Lounge30May

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

www.livemint.com

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Vol. 3 No. 21

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

Former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu at a Left Front victory rally in Kolkata in 1977.

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH NARAYANA HRUDAYALAYA’S DEVI PRASAD SHETTY >Page 6

FROM FRINGE TO FAME

He is the only Indian centurion of IPL 2, but young Manish Pandey’s feet are firmly planted on the ground.

In flip­flops >Page 7

red

My name was HIGH WINDOWS

MUKUL KESAVAN

‘Didi’ has replaced ‘dada’; green has replaced red.

A U2­loving, bourgeois­ bred Kolkatan, born the same year that Jyoti Basu first came to power, looks back at the confusing, decadent years >Page 10

THE GOOD LIFE

CRIMINAL MIND

SHOBA NARAYAN

ZAC O’YEAH

WILL PEACE RETURN START A BOOK CLUB, CAPOTE MEETS TO SERENDIP? KEEP IT GOING BOLLYWOOD

A

fter the first reports of Prabhakaran’s death, a political analyst from Tamil Nadu appeared on television to discuss the likely impact of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader’s end. Prabhakaran’s death, he said, would be an epochal defeat for Tamils the world over because it would kill the dream of a Tamil homeland. Tamils, he explained, didn’t have a country of their own. It has been so long since the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) gave up its demand... >Page 4

W

hen you move to a new city, there are several indicators to show that you have settled down. A key marker is when you start or join a club because it indicates that you have developed a community and a routine. In every location that I have lived as an adult, I have started or joined book clubs.

One failed spectacularly and the other succeeded just as spectacularly. In Bangalore, where I live now, I am part of a book club, a film club, a hiking group... >Page 4

I

n a worst-case scenario the two-night train ride from Chennai to New Delhi can be pretty tedious, with delays adding too many bonus hours to one’s trip, and so one needs to carry a sufficient amount of reading matter. In hindsight, I realize that I would have made a more favourable impression on my co-passengers by carrying a Journal of Subaltern Studies or maybe Frontline to read, but to be truthful, I picked up my favourite magazine from the station... >Page 15

GOOD TO GROW Low­maintenance plants to brighten up your terrace, balcony or window box >Page 8

BEFORE SUNRISE, BEFORE SUNSET Despite relentless hard­sell by Western guidebooks, this corner of Goa offers glimpses of a culture that’s almost lost >Page 12

DON’T MISS

For today’s business news > Question of Answers— the quiz with a difference > Markets Watch

HOME PAGE L3

LOUNGE

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

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

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 MANAS CHAKRAVARTY HARJEET AHLUWALIA JOSEY PULIYENTHURUTHEL ELIZABETH EAPEN VENKATESHA BABU ARCHNA SHUKLA ©2009 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved

CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MOVIE­DEPRIVED MIND

I

don’t know about you seen Terminator 3: Rise of but I don’t think I can the Machines again (and take too much more of this again) over the past multiplex vs film producmonth—but that makes ers mahayudh (war). It’s me even more desperate been almost eight weeks for a peek into life after since they forced us movie Judgement Day. worshippers out from our And why in summer? dark temples dedicated to How are people with chilthe God of First Day, First dren coping? As for the Shows into the blistering, rest of us, the heat ensures blinding summer heat. that we can’t even spend Do theatre owners really the weekends playing a believe we will now particleisurely game of golf or ipate in their blatant desethink gloomy thoughts cration of our already batover the warm fire of an tered temples? As movie outdoor barbecue. worshippers in a country Terminator 4: We need some Christian Bale­style salvation.

And oh, the pain of all whose film industry that news from Cannes, believes in quantity over quality, we the strike might end. Even if it does, where it was the year of the big direcare used to putting up with more than it’s time we like-minded folks joined tor (even video piracy can’t keep pace our share of substandard forces to ensure a situation like this with this slew of releases)—Quentin HELP releases—but heck, even we doesn’t repeat itself, say, on the eve of Tarantino, Lars von Trier, Francis Ford can’t survive on the dregs of Vishal Bhardwaj’s new film Kaminey. Coppola, Ken Loach, Pedro Almodóalternate and mainstream Hindi cinIt’s reached a stage where I’m actu- var, Alain Resnais and, of course, ema week after parched week. ally thinking that Race and Kidnap Michael Haneke, winner of the Palme Do they really expect us to waste weren’t such awful movies after all—at d’Or—that dratted award is the most our precious weekends watching least we got to gaze at Imran Khan in a recurring object in my dreams and duds such as Sanam Teri Kasam, a ganji (vest) in the latter. These days I nightmares these days. movie that takes us on a hair-raising can’t stop thinking of that Diwali Producers and multiplex owners be journey back in time to an era when weekend in 2004 when I saw all four warned; it’s time to kiss and make up Kareena Kapoor would never have new releases—Naach, Veer Zaara, before we convince ourselves there’s dreamt of dating Saif Ali Khan (was Mughal-e-Azam (in colour) and more to life than going to the movies. she even dating in the days when this Aitraaz—back to back. movie was made?).

And the less said about the Holly- PS: Mint launched in Kolkata on MonFor the first time in my life, I feel wood releases the better. I’ve sworn day, and this is the city’s first look at sorry for film reviewers who must drag not to watch another film with the Lounge. We hope you enjoy it! themselves to weekly previews to words Girlfriend or Boyfriend or My assign yet another one-star rating to Friend in the title.

Write to lounge@livemint.com B-movies starring Arshad Warsi or Television, that vast kingdom of Hindi films whose English titles—Cof- predictable reruns, has hardly held www.livemint.com fee House, School Days—give adequate our hands through this national crisis. warning of what lies ahead.

Okay, so I’m better prepared to see Priya Ramani blogs at blogs.livemint.com/firstcut.htm As I write this, there are signs that Terminator Salvation now that I’ve

inbox

Write to us at lounge@livemint.com STATE VS GOD ‘Why the Taliban’s going to win in Pakistan’, 23 May, is a thought­provoking column. Aakar Patel is absolutely correct: Any state that is so obsessed with Islam and imposing Shariah law will give birth to regressive ideologies such as the Taliban. Pakistan was created for that reason and it voted for the Shariah to be the law of the land, so it can’t complain when the Talibs want it implemented.

A secular state with respect for all religions is the only way for any nation to survive. The only long­term state is one which respects every person’s religious views.

USMAN ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: MONA CHOWDHURY

E­ASY PEASY Want to read ‘Lounge’ online but without compromising on the magazine’s design and layout? This week onwards we invite you to read the free new electronic version of ‘Lounge’ on www.livemint.com. The e­version is a virtual facsimile of the edition you hold in your hands, complete with crisp graphics and zoomable pages that turn with a click of your mouse. And you don’t need to install complicated new software. If you can watch YouTube videos on your browser, you should be able to read ‘Lounge’ online too.

LOUNGE LOVES | INDIAN COFFEE HOUSE AND WOMEN’S RUGBY HEMANT MISHRA/MINT

A new tackle A talented and spirited group is preparing to take Indian women’s rugby international

L Back again: Indian Coffee House reopened to a full house.

Old coffee, new charm The iconic Bangalore coffee house returns amid mixed reactions

T

he attendants usher curious onlookers with a smile and confirm that this is indeed the same Indian Coffee House (ICH) that closed on 5 April on MG Road, Bangalore.

The Bangalore institution has now reopened on the ground floor of Church Street’s Brigade Gardens (the same building that houses the Mint office, so you know where I’m spending all my time).

The new ICH, with its brightly painted walls and large windows, is dramatically different from the 52-year-old outlet, previously housed in a 70-year-old building.

But not everything has changed.

The menu’s the same and so are the old waiters in their white and red uniforms and matching turbans.

The posters of old Coffee Board advertisements still adorn the walls.

After the MG Road outlet shut down, the workers, who are part of the Indian Coffee Workers’ Cooperative Society, decided to open shop on Avenue Road (where they used to have an outlet). But they

knew an Avenue Road outlet, located around 4km away, might not attract even the most loyal customers. “We had several people asking us if we could find space in the same locality,” says K.U. Nagaraj, 43, who has been working as a cashier for the ICH for 19 years.

It was this sentiment that prompted them to pick Church Street, barely half a kilometre from their original location.

The new space is much smaller and has just 16 tables, while the earlier one had 30 tables spread over two floors. “We are also paying a rent of over Rs1 lakh whereas we used to pay just Rs13,000 for the old space. We hope that business does well,” says Nagaraj.

At MG Road, there was ample space and charcoal ovens were used for cooking. “Now we have limited kitchen space, so we’ve had to switch to LPG stoves and that will surely change the taste of the food,” says B.V. Ramachandra, who has worked as a waiter at ICH for 27 years. “But we are trying our best to make sure that everything else remains the same,” he adds.

Some die-hards, of course, say it will never be the same.

Prof. Raghupathy, who heads the

department of economics at VV Puram College of Arts and Commerce, Bangalore, has been visiting the coffee house for 30 years. “Over the years it has been the only affordable place in this area. I used to sip coffee, eat bread and omelette and look at the promenade on the other side of MG Road.” But the elegance of the ICH, he says, went away once the promenade made way for Metro rail construction. “I will come here (to the new place) because it’s affordable and centrally located,” says Raghupathy.

Even though the new venue lacks that old world charm, ICH was full on Day 1 (24 May). “It’s just so convenient and affordable.

They have the best scrambled eggs on toast priced at Rs28. Why would I not come here?” asks Madhur Kamat, who works at an IT firm down the road. At present, masala dosa is priced at Rs29, vegetable cutlet is Rs16 and a cup of coffee, Rs9—ICH plans to revise prices from Sunday.

The branch at Avenue Road will open soon too, but for now ICH will function from 8.30am-8.30 pm on all days at Church Street.

Pavitra Jayaraman

oud cheers, groans, sweat and blood are not uncommon in rugby. But when women play the game, there’s another element too.

At a recent game in Mumbai, tears of frustration over not making it to the international arena mingled with tears of joy for teammates who did make the cut. But there were no tears of pain when the girls—aged 14-23—walked out of the brutal arena. Only hopeful smiles, and pride at having been part of India’s first national rugby competition for women.

The atmosphere at the allIndia women’s seven-a-side tournament, held at the Bombay Gymkhana last week, was electric. The tournament featured teams from seven states, including Orissa, Maharashtra, Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir. On 24 May, the final match was played between Pune 2 and Jungle Crows (an

NGO team from Kolkata) with Nasir Hussain, captain of the men’s national rugby team, as referee. On show was a heady combination of youth, talent and adrenalin. The Pune team emerged the winner.

For the Indian Rugby Football Union, popularly known as Rugby India, it’s a prou d m oment. “We had only three days to train them, and look how well they’re doing,” says Aga Hussain, vice-president, Rugby India. “It’s a liberation of women.”

Khushnaz Jogi, 14, of Pune 2, all sweat and tears after consoling a friend who couldn’t play on the day her team won the final because of an injury, told us she learnt rugby in half an hour after being introduced to the game in school recently.

Greg Davey, development manager, Rugby India, is stunned and excited at the

Teamwork: Pune 2 battles it out with Jungle Crows (in green).

ease with which the girls took to the game.

Rugby is one of the fastest growing team sports in India and it was only natural for Rugby India to bring in women. “They are like sponges, and stunning athletes,” Davey says. He hopes women’s rugby will soon become a Commonwealth Games sport.

The girls in the competing teams have been members of various other sports teams, such as those of badminton, kho kho and football, and most started training for rugby only a few weeks ago.

But their confidence levels are high. “Rugby means do or die, so why should we be afraid of getting hurt? Hum marenge thodi (It’s not going to kill us),” says 15-year-old Sajda Yussuf from Srinagar.

The Jammu and Kashmir team’s practice suffered because of the recent general election. The team didn’t win any match, but Yussuf and her teammates are determined to win it the next time.

For now, they’ll visit EsselWorld and go back home.

The most anticipated moment in the tournament came when the names of the 24 girls chosen for the first shortlist for a national squad were announced.

Quite a few members of the winning Pune team were on that first list and the Pune coach, Shurut Khare, was ecstatic. His short victory speech made a fierce point: “Anyone who has the guts to enter a rugby field is a champion.”

Twelve of the 24 players have been shortlisted for the first India team. The India squad is competing in the Asian women’s seven-a-side tournament, being played Saturday and Sunday in Pattaya, Thailand. This will be the first international exposure in rugby for these girls.

Rachana Nakra

L4 COLUMNS SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

MUKUL KESAVAN HIGH WINDOWS

When will peace finally return to Serendip?

A

AFP

fter the first reports of Prabhakaran’s death, a political analyst from Tamil Nadu appeared on television to discuss the likely impact of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader’s end. Prabhakaran’s death, he said,

would be an epochal defeat for Tamils the world over because it would kill the dream of a Tamil homeland.

Tamils, he explained, didn’t have a country of their own.

It has been so long since the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) gave up its demand for a separate Dravida Nadu—in 1963, after the Indian Parliament amended the Constitution to make the demand for secession illegal—that most Indians have forgotten that Tamil separatism once flourished on both sides of the Palk Straits.

The anchor, taken aback by this frank restatement of the Tamil “cause”, asked if the analyst didn’t think that Prabhakaran’s violent methods were beyond the pale. The expert replied that Prabhakaran had made mistakes but his single-minded commitment to a Tamil state had been unprecedented and if he died without achieving Eelam, it was unlikely that any other leader would succeed. His tone made it clear that his take on the situation in northern Sri Lanka was at once analysis and elegy.

We should reject that elegiac note.

Whatever the nature of Tamil grievance or Sinhalese provocation, Prabhakaran and the LTTE represented a sectarian, violent and fascist dead end. Those who would see him as a Tamil nationalist, a martyr in the cause of

self-determination, ought to remind themselves that he killed as many Tamils as he did Sinhalese, that he intended to rule an independent Eelam as a dictator, and that he pioneered or refined every murderous tactic in the modern terrorist’s repertoire, from suicide bombing to ethnic cleansing.

Prabhakaran’s conception of a Tamil Eelam left no room for other identities: In October 1990, the LTTE dispossessed and expelled Jaffna’s entire Muslim population, some 28,000 people. The defeat of the LTTE is a necessary preliminary to peace in Sri Lanka.

That said, it’s worth exploring why the political histories of Tamil separatism in Sri Lanka and India are so different. Here, our analyst made a valid point. He argued that the Tamils took to violence after it became clear in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s that Sinhalese politics had taken an oppressively majoritarian turn and wouldn’t make any concessions to peaceful or constitutional protest.

The root cause for Tamil disaffection was the successful bid by Sinhalese politicians such as Solomon Bandaranaike to replace English with Sinhala as the language of government soon after independence. In 1956, the Sinhala Only Bill became law, breaking with an earlier consensus that English

Mistaken: A fascist cannot be a hero. ought to to be replaced by both major languages, Tamil and Sinhala. This was seen by the Tamils not just as the elevation of Sinhala but as the redefinition of Ceylon as a Sinhala Buddhist state. In this they weren’t far wrong: Not only was Sinhala raised above Tamil as the sole national language, the country’s constitution was amended to explicitly give primacy to Buddhism.

Article 9 of the Sri Lankan constitution stipulates that, “The Republic of Sri Lanka shall give Buddhism the foremost place and accordingly it shall be the duty of the State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana…”

In India, there was a similar attempt by politically powerful north Indian zealots, to foist Hindi on non-Hindi-speaking states. Luckily for

the peace of the country, Jawaharlal Nehru’s government backed down at the first sign of street protest from enraged Telugu- and Tamil-speaking agitators. Nehru reassured them by guaranteeing that English would be indefinitely retained as the language of Centre-state relations, thus defanging the threat of Hindi hegemony. Had Nehru and the Indian republic not been predisposed by the nationalist movement to value and accommodate diversity, they might have tried to impose Hindi and then the suicide of Potti Sriramulu in Andhra and the street agitations launched by the DMK in the Tamil country might have snowballed into larger, more violent disaffection.

The political sponsors of the Bill didn’t know it then, but by making Sinhala Sri Lanka’s hegemonic language, they were preparing the ground for violent dissent and civil war.

But even at the time there were sane, pluralist voices in Ceylon’s parliament that criticized the chauvinism of the language Bill and warned against its consequences. And these were Sinhalese voices. Colvin de Silva, Leslie Gunawardene, N.M. Perera, Sinhalese all, rose to oppose the language Bill.

With tragic prescience, de Silva warned of its likely consequences: “Do we, does this House, do our people want a single nation or do we want two nations?… Do we want one Ceylon or do we want two? And above all, do we want an independent Ceylon which must necessarily be united and single or two bleeding halves of Ceylon…? These are the issues that, in fact, we have been discussing under the form and appearance of the language issue.”

Eighty thousand Sri Lankans have

officially died since the civil war began in 1983. That war has now ended with the destruction of the LTTE, but in its hour of triumph the Sri Lankan state shows no sign of having learnt the lessons de Silva was trying to teach more than half a century ago.

Gen. Sarath Fonseca, the leader of the Sri Lankan armed forces, said this in a recent magazine interview: “I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people… We being the majority of the country, 75%, we will never give in and we have the right to protect this country… They can live in this country with us. But they must not try to, under the pretext of being a minority, demand undue things.”

Guru Golwalkar couldn’t have put the majoritarian case better. India has been lucky because its citizens have consistently rejected the dangerous idea that a nation is owned by its religious majority. They said no again this last general election. Starting with 1956, Sri Lanka’s tragedy has been that the Sinhalese have kept on saying yes.

Till they learn to say no, Prabhakaran or no Prabhakaran, there will be no peace in Serendip.

Mukul Kesavan, a professor of social history at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, is the author of The Ugliness of the Indian Male and Other Propositions.

Write to Mukul at highwindows@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Mukul’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/mukul­kesavan

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

How to start a book club and keep it going

W

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

hen you move to a new city, there are several indicators to show that you have settled down. A key marker is when you start or join a club because it indicates that you have developed a

community and a routine. In every location that I have lived as an adult, I have started or joined book clubs. One failed spectacularly and the other succeeded just as spectacularly.

In Bangalore, where I live now, I am part of a book club, a film club, a hiking group, a soccer league, a gourmet dining group, a design consortium and a virtual parenting community. This is in addition to all the building and alumni associations that we all get drafted into.

But to me, it all starts with a book club.

Starting a group—any group—is tricky because it usually involves opinionated people—or it should—each of whom has an agenda and a view on how to do things. Bangalore has thriving cinema clubs, bird-watching societies, hiking and foodie groups galore. Based on my association with these groups, I’ve come up with a set of rules to help those who want to start, say, a star-gazing society in their building complex. Not a bad idea actually. u Start with a passionate and charismatic leader. Most groups are anchored by one or several leaders, each of whom has a clear vision of what he or she wants the group to achieve.

Members may question the leader’s quirks and dislike his dictums but it is the leader who holds them together.

u If you are not charismatic or opinionated, try to find co-leaders who are. When I started my book club in Manhattan, I started it with three other women, mostly because I lacked the confidence to start it by myself. The four “core members” proved to be a great anchor and we kept adding members.

The club survives eight years later and though I don’t know many of the new members, I am still on its mailing list. In fact, I saw them all last weekend. u It helps if you have a clear vision of what you want from the group, whether it is de rigueur black tie or beginning a hike at 6am. Once you know what you want, it is easier to coax and harangue people into falling in line. Book clubs are notoriously all over the place. One book club in Hong Kong is mostly a social networking club. People discuss the book for 5 minutes before gossiping, venting and catching up.

Which is fine. As long as everyone in the group is okay with it. Most of these groups end up self-selecting members anyway and people who tire of the informality drop out and choose more structured groups with printed book reviews, allocated speaking times, previously emailed questions about the book, rules and punishments. u Increase membership if you have the

space. The Bangalore Wine Club has close to 100 members, while the Bangalore Black Tie society has around 30. Having a lot of members dilutes intimacy but reduces the pressure on members to show up for every event. u Be very careful when you add new members, particularly if it is a small group. They have to gel with the rest. In my Manhattan book club, one well-meaning member inducted a close friend who—as it turned out—everyone else hated. There were a dozen of us by then and we were faced with a dilemma: Who would bell the cat? Who would tell this gent that we didn’t want him in our club? Rather than face up to this unpleasant proposition, we took the coward’s way out. We told him that we were disbanding the book club because meeting once a month was just too difficult given our hectic lives and he was free to find other book clubs. He left our mailing list and we reconvened. u How often you meet depends on your membership and geography. All of us in my Singapore book club lived in the same building. Meeting at 5pm on a Saturday became easy because most of our children were downstairs playing and we could convene for chai and samosas (and ahem, book discussions) before taking off for dinners or parties.

Meeting on Saturday at 5pm becomes problematic in a city such as Bangalore because of traffic and geography. Even if the book club lasts only an hour, the distance and traffic require that you commit 3 hours for going and coming.

Far better to meet less frequently and, if possible, when there is less traffic. u Last but not least, what you serve at your soirée usually becomes a bone of contention and competition. My

Page­turner: An engrossed reader at the JN Petit Library in Mumbai.

Manhattan book club had women who were passionate cooks. They would serve us themed delicious dinners that went with the book. There were also some bachelors who made up in strong martinis what they lacked in culinary skills. After a while, some of the folks who either didn’t want to or couldn’t cook resented the spread that was served by the passionate cooks. We had a discussion about how to prevent food from becoming the centrepiece of the gathering. But there was no resolution: Some members splurged; others provided the liquor in abundance.

When I started the book club in Singapore, perhaps as a reaction, I insisted that only water needed to be served. Again, vociferous protests: “Chai to rakhna hi padega (You have to have tea),” said one. Some snacks, yaar, said another. So we drew the line at tea. Just tea. That worked.

In my Bangalore book club, there is no rule. One woman served a

multi-course chaat dinner when it was her turn to host. It was fantastic and completely eclipsed the discussion.

Being a foodie, I don’t care if the book is merely an excuse to get together and eat. But others take offence and view each spread as competition that they have to match. The trick, I guess, is to get members whose ego will allow them to serve crudités after a gourmet meal and feel no pangs of guilt or competition; or to get members who are on the same page (pun intended) with respect to what constitutes “snacks” for a book club.

Shoba Narayan reads to eat. Ergo, she seeks book clubs with competitive cooks as hosts. 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, MAY 30, 2009

L5

Parenting MUSIC NOTES For piano classes, call: u

Bangalore: William Joseph

International Academy for Performing Arts organizes weekly one­on­one piano sessions, Rs1,500 per month*.

Call 09844119956.

Chennai: KM Music Conservatory organizes piano sessions. For fee and schedule details, call 044­43444786. u

New Delhi: Madhur Mantra organizes a weekly piano class (three students per class) with an instructor, Rs400 per session*. Call Stuti Chandhok at 09811447919. u

Kolkata: Calcutta School of Music organizes weekly one­on­one piano sessions, Rs630 per month*. Call 033­24615375. *registration fee extra u

Tuned in: Music les­ sons can be tough on the parent.

FIRST PERSON

The key to a duet Why parents must know what they expect their children to learn B Y S EEMA S INGH seema.s@livemint.com

···························· ou have longer fingers, so you play better than me,” said my son as he dumped his Casio MA-150 keyboard, his eyes clouding.

In no time, my fingers (deliberately) faltered and the notes emanating from my Yamaha-413 electronic keyboard went haywire, nudging the smile back on his tear-stained face.

This is turning into somewhat routine play at home these days as my six-year-old and I progress in music lessons that we began together three months ago.

Having given up guitar lessons around 15 years ago (primarily owing to impatience), I decided to learn the keyboard to show my child that it takes time and prac-

Y

tice to master a new skill. Besides, I was tired of buying toy pianos and guitars. No, my son isn’t a prodigy but for some reason he likes to have a variety of musical instruments and plays indiscriminately till they run out of their intended life. Moreover, the desire to return to playing an instrument had been lurking for a long time, ever since I read that writer-lyricist Gulzar had gone for sitar classes very late in life, when his daughter began formal music lessons.

Sending my son to music school for hour-long lessons once a week was ruled out, first because of the distance, and later because the boy declared he didn’t want to go to yet another school to return with more homework! So be it.

I began hunting for a music teacher and this year, before the summer holidays started, I lucked out—I found a pastor who taught music to about 150 children around Bangalore. He agreed to come home to teach the mother-son duo for an hour every Saturday morning.

My hunch was that if I didn’t know what my child ought to

learn, I wouldn’t be able to ensure that he was practising right—and I was proved right. Even though my son is growing, his attention span is not. After 5-7 minutes of practice, he cleverly tries to play a song from the songbook recorded in the keyboard and deftly moves his fingers to fool his father, who is for now happy at the sight of his son reading the music notes which, he admits, look “illegible to him”.

Invariably, it’s my feigned policing that stops all tomfoolery.

And I know it’s going to get tougher as we move on and begin practising to the beat, measure, rhythm and more.

I wonder how parents, particularly mothers, manage overseeing what their children are learning if they don’t know something about music themselves.

“It’s difficult,” says the pastor, “especially in the case of boys who are more distracted than girls.”

Obviously, he is happy that I “am doing half his work” by getting my son to practise regularly. But I have to be careful—while I resort to gimmicks to keep him at it, I try not to turn all of it either into a

punishment or a competition.

For instance, when my son didn’t practise for two days recently, I told him: “If you don’t want to learn the instrument, let’s sell it back to the shop.” Less than 36 hours later, I heard him telling his father: “Mamma doesn’t have time to practise, let’s sell her keyboard.” Indeed, I hadn’t played a note in two days.

Often when his rigour flags, I come up with tales—sometimes true, sometimes half-baked—of how people who have learnt music have done wonderfully well in life. In one such instance, I picked up a book lying around, Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman (the title amuses him), and told him who the legendary Nobel Prize-winning physicist Feynman was (loosely explaining what Nobel means), and how he charmed everyone with his bongo.

But the mother in me couldn’t help saying: “You can also be like Feynman (pronounced ‘fine man’)”. Pat came the reply: “But how can I be a fine man, I am only a kid.”

Amused (and secretly embarrassed), I nodded: “Yes, you can’t,” and plugged in our keyboards. After all, he is learning for the sake of music, not to enhance the study of language, math or social science!

LEARNING CURVE

GOURI DANGE

HANDLE A TEEN CRUSH WITH SENSITIVITY I am sending my 15-year-old daughter to a summer camp. I know she has a big crush on one of the camp coordinators, who is her senior in school. I understand this is quite normal, but I am worried about her unsupervised trip in this context. He is a good boy, but what if she gets carried away and throws herself at him in some way? Should I speak to the organizers? Or maybe to my daughter?

It’s understandable that you are nervous about your daughter’s emotions and behaviour in a camp situation. A teen crush can become such an all-encompassing thing at that age.

However, you need not discuss her crush and your specific fears with the organizers, as that will not be fair to your daughter. Someone may start talking about it and, before you know it, it could become some kind of sniggering joke. Only if

As for her strong feelings for the boy, you could caution her very subtly to keep those to herself. Tell you are sure that the organizers her that you trust her are sensitive and sensible people to behave correctly, should you speak to them about to enjoy his company, this, and ask for their gentle and not be carried intervention in some form. away by his presence.

What you can do safely, By correctly, I however, is voice your concern Balancing act: Caution your teenage daughter mean remaining to the organizers about whether subtly about her crushes. friendly, enjoying his girls and boys at this camp will company, but not be supervised at all times. You Of course, with teens and seeking him out exclusively, can also ask parents who have pre-teens thrown together, there not behaving flirtatiously, not previously sent their teenagers is bound to be teasing and expecting or engineering any to this particular camp crushes and such things in a one-on-one situations with whether they were assured camp situation. What is him, such as walks or there was no “pairing off” of important to know is whether stargazing at some lonely spot, any kind and that a healthy the camp organizers and etc. You’re going to have to bonhomie was maintained coordinators are aware of this handle this one carefully, in between the boys and girls. and know how to handle it well. case she flares up at you.

Inappropriate mixing and As for your daughter, first If this whole thing is very unwanted encounters are a make sure she is not going to stressful for you, do you maybe very real concern for all this camp only because of the want to consider sending her parents sending their teen and boy. Find out if she’s really someplace else, where the boy pre-teen children to co-ed interested in the activities is not involved? summer camps. You will not proposed. Get a sense of be out of line in asking these whether she will really use the Gouri Dange is the author of questions and finding out camp to enjoy herself and The ABCs of Parenting. about past camps and how this learn new things, including Send your queries to Gouri at issue was handled. making new friends. learningcurve@livemint.com

Like father, like daughter Bindi Irwin pays tribute to her nature­loving dad Steve, the Crocodile Hunter B Y M ELISSA A . B ELL melissa.b@livemint.com

························································ or nearly a decade, The Crocodile Hunter ruled the animal airwaves. Steve Irwin, the “archetypical Australian”, as actor Russell Crowe called him, wrestled crocodiles, wrapped his daughter in snakes and played with poisonous spiders until his death in September 2006.

Three years later, his now 10-year-old daughter Bindi, a television star in her own right, has put together an hour-long documentary for Animal Planet on her relationship with her father, using behind-the-scenes clips and family home videos.

My Daddy the Crocodile Hunter will air on 2 June.

Bindi spends much of the show in a warehouse illuminated by huge family portraits, repeating, “I was never at risk”, “My dad taught me so much”, “He always kept me at a safe distance”. Bindi seems to be doing her 10-year-old best to quell past controversies (lest you forgot the most sensational, Irwin dangled his one-month-old son in front of an adult crocodile).

But the point of Irwin’s life and Bindi’s heritage is just that: It was controversial. Perhaps Irwin did provoke animals. Perhaps he did put his own children at risk. But the sensationalism also allowed the Irwins to build a huge interest in animal conservation. Even Irwin’s loudest critics cannot deny the money raised for research and the education of untold millions.

And Bindi was at the centre of an amazing world, with parents who obviously doted on her. They even managed to make the sometimes-unsettling reality of stage parents (Bindi has been part of several of her parents’ shows pretty much since her birth) seem simply another lesson in wildlife: Here’s how you pick up a scorpion; here’s how you talk to a journalist.

In the documentary, we watch Bindi as a baby cruise through the Everglades in Florida, learn to walk in the Outback of Australia and start filming her own television show Bindi the Jungle Girl. Through it all, her father is a larger-than-life presence—keeping a team of film-makers laughing, his wife blushing from passionate kisses, and crowds cheering his antics with the crocodiles. It’s a bittersweet look back on an incredible life and it’s tragic it didn’t last longer.

My only serious complaint with the show is that it chooses not to use Irwin’s death as a lesson.

Perhaps they left it out as a topic too big for a children-centric show to tackle. But the whole documentary, which pays homage to a man who was killed—and they never mention that he died—forget the circumstances of his death. They could have warned children of the dangers of provoking animals. They could have acknowledged that it’s slightly creepy to be sitting in a darkened warehouse with larger-than-life photographs of your dead father.

Perhaps parents could anyway use the show to discuss death and responsibility towards animals with their children.

By the end of the documentary, I was torn between wishing I could have grown up at the Australia Zoo and wishing Irwin had managed to escape death. Especially during a final scene that catches Bindi saying, “That’s my daddy all right.” And Irwin says, “That’s my girl!”

F

Animal Planet will broadcast My Daddy the Crocodile Hunter on 2 June at 9pm.

Daddy cool: Bindi Irwin with her late father Steve.

www.livemint.com Melissa A. Bell blogs at blogs.livemint.com/theexpatblog

L6

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009

Business Lounge DEVI PRASAD SHETTY

Operating with plenty of heart This social entrepreneur wants to change the face of Indian healthcare, doing the simple things in a big way at rock bottom prices B Y S EEMA S INGH seema.s@livemint.com

···························· arely does the medical community throw up surgeons who are as skilled with the scalpel as with formulating business ideas. That is the thought on my mind as I walk into Devi Prasad Shetty’s home in Koramangala, Bangalore, on a Sunday morning. Work meetings at home are a strict no-no for Shetty. But I insisted. It would be a rare glimpse into the life of a doctor who admittedly obsesses about healthcare and cares for little else. Eventually, Shetty relented, and now he welcomes me into his house, dressed casually, without his signature suspenders.

We settle down in his spacious, tastefully done living room and Shetty, chairman of the Narayana Hrudayalaya Pvt. Ltd (NHPL) group of hospitals, immediately begins talking about—what else—an angiogram. Specifically, the first angiogram at NHPL’s new 300-bed hospital in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, scheduled to take place the next morning.

Shetty talks about this surgical procedure with enough glee to put off some people. But once you realize that NHPL’s flagship hospital in Bangalore performs the largest number of cardiac surgeries in the world, things make more sense.

This is a man who really

R

CURRICULUM VITAE

DEVI PRASAD SHETTY BORN

8 May 1953

EDUCATION

Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore

CURRENT DESIGNATION

Chairman and senior consultant cardiac surgeon, Narayana Hrudayalaya Pvt. Ltd

WORK PROFILE

After working at Guys Hospital in London for six years, Shetty returned to India and joined the BM Birla Heart Research Centre in Kolkata. He moved to the Manipal Hospital in Bangalore in 1997 before setting up Narayana Hrudayalaya in 2000

BY HEART

Interests are healthcare, mainly surgery, reads books on business tycoons who have influenced global business. His favourite businessman is Pierre S. Du Pont, one­time scion of business conglomerate DuPont, who also helped reform General Motors when it faced bankruptcy in the 1920s. Shetty buys his books from Amazon

PRIZE WINNER

Shetty has won several awards, including the Karnataka Ratna award in 2001, the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2003 and the Padma Shri for medicine in 2004

likes surgeries. Especially when they cost the patient as little as possible. Harvard Business School once referred to NHPL’s model as the “WalMartization of healthcare”.

Shetty’s ongoing, massive hospital-building plan could, if successful, transform healthcare in India. In the next fiveseven years, NHPL plans to have 30,000 beds across the country, including in cities such as Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Bhubaneswar. And less than two weeks after our meeting, phase I of the mammoth 1,500-bed Mazumdar-Shaw Cancer Hospital would become operational at Anekal, a Bangalore suburb.

Besides the new hospital—one of the world’s largest dedicated to cancer treatment—the suburb also houses NHPL and Biocon Ltd, a biotechnology company founded by Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. Shaw is a partner in Shetty’s venture, having invested her personal wealth in NHPL—last year NHPL divested a 25% stake in the company to American International Group, Inc. and JPMorgan for Rs400 crore, thereby valuing the company at around Rs1,600 crore.

But don’t let those numbers fool you. Shetty’s and NHPL’s focus is firmly on the bottom of the pyramid— servicing the poorer sections of society without compromising on quality.

Shetty does this through a combination of scale when it comes to hospitals, and ultracheap health insurance schemes for his patients.

Six years ago, Shetty started Yeshaswini, a micro health insurance scheme in Karnakata with a monthly premium of Rs5-7, which has insured at least 10 million people. Now, the state government wants to pay the premium for all below poverty line (BPL) cardholders.

“We are helping 8-10 state governments to put the health insurance structure in place,” Shetty says, confident that eventually it’ll be the government, assisted by insurance companies, that will pay. Corporate-style, profit-driven health insurance, as in the US particularly, won’t work: “If (US President Barack) Obama does not have health insurance today, he can’t pay for his cardiac surgery.”

As we throw about these statistics—the world’s biggest hospitals, cheapest procedures, inexpensive insurance—I wonder aloud if these initiatives could indeed change Indian healthcare.

Shetty smiles reassuringly and proclaims, “India will become the world’s first country where healthcare will be dissociated from bank balance.” He envisions a future where everyone, irrespective of net worth or income, will have access to world-class healthcare.

But how can he be so incorrigibly optimistic about a country which currently has moribund public healthcare tethered to a frail health insurance system?

Shetty reminds me how, in 2001, while discussing NHPL’s then new telemedicine programme, we had spoken about

Kill bill: Shetty wants to roll out healthcare insurance which will cost patients just Rs60 a year.

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

micro insurance. At the time, my then editor and I had discounted it as a “crazy” scheme.

Today, eight years later, state governments are clamouring to implement Yeshaswini.

While talking about his past successes, future plans—and especially NHPL’s valuations—it

becomes clear that Shetty has managed to function as an astute businessman without letting go of the surgeon inside.

After he graduated in medicine, Shetty’s career took him through a circuit of hospitals in London, Kolkata and Bangalore before he set up NHPL. The busy

social entrepreneur continues to be an immensely productive doctor, however. Every day, Shetty says, he operates on at least two patients and then offers consultations to another 60-100 (some in person, and many more through NHPL’s extensive telemedicine network that reaches 56 cities in Africa and South Asia).

On the business front, Shetty’s next project is a smart cardbased system to pay health insurance premium, in paltry amounts, all round the year. His aim is to make any life-saving procedure accessible to patients.

But paramount on his list of to-dos is expansion of the hospital chain. He explains that unless there are big hospital chains that work with thin margins, such as Wal-Mart, the cost of healthcare won’t come down. “The biggest hospital group in India (he doesn’t want to name it) has a turnover of about Rs800 crore. Perhaps less than what Maruti spare parts dealers gross in a year,” he says.

Shetty plans to apply the same mantra of scale to umbilical cord blood banking—umbilical cords are a rich source of the stem cells that could revolutionize treatments in a few years— bringing down the cost from the current Rs60,000-1 lakh to less than Rs20,000 for standard storage of 20-odd years. “Unless you have the size, you can’t challenge price,” Shetty explains.

Setting up a bed in a corporate hospital, he says, costs Rs45-50 lakh, whereas his hospitals spends Rs15-18 lakh. The economies of scale have another advantage—they provide doctors with ethical and intellectual space: “Most doctors in big corporate hospitals earn their pay (meaning, their remuneration is linked largely to the number of procedures they do), but in our hospitals, doctors are employees; they do more surgeries only out of choice or hospital need.”

It’s hard not to believe that NHPL and its growing network is not about a hospital magnate rolling out his juggernaut. “It’s really sad if that is the perception,” he rues. “I have a great team of 40-50 surgeons, some of them have been with me for over 25 years, but they are faceless.”

Most medical professionals, after reaching a level of excellence, acquire a degree of eccentricity which thrives in special environments: “We try to give them that; our attrition rate is zero.”

As the tall timepiece in the corner strikes 11am, I make a move, darting a quick glance at some figurines of gods (which are also a fixture in all NHPL hospitals).

Are you religious? I ask.

“I am spiritual. I believe in cosmic power, I can pray to any God.”

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009

L7

Play CRICKET

From fringe to fame He is the only Indian centurion of IPL 2, but young Manish Pandey’s feet are firmly planted on the ground. In flip­flops B Y D ILEEP P REMACHANDRAN ···························· e may be Indian cricket’s next shining star, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that Manish Pandey won’t turn 20 till September. The first person he called after the stunning century against the Deccan Chargers at Centurion on 21 May was his mother. Echoes there of the legendary American diver, Greg Louganis, who once said, “Whether I win or whether I lose, my mom will still love me.” Ray Jennings, the coach of Royal Challengers Bangalore, says “Manny’s like a son to me”. Pandey’s father, an army man with roots in Uttarakhand always reminds him that “money will come” and that he should never play with rewards in mind.

With such guidance, it’s not surprising that Pandey comes across as a remarkably well-adjusted and thoroughly pleasant young man. He can be shy and bashful, but there’s also an impish side to him. On the field, he says he’s “calm and aggressive”, and he laughs when he speaks of sledging bowlers and short-leg fielders.

I remember walking past him down one of the vast corridors in the Sandton City shopping arcade in Johannesburg one night. The shops were closed and the place nearly deserted, and this young kid in flip-flops was walking back to the hotel, most probably after a visit to the nearby food court. No arrogant Marlon Samuels strut, no puffed-out chest or attitude,

H

none of the warning signs that you can usually spot with those who achieve too much too soon.

A couple of days later, he destroyed the Chargers’ attack on his way to a thrilling, unbeaten 114. “He played about 50 shots in the first 30 runs, threw his bat at everything,” said television commentator Harsha Bhogle afterwards, but we agreed that the composure that he had subsequently shown marked him out as pretty special.

He followed that up with an even better innings, the 48 in the semi-final last Saturday. There were two gorgeous pushes through the covers early on, and a wonderfully adjusted tap through mid-off after Shadab Jakati had beaten him in flight.

I risked ridicule by asking him afterwards if he felt he had played even better than he had during the hundred. But even before the question was finished,

The fame and attention will be Manish Pandey’s biggest test, but he insists that he’s capable of passing it AMAN SHARMA/AP

he and Jennings were nodding their heads. “I was playing better strokes,” he said.

“There were a few flaws in the hundred and I didn’t want to repeat those.”

Pandey was an anonymous part of the Mumbai Indians franchise last season and Jennings waited till the Indians failed to renew his contract before snapping him up in January. “I’ve known Manny for 18 months,” he said, harking back to the Under-19 World Cup, where Pandey waited till the final to make his mark. He made only 20 in a low-scoring game, but it was enough for Jennings, then coaching South Africa’s U-19s, to come over and say, “We lost because of you.”

After the semi-final victory, Jennings spoke with great warmth of Pandey’s batting and overall progress being the “real trophy”. A fortnight earlier, we had chatted about the U-19 players, and the difficulties involved in keeping them grounded.

“They’re good boys really, with lots of talent,” Jennings had told me. “I just needed to sit them down and tell them that they had done nothing in the game. No one’s Switch hit: Pandey was picked by the Royal Challengers after being dropped by the Mumbai Indians.

going to remember you for what you did as an Under-19.”

Pandey says he always wanted to be a cricketer. By the age of 9, he was part of Syed Kirmani’s academy in Bangalore, slamming a 40-ball century against a team from Mysore. His father’s itinerant lifestyle then took them to Nashik, where he played in the leagues for four years. Next came a spell in Rajasthan, and class X exams, a period when cricket receded into the background. It was only when the family returned to Bangalore and he signed up for the Karnataka State Cricket Association’s trials that his career started to take off.

After a poor first season with the Under-17s, he made three centuries in his second one. And though he was a fringe player in the U-19 World Cup triumph, there were enough glimpses to convince seasoned observers such as Jennings.

The fame and the attention will be his biggest test, but he insists that he’s capable of passing it. Having studied at Kendriya Vidyalaya—“not a rich kids school”—he says he’s learnt much from interacting with his idols. He watched Sachin Tendulkar at close quarters last season, and was in the same team as Anil Kumble and Rahul Dravid this year.

More than any specific advice, he says it’s what he’s seen that’s made the biggest impact. “I’ve observed how they carry themselves, how passionate they are about cricket and the respect they have for the game,” he says.

“I know some players have gone to another level in terms of attitude after a little success, but I’m not going to be like that.”

If he keeps his word, Indian cricket has something really special to look forward to.

Dileep Premachandran is associate editor of Cricinfo and Asian cricket correspondent for the Sunday Times and The Guardian.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

L8

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009

Insider GREEN THUMB

Good to grow Low­maintenance plants to brighten up your terrace, balcony or window box B Y P ARIZAAD K HAN parizaad.k@livemint.com

3

Ajwain: Water on alternate

4

Silver cinerea: Water on

5

Eforbia: Water on alternate

days, keep in sunlight as long as possible. Rs25

····························

1

Mini ixora: Water on alternate

2

Rhoeo: Water on alternate

days, keep in sunlight as long as possible. Rs30 days, keep in sunlight as long as possible. Rs75

alternate days, keep in sunlight as long as possible. Rs75 days, keep in sunlight for 50­75% of the day. Rs200

6

Marigold: Water on alternate

7

Cactus: Water on alternate

8

Coleus: Water on alternate

days, keep in sunlight for 50­75% of the day. Rs30 days, but if the soil is damp, do not water. Ensure plenty of sunlight. Rs100 days, keep in semi­shade. Rs50

Information and plants courtesy Namdeo Umaji, Byculla, Mumbai.

THE RIGHT MIX For all the plants, the growing medium should be a mixture of soil and cow manure. Fill three­quarters of the pot with this. Make a second mixture of coco peat, soil and manure, and top up the pots with it.

Available at Mumbai: u Namdeo Umaji, Byculla u Ratanshi Agro Hortitech, Byculla u Green Grower, Bandra (certain varieties are available only on order) New Delhi: u Masjid Nursery, Khan Market u Rajdhani Nursery, Karbala, Jor Bagh Road Bangalore: u Obalappa and Brothers, Lalbagh Road u Indo­American Hybrid Seeds, KR Road, Banashankari 2nd Stage Kolkata: u Agri Horticultural Society, Belvedere Road, Alipore u Globe Nursery, Lindsay Street, New Market PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

FLOWERING PLANT

5

FLOWERING PLANT AROMATIC LEAVES

1

2

3

FLOWERING PLANT

4

6

7

8

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009

L9

Style YOGEN SHAH

VIJAYANAND GUPTA/HINDUSTAN TIMES

Up the ante: Manish Malhotra showed shorts for men and women at the Lakme Fashion Week earlier this year; and (left) model Pia Trivedi pairs her shorts with a simple tee.

RETAIL THERAPY

The cut­off crowd Let shorts see you through the summer heat and monsoon muck in style

WOMEN

B Y P ARIZAAD K HAN R ACHANA N AKRA

q Wafa Safi: Brocade shorts, Rs4,500.

MEN

&

parizaad.k@livemint.com

·····························

t s.Oliver: Beige cotton shorts with belt, Rs3,599.

p Tommy Hilfiger: Crushed checked cotton shorts, Rs2,200. t Tommy Hilfiger: Beige linen floral print shorts, Rs2,795.

t Puma: Printed cotton Bermuda shorts, Rs2,299.

WHERE TO GET THEM Esprit: At Esprit stores in Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi and Pune. p Puma: Black shorts with satin sash, Rs1,199.

Marks and Spencer: At Marks and Spencer stores in Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi.

Provogue: At Provogue stores in Bangalore, Chandigarh, Mumbai, New Delhi and Pune.

p Marks and Spencer: Red and white striped linen­cotton shorts, Rs2,795.

u Esprit: Cotton plaid shorts, Rs2,890.

Puma: At Puma stores in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi. s.Oliver: At Ambience mall, Gurgaon; Select Citywalk mall, Saket, New Delhi; and Mega Mall, Mumbai.

Tommy Hilfiger: At Tommy Hilfiger stores in Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi.

Wafa Safi: At Cypress, Bandra, Mumbai.

p Esprit: Pinstriped blue cotton shorts, Rs2,500. t Provogue: Olive cotton shorts with belt, Rs895.

PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

L10 COVER

COVER L11

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

MONA CHOWDHURY

ESSAY

red

My name was

‘Didi’ has replaced ‘dada’; green has replaced red. A U2­loving, bourgeois Kolkatan, born the same year Jyoti Basu first came to power, looks back at the confusing, decadent years

JAYANTA SHAW/REUTERS

B Y S HAMIK B AG ···························· ive years after a stretch of it was renamed, Kolkata’s Park Street is yet to get used to being Mother Teresa Sarani.

It’s early into Saturday evening and Park Street is playing true to form: Ladies in miniskirts, longhaired musicians, encyclopaedia sellers, drug pushers, well-fed happy families hand-held by paan-chewing patriarchs, pimps and prostitutes—all ready to mingle seamlessly into the night of food, alcohol, dance, music, money, sex. Park Street doesn’t seem to be in any urgent need of missionary charity yet.

As we turn the corner into Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road, the Park Street cool metamorphoses—volubly and visibly—into chaos.

Vehicles piled up behind a tram car that has stopped dead in its wrecked, wretched track; crowds on the road while hawkers rule the pavements, honking, shouting, screaming, jostling—urban paralysis. Luke Kenny, well known as a video jockey till he became better known with Rock On!!, is sitting next to me, I’m at the wheel, there’s Steely Dan playing and air conditioning too—comforts carried over from Park Street. Kenny is back in the city of his birth—we had got together incidentally—and sitting immobile amid the anarchy of the street, he opportunely lets one slip in: “You think the Communists have been good for Calcutta?”

I fumble through a no-yesmaybe answer, concentrating more on the back of a handpulled rickshaw, its frail frame trying to pass through the dysfunctional four-wheel traffic. It manages to squeeze through; they always do. Just like they survived the government’s attempt to ban them. The ban has been held up through a compact of legalese, administrative vacillation, shortsightedness, vote-bank politics, endless debates and futile philosophizing; a combination of which has also often held up the state.

Hand-pulled rickshaws and Communists, I reckon, are the two great survivors in Kolkata.

I was born under the sign. For good or for bad, it happened to be the hammer and sickle. In the same year I was born, 1977, and almost to the day, the Left Front government came to power in West Bengal, decisively and invincibly holding on to the pole position for the next 32 years. That’s how old I’ll be this June.

F

March of the masses: An ‘anti­imperialism’ protest by CPM workers in Kolkata in September.

As I was flying into the city from Aizawl, Mizoram, on the day the results of the recent Lok Sabha election were declared, Kolkata looked greener than the green it is anyway. At best, it’s not red camouflaged in green any more, as Bengalis on the flight discussed animatedly the contours of an opposition-led electoral surge in West Bengal. From one seat in the 2004 Lok Sabha, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TC) tally rose to 19 seats, all the additions coming from Communist kitty. With ally Congress winning another six seats, the opposition in the state has made a meal of the Left Front, which is down from 35 seats in 2004 to 15 in the current Lok Sabha. In about a 75km radius of Kolkata, the Left hasn’t been left with even a speck.

As we drove into the city from the airport, massive billboards screamed, even if they were just an inadvertent teaser campaign, “Change is coming, get ready”. It started making sense. Party workers were busy erecting a “Congratulations Didi” poster at one busy crossing and there were many more tricoloured TC flags flying.

Later, in the docile, politically inert (by Kolkata standards) neighbourhood where I stay, I saw something for the first time in my life: a victor’s procession that was not celebrating a win with red abir (coloured powder) but with green; a long and winding file of marchers who had emerged from the woodwork of anti-Leftism, the surfacing of the chhaposa (a glamour-shunning Bengali word approximating the clerical ordinary existence, which Banerjee used to describe herself in a postwin television interview as a counter to Leftist intellectual brouhaha). Didi. Didi. Didi.

The television ad referring to Sourav Ganguly—“Dada’s days are over”—seems proverbial. Bengal has rediscovered the didi.

With the state assembly elections two years away, political pundits are predicting that it’ll only be me celebrating my 34th birthday in 2011. Nobody has forecast the fate of the handpulled rickshaw yet.

It was realistically possible to be a Communist kid in West Bengal. Those years in half pants are pockmarked with points of ensnarement, early entry points to the red commune. First, there were the books of Russian folk tales, abundantly available at dirt-cheap prices on Kolkata streets, which had the potential of

handholding wide-eyed children from Manicktala and Gariahat to the picture-perfect, agrarian worlds of the Eastern Bloc. Elders buried themselves in Gogol, Dostoyevsky and Gorky, or stuff picked up from the Marxist literature bookstalls run by grim-faced neighbourhood uncles outside crowded Puja pandals—a godless philosophy seeking expansion through a festival of gods.

While travelling to school, words such as “imperialist”, “capitalist”, “bourgeoisie”, “proletariat” and “politburo”, which appeared all over the city as posters and wall writing, were an additional burden to contend with besides the schoolbag and homework. And then there were such issues as “American imperialistic designs on Cuba”—good enough reason for the Students Federation of India (SFI), the students wing of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), to call a school bandh (strike), allowing us to spend the attendance-thin school day playing football or pranks in the British-built corridors of the institution. Well, the reason for the strike could even have been Fidel Castro twisting his ankle on an imperialist pebble, but we couldn’t have cared less.

I was lucky to be in an elite, autonomous, English-medium school that firmly kept political forces outside its high walls. Every time the CPM organized a maha michil (grand procession) to the Brigade Parade Ground, one would see the less privileged students of government-run primary and secondary schools perfunctorily marching through the wide, red-awash roads, little red flags and posters scribbled with slogans we rarely understood in hand.

Years later, I got to meet one such Communist schoolkid of West Bengal. A group of us were on our annual visit to Kankrajhor, an idyllic hilly nook in rural Bengal, and were staying with Mahato, the village patriarch who had earlier fortuitously played a role in a popular Bengali film Char Murti and built himself a two-storeyed mud house. As we sat outside his house, one of his grandsons—all of 14—recounted why he was all for the “lal party”: After the teenager’s first visit to Kolkata to participate in a Congress procession, the local CPM unit had not only taken him there a second time, but the “tiffin” included an extra dim aar kola.

His allegiance to the red brigade was cemented on the basis of an

MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT

INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

Pages of history: (clockwise from above) Jyoti Basu welcomes Cuba’s Fidel Castro to Kolkata in 1973; a young supporter of Mamata Banerjee after her party’s win in the recent general election; the Writers’ Buildings at BBD Bag, where the chief minister’s office is located.

egg and a banana. Within a year of our last visit, Kankrajhor would become a hotbed of Maoist activity. Change here too, even at gunpoint. Redder still.

Along with Cuba, the other buzzword was aposongskriti. If you, like me, had this word chasing you right till your university days, you wouldn’t trip on it. It’s Bengali for decadent (apo) culture (songskriti). The coinage gained currency when the sari-clad pop singer Usha Uthup had a dhoticlad Left Front minister scurrying for cover during a government function. Here’s the breakup: sariclad pop singer = apo; dhoti-clad Leftist minister = songskriti.

Repeat it a few times, and the word will easily roll off the tongue.

There was an attempt to ban the singer. She survived. So did the word, used as a baton every time the moral minders wanted a clampdown on this-and-that, a proposed Dr Alban concert for instance. Poor Dr—he never got to sing his one big hit, It’s My Life.

And bourgeoisie. That was the fun word, ever since the young

SFI intern in college interrupted class to deliver a lecture on Marx and market forces, in the process skidding on the crux word. When he finally managed, the word emerged as “bour-joys”. What joy. In the SFI-dominated college, classes would be broken up for 15 minutes each day so that cub cadres could go around the campus in a revolutionary file, defiling the day’s choice of class enemy. And here was this intern, breaking into an excruciatingly dreary classroom lecture and delivering such (bour)joy.

Going by their definition, I’m sure to have exhibited all the symptoms of being the class enemy, a “bourjoy” at any rate.

For many of those college-university years, I shared the core colour of the CPM. It wasn’t the primal and romantic red of the revolution, but that of cheap, industrial rum. We would meet at a musician friend’s neighbourhood on the northern fringes of the city, the erstwhile industrial epicentre of India, now a vast ghostly scape of factory sheds, silhouettes

standing bleak and bleary from years of gheraos (protests), goslows and consequent trade union-enforced lockouts. Inside the premises of one such factory, entered through a gaping hole in the boundary wall, we would dope on false hope, sing threechorded songs of U2, CSNY and Mohiner Ghoraguli, the red of the rum and the red of the revolutionary flags stuck at the factory gates the only patches of colour in the surroundings. With sundown, jackals would start a long, pining chorus; a wail from the emptied insides of industrial West Bengal.

Jyoti Basu, it was widely reported, hated that cry. The former chief minister, at the helm for 23 of West Bengal’s 32 years of Communist rule, had ordered the shooting of a lone jackal that howled through the night and broke his sleep.

Basu slept in a palatial house in Salt Lake, the roads outside it barricaded to keep out the public—a property that had once hosted his arch rival, former prime minister Indira Gandhi. By the time he

gave up office, Kolkata was cheering even a pimply neighbourhood flyover as a sign of development.

Basu continues to sleep at Indira Bhavan, the erring jackal having been taken care of long ago. Passing through the area one night, one of us would gingerly place a drained-out bottle of rum in a vacant police kiosk, a step away from Basu’s home. His kinda red salute in XXX. In 2007, seven years after Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee became chief minister of the state, which resonated with his revisionist ideas and Nike-like slogan of “Do it now”, I was on a journalistic trip to Nandigram. This was a day after the 14 March massacre of 14 villagers, among the thousands protesting the proposed forcible takeover of their land. It was a sea of red till Khejuri, a stronghold the CPM had then retained for being outside the demarcated area of the proposed special economic zone, or SEZ, to be developed by the Indonesia-based Salim Group. It was in Khejuri that I spotted one of the wall writ-

ings from my childhood, not too freshly painted but not too old either: “Markin samrajjobad nipat jak (Down with American imperialism)”.

At the grassroots level, that slogan still has currency, a strong residual hangover from three decades of political indoctrination, mogoj dholai (brainwashing), Satyajit Ray fans would say. And it is the grassroots that is being sought to be uprooted from the land they had been taught to love.

To contextualize Neil Young singing in Unknown Legend, do-itnow Bhattacharjee, even when he might mean well, is colliding with the air he breathes.

And there is Mamata. Yet another buzzword from those growing-up years—dragged in and kept afloat by Communist folly. Between them, thankfully, communal and caste-based politics is yet to gain a foothold in the state. For years, she was the hazardous part of the script: her tactics and politics seeming like a by-product of the Left. Part destructive, part comic. And

now, riding high on anti-Left votes, she is the didi to us all and a possible replacement for the dada-comrades at Writers’ Buildings. On television, she has vented her plans for reintroducing English from class I at government-run schools by reciting two lines from a Bengali rhyme which “our children will learn” while “their children will learn ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star...’”—a brief pause—“‘… are theirs’ fivestar kids or what?’” In the battle between the chhaposa and the comrade, it’s the ha-ha that gets my vote for now.

Finally, change—the recent addition to the everyman lexicon after 32 years of constancy. My drink is a clear and transparent vodka these days, and Smirnoff isn’t a Russian company either.

I’m even willing to toast a Cabernet Sauvignon to that. Sure, let’s all change. Why not?

Shamik Bag is a Kolkata-based independent journalist and writer.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

L12

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009

Travel PALOLEM

Before sunrise, before sunset

PHOTOGRAPHS

Despite relentless hard­sell by Western guidebooks, this corner of Goa offers glimpses of a culture that’s almost lost B Y A RJUN R AZDAN ···························· here are three kinds of tourists to Goa: Those looking for a “trip”, who head straight to the northern hippie haven of Arambol; those looking for fun, who camp on the sands of Baga and Calangute; and those who come looking for themselves, and head to the southern idyll of Palolem.

Palolem’s story, like that of all tourist magnets, is one of hype and deflation. Long promoted by Western guidebooks as the secret tropical paradise, the fortunes of

T

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

this quaint Goan fishing village were changed irrevocably by the influx of thousands of sunstarved, winter-weary Europeans.

In the late 1980s, it had just coconuts and fishermen. By the end of the millennium, fishermen were letting out a few rooms to visitors.

Now, there are restaurants with near-identical menus and clubs and Internet cafés and laundrywallahs and “Hello-friend-I-giveyou-cheap-price” vendors and masseurs (“shakes” and spicy massages also available) and yoga packages and Silent Noise parties and, of course, fishermen accosting tourists for a dolphinsighting ride.

After six trips over the last four years, I can say that much of Palolem’s popularity is well deserved. With a deserted island and a lagoon to the north and a perfect 2km-long crescent of white sand, it’s the prettiest part of the Goan coastline, and a gradual slope into the ocean makes it the safest beach for swimming too.

Then there is Palolem at night, which presents the mesmerizing spectacle of an arc of a million illuminated candlewicks fusing into the purple coolness of the ocean. No, I do not agree with Lonely Planet’s latest classification of Palolem as “claustrophobic”.

For, it has another face that breathes its languid rhythm as nonchalantly as it always has, another Palolem where life comes to a halt for siesta, reviving with the amber light of sunset. A Palolem which may or may not exist for tourists and their guidebooks. A Palolem where Konkani women with fragrant flowers in their hair sit in mud courtyards, splitting mounds of salo (raw mangoes) on toe-held cutters, where brightly painted earthen stands for the sacred tulsi (basil) dazzle in the afternoon sun, where jackfruits rest on giant tree trunks next to ancient moss-covered stone wells, where the colloquial lingo’s sing-song stress on the last syllable makes all conversation seem interrogative, where the lush green paddy fields contrast fiercely with the red laterite soil, where dogs are too lazy to bark, and cattle too nonplussed to make way for anyone.

BY

ARJUN RAZDAN

Paradise found: (above) Palolem at sunset; and Konkani women dressed in traditional attire near Chaudi bazaar.

Unlike many of the Velhas Conquistas (Old Conquests) areas north of the Zuari river, most of the interior areas of Canacona district (where Palolem is located) are Hindudominated. Mallikarjun (a manifestation of the Hindu god Shiva) is the most popular deity, with a majority of the fishermen’s boats emblazoned with “Sri Mallikarjuna Prasanna” (May the Lord be pleased).

The most important of the shrines dedicated to the deity lies about 7km from the beach. One sultry evening, as the countryside reeks of cashew feni, I cycle my way up to a local temple. Inside, a few Kunbi farmers seek shelter from the piercing sun. It was their ancestors who chanced upon a lingam (phallus) 350 years ago at the site and erected a structure to mark the discovery.

Today, the farmers take over the

management of the temple for three months—March, April and May—while Brahmins from other parts the country run it the rest of the year.

So stark is the contrast between the two faces of this region that on another day, when a local bus drops me to the remote hamlet of Avali near the Cotigao wildlife sanctuary, I find myself at a loss for words: None of the villagers speak Hindi or English. This is a picture of what Goa may have been had it not been “discovered”.

Kunbi farmers with koytas (machetes) hanging from their waists tend to their fields. Red chillies are left to dry in the tropical sun, while the men congregate over chai and bhaji pao or samosa (with the thinnest, flakiest pasty ever) in cool, sheltered cafés.

Sauntering on these rural

tracks, I see movement among the cashew trees. A farmer, exasperated with the heat and the petty thieves who have made off with a substantial chunk of his produce, pokes about the foliage with a pole to bring down the cashew apples with the kernel attached at the bottom. These kidney-shaped pods will sell for Rs47 a kg at the nearby Chaudi bazaar (at the time, the finished cashew nut was being sold for Rs400 per kg at Mapusa market).

He offers me the tannin-laced fruit. Sweet, sticky, bristly in texture, I devour it till my forearms are wet with the juice.

Sweat runs down the farmer’s forehead. But he ignores it for an evening in his prized grove, far removed from the bustle of the beach.

On the evening of Gudi Padwa (New Year’s day), the local villagers shed the garb of service providers catering to the lucrative tourist industry to assert their cultural lineage. A thick pall of haze hangs in the air at the compound of the local temple as men dance vigorously around a fire, stoking it intermittently with the gudi (a long stick crowned with bougainvillaea flowers and leaves).

Never mind lungs choking with the smoke, I notice the reversal of sorts that has taken place. For that instant, the tourist is not the cynosure of attention any more.

For that instant, the onlooker, rather than the native, is exotic and the gaze turned back to those who had descended on the sands in search of fleeting oblivion. For that instant, a place and a culture were on offer rather than an experience.

Much to my relief, I realized paradise is not completely lost.

Write to lounge@livemint.com CHILD­FRIENDLY RATING

A calm sea and lush farmlands make it a win­win treat for kids.

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009

L13

Eat/Drink IN SEASON

19 ways to make the most of mango sugar and salt. Cook on low heat for 15 minutes. Thicken the sauce using corn flour. Add diced mango. Pour the sauce on the fillet and serve.

It’s that time of year when mango’s on your mind and on every menu. We asked chefs across the country to spill their secrets

Blue Ginger, Taj West End, Bangalore

DRINKS

} Mango Mojito 1 tsp mint leaves (chopped), 3 small lemon pieces, K ripe mango (chopped), 30ml Bacardi, 60ml soda, crushed ice Muddle the mint leaves in a glass. Add the lemon pieces in it. Add Bacardi and mango pieces. Shake and add crushed ice with soda.

Henry Tham, Colaba, Mumbai

} Mango and Chocolate­chip Smoothie 2 ripe mangoes (peeled and diced), 1N cup yogurt, N cup milk, 2 tsp honey, 6 ice cubes. For garnish, whipped sweetened cream, 1 tbsp sugar­free chocolate chips, 2 cherries Blend the mango, milk, yogurt and honey until smooth. Add the ice slowly until the mix turns slushy. Pour into large glasses; garnish with chocolate chips, cherries and whipped cream.

The Bar, Grand Hyatt, Mumbai

} Mango Daiquiri 1 ripe mango (peeled and diced), 30ml white rum, 30ml vodka, juice of 1 lemon, sugar syrup to taste, K cup crushed ice Blend the mango, rum, vodka, lemon juice and sugar syrup until smooth. Add crushed ice. Blend until just combined. Pour into a glass and garnish with a thin mango slice.

carrot juliennes, 1 tbsp onion (finely sliced), K tsp red chilli (sliced), K tsp basil leaves, 1 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp light soya sauce, 1 tsp crushed roasted peanuts, 1 tbsp white vinegar, 1 tsp shallots (sliced and sautéed), salt to taste Mix the mango and carrot juliennes with onion slices, chilli and basil leaves in a bowl.

Prepare the dressing by mixing soya sauce, vinegar, sugar and salt. Spoon the dressing over the salad, and garnish with shallots and peanuts.

} Aam diye Mangsho 1kg mutton, 200g onion paste, 50g ginger paste, 20g turmeric powder, 50g red chilli powder, 150g mustard oil, 150g pulp of ripe mangoes, 100g ripe mango (diced), 7­8 pieces of slit green chillies, 30g green chilli paste, salt to taste Marinate the mutton with onion paste, ginger paste, turmeric powder, red chilli powder, salt and a little oil for 2 hours. Heat the rest of the oil, and add the marinated meat.

Cook on high heat till it’s brown. Add water to cook the mutton. Add half the mango pulp when the mutton is about three-fourths done. Add seasoning and green chilli paste.

Cook till the mutton is fully done, remove from the flame and add the diced mango, the rest of the pulp and slit chillies.

Mix well and keep covered for 20 minutes before serving.

Blue Ginger, Taj West End, Bangalore

} Mango and Smoked Chicken Salad 100g ripe mango slices, 50g smoked chicken breast, 30g rocket leaves, 1 tbsp finely chopped ginger, 2 tsp orange juice, 2 tsp lemon juice, 2 tsp extra­virgin olive oil, salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste Squeeze lemon juice on the mango slices and set aside. Cut the smoked chicken breast into thin slices. Place the mangoes on the plate, and then the chicken slices. Put the rocket leaves and chopped ginger on the chicken. For the dressing, whisk orange juice, lemon juice and olive oil together in a bowl with salt and pepper. Spoon the dressing over the salad.

Oh! Calcutta, Kolkata

DESSERTS

} Mango Cake

Lodi—The Garden Restaurant, New Delhi

24/7, The Lalit, New Delhi

SOUPS

} Coconut Crusted Mango with Chilli Honey Lemon

4 raw mangoes, 2 blades of lemon grass, 1 tsp thyme, 1 tsp rosemary, 1 tsp tarragon, 5 flakes chopped garlic, 1 tbsp butter, 1 litre vegetable stock, salt and pepper to taste Wash, peel and pit the mangoes. Make a fine paste with the mango pieces in a food processor. Melt the butter in a deep-bottom pan and add the garlic. When the garlic flakes turn golden, add the chopped lemon grass and sauté for 1 minute. Add the mango purée and stir. Then add the herbs and season with salt and pepper. Finally, add the vegetable stock and let it simmer for 10-12 minutes. Strain the soup and serve hot, garnished with sliced raw mango pieces.

1 ripe Alphonso mango, 2 tbsp desiccated coconut, 2 red chillies, 1 tbsp honey, 1 tbsp lemon juice, 1 tbsp mint leaves (chopped), 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp crushed black pepper, 1 tbsp olive oil Peel, pit and cut the mango into wedges and sprinkle salt on them. Separately mix coconut, a chopped red chilli, a pinch of crushed pepper and chopped mint leaves. Coat the mango wedges with the mix.

Heat the oil and cook the coated mango wedges very quickly till the coconut browns.

Mix the honey, lemon juice, the remaining chopped chillies and mint leaves, salt and crushed pepper to make a dressing. Place the mango pieces on a plate and spoon the dressing on.

} Raw Mango and Lemon Grass Soup

Parabola, Rodas, Mumbai

} Chilled Mango and Mint Soup 150g ripe mangoes, 1 tbsp sugar, 1g star anise, 100ml unsweetened coconut milk, 10ml water, mint sprigs, 50ml heavy cream Peel and pit mangoes. Reserve half a mango for garnish. Purée the remaining mango pulp in a food processor. In a heavy-bottom saucepan, combine water, sugar and star anise and bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, and let it simmer for 15 minutes, until the liquid is thick and syrupy. Add puréed mango and coconut milk and stir.

Cook until the mix just comes to a boil, and remove from the heat.

Strain through a fine sieve, pressing the mango pulp. Let it simmer for another 10 minutes on low heat. Cool and refrigerate until chilled. Pour the soup in a wine glass and garnish with diced mango pieces and mint.

Radisson Hotel, Noida

STARTERS/SALADS } Raw Mango Salad

3 tbsp raw mango juliennes, 2 tbsp

Earth Plate, Sahara Star, Vile Parle (East), Mumbai

} Smoked Salmon and Fresh Mango Crostini 1 French baguette (sliced thinly to crostini size), 150g smoked salmon (cut into small pieces), 150g ripe mango slices (chopped and chilled), K cup cream cheese, 1 tbsp dill, extra­virgin olive oil to drizzle, mint sprigs for garnish Toast the bread in an oven to get crostini (little toasts). Whisk the cream cheese and dill.

Drizzle a small amount of extra-virgin olive oil on the crostini and generously spread cream cheese and dill mix on it.

Top with an equal number of smoked salmon and mango pieces. Garnish with mint sprigs.

Bonobo, Mumbai

} Kanchkolar Tok 4 raw bananas, 100g potatoes, 2g ‘jeera’ powder, 15ml tamarind pulp, 60g raw mangoes, 2g ‘kala jeera’ (black cumin), 3 chillies, 5g turmeric powder, 10g green chilli paste, 30g mustard oil, 5g mustard paste, salt and sugar to taste

Sweet summer: Mango Cheesecake.

Boil the raw bananas, with the peel, and potatoes in salt and turmeric water. Drain and peel the bananas, then mash them with the potatoes. Mix it with salt, sugar, jeera powder and tamarind pulp. Make 12 small patties. Fry them in oil until golden. Peel, pit and slice the mangoes. Heat oil in a wok, add kala jeera and chillies. Add the mangoes and sauté, then add turmeric and chilli paste dissolved in water.

Add 200ml of water, salt and sugar. Cook till the mango is soft and then add mustard paste. Arrange the patties in a soup plate and pour the thin mango gravy over them.

Oh! Calcutta, Kolkata

} Ripe Mango Sansav 6 small ripe mangoes, 15g roasted mustard seeds, 4 Kashmiri red chillies, 10g tamarind, 150g coconut, 25g jaggery, salt to taste Grind the coconut, mustard seeds, chillies and tamarind to a coarse paste. Peel and squeeze mangoes so the pulp is homogenized. Add coconut paste to the pulp, with salt and jaggery, and mix thoroughly with your hands. The mixture can be cooked for 5 minutes on slow flame till all the ingredients blend (this is optional). Serve as a side dish.

Casa Sarita, Park Hyatt Goa Resort and Spa

} Alphonso Mango and Shrimp Salad 1 ripe mango (peeled, pitted and diced), 100g peeled shrimps, 15g

spring onion juliennes, juice of 1 lime, 50g red and yellow bell peppers (diced), salt and white pepper powder to taste, 10ml extra­virgin olive oil, 1 ripe tomato (chopped), 1 fresh jalapeno (chopped) Cut the shrimps into half, lengthwise. Heat water in a pan and add salt, pepper and lime juice. Cook the shrimps in it, drain and then put them in ice-cold water and drain immediately. Mix diced mango, chopped tomato and jalapeno with extra-virgin olive oil and season it. Put this on a chilled plate and place the shrimps on top. Garnish with spring onion juliennes.

Corleone, InterContinental Marine Drive, Mumbai

MAIN COURSE

} Seared Scallops with Mango and Mint Salsa 8 pieces of giant scallops, 10g salt, 10g pepper, 3 lemons, 10ml white wine, 400g ripe Alphonso mangoes, 50g mint leaves (chopped), 30g castor sugar, 1 medium­sized fennel bulb, 300ml milk, chervil leaves for garnish Marinate scallops with salt, pepper, lemon juice, white wine and castor sugar for half an hour.

To make the mango salsa, peel, pit and finely chop mangoes.

Add salt, pepper, lemon juice and chopped mint leaves. Peel and boil the fennel bulb with milk until soft. Purée in a blender and cook with seasoning until the mixture thickens.

Sear the scallops on a hot pan until caramelized and cooked.

To arrange the plate, put the fennel purée on the base. Top it

with half of the mango salsa.

Arrange the caramelized scallops in the middle of the plate. Top this with the rest of the salsa. Garnish with fresh chervil leaves.

Cafe Uno, Shangri-La Hotel, New Delhi

} Moong Dal with Raw Mangoes (Maanga Kottu) 250g ‘moong dal’ (green gram) washed, 5g turmeric powder, 10g chilli powder, 15g garlic (peeled and crushed), 150g raw mangoes (peeled, pitted and diced into quarter­inch pieces), 500ml water, 30g coconut oil, 5g mustard seeds, 2g curry leaves, 2g cumin seeds, 1g asafoetida powder Boil the moong dal with turmeric, chilli powder, garlic and water. When the dal is almost done, add the mango.

Cook until the pieces are soft and all the water has been absorbed. In another pan, heat coconut oil, add mustard seeds, cumin, curry leaves and asafoetida. Sauté for less than a minute and add to the dal.

Fire, The Park, New Delhi

} Grilled Salmon with Mango Tamarind Sauce 400g salmon fillet, 2 ripe mangoes (diced), 4 tbsp tamarind juice, 1 tsp jaggery, 2 tsp sugar, K tsp white pepper powder, corn flour to thicken the sauce, salt to taste Marinate the salmon fillet with salt and pepper for 5 minutes. Grill the fillet in a non-stick pan until it’s golden-brown. Prepare the mango-tamarind sauce by mixing tamarind juice, jaggery,

2 cups sliced ripe mangoes, 2 tbsp lemon juice, L cup castor sugar, N cup butter, N tsp salt, O cup sugar, 1 egg, K cup milk, 1N cups flour, 2 tsp baking powder Pour lemon juice over the mangoes and let it marinate for 15 minutes. Melt 1 tbsp butter in a pan. Add castor sugar and cover it with a layer of mango slices. Sauté for 2 minutes. To prepare the cake batter, cream the butter and sugar together, then add the beaten egg. Fold in sugar, flour, baking powder, salt and add milk alternately.

Put the sauteéd mango slices in a baking dish, pour the cake batter over them and bake for 50-60 minutes at 190 degrees Celsius. When the cake is done, turn it out upside-down.

Devi Garh Resort, Rajasthan

} Mango Cheesecake 85g pack of lemon jelly, 125g mini marshmallows, 255g cream cheese, 115g whipped cream, 1K cup ripe mango pulp, 2 ready 10­inch pie crusts Pour the contents of the lemon jelly pack into a large mixing bowl. Add a cup of boiling water and stir till the contents dissolve. Next add the marshmallows, and stir well till they completely dissolve too. Soften the cream cheese (heat in the microwave for 2 minutes) and add to the mix. Add whipped cream and mango pulp to this mixture and stir well. Blend in a food processor for 2 minutes. Pour the blend into pie crusts and refrigerate for 4-6 hours. Serve chilled.

Cafe Royal, Colaba, Mumbai

} Baked Mango Yogurt 400g fresh cream, 400g condensed milk, 500g yogurt, 200ml mango pulp Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Mix all the ingredients together with a whisk and pour in a baking tin.

Bake the mixture for 20 minutes at 160 degrees Celsius or until set. Serve chilled.

Café Mozaic, Taj Residency, Bangalore

Rachana Nakra, Pavitra Jayaraman and Seema Chowdhry Write to lounge@livemint.com

L14

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009

Books TRANSLATION

The new ‘Kolkata fiction’ genre INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

Why are big Eng­ lish language pub­ lishers turning their attention to home­ grown Bengali fiction?

B Y A RUNAVA S INHA ···························· aking refuge behind the translator’s discretion, I cannot reveal the identities of the people in the story that follows. Trust me, it’s authentic. A young Bengali fiction writer had just published a novel with a popular genre of TV show as its backdrop. It caught the eye of a commissioning editor in Delhi on the lookout for a national best-seller.

The story was promising, but all the characters were from Kolkata and its suburbs—with their lives, loves and lies played out against that narrow geographical backdrop. The editor hesitantly asked the author if he was willing to change his novel to include characters, backgrounds and events from across India. To his surprise, the writer agreed readily, even eagerly.

The translated version has not yet materialized—it never may— but it demonstrates a new hunger among Kolkata’s Bengali novelists: to be read by audiences outside their drearily familiar city. Confirms Diya Kar Hazra, editorial director, Penguin Books India: “They’re certainly more open to the idea of their works being translated—they even welcome it.”

When approached a couple of months ago by a publishing house for translation rights, the immensely popular novelist Samaresh Majumdar signed on the dotted line immediately, adding: “Another company had asked me earlier. I said no then as instantly as I’m saying yes now.”

The appetite may have been whetted in a symbolic way by the unexpected rapturous welcome accorded to the writer Sankar’s magnum opus Chowringhee, pub-

T

THE KOBAL COLLECTION

lished in the UK in April in an English translation 47 years after it hit middle-class Kolkata’s moral sensibilities in Bengali.

Away from the public glare, other international milestones are being set. Random House, publisher of Buddhadeva Bose’s My Kind of Girl (Moner Moto Meye, 1951) has just sold the rights to the novel to publishers in Italy, Spain and Germany, for sums that will far surpass its potential revenues from sales of the book in India. It is actually following the lead set by Penguin India, which has systematically been finding buyers in Europe, in particular, for several of its Bengali fiction titles in translation.

With the reputation of Kolkata as a crucible for literary talent already established by a number of Indian fiction writers in English, perhaps the sudden attention to home-grown Bengali fiction was more than overdue. But the blips on the radar screens have less to do with the actual number of books being translated into English than they have with the iden-

Telltale: Sankar’s Chowringhee, based on the city (above), was published in the UK last month; and many of Satyajit Ray’s writings have been translated.

tity of the publishers—topped by a short (so far), sharp burst of international attention.

After all, mission-driven—a polite way of saying that making money isn’t their primary objective—publishing imprints such as Seagull and Katha have long been bringing out quality Bengali fiction in translation. Among their writers is the fiery, evergreen Mahasweta Devi, one of the candidates for the Man Booker International Prize this year, and two

BAULSPHERE | MIMLU SEN

popular Bengali fiction writers, Bimal Kar and Bani Basu.

So, for that matter, has Penguin, whose list includes the Bengali language best-sellers of Sunil Gangopadhyay (with his two classics Those Days and First Light), Satyajit Ray (all his short stories, detective novels and science fiction works) and Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay.

Nor is this an entirely post-1990s phenomenon. Back in the 1970s, imprints such as Macmillan and Hind Pocket Books had published several Bengali novels in English translation. But it needed the big-ticket names in global publishing—such as Random House, HarperCollins and Hachette, besides Penguin—to create the buzz.

Today, classics as well as con-

temporary Bengali novels are being lined up for translation.

Publishers across the board are not only revisiting perennials such as Bibhutibhushan Bandhyopadhyay—at least two new versions of Pather Panchali alone are in the works—Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, but also experimenting with wellknown Bengali writers who remain relatively unknown elsewhere, such as Dibyendu Palit, Premendra Mitra, Samaresh Majumdar or Moti Nandi.

Are we, then, at that crucial cusp between regional obscurity and global fame for Bengali writers? Is there a real window of opportunity for Bengali literature to go global? Is there a unique, irresistible quality that can knit together different authors and their works into a Brand Kolkata Fiction?

One answer may be available in the motivations of publishers in India. Let us graciously ignore the possibility that it has something to do with senior editorial positions being staffed by Kolkata alumni.

B Y S HAMIK B AG ···························· n 1997, after Baul singer Paban Das and British genredefying musician Sam Mills released Real Sugar, an album produced by Peter Gabriel through his Real World Records, an altogether new society lumbered up to his door. “We had to switch gods in some senses,” say author and Paban Das’ longtime partner Mimlu Sen in Baulsphere, “to be accepted by middle-class Kolkata society, whose fads and fashions were largely determined in the West.”

Throughout her book, Sen delicately details the two worlds: that of the Bauls, the famous wander-

I

ing bards of Bengal, and of the rest. Self-effacement juxtaposed with self-aggrandizement, the higher consciousness of Baul life set against the consumerism of urban India. Her role is that of a straddler, navigating the crosscurrents of two divergent world views, leaning distinctly towards the sphere of her partner but not losing her footing in the process.

It is the kind of role—where the platform that Sen got, being an English-educated, French-knowing insider, into the famously fortified lives of the wandering minstrels—that could have been bartered easily for the pulpit. But except for a few occasions, her writing is not about moral grandstanding. Instead, she turns Baulsphere into a riveting chronicle of her life with Das, beginning with their first meeting at a Paris concert in 1982, their relationship cemented through his first love note to her (a human face-resembling sketch of an ektara instru-

Arunava Sinha is the English language translator of Sankar’s Chowringhee.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

COURTESY MIMLU SEN

Music of the sky A candid memoir about living with the wandering minstrels of Bengal

More important, every successful Bengali novel has attained its status in a competitive environment, making it a safer business choice.

Ask them about a Brand Kolkata, though, and the same publishers shake their heads. Ironically, the very lack of overt Bengali-ness may be vital for global success. Explains Chiki Sarkar, editor-in-chief, Random House India, about the international deals struck for Bose’s My Kind of Girl, “It’s an old-fashioned, elegant love story without the social detail which is difficult for nonIndians to absorb.” Confirms Sankar: “There are certainly novels likely to succeed with readers in other countries. But they have to be chosen individually, not as part of a basket.”

For Bengali novelists who’re now looking forward to being published in English, the compelling factor is recognition, not monetary benefits. Don’t blame them.

After all, the standard print-run of 3,000-5,000 copies that all but the hottest stars get for their novels may translate only into royalty earnings of Rs40,000-1 lakh, depending on the price of the book and its success. Even a bestseller by Indian publishing standards will multiply those earnings by a factor of four or five at best.

Sure, an international deal could change those economics.

With somewhere between 50% and 70% of the earnings from international rights earmarked for authors, a writer whose novel is sold in, say, half-a-dozen international markets could earn upwards of Rs15 lakh.

So, a few more high-value deals, such as the one struck by Random House India for Bose, will open more doors for both writers and publishers. Expect Bengali fiction to change seriously in that case.

Predicts Sankar: “The day will come soon when Bengali writers will write for global readers and not focus relentlessly on the misery and exploitation in their native villages.” Now that could be translated into a winning idea.

Baulsphere: In company: Das (extreme left) and Sen (third from left) with friends. ment on a paper napkin), consummated during her travels through Bengal’s vast and impoverished Baul hinterland, and continuing—as you read this—in the artistic quarters of Paris.

It’s travel memoir at its finest, with the journey including the author, Das, Baul society and the world at large. The destination, gratifyingly, is never reached.

Sen begins slowly, revealing her own life through a simple and linear narrative style when

describing her upper-class early life in Shillong, her rebellious past in Kolkata, when she dropped out of Presidency College to travel and serve in Bihar, spent a year in jail in 1972 (where she first heard Baul songs sung by inmates) for alleged pro-Naxalite leanings, travelled with foreign students of Delhi University through West Asia to Europe by land, and finally in Paris, where she lived in a ménage à trois with a French couple and bore two

Random House India, 281 pages, Rs395. children, Duniya and Krishna, her future travel companions. All this, by the time she was 33.

It is commonly understood that the passion Baul music elicits among performers and audiences comes from the deep-set philosophy supporting it. One is not born a Baul, rather one opts to be one, attaching oneself to a belief system that ties up centuries of oral traditions, religious syncretism involving Tantrism, Vaishnavism and Sufism, among

others, and rejecting caste, creed, sectarianism, social hierarchies and materialistic gain.

Sen makes an extra effort to explain some of the symbolism and allegories that stitch together Baul poetry; she doesn’t recoil when it comes to documenting the duplicities running through the clannish culture and observes in detail the mores and rituals, even the surreal situation leading up to her own initiation by Baul guru Hari Goshain.

What she eventually manages to achieve is to keep Baulsphere above the realms of Indian exotica—a label easily attached to many of the pop-culture twists given to Bauls since Purna Das Luxman Das (Sen, though, only mentions the former) made it to the cover of Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding. It doesn’t stop her, though, from heaping ridicule on some of the European spirituality-seekers trampling over their modest Santiniketan home looking for a crash course in prem sadhana, Baul sexo-yogic techniques. She writes she didn’t know about it; neither did Das. Write to lounge@livemint.com

BOOKS L15

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

CRIMINAL MIND

DEAD ON TIME | MEGHNAD DESAI

ZAC O’YEAH

Capote meets Bollywood PHOTOGRAPHS

COURTESY

A pedantic action thriller with stilted dialogues, tepid sex and sloppy editing

ZAC O’YEAH

There’s plenty of crime and cleavage in the real­life drama of these magazine stories

B Y S UMANA M UKHERJEE ··························· ulp fiction purists will probably grimace if I say this, but a good action thriller is a work of art. Dan Brown’s story in The Da Vinci Code, for instance, may have been complete garbage, but his storytelling skills were irreproachable.

It’s a much-coveted talent and, alas, it’s something you either have or you don’t.

Meghnad Desai, unfortunately, doesn’t.

That’s a pity because almost everything else is in place: a sprawling cast of characters, a narrative that jumps from Kuala Lumpur to Kansas, European politics, dollops of sex, including straight, gay and incestuous, murder plots (okay, LOTS of murder plots, all targeting the same person!)...the whole laundry list of best-seller ingredients woven into two days in the life of the British prime minister. All Dead on Time needed was a Jeffrey Archer—Desai’s shadow, if one may put it that way, from the Tory ranks—to put them together.

In his absence, we have to be content with shadow-play of another kind: Politicians and media magnates who closely resemble real-life figures (a Labour PM with a Roman Catholic wife; an ageing newspaper proprietor with a nubile Asian companion), sex scandals involving public faces, even a helicopter with VIP passengers that explodes in mid-air.

Big deal, you’d say. Page-turners have always depended on recognizable figures and incidents, depending on prurient curiosity bred by the familiarity factor. Logical absurdities don’t matter in the successful airport novel because you love the writer enough to suspend disbelief: You champion the protagonist as you read breathlessly to see how he turns out.

The problem with Dead on Time, though, is that Desai doesn’t spend enough time building up the one characterhook that you unquestioningly

P

I

n a worst-case scenario the two-night train ride from Chennai to New Delhi can be pretty tedious, with delays adding too many bonus hours to one’s trip, and so one needs to carry a sufficient amount of reading matter. In hindsight, I realize that I would have made a more favourable impression on my co-passengers by carrying a Journal of Subaltern Studies or maybe Frontline to read, but to be truthful, I picked up my favourite magazine from the station news-stand: Crime & Detective. The sure cure for railway blues.

While I derived immense titillation from the pulpy prose and gross gore of stories headlined “Tormented teenager nephew slew paternal aunt” and “Misdeeds of a rapist blackmailer minister”, I gradually became aware of how the cultured Tamils were looking at me as if a Gregor Samsa-sized cockroach had taken my place.

The situation wasn’t helped by the cover photo’s generous display of cleavage. Even more offensively, the cleavage-showing individual puffed on a fat cigar.

For the rest of my journey, I tried to look like a serious columnist, and in order to prove myself, the first thing I did on reaching Delhi was to hire a cycle rickshaw to take me up north, to the suburban commercial complex where the office of Crime & Detective is housed.

It’s cramped, and despite the lack of an appointment, Satish Verma invited me into his cubicle for tea. He’s a dynamic

No man’s land

one-man publishing empire running six different monthlies—including a cricket magazine and a current affairs magazine. When he founded Crime & Detective in 1992, he was already publishing two Hindi crime magazines, one of which was started as far back as 1984. In those days, there wasn’t much crime writing, so Verma had to develop his own format of fictionalized true-crime stories. So how true are they?

“Hundred per cent correct! We even give the case file numbers, if you notice, plus actual photographs of the investigating officers and the crime scene. It should read like fiction, but everything is based on real incidents,” Verma asserts.

The dialogues may be fictionalized, but the factual stuff ranges from new forensic techniques to methodical analysis of the modus operandi of Indian crooks. Content is produced by some 40 freelancers.

The more explicit material—such as the cleavage of bad-character ladies—goes into the “hard crime” magazine Madhur Kathayen, but there’s also a family-oriented edition, Mahanagar Kahaniyan, with “softer” crime. Crime & Detective was added to the portfolio after

Fact or fiction? (above) The magazines that Verma publishes; Verma at his office in Delhi.

Verma started getting fan mail from south of the Vindhyas, where readers had a tough time coping with Hindi. This brought the combined circulation to a staggering 250,000 copies per month, all sold off the stands.

The English edition is a mix of the two Hindi magazines—a cocktail of soft and hard, so to speak. “English readers are bolder,” claims Verma, and secretly I am somewhat relieved to know that I’m not the only reader in the conservative south, but that Crime & Detective has a solid fan following all over India.

In fact, many top cops are among his ardent readers and it is a matter of pride for them to get their photos into any of the three magazines, so they are happy to cooperate with Verma’s writers. The magazines are also

the preferred reading of the “crooked thugs” they expose, which was proved when Babloo Shrivastava, currently domiciled in Bareilly jail, contacted Verma and asked if he’d be interested in a gangster’s autobiography.

Adhura Khwab is now in its fourth reprint,with at least 60,000 copies sold—perhaps partly because Shrivastava, a kidnapper and extortionist, forfeited his royalty in order to keep the MRP at a wallet-friendly Rs60.

Truman Capote meets Bollywood? Yes, interestingly, this genre, which was pioneered by the American popular author with his “non-fiction novel” In Cold Blood (1966) about the apparently motiveless massacre of a Kansas family by two young psychopaths, is being taken forward in India by Verma with his true stories of tough ruffians, damsels in distress and the long hand of the law.

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

Write to Zac at criminalmind@livemint.com

Dead on Time: HarperCollins India, 238 pages, Rs399. invest your sympathies in. Everyone in the vast cast is pegged with a backstory and, together, they create an excellent pastiche of Britain’s current socio-economic scenario. However, they also dilute the narrative flow, an absolute no-no in the thriller genre, and when it all blows up in the end, you’re left wondering why you were subjected to the hard-luck story of the miner’s daughter.

Desai has been quoted as saying that he wrote the book “for the fun of it”, but it’s precisely this element that’s missing from the novel. Even the sex is tepid, as if some inner censor has made him hold back on the more-than-perfunctory details.

The flat writing, stilted dialogues and sloppy editing—none of which would matter in a real thriller—make matters worse.

At fault as much is Desai’s pedantic style. Towards the middle of the book, Deirdre, a minor character, sums up Roger, another minor character, thus: “Roger was always so keen to educate her. Ask a question and you got a lecture…” Substitute Roger with Desai—a well-regarded economist, author of several learned books and a Bollywood biography—and you’d be hard put to think of a better conclusion to a review. This one may just be dead before time.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

MIDNIGHT’S DIASPORA | EDITED BY DANIEL HERWITZ AND ASHUTOSH VARSHNEY

An author in many parts A book on Salman Rushdie that has very little to say about him

Midnight’s Diaspora: Penguin/Viking, 150 pages, Rs399.

B Y C HANDRAHAS C HOUDHURY ···························· t seems outrageous to allege that a book of interviews with, and essays about, Salman Rushdie doesn’t have enough of Rushdie in it, but this is precisely the issue with Midnight’s Diaspora.

This set of responses to Rushdie by a group of political scientists, anthropologists and literary critics—all career academics except for one, Shashi Tharoor—goes about its business, for the most part, in a language far too clotted and abstract to give any enjoyment to the lay reader. But even on its own terms, the scholarship on display in this book barely passes muster because it is either too narrow, tendentious, reductive, or peculiarly self-absorbed.

Midnight’s Diaspora begins with the transcripts of two plodding interviews with Rushdie held at an event in his honour at the University of Michigan in 2003.

The subject of the first, conducted by political scientist Ashutosh Varshney, is “The Political Rushdie”; that of the second, pursued by the literary scholar Gauri Viswanathan, is “The Literary Rushdie”. One might ask, why this

I

division of labour? The writer is, after all, one being, both literary and political at the same time.

The answer might be that both interviewers are playing to their respective strengths, the better to illuminate the literary and political facets of Rushdie’s oeuvre.

But this is to presume that a person with a political background is incapable of a stimulating conversation on a general subject with Rushdie.

Despite this allotment of territory, the questions are mostly superficial, revealing a mental universe as cramped as Rushdie’s is capacious. Viswanathan declares in advance that hers “will be the great rambling interview— very much like the great rambling Indian novel”—a peculiarly grandiose remark that inspires more dread than excitement.

Varshney, in turn, asserts that Rushdie’s work is highly political: “He seems to be singularly incapable of telling a story without political sharpness, without political courage.” It follows, then, that we should not “entirely abandon Salman Rushdie to the literary scholars and critics”. But the limitations of Varshney’s perspective

GUSTAU NACARINO/REUTERS

only a page. The rest of his essay is about the problems inherent in the political self-conception of Pakistan. It is a good essay, and there is much to be learnt from it about Pakistan.

Elsewhere, there is a ponderous defence of Rushdie’s critique of Islam in The Satanic Verses offered by Akeel Bilgrami. The paraphrase of Bilgrami’s idea—that we should defend Rushdie not merely on free-speech principles, but on the larger case that the novel is actually the ally of Class act: Rushdie’s praised, not weighed. moderate Muslims against fundamentalist immediately become apparent conceptions of their religion—is when, in the first sentence of his m o r e i n t e r e s t i n g t h a n i t s essay about Rushdie’s novel laboured execution.

Shame, he calls that book “a politDutch academic Thomas Blom ical commentary on Pakistan Hansen’s subject—the changing scripted as a novel”. picture of Mumbai in Rushdie’s Isn’t it strange that a book novels—seems promising to which is first and foremost a begin with. But even Hansen’s novel should be called a “political exploration quickly slides into the commentary” that is also—as if area of his own research, which is i n c i d e n t a l l y — a n o v e l ? A n d violence and Hindu nationalism shouldn’t we be suspicious when as embodied by the Shiv Sena, it is a political scientist making and then further to even more this peculiar claim? Unsurpris- arcane matters. ingly, Varshney’s engagement The suspicion that this book is with Rushdie and Shame lasts for basically a group exercise in self-

advertisement under the bright flag of the Republic of Rushdie is confirmed by Shashi Tharoor’s essay on Rushdie and Indianness.

Tharoor is a more stylish writer than the others in this book, but his prose always conveys the impression of someone standing in front of a mirror. He allows himself precisely one good, insightful paragraph about Rushdie before he wanders off into a consideration of the main emphasis of Rushdie’s work.

And what is that emphasis? “(A)s I have written in my book India: From Midnight to the Millennium,” declares Tharoor, “the singular thing about India is that you can only speak of it in the plural.” “My India, like Salman Rushdie’s, has room enough for everyone,” declares Tharoor fatuously.

The incredible thing is that readers should be expected to pay good money to find out this.

These “encounters” with Rushdie, in sum, are about as genuine as those of Mumbai’s cops with gangsters. If you have Rs399 to spare, spend it instead on Rushdie’s exuberant early career collection of essays, Imaginary Homelands, which will tell you far more about his work than this ugly and unnecessary volume will.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

L16

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009

Culture THE 1960 S

She’s like a rolling stone SHAMIK BAG

Sally Grossman, an American counterculture hall­of­famer, on ‘dysfunctional’ Dylan and her interest in Baul singers B Y S HAMIK B AG ···························· s Sally Grossman leisurely settles down on the sofa in a room at the Oberoi Grand hotel in Kolkata, an unlit filterless Charminar cigarette in hand, the sense of déjà vu is complete. The moment presents itself as a throwback to when a young Grossman, dressed in red, cigarette in hand, had sprawled on a chaise lounge, with a fireplace as backdrop and a bleary-eyed Bob Dylan in the foreground. For many, the cover of Dylan’s fifth studio album, Bring It All Back Home, had reserved for Grossman her place in the 1960s counterculture hall of fame.

Grossman, now 69, maintains a studied distance from Dylan, or from discussions centred on the American icon. Even as we have lunch at the Grand’s La Terrasse, there is an entire logjam of stories being built up by Grossman—about her being at the George Harrison-organized concert for Bangladesh in 1971; the early-1960s bohemia that was New York’s Greenwich Village, when yetto-be-famous personalities such as Woody Allen and Bill Cosby were popping in at the café where she worked as a waitress; the day Jimi Hendrix died and the crowds spilled over to the Grossman home; flying into the clogged inaugural Woodstock festival arena with husband Albert Grossman; and the inevitabile fate of Janis Joplin, among the many artists that her husband managed.

Nothing on Dylan. Nothing either about the critical eight years in the 1960s when Albert Grossman managed Dylan’s career before distrust and litigation soured the relationship.

When the question of her

A

being in touch with Dylan inevitably comes up, Grossman is prepared, replying with an emphatic “no” even before the query runs its course. “He is not a social person; rather, I would say, he is asocial. It’s a dysfunctional thing, you know.”

Grossman, though, happily tugs along one cultural hangover from the 1960s: It was in one of the Oberoi Grand’s rooms that the Grossmans, armed with names of musicians that Beat poet Allen Ginsberg had met during his travels in West Bengal, first heard Baul music.

In her book A Blue Hand: The Beats in India, author Deborah Baker details the encounter between GinsbergAlbert Grossman and Asoke Sarkar aka Asoke Fakir, who helped organize the first Baul tour to the US and found in the process a way of settling abroad. “Purna (Das Baul) had an extraordinary voice, but in reality Albert was taken in by the guilt trip that Asoke Sarkar laid on him. Asoke was driven to be taken out of this country,” remembers Grossman.

For Grossman, it was the beginning of an abiding relationship with Baul music. She

I’m a different person from who I’d be if I wasn’t in Bengal. It’s hard once you get involved to not be changed.

Sally Grossman

Rewind mode: Grossman, 69, who visits Kolkata often to research Baul traditions, at the Oberoi Grand hotel. has been returning regularly to Bengal to complete work on an archival website of Baul music. She had persuaded her husband, who died in 1986, to use his formidable influence to take the Bauls to the US, a move that resulted in the Bengali Bauls at Big Pink (produced by Garth Hudson of The Band) and Bauls of Bengal, albums that were picked up by many musicians back then, including, Grossman reckons, Mick Jagger.

“Albert was furious. So like Calcutta, isn’t it?” she asks, as the room fills with laughter at the anecdote of the Bengali musicians arriving in the US a day late, just hours before a scheduled concert.

The Bauls—Purna, Luxman, Hare Krishna, Sudhananda and Jiban—went on to open

for The Byrds and Paul Butterfield in venues such as San Francisco’s Fillmore and New York’s Town Hall. During their six-month visit, the brothers Purna and Luxman Das became friendly enough with Dylan to be prominently featured on the cover of the latter’s 1967 album, John Wesley Harding. Luxman Baul’s Movie, a documentary film Grossman produced after following Luxman Das through Bengal’s countryside—and partially shot by Satyajit Ray’s cameraman Subrata Mitra— was released in 1971 and is widely regarded as one of the earliest films to be made on the itinerant folk musicians.

In her Indian embroidered jacket, beaded necklace and smattering of Bengali words, Grossman gives out only one

Off­colour skills Good, bad and ugly on offer on Sony’s new talent show

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

···························· s watching a man burp continuously for a minute your idea of entertainment? So thinks at least one participant in Sony’s new show, Entertainment Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega (EKLKBK), where contestants get a minute to show off their talent and hold the audience and judges attention.

This man burping, with his wife keeping count, couldn’t. But he seemed confident of his rare “talent” and challenged the audience that kept booing him. A member of the audience even walked on to the stage to try and out-burp him.

You look on, amused and exasperated, wondering what Indian television has come to.

The 10pm reality dose is part of Sony’s new line-up of programmes that began airing on Monday. Bollywood composer Anu Malik and choreographerturned-director Farah Khan, both annoying and funny in equal parts, are back as judges. Con-

I

testants who succeed in entertaining the audience and the judges for a minute win Rs10,000; otherwise they are booed out by the “deadly hooter” (like the buzzer on America’s Got Talent, a similar talent show, which can terminate an act midway).

But what looks like a talent show really isn’t one. Namit Sharma, business head of Wizcraft that’s producing the show, says that it is not about discovering the most talented in India.

It’s about crazy fun.

So a moderately talented singer, who Light fare: would have been applauded on Indian Idol, is sent away because she has nothing “different” to offer. The key is to find a balance between talent and entertainment that the

A participant balances lit lamps. judges can appreciate.

Contestants range from people performing breathtaking stunts to a young boy who can recite the capitals of all countries to a man

side of her Indian connection.

One gets the feeling that with Baularchive.com, the proposed compendium of Baul music featuring over a hundred audio and video performances, Grossman will leave a lasting imprint.

The site, expected to be operational early next year, will also feature detailed descriptions of instruments, interviews with musicians and scholarly articles. It’s all being overseen by Charles Capwell, a noted Baul scholar and professor emeritus of music at the University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign, US. “I’m a different person from who I’d be if I wasn’t in Bengal,” Grossman says. “It’s hard once you get involved to not be changed.”

Moments before we enter the La Terrasse restaurant,

Francis Lepcha, the crooner, starts singing Puff, The Magic Dragon, a song made popular

by Peter, Paul and Mary, one of the prominent folk singing groups that Albert Grossman used to manage. Grossman is ecstatic at the connection made in faraway Kolkata and goes over to talk to Lepcha.

“It’s amazing to find so much American music all over the world,” she says once back at the table.

Possibly, the ambitious website she is executing will help reduce the imbalance.

Before that, of course, there is the matter of the khamok, a Baul instrument that Grossman is carrying from Kolkata to the US for Hudson, a former member of The Band.

afflicted by polio who put up a fabulous dance performance. And they all have a story to tell.

The man who puts his life at risk entertaining people by literally playing with fire doesn’t want his son to follow in his footsteps. The coach of a group of hip hop dancers, who perform to a standing ovation, breaks down on stage because two of his teammates have to wash cars for a living.

The group, which practises on railway platforms for want of space, is determined to make it big some day.

It’s stories such as these that draw the viewers and somewhat justify the occasional inanity of the proceedings. The best part is that there’s no audience voting, and the decisions are quick.

Shabash India, which used to air on Zee TV last year, was based on a similar concept, but the show was serious and more engaging because the contestants

would perform amazing tasks that were physically and mentally challenging—such as the man who could pull a Boeing 737 with his hair or the woman who had 50 motorbikes ride over her stomach. The Colors channel will soon be airing the India franchise of the Got Talent series from which EKLKBK seems to have been inspired.

Talent shows usually strike a chord because the audience gets to see ordinary folks with some extraordinary talent. The producers promise performances by celebrities, family acts and more children in the coming weeks. But will Colors have competition from Sony? We don’t think so. Sony’s format is good to keep you entertained during the commercial breaks of your other favourites in the same time slot. Whereas, if the British and American versions of the Got Talent franchise are anything to go by, not to mention that director Shekhar Kapur will be on the judging panel, we can expect some serious entertainment there.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

EKLKBK airs on Colors MondayThursday, 10pm, and Friday, 9pm.

CULTURE L17

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

CHRISTIE’S

Ministry of mirth The mecca of British stand­up comedy now brings some serious laughter to Mumbai B Y S IDIN V ADUKUT sidin.v@livemint.com

························································ t could have gone to Delhi or Gurgaon. Instead, Don Ward has decided to set up his Comedy Store at the Phoenix Mills compound in Mumbai’s Worli area. “As soon as I landed in Mumbai, I knew this was the place. It was so familiar. Mumbai is a good mix of London and Manchester,” explains Ward over the phone. Ward is one of the founders of the famed Comedy Store in London and its latter-day cousin in Manchester. Established 30 years ago in Soho, London’s art and culture district, the Comedy Store has been a launch pad for some of the biggest names in British stand-up comedy. Famous comics such as Ben Elton, Paul Merton and Eddie Izzard all made their big stage debuts at the London store.

Today, the Comedy Store is a tourist staple in London, and Ward says 85% of its seats are sold out on most weeks.

A few months ago, Ward was approached by Amar Agarwala, managing director of the Gurgaon-based Spa Group that has brought luxury labels such as Lladro and Swarovski to India. “He told me that when it came to comedy, I had the best brand. Was I interested to bring it to India?” says Ward. After a reconaissance tour of Gurgaon and Delhi proved unsuccessful, Ward flew to Mumbai. He was chuffed.

According to Ward, the stand-up comedy culture in India today is where it was in London in 1979, when he bought his club in Soho on top of a strip club. “Nobody knew what it was. There was no culture of stand-up comedy. But in reality, it is an art form. The artist is on the stage, (the) crowd in front and you’re either good or you’re rubbish.

Prince or poo!” he clarifies.

Ward is hoping to repeat Comedy Store’s London success story in Mumbai. The Mumbai Comedy Store will be housed in a double-level space inside the Palladium premium shopping section at Phoenix Mills.

One level will house the stage while the other will house a bar and a venue for music. Ward expects the facility to open by mid-November, when he will start bringing in “the best stand-up

I ART

The going’s still good SOTHEBY’S

Auction houses strike an optimistic note ahead of the summer art auction season

BY H I M A N S H U B H A G A T himanshu.b@livemint.com

···························· ome summer and those who can, head for Europe’s cooler climes.

This annual migration of the wellheeled Indian hasn’t escaped the notice of international auction houses; major London auctions of Indian art are held in June. This year, despite the economic downturn and crash in art prices, is no exception. “No doubt we are living in a different world,” admits Maithili Parekh, India representative of Sotheby’s, referring to the vastly altered market scenario since last summer. “But the positive thing is that it is becoming a buyer’s market.”

An auction house’s fundamental approach to selling art, she says, never changes—selecting and selling the best works by the best artists, which are priced well and have proven provenance (previous ownership and authenticity of a work). She accepts, though, that the downturn tends to make auctions “smaller and more focused”. Sotheby’s 16 June auction will feature 84 works—miniatures, modern and contemporary art, among them a work by Jogen Chowdhury, an early Paritosh Sen from his Paris days, and a work by Manjit Bawa (who died in December) that used to be part of the famous Herwitz collection.

Hugo Weihe, international director of Asia art at Christie’s auction house, agrees that auctions are more tightly curated in the wake of the downturn. “Now, selectivity is more important than ever,” he says. Ninety-seven works will go under the hammer at Christie’s in a 10 June auction,

C

LONDON CALLING Summer auctions of Indian art: u Bonham’s, 3 June— Modern and Contemporary Middle­Eastern and South Asian Art, London u Christie’s, 10 June— South Asian Modern plus Contemporary Art, London u Saffronart, 10­11 June— Saffronart Summer Art Auction (online) u Sotheby’s, 16 June— Annual Sale of Modern and Contemporary Indian Art, London

On offer: (top) Vivek Vilasini’s Last Supper Gaza will be in the Christie’s auction; Jogen Chowdhury’s Day Dreaming will be on sale at Sotheby’s. among them an F.N. Souza, an M.F. Husain, an early Tyeb Mehta and two works by Bawa.

Since buyers tend to be conservative during a slowdown, Weihe says masters from the modern period of Indian art, such as Husain and Souza, are in greater demand because they are “less of a risk”. As are “blue chip” contemporary artists such as Subodh Gupta and Jitish Kallat.

“Their works have become more affordable,” he points out. “(And) these artists are here to stay.”

Parekh says well-priced, topquality art is always of interest to buyers regardless of the economic scenario—works such as Women in Red, painted by Husain in 1964, are a highlight of Sotheby’s June auction. “The 1960s were a prolific and stellar time in his career,” she adds. “So this work is bound to get noticed and receive a lot of interest.”

The two major auction houses are very old—Christie’s was established in 1766 and Sotheby’s in 1744—and are likely to take business cycles in their

stride. Mirroring the larger world outside, Parekh views weaker cycles as a corrective—strong artists and works emerge stronger, weaker ones suffer.

“Good art will do well; mediocre art will fall slightly,” she says.

Around 2000, Indian art achieved a new level of prominence internationally and this higher profile was buoyed in the boom years that followed. The recognition was overdue, says Weihe. He points out that museums around the world are catching up—the Mori museum in Japan recently hosted Chalo!

India, a show of Indian contemporary art, and the Guggenheim museum in New York is planning one in two years.

But, for all the hype, Weihe stresses that masters of the modern period such as Mehta, Souza and Husain still haven’t received the critical attention that is their due. “We need catalogue raisonne, monographs, retrospective exhibitions,” he says, adding that their early works are both underappreciated and underpriced.

STALL ORDER

NANDINI RAMNATH

OFFBEAT? THEN BEAT IT

O

ne of the joys of being a film journalist for a listings magazine is learning about movie releases in advance. It means that you can organize your life and plan your weekend getaways. It also means dealing with the eternally optimistic colleague who will march up to your desk ever so often and quiz you about whether the movie that has impressed Philip French will make it to the local cinemas any time soon. It means gently deflating said colleague’s hopes and advising her to do one of the three: Travel to a film festival in the hope that the movie will be screened there; wait for a copy to show up at a rental library; or buy a pirated DVD. The much-reviled studio bosses who worship at the feet of the tent pole in Hollywood also find

the finances for indie projects. Yet very little of Hollywood’s diverse output trickles down to India.

Among the movies that were supposed to be released in India in the last two years, but weren’t, are Closer, Atonement, Frost/Nixon, Fur, and, most recently, State of Play. What we usually get, with some exceptions, are films with eardrum-splintering action and computer-generated wizardry or rom-coms about the sex lives of New Yorkers.

Among the Oscar-nominated heavies were the Batman movie The Dark Knight and the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men. No prizes for guessing which one made it to our cinemas and which one eventually turned up on television to be consumed between advertising breaks. We got Revolutionary Road and Milk,

Size matters: Only mainstream fare such as Star Trek is shown here. but they slunk out of the cinemas almost as quickly as they came.

We also got Spider-Man 3, whose ticket sales in India contributed considerably to its global box-office mop-up.

The five most significant centres for English movies, in order of importance, are Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune and Kolkata.

What works in these cities, says Shony Panjikaran, associate vice-president, marketing Hollywood at Fox Star Studios, are “hand-to-hand action” and “special effects the likes of which you don’t see in a typical Bollywood film”. There is also a small but sure shot audience for Hollywood rom-coms. The crowd

that watches sitcoms on Star World and Zee Café—the friends of Friends—will put down money for a Marley and Me or Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Panjikaran says this crowd numbers 300,000-500,000. “They require no advance publicity—you just have to let them know that a rom-com is coming,” he said.

Filmgoers in metros are in the strange position of being able to watch German film-maker Fatih Akin’s latest marvel, but not Charlie Kaufman’s new mindbender. What allows a company such as NDTV Lumiere to bring the Turkish-German The Edge of Heaven to India is that it imports very few prints, slots

Best medicine: Comic Paul Tonkinson (inset) will tour Mumbai in June; and the Comedy Store in London. talent from America, Canada, Britain and Australia”. “I am going to make sure that anyone who is on stage has clarity of diction,” Ward explains, ruling out comics with strong “Scottish, Liverpudlian and other accents” that are difficult to follow.

To make sure that his team knows its audience, Ward is providing “the lads” with shipments of Indian newspapers and magazines: “The audience must know you’ve done your homework. The biggest insult is if the comic knows nothing about you.” There will be performances all week, with the foreign star acts scheduled on weekends. Local comedians, too, will get a chance to train and perform. Ward says, the idea, ultimately, is to have good local talent performing at the store, “perhaps even in Hindi one day”.

To create a buzz around the opening, Ward is organizing a three-day tour of stand-up comedy performances by Sean Meo, Ian Stone and Paul Tonkinson in Mumbai on 4, 5 and 7 June at Blue Frog, Worli, Tata Experimental Theatre (both Rs1,000 per head) and ITC Grand Maratha hotel (Rs2,500 per head, inclusive of dinner), respectively.

For details, call 022-39895050 or log on to www.bookmyshow.com

these in limited shows, and staggers the release across a handful of cities. X-Men Origins: Wolverine, by contrast, is due to open with 250 prints, of which only about 70 are in English. The rest are in Hindi and Tamil.

The fact that there is a huge appetite for the gravity-defying stunts that Hollywood does so well means that blockbusters routinely get dubbed into Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Even here, there is a hierarchy at work—the latest Star Trek (scheduled to open on 5 June) may have broken a few box-office records in the US, but it won’t be dubbed, unlike X-Men Origins. There are fewer takers for a slice of quintessentially American pop culture than there are for a fantasy about a half-human, half-animal who’s avenging the death of his beloved.

Discerning filmgoers who complain about the lack of imagination in Bollywood movies haven’t yet reached enough of a critical mass to justify supporting a healthy run for independent Hindi films. Similarly, there don’t seem to be enough takers for even

mildly offbeat Hollywood dramas.

I’ve been dying to watch Frost/Nixon, but since the movie has been shoved into the NRP category (no release plan), I am going to dial Abdulbhai and wait for him to show up with his pirated copy. While I’m at it, I might as well buy Synecdoche, New York. Heaven can wait. A good film can’t.

Nandini Ramnath is film editor, Time Out Mumbai (www.timeoutmumbai.net).

Write to Nandini at stallorder@livemint.com

L18 FLAVOURS SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

PHOTOGRAPHS

BY I NDRANIL

BHOUMIK/MINT

KOLKATA CHROMOSOME | RAJDEEP DATTA ROY

Fading clickety­clack Their Remingtons perched on rickety tables, Kolkata’s street typists are a forgotten breed

B

eads of perspiration streaming down his forehead, Shibshankar Saha bangs on the keys of his trusted Remington typewriter as he races to finish an application for a licence for a snack bar.

“It’s been a good day, I have earned a hundred rupees,” says Saha, handing over, with a flourish, the application and its carbon copy to the licence-seeker.

Saha, who claims to have been a state junior volleyball player before he turned professional typist, sits on the footpath opposite Lalbazar, Kolkata’s police headquarters, waiting for customers. “At one time there were more than a hundred of us here, but the numbers are dwindling and there are barely 40-50 now,” he says.

Typists like him can be found all over the city, perched on rickety chairs and tables along busy streets and lanes, armed with ancient Remington or Godrej machines, typing out anything from biodatas to job applications, bills to annual reports. But they are concentrated mostly in the central business district of BBD Bag (named after the revolutionary trio of Benoy Bose, Badal Gupta and Dinesh Gupta).

“We have been around since the days of the Raj, when Calcutta was the capital of India and thousands of people poured in every day from the hinterlands with applications or petitions addressed to the government offices,” says Pratim Mukherjee, a 75-year-old veteran at Lalbazar.

After independence too, and till the early 1980s, they were in demand. But with computers now the norm, business has dwindled and they spend their days reading regional dailies,

oiling and re-oiling their machines or simply indulging in that favourite Bengali pastime—adda (spirited discussions about anything and everything under the sun). It appears to be the end of the road for them.

If Naru Haldar, who sits opposite Saha on Lalbazar Street and doesn’t have the luxury of a shop portico to sit under, is to be believed, their monthly income rarely exceeds Rs3,000. “Those who have rented typewriters have to pay Rs200-300, depending on the make, and then there’s the police to be paid off,” says Haldar, who has had to make a run for it with his machine on a number of occasions when the police decided to swoop down on the typists occupying the pavement.

While those who sit in the business district and near the courts are comparatively better off, the typists who ply their trade in neighbourhoods such as the Shyambazar crossing, under the watchful eyes of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose astride a stallion, are finding it difficult to make ends meet.

“Typists working in a bureau don’t have to worry about the space or the machines but, in turn, have to part with almost 50% of their meagre earnings,”

says Sushil Das, who works in a bureau.

Some of the typists have learnt electronic typing and desktop publishing (DTP) but they, too, aren’t well off.

“Today, everyone has a computer or goes to the neighbourhood cybercafé,” says Kanai Addya, interrupting an animated discussion on global warming in his cubbyhole bureau office near the Calcutta high court. “For DTP, you need space; you can’t plonk a computer on a footpath. And for that you need money,” he says, eager to get on with the debate. The bureau he works for is deserted, its workstations and printers look forlorn.

Yet, despite the dismal situation, there are those who are betting on their typing and shorthand skills to get them clerical jobs in government.

“The government still hires typists, I am told, or at least keyboard specialists, and hence I am here,” says Sanjoy Seth, a commerce graduate.

The 32-year-old, still dependent on his family, is among a class of 40-odd scheduled caste and scheduled tribe students who’ve been sponsored by the state government’s labour department to undergo training in typing and

Time warp: (clockwise from above) Typists on a pavement at Lalbazar; a vintage typewriter at the Suffee Commercial College; a class in progress at the college.

shorthand at Suffee college, one of the city’s last remaining “commercial colleges”.

These colleges used to teach “commercial” skills such as typing, shorthand (Pitman’s and Sloan-Duployan, among others), double-entry bookkeeping, secretarial practice and so on. But almost

TRAVELLING TIFFIN

MARRYAM H RESHII

WHY SOUR IS SO SWEET

M

y friend Karan has a strong opinion on almost everything. So it didn’t surprise me at all when he trashed my plans to try out a new Malaysian place in town.

Malaysian cuisine, he maintained, does not use enough souring agents. “Take, for example, a tandoori chicken with one important condition: Do not add yogurt in the marinade. When you serve it, do not add the wedge of lime on the side, but add the onion rings and coriander and mint leaves. What are you left with?”

He had made his point.

I’m not sure whether the mere inclusion of souring agents is enough ground to violently dislike one cuisine or another, but I will say that you can’t be too skilled in adding them, just like you can’t be too

beautiful or too rich.

You don’t want a situation where your teeth are set on edge by the sourness, but try leaving out the lemon from a mulligatawny soup, the yogurt from a korma or the tamarind-tomato blend from an Andhra fish curry, and you’ll see what I mean.

From north to south, our country bristles with souring agents that are used by one community and are not heard of by others. So, in Goa you have binni chi sollan or kokum, the dried berry of a tree that grows in parts of the Konkan coast, and bimbli, a fruit that grows in everybody’s backyard.

The first is used only in fish curries, the second only in dishes that contain vegetables.

Tamarind is used only to sour preparations of red meat,

Sour power: Tomato is one of the souring agents used across India. never seafood. Real Goan vinegar is a thriving cottage industry but I’ve never found anything like it elsewhere.

From Coorg comes the spectacular kochampulli.

Dark, smoky and with a depth of flavour that reminds me of Italy’s Aceto Balsamico, it is probably the only vinegar assertive enough to stand out in a pandi curry (a

traditional pork curry).

Slightly to the south, it’s the land of kodampulli (a kind of tamarind).

Kerala, especially the central part of the state, is where you find fish tamarind. Sun-dried, then smoked and thus preserved for a year, the smokiness of the kodampulli is intensified when cooked in earthenware vessels.

all these skills are redundant now, and the colleges themselves are floundering, with 75-year-old Suffee managing to stay afloat because of a slew of new-age computer, management and spoken English courses introduced by Mohammed Qamar Hamid, the director and principal.

In Tamil Nadu, nobody has the slightest hesitation in using tamarind to sour fish curries—something that is anathema in certain parts of the west coast. In Andhra Pradesh, a double whammy is the norm: Tamarind and tomatoes are cooked together to spectacular effect, especially in the state’s many stunning aubergine preparations.

West Bengal’s gondharaj lime has no parallel anywhere else in the country—even the lemons from Uttarakhand lack the fruity intensity. Uniquely in the country, Bengalis have no hesitation cooking fish with curd, as in doi maach.

North India has its dried, powdered mango—amchur for chaat, dry vegetables or dal. A slightly more sophisticated flavour comes from anardana—pomegranate seed.

And I’ve not even mentioned the obvious raw mangoes, lime or yogurt.

“These boys and girls are sent by the employment exchange at Purta Bhavan in Salt Lake to us for training in typing and shorthand,” says Hamid. “Not only do they not have to pay any tuition fees or for the books and material they get, but the government also pays them a stipend of Rs175 per month.” The students themselves are hopeful of landing secure jobs with the government some day.

Hamid, whose college was once the assembly line that churned out super-efficient Anglo-Indian women secretaries who excelled at stenography and typing, says the age of the typist is truly over.

As Saha says, before heading off to catch a bus home, “You may not find us here if you come back again next year.” rajdeep.r@livemint.com

Tomato Khatta Ingredients 6 tomatoes, chopped 1 tsp mustard seeds 2 pods of garlic, crushed 1 tsp jaggery 3 tbsp oil A pinch of turmeric Method Heat the oil in a pan; toss in the mustard seeds and then mix in the turmeric. Add the tomatoes and garlic, stir-frying till the tomatoes soften completely, adding a little water if required. Mix in the jaggery, check for sweetness.

This can be served cold.

Recipe courtesy Laxmi Parida’s Purba: Feast from the East Write to Marryam at travellingtiffin@livemint.com Samar Halarnkar’s column, Our Daily Bread, will return next week.

www.livemint.com Every Monday, catch Cooking With Lounge, a show with video recipes from well­known chefs, at www.livemint.com/cookingwithlounge