Sachin, of course) and definitely most of my extended family.

We’ll keep out polyester and people who wear it. And while on polyester, we’ll keep out the Ambani brothers—let them slug it out in Jamnagarabad.

We’ll skip Indians who think it’s their fundamental right that the attendant of the public loo clean up their mess. And those who don’t flush can stay out too.

We can live quite happily without those who don’t see the flaws of modern India, and those who think it’s somebody else’s job to fix those flaws.

We’ll keep out rodents and cockroaches (but lizards are welcome).

Is Nirvana beginning to sound just a little boring? I’m ready to put up with all the quirks and irritants of India as it is today—but only if the southern boys who want Telangana do the same.

Write to lounge@livemint.com www.livemint.com Priya Ramani blogs at blogs.livemint.com/firstcut MAHESH KUMAR A/AP

Arindam Chakravarti, divisional head, food and beverages, Big Cinemas, has developed 12 varieties of seasonings that can be used to flavour popcorn. Each flavour will be available in the form of powdered seasoning which you can sprinkle on your bag of popcorn and then give it a good shake to ensure the seasoning’s uniform dispersal. “Don’t use more than 2.5g of the seasoning in a 60g (bag of) popcorn, else it will taste much too strong,” cautions Chakravarti. The flavours, which will be available from 23 December at 29 Big Cinema multiplexes, come in three categories: Hot and Sour: Tomato Chilli seasoning tops the list. Munching popcorn with tomato flavour as the top note did not leave my mouth dry.

The Chilli Chutney seasoning has a curry-like taste and is most likely to appeal to Delhiites, according to Chakravarti. Avoid the Cheese and Jalapeno, and Sichuan flavours.

International: Though Chakravarti thinks the Wasabi seasoning will work only in Mumbai, I’m predicting it will be a crowd-puller. Yogurt and Onion is mild and creamy.

Avoid Cajun, and Cheese and Pepper seasonings. The pepper component is too strong in the latter; I was coughing for nearly a minute after I sampled some.

Absolutely Indian: Butter Garlic wins hands down though it means no kissing is possible during the movie because of the strong garlic flavour. Still, Chakravarti is confident Delhi will love it. The Chatpata Masala, and Sweet and Tangy Lime seasonings are not tangy enough.

The good stuff For Rs10 extra you can add unlimited seasoning in any combination of flavours you want. Each of the three paying counters at Odeon Big Cinemas, New Delhi, will be equipped with an individual, 12-flavour sprinkler rack so that you don’t get delayed during the intermission.

The not­so­good It’s unlikely that you will know how much seasoning is enough the first time. You are likely to miss some part of the movie if you queue up for your cola and then flavour your own popcorn during the intermission.

Though the management insists that the seasonings work equally well with cold popcorn, really hot popcorn seasoned with the Wasabi powder tasted better. Also, why aren’t there any sweet popcorn options?

Talk plastic At Odeon Big Cinemas, New Delhi, a 60g (regular) bag costs Rs70. The seasoning is an extra Rs10.

Seema Chowdhry

Azaad Bazaar,

Bandra, Mumbai

Street theatre: Telangana supporters at Osmania University, Hyderabad.

If you didn’t know better, you’d walk in, browse, and walk out of Azaad Bazaar without realizing it is India’s first LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) pride

Sampler: (clockwise from left) Rainbow pride colours on a tee; pick from 12 flavours for your popcorn; and try a bread bowl for lunch. store. You might wonder at the profusion of rainbow-coloured products and take a second look at some of the cheeky tees, but for shoppers, Azaad Bazaar is not very different from any other Bandra store.

Two members of the LGBT community who go by their first names Simran and Sabina have opened the store, which operates out of a garage opposite the Mini Punjab restaurant.

The store is an extension of a travelling exhibition which started in February and was established as an online shop a fortnight before the Delhi high court’s 2 July verdict decriminalizing gay sex. Though Azaad Bazaar is all for the LGBT cause, the duo’s aim was to make their store all-inclusive, socially responsible and affordable. All in all, it’s a fun store to browse through and a great place to pick up quirky gifts.

The tees (most are for Rs399) with tongue-in-cheek Indian humour are brilliant. “Desi murgas do it best”, says one. “Haan hoon, toh? (yes I am, so what?)” asks another. “Love is love” says the one showing three stick figures of lesbian, gay and hetro couples holding hands. The one proclaiming “Maa da laadla (mamma’s boy)” is snapped up by women for their husbands, Simran says.

There’s a range of funny mugs too, including one with a picture of Sholay’s Jai and Veeru, and one of an umpire with his arm raised and index finger up, which reads “Out in India”.

The store stocks organic cotton Fairtrade shopping bags made by a unit which gives employment to youth from slums, as well as bags made by earthquake-affected women from Kutch.

The rainbow pride colours are on tees, mugs, disco balls, bags and flags. There’s also a party corner with wigs, feather boas, moustaches and funky sunglasses—some light up with disco lights, while others are supersized versions. Prices start

from Rs20 for stickers and go up to Rs2,000 for a lamp.

Azaad Bazaar is situated at the junction of 16th and 33rd Road, Bandra, and opens at 2pm.

Parizaad Khan

Au Bon Pain,

MG Road, Bangalore Spencer’s Retail Ltd, a unit of RPG Enterprises, is the India franchisee of Au Bon Pain, a US-based bakerycafé chain that has over 200 outlets across the US, Thailand, South Korea and Taiwan.

Au Bon Pain offers both precooked and prepared meals. The wraps, sandwiches and rice bowls are made to order, while the soups, salads desserts, bakes and beverages can be picked off the shelves. You can ask to taste any of the six soups of the day (three vegetarian and three non-vegetarian) before pouring yourself a hot bowlful. The potato leek soup is especially creamy, and if it’s just soup for lunch, then you must have it in a bread bowl (the soup is poured into bowl-shaped sour dough bread with a hard crust).

The Mediterranean Hummus and Olive on a toasted Jalapeno Cheddar Bagel or the Chicken Tarragon on Country White Bread with herb mayonnaise is a good option for those who do not like spicy sandwiches.

We loved the pre-packed salads (Rs30-60) and muesli (Rs30 a cup), but the fruit juices were a disappointment. The grape juice and orange juice did not taste fresh and were excessively sweet. The seafood menu is limited to rice with prawns.

Sandwiches start at Rs44, soups at Rs50 for a bowl of vegetarian soup and Rs70 for non-vegetarian. The allvegetarian salads are for Rs30-60 per serving, with an additional charge of Rs25 if you want to add chicken (no mutton) to the salad.

Pavitra Jayaraman

L4 COLUMNS

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

AAKAR PATEL REPLY TO ALL

Why Indians don’t want to pay for culture

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HEMANT PADALKAR/HINDUSTAN TIMES

s India an ancient civilization on the cusp of modernity? Or is it actually a 3,500-year-old civilization in an advanced state of decay? We believe it’s the former, and middle-class Indians take pride in their belief that we are living in one of

the world’s great cultures.

Manmohan Singh loves to quote the famous lines of Iqbal: “Yunan-o-Misr-o-Roma, sab mitt gayay jahan se: Ab tak magar hai baqi naam-o-nishan hamara” (ancient Greece, Pharaonic Egypt and Imperial Rome are all dust, but India lives on).

Iqbal wrote that poem, Tarana-e-Hindi, commonly known by its opening lines Saare jahan se achcha, when he was quite young. He would change his opinion about Greece and Rome after studying in Heidelberg.

To return to our question: Are we advancing the culture we inherited or is it in decay? The only way in which civilizations advance their culture is through their arts.

What is the state of our arts? Let’s look at Time Out, the most comprehensive events magazine in the world. Every performance is listed.

I asked a friend to send me copies of the magazine from New York, London and Hong Kong. This will help us understand where we stand culturally.

In its issue of the week of 22-28 October, Time Out New York listed 65 classical music concerts, including 15 operas. Of these concerts, eight were free. New Yorkers watched 51 classical and modern dance shows (two free) and

attended 86 museum events, of which seven were free. All of this is high culture. Then there were 412 live concerts of popular (including jazz) music, of which 25 were free. New York City has eight million people.

In two weeks between 16-29 October (Time Out is a fortnightly in India), Delhi had eight classical concerts, including one Western classical performance.

Every show was free. That is an average of one classical music performance every two days for a city of 12 million. There was a Spic Macay festival and that was also free. There were 10 shows classified under rock/pop/international but of these only two were free. In two weeks Delhi had six classical dance performances including three Bharatanatyam, one Kathak and one Odissi. All six were free. Incidentally, there were 11 listings for salsa and jazz dance classes, none free.

In one week between 15-21 October, Londoners saw 101 classical music concerts (eight free) of which 12 were operas. They saw 45 dance performances of which six were free, and they heard 278 popular music concerts of which 32 were free.

London has seven million people.

In two weeks between 16-29 October, Mumbaikars saw 12 concerts of which

fusion. All six were free. Bangalore has seven million people.

Two things become clear, and they’re related. One, that we have few events. Two, these are free. Why? Unlike Europeans and Americans and Chinese, we don’t pay for culture. We pay Rs100 to watch a film, and Rs 200 to enter a pub with a DJ, but do not pay to listen to a Hindustani concert. Why not?

The answer is Fading notes: Amjad Ali Khan and the Scottish Chamber simple: Because it’s Orchestra at the NCPA. not entertainment.

Classical music is nine were free. But the three concerts not watched out of enjoyment, and that Mumbaikars paid to watch included one is why it has withered, because it is playing Bollywood songs and a irrelevant. This is a loss because it is one performance by a South African Western of the world’s great art forms. classical group. Meanwhile, there were The thing about Hindustani music is 23 events in pubs and discos, of which that its audience has always been small. seven were free. In 15 days, Mumbaikars The various gharanas are actually quite watched two dance performances, recent, and emerged with the scattering including one Bharatanatyam. Mumbai of Mughal musicians after two sacks: has 19 million people.

Nadir Shah’s in 1739 and Colin In two weeks between 14-27 October, Campbell’s in 1857. Why were all the Hong Kong had 14 classical concerts, musicians in Delhi? That’s where all the none free, and the cheapest ticket was patronage was: India has no tradition of $100. There were another five classical public performance. concerts listed under “Events” of which Aspen in Colorado has a population of two were free. It had 33 popular music 6,000 and a fine classical music radio concerts of which nine were free. Hong station that often showcases live events.

Kong’s population is seven million.

Because there aren’t enough professional In 15 days between 16-29 October, musicians in the town, listeners are often Bangalore had six concerts, three introduced to concert quartets featuring Carnatic, two Western classical and one a photographer playing violin or a

librarian on the harpsichord. This is unthinkable in India. Every high school in the US has a marching band with dozens of kids who can fluently read music. And classical music isn’t even as popular in the US as it is in Europe (as the listings for London show).

Meanwhile, how many of us can identify ragas? We nod our heads when Rashid Khan sings, but can we tell a good rendition from an average one?

Not really, and that’s why newspapers have stopped reviewing Hindustani concerts entirely.

No culture is sustained much less advanced by such a poor audience. We assume that other Indians somewhere are carrying the tradition forward. Those who believe culture is happening in the small town are mistaken. Places such as Surat and Aurangabad are utterly barren of high culture.

PTI reported last month that the sale of classical music instruments at one of the oldest stores in Delhi was down by 85% over 1970. Anecdotally, this rings true and fewer people I know are learning to play the music than did 30 years ago.

Being modern in India means being uninterested in classical Hindu tradition and ignorant of classical Europe. Our civilization is past.

Aakar Patel is a director with Hill Road Media.

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

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

Our festivals reflect our tolerance for chaos

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SHOBA NARAYAN

ore than the national flag; more than debates about immigration such as the one France is having; more than how elections are run and won; the way a nation celebrates and condoles

reflects—I would argue—the way its citizens live and die.

American celebrations are programmed, demonstrating its belief in and expertise with systems. Weddings have rehearsals. Can you imagine an Indian wedding with a “rehearsal” the day earlier? Parades in Europe are planned; its protests, such as the ones in Copenhagen, decorous. The way the Japanese react to their festivals—even so-called rambunctious ones such as Setsubun—suggests the nation’s inherent love of quietude, nature and order. South America’s carnivals, fiestas and mardi gras epitomize its Latin exuberance and sensuality. Gallic joie de vivre, Spanish flamboyance, the list of stereotypes and accompanying truths goes on. Indian celebrations follow what Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi (and economist Friedrich Hayek after him) called spontaneous order with makeshift pandals and hastily assembled decorations, all of which lead to colourful order amid seeming chaos. Like many developing countries, we Indians too have a formidable capacity for celebration, however poor our means.

A few weeks ago, a street near my home was closed for a rangoli (called kolam in south India) competition.

Walking through it was exhilarating on many levels. You expect the incongruous

in India but to walk through an entire street in central Bangalore covered with stunning rangoli somehow brings India’s many paradoxes to the fore. The street was reminiscent of a village, with narrow homes and galis, but it was, in fact, a stone’s throw from Commercial Street, where hip shoppers stocked up on Christmas gifts. Here, in nearby Sivan Chetty Garden, however, shops sold hand-rolled Malabar parathas topped with fried green chillies, and aromatic onion pakoras to a regular customer base that consisted of flower vendors, autorickshaw drivers and security guards. The atmosphere was festive as people strolled through the giant rangoli designs in bright colours. Pigtailed girls chased each other in an impromptu game of hide-and-seek. Grey-haired matrons sat on the pavement, catching up on rising rents and local gossip. At one end of the street, a makeshift dais was playing movie songs in preparation for the children’s fancy dress competition later that night. The women artists who drew the rangolis stood around waiting for the judges—two teachers from the nearby Chinmaya Vidyalaya—to come by. Many of these women were Hindu but some—going by their names—were Christian. The Hindus were celebrating the end of the Diwali season, while the Christians were

welcoming the start of the Christmas season. Teresa, the woman who works in my home, tells me that this is common in poor Indian neighbourhoods. Her family would draw rangoli designs in front of the Mother Mary statue at the entrance of her home during Hindu festivals and her Hindu neighbours would help her make fried snacks such as “gala-gala” and “rose-murukku” for Christmas. I asked her why she drew rangolis during Hindu festivals. “Why should our house look ugly when every house in the area has beautiful designs in front?” she said in explanation. Plus, she added, drawing rangoli wasn’t a religious thing. It was part of Indian “kalacharam”, or culture. In fact, Teresa added, it was the newly converted Christians that she had a problem with.

“They overdo everything,” she said. “Play loud Christian songs in the morning and preach to us about the right way to pray and celebrate Christmas.”

Indian celebrations not only reveal this nation’s tolerance for chaos and its appetite for spontaneity. Our celebrations also reveal how infinitely adaptable the Indian mind is. It has to be, given the many paradoxes we confront on a daily, even hourly basis.

Right now, luxury hotels in Bangalore are inviting regular guests for their cake-mixing ceremony. I’ve never been to one of these but it sure sounds good. Smells good too, I am sure, given that these Christmas cakes contain a rich and sometimes potent combination of ingredients. But alongside these scripted and carefully orchestrated events are impromptu celebrations where a community unites to draw designs, play music, share gifts, and catch up on gossip.

During the children’s fancy dress,

Colour burst: Rangoli adorns a street in central Bangalore for a competition. kids came, wearing kabuki-like powder make-up and donning costumes that turned them into Nehru, Miss India and Superman. They recited and sang.

Every single one got a wrapped present. There it was: a tiny side street where fair-skinned Moplah Muslims sold Malabar parathas to a largely Hindu community celebrating the spirit of Christmas.

To me, the best part of the Christmas season are the choirs that sprout around town. Bangalore is blessed with many: the St Mark’s Cathedral Choir, the Cecilian, the Holy Ghost, St John’s Church, Richmond Town Methodist and others. For a Hindu, listening to choirs takes some getting used to because they all sing in what Carnatic singers call the “false voice”. But once you get past this mental block, the soaring churches with their beautiful acoustics will transport even the most agnostic. In Bangalore, I like the East Parade children’s choir and Glorious, a choir that has been gently nurtured for decades.

Regional choirs that sing in

Malayalam, Konkani, Tamil and Hindi offer a different pleasure. The St Xavier’s choir in Mapusa, Goa, sings a song that sounds to me like “Sangatham, Divya Sangatham,” but it clearly is a Christian hymn. The Tamil version has a song called Geetham Geetham that is sung in a non-falsetto tune that sounds like any other Tamil song. Malayali choirs turn the language into Spanish with their variant intonations that descended from Vasco de Gama. And listening to these carols, I’ve got to say, gives me much more of a thrill than Handel’s Messiah or Oh Come All ye Faithful by the King’s College choir, which, as it happens, is what I am listening to now.

Shoba Narayan thinks that a Malabar paratha with a fried green chilli on top is a complete planned meal. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shoba­narayan

COLUMNS L5

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

ROHIT BRIJNATH GAME THEORY

Don’t confuse champions and heroes

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CHARLIE RIEDEL/AP

had heroes once as a boy. Posters Scotch taped to my walls, athletes fastened to my heart. How did they do those things? The footballer running with ball glued to foot, the helmet-less cricketer walking out to fast bowler, the twisting diver. I stood on the

couch. God, I said; Gods, I thought.

Then I grew up and became a sportswriter and crossed that line that separates us from them. It was a fine education because I am intrigued by what provokes greatness. I travelled in team buses, asked athletes how they kept technique pure under pressure, hung out in the bowels of stadiums as they emerged from contests their bodies still humming with energy.

But something else occurred. On TV, the athlete looked immortal. From 10ft away, the illusion of saintliness was peeled away. These were but ordinary folk with one extraordinary skill. Away from the floodlights, the sweat dried, they often lost their shine. You realize the superhero from your wall has no cape, that you have the good and bad mixed up. Great athlete and good person were not to be confused.

Champions, so many suffused with arrogance, could be jerks.

The list is long. Every sportswriter has them. A former cricketer, married, winked at me (as a male I was supposed to approve) as he chatted up yet another woman. A millionaire sportsman asked me to pay one half of a bill for two cups of coffee. A former Wimbledon champion told me “f*** off”

when I asked for an interview.

Of course, there are decent, gracious people. Athletes, exhausted by defeat, will still scribble autographs. Sachin Tendulkar interrupted his birthday party in Dubai to give me 5 minutes because he knew I was on deadline.

Johan Olav Koss, the ice skater, plays a pivotal role in the humanitarian organization Right To Play.

But eventually my admiration for athletes became mostly limited to the field. Heroes when sweaty. I respect their pushing of the envelope of human achievement; I am awed by their skill and spirit. I learn about discipline and commitment. And of course as a sportswriter, I tend to exaggerate all this.

But I rarely go to stadiums expecting lessons in morality. These aren’t arenas of real bravery for this isn’t real life.

These weren’t my guides, not my North Stars. My heroes are different, they are ordinary people taking on life, they are my parents, teachers, friends who grapple patiently with troubled kids, they are families who take care of the ill with a selfless love, they are preachers of tolerance.

I have expectations of the athlete, especially the great ones, for with fame

Great expectations: We invested so much in Tiger Woods because he changed the way we perceived golf. arrives responsibility. Certainly he must obey the rules, stay away from gunfights in nightclubs, respect the law, conduct himself appropriately when representing his country. It is not a difficult list. Roger Federer meets it nicely. But not everyone.

But then it gets tricky. What moral standard do we hold the athlete to, a higher one than we have for ourselves?

Marriage is beautiful and we are unimpressed by the adulterer, but do we hound them from our groups of friends and from our offices? Is Tiger Woods different, worth such public scorn, because he portrayed himself as a virtuous family man? It would appear so. And as much as the tawdriness of it all, the sheer number of infidelities, what seems to upset people is also the deception. He fooled us, this billionaire hero. He made us buy his shirts while he was taking his off.

What we tend to forget is that the great athlete presents to us an image.

On that basis we claim to know him, but we really don’t. Andre Agassi’s revealing autobiography, Open, suggested our view of him was almost entirely inaccurate. Woods is similarly a mystery. We know him as outrageous golfer, bland interviewee, smiling salesman. Beyond that he is hidden. It suited him. His golf was perfect, his trousers creased, his shoes shined, and so he let us assume the rest of his life was as polished. The point is this: He should have known better than to do what he did, but so should we have to have swallowed his myth.

The Woods story is sad, grubby, fascinating. Sports stars have erred before: Maradona took ephedrine, Boris Becker had a tryst with a model on a restaurant’s stairs, Mike Tyson dined on a rival’s ear. But this story

dwarfs them. It tell us how enormous a figure he has become, how powerful the Internet is, how voracious our appetite for celebrity is.

I am not surprised by Woods, maybe because I am a sportswriter. But I do have, echoing an Australian friend, “an inexplicable feeling of disappointment”.

Maybe because we saw him as promise. This black man who stood tall in a sport that was too white for too long. This nerveless athlete who turned a stuffy sport into a cool one. Perhaps we invested too much in one man.

Perhaps parents should just tell kids who Scotch tape posters of athletes to their walls, that these are just sporting champions. But not necessarily heroes.

Rohit Brijnath is a senior correspondent with The Straits Times in Singapore.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

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Insider HOMES

An understated affair Actor Divya Dutta’s flat is vibrant and warm without being flashy

B Y G EETIKA S ASAN B HANDARI Better Homes and Gardens

···························· epending on which films you’ve seen, you may remember Divya Dutta as Preity Zinta’s devoted friend in Veer-Zaara, the strong-headed village belle in Welcome to Sajjanpur, the foul-mouthed sweeper with a heart of gold in Delhi-6, or even the motormouth on the mobile in the Aircel advertisement that’s on air now. Whatever the role, you can’t miss her.

At home, though, she’s quite unlike the roles she essays: that of a loud Punjabi woman. Dutta is simple and understated and lives with her mother, brother, and three-month-old Lhasa Apso pup Sakhi in a two-bedroom flat in Juhu, Mumbai. The home is her sanctuary, and its location allows her to walk across to the beach at night for a run. “When I saw this flat, I felt intuitively that it should be mine,” says Dutta. But she knocked down a few walls, opted for an open kitchen, and sought the help of an interior designer. “I told her that I wanted different colours in each room except the living room, which I wanted white. She would kidnap me from the sets and we would scout around at stores and myriad exhibitions.” Dutta also made a trip to Bangkok, from where she purchased several artefacts.

Her bedroom is vibrant with yellow and orange walls, and a neat little pooja khana taken in from the balcony. “I have a very strong connect with God and I sit there and chat with him. I also chat with my friends there.”

Her mum’s room is pink and purple and a niche between the two, which houses a massive Ganapati, is bright red, Dutta’s favourite shade.

Very keen on getting the right lights for her house, Dutta trawled Mumbai for interesting lamps to add to her collection. “I am a very lamp person. I feel a lamp can really change the look of a corner or place.” A big brass lantern greets you at the entrance to her home, which also bears several warding off symbols—a Turkish eye, a horseshoe, a swastika, and the traditional lemon-chilli.

It’s served her well. “In the two-and-a-half years that we’ve been here, this house has got a lot of love and appreciation from everyone,” says Dutta, who often spends Sundays having the house thoroughly cleaned. “When you make something with love, you want it to stay that way,” she says.

D

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY DABBOO RATNANI; MAKE­UP BY SOHAIL AHMED; HAIR BY NIKI MARTIN; STYLED BY RAGINI SINGH/BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS

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Keep it simple: (clockwise from left) This sleeper wood windowside bench in Dutta’s living room is her ‘wine corner’; Dutta picked up this horse from an exhibition and added a bowl and a coconut lamp from Tresorie, a design store in Mumbai; this mirror was picked up at Inorbit mall, Mumbai; and the living room has stencilled walls and a rugged leather sofa bought at a Mumbai store.

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009

L7

Parenting LEARNING CURVE

UNDER 15 | M VENKATESH

GOURI DANGE

Drawing lines: is it too late?

Whether your teen­ ager should use your cellphone and how to mend a broken heart

Initially, my cellphone was a plaything for my son. He grabbed it as soon as I returned home from work to play games, download ringtones, click photos, etc. Since I’m not half as tech savvy as he is, I was quite happy to let him. Close relatives, however, have always been squeamish about the habit—they don’t allow him to touch their phones. Lately—he’s 15 now—he has started using my cellphone for long conversations, and erases the numbers he dials. He also spends a lot of time on the Internet, chatting and social networking. Is it too late to lay down the rules on online/ telephonic communication? His father thinks we should just give him his own phone. I think it’s too early.

There are two issues here. Your son needs to learn to recognize and respect boundaries (15 is late, 6 is from when this should begin: For those of you with younger children, this is something to start working on). Your relatives are right in stopping him from using their phones. We have to teach our children not to be presumptuous.

Second, do keep an overall eye and ear out for who his friends are and with whom he is chatting. His erasing the number from your phone could just be a quite natural secretiveness, but you need to know who he closely associates with on a daily basis.

Talking about boundaries, for starters, I would say you have to declare your phone off-limits. Your phone is yours and should be kept that way. From what you describe, you have willy-nilly given your son permission to simply “commandeer” your phone when he wants to, so you will need to sort this out decisively but without unpleasantness.

Locked: Assign fixed phone hours.

I agree with you that it is too early to give a child his own phone. You could sit down with him and resolve it together. First, surely he can use the landline phone? Second, you have to have that chat about him not using your phone. As for the Internet, maybe you could come up with a mutually agreeable quantum of time that he is allowed to spend on the Internet. But if it is, say, 2 hours, then avoid letting him chop this up into five different intermittent sessions, where he is then fretting and simply killing time till the next session.

Many youngsters submit to and accept a timetable for studies and recreation during classes X-XII. You could too, again asking him to come up with what he thinks is a realistic and fair timetable which would include studies, Internet time and recreation outdoors. Parents make a cardinal mistake when they object to something and then give in to their children’s whining and sulking.

When she was 13, my daughter confessed to “liking” someone in her class. At that time, I told her she was too young to “go steady”. She’s now 15 and has been studying together with this boy for the past year. They considered themselves “a couple”. However, a few months ago, something happened between them and he called it off. My daughter is now behaving as if the world has come to an end. How do I help her get some perspective?

This is no doubt a painful time for

your daughter. Most people will say let time do the healing. However, at this age and stage, it is important that someone (such as a sensitive parent or even a counsellor) intervenes gently.

While you (as well as her friends) are available, possibly, to listen to her, and to let her express her grief and/or anger, hurt, etc., there is something more important to be done to help her move ahead. The intervention is not so much to help the youngster “vent” and “get over it”, but to put a more far-reaching attitudinal shift in place. What you need to work on here is helping your daughter make the distinction between feeling currently unloved by this boy and permanently unlovable by anyone.

This is what she seems to be feeling right now and, in that sense, you have to help her “label” this episode appropriately. By talking to her, as well as her friends, perhaps, you can bring some perspective to the situation a) by identifying and labelling the event as a specific change of heart or attitude on the boy’s part—something over which she has no control—and reiterating that it’s mostly about him and not her, and b) by helping her see that this is not the end of the world.

While doing this, be careful not to say bad things about the boy. Find ways for her to see this as a disappointing development, but not something that should “sentence” her as unlovable by any boy. The other thing that you need to subtly help her with, without a hint of “blame apportioning”, is to see in what ways the boy was wrong and in what ways she may have mishandled their relationship.

However, overall, what you need to help your daughter with is to understand that people change and exit our lives and have a right to do so. And this does not mean that one should allow all our self-worth to exit along with them!

Gouri Dange is the author of The ABCs of Parenting.

Send your queries to Gouri at learningcurve@livemint.com

A lion’s travelogue Picture storybooks about a lion’s journey, a walking bat and an unwanted worm

V

ery few Indian publishers have done justice to picture storybooks. The three recently released picture storybooks from Katha are a visual treat and quite unlike the regular published-in-India storybooks. The illustrations are lovely, the storytelling flows naturally and the production quality is excellent.

Written and illustrated by Beatrice Alemagna (who had decided at the age of 8 that she would became a “painter of novels” when she grew up), A Lion in Paris is the story of a lion that escapes from the savannah and travels to Paris—by train.

Exploring the city, the lion is sad that nobody seems to notice his presence. So he goes for a walk around the city, trying to attract attention. Finally, he reaches a crossroads with a high pedestal. With a roar he jumps on it and settles down. As cars honk, he is happy that he has found his place in the big, colourful city.

The author acknowledges that the statue at Denfert-Rochereau Square in Paris inspired the story. Alemagna’s story is easy to read for under six-year-olds (a full-page illustration follows every narration), as are the other two: Fledolin Upside Down (translated from Antje Damm’s German story Fledolin Verger Herum) and On the Tip of a Pin (by Geeta Dharmarajan).

Author-illustrator Damm turns out a fantastic story about Fledolin, a bat who prefers to live upside down. Contrary to everything bat-dom stands for, Fledolin often wonders why he is so happy being upside down.

With his feet firmly planted on the ground, he finds some

u Fledolin Upside Down

by Antje Damm, u On the Tip of a Pin

by Geeta Dharmarajan, u A Lion in Paris

by Beatrice Alemagna, Katha, Rs150 each. interesting answers.

On the Tip of a Pin is a science fiction story. Illustrated by Ludmilla Chakrabarthy and written by Dharmarajan, it is about Pintipur, a town on the tip of a pin. In that town live Lion, Pig, Cow, Goat and Worm, and 20 children in 20 houses. And as is the case, everyone has a thing against Worm.

They think he is terrible—he with his wormholes. Worm maintains that the holes are mazes that lead to other worlds.

Everything changes when Mamta of Pintipur discovers a town at the bottom of the well. The town is exactly like Pintipur, except that it is on the top of a pin and is called Pintopur. The people of Pintopur want Worm and he is ready to go.

These books are worthy successors to old Katha favourites such as Song of a Scarecrow, Autorickshaw Blues and Pokiri Parrot.

The writer is the editor of Heek, a children’s magazine.

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L8

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009

Play TOYS

Bangalore boys go radio ga ga PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

HEMANT MISHRA/MINT

Control freaks: (from extreme left) Biju Jose takes part in a race in Bangalore; Harish Kukreja, aka Handbrake Harry, is part of a 50­member enthusiasts’ group.

Remote­controlled car racing revs up in the city, with new tracks, a growing number of enthusiasts, and a national championship B Y P AVITRA J AYARAMAN pavitra.j@livemint.com

···························· s 37-year-old Biju Jose offlo ad s fo ur r e mot e- or radio-controlled (RC) cars, each more than a foot long, from his luxury SUV, his three sons, aged between 5 and 9, are itching to get their hands on the controls.

But the cars are meant for Jose.

Jose, who runs a family-owned business of 82 bakeries across south India, bought his first RC car on a whim in September, thinking his sons would enjoy it—but he got hooked instead.

Since then, he has bought three more, including a Thunder Tiger Hummer that costs Rs40,000 and the much sought after Traxxas E-Revo monster truck that left him poorer by about Rs50,000. His overall investment in this newfound weekend passion, he says, has been around Rs2 lakh.

Jose is only one of many Bangaloreans to have taken to this new hobby. On 6 December, a national tournament of remotecontrolled vehicles, organized by newly formed Delhi-based event organizer RC Inc. in Bangalore, fuelled the passion of enthusiasts like him. Harish Kukreja, or

A

Handbrake Harry, part of the 50-member RC car enthusiasts’ group called the RC Bangalore Boys, says 38 cars participated in the tournament and around 250 enthusiasts turned up to watch and cheer.

Kukreja, who did not take part, is also the dealer for HPI Racing, a Japan-based manufacturer of high-performance RC cars, trucks and monster trucks.

Small, toy-grade cars cost upwards of Rs1,500 and are operated by remote control, while the relatively bigger hobby-grade cars, used for racing, are guided by radio-control transmitters that hold a steady network at long distances. The larger RC cars come with power support options of battery or nitro fuel, which costs Rs600-1,000 a litre in India, and broadly speaking, come in two variants. “On-road” cars have relatively small road clearance and are called buggies, while the “off-road” ones, called monster trucks, can be driven on rougher and bumpier terrain.

The ones in between are, conveniently, called truggies. These RC cars can cost anything between Rs15,000 and Rs1.5 lakh. The most popular brands,

the Japanese HPI Racing and Kyosho and the American Redcat, are available in India through dealers, while Thunder Tiger, a Chinese brand, is sold in retail stores. Jose bought his two Traxxas cars, each with a top speed of 80kmph, on a trip to Dubai.

Towards the end of October, an RC car enthusiast and friend of Jose’s mentioned the opening of Pitstop, a 1-acre space in JP Nagar, south Bangalore, that

High­powered vehicles can hit speeds ranging from 80­120kmph

boasts of two RC tracks and an adjoining café. “I was just beginning to understand these cars, and putting them on tracks seemed challenging. But then, how long could we drive them in the safety of our courtyard?” asks Jose, testing his car for a race organized by Pitstop.

Equipped with one “on-road” (60ftx50ft) and one “off-road” (90ftx60ft) track, Pitstop is Bangalore’s first RC track. Owner Suresh Babu, 40, is a granite stone dealer who came across the RC car phenomenon on the Internet a few months ago and sensed a business opportunity. With ancestral land at his disposal, Babu took the plunge. Constructing the “on-road” track with a tarmac surface cost him around Rs1 lakh, but it’s an investment that seems to be getting quick returns, especially since Babu also rents out a range of RC cars and even imports them on demand.

“Buying cars is an expensive

deal and people should first try their hands at the machines before investing thousands of rupees,” says Babu. He adds that renting a car with a tank of nitro fuel that runs up to 15 minutes costs Rs250. “It’s not cheap,” he admits, “but it’s better than buying a car and then figuring out if you are interested.”

“One man just came one day with a car worth Rs18,000, but later realized it just wasn’t his thing,” says Kukreja, who bought his two large-scale Baja 5B variations, each worth around Rs80,000, a year-and-a-half ago.

Enthusiasts range from ages 5 to 65, but serious drivers discourage children under 14 from driving high-power vehicles. “Most of these vehicles, anything that goes above 8.5 cc, can hit speeds ranging between 80kmph to 120kmph.

Speed needs control and parental guidance if you are very young,” says Umesh Kotramada, an importer of Kyosho cars.

The RC Bangalore Boys meet every weekend at the Palace grounds to drive their machines.

Ten or 15 people turn up to watch, and it’s not uncommon for the same people to turn up the following weekend with newly acquired cars.

It’s still early days, however.

“RC car racing is a recognized sport across the world,” says Babu, “and for us to have more car brands available and to be able to participate in international events, we have to show them we are serious.”

Kukreja is setting up his own RC track on Bannerghatta Road in Bangalore to encourage more professional racing—for his friends and him, just driving their “babies” on open grounds was becoming monotonous..

The national tournament, racers believe, helped achieve two goals: bringing the community closer in a competitive environment and showing the road ahead.

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009

L9

Business Lounge GURURAJ DESHPANDE

The serial entrepreneur Once among the world’s richest individuals, Gururaj Deshpande says India is a land of limitless potential

B Y V ENKATESHA B ABU venkatesha.b@livemint.com

··························· n a lazy, rainy Sunday afternoon in Bangalore, the only thing that would have prompted me to move out was a unique opportunity: To meet the person who, in the heady days of the dotcom revolution, became one of the richest persons of Indian origin in the world.

His net worth, at its peak exceeding $4 billion (Rs18,800 crore now), may have whittled down but his entrepreneurial zeal and his passion for technology have not ebbed. Like many Indians living abroad who prefer an acronym, US-based Gururaj Deshpande likes to be called Desh. Though his primary expertise is in IT and telecom, he is a serial entrepreneur, mentor to several profit and non-profit ventures, and a philanthropist.

With his neatly combed silver-grey hair, the clean-shaven Deshpande looks much younger than 60. Given that he is on one of his fleeting visits to India, our rendezvous on a Sunday is not surprising.

Neither is the venue—the rotunda drawing room at his brother-in-law N.R. Narayana Murthy’s house (Murthy’s wife Sudha and Deshpande’s wife Jayashree are sisters).

There is this apocryphal story of how Deshpande used to be introduced as Murthy’s brother-in-law in India, and vice versa in the US. Born in Hubli, in Karnataka, Deshpande graduated in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and went to Canada to do his master’s and PhD. He

O

Tech­tacular: For Desh, a good start is a start­up.

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

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used to be an academic before a fellow professor got him into the world of business.

Unlike Murthy, who has focused on Infosys Technologies Ltd since its start in 1981, Deshpande has started and taken public three multi-billiondollar companies.

In October, A123 Systems, of which he is the chairman, had a spectacular debut on Nasdaq, raising $438 million and trading at a 50% premium on the offer price on the day of listing. A123 develops and manufactures advanced lithium ion batteries and battery systems.

Today, Deshpande says he divides his time equally between each of his not-forprofit initiatives and his six businesses— Sandstone Capital, Sycamore Networks, A123 Systems, HiveFire, Tejas Networks and Airvana Inc. He is the chairman of the first five and an investor in the last.

His non-profit initiatives include an innovation centre at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an alumni network at IIT Madras—he is on the institute’s board as well—The Indus Entrepreneurs, the Public Health Foundation of India, Social Entrepreneurship Sandbox (an organization that helps NGOs incubate ideas) and Akshaya Patra, a meal programme for impoverished school children.

Deshpande says things have changed—India today offers more opportunities for entrepreneurship than the US. He counters my scepticism: “Look at the scale and variety of challenges which need to be addressed in the Indian market.

They are mind-boggling. While cutting-edge technology might still get done in the US, the Indian environment is conducive to entrepreneurs, if you can identify market opportunities and address them.”

He adds that unlike the late 1970s and 1980s, entrepreneurs in India now have access to angel investors, venture capital firms and mentors.

When he moved from academia in 1981, initial hiccups in entrepreneurship preceded the eventual successes. He worked for Codex Corporation, a manufacturer of modems. While

Codex profited handsomely from Deshpande’s technological expertise, he realized what his strengths were. He co-founded Coral Networks, a router developer, in 1987.

But product delays and disagreements with his financial partner forced him to quit Coral. He returned to India briefly, but decided to go back.

With most of his money gone, there were times when the family had to go without health insurance, a dangerous situation in a country where medical services are expensive.

Did he ever contemplate quitting? “It’s never easy. Those tough times taught me a lot. The key to being a successful entrepreneur is the ability to tolerate pain, face challenges, have the humility to correct oneself midway, if required, and self-belief.”

It was this innate confidence which made Deshpande start Cascade Communications six months later, in 1990. From a one-man show, he built it into a $500 million company before Ascend Communications acquired it for $3.7 billion in 1997. By then, about 72% of all Internet traffic was passing through Cascade products.

Ascend itself was eventually acquired by Lucent for $24 billion, mainly because of its Cascade portfolio.

Deshpande started Sycamore Networks next. In October 1999, when Sycamore debuted on the bourses, it had a market cap of $18 billion. His 21% shareholding in the company made him one of the richest persons in the world.

Sycamore has struggled since, and lost $35 million in the latest quarter. “The landscape changed,” Deshpande says.

“Markets changed. But Sycamore is still strong compared to some of its peers. It still has (close to) a billion dollars in cash. I am confident it will do well.”

Since the late 1990s, he has been investing in companies which either address the Indian market or have a large role to play in the country. One such, Tejas Networks, involved in optical networking, has emerged as a strong player in its segment.

Deshpande, who is the chairman of Tejas, becomes animated when he talks about the firm’s potential—it has raised $75 mil-

lion in venture funding so far.

“After petro imports, telecom equipment is another area where India imports a lot. With more than 500 million telco subscribers, the market potential in India is huge. But there are few Indian telecom equipment manufacturing companies. While Tejas is doing its bit, there is potential for several more ventures like Tejas.”

I ask him whether we will see big telecom companies such as China’s Huawei or ZTE emerge from India. “Within the last 10 years, from around a $1 billion in sales, Huawei and ZTE today would have combined sales of $30 billion. While this is impressive, those companies get tacit backing from the Chinese government. In the long run, companies that get market validation and not necessarily government support are likely to thrive better. India (the government) could do more to encourage telecom manufacturing.”

With his international experience, does he have any advice for his brother-in-law, who is launching Catamaran (the venture capital fund Murthy is starting with a Rs630 crore corpus, mainly contributed by his wife Sudha)? “We talk to each other on a regular basis but not on investments. I am sure he has his own ideas. For now, I am not looking at co-investing,” he says, smiling.

He spends a lot of time on the Deshpande Centre for Innovation at MIT, to which he contributed $20 million. “The quality of some ideas there is incredible.

They have the potential to impact society in a fundamental way and I am excited by it.”

The Akshaya Patra is another cause close to his heart. He has contributed his own money and raises funds for the foundation.

Deshpande recalls a recent event in Haiti in which “Bill (Clinton) was amazed at the scale of Akshaya Patra. We feed a million children a day (in India) and it is increasing”. The Clinton Foundation feeds around 70,000 children in Haiti.

Deshpande, who is also mentoring his son Pawan at his start-up HiveFire adds: “I want entrepreneurs to dream big.

India today is full of opportunities. The potential and possibilities are limitless.”

L10 COVER

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

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PHOTO: ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT; MODELS: RAASHI MALHOTRA, KHUSHI/ ELITE MODEL MANAGEMENT; DRESS: NITIN BAL CHAUHAN AT MUSE AND (RIGHT) FCUK; ACCESSORIES: BAG: CHARLES AND K EITH; BELT: M USE; SHOES: ALDO AND NINE WEST; LOCATION: MUSE, KALA GHODA, MUMBAI

What is the day of week you are least likely to shop? What makes the Indian man special? Why do our stores look so crowded? Lounge unravels the art and science of how we shop

SHOP TALK WOMEN TEND TO CHECK THE BILL, MEN DO NOT

YOUR SHOPPING SECRETS DECODED

B Y V EENA V ENUGOPAL veena.v@livemint.com

···························· he Indian shopper is a mystery. In the last few years, as large business houses and international retailers have set out to woo the Indian shopper, they have tried to unravel the puzzle of how we shop. Now, after a reasonable amount of testing and retesting hypotheses, they realize that most of their earlier assumptions have been turned on their heads.

The formula, that as a nation and its people get richer they would want these products, sold in this fashion at this price, simply does not hold good for India.

We are how we shop. And how we shop is a function of our past, our collective history as a nation, our economics past and present.

This is what makes us difficult to predict, the reason why we do not follow the formula. Consumer research in India unravelled that we buy in smaller lots, because our past economic life has not allowed us higher levels of disposable income. We buy around our festivals, because that’s part of how we celebrate. We buy as a family, because shopping is an outing, an avenue of entertainment, not a chore.

But the profile of the Indian shopper also details that we will not travel for more than 15 minutes to shop for our staples. We will not be blindly loyal to a store or a brand. At the end of the day, we are the most efficient value hunters in the world.

SHOP TALK

T

Venus & Mars go shopping Nowhere are gender differences as stark as they are in the shopping aisle. Indian men and women are complete opposites in the way they approach shopping, with their own set of eccentricities. Retailers hate to see a man and a woman walk in together—one impatient, feeling trapped and desperate to get it done with; the other relishing the prospect of a few hours of brows-

ing, smelling, touching, the complex mathematics of comparing prices, and loving it all. It’s a disharmonious journey, one that rarely has a happy ending.

When men walk into a supermarket, they often pick the baskets or the smaller trolleys.

Women eye large carts because they like the notion of excess capacity, in case things take a happy turn and the shelves are lined with deals. If they are shopping together, the organizational structure is fixed. The man pushes the cart, the lowergrade job, and the wife (and children) are the hunters and gatherers. Occasionally, his opinion is sought while comparing two offers. Women usually carry a list if they are shopping alone. Men walk back and forth between aisles while they decide what they want.

While buying clothes, if a man walks into the trial room, the probability of him buying something is very, very high, says Damodar Mall, group customer director of Future Group, the company that runs Big Bazaar, Pantaloons and other retail chains. If a woman walks into the trial room, it is just one step in the process. Indian stores often have a larger number of trial rooms for women. Also, there is more space in the area outside the trial rooms as women always need somebody else’s approval before buying clothes. We have to put it on, step out, twirl around, tug and have the other person say it looks

super smashing before we decide to buy it. There are also more sales assistants assigned to the women’s section.

This makes the single shopper a unique being, says Vinay Bhatia, vice-president, Shoppers Stop. “He is there to buy for sure, but he has no one to discuss things with. So when we have a single shopper, we assign a salesperson to assist him t hr o ug ho ut t he sto re . The y would move across sections, providing suggestions and advice as the single shopper has no one else to seek for opinion.”

The best shoppers are two women. They are purposeful, goad each other to spend more and they are focused. A group of more than two women is a diffused group that tends to wander about.

Space check Ever noticed how small our supermarkets are compared to those in other countries? And how crowded the checkout lines seem here, with people pressing against each other? That’s because we like it that way.

Ridiculous as it sounds, it has its rationale in the deep-rooted notion we have about space. For one, an empty store is perceived to be an unsuccessful one. If only a handful of people are shopping there, we assume that the products will not be fresh and the prices will be high. So a smaller store with the same number of shoppers makes us believe it is a better one.

Also, we are uncomfortable with the notion of large spaces. This is

SHOP TALK

perhaps historical baggage that we carry, the need to claim spaces as our own before someone else does.

While waiting at a traffic signal, if the car next to ours moves forward an inch, we move too.

“If there is more than one elbow r o o m between you and the person ahead of you in a line, it makes you uncomfortable. The space becomes a thoroughfare and you get worried that someone might jump the queue and stand there,” Mall says. So people tend to stand close to each other even when there is space.

Fashionably modest

WEEKDAY SHOPPERS ARE MOST LIKELY TO BE GROUPS OF FRIENDS MOST COMMON REASON FOR MEN TO GO GROCERY SHOPPING: THEY ARE DESIGNATED DRIVERS AVERAGE TIME SPENT BROWSING IN LANDMARK BOOKSTORE: 2 HOURS IF YOU ARE SHOPPING ALONE, YOU ARE MORE LIKELY TO GO ON A WEEK­ DAY THAN THE WEEKEND INDIA IS THE ONLY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, ACCORDING TO McKINSEY, WHERE THE SIZE OF THE MEN’S APPAREL MARKET (ORGANIZED) IS LARGER THAN THE WOMEN’S INDIANS TRAVEL MORE THAN 15 MINUTES FOR GROCERIES ONLY IF THE TOTAL SAVINGS ARE GREATER THAN THE COST OF TRANSPORT WOMEN RARELY BUY ELECTRONICS AND CONSUMER DURABLES

BY THEMSELVES

SHOP TALK

When it comes to dressing, even the urban and the more fashionable among us are more modest than we believe. While we buy and wear clothes cut to international standards, we still prefer conservative necklines. Marks & Spencer, the international retailer, customizes women’s tops in India to reflect this.

Though it offers its whole range here, the V-neck tops with a higher neckline sell more than a really deep-cut V. “We also sell a lot of tops with buttons in the front so that the wearer can customize the length of the neckline to what they are comfortable with,” says Adam Colton, head of merchandise, M&S Reliance, the joint venture between Marks & Spencer and Reliance Retail.

Colour­me­plenty Who would want to wear the same navy, grey, black every day? So, how many colour options do we like? 8? 12? 15?

The answer is well over 30. And

THE McKINSEY SURVEY SAYS INDIAN SHOPPERS ARE THE LEAST LOYAL TO A STORE. THE REPORT STUDIED SHOPPERS IN BRAZIL, RUSSIA, INDIA, CHINA AND SOUTH AFRICA AND COMPARED THEM WITH SHOPPERS IN THE US & FRANCE FOR FASHION­ ORIENTED STORES, BLUE INTERIORS ARE ASSOCIATED WITH MORE FAVOURABLE EVALUATIONS, MARGINALLY GREATER EXCITEMENT AND HIGHER PURCHASE INTENTIONS

The sari factor: We love low­rise jeans, like the pair actor Gul Panag is wearing.

YOGEN SHAH

SHOP TALK

that’s for menswear.

M&S stores sell polo neck T-shirts for men in 30 colours in India, six internationally. While there are certain predominant colours every season, the Indian shopper likes to see options in all his favourite shades. If he has 10 shirts at home, his 11th shirt would have to be in an 11th colour lest people think he wears the same blue T-shirt every Friday to office.

The impact of the loyalty card is slightly lower if it comes free. If you pay for the card, you might as well handcuff yourself to the store and throw away the keys. You will always go back to the store to make your planned purchases—a lipstick that you need to buy anyway may as well earn you some points—and end up buying a few other things.

You cook, but my way While we may have begun experimenting with Vietnamese food and absinthe when we dine out, at home we want our dal cooked to the exacting standards set by our mothers. Few might have the time to wash and chop vegetables, but please don’t tell us how much ginger to add in the bhuna masala. “Our experience is that the shopper would like us to take away some of the negative labour, but they will not engage with us on taste,” Mall says.

So we are likely to go shopping and buy chopped and packed vegetables, but try selling us a packet of ready-to-eat chana masala, and we turn our shopping carts around. “What the Indian customer is really telling us is: Modernize the form of what you are giving us, but keep the taste specific,” Mall adds.

One for all, all in one Ever wondered why bookstores in India don’t sell only books? They always have an assortment of music, toys and stationery. The answer to that question is the great Indian family. Even when we go to buy books, we rarely go alone. Once inside, the spouse who is not interested in reading and the children wander off. So bookstores in India have had to find space to keep them occupied.

Enter music and toys. “On an average, a customer browses for 2 hours in our stores. So it is imperative that the people accompanying him/her also have something to keep them occupied,” says Madhu M., head of merchandising, Landmark.

Brands online

Centrepiece The highest selling fit for women’s jeans in India is the low–rise waist. You might rationalize that low-waist jeans teamed with a kurti is the best way to camouflage a muffin (the little excess bit of the stomach that falls over the belt). But the real reason is historical: Indian women, traditionally sari wearers, are comfortable displaying their midriffs.

However, exposing legs is taboo. None of our traditional attire allows any display of hamstring, and horror of horrors, knees! Organized apparel retailers sell very little quantities of skirts and shorts.

Deep pockets The single most significant feature that clinches a shirt deal is not the colour, fabric or fit but the presence of a pocket. In most Western markets, shirts and T-shirts are sold without pockets because men wear jackets over them. In India, since everyday dressing does not involve jackets, it is mandatory that shirts come with pockets, so there is a place to keep your pen, spectacles and what have you.

Bin there done that The Indian shopper loves pulling things out, nonchalantly disturbing a neat arrangement.

It is a throwback to the bazaars where the merchandise was placed in heaps. Though placing bins with products is an international practice, more product categories are sold through bins in India. Shopping is about hunting, according to the Indian psyche. You hunt for the best value, the best piece. So the idea of pulling things out until you find the perfect product appeals hugely to us. Shopping is also more rewarding when it is tactile.

Double bill: (above) Two women make the best shoppers; people who buy denims are most likely to buy a pair of sunglasses. your price offering,” he adds.

The reason we shop more frequently for fresh produce is because it is only in the last 25 years or so that most urban families have had refrigerators. Even today, the power infrastructure across the country is unreliable.

We have a deep-seated suspicion of storing things and because of our frugal past, a morbid fear of being forced to waste. Yet we do not trust pre-packaged foods. A McKinsey report of September 2008 about the Indian shopper, The Great Indian Bazaar, says 65% of Indians would never buy pre-packaged food. Compare this with 24% in China and 6% in the US.

SHOP TALK

Plus one What is the product you are most likely to buy when you get a pair of jeans? It’s not a shirt or socks, it’s sunglasses. Shoppers Stop intensely scrutinized the shopping habits of its 1.45 million loyalty card holders, the First Citizen club members. They analysed each bill and ran the numbers to see the correlation. “Our data reveals that people who bought denims were highly likely to buy a pair of sunglasses. So now we have put these two sections together,” says Bhatia.

The other, more reasonable, correlation can be seen in salwar-kurta sets and ethnic footwear. The numbers also suggest that women who buy Western wear or office wear are more likely to buy cosmetics.

Catch ’em young Children in department stores are a Indian phenomenon. Indian retailers love children because the shopper would invariably buy a few things that were not on the shopping list. Pester power wins over all. If the children are below 5, the parents decide what to buy.

Otherwise, store assistants are trained to show options to the children themselves and sideline

the parents. By the time they are 10, children have opinions and influence parents.

“The involvement of children in the shopping process is ideal for the customer and the shopkeeper,” says Mall. “We now see children who are so aware of products that they have logical and well-informed opinions,” Bhatia says. When a group of teenagers go shopping, they are likely to browse more, try on and buy more. They have a cap on bill sizes though, as most of them pay cash and do not have access to credit cards. Retailers use this to pitch, for instance, feature-heavy, yet cheaper versions of mobile phones and accessories.

The tight leash of loyalty The loyalty card is a minefield for the Indian shopper. If you sign up for one, chances are you feel subconsciously tied down to the store. You visit more often, buy more things and run up a higher bill value. “The average ticket size (value of the bill) is higher by over double-digit percentage between the First Citizen and the regular shopper,” says Bhatia. On an average, a regular card holder would buy 2.5 items per bill in the store, while it is over 3 for a First Citizen.

SUDHANSHU/MINT

Fresh take Grocery shopping, in the developed world, is a weekly or fortnightly activity. “In India, people stock up fresh products only for two days,” says K. Venkatramani, chief marketing officer, Bharti Retail, which runs the Easy Day chain of stores. “Also, the Indian consumer knows the prices of about 150 products. They are able to compare prices and are constantly evaluating. So it is essential that you be consistent with

Life’s colourful: Indian men get a choice of up to 30 colours in polo T­shirts. Globally, it’s about five.

Metros today give access to most big brands available anywhere in the world. But how do we buy our favourite Ralph Lauren T-shirt or Tommy Hilfiger briefs if we happen to live in Kohima or Port Blair? Online, of course. “A lot of our customers are spread across 660 cities in India. They come online purely to access the brands that are not available in their town,” says Deepa Thomas, senior manager, eBay India. Though internationally people who buy on eBay prefer to bid in the auctions, in India customers prefer to buy at a fixed price. Also, the predominant Indian online buyer is aged 20-40, unlike the developed markets, where they tend to be older.

Designs on you Designing a store in India is a bit of a nightmare. “In India we have had to think differently with some aspects of the store experience.

For example, creating wider aisles to accommodate larger groups of shoppers at one time, because many people in India like to shop with the whole family,” says David Blair, managing director, South Asia, Fitch, which provides design consultancy for retail stores.

Our preference for a wide colour palette goes beyond our wardrobe. “Indians’ love of colour is well known and we have found that when we have brought concepts to India from elsewhere we have had to brighten up the whole experience to appeal to local tastes,” Blair says.

Pick it or nick it The annual Global Retail Theft Barometer ranked India right on top, for the second year in a row.

Shrinkage—the loss of goods in retail stores—is at 3.2% of turnover. The most stolen items in our stores are electronics, cosmetics, alcohol, apparel and jewellery.

Some of the simple ways to steal include cutting off the electronic tag while in the changing room, wearing multiple layers of clothing and walking out, and pocketing small items of cosmetics. But the higher numbers occur when customers collude with retail employees. Right under the unblinking video camera, the employee does not actually scan all the items that are bagged.

We can’t help it, we just love a steal!

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009

Travel PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

RISHAD SAAM MEHTA

LAPLAND

Santa lives here For a Christmas with the big man and reindeers, there’s only one place to go

B Y R ISHAD S AAM M EHTA ···························· octor D’mello’s Dormitory for the Deeply Demented,” exclaimed a well-wisher when I told him about my Christmas-in-the-Arctic-Circle plan, “that is your ideal destination for Christmas, considering the condition of your upper storey.”

“But Santa Claus is there and I have been good, so I’m going to collect,” I explained.

He gave me a worried look, no doubt thinking that the only place I should be headed for the holidays was a padlocked, padded cell, and then tried to convince me again. “Have you seriously lost it? You’ll freeze and come back frost-bitten.”

But shying away from extremes has never been my game and I walked out of Rovaniemi’s little airport on a crisp December evening with snow crunching underfoot. In that first instant, I knew exactly what J.K. Rowling had in mind for a dementor’s kiss.

Every BTU of heat seemed to be sucked out of me in a second, even the moisture in my breath

Come all ye faithful: (clockwise from top) Rudolph the reindeer’s sleigh; Santa delivering gifts; an ice restaurant near Rovaniemi.

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GRAPHICS

BY

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

froze and irritated the back of my throat.

“Hello and welcome,” said Steffi, who was there from Lapland Safaris to greet me. She was snug behind layers of Gore-Tex, nylon and polyester. “We’ll get you into your Arctic kit and you’ll soon forget about the cold and start enjoying Lapland in the winter.”

Coming from a country where woollies are pulled out with much fanfare when the mercury falls below 15 degrees Celsius, most of us would consider prancing about outdoors at the same figure on the

wrong side of zero maniacal. But, believe me, it’s all in the mind.

Once I was in my Arctic gear, the cold lost its icy edge.

It was a clear day and, during this time of the year, the sun skirts the horizon, rather than popping over and disappearing under it. So daylight hours are a long extended moment of dawn, the night sky is a hue of indigo blue and the land glows, thanks to residual light reflecting off the snow everywhere. Rovaniemi is the capital of Finnish Lapland, a village that grew up to be a town. It got its first traffic lights

last year and the residents thought they were an unnecessary extravagance.

Once in my hotel room, in a fell about 30km from the airport, I was all set to toast myself before the roaring fire in the cosy lounge when I heard the roar of engines starting up. I rushed outside and, in the quick diminishing light saw them: a line-up of Lynx skimobiles—or skidoos, as they are popularly called—their idling engines making them quiver like beasts impatient to get going.

A group of German tourists was about to set off for an evening snowmobile safari through the fell and forested hillsides. “Would you like to join us?” asked Steffi.

Would I ever? In a flash I was in my Arctic suit on my skidoo, part of the nine-vehicle convoy.

Reading the lust for speed quite correctly in our eyes, Steffi emphatically laid out a few ground rules: We would proceed

Blue­nosed skidoo: Mehta on his skimobile.

in a single file. There would be no racing. No overtaking either. But she set such a blistering pace that soon the forested hillsides with their snow-laden birches were throbbing with the throaty exhaust notes of the 400 cc Rotax engines. We zigzagged through forested paths and twisty trails, up and down the white hillsides, pausing only to let wild reindeer herds cross the path. Midway, we stopped for a cup of hot berry juice around a fire. Lest we forget where we were, we were treated to a splendid display of the Aurora Borealis, the famed Northern Lights.

The Kemijoki river, which runs past Rovaniemi, morphs into a frozen highway for skidoos in winter, complete with signposts and speed limits. The next morning I set out on one with Steffi as my pillion towards Santa Claus Village, 34.2km away. By now I had quite got the hang of the skidoo and could zip through narrow trails with snowdrifts on either side without lifting off the throttle.

So close to Christmas, Santa’s village was a flurry of activity, with decorated Christmas trees at every corner and the merry ambient sound of sleigh bells. Elves, or staff, were furiously sorting mail.

A letter addressed to “Santa Claus, Arctic Circle”, dropped in any post box around the world, will find its way here. No surprise then that Santa’s post office receives up to 32,000 letters a day in the run-up to Christmas. Every letter with a return a d d r e s s i s answered.

Still, scores of children were here in person to see the big man for themselves. While their mums shopped for official Santa Claus merchandise—no freebies here—and the fathers eyed the elves, very pretty rosy-cheeked

Finnish girls, we lined up with them to go and meet Father Christmas himself in his study.

Now I knew—as I have no doubt some of them did too—that it’s just a regular guy dressed up as Santa Claus in there, but the creaking footboards and the cavelike atmosphere allow quite a willing suspension of disbelief.

Excitement peaked as we finally filed inside the warm study presided over by a Santa exuding exemplary good cheer. Rugs and bookshelves and an antique telephone made for the perfect setting for the large man with the flowing beard and furry moccasins, as dozens of wildly excited children made a beeline to be photographed with him.

But it’s getting on to Christmas, and so Santa had only limited time for his faithfuls. On to, then, his nine reindeer: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder, Blitzen and, of course, Rudolf, him of the red nose, at Konttaniemi Reindeer Farm, 14km away, by the Ounasjoki river. After glasses of hot berry juice—cranberry, blueberry, cloudberry, lingonberry are very popular in Finland—we could finally try our luck with the reindeer sleighs. I waited till I was out of earshot and then tried my deepest imitation of “Ho, ho, ho, up you go”. But try as I might, not a single reindeer went airborne.

My next few days in and around Rovaniemi, were spent visiting the stunning Artikum museum and going on a husky safari. By now the cold had become inconsequential, even though at times it did touch -20 degrees Celsius. I spent the jolliest time of the year in the neighbourhood of the season’s central figure and returned home feeling warm inside and with all my extremities intact.

Dr D’mello’s dorm can wait a couple more years.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

CHILD­FRIENDLY RATING

Perfect for children of all ages.

TRAVEL L13

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM COX

FOOT NOTES | SUMANA MUKHERJEE

Tripping on Cyprus The Mediterranean island on the crossroads of three continents is perfect for exploring myths

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arnaca, Kition, Limassol, Paphos, the Troodos mountains.

If all these names sound Greek to you, don’t worry—that’s only normal in Cyprus, which has been under Hellenic influence since

ancient times. Touted as “the European destination closest to India”, Cyprus has just begun tapping the Indian market, wooing travellers with a seven-night/ eight-day package that takes them to all the places mentioned and then some more.

Expect a mélange of the East and West in this Mediterranean island nation. Its long history reveals the imprint of various sea-faring people, including the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Romans and, much later, the British.

STIC

All aboard: MS Amsterdam.

Set sail at cruise control F

rom what we know, the Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas, the largest ship ever to sail the earth, isn’t coming to India any time soon. But if your mind is drifting towards a cruise for an early-2010 break, you could sign up for Holland America Line’s MS Amsterdam, which sails from Mumbai to Hong Kong on 12 March. Ports of call include Port Kelang, Malaysia; Sihanoukville, Cambodia; and Halong Bay, Vietnam.

Ski spree

Experience the Culinary Arts Centre, a demo kitchen for gourmet presentations; the Queen’s Show Lounge featuring vocalists, dancers and illusionists; and the Crow’s Nest, a nightclub that transforms into a 270-degree viewing station by day. Ticket prices start from $153 per person per day and are available across all STIC Travel Group offices. For details and reservations, call 011-46206600 or email halindia@sticgroup.com KUONI HOLIDAYS

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or all the thrills they offer, skidoos are the elementary option. The real thing when it comes to travelling over snow remains skiing. And though Kashmir is becoming increasingly popular as a ski-holiday destination, there’s nothing to quite beat the romance of the Swiss Alps for this winter sport. Now, Kuoni Holidays has launched ski-holiday packages in its home territory of Switzerland, complete with accommodation in private chalets (choose from 17 catered chalets and four self-catered ones), champagne breakfasts, personal chefs, massages, private pools and jacuzzis—not to forget ski lessons from a professional.

The top of the line accommodation is at the six-bedroom Chalet Septiéme Ciel, on the Savoleyres side of Verbier, which comes with its four in-house staff, including a private chef. For chalets more than 5 minutes away from the town centre, there’s a chauffeur service to take guests to and from

Snowscape: The Alps make a perfect ski­holiday destination. the slopes and nightclubs.

Packages start from Rs46,200 per person per week, inclusive of a seven-night stay, dedicated service, ski-pass delivery, hot beverages and wines, beers and soft drinks et al. For more details, log on to www.kuoni.in Write to lounge@livemint.com

Lounge blogs at blogs.livemint.com/livelounge

Cyprus Delights, the package being sold by Cox and Kings, covers the ninth century St Lazarus Cathedral and the Hala Soultan Tekke mosque in Larnaca, the Makarios Byzantine Museum and the Kykko monastery in the Troodos mountains, and the stunning seascapes—including the Baths of Aphrodite—of Paphos and Limassol.

The package costs $529 (around Rs26,000) per person on a twin-sharing basis. Contact Cox and Kings on 022-22709100 for details.

Slice of history: The Aggeloktisti Church in Larnaca, Cyprus.

&

KINGS

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009

Books THE DOGS AND THE WOLVES | IRÈNE NÉMIROVSKY

POSTSCRIPT

The agony and ecstasy The latest translation of this writer’s work shows her mastery over her craft B Y C HANDRAHAS C HOUDHURY ···························· he life of Russo-French writer Irène Némirovsky had an arc as dramatic and tragic as that of a character in a perfectly crafted but disturbing story. Born in Ukraine in 1903 to a prosperous Jewish family, she was taken to France when a teenager, and garnered immediate acclaim in her 20s for a number of precociously accomplished novels.

Némirovsky’s family had fled Russia because of the persecution of Jews there, but her ethnic identity was to continue to haunt her.

When France fell to Hitler’s army in World War II, Némirovsky was captured and sent to a concentration camp, and in Auschwitz in 1942 the career of this brilliant writer was snuffed out. Many decades would pass before her literary reputation was resurrected. But since the success of Suite Francaise (2004), an ambitious but unfinished novel belatedly discovered in a suitcase, there has been a Némi-

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AFP

Portrait: Némirovsky’s fame as an author got a fresh lease after the posthumous publication of her unfinished novel Suite Francaisein 2004.

The Dogs and the Wolves: Chatto & Windus, 216 pages, £12.99 (around Rs1,000). rovsky novel brought out in English almost every year by her able translator Sandra Smith.

The most distinctive characteristic of Némirovsky’s work is the epic scope of her stories and the extreme compression and dramatic precision of her novelistic method. Though her books span the events of many years—All Our Worldly Goods, for instance, begins before World War I and ends after the second—they are rarely more than 200 pages long.

They dive in and out of life.

In her newly translated novel, The Dogs and the Wolves, the main characters of the story are followed all the way from childhood to maturity, but without any attempt at a forced continuity. It is perfectly normal for Némirovsky to begin one of her short, beautifully composed chapters (composed both in the sense of “crafted”, as well as in the sense of poised, serene) by saying, “Two years later, Harry was waiting for Laurence at...”

These gaps and jumps create, paradoxically, a sense of roominess in the narrative; we repeatedly experience a sense of time expanding and collapsing.

Literary novelists are often accused of holding the pleasures of plot in contempt. But Némirovsky is one of those writers who revels in the heat and light of a good story. One of her novels is titled Fire in the Blood, and that might serve as an accurate description of her storytelling

instincts, which is to track, and indeed to some degree venerate, the lives of intensely passionate, driven people.

The Dogs and the Wolves follows the childhood and youth of three characters. Ada Sinner and her cousin Ben are brought up in a ghetto in a city in Ukraine; their distant relative, Harry, grows up in a gilded palace in the same city.

Between them, these three characters represent the dogs and the wolves of the story, the word “dogs” here standing for cultured, well-bred, sleek, comfortable (Harry), and “wolves” for wild, dirty, disturbing (Ada, Ben).

When their paths cross for the first time as children, Harry recoils at the sight of the other two, while Ada instantly falls in love with this forbiddingly unattainable boy. Némirovsky follows the story of the tangles into which the three cousins are catapulted, the powerful pulsing and jousting of their respective natures, into their adulthood and into Paris, where they all end up.

Every page of The Dogs and the Wolves is marked by the writer’s acute eye for the complexities of human relationships. When Harry falls in love with a young French heiress, his face, we are told, “carried that demanding yet humble expression...that was unique to love as yet acknowledged”. When Harry asks Ada why she does not seem to fear losing him after waiting for so many years to win him, she replies, speaking of how she has always imagined him by her side and in this sense always possessed him: “I invented you, my love. You are much more than my lover. You are my creation.”

Némirovsky’s characters are marked by the burning intensity of their need and the scale of their dreaming, and this is what, alongside the intensity of the narrating voice itself, makes her novels so hypnotically attractive.

Chandrahas Choudhury is the author of Arzee the Dwarf.

Write to lounge@livemint.com IN SIX WORDS An ode to driven, passionate people

A PACK OF LIES | URMILA DESHPANDE

Mother to mother Adolescent sex, a towering mother, motherhood—this is grown­up chick lit B Y S UMANA M UKHERJEE ···························· coming-of-age novel has become something of a rite of passage for debuting Indian writers in English. Which is all very well, except that going by the oeuvre, everyone growing up in this country over the past 40 years has led the same life. Consequently, we are being treated to the same story till we have sexual awakenings and dalliances with drugs coming out of our ears.

So yes, Urmila Deshpande’s debut novel, A Pack of Lies, checks all the boxes: aloof mother, absent father, adolescent sex and a superneedy protagonist that makes you glad your own teenage is behind

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you. Simultaneously, it makes you wish for a time when storylines didn’t echo author bios so closely.

Consider this: “Urmila Deshpande lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with her family. Modelling, photography, editing and motherhood prepared her to write.” Replace the author’s name with that of her protagonist, and you pretty much have a summary of the book.

With no surprises in the story, it all boils down to the technique, and that’s where Deshpande scores. Spurning the conventional chapter break-up and adopting a non-chronological, daubing style, the author achieves a racy narrative. The unpretentious style works well for the chaotic life she charts: There’s a candour in the wild child episodes of the hash hunt in Manali—the book unfolds largely against the backdrop of the advertising world in the Mumbai of the 1980s, what did you expect—and the unapolo-

:

A Pack of Lies: Tranquebar, 291 pages, Rs295. getic man-hopping, but… And it’s a big but.

Ginny lives through multiple relationships, modelling success, a career switch-over behind the camera, riots, police raids, reunions with long-lost sisters, gruesome parental secrets, motherhood and much therapy, yet she remains untouched and unchanged from first page to last.

Her friends have been replaced by family, but in essence she remains

the little girl looking for love.

This major flaw could have something to do with the author’s—and, by extension, the protagonist’s—refusal to look Ginny’s mother in the eye. Most of Ginny’s issues are born in this thorny relationship, yet it is “resolved” in the most predictable fashion ever, when Ginny is about to become a mother herself. In contrast to the early scenes, when their confrontations—or the lack of them—touch raw chords, this sudden thaw towards the end undermines the very core of the book. In particular, the scene by the death bed, when difficult daughters encounter their mother’s fans and see a whole new side to their terror figure, has been, if you’ll pardon the expression, done to death.

But perhaps that’s making heavy weather of a book that, for all intents and purposes, reads like grown-up chick lit. Deshpande can be fun, fairly gripping reading if you don’t look deep—and that’s exciting news for her publishers.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

LAKSHMI CHAUDHRY

DO YOU MISS THE PAPER?

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eff Bezos has built a machine that marks a cultural revolution,” writes Jacob Weisberg in a breathless Newsweek column that apologizes for being “irksomely enthusiastic about my cool new literature delivery system”, as in Kindle, Amazon.com’s wireless reading device. “Enthusiastic” is an understatement for what follows. “The Kindle 2 signals that after a happy, 550-year union, reading and printing are getting separated,” Weisberg grandly declares. “It tells us that printed books, the most important artefacts of human civilization, are going to join newspapers and magazines on the road to obsolescence.” No need for fascists to throw our books in the bonfire; we’ll soon be doing it for them.

So are you ready to Kindle? The international edition is now available in India for the low, low price of $279 (around Rs13,000).

Add the sales tax, shipping and import duty, and you end up paying $405 for the privilege of sending the printing press to its tree-hating, pre-digital, Luddite grave. As for literary snobs wrinkling their noses in their parchment-lined ivory towers, Amazon.com will have you know (video testimonials available!) Kindle’s most fervent supporters include Toni Morrison, Michael Lewis, Neil Gaiman and—hold your breath—James Patterson. No word on the Really Big Names, i.e. the likes of Ondaatje, Amis or Roth. The odds are that in most cases authorial narcissism will prevail over principle.

Not all have succumbed to the siren call of Kindle. Nicholson Baker penned a 6,000-word polemic in The New Yorker bemoaning the visuals, or lack thereof. “(Kindle’s font) Monotype Caecilia was grim and Calvinist; it had a way of reducing everything to arbitrary heaps of words,” Baker writes of his experience, “You get the words, yes, and sometimes pictures, after a fashion. Photographs, charts, diagrams, foreign characters, and tables don’t fare so well on the little grey screen.” Purchase an e-textbook on oncology and you may never learn to identify a tumour.

RAMIN TALAIE/BLOOMBERG

Fast read: The Kindle has been endorsed by Toni Morrison.

A well-loved book offers many pleasures, tactile, aesthetic and emotional. Downloading some text on Kindle can never match the unalloyed pleasure of a well-loved object that can please by its presence. The mere sight of the 1924 edition of R.G. Collingwood’s Speculum Mentis on my bookshelf makes me happy. In Ex Libris, Anne Fadiman describes her family’s love for books as “carnal”, less concerned with form than content: “To us, a book’s words were holy, but the paper, cloth, cardboard, glue, thread, and ink that contained them were a mere vessel, and it was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated.” To separate a book entirely from its vessel, however, is another matter. Fadiman is no fan of Kindle, and is one of the few who hopes her books will never be offered in an e-format. Then again Fadiman has likely never wandered into an Indian bookstore, a bibliophile’s seventh circle of hell. Finding an author or title in the fiction aisle is nothing short of a miracle. Books are shelved with blithe disregard for genre: Look, there’s Mary Higgins Clark cuddling up to J.M. Coetzee in the literature section. The good stuff is always missing or out of stock, but lovers of Patterson, Robert Ludlum or Agatha Christie need never fear. There are always at least three copies of everything they ever wrote.

There’s no better cure for my inner Luddite than a trip to the local Crossword store. Kindle may not be a perfect or even adequate substitute for the beloved book, but I’d rather curl up with a good novel displayed in “Kindle grey” than have to make do with another edition of Jason Bourne’s adventures.

Write to Lakshmi at postscript@livemint.com

FREE VERSE | CHANDRAHAS CHOUDHURY

If I Should Let Every Feeling If I should let every feeling show And never myself to myself keep I should leave myself with nowhere to go My door being open while I sleep.

If my nature knows nor day nor night Is swiftly sized as soon as seen Keeps its colour in the changing light It asks for trouble from the human mean.

No—I should this ungated house extend, Build by breaking, fence the word, blast the line— Perplex myself, and thus myself defend From sunlight. I’ll be less, but more will be mine.

In that new room let there a mirror be— And let my reflection there—a stranger see.

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009

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Culture PHOTOGRAPHS

ART

BY

HARIKRISHNA KATRAGADDA/MINT

Evergreen: (left) Krishna Shistai is available with Ashok Agarwal; a Ravi Varma­inspired figurine at the Neemrana store.

Long live the king New buyers with new tastes still covet Ravi Varma prints, which have been in demand for over a century now

Mixed media: A Dampati (couple) figurine, inspired

by Ravi Varma’s oleographs, at the Neemrana store.

B Y H IMANSHU B HAGAT himanshu.b@livemint.com

···························· aja Ravi Varma (1848-1906) is India’s original pop artist—he pioneered mass reproduction of art in the country and, fittingly, was its first artist with a “mass market” appeal. A hundred years later, he is still very much in vogue. Exhibitions of his works are held often, and books on him and his paintings seem to come out with unerring regularity—celebrated director Ketan Mehta has even made an as yet unreleased Hindi film, titled Rang Rasiya, based on his life. The latest example of his popularity is the recently published book The Painter: A Life of Ravi Varma by journalist Deepanjana Pal. While the subject of Ravi Varma’s paintings were usually traditional—Hindu gods and goddesses; scenes from the Ramayan, Mahabharat and classical literary texts such as Shakuntala—he is known for having introduced European-style realism when depicting them. And he is even better known for having introduced to India the technology for making oleographs (defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “a print textured to resemble an oil painting”). The different presses he set up in the latter half of the 19th century mass-produced oleographs of his oil paintings.

These days, more than a century after his death, a new generation of collectors, who might not have the means to buy an original work of contemporary art, can still acquire an authentic Ravi Varma—his oleographs usually sell for Rs500-20,000. They have been gaining steadily in value over the past two decades, are relatively affordable and still available in the market.

Aman Nath, art collector and co-proprietor of the Neemrana chain of hotels, whose Neemrana shop in Delhi’s Khan Market sells Ravi Varma’s oleographs, calls the growing interest in these a manifestation of “glocalization”. As the post-liberalization, confident Indian goes increasingly global, he is also developing a new awareness and taste for his heritage.

Nath began buying Ravi Varma oleographs 30 years ago, when “calendar art was something you only found hung in servants’ quarters”. At the time, he says, he paid “Rs15 for the big ones, and Rs5 the small ones”.

Among the few dealers in Delhi who sell Ravi Varma oleographs is Ashok Agarwal—though Agarwal, who restores and sells antique furniture, sees himself more as a collector than a dealer in oleographs.

He would come across the prints while scouting for furniture in old houses in Gujarat and Rajasthan and buy them. He says buyers in the Capital rely on word of mouth on where to find them.

Agarwal’s collection of oleographs, complete with disintegrating frames of seemingly the same vin-

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tage, include some classic Ravi Varma prints such as Krishna Shistai—the original oil painting is on display at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; it depicts the episode in Mahabharat where Krishna is being insulted and threatened by Duryodhan in the court of the Kauravs, where he has gone as an envoy of the Pandavs. Showing a print of the seminude apsara Tilottama, Agarwal remarks that “sensuous” subjects tend to fetch more than prints of gods and goddesses.

Over the years, Agarwal has developed quite an appreciation for Ravi Varma the painter, as well as Ravi Varma the professional, who had the vision to import German machinery and hire a German manager to run it. He draws attention to at least five shades of red in the cascading folds of a woman’s sari, each shade depicting sunlight being deflected at a different angle.

In another oleograph, Arjuna Subhadra, he points to the willing coyness in Subhadra’s downcast eyes. Buyers at the time who could afford to pay more demanded embellishments in their prints says Agarwal, showing oleographs where zari trimming and gota have been stuck on to the subjects’ attire.

Agarwal points to the growing interest in arts among the young, more of whom now have disposable income and better houses.

Oleographs are a good buy for them as they are within their budget, and are old as well as undeniably genuine. “(Original) Ravi Varma’s paintings go for crores,” says Sanjiv Jain of RS Books and Prints, which operates out of a house behind the South Extension market in New Delhi. “For the collector, (an oleograph) is the cheapest Ravi Varma you can get a hold of.” According to Jain, an oleograph’s going rate depends on four factors—the size of the print, its rarity, its subject and its condition.

Until seven years ago, he says, you could get one for a few hundred rupees, but then demand shot up. The jump in prices was

part of a larger trend. “The years 1998-2008 saw an extended boom in the art market,” observes Jain, who deals primarily in antiquarian books, but actively began collecting Ravi Varma oleographs 15 years ago.

His buyers are usually wealthy Indians, many in their 30s and 40s.

Until 2007, a significant percentage of the buyers was “small businessmen” who bought only to resell the prints in future at a profit. For them the Ravi Varma brand was, and still is, a sure bet. As Jain explains, “The number of oleo-

graphs is limited and the number of buyers is going up—naturally, demand can only go up.”

Jain’s buyers come from all over India, not just Delhi—places such as Jaipur, Chandigarh, Pune and Hyderabad. He recalls an NRI buyer, who he says was “south Indian” and couldn’t have been more than 20 years old. The young man, who impressed Jain with his knowledge, bought six oleographs for around Rs80,000.

Jain dismisses fears of fakes floating around in what is an unregulated market that oper-

ates on trust. It would be hard to fake the paper quality of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he says. And since oleograph technology has become obsolete, making a fake wouldn’t be worth the returns.

A more germane concern is their preservation. Jain says that mounting them on acid-free mount boards, air-tight framing, avoiding direct sunlight and repacking them—i.e, pasting them with acid-free gum on to handmade, acid-free Japanese paper lining—does the trick.

L16 CULTURE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

ART

In hindsight IMAGES COURTESY CHEMOULD PRESCOTT ROAD

GALLERY

A century after Gandhi wrote ‘Hind Swaraj’, five photographers reflect on the state of the republic

B Y H IMANSHU B HAGAT himanshu.b@livemint.com

···························· igures from the past whose ideas and message stand the test of time are christened “great”. By this criteria—and beyond the Indian state’s statue-building and roadnaming drive over the last 60 years—the Father of our nation seems to qualify eminently.

While non-violent satyagraha and universal brotherhood appeal to everyone, some of Mahatma Gandhi’s more “kooky” ideas about machines, factories, khadi and village republics seem a little less outlandish in the age of climate change and persisting poverty on a massive scale.

No wonder then that a hundred years after it was first published in 1909, his book Hind Swaraj continues to provoke discussion and debate—and also gain steadily in readership as well as appreciation for containing some of the ideas that form the foundations of our republic.

Shortly after he turned 40, Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj while sailing from London to South Africa, outlining in brief his basic beliefs and philosophy. Gandhi always saw his life as a work in progress and consequently never shied away from changing his opinion even if it contradicted something he had said or believed earlier. Nonetheless, a couple of decades after he wrote Hind Swaraj, he said he stood by every word in that slender volume; and it is now widely accepted as a more or less definitive primer on Gandhian thought and philosophy.

Chemould Prescott Road gallery in Mumbai is marking the centennial of the book’s publication by organizing a show of works by five photographers selected by writer and critic Ranjit Hoskote. He calls the show “an extended meditation

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on Gandhi’s continuing relevance” and has chosen the photographers because they have “mixed practices”—i.e. their field of activity extends beyond photography to include other art forms, and also embraces concerns of larger public good in the form of advocacy, writing and “strong and emphatic political commitments”.

The show is, then, an exercise in stocktaking—where do we as a people stand today, a hundred years after Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj; and where do we as a nation stand today, 60 years after we gained Swaraj (self-rule). It is titled Detours because, as Hoskote explains, “the history of post-colonial India is not a linear progression…and in a roundabout way comes back to Gandhi’s questions.” “(This) is a historical exhibition, both in the choice of its subject and in its treatment,” he adds pointing out that most of

Gandhi said, ‘My life is my work.’ We have lost some of that personal ethics.

Ravi Agarwal Artist

His story: (clockwise from above) Two images from the Allahabad series by Singh; Bhagat Singh, a poster designed by Rahman for Sahmat; and from the Television series by Jodha. the works on display are not new and represent “long term commitments by the artists”. There are Dayanita Singh’s photographs of Anand Bhawan—the grand ancestral home of the Nehru family in Allahabad that has become a latter-day pilgrimage site; and there are Ram Rahman’s posters and collages, which trace some of the strands that have defined India in the years since independence.

Rahman’s father, the architect Habib Rahman, was among those hand-picked by Nehru to give expression to his vision of India, and his mother was the Kathak dancer Indrani Rahman.

His parents, he says, were a part of “Nehru’s renaissance generation”, and he a product of that generation. The collages juxtapose images of buildings designed by his father in the 1950s and 1960s with those showing the same buildings in their less-than-pristine state today. To him they represent “the dying of the dream”.

There is little overt history in Ravi Agarwal’s and Samar Jodha’s photographs—they are more about today’s India, capturing both its squalor and its enterprise. The history lies in the

show’s context—Hoskote calls their works, and those of the other three artists, “position papers on the republic”.

In a set of three images titled Scene of Crime, Agarwal depicts his quest for three very Gandhian ideas of “truth, knowing and peace”—though there is no way of telling that from the photos which have an abstract air about them. “I have (always) been driven by a sense of personal location, personal ethics

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

···························· ellist Saskia Rao-de Haas plays Raga Bhimpalasi for us in the music room she shares with her husband Shubhendra Rao, an acclaimed sitarist and a protégé of Pandit Ravi Shankar.

An electronic tanpura accompanies her, but that’s ambient: The Raos wake up to it and turn it off only when they retire for the night. Seated on a duree (mat) in her suburban Delhi apartment, under a framed portrait of the sarod player Ustad Alauddin Khan, de Haas seems to belie her Dutch roots despite her chestnut brown hair.

The notes of the highly evolved

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Bhimpalasi are the centrepiece of de Haas’ first solo album, which she has just finished recording. It embodies 15 years of work—the years since her introduction to the raga tradition. The hour-long album will be released in India and Europe early next year by a record label that she is reluctant to disclose at this stage.

De Haas’ story is that of a girl from a small village, Abcoude in Holland, who has taken to Hindustani classical music not just as a profession but as a way of life.

Hailing from a family of Western classical musicians, and a cellist since the age of 8, de Haas ventured into the world of Hindustani classical music when she came to India in 1994 as a student of ethnomusicology. A short research trip to study sargam notation in Indian music turned into a year-long journey. So attracted by the ragas and taals (rhythms) was she, that when she went back to the prestigious Rotterdam Conservatory in the Neth-

erlands, she changed track to devote herself entirely to Hindustani classical music. At the conservatory, she studied under stalwarts such as vocalist Koustav Ray and flautist Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia.

De Haas plays on a cello she has modified based on her comparitive study of Indian string instruments and European baroque instruments. It took the Dutch violin maker Eduard van Tongeren—who also built her first cello when she was nine years old—three years to craft. De Haas has added one playing string on the higher octave to enlarge the scope of the instrument and introduced 10 sympathetic strings to enrich its tonal quality.

But most importantly, she has reduced its size to allow her to sit on the floor like other Indian classical musicians. A cello is played sitting on a chair, but when de Haas had her first lesson with the vocalist Sumati Mutatkar

and philosophy of life reach outward to encompass, quite literally, everything—and by that token alone all works on display resonate with his concerns.

Detours is a meditation on Gandhi and a look at how far his children have come in their own version of the Gandhian Project.

Detours is on at Chemould Prescott Road gallery till 19 January. For details, log on to www.gallerychemould.com

MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT

Raga from Rotterdam Saskia Rao­de Haas has introduced the cello to Hindustani classical music

and personal consciousness,” says Agarwal, whose art and photography has always been informed by his concern for and advocacy of, environmental issues. Gandhi, he says, is important to him not only because of what he preached but because he “walked the talk”. For Gandhi, “the self is the centre—not in a selfish way, but in a responsible way.”

Born out of this quest for selfimprovement, Gandhian ethics

Right notes: De Haas’ first solo album features the Raga Bhimpalasi as part of her student research, she found it terribly awkward.

“For our second class, I was on the floor, though it was difficult to manage an instrument as large as the cello and hold it at the correct angle,” she says, now expertly handling her refashioned piece.

She says purists often question

her, but she hasn’t yet been targeted with charges of dilution.

“Because I’m not doing that,” she says, adding, “I don’t mix the two.

I’m a Hindustani classical musician but I play on a cello.”

The true music lover would only celebrate such a marriage, believes de Haas, whose varied

experiences include the Jewish klezmer and the Flamenco guitar. “What is a sitar other than a fusion between Indian and Persian culture so many years ago?” she asks.

She recalls an incident four years ago at the prestigious Maihar festival, held every February at Ustad Alauddin Khan’s old kothi (house) in Madhya Pradesh.

“An old gentleman came up to me after my performance and said ‘Who said Saraswati had to be Indian?’ It was deeply inspiring.”

Several years ago, Chaurasia had told her that the secret lay in finding a style that suits one’s own instrument. “It’s something that he’s done perfectly himself,” says de Haas. In her album, in which she evokes the pathosfilled notes of the Bhimpalasi as if they were created for the cello, she seems to be on track.

Saskia Rao-de Haas will perform at the Dhrupad Samaroh in Bhopal on 3 January.

CULTURE L17

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

Q&A | RAJKUMAR HIRANI

RAAGTIME

SAMANTH S

The pan­Indian pulse The director on his new movie, turning big ideas into films, and Aamir Khan’s perfectionism

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

···························· irector and writer Rajkumar Hirani is just two films old, and as it happens, both have been among the seminal films of the past decade, giving movie lovers the plebeian, accidental philosopher Munnabhai. For his new film, 3 Idiots, which has Aamir Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Madhavan and Sharman Joshi in lead roles, he has changed his canvas—to a college campus in Delhi. Hirani’s writing can make you cry and laugh at the same time, and his direction, free of technical wizardry, focuses more on the moments that his characters inhabit. He spoke with Lounge about his writing and his pan-Indian sensibility. Edited excerpts:

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This is your first adaptation from a book to a film. How much did you change ‘Five Point Someone’, Chetan Bhagat’s book?

I ended up changing a lot. The book doesn’t have a plot as such, it’s more of a slice of life kind of narrative. I had to weave a plot around it to make it suitable for cinema, so besides the fact that half of the film is set in an IIT campus, and it has three protagonists, there’s not much similarity to the book.

Chetan had sent me the book to read, and later on when I wanted to adapt it, I told him that it was going to be very

different from the book. He was okay with that.

The book took me back to my hostel days at the film institute in Pune where I studied editing.

You know, the little moments that make hostel life special.

Both the Munnabhai films were comedies, but they engaged with society at large. What is your framework for a script—do you think of the bigger idea first and then go into characters and other details?

I never intended either of the Munnabhai films as comedies.

I never really thought that they were funny films; I meant them as light-hearted, feel-good films that could make people laugh as well as cry. But yes, I always think of the theme or idea, or whatever you call it, first and then

go into characters. The idea for Lage Raho Munnabhai came to me when I encountered many people in parties who would criticize Gandhi; you know, say things like “Gandhi was responsible for India’s Partition”, but when you probed, they would not have any solid explanations. It was cool to criticize Gandhi. So the idea I started with was: Resurrect for the new generation what Gandhi was, in a light-hearted film.

Is the big idea in 3 Idiots the malaise in the education system?

The big idea here is a message for young Indians: Chase excellence, and success will follow. It’s a pretty basic message.

Of course, education in our country is a race for marks. There’s no attempt to learn as much as learn how to get marks. Even an institution like the IIT can’t The cast: Hirani was an editor before he turned scriptwriter and director; (top, from left) Sharman Joshi, Aamir Khan and Madhavan in 3 Idiots.

SEASON OF MELODY

escape this. So the story is about three guys in Delhi IIT who are not so interested in studies. The film has two time spans—what happened to the three protagonists after they left IIT. Two go in search of the third.

At the centre of it is the love story between the characters played by Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor. It’s again a light-hearted, emotional look at youth. Both students and parents will identify with it.

Your two earlier films have appealed to all kinds of audiences—from city multiplex ones to small-town, single-theatre ones. From the look of it, ‘3 Idiots’ seems to be meant for a more niche, urban, educated audience.

Perhaps, but 3 Idiots is about middle-class aspirations; and there’s a middle class everywhere in India. I’ve been lucky that my films have worked with all kinds of audiences; that could have something to do with the fact that I grew up in Nagpur, studied in Pune and have been working in Mumbai, so it’s a kind of a pan-Indian sensibility, which I think comes across also in 3 Idiots.

Aamir Khan is not known to be an easy actor to work with because of the extent of his involvement in every project.

Is it true that he tries to get his way with directors with his own ideas?

He always has his options for scenes; and he insists on doing proper, on-location rehearsals before the shoot. If, as a director, you are a perfectionist, you will understand where Aamir is coming from. He is very involved, but he’s also not an actor who disrespects his director if he knows the director knows what he wants. I took suggestions from Aamir, but that didn’t mean I had to take all of them.

3 Idiots releases in theatres on 25 December.

SHRIYA PATIL SHINDE/MINT

Tickler from Southall Gurinder Chadha talks about moth­ erhood, Hollywood and her new film B Y A RUN J ANARDHAN arun.j@livemint.com

···························· hen film-maker Karan Johar first saw the script for It’s a Wonderful Afterlife, he called it a mad, post-motherhood, hormonal effort. Fellow film-maker Gurinder Chadha, who co-wrote the script, couldn’t agree more.

The 49-year-old mother of twoyear-old twins—who has directed films such as Bhaji on the Beach, Bend It Like Beckham, Bride and Prejudice in the past—juggled family responsibilities and high expectations to turn that script of

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a “Punjabi ghost story” into a film which will release in April. At Johar’s suggestion, Chadha, for the first time, is making a film with an Indian production house, Studio 18.

“The film is Capra-esque. It feels like a (Frank) Capra madcap comedy, which I think he would have enjoyed,” says Chadha, alluding to Capra’s 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life.

“The title of the film gives you access to its story and makes you smile. The twist of adding ‘afterlife’ gives it an Indian angle, suggesting reincarnation. There is, of course, a lot of pressure because I don’t want people to say that Capra would turn in his grave after this film.”

Chadha is used to high expectations, especially after the 2002 cult hit Bend It Like Beckham, which made aloo gobi and Keira Knightley household names

across the globe. But her next two films, Bride and Prejudice, with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging were poorly recieved.

“I have made a few films with Punjabi weddings and realize that I could not do any more at the risk of repeating myself,” she says, adding: “This is a supernatural comedy. I blend genres, culture and music. As my cousin puts it, the one word that describes my films is ‘inclusion’. Bend it Like Beckham, for instance, totally changed England. It made the British proud of the country they lived in.”

That film was a turning point for Chadha—audiences in India and overseas found the stereotypes in the film funny. It made money, propelled its actors to stardom and threatened to send Chadha into the Hollywood big

league. She was roped in to direct the film versions of Dallas and I Dream of Jeannie, but both fell through. “I get scripts for Hollywood films all the time,” she says, “but I will do one only when the cast, script and finance are just right. I could be making a whole lot of money in Hollywood with-

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head of Chennai’s December music season, a couple of readers wrote in asking me what I was most looking forward to, and what they should watch out for. Here, accordingly, is Raagtime’s gentle guide to four prospective highlights of the season.

Parasala Ponnammal: The standout concert of December 2008, for me, was that of Parasala Ponnammal, about whom I raved, like an awestruck fan, in this space. She is 86 years old, but as I wrote, “her voice has all the burnished richness of advanced age but none of its infirmities”. Given her age, Ponnammal does not travel and perform as frequently as we would like, so make every effort to listen to her at the Music Academy on the morning of 20 December.

The out-of-towners: Being in Chennai in December is the ideal way to get a glimpse of the Carnatic music landscape in India as squads of musicians descend on the city—musicians you could otherwise never hear in person unless you visited their hometowns. I have my own small list of musicians I’ve been hearing about and intend finally to hear in live concert: Hemmige Prashanth, a Bangalore-based singer, for instance, and Kottakkal Ranjith Varier, a vocalist from Thrissur. The season also gives you second chances. Mysore A. Chandan Kumar, a flautist and the grandson of the renowned violinist T. Chowdiah, has performed in Chennai before, but I’ve never quite managed to catch him.

That will, I hope, change this month.

RAJESH KASHYAP/HT CITY

Well seasoned: Attendees look forward to good food and coffee too.

Gnanambiga: Last December, Gnanambiga, arguably the season-goer’s most beloved canteen, was missing from its usual spot at the Narada Gana Sabha auditorium; a particularly severe spell of rain that year had ruined much of the caterer’s supplies and equipment. They were sorely missed. I have fond memories of 2007, of their superb breakfasts, but also of their lavish, multi-course lunch, served on banana leaves in a jury-rigged dining area behind the auditorium. It was the sort of lunch that deserved to live in rhyme and song, and it left you no recourse but to toddle back into the hall, sink into one of the seats, and let the music wash you into a serene stupor. Gnanambiga Rajan, one of the brothers of this worthy family, tells me that they are prepared to be back this year, but that no firm commitments have been made as yet. By the time this column appears in print, however, they should hopefully be ensconced at the Narada Gana Sabha, plying me with food and filter coffee.

Sriram’s lecture: Every year, the music historian V. Sriram delivers a talk on a personality of Carnatic music—a composer, a prolific musicologist, an underrated performer—at the intimate TAG Centre auditorium. These talks are billed as lectures, but they hardly deserve the notions of dullness that word carries; they are, instead, sparkling monologues in Sriram’s inimitably genial, humorous manner, always augmented by audio clips and visual presentations. Last year, Sriram’s subject was the composer Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavatar. This year, he generously gives two talks: on the innovative 19th century composer Maha Vaidyanatha Sivan (on 20 December) and on the veena maestro S. Balachander (on 27 December). The talks are by invitation only, but Sriram informs me that invites can be procured by writing to southernheritage@tagcorporation.net Write to Samanth Subramanian at raagtime@livemint.com

out making any films because you just have to wait so long. Dallas fell through because the studio developed cold feet...Then I got pregnant and felt that maybe it was preordained. I prefer making my own quirky films.”

Her latest film has the usual mix of Indian and international GRAHAM BARCLAY

‘Desi’ hook: Chadha was in Mumbai to show her film to Studio 18.

actors, such as Sanjeev Bhaskar (The Kumars at No. 42), Jimi Mistry (The Guru, The Mystic Masseur), Mark Addy (Full Monty, Still Standing) and Sendhil Ramamurthy (Heroes). “You would not recognize Shabana (Azmi) in this film,” says Chadha. “She could be sitting in a gurudwara in Southall and no one would notice her. She has transformed to completely fit the part of a Punjabi woman—with a three-stomach physique.”

Chadha now wants to make films that allow her to spend time with her children and she plans on continuing to work with husband Paul Mayeda Berges, who has been the writer-collaborator on many of her films, including It’s a Wonderful Afterlife. “Paul and I have been working together for 13 years, though he was involved less with this film because of the children,” she says. “When he is writing, I take the back seat and vice versa. He does a lot of the hard work while I do the thinking.”

L18 FLAVOURS SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

KOLKATA CHROMOSOME | RAJDEEP DATTA ROY

From maharajas to the masses PHOTOGRAPHS

BY I NDRANIL

BHOUMIK/MINT

Through outreach programmes and corporatization, the Calcutta Polo Club is trying its best to break stereotypes

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The CPC has now embarked on an ambitious programme to rid polo of its elitist image

n a mild December afternoon in Kolkata, eight men on horseback are tearing around on a patch of turf within the city’s racecourse, swinging mallets and jostling as they try to put a white ball past the goalposts on either side of the field. The motley group at the Pat Williamson Ground—the polo field at the Royal Calcutta Turf Club—includes a young diamond merchant, the ageing scion of one of the city’s illustrious families, a newly minted graduate, a school boy and a strapping army officer.

The riders, all members of the Calcutta Polo Club (CPC), which claims to be the oldest in the world, are practising for the Kolkata polo season which started on Thursday and will end on Christmas Day. “CPC is trying to give back to Kolkata polo the pre-eminence it enjoyed,” says Anant Bangur, a member of the club’s managing committee. His father Keshav Bangur, a city industrialist, is the club president.

“CPC had become almost defunct before Keshav Bangur took it over,” says club secretary Cyrus Confectioner.

“The club organized its first full-fledged tournament in 2006, after almost a decade.”

This year, 25-30 players from outside West Bengal and 10-12 CPC players are participating in a series of exhibition matches as well as the Carmichael Cup, the Ezra Cup (instituted in 1880, it is the oldest) and the Polo Masters trophy.

The CPC was established in 1862 by two British army officers, Major General Joe Shearer and Captain Robert Stewart, after they saw locals in present-day Manipur play a game on horseback called Sagol Kangjei. Captivated, they initiated their countrymen into it and the sport of polo has not looked back since. Today, it is played in the UK, US and South America, especially Argentina.

In India, following its “discovery” by the British, polo was adopted by the princes and the British Indian Army and developed into a sport for the country’s elite. It is, however, still played in its original form in Manipur and in the Turtuk area of Jammu and Kashmir, as well as in the Gilgit-Baltistan area of Pakistan-occupied

Mounted: Players rehearse at the Royal Calcutta Turf Club opposite the Victoria Memorial.

Kashmir. “In Turtuk, for instance, there are practically no rules and it’s a mad free-for-all, with as many villagers joining in as possible,” says Lieutenant Colonel Shakti Singh Rathore, an Army Service Corps officer who served in the area and had the opportunity to play with the locals. A player with a plus 2 handicap, he is currently the secretary of the Fort William Riding and Polo Club in Kolkata.

While a lower handicap indicates a better player in golf, the reverse is true for polo.

“While countries like Argentina have players with a handicap of 10 (the highest), the best Indian players are at 6,” says Rathore.

The handicaps are decided at the beginning of every season by a four-member committee which looks at the number of goals a player scores, his effective play, stickwork, riding ability and sense of anticipation.

As it happens, the Indian polo fraternity was looking forward to playing against an American team in Washington, DC in June but that may well be called off now. The man who was instrumental in making that happen—by arranging for the Indian polo team to play in the America’s Polo Cup in Washington—was Tareq Salahi.

Yes, the same gent who is in a spot of bother over gatecrashing a recent state dinner at the White House hosted by US President Barack Obama for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. “I think the match is off after what happened,” says

Major Ravi Rathore, secretary of the Army Riding and Polo Club in New Delhi.

According to Major Rathore, six-, eight- and 10-goal tournaments are considered medium-level meets, while 12, 14 and 16 are considered high-goal events. “In a 10-goal tournament, for instance, the combined handicap of the four players should not exceed 10,” he explains, adding that he has a handicap of 4.

At the Pat Williamson Ground, 15-year-old Nikhil Poddar, the youngest member of the CPC, goes over his game with senior players and club coach Narpat Singh, a former soldier with the army’s 61 Cavalry regiment. “I am quite hopeful of playing at least four matches this season,” says Poddar, who studies in class X at the Lakshmipat Singhania Academy. He took to riding a year and a half ago, after Anant visited his school as part of the CPC’s outreach programme.

“Barely two-three of my schoolmates responded, but if he went now, I’m sure he would get at least 20-30 applicants,” says Poddar, patting his horse Class Action, a gift from his father.

Polo has traditionally been the sport of the royalty, the army and the rich. To change this and rid the game of its elitist image, the CPC has embarked on an ambitious programme. “If polo is to make a comeback in Kolkata, then we have to broadbase it,” says Anant. “We are approaching schools to allow their students to attend sessions

where they are introduced to riding, free of cost. If they want to pursue riding, they can do so at a nominal cost of Rs3,800 for a two-month course.”

The club has already approached many schools such as La Martiniere, MP Birla Foundation and Kendriya Vidyalaya-Fort William.

“Polo, or riding itself, is expensive and if we want to take it to boys from middle-class families then we have to make it cheaper,” says Harsh Vardhan Dugar, who has been riding for 15 years and owns two former racehorses—Bravo and Blast.

“That is possible only when corporate sponsorship comes in.”

Not only is riding equipment expensive but players have to maintain a string of ponies.

Typically, a fresh horse or pony is required for each of the four or six chukkahs (rounds) in a polo match. “That makes it a minimum of 32 horses for every match unless ponies are doubled (used in more than one chukkah), depending on their fitness,” says Lt Col. Rathore.

He agrees with Dugar that apart from the army’s patronage, corporatization is the only way for the game to not just survive but also thrive.

“I joined the army with the sole intention of riding, but today’s youngsters have the option of turning professional and playing for many large companies that have decided to field teams,” he says.

The Oberois, the Jindal group (Naveen Jindal is believed to

own 50 horses and fields his own polo team), Sona (the steering company) and Crompton Greaves have traditionally fielded teams.

These companies not only bring in professional players from overseas, but have also spawned a new breed of young professional polo players in India. “Most of them are sons of army officers who learnt to ride on army horses and used the advent of private companies to turn professional,” says Lt Col. Rathore.

One such player is 27-year-old Simran Shergill, whose father served in the army’s 17 Poona Horse regiment. “I was fortunate that I got the opportunity to learn and play polo at a very nominal cost,” says Shergill (handicap, plus 4), who plays for Jindal and feels more youngsters need to be brought into the game for it to thrive. “The only way that is possible is if big companies come forward in a big way to support polo,” he adds.

This year, for instance, Jindal has brought Shamsher Ali, a player with one of the highest handicaps (6) in India, who now plays on the professional circuit in Argentina and Brazil. “While groups like the Oberois, Crompton Greaves and Vikramaditya Singh (owner of the Royal Kashmir team)...have left the field, others, such as Jindal, Elevation (a real estate company), Equisports (and) Jaipur Polo Company...are trying to carry on the tradition,” says Ali, 26, who is playing in India after three years and whose grandfather held the finance and home portfolios in the government of the erstwhile nizam of Hyderabad. “There are players sitting around with no teams to play for. There are few sponsors, (and) only one polo field (in Delhi) is used every day during the season.”

Ali feels there has been no improvement in the situation since he left for South America in 2005 and he does not believe that attempts to broadbase the sport will succeed. The nature of the game requires a certain degree of affluence, he feels. “If you want to play serious, professional polo, it requires a lot of money,” says the owner of 25 horses.

Poddar, meanwhile, is looking forward to playing his first tournament and hoping to encourage more of his classmates to take up the sport. A sign of the changing trends in polo. rajdeep.r@livemint.com