Lounge 26June 2010

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

www.livemint.com

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Vol. 4 No. 25

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

Earlier this month Samim Rizvi became the first Indian at the world’s toughest bicycle race.

This speaks of a small, invisible revolution: Cycling is now a sport of choice, for leisure and competition

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH HDIL’S SARANG WADHAWAN >Page 8

>Page 10

SPORT YOUR TRIBE

The blowing of the vuvuzela is an example of tribal antecedents in modern sports >Page 12

PEDALLING

NIRVANA

ART’S EVERYWOMAN Why Ravinder Reddy’s woman heads became the iconic symbol of contemporary Indian art >Page 13

A MILLS AND BOON HEROINE The night before a long ride, Rizvi binges on biryani to load up on carbs.

THE TICKLED SCORER

RAHUL BHATTACHARYA

THE GOOD LIFE

OUR DAILY BREAD

SHOBA NARAYAN

SAMAR HALARNKAR

Javier Moro’s book on Sonia Gandhi is a hagiographic and sanitized telling of the life of India’s first family >Page 16

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

CRICKET OR TENNIS? MEN (AND WOMEN) CHENNAI VIA IT’S A NO CONTEST ARE FROM MARS CASABLANCA

W

imbledon will be in its sixth day when this appears, but I write on its eve. I look forward to it more than I have to any cricket series in the last year. Or anything else in the next few months, unless Australia agree to play Tests here in October. Then, too, I dread the pitches, the empty stands. I found it mildly disturbing that my unquestionable, indisputable, all-time favourite sport no longer occupied the No. 1 pedestal. I never had to consider the matter before. Cricket wasn’t selected as a choice, it was in our blood... >Page 4

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hat’s your fighting style? Are you a screamer or a sulker? When you fight with your spouse or significant other, do you scream or sulk? Marital (or extramarital) strife can be classified into two broad categories. Some couples fight as if they are in a battle. Issues, however small, spiral out of control. They yell, scream, throw things, threaten to walk out and then act on the threat.

Quarrels escalate quickly and get really ugly; voices screech to a peak... >Page 4

R

egular readers of this column may wonder: Moroccan food? Again? I can’t help it people. It’s light. It’s refreshing.

It’s great for the summer. It’s emerged as a hit with friends and family. They’re happy. I’m happy. So, there. This all-around summer happiness over my extended foray into the Maghreb may continue, but I promise this is the last instalment for this column. While I waded through my summer with couscous and the flavours of north Africa, I wondered... >Page 7

PHOTO ESSAY

IN THE NAME OF THE MOTHER

HOME PAGE L3

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

SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

LOUNGE REVIEW | YOGACARA

FIRST CUT

PRIYA RAMANI

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (MANAGING EDITOR)

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

FOUNDING EDITOR RAJU NARISETTI ©2010 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved

WHEN YOUR BOSS IS A CONSENSUAL FLIRT HINDUSTAN TIMES

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ast weekend I learnt a new term: consensual flirtation.

It popped up in my mailbox past midnight courtesy former Penguin Canada CEO David Davidar’s litigation counsel. He argued that his client, who was sacked from Penguin after an illustrious 25-year career for allegedly sexually harassing a colleague Lisa Rundle, had not assaulted anyone. He had a “consensual, flirtatious” relationship that grew out of a close friendship with a colleague.

Through his lawyer, Davidar outlined a relationship that lasted four-and-ahalf years, and turned flirtatious after two years. At some point the married author had apparently suggested to Rundle that their relationship become more “romantic”, but she POWER PLAY replied that she had other “suitors” too and wouldn’t like to keep a more intimate relationship a secret.

So is Davidar lying? Why did Rundle bring up the complaint so late? Is this an office affair gone wrong? Did they really spend four-and-a-half years just watching Federer play tennis, reading poetry to each other and exchanging cream-filled biscuits and two kisses?

It doesn’t matter, really.

Workplaces are brimming over with uneven power equations. All of us have access to multiple relationship opportunities in this unequal minefield—and talented, fair bosses are always attractive to their subordinates. Besides, everyone wants to please the person who signs off on their increment and, one could argue, any boss has more access to work-play opportunities than an average, everyman employee.

It’s especially tricky for bosses to

Suit, boot: Davidar pleads friendship. walk the relationship tightrope in an age when many of us believe we have easy, equal equations with the people we report to. In a world where it’s not unusual for bosses and employees to send each other drunken SMSes and swap personal stories, it’s tougher to distinguish a close friendship from a consensual flirtation from sexual harassment.

Yet, by propositioning/getting intimate with a colleague who reports to him/her, a CEO shifts the power equation so that the other party now has his/her own power to utilize in that relationship. In short, the onus not to misuse or manipulate an employeeboss relationship lies with the boss and once he/she takes the first misstep, there’s no controlling the outcome.

Four years of great consensual flirting can then easily be followed by a sexual harassment case.

inbox

Write to us at lounge@livemint.com ORWELLIAN ARGUMENT I was amazed by the excellent write­up

by Aakar Patel, “Why our media can’t explain India”, 19 June. I was reminded of something George Orwell noticed in pre­ Independence India. In his own words, “I have seen a daily paper (in India) which was given away free for some time with apparent profit to its backers, a ring of advertisers who found a free newspaper to be a cheap and satisfactory means of blowing their own trumpet.”

Is this what is called “going upmar­ ket”, as Patel terms it? He is absolutely right about Indian journalists but this afflicts most businesspeople too. In sem­ inars, when the Q&A session begins,

people get up and make statements.

Often, the moderator has to remind them to ask a question. When questions are restricted to one per per­ son, they cleverly say: “My question is in three parts...”

Business presentations are worse. Speakers spend the first 5 min­ utes retelling the macroeconomics of India, which the audience already knows. We need to improve our communication skills.

RAJ KHALID

DISMAL REPORTING This refers to Aakar Patel’s “Why our

But Davidar’s case is the least of our sexual harassment worries.

Closer home, horrific stories of the misuse of power emerge routinely from our workplaces where our mostly male bosses think sexual relationships with their junior employees are a companyapproved perk. And maybe they are?

Indian companies rarely terminate male employees for sexual harassment; many have also been known to terminate the female employee who filed the complaint. In India, we still don’t have a sexual harassment law although one is likely soon.

Most of the working women I know learnt early in their careers to keep their guard up at all times. I know I’ll never forget my first job interview.

The hotshot editor whose work I had worshipped growing up said he would meet me at his hotel at 7pm. When I got to the hotel, I called him on the house phone and he said, come on up.

I shuffled around nervously for a couple of minutes in the lobby, torn between the eagerness of a 23-year-old to meet one of her journalism heroes and the thought that it was perhaps best to walk away from the job. He interviewed me over drinks besides the bed in his tiny room that was made up for the night. He was charming, he flirted, and I pretended not to recognize the signals. Eventually, I escaped unscathed. It was my first lesson on surviving the workplace.

Write to lounge@livemint.com www.livemint.com Priya Ramani blogs at blogs.livemint.com/firstcut

media can’t explain India”, 19 June. It was interesting to read his take on the Indian­style journalist. I completely agree with his views on representing the “common man”. All the Hindi news channels, whom I call ‘bhoot­pret’ (ghosts and spirits) channels, focus on either urban slums or the villages and have done little towards making a dif­ ference through reporting. All they care about is TRPs. I find no one deeply interested in focusing on the changes we need to make as a country. We may soon be a leading world economy, but how inclusive are we in our minds?

How should we be leveraging the huge opportunity? How can we be externally focused and project how economies the world over change and the lessons we need to learn as a country? It’s good to see someone focus on providing a com­ plete view of things and being a mirror to the industry.

Thanks for the good read.

PATERNAL LOVE

POOJA THAKRAN

MILANDEEP SINGH BHATIA

I loved Shoba Narayan’s column, “The comfort of a father’s quiet presence”, 19 June, on fathers—maybe because this is my first Father’s Day as a father. My daughter is too young to know about it (she was born last July), but I’m feeling thrilled.

I liked what Narayan wrote about how fathers are always there but are not overbearing. On my part, I’m more involved in raising my daughter, as I work from home. I’ve seen her reach all the “baby milestones” that we all antic­ ipate. Everybody says she’s my carbon copy. I was ecstatic when her first word was “papa”. At the same time, I know that nobody can take the place of a mother. When my wife returns from work, Prisha, my daughter, is inseparable from her.

Thanks again for the insights on fatherhood. I look forward to Shoba’s column every Saturday.

A

few years ago, the opening of a newfangled yoga institute would excite me. Sufi Yoga, Pilates Yoga, Hot Yoga—suddenly, there were so many. We imported back from the West what was our hottest export to it, repackaged and with fancy new names. Now, there seems to be fatigue for New Age yoga. When I checked last month, classes in the traditional institutes, such as the Iyengar Yogashraya in Lower Parel in Mumbai and Mumbai University’s Ashtanga Yoga classes, were booked for the next two or three months.

When Radhika Vachani’s Yogacara opened for an introductory trial period, I decided to try out a class. The brochure claimed it adopted a “traditional approach towards healing”.

Tucked away in a breezy corner of Rewa House, the Maharani of Rewa’s estate in south Mumbai, Yogacara overlooks a large expanse of the Arabian sea, which includes the Haji Ali mosque. The room where we were to do a 1-hour session of asanas and a massage directly overlooked the sea. The sea was in a rumble when I walked in, agitated by gathering monsoon clouds.

The good stuff Vachani, who owns Yogacara and teaches yoga here, has been a practitioner since the early 1990s. She learnt Iyengar Yoga and also trained under gurus of the Bihar school of yoga while pursuing her career as a business director in a brand strategy firm. This year, she qualified to be a teacher and quit her job.

She uses props used in Iyengar Yoga such as wooden bricks, blankets, ropes and chairs—inventions of B.K.S. Iyengar. The approach is easy; I gradually warmed up from basic poses to slightly more advanced variations of the same poses. The goals: accurate alignment of body parts involved in a particular asana, stretching the right muscles and holding a position for the right time—the three tenets of the purest forms of Hatha Yoga, of which Iyengar and Ashtanga are offshoots. In the 1-hour session, she taught me the fundamentals, which includes ensuring there’s intelligence in my knees and toes—which means keeping the knees tightly stretched upwards and toes and feet rooted.

I practised four variations of standing asanas, two of backward bends with the help of props, and two sleeping asanas. My lungs got a healthy expansion and muscles all over the body got some stretch.

After a break, I got the Yogacara Special massage—a combination of Shiatsu, Balinese massage and reflexology. There was no pummelling with handfuls of oil. The masseur knew the strained and painful areas, and focused on them. My weak areas, the upper back and elbow, felt unknotted for a few hours. I walked into the wet outdoors with a sense of exhilaration.

The not­so­good The traditional Iyengar approach is not known to excite those who are looking for yoga that pushes the body to degrees which make it the equivalent of a heart-pumping, sweaty workout. The movements are not quick and dynamic, and unless done for at least six months, you are not likely to see the result—a flexible, strong and toned body.

The course is not for those who already know the fundamentals of Hatha Yoga and are looking to intensify and master asanas.

Talk plastic For the monthly membership (a minimum of three months), there are three packages. For Rs6,800, three sessions of yoga every week, one session of Pranayam and meditation every week and two massages every month. The Rs8,000 package is only for massages—four every month; and the third, for yoga/and/or Pranayam only, includes three sessions every week. Service tax is extra. Till 30 June, there’s a free trial period of one each of the yoga, Pranayam and massage sessions.

For more details and appointments, call 9833198371.

Sanjukta Sharma CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS: In the Q&A with Vikram, “My blood group is B+ and that’s my motto”, 19 June, the actor’s photograph was taken at the Novotel hotel in Mumbai.

L4 COLUMNS SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

RAHUL BHATTACHARYA THE TICKLED SCORER

Cricket’s interrogation or tennis’ conversation?

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SANG TANG/AP

imbledon will be in its sixth day when this appears, but I write on its eve. I look forward to it more than I have to any cricket series in the last year. Or anything else in the next few

months, unless Australia agree to play Tests here in October. Then, too, I dread the pitches, the empty stands.

I found it mildly disturbing that my unquestionable, indisputable, all-time favourite sport no longer occupied the No. 1 pedestal. I never had to consider the matter before. Cricket wasn’t selected as a choice, it was in our blood, in our air, and it absorbed us as osmotically as we absorbed it. I wondered if the realignment of affection had something to do with the fact that I had been playing tennis for the last year. I also read relatively little tennis press. I could approach it in a manner closest to childlike fascination, drawing directly from Sunday morning knocks to the glory of the gods on the screen.

But that didn’t fully account for it; playing tennis, or football, or basketball as a teenager, I never felt the intimacy I did with cricket.

More likely was that tennis provided better what cricket once did, an immersion. At Roland Garros the cameras always lingered. On the players taking the court, taking their seats, warming up, the Parisian crowd, the French skies, the world of tennis and its players and its environment, subtly and consummately relayed without the gimmicks of propaganda. As much as for the actual tennis, I liked leaving Roland Garros on through the evenings

for the beauty of the clay courts and the soothing coverage.

In his review of Andre Agassi’s autobiography in The New York Review of Books, Michael Kimmelman wrote that “players shape points by moving the ball around the court to make it arch and zig, devising patterns that from a spectator’s perch map crisscrossing lines. The fan’s pleasure, after a particularly good exchange of shots, stems from redrawing those lines as a memory, every point, like every creative mark on a page with a pencil, being slightly different. Within sameness, there is variety, artists have proved. Athletes have, too.”

Kimmelman is probably talking about watching live, but television coverage of tennis, like the restrained appreciation of a tennis crowd, complements perfectly this ephemeral, elusive marvel of the tennis point.

A good sports broadcast ought to always bring out the essence of the sport. I remember Channel 4’s coverage of India’s England tour in 2002, able to capture cricket’s expansive languor, as well as its urgent obsession with tactics and trends and its family-soapish quibbling over decisions made by the captains or umpires.

Cricket on Indian television is now unendurable. The Neo Sports telecasts don’t have the mid-over

Courtship: Tennis on TV offers joys and satisfactions that are now missing in cricket. advertisements of Sony Max’s Indian Premier League telecasts, but Neo makes up with the length and volume of its breaks between overs and every minor stoppage. The logic of a passage of play is so utterly damaged as to feel dismantled.

Cricket, with its huge capacity for roles, needs all the more latitude to play out its proper drama. It isn’t, like tennis, a straightforward rivalry.

Cricket’s rivalries include a team versus another, a team versus an individual, an individual versus an individual, and in that a bowler against an opposition batsman, a bowler against an opposition bowler, bowling or batting partners of the same team versus one another, a captain versus a captain, sometimes a captain versus

one of his own teammates.

We watch sport to see the response of human beings under forceful pressure.

The tennis rally is a conversation. Its truest thrills are the moments when the balance of power shifts, like dialogues in old films. Cricket’s exchange is an interrogation. There is pathos in a dismissal that I think has no parallel in sport. But for the interrogation to feel significant, one needs good pitches and good bowling attacks. It is unrevealing when the interrogated run the show like ringmasters, as they do these days.

At times tennis has out-cricketed cricket. I mean, of course, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in exquisite counter-attacking symphony at Wimbledon two years ago. With its 7-hour span, its rain breaks, and

subsequent influence of weather and intervals, its all-white attire—Fed swan-like, Rafa like a punished Dennis the Menace—it recalled a day of Test cricket. In fact, it was the most exhausting day’s Test cricket since Sydney 2008.

I envy tennis—and I use tennis here as an illustrative example. In the four Grand Slams, the ATP tour finals, the nine ATP Masters events, one can be assured of a minimum level of excellence. This no longer holds true for cricket. The last two years have been the least inspiring I have seen in the last two decades. Perhaps that is a cyclical thing. More worrying is the confusion among cricket followers.

Tests are hardly watched. Nobody is sure what form One-Dayers ought to take. Twenty20’s incredible proliferation, I fear, will affect the excellence of cricketers and perhaps the appetite of viewers.

I have no faith in the administrators.

I only hold on to the hope that, as it sometimes happens, half-a-dozen players of such calibre arrive into the world game that no matter how awful the pitches, the calendar, the coverage, they cannot help but illuminate for us the essential wonder of the sport, a la Fed and Rafa.

Rahul Bhattacharya is the author of the cricket tour book, Pundits from Pakistan. He writes a monthly cricket column for Lounge.

Write to Rahul at thetickledscorer@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Rahul’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/rahul­bhattacharya

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

Men are from Mars, and so are women

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hat’s your fighting style? Are you a screamer or a sulker? When you fight with your spouse or significant other, do you scream or sulk? Marital (or extramarital) strife can be classified

into two broad categories. Some couples fight as if they are in a battle. Issues, however small, spiral out of control.

They yell, scream, throw things, threaten to walk out and then act on the threat. Quarrels escalate quickly and get really ugly; voices screech to a peak before calming down. Bruised and bloodied, these screamers stagger to the couch and sit in shocked silence before coming up with a semblance of a compromise. After calling each other names; and calling each other’s bluff—“Where will you go after you walk out: to Olive or Kimaya”—they usually resolve the issue at hand.

“Okay, fine. I won’t spend all Sunday at the golf course but you’d better not drag me to your boring relatives’ houses all day.”

“I won’t nag but you have to promise to help with the kids’ homework.”

“Chalo, let’s hit the gym together.

Enough of this carping about each other’s weight and fitness.”

To get to this stage is a costly process. Mom, dad, siblings, family, friends, colleagues, work habits, the security guard, nariyal-wala (coconut vendor), everyone gets dragged in; everything is fair game. The good news for screamers is that they rarely take

their problems to bed. Often a bed is involved after their quarrel but as a pleasurable instrument of making up.

Contrast this with the sulkers. Sulkers are more civilized when they quarrel.

They weigh their words and take care not to spell out ugly truths. Ever sensitive, they realize that what they say can wound their opponent so they choose their accusations carefully.

Mostly, they simmer. They mutter half-heartedly and bang doors. When they feel that they aren’t being heard, they sulk. They don’t talk to each other, sometimes for days; and in one case, for three months. Another sulker variant is the sulk plus hunger strike, when both spouses stop talking and eating.

If the screamers use sadism as a tool for spousal battles, the sulkers are masochists. They inflict pain on themselves, hoping that at some point their partner will relent and sweet-talk them into talking, eating, or both. The partner, meanwhile, is gloating in his or her suffering and expecting the other party to relent. So it goes on, for hours, days or months, till events catapult them out of this masochistic rat race. A beloved aunt comes to visit and they are forced to talk to each other. A birthday comes up and the husband is

forced to say “Happy Birthday” to the wife. A party needs to be planned and the wife is forced to make sure that the husband doesn’t sulk before her guests.

Children start complaining about the silence in the house. They start talking, slowly at first, and fall back to normal.

Nothing gets resolved and the problem either goes away or gets postponed to the next quarrel.

It is not as if sulkers are gentle passive types relative to screamers.

Sulkers can be quite assertive Type A personalities. They can play hard-ball and often are better negotiators than the screamers. It is just that their tolerance for harsh words—from their spouse, not from the world at large—is much lower than the screamers.

The problem compounds when a screamer marries a sulker. Halfway through an earnest, high-voltage quarrel, just as the screamer is making his point with pointed fingers and clipped intonation, imagine his surprise when his opponent just walks away with a “That’s it. I’ve heard enough,” raise of hands.

The screamer is not done. “What about the last party, huh?” he screams at her retreating back. “You were chatting with other people all evening.

You forgot I was even there. What does that prove, huh?”

She is long gone.

These are oversimplifications. Not everyone who walks away halfway through a quarrel is a sulker. Often, they are screamers too, who can give as good as they get. But they can only take so much relative to true-blue screamers. Screamers show high tolerance for what psychologist John

Fight right: Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston play a warring couple in The Break­Up. Gottman calls the “Four Horsemen of Apocalypse”, that can throw a spanner in the happiest of marriages: criticism, contempt, stonewalling and defensiveness. Screamers do all of the above; they pull out each of Gottman’s horsemen and use it to their advantage in a quarrel. They fight dirty, in other words. But this doesn’t mean that they are worse people than the sulkers, who inflict as much, if not more hurt in a passive-aggressive way.

Gottman says that he can predict with 96% accuracy whether a marriage will survive or not based on how a couple argues. He would have trouble with Indian marriages, many of which hold up under societal pressure. That said, Gottman’s tips on effective spousal quarrels might help both the sulkers and the screamers: a soft start, repair attempts, self-soothe, compromise, and tolerate. Instead of launching into a diatribe, he says, start the quarrel softly.

When your partner holds out an olive branch, take it, even if you are beyond furious. Then, return the favour and engage in a “repair attempt” too. Give yourself time out if you feel that your head is about to burst. Go into the bathroom and dip your head into a bucket of cold water. These are doable things in a quarrel. The last two, however—compromise and tolerate—are part of an extended process.

To compromise, you have to apologize. These days, several couples have learned the art of a “no-sorry sorry”. But that’s a topic for next week.

Shoba Narayan likes olives, if not in a branch, at least in a dirty martini. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shoba­narayan

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2010

L5

Parenting WEB

Monsters in the machine A survey of the threats that children face on the Internet throws up some startling facts

TIPS FOR MONITORING l Set parental controls on the

browser l Check the history tab l Talk about why monitoring—as opposed to prying—is necessary l Insist they only add friends they know and not ‘friends of friends’ l Have your children add you as a friend so you can see who their friends are l Make sure your child tells you if someone online wants to meet them in person l Always go with your child if you agree to his meeting a peer in real life l Regularly check phone bills and account activity l Make sure phones are left and charged in a family room, not taken into bedrooms at night

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

·························· hen she was 3, Avvalprit Kaur used to sit on her father’s lap while he surfed the Internet. By the time her next birthday rang in, she was online herself—playing games on Barbie and Walt Disney websites. She started blogging at 9, and now at 12 she’s also on Twitter and has a Facebook account. Her more friends you have playing father, Simarprit Singh, the game, the easier it is for you has talked to her about to move up to the higher levels. the dangers of the InterThough he has not had any neganet but does not feel tive experience with them, he is that limiting access is leaving himself vulnerable. the key to keeping her Companies whose target audisafe from lurkers and ence is children also play safe criminals online. when they connect with them on JAYACHANDRAN/MINT “She asked me for a Facethe Internet. However, book account and I refused. a foolproof security sysLater I learnt that she had online to either play tem is yet to emerge. “If gotten a friend to help and games or for help we look at our consumopened an account. I talked to with their home- of Indian ers, our target audience her about it, but promised to w o r k . A n d s i n c e parents have for the business is kids keep it live till she turns 14 and is they tend to surf the age of 14. Trust spoken to their till legally allowed to have an more freely—withand safety is a big thing. account,” he says. o u t r e s t r i c t i n g children about We have a 24x7 moderKaur intuitively demonstrates child when it comes to the Inter- themselves to famil- safe online ation team that monithe dexterity required of the net. Though she spends anything iar websites—they habits. But only tors every user that logs online medium. On her blog she from 30 minutes to 2 hours surf- put themselves at a on to the website. There details her father’s bookshelf and ing the Net—playing games and much higher risk of 34% have set i s p ar ent al consent the cars she loves. On Twitter she emailing—she does not have a b e i n g v i c t i m s o f parental controls required for every user moans about the last class in Facebook account, which is a c y b e r c r i m e . “ A on the family that signs up for the school which seemed “like a mar- good thing according to her. 1 3 - y e a r - o l d b o y website (parents have athon”. It is inevitable that she Often, though, she gets emails isn’t going to tell computer to confirm by email). If meets all kinds of people online. from people whose names sound you if he’s searched for and seen a we want to stay in the space of “Twitter users can be familiar. “Sometimes I naked woman. But he may get kids’ entertainment, these are the abusive at times. But I think these could be from upset if he innocently comes necessary costs that we have to scan her page and ask my uncle or someone else across indecent images or down- bear,” says Benjamin Grubbs, her to unfollow anyI know and click on them. loads a virus. It’s crucial that chil- regional director, Turner Entero n e w h o u s e s t h e of Indian Then I realize it’s spam,” dren know their parents will listen tainment Interactive Media, othF-word or talks badly children say she says. Shena Gamat, to them and partner with them to erwise known as the folks who in any way. But you her mother, keeps close set things right. If they think run Cartoon Network. can’t prevent every- their parents tabs on Aditi as a person, they’ll be blamed or punished, While most parents, including thing,” Singh con- have no idea but does not actively mon- they’ll simply push things under- Singh, Gamat cedes. Though he has what they do itor what she does on the ground,” Merritt says. and Kumar, activated an auto-for- online Internet.

Mumbai-based Akash Kumar, have spoken ward for her email Though the only nega- 13, is a veteran on the Net. He to their chil- of Indian account, whereby he gets a copy tive in Gamat’s online experience has been online since he was 6. d r e n a b o u t children access of all the emails she receives, he so far has been the disappoint- H i s m o t h e r , C h i t r a K u m a r , I n t e r n e t has not really checked it. ment that the email was not from knows all his passwords and safety, they the Net from Modern-day parents, gripped her uncle, others have had it far most often he signs up with her do not really their mobiles with the idea of their child’s need worse. email ID. He is on Facebook, he e n f o r c e i t s for privacy, tend to get lax about “Parents do worry about pred- knows what spam is, he has on implementation. monitoring what the children do ators, but they seem to be over- several occasions advised his The Norton survey says that online. But several dangers lurk. looking more common threats, mother on which websites are 68% of Indian parents have laid So much so that 62% of children such as cyberbullying. And more safe for her. But probe him a bit down some house rules to reguworldwide have had a negative than half of all families are and chinks in this loosely moni- late what their children do on the online experience. In India, that putting themselves at tored system appear. Internet. However, only 34% number is 77%, according to the ris k th rou gh c h il - Average number Akash has around 150 have set parental controls on the Norton Online Family Report, d r e n ’ s u n c h e c k e d of hours per friends on Facebook; of c o m p u t e r . W h i l e y o u m a y which was released on Wednes- downloading behav- week a child in them, around 10 are implicitly trust what your child day. And what makes it worse is iour,” says Marian India spends on p e o p l e h e d o e s n o t tells you, a little snooping around that only 50% of parents in India M e r r i t t , N o r t o n ’ s the Net: know in real life. He their browsing history is mandaeven know about their child’s Internet safety advob e f r i e n d e d t h e m tory. Passionate and affronted bad experience. cate. because he was playing speeches about the need for their Aditi Gamat, 11, is a sensible Most children get Mafia Wars and the privacy notwithstanding.

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70%

23%

16%

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AM I DONE? If you are tired of nagging your children to do their chores properly, the cool iPhone app ‘Am I Done?’ can help. The app comes with six icons—washing hands, brushing teeth, etc.—but you can interpret these to be any activity you like.

When your child comes out after having ostensibly washed her hands, you use the app as a

detector. You run it over the palms of the hand and a green radar­type screen appears. There are two secret buttons at the bottom. If you think your child has done a good job, you press the right button.

An animated penguin gives a “cool” certificate. If not, a sad raccoon appears to urge the child to “try again”.

Varuni Khosla contributed to this story.

The graphics and the radar screen are good enough to fool children who are 3­10 years old.

Sure, it’s trickery but hey, they would rather have a sad raccoon asking them to redo their chores than a monster parent. And it saves you the “you just don’t love me” extortions. ‘Am I done?’ can be downloaded from the iTunes store for $0.99 (around Rs45.50).

Veena Venugopal

LEARNING CURVE

GOURI DANGE

EDUCATED CLASSES AND ‘BRAINY’ PREJUDICES I run a catering service from home and make a good living out of it. My husband is a scientist and so is his whole family. My 11-year-old daughter visits his family in Pune quite often. Over the last few months, I have realized that my husband’s family tells her, jokingly, that she should study hard, or she will end up “frying ‘samosas’”. Even if I ignore the jibe at me, I do think that, in itself, it is bad to teach a child that some work is “intelligent” and “brainy” and some work is to be dismissed. How do I get this across without sounding defensive and shrill about my own profession, and keep the issue in focus? My husband tells me not to pay attention to these remarks. What should I do?

Having a great brain does not ensure that people have a good mind!

That’s something I have had to say in this column a few times already. For all our talk about the dignity of labour, mindless prejudices are well-entrenched. People from the so-called educated classes can be rather foolish and narrow in their response to anything that is not “academic” and “intellect-driven”.

You are right: To teach a child to disdain any kind of work is wrong. I would go a step ahead and say that to do that is to severely limit a child’s view and exposure to the world. It’s amazing that people will later send their kids to “develop their personalities”—but before that, will pass on so many preconceived notions to a child that there is little scope for their personalities to develop in the first place.

I would not agree with your husband that you simply need to ignore what is being said to your child by his family. He is probably trying to avoid any kind of conflict or confrontation but, in the meanwhile, your child is being told things that will warp her outlook as well as make her disrespect her own mother’s occupation. Not something to ignore, I would say.

While I understand that you don’t want this to be any kind of personal thing between you and his family, I think you should nip this in the bud by bringing it up at the next family gathering. I urge you not to sound defensive, or go on the offensive either. You will have to find a self-assured note with which to handle this. You could even say that your child has picked up this wrong and narrow notion, and perhaps you and they are best placed (what with your different professions) to clarify to her that no work is wrong or shameful or to be dismissed.

You will have to be clever in the way you bring this up and “artistically” put it across. Spell out that you too “fry samosas” or whatever, and that doesn’t Setting examples: Respect all work. make you any less or more of a human being. It’s just doing work that you enjoy. Ask them to advise her to do everything wholeheartedly, instead of just talking about what she should or should not do in school.

If this kind of dismissive talk continues, though, you will have to come right out and say that you would be very happy if they didn’t talk in favour of one kind of profession and against any other.

I have two children, a five-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl.

I have read that the child’s mind is most fertile before the age of 4. Is that correct? If yes, should they be exposed to as many learning opportunities as possible by that age? I find that mindset to be in conflict with my husband’s conviction that young kids should be relaxed and enjoy the early part of their childhood without any kind of pressure. Please advise.

Yes, of course: Young children are at their curious and discovering best in the early years. And you must have seen how hungrily and happily they discover and define the world around them—language, play, food, textures, relationships, and a hundred new things every week. I would not advise too much focusing on getting them to “learn” a lot. I would put greater emphasis on providing exposure to things—the learning comes naturally. Providing experiences, conversations, games, outings, meeting, spending time with other kids and adults, the natural world around us...if you can facilitate such interactions, your kids will hungrily and happily absorb the benefits. Your husband’s focus on a relaxed way of doing things is right. However, plonking them in front of a TV is definitely not a relaxed way of doing things—as some parents think!

What you do with your kids at this age will sow the seeds for future creativity, joy, learning and discovery. These are very good years to provide inputs. However, parents are sometimes anxious to make these inputs all about “learning” and “information”. I would urge you to avoid that trap. It is equally important to remember that these are crucial years, when a child’s emotional experiences are going towards forming his or her personality. Parents, anxious that their children “learn” a lot or “acquire knowledge”, end up transferring that anxiety and insistence on learning, rather than the joy of discovery to their kids. They also end up goading them and cajoling them to go to coaching and classes, enter competitions and the like—so the physical and mental growth part of it perhaps is addressed. However, there is a real danger of neglecting the quieter, emotional needs of a small child in the rush to “fill the child with information”. For instance, instead of sending kids off to “vocabulary and reading” classes and “brain gyms”, I would any day advise parents to make reading a bedtime ritual...along with switching them on to the world of books, the warm, cosy, relaxing assurance of even 15 minutes spent this way will enter their souls and psyche for sure.

Gouri Dange is the author of The ABCs of Parenting.

Write to Gouri at thelearningcurve@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2010

Insider HOMES

Where the hills come alive STYLED

BY

RAGINI SINGH

Country­style decor in vibrant colours adds to the warmth of this stylish yet fuss­free home of Feroze and Mohit Gujral in Kasauli

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

···························· he Kasauli hills are very special for former model Feroze Gujral. She studied at the Lawrence School, Sanawar, and grew up in these hills. “I always wanted a house overlooking Sanawar so we bought this land a long time ago and for many years it just lay here,” says Feroze, standing in one of the gardens from where the red roofs of her alma mater are distinctly visible.

But husband Mohit, a developer by profession, not only built a villa for them, he also constructed 16 other homes on the hillside in the Lower Mall area, which were sold to friends. Of course, their six-bedroom home is at a vantage point, with a clear view of the hills.

Inside, it’s warm and lovely, with Feroze giving it a different treatment from her city home.

French windows, and pinewood ceilings from wood sourced locally, give it the feel of a hill home. Instead of art, Feroze has used paint differently—the walls have watercolour murals with a forest theme and wild animals running throughout the house.

Feroze scoured books for pictures and then got art students to execute what she had in mind.

The attention to detail is visible in the fact that all the creatures are hill animals, such as bears, squirrels and hedgehogs. It’s also a home built for family and friends to enjoy and names of the couple’s nephews and nieces are embedded in the paintings.

Some walls have been left blank to display family photographs that Feroze has grouped together and framed. Family portraits by Dayanita Singh, a friend, occupy pride of place in the basement. The other facet that lends a homely touch is the fact that every piece in the house has a story to tell, and none of it is store bought. “All the furniture is special, it’s been collected over the years; nothing has been bought except the Ikea sofacum-beds. Also, when friends and family asked me what they could gift me for this home, I told them not to buy me new things but to give me something of their own.

So the dining chairs are my momin-law’s old ones, a chest has come from a friend, a lamp from another. That way the entire house has a history, each piece a story.”

The home plays host to friends and family throughout the year, especially to the couple’s children, 20-year-old son Armaan and 16-year-old daughter Alaiia.

“A lot of the house is the kids’, they use it a lot…they come with friends.” Feroze, whose father is Malayalee and mother Hyderabadi, wanted this home to capture the essence of her childhood, when she would go for holidays to her family estate in the south.

“For me, it’s very important that a hill home is where family and friends come together like the olden days... the feeling of an estate home, where things are old, and history is welcoming. We cel-

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ebrated my in-laws’ 50th wedding anniversary here; it was a fantastic evening. If you have a place like this, it should be shared, otherwise what’s the point?”

Feroze has ensured that two permanent staff members are always at hand for them. “I like a house to be lived in, not locked up. I don’t like coming and then cleaning for the first two days and dealing with the smell.” She’s also ensured that whatever she has here is not expensive. “All the things are priceless but I am not worried about breakables. In a hill home if someone is coming with kids, or my kids are coming, it should be easy, so there’s all simple stuff. If it breaks, it breaks, if it’s missing, it’s missing.”

For someone with access and exposure, Feroze is particularly grounded. Not one to sit around and give orders, she’s up on her feet, taking pains to ensure that every corner is perfect.

No wonder then that though it’s very spacious and luxurious, the villa feels warm and lived in—just like home.

Write to lounge@livemint.com All content courtesy

Mountain high: 1. The Gujrals’ living room is brought alive with the vibrant red wall on which an owl has been painted, ostensibly to keep a watchful eye on the house.

2. The spacious attic is son Armaan’s domain.With a stunning view and floor seating near the window, it’s a great place to chill out. His sports medals line the walls.

3. Daughter Alaiia’s room is all girlie, with a four­poster bed and a mauve mosquito net. In the centre is a cushion with an image of Feroze, done for her by a friend.

4. Feroze sits atop the billiards table, kept in the basement. ‘It’s great because someone has a TT table, someone has a shooting range, someone has a gym, and we have this, so you can just pop by and play whatever sport you feel like,’ she says.

5. The family goes for long walks, so this hat and parasol stand on the front porch comes in handy.

6. Peeping out from behind scores of pines, silver oaks and firs, stands the villa.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2010

L7

Eat/Drink OUR DAILY BREAD

SAMAR HALARNKAR

Chennai chicken goes to Casablanca PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

SAMAR HALARNKAR/MINT

adding yogurt) and bread.

A Moroccan finale makes a south India detour. Of course, that takes a little time

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egular readers of this column may wonder: Moroccan food? Again?

I can’t help it people. It’s light.

It’s refreshing. It’s great for the summer. It’s emerged as a hit with friends and family. They’re happy. I’m happy.

So, there.

This all-around summer happiness over my extended foray into the Maghreb may continue, but I promise this is the last instalment for this column.

While I waded through my summer with couscous and the flavours of north Africa, I wondered: Might I not be well-served by smuggling in some Indian twists? I did not go as far as to mix and match spices. That sounded like too much of a hash.

As I mulled over this existential dilemma—in the Halarnkar household, all food-related dilemmas veer towards the metaphysical—I consulted two books. I have a large stack of books on cooking, but I don’t consult them as often as I should. The problem: When I do pick a recipe, I find I don’t have many ingredients. When I have the ingredients, I have forgotten the recipe and end up doing what I wish, aided sometimes by the faint memory of what I once read.

This particular Sunday dawned with a more determined me. I know this column is about quick, inventive cooking, but I figured I could drop the quick this once. Perhaps I could also be less inventive and more traditionalist? I couldn’t have picked a better time.

With ideas for vegetarian food from the Maghreb fast petering out, I found fresh inspiration from Food and Cooking of Africa and the Middle East by Josephine Bacon and Jenni Fleetwood. I had most of the ingredients, so this was a good sign.

Nevertheless, I added some of my own, and the end result was none the worse—a grand-looking dish of roasted vegetables, Casablanca style, according to

Messrs Bacon and Fleetwood. To this, I added the harissa paste, a tart, spicy chutney that the Indian palate will greatly love.

Since the main dish was vegetarian to please the wife (and was she pleased!), and took more than 2 hours to organize and cook, I realized I would have to use my least favourite but fastest-cooking meat, chicken. Somehow, I thought a spice-ridden chicken from the south might go well with the couscous, vegetables, harissa and bread (don’t ask me why I thought this.

I just did. Call it intuition. Mostly, it works for me).

So I dug deep into my library of cookbooks and selected Aharam by Sabita Radhakrishna, an evocative exploration of the traditional cuisine of Tamil Nadu. It is her I must thank for the recipe below.

For once, I used some fancy-looking plates (purchased from craftsmen in Delhi’s wonderful Dilli Haat, the crafts market), and served up a late Sunday meal. We ate under a whirring fan, ignoring the sultry weather, sipping our wine and spending a leisurely 45 minutes over lunch. The summer heat never seemed so welcome.

Roasted Casablanca Summer Vegetables Serves 4-5 Ingredients The vegetables 1 zucchini, halved along its length and cut into three-four large pieces 1 red pepper, deseeded and quartered 1 yellow pepper, deseeded and quartered 4-5 small aubergines (baingans), halved 2 potatoes, peeled, halved lengthways and cut into strips 3 large onions, cut into quarters (or 8-9 whole small onions, peeled) 8-9 pods of garlic (unpeeled is fine) The flavouring 5-6 large sprigs of rosemary

From Chennai, the non-vegetarian addition to your roasted vegetables:

Kozhi Molavu Varuval: Chicken Pepper Fry Serves 4-5 Ingredients 1kg chicken (I used full legs, cut into three pieces) 3 large onions, sliced 15 curry leaves 3 tbsp olive oil Make a powder from 3 tsp whole black pepper 2 tsp cumin seeds 3-4 cloves 2 pieces of cinnamon (around 1-inch each) For the marination Juice of 1K limes 3 tsp garlic paste 1K tsp ginger paste K tsp turmeric powder 1 tsp clove powder K tsp grated nutmeg

Colonial cousins: (above) The Chennai chicken teams up with the roasted vegetables; pound the harissa the traditional way or use a processor.

Method Marinate chicken and set aside for at least 2 hours. Make the powder and set aside. Heat oil gently in a non-stick vessel. Add curry leaves, wait for 10 seconds and add onions. Fry till golden brown. Add the powdered spices, sauté for 2 minutes.

Reduce heat, add chicken and turn over till spices and onions are properly mixed. Add half a cup of water, increase heat to medium for 10-15 minutes.

Cover and cook for half an hour on reduced heat. Open and cook further, sautéeing occasionally, until water is absorbed. You can keep some residual gravy if you wish.

2-inch piece of ginger, sliced or julienned 2 tsp honey 5-6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil Salt Fresh pepper Method Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Tumble all the vegetables into a wide casserole.

Tuck rosemary, garlic and ginger along sides and between vegetables. Pour honey and olive oil over the vegetables, add salt and grind fresh pepper.

Increase oven heat by one mark and roast vegetables for 60-80 minutes. Remove and turn over vegetables in the oil and juices when they brown; don’t let them burn. Add more olive oil if needed. Remember, the vegetables shrink as they become tender.

For couscous: Pour a large cup of couscous in a flat dish. Pour boiling water over. Keep two cups handy; first add one cup and let the couscous swell. Add 2 tsp of sunflower oil and fluff up with fork or fingers.

Home­made harissa Ingredients 20 dried red chillies 3 tsp coriander (dhania) powder 2 tsp cumin (jeera) powder 1 tsp caraway seeds (shah jeera) 3 tbsp olive oil Salt Method Boil water. Soak red chillies so they are covered. After 30 minutes, remove. They should be softened. Remove stalks and deseed. Grind to a paste with

half the olive oil and salt. Add spices and grind, drizzling the rest of the olive oil. Add more if needed. Store in a glass bottle.

Pour 1 tbsp more of olive oil and it should keep for a week.

Serving suggestions Pile couscous on a large plate in a mound and make a little volcano cone on top. Pour vegetables into the cone; let them spill over. Serve immediately with harissa (if you wish, lighten the harissa by

This is a column on easy, inventive cooking from a male perspective. Samar Halarnkar writes a blog, Our Daily Bread, at Htblogs.com.

He is editor-at-large, Hindustan Times.

Write to Samar at ourdailybread@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Samar’s previous columns at www.livemint.com/ourdailybread

HUNGRY PLANET | PATRICIA SOTO

Potatoes in Bogota Fresh fruits, potato­centricity, and other secrets of Colombian cuisine B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com

···························· or Colombian chef Patricia Soto, the word “potato” means very little. “It’s like saying ‘spices’, or ‘vegetables’,” she says. “You have to be more specific.” Tubers lie at the heart of Colombian cuisine, and Soto is particular about the differences between the different kinds—it’s central to Colombian cuisine, she says.

Soto is a consultant chef for culinary institutes around the world, and travels to promote a

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view of the country “beyond the dominant drugs-and-crime image”. On her first visit to Delhi, she spoke to Lounge about soup, guascas and the magic of fresh juice. Edited excerpts: What lies at the heart of Colombian cooking?

The potatoes! There are more than 15 kinds that we use in food, from the basic, all-purpose yellow potato, to the pastusa (which melts easily) and the criolla (usually roasted or fried). We use it in soup, especially this signature soup called the Ajiaco. The Ajiaco uses three kinds of potatoes mixed with chicken, cream and a herb called guascas. Potatoes are also mixed with green peas, meats, beans and legumes. It depends on the region you’re

in. They all have remarkably varied cuisines.

In what ways are the cuisines different?

If you go to the Orinoco region, the food has a distinct Caribbean flavour. They use a lot of coconut milk and fruits, and cumin, cilantro and coriander. They favour a lot of sweet and salty tastes. Near the capital Bogota, you’ll find equally eclectic food, but spicy.

Near the Andean region, it’s different. It’s low in spice, and mainly uses combinations of grains and potatoes.

Is there a Colombian technique? What does the typical Colombian meal involve?

Well, we use everything, really.

A lot of households use wooden furnaces, and we do everything to food—from boiling to roasting to frying. An everyday meal would consist of rice, tapioca, maybe a side of cheese and potatoes. There’ll be

Soto voce: Tubers are stars. fruit-based ice cream, or Arequipe—which is a thick milk caramel dessert.

What about festivals or special occasions?

During festivals, there’s a lot of coconut rice served with chicken. On Sundays, we eat a

special soup called sancocho—usually with pork, plantain and cassava.

During the February Barranquilla Carnival, people make this special soup with three meats called the Sopa de Guandu, and of course, we drink lots of aguardiente (a clear alcoholic drink)!

Speaking of drinks, I have to mention Colombia’s love for pure natural tropical fruit juices. We never buy juice in a market; it’s always made fresh at home.

Which fruits are the most popular for juices?

Oh, there are so many. We use maracuyas (passion fruit), guanabanas (soursop), guayusas (a tree native to the Amazon), curubas (banana passionfruit), moras (Andean blackberry), mangoes, oranges, mamons (Spanish lime), corozos (a type of palm), pineapples, watermelons, zapotes (sapote), nisperos (loquat) and papayas.

Mashed green plantains with cheese, crispy onions and chilli Serves 10 Ingredients 10 green bananas 100g butter 500g grated buffalo cheese 500g white onion 200g flour 100g sugar 50g red chillies Method Cook the bananas until tender.

Remove the skin and purée. Mix with butter and salt, and add half the grated cheese. Cut onions into rings, dip in cold water with sugar and refrigerate for an hour. Drain, dry with absorbent cloth, roll in flour and fry until golden brown.

Make a timbale (a drum-shaped mould) with mashed bananas and create a hollow in the centre of the mould. Fill it with the crispy onions and half of the grated buffalo cheese and red chillies. Place the timbales under a grill to melt the cheese.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2010

Business Lounge SARANG WADHAWAN

He turns huts into high­rises A new­generation builder who can manage glitzy couture weeks while redeveloping shanty towns

B Y M ADHURIMA N ANDY madhurima.n@livemint.com

···························· he black Porsche Panamera parked outside the Dheeraj Arma building in suburban Mumbai’s Bandra (East) area looks out of place amid the lawyers in black coats streaming in and out of the neighbouring Bandra court, the crowd at the railway station around the corner and squatters all over.

I meet Sarang Wadhawan, the

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33-year-old managing director of Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd (HDIL), in his chamber on the ninth floor of the building. Tall and dressed, as usual, in well-tailored clothes, he looks less hurried this time.

Our last meeting, over a year ago, was in the midst of the economic downturn. Wadhawan and his team were busy setting things right—tweaking their business model and keeping away from new sectors, such as

Transformer: Wadhawan has been focused on turning his company from a slum redeveloper into the corporate brand HDIL.

power, gas and hospitality, that they knew wouldn’t sustain them through the crisis.

He is a little more forthcoming this time too, possibly secure in the knowledge that the worst seems to be over for the real estate sector—and that they came out relatively unscathed.“The recession caught us all by surprise. But in the last one year we took the right decisions, were open and spoke to our investors almost on a daily basis,” he says.

Till 2008, Wadhawan may not have imagined that his firm, described as India’s largest slum redeveloper, would do anything else. Yet as the downturn hit in 2008-09, HDIL changed gear and tapped, for starters, the safer residential sector.

Today, the firm’s got a different image. And he’d rather talk about his showcase project—the Mumbai International Airport Pvt. Ltd (Mial)—than why the firm had to opt out of the redevelopment of one of Asia’s largest slums, Dharavi, in 2009.

Wadhawan, who joined the company in 2000, believes two factors played a key role in HDIL’s corporate branding.

One, a June 2007 initial public offering (IPO), which consolidated its real estate business.

Two, the extravaganza called HDIL India Couture Week, a collaboration between the Fashion Design Council of India and HDIL, which started in 2007. “It was a conscious, wellthought decision and this association will help us,” he says of the Couture Week.

HDIL’s core remains its land banking business, in which it typ i cal ly d evel ops infrastructure and sells development rights. The Mumbaifocused developer has a land bank of 2,500-odd acres. Just before its IPO, HDIL had 45.5 million sq. ft of space under development, comparable only with India’s largest developer by market value DLF Ltd, which had 44 million sq. ft under construction.

‘Mial is just as difficult as Dharavi. If we can handle 80,000 slum dwellers, the govt also can.’

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

IN PARENTHESIS Wadhawan doesn’t hesitate to say that the HDIL India Couture Week extravaganza gave the company, largely into redeveloping slums, a much needed corporate brand image makeover. In 2009, Bollywood showed up in great numbers: Actor Shah Rukh Khan walked the ramp with wife Gauri, and Katrina Kaif and several others showed up to support Salman Khan’s ‘Being Human’ initiative. It’s owing to the Couture Week, says Wadhawan, that the corporate world began associating luxury and quality with HDIL. Despite his six­day week work schedule, Wadhawan and his wife Anu are regulars at Mumbai’s social dos, fashion events and high­profile weddings. Anu, often spotted in Oscar de la Renta gowns on the red carpet, is closely associated with the three­year­old Couture Week event. About his own wardrobe, Wadhawan says, “Every suit I have worn in the last nine years has been made by designer and friend Ashish Soni.”

HDIL probably never imagined that it would not be part of the Rs15,000 crore Dharavi redevelopment project. In one of our conversations in 2008, Wadhawan had said his firm was capable of single-handedly executing the project, and was ready to bid for all five sectors there. After the bankruptcy of its partner, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., in 2008, HDIL was forced to pull out completely from the Dharavi project in March 2009—an outcome that continues to surprise many.

Senior Maharashtra government bureaucrats say it’s ironical that the best, and probably most eligible, firm in the business of slum redevelopment is out of the Dharavi project.

Sipping my second cup of coffee, I remind Wadhawan that the Dharavi project is yet to take off. He explains that the project has been “on the anvil for eight years, plagued by (the) overexpectations of people and the lack of someone to take responsibility”.

He is more forthcoming, however, about the seven-year Mial project that will relocate around 80,000 families. Under way despite the hiccups and delays, it will generate 43.4 million sq. ft of development rights and is valued at around Rs6,700 crore, according to a report by brokerage firm Prabhudas Lilladher Pvt. Ltd. “Mial is just as difficult as Dharavi. If we can handle 80,000 slum dwellers, the government also can,” he says.

For a company that is one of the largest players in the real estate business after DLF Ltd and Unitech Ltd, there is, strangely, only one spokesperson—Wadhawan himself. A second-generation developer, he will tell you that he learnt the tricks of the trade from Rakesh Kumar Wadhawan, his father.

Wadhawan senior is the company executive chairman, but not as hands on as he was till the son took over. Sarang Wadhawan, however, says the veteran is still involved in the big decisions.

“The days are busy, so often between 10pm-1am, I sit down with him and chat. We talk about business, strategy,” says Wadhawan.

He says he was into the family run business for years before the company went for its IPO. From 2000, on his return to India after a management degree in finance and marketing from the University of Houston, followed by a six-month internship in “a small company that dealt with plasma reactors for garbage disposal”, Wadhawan was on home turf. In the run-up to the company’s IPO, he simply followed his father’s instructions, spending days at a project being developed in Mumbai’s Andheri area and interacting with government officials to understand the key rules of project approvals during countless rounds of Mantralaya, the state secretariat.

There isn’t a speck of dust on his designer shoes now but he still manages to watch every project site, workers and every bag of cement that comes in through webcams in his plush cabin.

Despite the fiercely competitive nature of the real estate business, Wadhawan does have friends within the industry. He counts Vikas Oberoi, managing director of Oberoi Constructions Pvt. Ltd, and Boman Irani, chairman and managing director of Keystone Realtors Pvt. Ltd, as two of them.

But right now he is ecstatic about his newborn boy. “We have named him Abhay,” he says His three-year-old daughter Sara, he adds, goes to a playschool close to their home in Pali Hill, Bandra.

He has a hectic schedule, shuttling between his home and office in a Ferrari F430 Spider, Porsche or Roll-Royce, and travelling to Delhi regularly for project approvals. But sometimes, on a lazy Sunday, Wadhawan goes for a cruise in his 90ft yacht, a Ferretti 881 he bought a year ago, and which is parked at the Gateway of India.

So where did he go for his last holiday? “I haven’t taken a holiday in two years. The recession, you know,” he chuckles.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2010

L9

Style RETAIL THERAPY

They’re hip, they’re square

Acid rain Add a pop of colour to your look while waterproofing yourself with bright rain gear this season

Unfamiliar form factors, odd design cues— these new ‘social’ mobile phones don’t want to look like bricks any more p Yves Saint Laurent: Ombres Duolumieres Turquoise Blue­Hazy Violet water­resistant eyeshadow, at Shoppers Stop and Pantaloons outlets, Rs2,330.

B Y R ACHANA N AKRA rachana.n@livemint.com

····························

u Nike: Yellow nylon waterproof windrunner, at all Nike stores, Rs3,499.

q ToyWatch: Bright green watch from the Jelly collection, at The Collective, UB City mall, Bangalore; Aza, Kemps Corner, The Collective, Palladium, Mumbai, Oak Tree, Colaba, Mumbai; and Ensemble, Mehrauli, New Delhi, Rs9,625.

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

··························· our make-up compact may have just replaced the brick as the mobile phone industry’s new design muse. The last few months have seen no less than six new handsets flaunting an unusual square form factor, packed with all the necessities—a camera, Internet browser, apps—a palm-sized smartphone can manage.

Most of these new phones, from Microsoft’s Kin One to Motorola’s upcoming Flipout, are social networking and mes-

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t Micromax Q55 Rs5,599.

t Sonya Vajifdar: Purple PVC raincoat with shoulder flaps and cotton shimmer lining, at Attic, Santa Cruz (West), and Bombay Electric, Colaba, Mumbai, Rs4,500.

q Miss Sixty: Waterproof yellow bag with polyester lining, at Palladium, Lower Parel, Mumbai; and DLF Place, Saket, New Delhi, Rs8,000.

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

q Paul Smith: Men’s black umbrella with printed lining and wooden handle from the Crazy Print collection, at UB City mall, Bangalore; and DLF Emporio mall, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, Rs11,000.

saging-centric devices. The square display, along with the Qwerty keypad, arguably provides more efficient on-screen real estate for viewing Facebook walls and Twitter conversations, while avoiding the precarious fragility of lugging around a smartphone. Micromax’s Q55 comes studded with “Swarovski Crystal Elements” and is fittingly subtitled the “Bling”. Nokia calls its X5-01 a “MiniDisc player” masquerading as a cellphone, while Alcatel’s ICE3 takes its design cues from Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance SP.

p Zen Z90 Rs5,399.

t Nokia X5­01 Launching in September; tentative price, €165 (around Rs9,000), plus taxes.

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

q Pop Goes The Art: Digitally printed waterproof laptop bag, at Attic, Santa Cruz (West), Mumbai, Rs4,500.

q Motorola Flipout Launching in July; tentative price, €400.

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

p Microsoft Kin One International price, $50 (around Rs2,300), with a two­year network contract.

t Crocs: Green flip­flops for men, at all Crocs outlets, Rs1,295.

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

q Jimmy Choo: Animal­print jelly rubber sandals, at The Galleria, Trident, Mumbai; and DLF Emporio mall, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, Rs10,500.

t Alcatel ICE3 Rs6,500.

L10 COVER

COVER L11

SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

EXTREME CYCLING

EARLIER THIS MONTH SAMIM RIZVI BECAME THE FIRST

PEDALLING

INDIAN ENTRY INTO THE WORLD’S TOUGHEST BICYCLE RACE.

NIRVANA B Y A RUN K ATIYAR ····························· ver noticed how people who ride bicycles are so trim and, well, disgustingly fit? That’s because their bodies are tuned to a regular and natural workout. Riding a bicycle improves your cardiovascular capability, increases your metabolic rate, lowers blood pressure and tones your muscles. With so much goodness thrown into something as simple as a bicycle, why avoid it?

Then there are those OMG facts: Cycling can burn off a bar of chocolate or a couple of alcoholic drinks (300 calories) in an hour. A short 15-minute ride every day, perhaps to work, around the neighbourhood or to the market, has the potential to vaporize 5kg of fat in a year. So what’s it going to be this evening? A quick visit to the bicycle store, surely?

Says Arvind Bhateja, 40, consultant neurosurgeon and spine surgeon, Sita Bhateja Speciality Hospital, Bangalore, who began cycling because a knee injury brought an end to his passion for running: “Cycling has given me f itn ess a nd f o ugh t my fl a b .”

Today, barely a few years after he began cycling, his fitness levels have improved to the extent that he now leads Spectrum, one of Bangalore’s three professional cycling teams.

But it’s not health and fitness that drives Dr Bhateja now; it is a savagely competitive aspect of the sport that has captured his imagination. Most cyclists fondly think Spectrum is made up of a bunch of animals—such as Gaurav Dwivedi, who is part of the nine-member team, and who recently cycled 63km in 1 hour and 42 minutes, averaging 36.8km per hour (kmph) for a podium finish in a race. But if you think that is jaw-dropping, read up. Samim Rizvi (www.samriz.com), a 42-yearold cycling demon from Bangalore, became the first Indian in 27 years to participate in the Race Across America (Raam), the world’s toughest bicycle race—one that began in Oceanside in California and ended at Annapolis on the East Coast after traversing 4,800km across the US, clocking a total elevation of 100,000ft, in less than 10 days. That’s an average of 480km a day. If you cycle round the clock, that’s 20 kmph for 10 days, no excuses. If that doesn’t rewrite the limits of human

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endurance, what could? On Day 3 of the race which began on 9 June, Rizvi did 616km. It can’t be just about physical fitness; that kind of ultra performance calls for neurotic mental focus and a determination beyond comprehension.

Unfortunately, on Day 4, while Rizvi was among the top 15 riders, he was hit by influenza and was advised by doctors to retire from the race. It is impossible to imagine how Rizvi must have felt. Disappointed, perhaps.

Upset, maybe. But whatever else, he won’t have felt defeated. His spirit may have flagged, but he would combat it and be back next year. That’s one of the things endurance cycling does to you—it rearranges the mind to deal with a setback for what it is: another opportunity to overcome the impossible.

If you are planning to trot down to the neighbourhood bicycle store and think of a race like Raam, who knows, one day you too might be doing it.

I began cycling at the age of 45 after a parasailing accident tore away most of my posterior cruciate ligament in the left knee and brought my ability to do any outdoor physical activity to a grinding halt. Any more of that critical ligament goes and I will be in a wheelchair for life. But because the outdoors is irresistible, I picked up a second-hand Giant Iguana—it’s a bicycle, not an animal—from my neighbour who was returning to California.

I told myself: “It’s only a bicycle.

I will toodle around the neighbourhood.” The bicycle cost me less than the metal brace I had to stick my knees into so that I could cycle with a reduced likelihood of further damage.

I am now 52. Most Sundays I cycle with friends, leaving home at 6am, clocking some 50km on off-roads. When I get back home, my wife hoses me down in the garden along with my bicycle—both of us having picked up tonnes of gunk on the farmland that we make our way through. Once in two months, we do rides that are 100-150km, pushing our physical limits in the hope of finding…what…nirvana? Herogiri? Mojo? My riding buddy Siva, who is in his 30s, has mapped out a 220km, daylong ride to the fabulous Sripuram Golden Mahalaxmi Temple in Vellore. We’ll recklessly plunge into that ride later this monsoon. I joke with him—for sure, God is guaran-

teed at the end of that ride.

I am not sure what it is that cycling these monster distances does for the human soul. I suspect it has a way of seeding the body with calm; for after the pain of doing some 100km on the saddle, the body recognizes pain, and in a moment of magic, comes to embrace it like an old friend. In that sweaty, searing, agonizingly numb body blooms—like a lotus in a dirt pond—a tranquillity that is inexplicable. Maybe this is what the Bhagavad Gita means when it says may you be blessed with God’s grace, transporting you from the unreal to the real, from darkness into light and from death to immortality. I’m not sure…

What I know is this: To the horror of my family, the number of bicycles in my backyard has been growing steadily. I now own five bicycles. And I won’t discuss the numerous helmets, gloves, tyre pressure gauges, pumps, cycle computers and bottles of silicon lube that litter our home—silent indicators of the insane cycling bug.

Those who are bitten by the bug quickly begin to do ambitious rides, in the range of 30-50km on weekends, going out of city limits, into the countryside and villages. Imagine cycling through paddy fields.

Imagine the aroma of mango groves in summer as you zip through them. Imagine being in places that don’t have mobile signals. Don’t have ATMs. Don’t have pizza deliveries.

With a few months of regularly cycling 50km, leisure and recreational cyclists can do 60-100km rides on weekends. Let’s look at what this can do for you. Most off-road rides that require you to cycle through forested or farmlands, up mountains and hills, and on mud roads around the countryside, can burn 1,500-2,500 calories in about 4-5 hours of cycling.

“Coupled with the fact that you will be drawing in vast amounts of clean, high-oxygen air while riding in these places, your health gains will be unparalleled. Besides, cycling through the rural countryside can be invigorating and can become one of the reasons for a sense of calm and reduced stress,” says Chandra Siddaiah, head and consultant doctor, department of sports medicine, Manipal Hospital, Bangalore. Notice how Dr Siddaiah and I don’t differ much

on the outcome of cycling. He looks at it from a professional medical point of view. I like to believe it is a spiritual journey.

But cycling can become an obsessive activity. It can take you to unimaginable extremes. Like Rizvi’s ultra-cycling Raam effort—a race that is tougher than the celebrated Tour de France, because it is 30% longer.

It has no rest days, with participants doing an average 400-560km per day. And most Raam solo riders finish it in half the time it takes to do the Tour de France. Rizvi’s advice for people who want to do extreme cycling (more than 200km a day): “Focus on the physical aspect of the sport. Endurance riding needs one to be extremely strong from the head to the toes.

Don’t do junk miles. Junk miles are like junk food. Avoid them completely. It’s not about how much distance you ride, but how you ride it. Get out of the comfort zone. Make every mile count. Show no mercy to yourself” (see accompanying box on training).

The good news is that India now has many cycle brands— Cannondale, Bianchi, Trek, Raleigh, Merida, Kona, Colnago, Orbea, Rockrider, etc. These are performance bicycles that cost upwards of Rs25,000 (up to Rs2 lakh). They can help you ride further and longer—and bring you up close to rural India, which is in itself a rewarding experience. They can help you ride distances such as 150km a day to lift mental barriers, release legal opiates such as endorphins and keep you in the “zone” where others find it insanely frustrating to see you smile without much reason.

And, truth be told, with your day glow spandex cycling shorts showcasing those bulging thighs, the cool cycling helmets and the colourful polycarbonate eyewear, you will feel like god flying in the wind.

Arun Katiyar is addicted to cycling. He was part of the team that in 2008 started the country’s longest bicycle ride, the eight-day, 1,000-plus km Tour of Nilgiris.

Today, in its third edition, it is a dream tour on the calendar of every serious cyclist in India. In his free time, Katiyar is a content and communication consultant with a focus on technology companies. He is a published author with HarperCollins Publishers.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

THE ACHIEVEMENT SPEAKS OF A SMALL, INVISIBLE REVOLUTION AROUND US. CYCLING HAS BECOME THE SPORT OF CHOICE, FOR LEISURE AND FOR COMPETITION

Well­wheeled: (clockwise from right) Samim Rizvi hard at work; Arvind Bhateja leads a profes­ sional cycling team in Bangalore; a good mountain bike will set you back by about Rs25,000; and (from left) Ramesh Palani, Pratvii Ponnappa, and Gayathri Chablani of the ‘Radio One’ BSA Tour of Nilgiris team.

Get up and ride

The number of cycling groups and cycling opportunities is growing. A self­help guide to get you dreaming

G PEEVEE

ABHIJITH RAO

The cycling start­up toolkit Can cycling be such a big deal that you need to think about it? As children, we just rented a bicycle and were off, isn’t it? But today, you have better options.

A look at what you need to consider when taking up cycling. Seriously

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• The 10­day, 450­650km Hercules

Arun Katiyar

• The eight­day, approximately 1,000km Tour of Nilgiris goes through the high Nilgiri mountains and takes you through forests, game reserves and some of the most hairy climbs in the history of Indian cycling. It also takes riders through a vast variety of intriguing landscapes and cultures. The tour accommodates 100 and there isn’t a serious cyclist in the country who doesn’t want to test himself or herself on this non­competitive tour. Tour dates are for December. More details at www.tourofnilgiris.com

here are many kinds of bicycles available in the market. But the most popular ones are road bicycles, the sleek ones that come with those super­svelte bent handlebars, and MTBs or the thobby, built­like­monsters mountain bikes. You need to figure out the kind of cycling you want to do first. Road bikes are for hard, good tarmac, racing and strategy. MTBs are for off­roads, climbing and brutal strength. You get the picture.

Most good road bicycles will cost upwards of Rs40,000 and a decent MTB will cost upwards of Rs25,000. Budget another Rs4,000–5,000 for essential accessories and other cool road warrior stuff.

Make sure you learn how to repair punctures, and at the min­ imum buy a puncture repair kit, a spare tube, portable pump, helmet, gloves, a mini toolkit and a water bottle. You can always add on the accessories once you get ambitious—polycarbonate eyewear, high contrast lenses to go with them, carbon seats, saddle bags, lights, cadence meters, cycle computers, GPS…the list is endless. And don’t you forget those devastatingly revealing riding shorts and jersey.

MTB Himachal begins from Shimla and makes its way through the western Himalayas. This is a spectacular, competitive ride that places you within arm’s distance of rain clouds and within skin­of­the­teeth distance with danger as tracks plunge up to 1,470m in just 19km. The event’s website at www.mtbhimachal.com is being updated. Visit it often to figure out the dates for the next Himachal MTB.

The seat of a problem

Training for extreme cycling fitness

Oops! Could cycling be bad news for men?

Samim Rizvi, the first Indian to qualify for the longest and toughest cycling race in the world, the Race Across America, follows a fitness programme that makes you think, ‘Is this guy made of steel? Does he eat bicycle spokes for breakfast?’ A look at the most demanding training programme that probably any cyclist has undertaken in the country

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s it possible that while you have been trying to beat obesity, improve your cardiovascular capability and tone up, you could be taking a hit in bed?

Perhaps you’ve been on a bicycle and given up because of serious butt pain after an hour or so of riding—a numbness in the most embarrassing places that often leads to alarm for men.

Cycling may be great for your carbon footprint, but is it bad for your sex life?

Some studies have shown that men riding a bicycle may be prone to impotency.

Here is what is happening: The area that makes contact with the bicycle seat is called the perineum, located between the external genitals and the anus. This part of the perineum called Alcock’s canal contains an artery and a nerve supplying the penis with blood and

sensation. When blood flow to this part of the body is cut, it results in numbness, says a study by Steven Schrader in International Society for Sexual Medicine. But before you rush at your bicycle with a hacksaw and bloodshot eyes to total it, you may wish to think over the fact that China has no population problem, despite the bicycle being the most popular mode of transport.

So what’s the catch? The issue is your riding posture. If your posture is poor, you will go through the perineum­artery­ nerve under pressure problem. Fix your posture and everything fixes itself. Just look at Samim Rizvi (see main story). He’s 40­plus, has children and just participated in the world’s toughest bicycle race. He doesn’t think it affects him.

Arun Katiyar

o online and look for cycling groups.

There are plenty of them across India. And each of these groups announces rides to meet different cycling capabilities. But most groups try and organize weekend rides that go off road, into the countryside. Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai have the most active cycling communities. For extreme mountain biking opportunities, think about the three events listed below. Be sure, mountain biking is not for the lily­livered. So tread cautiously.

Workout u Every Monday: One long ride

of 450­plus km uTuesday: Off­day. Complete recuperation u Wednesday­Sunday: Very high­intensity interval training workouts, body­weight strength training and hard­core conditioning u Rizvi’s interval training is on a stationary trainer (spinning, as it is termed) on zone 4 and zone 5.

This is an extremely high­intensity workout routine done at maximum heart rate or beyond the maximum heart rate.

Rizvi’s resting heart rate is 37 and maximum heart rate is 196. u High­altitude training: Wolfgang Fasching, three­time

winner of the solo Raam, has also climbed Mt Everest. In his words, though climbing Everest is more dangerous, Raam is much harder. To ensure that Rizvi would be able to meet the rigour of extremes—physical exertion, climate changes, lack of sleep—he underwent three sets of high­altitude training in March.

Nutrition Rizvi burns approximately 10,000 calories a day. This means that he takes in a lot of high­calorie carbohydrates along with quality calories (proteins and antioxidants) to make up for the deficit. On an average, he eats about 25 eggs a day and consumes high­quality natural

protein drinks. The night before his long rides, he loads up on carbs by bingeing on biryani, which he insists releases energy slowly and surely the next day!

Mental fitness Rizvi is a very optimistic and positive person. However, Raam and working towards Raam can be daunting even for the most upbeat person due to the severe physical strain they face on a daily basis. Rizvi worked with Ronnie Sehgal, CEO of Bulldog Sportz, and life coach Paul Robinson, who helped him put his mind over body, push the limits and dream big.

• The Great Malnad Challenge is a nine­day, 800­odd km cycling expedition through the rain­washed Western Ghats in Karnataka. Staying away from the highways, the route starts from Madikeri in Coorg and runs through Belur, Mullaingiri (the highest point in the state), the Kemmangundi and Bababudangiri hill stations and the forest trails of Kudremukh and Kodachadri before winding up at the Jog Falls in Shimoga, an average distance of 90­100km per day. To get the participants in shape for the gruelling ride, Tandem Trails has lined up seven practice rides. The Great Malnad Challenge is scheduled to be held from 23­31 October and costs Rs15,000 for the full ride. For details, visit http://tandemtrails.co.in/gmc Arun Katiyar & Sumana Mukherjee

Arun Katiyar

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www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2010

Play ESSAY

Sport your tribe

THE ALL BLACKS’ HAKA (KA MATE) (Translation in italics) MARTYN HAYHOW/AFP

Ka mate, Ka mate!

It is death, It is death Ka ora, Ka ora!

It is life, It is life Ka mate, Ka mate!

It is death, It is death Ka ora, Ka ora!

It is life, It is life Tenei te tangata puhuruhuru This is the man above me Nana i tiki mai whakawhiti te ra!

Who enabled me to live A hupane, kaupane As I climb up step by step A hupane, kaupane whiti te ra!

Towards sunlight Translation from All Blacks’ website DOUG BENC/GETTY IMAGES/AFP

The blowing of the vuvuzela is an example of tribal antecedents in modern sports B Y A NINDITA G HOSE anindita.g@livemint.com

···························· ccording to South African folklore, too much noise kills baboons—primates that proliferate in the region and occasionally cause nuisance to farmers. Some believe this is the reason the vuvuzela, called lepatata in the South African Tswana language, is blown during football matches in South Africa. It is a gesture seeped in symbols: Supporters blow vuvuzelas frantically in an attempt to “kill off” their opponents.

At close range, and with prolonged exposure, the vuvuzela’s high sound levels can lead to permanent hearing loss in humans, according to The Hear the World Foundation, an initiative formed by Swiss hearing aid products group Phonak. But in spite of the controversy they have spawned, enthusiasts defend the vuvuzela as an integral part of football culture in South Africa; a way of showing loyalty to the home team.

This stadium horn is no lone ringer of primeval customs. British zoologist Desmond Morris, most famous for his book The Naked Ape that stripped bare the behaviour of primates, traces the roots of sports such as football to the activities of our evolutionary ancestors.

In his 1981 book, The Soccer Tribe, Morris starts off by describing the “survival hunters”, who relied on the chase and kill to stay alive.

When hunting for food was no longer necessary for survival, men became “sports hunters”, keeping alive the thrill of the chase. The third stage of development was marked by the creation of “arena blood-sportsmen” who brought the hunting activities of the countryside to the centre of cities: Spanish bullfighting and Balinese cockfights for instance. These were finally replaced in relatively recent times by the “arena ball-sportsmen”, who adapted the rules and rituals of blood sports to create more socially acceptable games.

Games such as football stand in for this ultimate ritualization of tribal hunting, removing death altogether but retaining the use of cooperative skills which once ensured our survival as a species.

In another book called Tribes (1988), a book Morris has co-

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authored with Peter Marsh, a social psychologist, the pair explains that though modern sports are largely obscured by technology and the interests of large commercial institutions, the true function of sport is still largely manifest in the nature of the games.

Most sports involve skills that were once essential for survival within hunting communities: strength, stamina, agility, territorial defence and accurate aim.

These skills are no longer essential in contemporary societies but they have filtered down to the sports we engage in today.

Strength and stamina are essential for blocking or tackling rival players; agility, when running with or for the ball; territorial defence while goalkeeping; and accuracy of aim when making passes or making a goal. More importantly, these skills are of no value without coordination with other players. Strong bonds between teammates are essential for a win, just as strong bonds between tribesmen were essential for group hunting.

MEXSPORT/AFP

PEDRO ARMESTRE/AFP

Ethnic flavours: (from top) New Zealand’s national rugby team, All Blacks, performs the Haka, a Maori war dance that has become an iconic pre­game ritual today; cheerleaders have a distinctly primal role in modern sports—the erotic motivation of male participants; in Spain and Latin America, the bullfight continues to reinforce the dominant concept of machismo; and the Mexican lucha libre style of wrestling uses ‘sacred’ masks, more ritualistic than performative.

There is also the ritual of sport: the symbolism and protocol. The rites of collegiate American football can be interpreted as a masculine rite of passage involving a yearly ceremonial cycle, the isolation of novices from females, and a special diet in which certain foods (such as potato) are taboo.

Even beyond the games themselves, sports embrace several components of tribal culture: repetition, regularity,

emotionality, drama and symbolism. In her research on the history of sports, American anthropologist Alyce Cheska draws attention to how sports seasons have replaced harvesting seasons in segmenting the year. While ungentlemanly behaviour resulted in the ousting of a tribe member, on the field it results in fouls.

Barring a few sports, such as climbing, there is always a winner—an individual or a team.

In football, the two teams are not trying to destroy each other, they are trying to get past each other to make a goal, a symbolic killing.

With modern societies marked by mechanism, sports offer deliberately sought-after emotional risks. They bring about ritual activity and heighten bonds between people; they evoke a sense of belonging.

Why shouldn’t the vuvuzela be blown?

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SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2010

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Culture ICONS

Art’s everywoman Why Ravinder Reddy’s woman heads became the iconic symbol of contemporary Indian art

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

···························· here is an unabashed provinciality to artist Ravinder Reddy’s “woman heads”.

Despite the exaggerated flourishes, such as the stunned expression in their eyes, the resplendent gold or bright hues and elaborate ornamentation in the hair, they are distinctly Indian, even south Indian, and tribal. Perhaps one of the reasons the woman in fibreglass is an iconic artwork all over the world and a discerning collector’s staple from India.

A lot of contemporary art follows directly or indirectly from Western trends and Western technical and digital ingenuity. Their universal appeal is often a matter of technique rather than form or subject. In Reddy’s work, it is easy to spot the provincial in the universal, and yet the universality is what you react to, on first and later viewings—Reddy recently told me, over the phone from his Visakhapatnam studio, that it was “a kind of an amalgam of Egyptian and Mexican figures, Nigerian bronzes, real-life women in rural Andhra Pradesh and Warholian pop sensibility”. The faces could be as close to Kalighat paintings as to African folk art.

Recently, an 11ft-high bronze head which Reddy made for the CentralWorld Plaza, a shopping mall in Bangkok, as part of an Indian-Thai diplomatic initiative, made it to the front page of international newspapers when the Thai capital was under siege. It was unscathed by the fire in the complex. The eyes were eerily eloquent about the devastation.

Mumbai’s Sakshi Art Gallery, one of the first galleries in the city to promote the heads, is showcasing one of them as part of Third Dimension, a group show of con-

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temporary art.

In the last five years, Reddy’s “everywoman” has appeared in Christie’s and Sotheby’s catalogues, and many books on Indian contemporary art, such as the lavishly produced New Delhi New Wave by the French art publishing house Damiani. It is part of famous art collections such as the Fukuoka Art Museum in Japan, the Frank Cohen collection, and closer home, Anupam

MUSIC MATTERS

SHUBHA MUDGAL

VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS

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id you ever think that you could learn Raga Yaman or a thumri, or get tabla and sitar lessons online? As has been reported occasionally by the print and electronic media, online classes in Indian music are becoming increasingly popular.

Even as the more orthodox among Indian musicians scowl and grimace, and dismiss technology-aided teaching options as gimmickry, many musicians are ready to give Internet technology a serious shot.

On 15 April, tabla player Aneesh Pradhan and I taught what could be called a virtual class to students in a room at Ithaca College, New York. We were accompanied by our friend and colleague Sudhir Nayak, one of India’s acclaimed harmonium artistes, and the

three of us were performing and interacting with students in New York from the popular Blue Frog Studios at Lower Parel in Mumbai. This was the first in a series of online classes that we had been planning with Denise Nuttall, assistant professor at Ithaca College and a tabla player herself.

In Pune, several musicians work with ShadjaMadhyam, a portal with a steadily increasing panel of gurus featuring on its website (www.shadjamadhyam.com/ guru_panel). Many musicians in south India conduct online classes through the night, almost every day of the week, using applications such as Skype to teach Carnatic music to students living in different time zones.

Indeed, Skype (www.skype.com), Adobe Connect

In vogue: A woman head by Reddy in gold leaf and fibreglass.

(www.adobe.com/ products/acrobatconnectpro/), Dimdim (www.dimdim.com), ooVoo (www.oovoo.com) and the lesser known but very efficient Pune-grown kPoint (www.kpoint.in) offer affordable, often free and easy-to-use facilities for videoconferencing and online teaching.

But if you want to sing or play along with a student online, there is invariably a slight lag, which makes interaction in real time impossible.

Depending on the Net speed, the bandwidth and other constraints, the time lag could be anywhere between 3-30 seconds.

That, in the context of music, would render the student and teacher completely out of sync with each other.

Moreover, fast movements tend to jitter and destroy the continuity of communication. To overcome these problems, one would have to consider options

such as Musion, forwarded to me recently by Australian sarod player Adrian McNeil.

To see what Musion offers, check out its YouTube videos of German band Tokio Hotel’s hologram tour (www.musion.co.uk/ Tokio_Hotel.html) where, to quote from their website, the band was transformed into 3D holograms,

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

Poddar’s personal collection, besides many smaller private collections.

How did this work travel so far and why did it connect instantly with collectors?

Reddy, 54, has been making art since the 1980s. One of his first works was part of an exhibition in Mumbai in the mid-1980s, at a show called Time Art Auctions. In the early 1990s, he showed in Mumbai again, as a part of a public art show. At a bus stop in south Mumbai and inside what was then the Victoria Terminus Station, Reddy showcased sculptures depicting a couple sleeping with a quilt over their bodies. “That caused quite a stir,” recalls Sakshi’s Geetha Mehra. People were scandalized and curious; Reddy had made an entry into the art world.

In the 1990s, Reddy made the first head.

He says: “I had seen Nigerian bronzes in 1984 when I was in London’s Royal College of Art after my graduation from Baroda (MS university).

They reminded me of figures and features from Andhra Pradesh, the kind of faces I had probably grown up seeing.

The broad features had resonance across geographical borders.” Several years later, when he decided to make something similar, he had been exposed to more art forms. “Pop art was a big thing at that time. You just couldn’t avoid it.”

Among the first collectors Reddy showed his works to was Ebrahim Alkazi and soon after, to Thai curator and art critic Apinan Poshyananda. In a span of two or three years in the late 1990s, he was showing in SoHo galleries and London’s Grosvenor Gallery.

“Back then, India was not on the international radar. Reddy was one of the few sculptors to actually get attention in the right places internationally,” says Mehra.

In 2007, the woman head ensured an economic turnaround for Indian sculpture. At the time, for a combination of reasons, the art market was experiencing an unprecedented upsurge. In March that year, Radha, a head in gold leaf and fibreglass, fetched Rs1.49 crore at Saffronart’s online auc-

“allowing them to transmit spectacular live performances across seven countries in Europe”.

Of course, the technology costs a bomb, and setting it up also requires time and special equipment, as opposed to the easy-to-use Skype or Adobe Connect. And so, it will remain out of the reach of online music classes, and will be used in India only to beam some Bollywood hottie kicking up her heels at the nth XYZ award ceremony to screaming fans in a dozen countries.

So until Musion releases a more affordable version, we will just have to accept that video images of fingers flying across the pudi of a tabla will just jitter and split and break.

Nevertheless, many Indian musicians will continue to try online classes rather than go through the trials and travails of acquiring visas or being frisked and interrogated by immigration officers at different airports.

Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com

tion. Soon after, Lakshmi Devi, a similar sculpture, fetched Rs1.36 crore at Christie’s auction of modern and contemporary art in New York. Christie’s had anticipated the interest the sculpture would generate. The work, estimated to sell for around Rs30 lakh, was on the cover of the auction’s catalogue—the first time an Indian sculpture, and not a painting, was on a Christie’s catalogue cover.

Now Reddy’s works are estimated at around Rs2-3 crore, say gallerists and curators. The art world has gone through a phase of price correction, and prices have plateaued. But interest in Reddy’s works has been increasing steadily. Mehra says many foreign curators and first-time buyers show interest in Reddy’s heads.

Minal Vizarani, co-founder of Saffronart, who collects Reddy’s work for her own collection, says the artist’s appeal is his ability to meld various kinds of iconography in one work: “There’s a grace to his ungainly forms. He is able to engage with what India is about.

He can capture the dualities and contradictions of Indian life.” She says living with his work requires engagement, it constantly attracts you and makes you react to it.

The Indianness of his works attracted French collector and curator Hervé Perdriolle, who visited Reddy many times. “The heads are iconic because of their eloquent simplicity,” Perdriolle says. “As with Subodh Gupta’s Very Hungry God, he has found with this the universal in the local.” But he says it’s the singularly Indian qualities that draw collectors to them. “Their spectacular size connects with both sacred art and the secular by representing the statutes erected in public places of famous people.”

Reddy, who is now working on a series of works for a show in Japan, speaks in measured words. Born in Andhra Pradesh’s Suryapet village, he has settled in Visakhapatnam. “I don’t really get so many visitors,” he says, “it is quite peaceful to be working here.”

He is not a prolific artist, and is known to have spent at least nine months to a year on a work. “I think I was conscious from the beginning about the fact that I was making the head a combination of various art forms. The universality of it was very deliberately achieved. To make something monumental and timeless. And when you are blowing anything up to such a size, it fits into the ‘pop’ mould,” says Reddy.

Ravinder Reddy’s Gilded Head 1 is part of Third Dimension, on show at Sakshi Art Gallery, Colaba, Mumbai, till 10 July.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2010

Travel GASTRONOMY

Have food? Will travel Exclusive excerpts from a National Geographic book on the most historic and extraordinary places to eat around the world Food Journeys of a Lifetime: National Geographic, 320 pages, Rs1,800.

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Recommended: K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen for the original blackened redfish.

Montreal

Packing intercontinental fusion twists, Puerto Rico’s capital city showcases a playful modern interpretation of Latin American dishes—themselves a blend of Amerindian, Spanish, African and other influences—using French cooking styles. Nuevo Latino cuisine thrives on freshness and typically uses humble local ingredients.

When to go: Year-round Recommended: The Oof! chain, including Aquaviva, Parrot Club and Koco.

place may attract visitors because of its scenery, its historic landmarks, its street life, or the treasures in its museums. But the opportunities for good eating can be as much, if not more, of a draw. On such journeys as these, unfortunately, three meals a day may never be quite enough.

A sampling menu: The roots of local cooking lie in Quebec’s fur-trapping past, resulting in nourishing, rich food.

Try poutine, a sort of Québécois fast food: French fries topped with a rich gravy and bits of densely textured, squeaky cheese curds.

When to go: Spring through fall (March to August) Recommended: Au Pied de Cochon for duck in a can: a duck breast wrapped around a lobe of foie gras with a head of garlic, sprigs of thyme and a rich balsamic maple glaze, served on a slice of toasted sourdough spread with celeriac puree.

New Orleans From early days, Cajun cuisine blended French country cooking methods with local ingredients, in particular seafood, rice, sugarcane, celery, onions and peppers. Several Cajun dishes are now cherished well beyond the bayou, among them gumbo, jambalaya and crawfish pie. But there are plenty more where those came from.

When to go: Spring and fall

Culinary capers: (clockwise from far left) Don’t miss Hong Kong’s dim sums, Tunis’ spices and Montreal’s poutine fries.

San Juan

Tokyo A typical izakaya has all the bustle and buzz of a Western bar or pub. But the Japanese like to eat when they drink, and izakaya also serve excellent food. The dishes are often compared to Spanish tapas, but tend to come in larger portions, though no dish is a meal in itself.

When to go: Late-spring and mid-fall Recommended: Tengu and Tofuro, izakaya chains with multiple outlets across Tokyo.

Manila For non-Muslim Filipinos, pork is king and the version that reigns supreme is lechon or whole spit-roast pig. Whether seasoned only with salt and pepper, as in Manila and the northern island group of Luzon, or with

lemongrass, scallions and other seasonings, as in the southern island groups of Visayas and Mindanao, a lechon should taste utterly, extravagantly porcine.

When to go: Anytime but the monsoon.

Recommended: Kamayan, where the milk-basted lecon de leche is served with sweet, sour, and spicy dipping sauces.

Hong Kong Hong Kong claims to have the best dim sum in the world, from street level basics to pricey rarities and fusion versions served in high-rise restaurants.

The classic menu items by which any dim sum restaurant can be judged are har gau, prawns in a bite-sized, rice-noodle wrapper, and sui mai, steamed minced pork bound into a small round parcel with tofu skin, topped with crab roe.

When to go: November through January Recommended: Shu Zhai at Stanley Market or the Easterngate Seafood Restaurant at Citygate mall at Tung Chung.

Copenhagen Denmark’s smørrebrød translates as “butter and bread” and describes the city’s famous open-face sandwiches. One popular version is bread topped with pork liver pate and served with crunchy pickled cucumber, bacon and fragrant fried mushrooms.

When to go: Spring and fall Recommended: Restaurant Ida Davidsen.

Sydney A diverse multiculturalism ensures that its restaurants offer an ever-changing array of Mediterrasian cuisines. Chefs select from some of the world’s finest ingredients, including grain- and grass-fed beef, succulent lamb, free-range poultry, and the more exotic kangaroo and crocodile. But seafood is Sydney’s real specialty.

When to go: Spring for seasonal food Recommended: Rockpool, Pier, Tetsuya’s. Or Frenchmans Beach

at Botany Bay for a takeout.

Naples In pizzerias around the city, mozzarella di bufala bubbles and blisters in the volcanic heat of wood-fired ovens. It is destined for the queen of pizzas, the Margherita. To create a Margherita, the mozzarella is combined with vibrant basil and locally grown San Marzano tomatoes. Also found on the menu of every Neapolitan pizzeria is the marinara, topped with deep-red tomato puree and wildly fragrant oregano.

When to go: Winters Recommended: Da Michele.

Edinburgh Until recently, the city would never have figured in anybody’s list of gourmet destinations.

Happily, Scotland has now learned to appreciate national produce that includes seafood from crystal-clear northern waters, Europe’s finest beef cattle, lamb with a delicacy of flavour that comes only from grazing by the sea or on

Sydney Montreal

Tokyo

Hong Kong

New Orleans

heather-clad hills, wild mushrooms, game and luscious soft fruits.

When to go: August Recommended: Castle Terrace Farmers’ Market, held every Saturday from 9am to 2pm for sweet and savory free samples and brunch.

Tunis Start your tasting tour by entering the Medina through Bab el Bahr. Inside you can lose yourself in a maze of narrow alleyways, all of which lead to the souk. Each part of the souk features a different product but everywhere hole-in-the-wall restaurants beckon. Sit inside or at one of the tiny tables that line the narrow alleys and enjoy a snack of merguez or brik. For a formal lunch or a delicious dinner, visit La Galette, Tunis’ port.

When to go: Spring and fall Recommended: Le Café Vert, L’Avenir.

Reprinted with permission of the National Geographic Society from Food Journeys of a Lifetime: 500 Extraordinary Places to Eat Around the Globe. Copyright ©2009 Toucan Books Ltd. Available freely.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

TRAVEL L15

SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

PROFILE

Bull’s glacier

MANOJ VERMA/MINT

Moving mountains: (clockwise from top, left) Kumar (right) discusses an unexplored route to Kanchenjunga with then chief of army staff Gen. T.N. Raina in 1977; Kumar (in orange) leads the 1981 Siachen expedi­ tion; and Kumar at his home in New Delhi.

We may have lost the Siachen glacier and its surrounding areas if it wasn’t for one man’s zest for exploration

B Y R UDRANEIL S ENGUPTA rudraneil.s@livemint.com

···························· nybody who visits the Siachen glacier has to land at Kumar Base—perhaps the only base named after a living army officer. But the stocky and muscular Col. Narendra “Bull” Kumar, still fitting the epithet at 77, is embarrassed when this is mentioned to him. This, despite the fact that he almost single-handedly ensured India’s presence at Siachen, the world’s longest non-polar glacier.

In 1978, Kumar, as commandant of the Indian Army’s High Altitude Warfare School, joined two German explorers in an attempt to navigate the upper reaches of the Indus river in Ladakh. Two years later, one of his former co-travellers returned to India and asked Kumar to join him in an expedition to the Nubra Valley, which separates Ladakh from the Karakoram ranges. “The only problem,” he pointed out on a map, “is that it’s in Pakistan.”

“Like hell it is,” thought Kumar, and took the map straight to the director general of military operations. “I told him I’d volunteer to lead the expedition,” he recalls, “and to cut through all the red tape, I took one full batch of students from the High Altitude Warfare School, saying that I’m taking them for practical training.”

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It was the first Indian expedition into the remote glacier. The team started at the snout of the glacier and reached halfway up the massive bulk of uncharted ice, braving temperatures that dipped to -50 degrees Celsius, and navigating tricky crevasses, peaks and passes—bound to each other with thick ropes.

“Every day Pakistani fighter jets would circle above us,” says Kumar, “and we were carrying no weapons!”

The team returned with the trash left behind by Pakistani expeditions as proof of their incursions. In 1981, Kumar went back to Siachen, this time covering it from snout to source, and summiting Sia Kangri (24,350ft), India’s northernmost point.

Three years later, in the summer

of 1984, the Indian Army launched its first major offensive against the Pakistani army at Siachen and established bases along the glacier. Their main weapon? The detailed maps, plans, photographs and videos made by Kumar and his team.

On 25 June, Kumar was honoured with the McGregor Medal, awarded by the United Service Institution of India for the best military reconnaissance, exploration or survey in remote areas in the country. Although he is one of the most highly decorated officers in India, this recognition was still a significant thrill for Kumar. “But for my reconnaissance work, all of Siachen and its adjoining regions, including the Nubra Valley, would be Pakistan’s. That’s an

area covering almost 10,000 sq. km. That’s how much this award means to me,” he says.

Previous recipients of the award include such historical figures as the 19th century British explorers Francis Younghusband and Frederick Bailey.

“People used to tell me I’m in the league of early 20th century explorers like Eric Shipton,” says Kumar. “Now they’ll tell me I’m in the league of 19th century explorers like Younghusband—just goes to show how ancient I’m becoming!”

Unlike Shipton and Younghusband, though, Kumar’s pioneering exploration work is largely unknown outside India’s mountaineering and Armed Forces circles. He was the first Indian to reach up to 28,700ft, in his first

FOOT NOTES | SUMANA MUKHERJEE

Shoestring Hong Kong Budget deals and boat races. Arts fair and beer fest. It’s carnival time soon, folks

Snake charming MIKE CLARKE/AFP

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ong Kong will be witnessing a spectacular series of summer extravaganzas. Topping the list is the Dragon Boat Carnival (23-25 July).

Starting from East Tsim Sha Tsui on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbour, the 640m race course will see the world’s leading paddlers compete in multiple dragon boat races, amid much colour, costumes and revelry.

Don’t forget to sample the rice-and-meat dumplings that are an intrinsic part of the festival.

There’s also the International Arts Carnival (9 July-15 August), the Lan Kwai Fong Beer and Food Festival (17-18 July), the Hong Kong Book Fair (21-27 July)—not to mention special

Dance of the dragon: The Dragon Boat races are the highlight of the summer fiesta. deals at the Hong Kong Disneyland and at Ocean Park through the end of August. None of that appeals to you?

Then consider online portal Travel Chacha’s steal-deal: Three nights/four days in Hong Kong—inclusive of return airfare, three nights’

attempt at climbing the Everest in 1960, before having to turn back due to inclement weather. In 1965, he was deputy leader of a team that put nine Indian Army climbers at the top of the world’s tallest peak. Capt. M.S. Kohli, who led the 1965 Everest expedition, says Kumar’s climbing career was “astonishing”. “He succeeded in almost every expedition he undertook,” says Kohli.

“Despite his frostbite injuries he was an extraordinary climber and explorer. Nothing stopped him, he really was just like a bull.”

Wing Commander T. Sridharan, now the treasurer of the New Delhi-based Indian Mountaineering Foundation calls Kumar “India’s Chris Bonnington”—“Kumar is a great leader as well as a great mountaineer,”

says Sridharan. “Most people would rest on their laurels if they achieved even a quarter of the things Kumar has done, but he just went on and on. His eye and mind for exploration is unparalleled.”

Sridharan points out that no one had successfully climbed the north-east spur of Kanchenjunga before Kumar fought his way to the top in 1977. “Before him people have been trying and failing for 45 years,” says Sridharan.

“It’s probably the most technically difficult climb in India.”

In 1961, Kumar led a harrowing expedition to climb Neelkanth (21,644ft) in the Garhwal Himalayas. “We succeeded, where everyone else, including Edmund Hillary, had failed,” he says. But that success came at a price. While decending from the summit, the five-member team was stuck for seven days inside a narrow crevasse at 19,000ft, trying to escape a raging storm.

“We had just one tent which we lay on the floor of the crevasse, and then the five of us just huddled together for seven days,” recalls Kumar. All five members suffered severe frostbite; Kumar lost four of his toes.

In the biggest irony of his life, Kumar was put in “permanent category C” by the Indian Army, which meant no postings above 7,000ft. “Every time I was in the mountains, I had to give the government a certificate saying that I absolve them of all responsibilities should anything happen to me,” he says, breaking into a laugh.

accommodation, daily breakfast, city tours and transfers—all for Rs26,999 per person. For more information, log on to www.travelchacha.com or call 011-45080808.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

AMOGHAVARSHA

J

ust 400km short of Bangalore lie the forests of Agumbe, one of the wettest places in India. In the heart of the Western Ghats, it’s also home to the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station, the country’s first investigation centre for tropical flora and fauna. Set up by Romulus Whitaker, popularly known as the snake man of India, the centre’s flagship species is the king cobra.

Join wildlife photographer Amoghavarsha and biodiversity researcher Gowrishankar as they guide you through the pristine forests. Be ready to shoot—only on camera, of course—several rare and endemic bird and animal species, fabulous landscapes and dense forests. And happily, they have none of the SLR-snobbery so common today: Even if you are comfortable using a point-and-shoot, you’re welcome to join in—but a basic familiarity with the camera is a prerequisite.

Besides photography, you’ll be

Regal: A king cobra at Agumbe. exposed to life at the research station and first-hand experience of the rainforests, so you’d presumably be keen on wildlife as well, and be ready to rough it out with the basic facilities.

The two-day expedition, over 10-11 July, costs Rs9,600 per head, inclusive of Bangalore-Bangalore travel, the service of a guide, all food, accommodation and permits. Only 10 seats are available, so call Amoghavarsha on 09901044344 to register.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2010

Books POLITICS

A Mills and Boon heroine HINDUSTAN TIMES

Javier Moro’s controversial book on Sonia Gandhi is a hagiographic and sanitized telling of the life of India’s first political family

B Y N AMITA B HANDARE ···························· ow do you get an utterly pedestrian book to shout “reprint”?

Congress managers have made such a din about Javier Moro’s The Red Sari that the book has the imprint of best-seller stamped all over it.

What a shame. Forget for a minute the hundreds of mistakes—the sparse, angular Congress leader Bansi Lal consistently described as “chubby”; the idiotic translation of Kissa Kursi Ka as The Tale of Two Armchairs; the Festival of India turned into the Year of India; marigolds, the ubiquitous flower of political campaigns, becoming carnations; and, most glaring of all, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale referred to throughout the manuscript as Brindanwale (no first name). How much genius does it take to get the little things right? And if the details are wrong then how can this book, or any book, have credibility? We read the manuscript so, hopefully, editors at Roli, Moro’s Indian publisher, will clean up after him.

But perhaps Moro simply didn’t care enough to get his book right, right on facts or right on nuances, consumed instead by turning the head of the world’s largest political party into a Mills and Boon heroine. His first line sets the tone, and the colour, “Sonia Gandhi simply cannot believe that the man she loves is dead, and she will no longer feel his caresses or the warmth of his kisses.” More purple prose follows: “Since the moment she had clung to Rajiv’s hand in response to his shy advances, back there in the gardens of the cathedral at Ely, she was consistent with herself.” Yes, yes, now give us the insight.

Hilariously, Moro describes his book as a “lengthy investigation”. But his disclaimer

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seems at odds with facts, “This is a novel based on the story of Sonia Gandhi and the Nehru family. Neither Sonia Gandhi nor any member of her family has provided information or has collaborated in this book.

Dialogues, conversations and situations found therein are the product of the author’s own interpretation and do not necessarily reflect authenticity.”

What does a biographer whose subject refuses to speak with him do? He could tiptoe around and speak to people who will. But if Moro does that, then his information is sketchy. He is parsimonious with names. The two Aruns, Nehru and Singh, so much a part of Rajiv’s inner circle in the early days, find no mention by name. Satish Sharma, Rajiv’s Indian Airlines colleague who continues to be close to the family, gets barely a passing mention. Vincent George, loyal Gandhi secretary, features prominently but is never named. A “highly valued” Congress leader whose opinion carries weight in Rajiv’s time is simply D.S. Who is this person? Your guess is as good as mine. Did Moro speak to the other side then, the estranged Gandhis, Maneka and her son Vitriolic Varun?

Clearly there is a problem.

Those close to the Gandhis will not speak to him, or if they do then it’s on conditions of anonymity to reveal nothing that is not already known and published. Those ranged against the Gandhis, and that number is not inconsiderable, are of no use to Moro because in the end The Red Sari is more hagiography than biography, a sanitized telling of the life of India’s first political family. Warts are glossed over, wrinkles botoxed, leaving only a shiny patina.

There is mention, for instance, of the Sikh riots following Indira Gandhi’s assassination, but no mention of a quote famously attributed to Rajiv, and for which he received a roasting at home: “When a big tree falls, the earth will shake.” There is mention too of the battle for secular India, but no analysis of the overturning of the Shah Bano verdict and its impact, no understanding of what opening the locks at Ayodhya by Rajiv’s government meant.

Moro falls back on a vast library of books on the Gandhi/Nehrus. If you’ve read Katherine Frank’s Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi or Pupul Jayakar’s Indira Gandhi: An Intimate

HINDUSTAN TIMES

In grief: (from left) Rajiv Gandhi at his mother Indira Gandhi’s funeral, with children Rahul and Priyanka, and nephew Varun.

HINDUSTAN TIMES

COURTESY JAVIER MORO

Larger than life: (clockwise from top) Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi at a sports event in Delhi; Javier Moro; the author ignores the dark spots in the Gandhis’ history such as the anti­Sikh riots; and Moro even gets the wedding sari detail wrong.

Biography and Sonia Gandhi’s own Rajiv, then you pretty much know where the rehashing is coming from.

Much of The Red Sari has already been documented: Sonia weeping at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences while Rajiv Gandhi holds her hands, telling her he must take over as prime minister from his assassinated mother, is straight out of P.C. Alexander’s My Years with Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi’s clear distaste for her younger daughter-in-law Maneka finds mention in Frank’s book: The issue is not an inevitable conflict with a mother-in-law so much as a clash of opposing personalities.

The senior Mrs Gandhi finds “Maneka’s behaviour inappropriate and grating”, writes Frank, a conclusion echoed by Moro.

The central question about Moro’s book is not its authenticity but its ethics: Should you write a book about a living public figure even as you admit that it does not “necessarily reflect authenticity”?

The liberal view, one taken by the First Amendment, America’s standard DINODIA

of free speech, is that when you are a public figure you become fair game. It doesn’t matter if Sonia Gandhi did not speak to Moro; he was at liberty to conduct his own investigations. But to do so and then concede that you do not “necessarily reflect authenticity” is to admit that this is a “biography” in the loosest sense of the word. So if it is not biography what is it? This is the dilemma of the book.

Just one last word. The Red Sari, both the title as well as the sari worn by Indira Gandhi on her wedding day, presents itself through the book. We are told Rajiv showed it first to Sonia in England during an exhibition on Jawaharlal Nehru. He tells Sonia: “That is the sari my grandfather wove in prison for my mother’s wedding...I hope you will wear it one day...”

Sonia does indeed. Only thing, as anyone who has ever seen those documented wedding photographs knows, the sari was not red. It was pink.

Moro’s website says The Red Sari is in its 10th printing and has sold 230,000 copies in Spain and Latin America. Roli Books will release it in India.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

BOOKS L17

SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

THE MONOCHROME MADONNA | KALPANA SWAMINATHAN

CRIMINAL MIND

The sleuth from Vile Parle AFP

The latest ‘Lalli mystery’ is one of the most satisfying titles in Indian crime fiction

B Y C HANDRAHAS C HOUDHURY ···························· hree female presences, not counting the gold-coloured Madonna of the title, light up Kalpana Swaminathan’s new crime novel The Monochrome Madonna. These are the ageing detective Lalli, a retired policewoman familiar to Swaminathan’s readers from two previous novels; Lalli’s niece Sita, a woman of literary inclinations with a deliciously tart tongue and an acquired interest in crime; and finally Swaminathan herself, a writer with a turn of phrase as stylish as that of anyone else on the contemporary scene, and considerable felicity with both dialogue and plotting.

Although the universe of Indian genre fiction expands by the day (often to a chorus of voices inclined to exaggerate the charm of what is on offer), there are in truth few writers in this group as gifted as Swaminathan, whether the criterion of judgement is the quality of their prose or their understanding of the folds and quirks of human nature.

The opening chapter of The Monochrome Madonna, only three pages long, might serve as a case study in how to bring a reader flying on-board. There is the dramatic opening line (“I’ve always known I’d be stuck with a corpse some day, probably in the first week of October”), which introduces us to Sita, from whose point of view the story is told. The theme of corpse-ridden Octobers is elaborated with brief, intriguing descriptions of the trouble that has flared up in the lives of Sita, Lalli and their cohort Savio three Octobers running, as if the reader is already familiar with these cases. In this way, even if the

TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

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The Monochrome Madonna: Penguin, 252 pages, Rs250.

Multi­chromed: The title’s inspired by Raphael’s Madonna painting. reader is actually not, an air of intimacy between narrator and reader is cunningly established, and a kind of storytelling energy generated. There is also a murmur of resistance: We find Sita actually wants to sit down and write in peace, but in Lalli’s absence she has to follow the new case. We enjoy her grumbles, because it makes for a better and funnier story than if she had been ready and waiting.

And by the time the chapter ends, we are on site with “the annual corpse”, and now the story must move both forward and, if it is to be resolved satisfactorily, backward too. Who did it?

The various personalities and elements attached to the crime include the striking Sitara Shah, an old classmate of Sita’s with the air of a diva; Sitara’s husband Vinay, who adores his wife so much that he has photoshopped Raphael’s famous painting of the Madonna and replaced Mary’s face with Sitara’s; a mysterious

man discovered lying dead in Sitara’s drawing room; and various little curiosities, from an empty teacup to a set of fake golden toenails. Lalli only appears on page 50, by which time Sita has done much of the groundwork. We see not Lalli’s serene confidence, but Sita’s doubt-filled diligence (even as she worries away at what is going to happen to her book on the sewers of Bombay, an interest sparked by an earlier case). “Murder felt safer when Lalli and Savio were around,” confides Sita.

“Taking on murder meant total responsibility. I was edgy, knowing that I wasn’t good enough.”

Thus, while the unravelling of the crime (or the book’s plot) is left to Lalli, the observation of this from without (or the book’s larger story) is entrusted to Sita, and it is this division of narrative duties that makes for the satisfactions of Swaminathan’s book. Indeed, the story is most interesting when it stays close to Sita’s point of view,

by turns agitated, acerbic, distracted, and falls away somewhat when it gets too close to other characters, such as the testimonies of Sitara, Vinay and Savio.

Swaminathan knows that even murder mysteries must have their moments of digression. At one point we are treated to a sudden meditation upon roses, followed by another passage on meteors, and realize this is a very independent-minded detective story.

The plot line of The Monochrome Madonna is competent at best, and perhaps too elaborate.

But there are many lovely moments in the book, and the writing has a leanness, wit and easy grace that are in marked contrast to the earnest and windy phrase-making and imperfect control of register of so much Indian fiction in English. Lalli, Savio and Sita love not just sleuthery but also eating, drinking and talking, and there is a rich pleasure here not just in the business of death but in the quotidian satisfactions of life.

Vile Parle, the unfashionable Mumbai suburb where Lalli resides, should name one of its streets after Swaminathan’s charming detective.

Women of the world Disparate women unite for a cause in fiction, and a book of friendly emails

IN SIX WORDS Graceful, lean and witty murder caper

New drill

Heaven in hell

Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad: Penguin, 370 pages, Rs299. neighbourhood. Rowlatt, on the other hand, lives a charmed British life. She has two daughters, a journalist husband and a parttime job. Her life’s bigger crises are about whether it is too cold to go swimming in her favourite pond or not. Her cheerful emails give Witwit a vision of a happier possibility and help her to not just stay sane, but find a way out of the living hell that is Baghdad.

The Dear May, Dear Bee style of writing tends to get a bit tedious (if you have read the oh-socharming The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows you know exactly what I am

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Write to lounge@livemint.com

talking about). But then the book itself plays an important plot turner and you are willing to forgive the authors their little meanderings into the mundane.

Sajita Nair’s She’s a Jolly Good Fellow is also the story of two women.

Except her protagonists—Deepa Shekhar and Anjali Sharma—are the first batch of lady officers on their debut posting. Shekhar and Sharma are as different from each other as two army officers possibly can be. Shekhar is determined not to let her gender come in the way of her career, learning to swear as often as the men, running as fast as they do and rope-climbing better than them. Sharma, on the other hand, likes her Mills and Boons, chiffon saris and high heels. And the men in the remote unit they are posted to do not know how to handle either of these types.

The two have to not just figure out how they should approach the challenges of the unit, but also have to worry about the precedent they set and the impressions they create about women officers, in general. And as they navigate through hostility, sexual harassment, alcohol-induced misbehaviour and pure, hormonal attraction, they learn a little more about themselves. At its core, the book is about creating a balance and not buttonholing yourself into a selfscrawled caricature.

here’s something unlikely yet inevitable about the allure of fictional heroes and their fictive footsteps. Go abroad and you’ll find on offer plenty of guided walks to the digs and the dives of crime fiction lore, pubs in which some detective or the other never had a drink, crime locations where no person was murdered, mean streets that weren’t actually stalked by evil masterminds.

The last time I was in London I happened to pass 221B Baker Street and I couldn’t help thinking: so this is where the great Sherlock lived! Of course, he didn’t live there, but there’s a museum recreating his and Dr Watson’s apartment. Visitors are disappointed when they’re told it’s a mock-up, and that Holmes was a fictional character loosely based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s teacher—forensic expert Dr Bell—at the medical school in Edinburgh. Cashing in on curiosity, regular Sherlock Holmes walks are conducted (www.walks.com) tracking his adventures, mainly in West End. While in the UK, one can also take Agatha Christie tours—many stories are set around her coastal birthplace Torquay. The Scottish capital Edinburgh is, apart from Doyle’s birthplace, a tourist destination for Inspector Rebus fans, and multiple tours cover the books by Ian Rankin, many of them focused on Rebus’ and Rankin’s favourite pubs (www.rebustours.com). However, I’m waiting till there’s a Graham Greene tour before I go to England again—though he visited Goa in the 1960s, so I might as well just have a drink at the hotel he stayed at instead (incidentally, the Hotel Mandovi).

Elsewhere, you’ll find Swedish crime fiction trails (but of course!) and the pilgrimage hubs are Ystad with its Wallander tours (based on Henning Mankell’s novels; www.ystad.se) and Stockholm where Millennium Walks (book through www.ticnet.se) take you to places mentioned by Stieg Larsson. In Barcelona, there’s a walk centred around the globally best-selling bibliophile-mystery novel The Shadow of the Wind

Chandrahas Choudhury is the author of Arzee the Dwarf.

QUICK LIT | VEENA VENUGOPAL

Serendipity always makes for an excellent story. And when it’s based on a true-life incident, the story becomes an inspiration, a little sliver of hope that a wrongly delivered email or a turn around a blind corner can present a life-altering opportunity. For British journalist Bee Rowlatt and Iraqi university lecturer May Witwit, serendipity came in the form of a telephone call. Rowlatt, who works with BBC Radio, is trying to set up an interview with regular Iraqis and happens to dial Witwit’s number. And thus unfolds Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad, a real story of an unlikely friendship.

The book is simply a series of emails that Rowlatt and Witwit exchanged. Witwit lives a life that is hingeing on the horrors of a war.

Bombs frequently go off on the Baghdad street she lives on, security men barge into her house to search for insurgents, her husband Ali—a Sunni Muslim—is not a welcome presence in the Shiite

ZAC O’YEAH

She’s a Jolly Good Fellow: Hachette India, 338 pages, Rs250.

As a quick read, She’s a Jolly Good Fellow works because of two reasons. One, you can’t dismiss it as just another piece of workplace fiction—the Indian Army is a whole new world, a universe away from the marble-floored investment banks and call centres that our pulp fiction authors are fond of. Two, the protagonists resonate with most Indian women. You may not be exactly like either of them, but you have certainly met people who fit both the moulds.

However, in her portrayal of other characters, especially the amorous army men, I wish Nair had stepped away from stereotypes. She could have sketched a canvas of surprises; instead, she settles for the safe and familiar.

Still, an easy story about a difficult job is worth a couple of hours of your airport time.

Hot spot: 221B Baker Street, the Sherlock Holmes museum.

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (www.iconoserveis.com) and further south in Africa, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency Tour apparently shows you offbeat Botswana (an interesting by-product of which seems to be Mma Ramotswe’s Cookbook of local food).

The big mama of modern crime fiction is America. In New York, you can visit locations from Martin Scorsese’s mafia films, as well as the Sopranos TV serial, and look for the West 35th Street brownstone of Nero Wolfe, the Greenwich Village of Kinky Friedman, and the 87th Precinct of Ed McBain (it’s NYC although he does fictionalize the city as “Isola” in the books).

But it is really California that is hallowed ground. The crook town par excellence, used by writers almost as a character in its own right, is Los Angeles. An esoteric blog project-turned-bus tour (Esotouric.com) takes you to Philip Marlowe locations, whose creator Raymond Chandler (the “Baba” of crime writers just like Hemingway was “Papa Hem” for non-crime writers) apparently loved showing visitors the settings for his fictional scenes. Video clips and old slides are screened on the bus to aid imagination, because things have changed over time and the infamous “mean streets” tend to be rather upscale. Sporadic tours feature the “psycho-geography” of James Ellroy’s LA-quartet of noir cop novels, out of which LA Confidential and The Black Dahlia have been beautifully filmed. If you’re more of a Sam Spade-type, then head to San Francisco for a tour guided

by Dashiell Hammett experts.

Depending on the complexity of a tour, tickets cost anywhere between Rs300 and Rs2,500, although plenty of well-researched websites reveal the places for free (for example, those interested in Chandler, take a look at http://homepage.mac.com/llatker).

The only thing that remains a mystery is why there aren’t similar tours in India. Mumbai would be a good place to start, with tours to locations in books by Vikram Chandra, Suketu Mehta, Gregory David Roberts and Ashok Banker (according to rumours, Banker’s out-of-print trilogy of crime will be reissued soon). Kolkata is another logical destination: Just imagine seeing the city as it is depicted in the Feluda and Byomkesh Bakshi stories or in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome. If this is too much to ask for, could somebody—anybody—create a website compiling locations from crime novels such as Surender Mohan Pathak’s, which take you pretty much all over the country? That’d be a boon.

Zac O’Yeah is a Bangalore-based crime fiction writer.

Write to Zac at criminalmind@livemint.com