Lounge for 31 July 2010

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

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Saturday, July 31, 2010

Vol. 4 No. 30

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

Mother’s

legacy

Children at Kolkata’s Sishu Bhavan, run by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity.

Ahead of her 100th birth anniversary on 26 August, we remember Mother Teresa through five people whose lives were changed by the Missionaries of Charity, and who went on to make a difference in the world >Pages 9­12

KANGNA RANAUT’S STYLE MANTRAS >Page 7

HAVE YOU BEEN PHOTOSHOPPED? In 20 years, Adobe’s Photoshop has altered digital design and created some bizarre controversies. We pick five of the strangest >Page 5

THE EXTRA IN ORDINARY

Who better a candidate to write a juicy history of nothing yet everything? >Page 15

A REAPPEARING NUMBER

Math maverick Ramanujan’s legacy is undisputed, his significance current; that is precisely why he is again a talking point >Page 16

THE TICKLED SCORER

THE GOOD LIFE

RAHUL BHATTACHARYA

OUR BOWLERS AND OTHER ANIMALS

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no longer support teams, only bowling. This is an ecologically conscious decision, of course, a petition for preserving the balance of cricket. But it is also driven by greed for the comedy that is a batting collapse (Pakistan and England are somehow the funniest). Much of it, however, has to do with the rare pleasure of brilliant bowling. And last month was a beaut. Test cricket was back again, even though it lost yet another of its ace bowlers. Murali, Warne, Kumble, McGrath, Pollock, Vaas, Lee, Flintoff, Bond—by a rough count that’s 4,000 Test wickets... >Page 4

PIECE OF CAKE

SHOBA NARAYAN

PAMELA TIMMS

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

TRUE LUXURY AND IN KULLU, A CRISP PROVENANCE APFELSTRUDEL

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uxury has many definitions. Allow me to submit one more: provenance. The word comes from a French root which means origin or source; the history of ownership of an object. Before Takashi Murakami stamped his exuberant multicoloured monogram all over Louis Vuitton bags; before Gianni Versace was murdered outside his mansion in Miami; and before Miuccia Prada bought and sold Jil Sander, luxury wasn’t so much... >Page 4

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urn into any lane off NH21 between Kullu and Manali and you’ll quickly find yourself in an orchard. Stop at any of the local restaurants, however, and unlike other great apple-growing regions of the world, you won’t find apples on the menu. Apples have been grown in Himachal Pradesh’s Kullu Valley since 1870, introduced by the British along with trout and hollyhocks, but apart from juice and the occasional chutney, they have failed to make a mark on the local cuisine. >Page 8

PHOTO ESSAY

A HAIRY TALE

HOME PAGE L3

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

SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

FIRST CUT

PRIYA RAMANI

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (MANAGING EDITOR)

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

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

THE BOOK THAT LIVES ON AND ON

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UNITED STATES LIBRARY

OF

CONGRESS

who introduced me to hy don’t you write a this magical story. The book? I have often book is essentially a colbeen asked. It’s a fair lection of the letters of enough question considJerusha Abbott, a teenering that everyone and ager who is suddenly his uncle seem to be writinformed that a trustee at ing fiction in today’s India. her orphanage has MBAs, journalists, condecided to send her to sultants, psychologists, college because he politicians, professors, believes she can become lawyers, CEOs, musicians, a writer. In return, she has fashionistas, even my exto ensure she sends him best friend’s husband’s regular reports of her life sister—a doctor when I at college. She has never last met her—wrote a Jean Webster: A gal pal from seen her benefactor, only book of short stories in another century. a fleeting shadow of the 2008. One publisher says she gets 30-40 unsolicited manuscripts man that looked like a “huge, wavering, every month. These days multiple daddy-long-legs”—hence the title.

When she goes to college she realizes unknown debut authors elbow Rushdie that she’s missed out on a whole slice of life. and Ghosh out of the way in book stores.

Most of my friends are either published She has never heard of Jane Eyre or Robinauthors or to be published authors (of son Crusoe or Holmes or that Shelley is a course the husband has written a book too). poet and George Eliot a lady.

Jerusha and me clicked immediately.

I recently figured the reason I haven’t yet written a book is because my dream book is She’s the kind of girl who gets indignant when she hears a bishop preach that the too scary to even attempt to replicate.

In 2012 it will be 100 years since it was poor were put on earth in order to keep the published! In other words, it was written the rest of us charitable; Wuthering Heights is same year the Titanic hit an her favourite book (I have yet to meet a AGELESS iceberg and sunk—clearly, woman who didn’t think Heathcliff was a both stories have survived the hottie); she believes all children should have test of time. It’s been adapted multiple a happy childhood to look back on; likes to times to film and stage including the 1955 think of herself as a Socialist; and discovers, hit musical starring Fred Astaire and Leslie after reading Stevenson, that she has a “terCaron. I wonder if you’ve read it? A spot rible wanderthirst”. And then of course office survey showed only three members there’s the fact that she likes older men.

Yet the book is more than a fun read. of my team had.

I guess it would classify as a girlie book, When Webster was born in 1876, and even it’s told from the perspective of a 17-year- when she published her novel in 1912, all old orphan. It’s also a book you can easily American women didn’t have the right to finish on a flight from Delhi to Mumbai, as I vote. Her grandmother was an activist who believed in women’s suffrage and that turdid again, earlier this week.

It recently featured on the list of books bulent time is clearly reflected in Jerusha’s the Central Board of Secondary Education letters. In one she tells her benefactor: “The (CBSE) said would improve reading habits only way I can ever repay you is by turning among Indian schoolchildren. The list, out a Very Useful Citizen (Are women citiwhich was released at the end of last year, zens? I don’t suppose they are.) Anyway, a recommended Jean Webster’s Daddy- Very Useful Person.” Another time she Long-Legs—the book I’m talking about—for writes: “Don’t you think I’d make an admistudents of classes IX and X along with rable voter if I had my rights? This is an books by more “popular” authors such as awfully wasteful country to throw away Agatha Christie, Ruskin Bond, Oscar Wilde such an honest, educated, conscientious, intelligent citizen as I would be.” and P.G. Wodehouse.

So every time I think of writing a book I Scholastic India, which regularly publishes classics, chanced upon CBSE’s list think of Daddy-Long-Legs. Intense perforand took the opportunity to publish the mance anxiety follows. And the book book in India in June with the blurb: Rec- remains unwritten. ommended by CBSE. I’m not sure that blurb is likely to attract students, who, as a Write to lounge@livemint.com Scholastic rep told me, are not drawn easily to classics except those that star a certain www.livemint.com detective called Sherlock Holmes.

Priya Ramani blogs at I know I read Daddy-Long-Legs long blog.livemint.com/first­cut before class IX, although I can’t remember

LOUNGE LOVES | HUMPHREY BOGART & INGRID BERGMAN PENS

A Casablanca­sized coincidence?

These two new luxury pens are inspired by two of our favourite Hollywood icons

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ou can now carry Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman—screen idols, firebrand stars and legendary celluloid couple—in your breast pocket or let them gleam from the pen rest on your study table. American pen company Krone has brought out the Krone Humphrey Bogart Limited Edition Fountain Pen, while Mont Blanc has introduced its Ingrid Bergman La Donna Fountain Pen. The Bergman pen has an 18-carat gold nib with a heart-shaped hole. The metal cap is engraved with a pattern and Bergman’s “I. Bergman” signature and coated with mother-of-pearl

style lacquer. The pen’s red gold-plated clip is set with a royal purple amethyst and its barrel is made of a precious black resin. When out of ink, you can have a refill in colours such as Mystery Black, Royal Blue, Midnight Blue, Burgundy Red, Lavender Purple, Oyster Grey, Toffee Brown and Irish Green.

The Bogart pen is sexier since it features two images of him. In one, he poses in his fedora hat and trenchcoat, as if about to mouth his famous line, “Here’s looking at you kid”. The barrel of the Bogart pen is hand-painted in vintage black and white. A combination of painting and silver leaf engraving separates the two images. A three-dimensional engraving of “Rick’s Café Americain” (the nightclub Bogart’s character Rick Blaine owns in Casablanca) highlights the sterling silver band above the barrel. Alternating enamel bands of rich bordeaux and golden yellow embellish the

sterling silver cap. A motherof-pearl coin atop the cap is hand-painted with an ornate Moroccan pattern. An authenticated piece of Bogart’s famous trenchcoat is set into the base of the clip. Two threads from the trenchcoat he wore in Casablanca line the clip of the pen.

Both pens are expensive, but the value of vintage Hollywood, so rare to come by, has never been small.

The Krone Humphrey Bogart Limited Edition Fountain Pen costs Rs4.25 lakh and its roller-ball pen, Rs3.8 lakh; available at Editions pen stores in Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore. Mont Blanc’s Ingrid Bergman La Donna Fountain Pen costs Rs46,250 and the Bergman ball-point pen, Rs32,850; available at Mont Blanc stores.

Rahul Jayaram

Write stuff: (left) The Mont Blanc; and the Krone.

inbox

Write to us at lounge@livemint.com

ever analysing his or her character and it keeps me inspired—and that’s all I want from the whole process.

Perhaps intellectual brainstorming is not a constructive activity all the time.

SUMIT

MEN AREN’T GOD

WHAT LIES BENEATH

I refer to Aakar Patel’s “The human face of our national idols”, 24 July. The lesser­known events and traits of our national heroes that Patel writes about might be correct.

But what does he prove? We are all human. They were too. However, they did something remarkable and inspired others. That’s why they are adored.

There might be some element of truth in his point that as a culture we start worshipping our heroes instead of just admiring them and emulating their positive qualities. Let noble thoughts come to us from all sides.

CHAITANYA

I read Aakar Patel’s “The human face of our national idols”, 24 July. It was an eye­opener. Seldom do we think about things beyond what has been traditionally established. The article exposes the “competence” of our revered leaders. It is absolutely true that we worship people for their physical forms and not for their ideas. This is evident from the kind of public attention any politician gets if he/she carries the Gandhi tag. Even people such as Maneka and Varun Gandhi, who have never proved their intellectual capacity, continue to exploit their surname.

SANTOSH V GEDAM

THE FAITH PRINCIPLE

MEATY READ

While all the stories and anecdotes Aakar Patel mentions (“The human face of our national idols”, 24 July) might be true, the article seems to be demeaning towards the idols he refers to. No Indian would want to listen to somebody criticizing these people.

If we now associate Nehru, Gandhi and Vivekananda with certain “great” qualities and cite them as examples to our children, then they are still serving the country well. I worship my God (and you might too) without

This refers to the articles “Brahmaputra banquet” and “The RIP mantra: roast in peace”, 24 July. Both were interesting reads and that’s what I love about Mint—always interactive and contemporary. More importantly, the articles were very anecdotal and penned in a try­it­at­home style. I will attempt RIP first and then visit Jakoi during the week for lunch perhaps, presuming it is open at that time.

SIDHARTHA

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: INDRANIL BHOUMIK/MINT

LISTEN TO THE LOUNGE PODCAST Shamik Bag speaks on Mother Teresa’s relationship with the city of Kolkata; Sanjukta Sharma reviews ‘Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai’; and Chandrahas Choudhury reviews David Mitchell’s ‘The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet’. www.livemint.com/loungepodcast

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SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

RAHUL BHATTACHARYA THE TICKLED SCORER

Our bowlers and other animals

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TIM HALES/AP

no longer support teams, only bowling. This is an

ecologically conscious decision, of course, a petition for preserving the balance of cricket. But it is also driven by greed for the comedy that is a batting collapse (Pakistan and England are somehow the

funniest). Much of it, however, has to do with the rare pleasure of brilliant bowling. And last month was a beaut.

Test cricket was back again, even though it lost yet another of its ace bowlers. Murali, Warne, Kumble, McGrath, Pollock, Vaas, Lee, Flintoff, Bond—by a rough count that’s 4,000 Test wickets gone in the last three years.

England and South Africa are the best venues to watch bowling nowadays. Australian pitches lately bounce as sorrowfully as dead kangaroos. Broken Indian pitches used to have their moments of glory (Mumbai 2004, Kanpur 2008), but match referees and the media have terrorized them into terminal blandness. South Africa’s have pace, bounce, seam. But England has rain, rain enough to put juice into pitches and wobble in the air, but not enough to wash out matches altogether. Rain is critical to the ecology. Rain made uncovered pitches the exquisite roulettes we read about. And rain, drawing sweat from the surface underneath covers, still makes excellent bowling legendary.

On two wet first days at Lord’s and Headingley, Pakistan’s two Ms, may their success be as great as the two

Ws, along with Umar Gul, hooped and frisbeed all around the Australians in collusive joy.

Mohammad Aamer is a bee. He buzzes in his run-up, the ball buzzes in the air, either way, and off the pitch, either way, he buzzes in appeal.

Honeybees die after a single sting, but not Aamer. He chews gum with teenage vigour. He takes the hair out of his eyes.

He buzzes in again.

Mohammad Asif is a snake (Wasim was both snake, King Cobra, and bee, Queen Bee. Waqar was a bull. Imran was a stallion. Shoaib is an unnamed genetically modified species comprising Shoaib Akhtar—and occasionally Salman Khan).

Asif is no ordinary snake. He is both venomous and a constrictor. This is a very wise and languid snake indeed. He cannot be provoked into reckless bites or overexerting constrictions. Doesn’t have those ways. He may plot his prey days in advance, observing the victims.

Then he begins to slyly slither in. He fattens them if need be. He begins to paralyse them. One limb, then another, and another, then the entire nervous system. He slithers in again, cool, wraps himself around, gentle, and swallows whole. Pups are tormented by him. Did

you watch Michael Clarke?

How he laughs at the desperate flingers. Osman Samiuddin, Pakistan editor of Cricinfo.com, tells the story of Asif narrating a tale from a domestic match. He is watching a whippet-like, floppy-haired, largely futile fast bowler, in and out of the national team for a decade, going at it as usual. “Pace pe pace.” Asif jogs in calmly, wrists it this way and that, picks up a couple of wickets. It is hot. He heads for the pavilion. The fast bowler is still at it, still wicketless. “Pace pe pace.” Asif drinks tea, smokes a ciggy. Outside in the heat, “Pace pe pace.” Asif returns.

Takes two more.

Closer home, before the horror of Colombo, there was some eye-catching bowling in Galle. Ishant Sharma is a giraffe, though arguably more an ostrich. Neither animal has our very tall and thin fast bowler’s Adam’s apple, which leads his gangly loping run like a spear, his hair (unlike Pakistani hair, invariably cool) racing behind him like something forgotten. Ishant needed rain. Once he had it, he stood the ball on the seam, jagged it both ways, fast and sharp. He was coming in like the breeze, floating like a long ghost in follow-through. Preserving Ishant, however, might be a challenge too big for the Indian conservationist.

At any rate, Ishant was easily outbowled by Lasith Malinga, who is a frill-necked lizard. As that creature throws opens the startling umbrella around its neck to frighten predators so Malinga—who otherwise smiles like a little girl with ribbons in her plaits, who kisses the ball softly every time he bowls it—so Malinga unveils at the

Predatory: Pakistan’s Mohammad Asif (centre) lures the batsman into making errors. very last moment the shock of his delivery action. And each time it is indeed a shock.

Bowlers have all kinds of philosophies. An uber-genius like Garry Sobers (who was the whole Ark) could say it depended on—not on the pitch, the day, or the match situation—no, it depended on the ball, its “character”.

“Some swing or spin, some don’t.” Ah! For others, like Jeff Thomson, “I just roll up and go whang.” Malinga slings it like Thommo, and that’s his approach. If the bouncer don’t get ya, the yorker must.

Finally, there was a long and anxious bowl, one final time, from the great Muttiah Muralitharan. “Hello, superstars,” he told M.S. Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh in the first innings, “this is Test cricket. Remember it well.” In the second he grinned, he bore, and got to 800.

Murali is described often as a fox.

This seems right. Unlike hedgehog bowlers who pursue one big idea, Murali, like a fox, had many ways of pursuit. Like a fox he did not hunt in a pack. Like a fox he was himself cruelly hunted for sport in some parts of the world. Fox hunting was banned a few years ago in England, but is still legal in Australia.

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

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

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

Why true luxury is about provenance

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ATHAR HUSSAIN/REUTERS

uxury has many definitions. Allow me to submit one more: provenance. The word comes from a French root which means origin or source; the history of ownership of an object.

Before Takashi Murakami stamped

his exuberant multicoloured monogram all over Louis Vuitton bags; before Gianni Versace was murdered outside his mansion in Miami; and before Miuccia Prada bought and sold Jil Sander, luxury wasn’t so much about brand names as much as it was about provenance: where stuff came from, who made them and how they were made. Haute couture, variously interpreted as made-to-measure or “high sewing”, was, at its inception nothing more than custom tailoring.

In our grandparents’ generation in India, customization and provenance were taken for granted. Even today, in many traditional homes, particularly in small but rich towns such as Coimbatore, Chandigarh and Udaipur, jewellery is custom-made to exacting specifications, both gemological and astrological. The jeweller comes home and waits till the mistress of the house is finished with her chores and ready to talk gems. She comes out to the veranda, wiping her hands on her sari pallu. Chaach (spiced buttermilk) is offered and pleasantries exchanged.

Necklace lengths are discussed, designs analysed and discarded, the mango motif is traced on a piece of paper and updated to suit the fashionable daughter-in-law’s tastes.

Not so ornate, the lady of the house might say. Maybe with platinum and

gold, the jeweller might venture. It is all the rage in Dubai. How about a pearl-drop in the centre? It would cool her fiery temper. Perhaps a ruby instead, the jeweller might suggest.

Madam wanted a grandchild, didn’t she? A blood-red 2-carat ruby would enhance ardour and fertility. And so it went, this discussion. Usually, the jeweller would bring his tools and make the necklace in front of the customer to make sure that the gold was of the highest quality and not mixed with copper.

My mother-in-law had my mangalsutra or wedding chain made at her home in this fashion to make sure of its provenance. It wasn’t the mixing of copper that she was worried about, she said. It was that the jeweller might melt old jewellery sold by some poor woman in distress and use this “distress gold” to make that most auspicious of symbols: the marriage chain. She worried about intangibles such as bad energy and a poor woman’s tears being passed on through the jewellery to me. A karmic spin on the proverbial blood diamond.

In the old days, provenance was taken to its logical, psychological and even supernatural conclusion. After the jeweller custom-made the piece, it would be placed at the altar for a few days to see if the omens were good. If

Custom­made: Bespoke was de rigueur before the age of brands, now it’s a luxury. something auspicious happened, if the piece made the wearer feel good, it was accepted and paid for. If instead, something bad happened, the piece was returned to the jeweller who took it back, no questions asked.

Today, most of us don’t have the time for such attention to detail and quality of ingredients. We leave it to the big brands. The reason Hermès can charge what it does for a Birkin bag is because we assume that numerous artisans are obsessing over minute details such as suppleness of leather and type of stitch. What your grandmother and mine did for us out of love, these brands do for a price.

Last month, I paid a ridiculous amount of money for an Hermès clutch. I am not apologizing for this

purchase—well, maybe a little. I know I can feed a village for that money, but hey, it took me years to work up the cash and work out the guilt; and it isn’t illegal. But here’s the thing: The only reason I bought this Hermès bag is for its brand name—does that make me a phoney? I know nothing about its making, have little or no appreciation for its details, can barely pronounce the name, and have no cultural connection to this French fashion house that is less than 200 years old.

Indian textiles and jewellery, however, are part of my 5,000-year-old heritage and have a great cultural resonance in my psyche.

Then why am I fascinated by the European brands? Is it because I have lost the patience and the skill to be a

true connoisseur so I’d rather hide behind a brand name?

Our mothers knew their textiles and jewellery. They understood quality, customization and finish in a way that is not Western but instinctively and appropriately Indian. My mother, for instance, understood and accepted the imperfections that come from the warp and weft of a fine Kanjeevaram silk.

Yet, at the same time, she could finger the texture and spot a fake from the real. She knew price-points but also provenance. If you tell women like my mother that they were connoisseurs of Indian luxury, they would laugh. “Not like you fancy young people with your sunglasses and your high heels,” they might say self-deprecatingly. But go into a jewellery store in Dariba Kalan with them, or a sari shop in Chennai, and these same women will transform into buyers for Bergdorf Goodman or Harrods: bargaining hard, expecting the highest quality for their money and honing in on the best.

Luxury is provenance; the ability to recognize not just who you are but also where you came from culturally.

Luxury is a celebration of this provenance; not an imitation of a culture that is not yours.

If you have Rs50,000 to spend, are you going to buy a Marni or a custom-made Paithani? In your answer lies the future of the Indian craft tradition.

Shoba Narayan wishes she hadn’t bought the Hermès. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shoba­narayan

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SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2010

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LOUNGE SOFTWARE

Have you been photoshopped?

AFP

In 20 years, Adobe’s Photoshop has dramatically altered the world of digital design. It’s also created some bizarre controversies. We pick five of the strangest B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com

·································· n the second week of July, nearly 50 students in Tamil Nadu were caught submitting bogus marksheets for college admissions, blowing the lid off a coordinated, state-wide fake marksheet scam. The modus operandi of the forgers, it was discovered, involved the simple use of blank marksheets pilfered from university offices, desktop scanners and a piece of software called Adobe Photoshop. A week later, halfway across the world, energy company BP Plc admitted after an online firestorm that it had digitally altered or “photoshopped” some of the images released to show the company’s response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The landmark image editing program celebrates 20 years since its first release in June 1990, and its appearance in recent news is perhaps unfair to its legacy and importance in the world of photography and digital design. It’s among the few hallowed pieces of technology to have its own verb, and it has democratized professional photo-editing on the Internet (bloggers spotted BP’s Photoshop faux

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pas, not image analysis experts). Its ubiquity, however, has led us to an interesting question: Where does one draw the line between digital “improvement” and “manipulation”? “When I look at a picture I like to ask myself the question, is that real? If I can’t tell, then the person either took a phenomenal photo or did a fantastic job in Photoshop,” says Terry White, worldwide evangelist for Photoshop developers Adobe.

“Using Photoshop is part and parcel of photography now, but the constructive use of it is a carefully applied skill,” says Mumbai-based photographer Vishal Bhende, who conducts training workshops on the use of Photoshop. Most of the questions he fields at these sessions, he says, involve flamboyant things— replacing backgrounds, airbrushing elements out of a photo, or removing blemishes. The over-eager use of the tool has seen many contortion-bending magazine covers (and appalling instances of “whitewashing”, or lightening of skin tones), most of which are lovingly chronicled by blogs such as Photoshop Disasters (http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com). We look at five famous Photoshop gaffes over the years:

2001—the 9/11 tourist The 9/11 tourist photograph appeared online shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US, showing a man standing on top of the World Trade Center, with a large plane flying towards the building behind him. The photo was dismissed as a hoax fairly quickly, but that didn’t diminish its popularity.

To this day, the picture still appears in email forwards and message boards.

2005—Shark Helicopter The “Shark Helicopter” was a popular email forward that grafted two separate images, showing a shark attacking a helicopter hovering above water. It claimed to be “National Geographic’s photo of the year”, forcing the magazine to put up a stern warning that it was a hoax.

“Nationalgeographic.com has received hundreds of visits each day due to this photo since the latest round of the email began,” the post said.

BP PLC

2010—BP’s crisis response On 20 July, blogger John Aravosis spotted something strange on BP’s website.

The company had uploaded a series of pictures to show its response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill—among them a picture taken at BP’s command centre showing a row of screens monitoring the situation. Closer investigation showed that a number of blank screens had been “filled in” with Photoshop, albeit so poorly that Aravosis called it an “incredibly amateur job”.

“I guess if you’re doing fake crisis response, you might as well fake a photo of the crisis response center,” he wrote in a scathing blog post. A day later, BP owned up, admitting that three images from the set were “digitally altered”.

2008—Iran’s cloned missile In July 2008, Sepah News, the media arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, posted a number of images showing a successful Iranian missile test. The photo, which made the front pages of the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times and the BBC website, was exposed as a poor Photoshop job, with telltale cloned smoke trails.

The image was later retracted.

2008—the Tibetan rail An award-winning photograph showing antelopes galloping beneath China’s shiny Qinghai-Xizang railway was shown to be digitally altered, forcing news agency Xinhua to issue an apology. The picture, when it appeared, seemed to soften the environmental concerns surrounding the new railway line, with worries that it would destroy the breeding ground of the endangered chiru antelope.

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SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2010

Insider

LOUNGE

DECOR

Six ideas for laid­back living PHOTOGRAPHS

The carefree spirit of summer with ideas that are good for all seasons B Y J ODY G ARLOCK ····························

Cue up the colour: The happy colours in this Florida, US, living room originated from the chair’s striped fabric. “Fabric hands you a palette to work with and gets you going,” says interior designer Rod Mickley. He ran with shades of blue, yellow and red but also threw in surprise pops of lime.

“Sometimes you need a colour that’s not driven by anything other than that the room needs a little zip,” Mickley says.

Bring the outdoors in: The two­tone sofa, with raffia fabric (made of African palm leaves), is Mickley’s take on outdoor furniture. “It makes you think of a wicker chair with cushions without looking—and feeling—like something that belongs on a patio,” he says.

overall look light. Even the sofa and club chairs have exposed legs and the coffee table has cut­outs. function for the way you live,” Mickley says. Rather than hide the TV, he hung it front and centre, then decorated around it.

He centred an oversize, woven, round coffee table so that it would be accessible from both the sofa and chairs.

room in which everything matches. Here, smooth wood and rough woven surfaces break up any monotony. The painted end table in the far corner is another change. Mickley likes to add something fun and unexpected, such as the vintage rope­wrapped chairs. “It doesn’t have to be anything expensive—just something that says ‘I don’t really belong here but, wow, I look great anyway,’” Mickley says.

Don’t be too predictable:

Make things movable: Think of

Nothing looks more serious than a

baskets as cabinets­on­the­go.

Keep it real: “A room should

Let it breathe: Wooden accent chairs, slender lamps and curtain­free windows keep the

They do the obvious (store the stuff), but they also make it easy to tote board games to the patio or magazines and books to wherever you feel like flopping down.

Write to lounge@livemint.com All content on this page courtesy

BY

MICHAEL PARTENIO; STYLED

BY

STACY KUNSTEL

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SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2010

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Style

LOUNGE Q&A | KANGNA RANAUT

‘I don’t need to be told my style’ B Y S EEMA C HOWDHRY

The actor on being her own stylist, why the bouffant should make a comeback, and how to invest in a classic gown

seema.c@livemint.com

···························· ast week, Kangna Ranaut was looking for a yellow gown to wear to the premiere of Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai, a film inspired by the life of Haji Mastan, where she plays the role of Mastan’s glamorous lover. Ranaut’s wardrobe has been making tabloid headlines ever since she established herself as one of Bollywood’s few stylish women who is choosy and eclectic in her taste, and can carry off Western as well as Indian wear with ease.

In New Delhi to walk the ramp for J.J. Valaya’s show at Pearls Infrastructure Delhi Couture Week, the actor says she sometimes sketches the outfit

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‘Opt for dressy shirts such as this one from Armani.’

designs she wants and discusses with designers how to achieve that look. Of late, Ranaut has increasingly been opting to go classic. Here she shares her style secrets. Edited excerpts: Your style has changed. You are dressing more grown-up.

There was a phase when I liked the cute look, like the white gown that my friend Rick Roy made for Iifa (International Indian Film Academy) in 2009. It was a Barbie look. But now I have grown up.

Earlier I loved pinks but now I prefer more whites, beiges, dusty rose, navy, black and deep blue.

I love clothes and everything about them. I am happy to experiment and try out new designers. I don’t just experiment with different silhouettes but also with new hairstyles. A look is a

‘I can add gloves or pearls to change the look of this classic LBD.’

Pants: Zara; Shirt: Armani; Bag: Prada; Shoes: Aldo

Dress: Dolce & Gabbana; Bag: Bottega Veneta; Shoes: Louis Vuitton

‘Talk to the designer and see how he can adapt an outfit to suit your style.’

Gown: Manav Gangwani PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

YOGEN SHAH

complete package. You can’t have the same hairstyle and just change the clothes.

How are you styling your look for events?

I wear my own clothes. It is unlikely that an international fashion house will lend you a dress for every occasion. Good dresses can cost a lot and I want to build my wardrobe.

Do you shop a lot?

No, no. I’m not a shopaholic. But of late I have started investing in dresses that are classy. I don’t buy things that are at the moment fashion fads.

What are classic dresses according to you?

Dresses I can wear more than once. I don’t want to invest Rs5 lakh in a gown that I wear once and can never be seen in again.

That black dress (refers to the Dolce & Gabbana dress) is very, very expensive. It is classic because of its colour, the slightly puffy sleeves, and the length. Even after five years I can wear it and it will look like a

new dress. I can dress it up with long gloves or wear it with a pearl necklace and it will look different. I can do so much with it. I make sure when I invest in clothes, I do it properly.

Was this advice from a stylist—invest properly in your wardrobe?

No, no. I don’t need anybody to tell me how to style myself. If you always take advice from other people, you will go wrong.

Why ask stylists to tell you how to define your style or what suits your body? It becomes their style then, not yours. I don’t get influenced by anybody. I make my own decisions. It’s not so difficult.

Among Indian designers, who do you like wearing?

I like Sabyasachi (Mukherjee). He has an earthy feel to his clothes. I like Suneet Verma’s net saris.

Manav (Gangwani) is good with gowns.

How do you decide between Indian designers and international design

‘With a sari, the hairdo should always be elaborate and dressy.’

Sari: Swapnil Shinde; Bag: Bottega Veneta; Earrings: Amrapali

brands when you have to choose a gown for a red carpet function?

Depends on how much time I have. Sometimes design houses send gowns, usually 10-15 of them, and I see if I like something from among those.

Otherwise, if there is time, I prefer a gown or an outfit to be especially created for me. When I am nominated or am getting an award, I want that moment to be special. For the National Award, I worked with Shoaib Ali Khan, who owns a boutique Hi Craft in Bandra (Mumbai), to design the churidaar-kurta I wore.

Between bags and shoes, what do you gravitate towards?

More shoes than bags definitely.

Did you have any inputs for your look in ‘Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai’?

Actresses must always have a say in how they look for a film. I am not a model but an actress. I will not wear just anything. I have to perform in those clothes, so I have to be comfortable in them and feel the character in them.

I looked up lots of references for retro looks. I worked with the designers Rushi Sharma and Manoshi Nath. Rehana (the character she plays) is more Western than Indian.

High-waisted dresses, jumpsuits, polka prints, low-neck gowns, Can-Can dresses—all these were elements of my wardrobe in the film. It is a look inspired by Parveen Babi and Zeenat Aman— very bold in attitude.

Anything from the 1970s that you hope sees a revival?

I wish those hairstyles, the elaborate hairdos, come back.

They are so grand and add so much height to a woman.

So you want bouffant to make a comeback?

Not exactly the 1970s’ bouffant but the elegant hairdo that Audrey Hepburn had in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. That kind of a hairdo makes every gown look so elegant. These days women leave their hair open with any outfit and they think it looks good. I don’t think so. If I am wearing a dress I make sure my hairdo is as elaborate as the dress.

What about sari gowns from Tarun Tahiliani or Gaurav Gupta?

I don’t know what you are talking about. I have not seen these things. I am not as updated with fashion as people think.

Why the fetish with drainpipe trousers?

After working out regularly, now my body has changed. My legs have toned up and I can carry off drainpipe pants. Earlier, when I was skinny, people used to make fun of me if I wore such trousers.

My friends used to say “Haath agarbatti pair mombatti” (the hands are thin like incense sticks, the legs are thick like candles).

You don’t seem too focused on jewellery?

My style is not about jewellery. I hate forcing pieces on. I like solitaires. Or chandelier earrings.

Do you never seek a second opinion about your style?

Never. I cannot handle opinions. I will go mad. People seem to have ideas that are opposite to mine when it comes to dressing me. Anyway, I become stubborn, and do the opposite of what is advised. I lose my confidence in any case.

You are so big on gowns, why have you never been seen in a Gauri-Nainika?

(Long pause) They have never approached me.

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SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2010

Eat/Drink

LOUNGE PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

PAMELA TIMMS

PIECE OF CAKE

PAMELA TIMMS

In Apfel Pradesh Even after a century, apples are missing from Kullu cuisine. Up in Manali’s hills, an Austrian tradition makes up for the loss

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urn into any lane off NH21 between Kullu and Manali and you’ll quickly find yourself in an orchard. Stop at any of the local restaurants, however, and unlike other great apple-growing regions of the world, you won’t find apples on the menu.

Apples have been grown in Himachal Pradesh’s Kullu Valley since 1870, introduced by the British along with trout and hollyhocks, but apart from juice and the occasional chutney, they have failed to make a mark on the local cuisine.

In northern France, every village has its own treasured recipe for tarte aux pommes and even the tiniest bistro boasts apple-based pies, galettes, crêpes, soufflés, charlottes, liqueurs, compotes and sorbets.

Where are all the Kullu pies, crumbles and cakes? As we discovered recently, there is some consolation for apple fans at Martin Kiener’s Himalaya Sports Club, nestled in the hills above Manali. Devoted locals, tourists in the know, maharajas and the odd passing chief minister all flock to the Sunday-only restaurant where Martin serves up home-smoked fish, wood-fired pizzas and outstanding roast chicken under the dappled shade of walnut trees.

While Martin, who has lived in the valley for over 30 years, is perplexed at the local attitude to apples—“they’re only for selling”—his own dessert menu is a showcase for seasonal fruits, including a Mountain Berry Flan

and, as soon as the apple season starts, apfelstrudel from his native Austria.

An authentic apfelstrudel is one of the home baker’s most feared projects involving a fragile pastry, similar to Greek filo, which requires enormous patience and experience.

According to an awestruck Jane Grigson, the British food writer who once watched the process, “eventually you may be able to read the newspaper through it—text not headlines: this is the counsel of perfection”.

Martin gave me a masterclass and I swear he didn’t draw breath from the moment he started to roll the lump of dough until he had patiently and tenderly coaxed it into the flimsiest of gossamer sheets. He made it look like child’s play but even with years of experience, he says, the whole thing can break into a mass of holes. His apfelstrudel was perfection: a lightly spiced apple filling rolled in a delicate crispy pastry, a fitting tribute to India’s apple country.

Make strudel on a day when you have a few hours to spare with no distractions, a day that’s neither too hot nor too cold and when you have a companion with a delicate touch on hand to help with the pulling process. Your reward will be in the gasps of amazement of your diners.

Apfelstrudel Serves 12-14 Ingredients Strudel pastry 200g plain flour (maida)

1 tbsp sunflower oil Grated zest of half a lemon 125ml of water Strudel filling 1.5kg apples 200g breadcrumbs 100g butter 2 pinches of ground cloves A handful of raisins (optional) A handful of vanilla sugar 1 tsp cinnamon Melted butter for basting 1 tbsp rum Method Have ready a large baking tray lined with baking parchment.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Sift the flour into a wide metal tray, make a crater in the middle, then add the oil. Gradually add the water a little at a time, kneading well to incorporate fully before each addition. At times the pastry will look very soggy but keep kneading until all the water has been used and the dough is soft and smooth and doesn’t stick to the tray. Pat the pastry into a ball then moisten all over with a little oil. Cover with a clean tea towel and leave to rest

COOKING WITH LOUNGE | NACHIKET BARVE

for about 15 minutes.

While the pastry is resting, prepare the filling. Peel, core and very thinly slice the apples—a mandolin is ideal to get the apple slices uniformly wispy. Tip the slices into a bowl with a handful of sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice to prevent the apple turning brown. Stir in 1 tbsp of rum (Martin uses the Austrian variety Stroh 80—perhaps someone could start making a Kullu “Calavados”?).

In a frying pan, melt 100g of butter then tip in the breadcrumbs and cloves. Cook until breadcrumbs are nicely but lightly browned.

On a large table or work surface, lay out a large clean cloth, sprinkle with sifted flour to stop the dough sticking. Place the pastry in the centre of the cloth and with a rolling pin press gently into a large rectangle.

Brush the entire surface of the pastry with melted butter to keep the pastry supple and prevent cracking. Cover the pastry with a clean cloth and leave for 10-15 minutes.

At this point, take a deep

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

···························· hen you have talents that fit as easily in a tailoring workshop as in a kitchen, it must be hard to decide on a career. Nachiket Barve had to make that choice.

His first experience with design, before the commerce student began his fashion career at the National Institute of Design, was as a child when he redesigned the shapes of karanji and shakkarpare.

“It was either fashion designing, cooking or wildlife photography for me,” he says. People who love his clothes will be glad he picked fashion, but we got him to leave the studio to don an apron. He has always loved cooking and wants to add his touch to everything, his mother Dr Rekha Barve tells us.

Barve is making his own version of stir-fry chicken for us. On one of his recent grocery shop-

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ping trips, he bought some plum sauce and is using it in the dish.

“I love the yin and yang of spicy and sweet,” he says. After making sure his two-year-old hyperactive labrador Theo has been fed, Barve gets to work.

Quite unlike the riot of colours in the collections he designs, Barve’s personal taste is understated. Sporting a black shirt over blue jeans, which has become a uniform of sorts, Barve pulls out ingredients from the fridge in his kitchen that is just as basic. With a two-burner stove, a refrigerator, a mixer and a microwave, the only dash of colour in the kitchen comes from the fresh vegetables.

He’s making stir-fried vegetables and fried rice to go with the chicken.

His own touch to the veggies is the apricot jam glaze. Barve looks confused when we ask him how he learnt to cook.

For him, it’s all instinctive and impromptu. “I am making up this recipe as we cook,” he says, tasting the chicken for salt.

The designer started early in

Season’s best: (above) An apfelstrudel is a home baker’s chal­ lenge; and Kiener stretches the dough, the trickiest step. tightly the pastry and filling, using the cloth underneath to keep the roll firm. Tip the roll on to the prepared baking sheet.

Seal the strudel by pressing the pastry edges together, brush off the excess flour then brush all over with melted butter.

Bake at 200 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes to 1 hour until brown and crispy.

Eat hot, straight from the oven with cream, custard or ice cream.

Pamela Timms is a Delhi-based journalist and food writer. She blogs at http://eatanddust. wordpress.com Write to Pamela at pieceofcake@livemint.com

www.livemint.com For a slideshow on how to bake apfelstrudel, go to www.livemint.com/apfelstrudel.htm Read Pamela’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/pieceofcake

KEDAR BHAT/MINT

The closet chef The designer is as passionate about appliqué as apricot.

We got a taste

breath. Pick up the dough and start to stretch it gently over your hands, rather like a pizza dough. Place the pastry back on the cloth and gently pull at the edges. Martin worked deftly with his daughter Erika, expertly stretching until it was “a bit like roomali dough”.

Grigson recommends doing this with palms facing down to avoid poking holes in the dough with fingers.

When the pastry is as fine as you can make it, trim the edges, using trimmings to cover any holes that appeared during the pulling process.

Breathe again. Sprinkle two-thirds of the breadcrumb mixture over the pastry, add an even layer of apple then the remaining crumbs. Sprinkle over the raisins (if using), vanilla sugar and cinnamon.

Run a knife around the edges of the pastry to loosen slightly then, working quickly, roll up

Made to order: (above) Barve likes his dishes to be visually appealing; and the stir­fry chicken. life with all his passions—he used to pick his own clothes to wear as a six-year-old and make his own snacks as a seven-year-old, while his parents were at work. “My neighbour would light the gas for me and I

would make an omelette,” he says. Otherwise, it would be his variation of Maggi noodles or even a Maggi burger that he made using eggs.

Barve loves to try local cuisine wherever he travels and could be

considered a purist in some ways.

A simple meal at a Tuscan villa would be preferred over a “science experiment” at a fancy restaurant. “You apply the same philosophy and sensibility to designing that you do to cooking. One is an extension of the other,” he says, adding green, yellow and red bell peppers to the wok.

The work backstage is by now done, and it’s time to send out the collection. But the finish is just as important. Barve brings out the napkins and crockery he bought in Sri Lanka during his visit there for the International Indian Film Academy (Iifa) awards. The table is laid, but something is missing. He goes into the kitchen and brings out a lime wedge to garnish the plated dish.

Guarding the food from a jumpy Theo, we dig in. That Barve loves a pop of colour is apparent. The table setting is colourful, the chicken bright from the chilli powder and plum sauce, and the veggies are left undercooked to retain their colour and crunch.

His instinct for layering and balancing translates from the runway to the kitchen. The sweet and sour taste of the sauce is not overwhelming. The crunchy cashew complements the soft chicken, as does the gently spiced egg fried rice.

While growing up, Barve used to ask his mother to take a break from cooking on Sundays and

make an entire meal for his parents. Even now, whenever he gets time, he cooks for family and friends. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Sonam Kapoor might be wearing his collections, but there are many who appreciate his culinary creations too.

Stir­fry chicken with burnt garlic and basil in plum sauce Serves 2 Ingredients 800g boneless chicken 2 pods garlic 3 tbsp oil 2 tsp chilli powder 1 tsp sugar 4 tbsp plum sauce, found in certain grocery stores, usually imported 50g cashews, fried 2 onions, separated as rings Method Clean the chicken and cut into bite-sized pieces. Marinate the chicken in a mix of salt, sugar and chilli powder and keep aside for 30 minutes. Add oil in a non-stick wok. When the oil starts smoking, add the garlic and sauté till it turns brown.

Add the chicken and stir fry on high flame till half cooked. Now, add onion rings and stir fry till the chicken is cooked. Add the plum sauce and stir fry till the sauce glazes the chicken. Garnish with fried cashews and fresh basil leaves.

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SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2010

Cover

LOUNGE

CENTENARY

MOTHER’S

LEGACY FOR SOME, SHE IS A MESSIAH. FOR OTHERS, AN OPPORTUNISTIC PIED PIPER AND A VEHICLE FOR RELIGIOUS CONVERSION. AHEAD OF HER 100TH BIRTH ANNIVERSARY ON 26 AUGUST, WE REMEMBER MOTHER TERESA THROUGH FIVE PEOPLE WHOSE LIVES WERE CHANGED BY THE MISSIONARIES OF CHARITY, AND WHO THEMSELVES WENT ON TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD PHOTOGRAPHS

B Y S HAMIK B AG ································ aught between the traditional north and the snooty south, east Kolkata never stood a chance.

Even a decade back, it was an area people just passed by on their way to the airport—stopping meant the additional intake of noxious fumes from the polluting tanneries around Tangra and the stench from Dhapa, which continues to serve as the city’s garbage dump. For much of the city, its occasional encounter with east Kolkata was conducted swiftly, indifferently and with handkerchief held firmly to nose.

So perhaps it was natural that when Mother Teresa quit her Catholic nun’s garb for the white and blue bordered sari around 1948 and stepped out of the gates of Loreto Convent in Entally to serve the poor, she headed east. There, in the byzantine network of slums, infested with malaria and malaise, she founded a slew of charitable institutions—schools for underprivileged chil-

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dren, orphanages, leprosy clinics and rehab centres for mentally challenged women, among others.

Kolkata has over the years had an ambiguous relationship with Mother Teresa. While millions revered her in life and death, dyed-to-the-core Kolkatans perceived her as a Pied Piper of “poverty tourism”, the kind of “comesee-the-slum” guided tours that rankled Mumbaikars after Slumdog Millionaire.

From the Pope to Penelope Cruz, and Ronald Reagan and Princess Diana, they all doted on the “Saint of the Gutters”—the gutters an offhand summation of a vibrant, culturally erudite city.

The fact that it survived the tragic aftermath of the man-made Bengal Famine and one of the world’s largest human migrations from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in the 1940s remained untold in the international press.

Kolkata has been torn between Malcolm Muggeridge’s kindly sketch of Mother Teresa (hagiography, if you want) in his documentary Something

BY I NDRANIL

BHOUMIK/MINT

Light house: Mother House, the office of the Missionaries of Char­ ity on AJC Bose Road, Kolkata, where Mother Teresa was buried.

Beautiful for God, which firmly introduced her to the world stage, and fellow-British journalist Christopher Hitchens’ clinical iconoclasm (hatchet job, if you want) in his book, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Hitchens’ book questioned Mother Teresa’s willingness to generate funds from dubious sources such as the Duvalier family of Haiti and American financier Charles Keating, the primitivism of the medical infrastructure at her homes in Kolkata, her orthodox views on abortion and divorce, and the unaudited missionary accounts.

And on the issue of religious conversion, Mother Teresa often found the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Leftwing Bengali intellectuals on

the same side.

For Kolkata, the Missionaries of Charity could well have been the Machineries of Charity.

Yet these are not questions that weigh on the minds of Agnes Maity, Frederick Marcus, Lucy Yashoda, Dipika Das and Harihar Sahu—the five people rescued by Mother Teresa and her charity from situations of acute crisis and neglect and given a new life.

Through their profiles, some of the questions find answers nevertheless. All of them were prepared for futures that were neither bleak nor desperate.

At their one-room home in the festering Motijheel basti, Maity’s granddaughter squats to do her homework—yet another generation of literates since Maity enrolled as Mother Teresa’s earliest student and became the first woman in her family to be lettered. A runaway from home, Yashoda now finds her daughter giving English lessons to students, while Das’ eyes light up when she talks about the orphanage pivoted on classical dance practice that she wants to start some day.

All five agree on one point: If it were not for Mother, they would not have come this far.

Even now, each time a new flyover comes up in the city, yet another hopelessly ragged family of insolvents moves in under the flyover’s concrete shelter.

Oblivious to the frailty of lives being sheltered beneath, a city zips by overhead. Had she been alive, Mother Teresa would have been busy in this neglected underbelly.

ILLUSTRATION

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JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

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United: A prayer session at Mother House on AJC Bose Road, Kolkata.

SWAPAN NAYAK

Afterthought: Maity’s frail health forced her to retire in 2006 from the leprosy centre established by Mother Teresa.

FREDERICK MARCUS

THE ‘FIRST BOY’ He came to the Missionaries with a damaged eye. Today he is organizing homes for the inmates of Boys’ Town

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AGNES MAITY

BATCH OF 1948 One of the first girls to enrol in the first school Mother Teresa set up, she dedicated her own life to leprosy patients

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he road that turns left from Loreto Convent School, Entally, winds its way to Agnes Maity’s home.

At the turn, the transformation from the leafy and peaceful setting of the sprawling Loreto campus is immediate—there are people sleeping on narrow pavements, rows and rows of unsightly hutments, people cooking on the roadside, open baths and sewers, rising stench, and all that completes the picture of an urban shanty town.

It is this road that Mother Teresa took in 1948 when she met Maity’s mother, Philomena, in the innards of Motijheel slum in Kolkata. From the high iron gates of Loreto, it was a short walk for the Albanian nun, but it was a stride across worlds and a leap of faith.

Maity was an eight-year-old when she saw the “fairy-like lady, who seemed to have bathed in milk”, walk through their lane looking for her mother, a fourth-generation Christian who would help her find non-school-going children in Motijheel and the neighbouring slums at Kamardanga, Chor Garod and No. 3 Bridge

areas. Just the previous year, after their slum was burnt down in communal riots, the Maitys had been huddled in a relief camp on the Loreto campus.

“She used to serve us food and would wear black robes. But that morning, she came wearing a white sari with blue border and looked beautiful. We knew something had changed, but didn’t know what,” Maity recalls.

Maity went on to become one of the first students of Nirmala Motijheel School, the first school or institution founded by Mother Teresa. The school started humbly under a banyan tree, the raised concrete platform under it fabled to have been the blackboard.

Three rooms in the slum were requisitioned for the school before the modest asbestos-roofed, single-storeyed structure came up. Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Mother Teresa in 1950, continue to organize elementary schooling for slum children here.

We sit in one of the three rooms that initially served as a classroom for Mother

Teresa. It is now the room Maity and her extended family use as living space. Maity became the first girl in her family to attend school; her nine younger siblings also got an education—most of them beginning their student life at the free Nirmala Motijheel School.

At the time, Maity was unsure of the “change” in the young Mother Teresa.

Today 71-year-old Maity understands the change she saw in Mother Teresa that day.

After her schooling, Maity went on to work as a nurse at Nirmal Hriday, the home for the elderly destitute in Kalighat that Mother Teresa established in 1952. “I was earning Rs60 every month, which was enough in those days. At Nirmal Hriday, I learnt how to apply injections, dress wounds and feed people,” Maity says.

This would stand her in good stead when she started working at the leprosy centre established by Mother Teresa at Dhapa, in 1963. In a country where lepers continue to be shunned, Maity learnt another valuable lesson. For after working 43 years at the leprosy centre, she retired in 2006—frail in health, but untouched by leprotic decay or the stigma surrounding the disease.

“Mother made me overcome my fears and revulsion. She taught me to love regardless,” says Maity.

All through, Maity refused to marry, having dedicated her life to Mother Teresa. “Mother ensured the marriage of my siblings, but in my case, I didn’t agree.

She was working for God and I wanted to work for her.”

other picked me up from the street when ants were eating into my left eye.” Frederick Marcus says this in almost deadpan fashion, immediately drawing attention to the severely damaged eye.

Even Mother Teresa’s best efforts and connections in the medical fraternity couldn’t save the damaged eye. But Marcus isn’t complaining.

What he got from her in return, he admits, is a life saved from the streets where he was abandoned as a sixmonth-old, and education.

As Marcus introduces us to his wife and son, he talks about a vision, one that will be achieved when all 210 inmates of Boys’ Town are allotted their quota of 5 cottahs of land and funds to build their own homes. Boys’ Town is an orphanage founded in 1964 by Father A. Vanigasooriyar with Mother Teresa as consultant and chief patron; it was her first rehabilitation initiative involving orphaned boys.

“Sixty-five boys have already been settled with land and home under the housing project, while another 65 have been allotted land. Over the years, 160

boys have also got married and now have families,” says the 52-year-old project officer of Boys’ Town, located 30km south of Kolkata in lush green Gangarampur. “It might take another 15-20 years, but I have to ensure that all the boys are settled here.”

Boys’ Town was born when Mother Teresa was asked: What happens to orphaned and abandoned boys. Most of her earlier efforts had focused on the girl child. In Father Vanigasooriyar’s Boys’ Town, complete with residential buildings and a now-defunct school, lay part of the answer.

The erstwhile orphanage has been focusing on housing since the mid-1980s. It stopped accepting inmates post-1986 in an effort to rehabilitate the existing inmates; the Missionaries of Charity stopped funding in 1987 to encourage the orphanage to sustain itself. In their rehabilitation, Mother Teresa’s “vision” for the orphaned boys will be met. It is a task, Marcus says, that he is now entrusted with.

From being Mother Teresa’s “first boy” and among the first group of 16 inmates to arrive at Boys’ Town from

the nuns’ childcare home in Kolkata, Marcus’ pivotal position in society as well as in Boys’ Town was helped through education. Having studied in the campus school till class X, Marcus moved to the Calcutta Preparatory College and St Xavier’s College to complete his graduation. He followed this up with further studies in the Philippines and a course in community development at Coady International Institute, Canada.

Having returned to the responsibility facing him in Boys’ Town in 1987, Marcus has travelled to 23 countries since, seeking funds and benefactors.

“Every year, Belgians adopt children from Mother’s orphanages. They are contractually bound to financially support Boys’ Town, while we keep track of the children’s well-being.

Funding comes in from countries like Germany too,” explains Marcus.

At his austere home in the vast housing area of Boys’ Town, Marcus brings out a letter written by Mother Teresa, introducing the “boy who has lost one eye” to an official in the Philippines college where he went to study. “But in spite of it, he is full of life and ambition to do well,” the letter adds.

“My first memory of Mother is being hugged by her,” he recalls.

Step forward: Das wants to run a school for orphans where classical dance will be part of the school curriculum.

DIPIKA DAS

DANCE THERAPY She grew up in Mother Teresa’s home for abandoned people with special needs and found joy and recognition in classical dance

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Man of action: Marcus joined Boys’ Town after studying in the Philippines and Canada.

here are segments in the dance drama which are uncomfortably real for 20-year-old Julie Brown; too close, she says, to her own life. Yet she has willed herself to participate in Something Beautiful for God, which will be staged in Kolkata and New Delhi over the coming months to commemorate Mother Teresa’s centennial.

“I was eight months old when I was brought here to stay in Santi Dan,” she says haltingly, standing among fellow dancers and mates at Santi Dan after a rehearsal session at the Missionaries of Charity-run home for mentally challenged women and HIV-affected children and adults in east Kolkata. “Since then, this will be my first opportunity to do something for Mother. I feel honoured,” Brown adds.

Brown was born in a jail where

her mother was an inmate; she died within months of Brown’s birth. Still an infant, Brown—along with some mentally challenged inmates—was rehabilitated in Santi Dan through a process initiated by Mother Teresa.

Preparing for the staging of Something Beautiful for God, the title of which is inspired by British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge’s celebrated documentary film and book on Mother Teresa, was an exacting job for Brown, says the director of the production, Dipika Das. “She opted out of a sequence that she found too difficult to portray for closely reflecting her own story,” says Das, who lives at Santi Dan, learns Bharatanatyam from the senior gurus and exponents, Professor C.V. Chandrasekhar and Manjuri Chandrasekhar, in Chennai and teaches underprivileged school-

children at Don Bosco Nitika and Sishu Bhavan, the Missionaries of Charity-run home for orphan and homeless children, when in Kolkata.

For 32-year-old Das, the script of the dance drama is a collage of the lives of all the participants in the production—children who have been brought up in Santi Dan, “whose mothers have shared time in jail before being rehabilitated by Mother”—but who, Das adds authoritatively, are anything but in a state of destitution.

She takes time to introduce her students’ current context before their past misfortunes—Champa has taken her BA exam, Tara practises tailoring after learning the craft in Bangalore, Konica sings, Lipika wants to study nursing to serve the poor and ailing, Julie’s got a day job, and one of her HIV-infected stu-

dents has started going to school.

Das practises Indian classical dance. “I feel this is what I can offer best,” she says.

From her childhood days, burdened by memories of the physical torture inflicted on her mother by her in-laws, Das would dwell on more pleasant things: her mother’s rendition of Tagore’s songs, her aunt and danseuse Mamata Das inspiring her to dance, the introduction to yoga by her parents. “As a child, whenever I was alone, I would dance in front of idols of gods. That would be my offering,” says the dancer, who recently completed her master’s degree in fine arts (dance) from Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, and is now preparing for an MPhil in music.

Among the last persons to visit Mother Teresa on her deathbed, Das wants to start an orphanage where classical dance studies will be a pivotal part of the formal education curriculum.

Twenty years after her release from a mental rehab centre, Das’ mother died earlier this year in Santi Dan, the same place where her four children grew up. Says Das, “I want to live with the dignity of a dancer.”

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United: A prayer session at Mother House on AJC Bose Road, Kolkata.

SWAPAN NAYAK

Afterthought: Maity’s frail health forced her to retire in 2006 from the leprosy centre established by Mother Teresa.

FREDERICK MARCUS

THE ‘FIRST BOY’ He came to the Missionaries with a damaged eye. Today he is organizing homes for the inmates of Boys’ Town

M

AGNES MAITY

BATCH OF 1948 One of the first girls to enrol in the first school Mother Teresa set up, she dedicated her own life to leprosy patients

T

he road that turns left from Loreto Convent School, Entally, winds its way to Agnes Maity’s home.

At the turn, the transformation from the leafy and peaceful setting of the sprawling Loreto campus is immediate—there are people sleeping on narrow pavements, rows and rows of unsightly hutments, people cooking on the roadside, open baths and sewers, rising stench, and all that completes the picture of an urban shanty town.

It is this road that Mother Teresa took in 1948 when she met Maity’s mother, Philomena, in the innards of Motijheel slum in Kolkata. From the high iron gates of Loreto, it was a short walk for the Albanian nun, but it was a stride across worlds and a leap of faith.

Maity was an eight-year-old when she saw the “fairy-like lady, who seemed to have bathed in milk”, walk through their lane looking for her mother, a fourth-generation Christian who would help her find non-school-going children in Motijheel and the neighbouring slums at Kamardanga, Chor Garod and No. 3 Bridge

areas. Just the previous year, after their slum was burnt down in communal riots, the Maitys had been huddled in a relief camp on the Loreto campus.

“She used to serve us food and would wear black robes. But that morning, she came wearing a white sari with blue border and looked beautiful. We knew something had changed, but didn’t know what,” Maity recalls.

Maity went on to become one of the first students of Nirmala Motijheel School, the first school or institution founded by Mother Teresa. The school started humbly under a banyan tree, the raised concrete platform under it fabled to have been the blackboard.

Three rooms in the slum were requisitioned for the school before the modest asbestos-roofed, single-storeyed structure came up. Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Mother Teresa in 1950, continue to organize elementary schooling for slum children here.

We sit in one of the three rooms that initially served as a classroom for Mother

Teresa. It is now the room Maity and her extended family use as living space. Maity became the first girl in her family to attend school; her nine younger siblings also got an education—most of them beginning their student life at the free Nirmala Motijheel School.

At the time, Maity was unsure of the “change” in the young Mother Teresa.

Today 71-year-old Maity understands the change she saw in Mother Teresa that day.

After her schooling, Maity went on to work as a nurse at Nirmal Hriday, the home for the elderly destitute in Kalighat that Mother Teresa established in 1952. “I was earning Rs60 every month, which was enough in those days. At Nirmal Hriday, I learnt how to apply injections, dress wounds and feed people,” Maity says.

This would stand her in good stead when she started working at the leprosy centre established by Mother Teresa at Dhapa, in 1963. In a country where lepers continue to be shunned, Maity learnt another valuable lesson. For after working 43 years at the leprosy centre, she retired in 2006—frail in health, but untouched by leprotic decay or the stigma surrounding the disease.

“Mother made me overcome my fears and revulsion. She taught me to love regardless,” says Maity.

All through, Maity refused to marry, having dedicated her life to Mother Teresa. “Mother ensured the marriage of my siblings, but in my case, I didn’t agree.

She was working for God and I wanted to work for her.”

other picked me up from the street when ants were eating into my left eye.” Frederick Marcus says this in almost deadpan fashion, immediately drawing attention to the severely damaged eye.

Even Mother Teresa’s best efforts and connections in the medical fraternity couldn’t save the damaged eye. But Marcus isn’t complaining.

What he got from her in return, he admits, is a life saved from the streets where he was abandoned as a sixmonth-old, and education.

As Marcus introduces us to his wife and son, he talks about a vision, one that will be achieved when all 210 inmates of Boys’ Town are allotted their quota of 5 cottahs of land and funds to build their own homes. Boys’ Town is an orphanage founded in 1964 by Father A. Vanigasooriyar with Mother Teresa as consultant and chief patron; it was her first rehabilitation initiative involving orphaned boys.

“Sixty-five boys have already been settled with land and home under the housing project, while another 65 have been allotted land. Over the years, 160

boys have also got married and now have families,” says the 52-year-old project officer of Boys’ Town, located 30km south of Kolkata in lush green Gangarampur. “It might take another 15-20 years, but I have to ensure that all the boys are settled here.”

Boys’ Town was born when Mother Teresa was asked: What happens to orphaned and abandoned boys. Most of her earlier efforts had focused on the girl child. In Father Vanigasooriyar’s Boys’ Town, complete with residential buildings and a now-defunct school, lay part of the answer.

The erstwhile orphanage has been focusing on housing since the mid-1980s. It stopped accepting inmates post-1986 in an effort to rehabilitate the existing inmates; the Missionaries of Charity stopped funding in 1987 to encourage the orphanage to sustain itself. In their rehabilitation, Mother Teresa’s “vision” for the orphaned boys will be met. It is a task, Marcus says, that he is now entrusted with.

From being Mother Teresa’s “first boy” and among the first group of 16 inmates to arrive at Boys’ Town from

the nuns’ childcare home in Kolkata, Marcus’ pivotal position in society as well as in Boys’ Town was helped through education. Having studied in the campus school till class X, Marcus moved to the Calcutta Preparatory College and St Xavier’s College to complete his graduation. He followed this up with further studies in the Philippines and a course in community development at Coady International Institute, Canada.

Having returned to the responsibility facing him in Boys’ Town in 1987, Marcus has travelled to 23 countries since, seeking funds and benefactors.

“Every year, Belgians adopt children from Mother’s orphanages. They are contractually bound to financially support Boys’ Town, while we keep track of the children’s well-being.

Funding comes in from countries like Germany too,” explains Marcus.

At his austere home in the vast housing area of Boys’ Town, Marcus brings out a letter written by Mother Teresa, introducing the “boy who has lost one eye” to an official in the Philippines college where he went to study. “But in spite of it, he is full of life and ambition to do well,” the letter adds.

“My first memory of Mother is being hugged by her,” he recalls.

Step forward: Das wants to run a school for orphans where classical dance will be part of the school curriculum.

DIPIKA DAS

DANCE THERAPY She grew up in Mother Teresa’s home for abandoned people with special needs and found joy and recognition in classical dance

T

Man of action: Marcus joined Boys’ Town after studying in the Philippines and Canada.

here are segments in the dance drama which are uncomfortably real for 20-year-old Julie Brown; too close, she says, to her own life. Yet she has willed herself to participate in Something Beautiful for God, which will be staged in Kolkata and New Delhi over the coming months to commemorate Mother Teresa’s centennial.

“I was eight months old when I was brought here to stay in Santi Dan,” she says haltingly, standing among fellow dancers and mates at Santi Dan after a rehearsal session at the Missionaries of Charity-run home for mentally challenged women and HIV-affected children and adults in east Kolkata. “Since then, this will be my first opportunity to do something for Mother. I feel honoured,” Brown adds.

Brown was born in a jail where

her mother was an inmate; she died within months of Brown’s birth. Still an infant, Brown—along with some mentally challenged inmates—was rehabilitated in Santi Dan through a process initiated by Mother Teresa.

Preparing for the staging of Something Beautiful for God, the title of which is inspired by British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge’s celebrated documentary film and book on Mother Teresa, was an exacting job for Brown, says the director of the production, Dipika Das. “She opted out of a sequence that she found too difficult to portray for closely reflecting her own story,” says Das, who lives at Santi Dan, learns Bharatanatyam from the senior gurus and exponents, Professor C.V. Chandrasekhar and Manjuri Chandrasekhar, in Chennai and teaches underprivileged school-

children at Don Bosco Nitika and Sishu Bhavan, the Missionaries of Charity-run home for orphan and homeless children, when in Kolkata.

For 32-year-old Das, the script of the dance drama is a collage of the lives of all the participants in the production—children who have been brought up in Santi Dan, “whose mothers have shared time in jail before being rehabilitated by Mother”—but who, Das adds authoritatively, are anything but in a state of destitution.

She takes time to introduce her students’ current context before their past misfortunes—Champa has taken her BA exam, Tara practises tailoring after learning the craft in Bangalore, Konica sings, Lipika wants to study nursing to serve the poor and ailing, Julie’s got a day job, and one of her HIV-infected stu-

dents has started going to school.

Das practises Indian classical dance. “I feel this is what I can offer best,” she says.

From her childhood days, burdened by memories of the physical torture inflicted on her mother by her in-laws, Das would dwell on more pleasant things: her mother’s rendition of Tagore’s songs, her aunt and danseuse Mamata Das inspiring her to dance, the introduction to yoga by her parents. “As a child, whenever I was alone, I would dance in front of idols of gods. That would be my offering,” says the dancer, who recently completed her master’s degree in fine arts (dance) from Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, and is now preparing for an MPhil in music.

Among the last persons to visit Mother Teresa on her deathbed, Das wants to start an orphanage where classical dance studies will be a pivotal part of the formal education curriculum.

Twenty years after her release from a mental rehab centre, Das’ mother died earlier this year in Santi Dan, the same place where her four children grew up. Says Das, “I want to live with the dignity of a dancer.”

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PORTRAIT OF A LEGEND After London, an exhibition of works inspired by the Nobel laureate will be shown in Kolkata

O

Mentor: Yashoda runs an abacus­cum­activity centre in south Kolkata.

LUCY YASHODA

THE RUNAWAY WINNER Despite two failed marriages and abandonment, her education gave her the confidence to be on her own

I

t takes some convincing before Lucy Yashoda finally agrees to be photographed for the article. Her consent comes with a clause: Nothing will be printed that might specifically indicate her current location and allow her past to catch up with her.

For many years, Yashoda was on the run. She walked out on a bad marriage in her native Visakhapatnam and ran away from her conservative parental home, and has avoided giving away too much of her previous identity since.

“Without even blinking, I used to lie to the sisters at the Missionaries of Charity. For some time, they didn’t

even know my real name or where I came from. I was afraid they will deny me and my daughter a place to stay at Sishu Bhavan and might even send me back,” Yashoda says as the first of her 40-odd students appears at the door of the abacus-cum-activity centre she runs in Kolkata.

The centre is her comfort zone. In 1993, Yashoda, carrying her twoyear-old daughter Christina, met Mother Teresa and begged to be allowed to stay in one of her homes in Kolkata.

“I would have had to commit suicide if Mother didn’t agree. Like most south Indian married women, I had a little gold, but it wasn’t

enough. I didn’t even have the required qualifications to take up a decent job and my infant daughter was with me...,” says the 42-yearold, who teaches the abacus in a couple of Kolkata schools.

In the two and a half years that Yashoda and her daughter stayed at Sishu Bhavan, Mother Teresa’s home for orphaned and homeless children, little Christina found a shelter and playmates and Yashoda got training in typing, shorthand and the English language—skills which would allow her to take up reasonably paying jobs with Christian organizations and non-government organizations. In between, she taught children at Sishu Bhavan how to sing and dance, and read out to them. “Those years opened up vistas for me. I was given food and shelter,

and could live life without being judged. I was also no longer leading the self-centred life of Vizag.”

Her second attempt at marriage in Kolkata resulted in a spiral of abuse and physical violence, but Yashoda kept gaining in confidence as an individual. These days, she is in a live-in relationship; a relationship, Yashoda says, that is based on respect and mutual understanding.

Christina, now 18, helps out at the activity centre after school.

“I faced problems getting my daughter admitted in school because she had to mention her father’s name in the form. But I was adamant that she should write ‘Christina Yashoda, daughter of Lucy Yashoda’ and nothing else,” says Yashoda, with a poise that has come after a long struggle.

HARIHAR SAHU

THE BIRTHDAY SINGER He sang for Mother Teresa every year on her birthday and it was on her recommendation that he got his job

W

hile getting into the vehicle that was to take him back to his workplace after the interview, Harihar Sahu hurt himself. The car door shut on his left palm. He winced in pain and almost doubled up in the car, but refused to stop for an ice pack or an instant pain-reliever.

“Getting hurt is no big deal for a blind man,” he says.

In the canteen inside the Life Insurance of India building, opposite Sahu’s office at the Mint in Behala, the 48-year-old speaks of the one occasion that did really hurt.

That was when a thief filched some of the stock of spices Sahu used to sell on the road and in public transport. “I used to go and meet Mother often and sing for her. But that day I was quiet and she could sense my sadness. Till then, I had not disclosed my work to her, but when she asked I had to tell her,” says Sahu, as the canteen help places a meal of fries, boiled vegetables, potato curry and rice on the table for his regular customer.

It was a recommendation letter by Mother to the Mint authorities that got Sahu the job. His position is that of an examiner of coins; a role that befits a person whose blindness has strengthened his sense of touch and feel.

Sahu’s tale has an unusual twist.

He was abandoned as a child by his father on Nimtala Ghat Street in

north Kolkata. He was adopted by erstwhile local politician Ila Ray and sent to school at the Ramakrishna Mission in Narendrapur.

But he decided he didn’t want to burden the family and left, initially joining the Salvation Army and then earning a living by selling spices on

the street. That’s when he first went to visit Mother Teresa with his friends, on her birthday. It was 1986.

Today, he’s married, owns a flat on the outskirts of the city and has a well-paying job. “Being born blind, I must have been useless for him (my father) when he left me on the street.

Of course, not all blind children are as lucky as me. I got shelter at Mrs Ray’s home, received proper education at Ramakrishna Mission and

was fortunate to have met a person like Mother,” he says. “I arranged some money for my father and sent it to him,” he says, referring to the time when his father tried to get in touch with him.

With Mother Teresa, the bond was reinforced over songs. His habit of singing passionately since childhood was put to good use when, after being introduced to her, Sahu started composing spiritual songs that he would sing in her presence, on her birthdays. Since her death in 1997, Sahu often finds his way to Mother House on AJC Bose Road and sings softly near her memorial. “I will try and compose some new songs for her centenary,” he says.

His wife Gauri might join him—as she often does on Sundays when the couple, who have a school-going daughter, sing at a church in Barrackpore. Sahu met Gauri—who is also blind—at a club on Elliot Road and the two connected over music. “She sang Nazrul’s songs, while I sang bhajan and film songs, especially those of Mukesh. We clicked,” Sahu says, laughing heartily.

“Mother wanted to fix marriage for me, but I told her that I will marry the person I love. Some of the sisters objected for both of us being blind.

But Mother gave the go-ahead, saying that two blind people will be able to love and understand each other best,” recalls Sahu.

f the many events being planned to commemorate the birth centenary of Mother Teresa, her exhibition of paintings is touched by rare intimacy, says Sunita Kumar, a painter, who has had a long association with the Missionaries of Charity.

The prestigious Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum in London had a one­day show of Mother Teresa paintings by M.F. Husain and Kumar on 30 June, and the exhibition is scheduled to open in Kolkata in November. Plans are also being made to take the exhibition to Hong Kong and Singapore.

As a long­time companion of Mother Teresa, a relationship which began over three decades before the Nobel laureate’s death, Kumar enjoyed special status, being her official biographer, a spokesperson for the Missionaries of Charity and the person chosen to announce the news of Mother Teresa’s death to the world on 5 September 1997.

Lines: A Husain work in the show.

“I got the urge to paint her when I found Mother seriously ill, two years before her eventual death,” says the trained artist and wife of tennis player and former Indian Davis Cup captain Naresh Kumar. “Mother would comment but never criticize my paintings,” the 68­year­old painter says over the phone from London. The nun wished to have children from the orphanages represented in the paintings. The 20 paintings Kumar exhibited at V&A included paintings of “Mother’s children”—orphans and abandoned children in her homes, people suffering from leprosy, and even nuns and sisters of her order.

Unlike the foreboding undertone present in the work of Husain, who was introduced to Mother Teresa in the late 1970s by Kumar, the latter’s paintings have an unfussy, life­affirming spirit. Having been privy to “the simplistic way of life in the Missionaries of Charity, where nuns used to be taken on an annual picnic to the Tollygunge Club lawns”, Kumar has attempted a similar, unambiguous treatment in her paintings.

Various stages and moments from Mother Teresa’s life have been given an artistic interpretation, starting with the Kolkata­Darjeeling train journey in 1946 during which she is said to have found her calling— working for the needy.

“I got married when I was only 18, but instead of being a housewife I did voluntary work at the Missionaries of Charity,” recounts Kumar. “It was around then that I met Mother and when she shook my hand, it did something to me.”

The painting exhibition, initiated by Husain and implemented by Kumar, is a homage.

Shamik Bag

Touch proof: Sahu works as an examiner of coins for the government.

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RAMAN VIRDI/FLICKR

EXCERPT

Journey of a life

P.G. Tenzing, a bureaucrat who quit his job for a 9­month, 25,320km motorcycle ride across India, died on Monday. An extract from the book (Penguin, 2009) in which he chronicled the ultimate trip

I

t was a great day for me when I met the legendary Ruskin Bond and his good friend Ganesh Saili. I served a couple of drinks to Bond, in Saili’s house. I apologized to the others because my jeans had gravy stains on them and that was the cleanest outfit in my possession that day. Ruskin has a twinkle in his eye when he talks sexy, even at this age. I can imagine the blaze in his youth.

Surprisingly down-to-earth and extremely witty, he immediately saw me for the rascal that I am.

Humility, graciousness and wisdom equal Ruskin Bond. Mr Bond lives in Landour, in Mussoorie, and is a bachelor who fondly remembered the cheap whisky he used to drink in his youth before he hit the big time. I drink good whisky even though I’m yet to hit the big time. Maybe that’s where I go wrong; I should have stuck to the rum I drank in my youth.

Ganesh is a cool cat and an excellent host, with a very gracious wife.

Rudra Gangadharan, a senior colleague from Kerala, heads the Academy as its director. He is pretty relaxed for a babu. And I like him a lot, especially as he invited me for a round of drinks at his residence.

Then there was Kishen Lal, the head waiter who worked for a stunning forty-four years in the Academy. I had arrived there just to be present at his farewell, or so it seemed to me. There was a group of scientists on a training programme, and Ashok, their course coordinator, and another friend of mine, wanted me to give them a talk. I agreed, with the proviso that it would be in the evening with at least beer to go around.

Imagine a group of scientists inter-

acting with an ex-bureaucrat with gravy stains on his jeans. Sometimes, the weirdest people hit it off—and this was a one-of-a-kind day for me. We took some photographs, we had some beer, we shared some jokes and we contributed a small fund of Rs 8,000 for Kishen Lal who was retiring that day. One of the scientists told me, unaccountably, that I was ‘sucking the fly in the milk of life’.

Figure that one out yourself.

This trip to Mussoorie was a closure of sorts. The last time I was there I was ready to imprint my stamp on the Indian public life. This time I came back sealed, stamped and delivered by the same. The full circle. More like the full Monty. ÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞ Bilaspur is a small town in Himachal Pradesh I entered in the night. Head constable Manohar is a dashing young man who boxes.

I met him at an accident site just an hour away from Bilaspur. It was dark, and traffic was at a standstill. I crept along the side of the road and there was confusion galore. I noticed this young man in civilian clothes taking charge of things. He came to me and said that if I gave him a ride to town he would get me through the mess. I broke another rule that day (‘no hitchhikers’) and agreed to give him a lift. I had had a long day travelling from Mussoorie via Shimla to this place, and besides, I sized the bugger up and he didn’t look like a highwayman.

As he’d promised, he got me through the traffic somehow and we pelted downhill. The man suffered from verbal diar-

rhoea, boasting about his boxing prowess and his other athletic feats. He followed that up with the advice not to pick up strangers in the night.

The ride was lengthy and tiring. Some stretches of the road looked like they had been carpet-bombed.

Shimla had been considered for a night halt but I was sick of hideous concrete buildings on mountainsides. The bike had also been having some electrical problems which were temporarily fixed at Solan, a place at one time famous for its beer. I did not know I had an appointment with head constable Manohar, about to be promoted shortly to assistant sub-inspector of police.

The fellow arranged an indifferent hotel and wanted to give me dinner. He had been to Sikkim and out-boxed everyone there.

Getting rid of a grateful policeman is no mean feat. Actually, we’re more used to policemen who want something from you and not the other way around. It was quite unnerving. I even considered the possibility that the chap was gay.

Finally, as a compromise, we exchanged telephone numbers and he treated me to a cold drink outside his house. He thought I was a cardamom farmer and introduced me as one to his whole locality. He could have taught a thing or two to a limpet. Or maybe

It was like a scene from Woodstock.

Flower children with their chillums. And me with my bottle of vodka.

Bends in the Beas: (above) From Pulga­Tulga, the author headed to Manali; and Tenzing’s memoir of his adventures.

he just liked me.

Manohar’s hotel of choice was one of the dirtiest I have stayed in through the entire journey. You know when dirt has seeped into the woodwork and the fabric themselves. That was the better part. The food looked bad and tasted worse. I have thought long and hard about what I ate and I can’t figure out what it was. This cook could spoil an egg. My dues to Manohar are paid in full.

Many friends had told me garbled stories about a village full of Israelis up in some remote corner of Himachal Pradesh. Even some of the local people were not aware of it. I had finally pinpointed it as the twin villages of Pulga and Tulga. There is a popular Sikh shrine called Manikaran on the way. Hundreds of devotees seem to go there. One interesting aspect was the number of young pilgrims on motorcycles, sporting flags.

The dirt road ended in a onemouse town called Barsiyani.

The bike had to be parked there. I paid someone to watch over it and walked half-an-hour uphill to Pulga, with a porter. Pulga-Tulga is picturesque, to say the least, framed against a juniper forest. Small wooden houses with a few rooms to let. There are also some two-storeyed houses which form the luxury segment, charging a hundred rupees a day. Everything is very basic and that is where the fun lies. The place is full

of long-term tourists. The rooms were terrible and I finally landed at the last lodge in town. It was also the biggest.

A three-storeyed timber monster. ‘Uncleji’ was the man in charge—or so I thought.

Uncleji was a thin, gaunt, mustachioed character with watery eyes and a weak personality. He was the owner but the wife was the boss. Thick-set, heavy and with a brooding, sombre personality. There was no contest between the two. She eyed me suspiciously and wanted the money in advance. The money and my Hindi softened her considerably. I observed that when any of her would-be clients declined to forward an advance, she demanded to see their passports. Clearly having suffered at the hands of some of her guests, she was severely lacking in the trust department. But with my money in her pocket, she almost smiled at me.

A small canteen composed of tarpaulin above and seats on the ground served great Israeli cuisine. I wiped up great quantities of hummus and tahini with soft pita bread. Uncleji’s pet dog ate only onion soup. Weird. The inhabitants were almost all charas and ganja addicts. It was like a scene from Woodstock. Flower children with their chillums. And me with my bottle of vodka. I had no one to share it with so I called Uncleji over for a toast. He came and sipped hesitantly at the liberal shot I’d poured him. He was a slow and sparing drinker and I was surprised. The next evening, when I invited him across for a drink, he literally ran away, keeping well out of sight till I retired to bed. He was a smoker all right, but clearly not used to alcohol. He must have suspected that two days in a row would be lethal for

him, because he never emerged again from his strategic retreat.

The cooks and the waiters were very professional. They migrated with the tourist seasons everywhere. Winters in Goa, summers in Himachal—that sort of thing.

What they omitted to tell me is that they all smoked too. The Nepali porter who carried my saddlebags informed me that a large quantity of ganja is planted in the forest and a brisk trade goes on. A part of the dope trail now, but it has a history as well. As usual, the British had been the first outsiders to locate this beautiful place, and a forest bungalow stands testimony to the fact. A walk around the forest trails and the small waterfalls is stimulating—the perfect getaway for young couples. And for lovers of solitude such as I. Uncleji’s hotel had a very queer common bathroom. There were large windows on all sides without window panes or curtains. Your activities were not too private. I wonder who the peeping Tom in the family was—Uncleji or Auntyji?

Night time was filled with the sounds of rhythmic lovemaking on a creaking wooden bed, on a creaking wooden floor which happened to be my ceiling. The doped-out couple, whoever they were, were patently having an extended ball. No wonder Uncleji is a junkie and looks mortally afraid of Auntyji. The pressure of being compared with, and all that jazz.

Gwendolyn and Gertrude from the United States paired up at their place of stay. My first close-up of a lesbian couple. Without the sexual tension, they were lovely company, although their constant kissing made me a little uncomfortable. I learnt to modestly avert my eyes every time it happened. The Israelis and other foreigners outnumber the locals two to one at least. This place does not look like a part of India. But the view is great, the food is great, the dope is great and the company is way out.

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Books

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THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET | DAVID MITCHELL

A structural wizard roams free TISEB/FLICKR

The British stylist’s long­awaited new novel is among the year’s most memorable

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: Hachette, 472 pages, Rs595.

B Y C HANDRAHAS C HOUDHURY ···························· he hallmark of the work of the British novelist David Mitchell is an irresistible vitality, an exuberance radiating from every element in the text—including his vigorous and inventive punctuation—and felt, it would seem, even by Mitchell’s characters, who seem to know that they’re not just in any old story. Mitchell’s four previous novels, including the sprawling Cloud Atlas (2004), had won him a reputation as one of the most distinctive stylists in contemporary English prose, and as a thinker determined to wrestle, each time he produced a new book, not just with the demands of story but with the idea of the novel itself. Several years in the making, his new novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a rich, savoury brew of storytelling pleasure set—and this is no surprise, coming from an imagination that seems happiest when roving widely in space and time—in the cloistered world of 18th century imperial Japan.

Jacob de Zoet is a Dutch clerk newly arrived on Dejima, a small artificial island off the coast of Nagasaki. Dejima has been set up as a trading post for the local chapter of the Dutch East India Company, and represents the inward-looking Japanese empire’s one point of contact with the outside world. Jacob, a pastor’s son, has thrown himself into this rough-and-tumble world of trade, business, hardship and intrigue because he needs to set up a career for himself in order to win the hand of Anna, his sweetheart back home.

In Dejima, Jacob finds himself quickly having to learn the ways of an unfamiliar world, and to navigate the cliques and power structures both of the Dutch and the Japanese. The first time we see him, he has his nose broken in a scuffle. Soon, he is put to work investigating corruption at the trading post in years gone by.

He fears the discovery of the small book of psalms that he has smuggled in (any trace of Christianity is forbidden by the Japa-

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nese), tries to scout for opportunities in the private sale of goods, and surprises himself by falling in love with a Japanese girl, possibly because he has so much time on his hands and so little chance to see her.

Once again, Mitchell proves himself greatly adept at structural wizardry. The novel has an intriguing three-part architecture, and one of these sections moves away from Nagasaki to follow Jacob’s love interest, a midwife by profession, up into the remote world of a mysterious shrine where she has been incarcerated. Every scene teems with life, released by sentences that have been carefully wound up, and indeed some of the dialogue and repartee seem as if lifted out of the screenplay of a very intelligent period movie (Mitchell has said that he likes to write his scenes very visually, almost as film scenes). In his 20s and early 30s, Mitchell spent eight years as

Unfamiliar world: (above) Dejima, where the book is set, is a small island off Nagasaki; and Mitchell.

a teacher of English in Japan, and his book hums with a kind of “mysteries of the Orient” view of Japanese traits and mores, which we happily accept because it is pulled off with such panache.

But despite the care with which the book is built, the most satisfying aspect of The Thousand Autumns... is the novel’s relaxed and expansive manner.

Much of the book is talk—Jacob in conversation with company higher-ups and with Japanese, menial workers of the company reminiscing about their straitened childhoods in Holland, a cantankerous but witty company doctor sparring with Jacob over matters of both the mind and the heart. The fascination of human minds rubbing against and feeding off each other is explored for its own sake, and many encounters remain memorably imprinted in the reader’s mind.

Although the conventions for how dialogue is written in a novel—the quote marks that bracket speech, the little bits of authorial description of how the character is speaking, the breaks away from a conversation to something significant and then

back again—are now firmly established, readers will observe how Mitchell loves to tinker with the basic elements of narrative till he has made something distinctive. His novel has more onesentence paragraphs than any book in recent memory, giving the narration a thrilling speed and dramatic urgency.

This is a book with a real love of story—this may be surprising, but very few of the hundreds of novels published every year are actually worthy of this compliment—and one that confirms its writer as the best British novelist of his generation.

Chandrahas Choudhury is the author of Arzee the Dwarf.

Write to lounge@livemint.com IN SIX WORDS Original story, craft and narrative art

MORE MONEY THAN GOD | SEBASTIAN MALLABY

A bet to save capitalism A balanced, inside look at the bad boys of Wall Street B Y A BHEEK B HATTACHARYA abheek.b@livemint.com

···························· arl Marx didn’t like speculators. “What distinguishes the present period of speculation in Europe is the universality of the rage,” he lamented in 1856. On cue, every leftist-type worth his jhola today reserves special hatred for the speculators of our era. There is much lament about the present “universality of the rage”: Speculation these days can even drive up food prices, as one commentator ranted recently in The Independent.

That must mean then that the speculators who most embody this “rage”, none other than hedge funds, are the very avatars of freewheeling capitalism.

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Sebastian Mallaby, proud capitalist, tries to find out where exactly hedge funds stand in the capitalist scheme of things in his More Money than God. In constructing their history, he comes to the conclusion that they may well be the future of capitalist finance.

A former writer at The Economist and The Washington Post, Mallaby tells his story with the keen eye of a journalist and the steady narrative of a novelist.

We’re treated to both revealing factual material from hundreds of interviews as well as to the elegant metaphors that stitch together these different—and sometimes complex—facts.

The first such fact: What is a “hedge fund”? The term today is thrown around casually to suggest (and blame) some greedy financier-type. Though it’s actually hard to settle on a definition, this type of fund has tended to mean a particular way of investing. The first “hedged” fund, started by A.W. Jones in 1949 was so because Jones took the care to bet

in favour of some stocks, while betting against others. He thus “hedged his bets”, protecting himself against the ups and downs of the marketplace.

This fundamental tenet has somewhat survived, even as hedge funds have evolved fantastically. Mallaby shows us the “block trading” days in the 1970s (waiting for someone to dump a large block of stocks, buying them as the dumping lowers the price, and then selling them when the price springs back up); the “trend surfing” days of the 1980s (watching data charts carefully to ride a bull market and getting out as it turned bearish to bet against it); and the “quant” days starting in the 1990s (computers detecting financial signals humans can’t).

And hedge funds evolved over the last 50 years in step with changes in the macroeconomic landscape. Back when exchange rates were fixed and capital couldn’t cross borders easily, Jones wouldn’t have dreamed of betting against national curren-

More Money than God: Bloomsbury, 482 pages, Rs599. cies. But George Soros, the most famous hedge fund titan till date, could bring both the UK pound and the Thai baht to their knees in the 1990s. Mallaby displays an impressive grasp of history here: As ideas and policymaking shifted, the strategies of funds have had to, too.

But some things have remained the same. “Repellent and attractive, objects of envy and yearning” simultaneously, hedge funds have remained the “wizards of modern capitalism’s favorite pastime, the unabashed pursuit of money”.

Many maintain that this

unabashed pursuit must be controlled, but Mallaby insists otherwise: Society should tolerate these speculators because, in their greed, they have ended up performing a social function (most of the time at least). Block trading provided liquidity to those looking to offload many shares; attacking the baht forced Thailand to abandon an inflexible currency framework, arguably for the better; and all the quantitative tricks have, on most days, tried to make prices reflect reality instead of sentiment.

Of course, the days when they aren’t so noble, hedge funds have been known to create mayhem.

Yet before we pass judgement on those fund managers who almost crippled the financial system in the past, Mallaby’s narrative converges on to the present day, when some bankers did fully cripple the system.

This book (thankfully) isn’t part of the 2007-09 crisis literature, but it adds a great twist to it. To wit, if the big banks failed and threatened to take down the whole system, why doesn’t finance rely more on hedge funds? This crisis killed 1,500 funds, without imperiling the system or requiring gov-

ernment bailouts. Many of them even profited because they weren’t as stupid.

Mallaby is convinced that through all the evolutions and shifts, some things have kept hedge funds unique—and kept them performing a social function—unlike other financial firms.

They continue to rely on individual geniuses, not lumbering bureaucracies. They continue to be driven by contrarian instincts: They don’t get sucked into the tide. And they continue to be taut and lean: Because the managers’ own savings are often at stake, risk is perhaps better managed and incentives better aligned.

Still, after this last gut-wrenching crisis, can we really stomach these unregulated hedge funds?

Mallaby is remarkably fair in addressing this concern. Aware of the exhausting debate over financial regulation that preoccupies the world, he doesn’t pretend that his recommendations will stand the test of all time, or that they are free of costs. He offers sufficient nuance, which we should give its due. The only sharp opinion he clings to is that he likes his speculators. He wants their rage to be even more universal.

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AT HOME: A SHORT HISTORY OF PRIVATE LIFE | BILL BRYSON

The extra in ordinary

CRIMINAL MIND

ZAC O’YEAH GRAHAM BARCLAY/BLOOMBERG

Who better a candidate to write a juicy history of nothing yet everything?

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B Y S IDIN V ADUKUT sidin.v@livemint.com

···························· erhaps there is still a little time left in 2010 for footballing references.

Sometime during the 1998 World Cup, before France had won that instalment if memory serves right, a journalist asked French defender Bixente Lizarazu about how it felt to play alongside maestro Zinedine Zidane.

Lizarazu encapsulated most of France’s game plan for that tournament into one sentence: “When we don’t know what to do, we just give (the ball) to Zizou and he works something out.”

Likewise it is easy to imagine the conversations Bill Bryson has with his publishers. Someone from the establishment sits across the table from Bryson and asks him what he is thinking of writing about next. Bryson—spectacled, bearded, gruff yet adorably corpulent in that humour-writer way— looks around, maybe out of a window, and thinks for a while. And then he says that he will write a book about toilets, or salt and pepper shakers. The publisher agrees and extends a draft contract. When you don’t know what to do or who to publish, you just give a contract to Bryson.

Bryson’s canon is long and diverse. He has written about travelling all over the world, especially in his beloved Britain and the US. He has written tomes on language, a slim but amusing biography of Shakespeare, a sprawling best-seller on science, a memoir and now this, At Home: A Short History of Private Life.

While all his previous books had some form of theme cementing the chapters, At Home is his most whimsical yet.

The book is simultaneously both about nothing in particular, and

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On the road: One of the subjects Bryson takes up extensively is the pleasures of the English countryside. about everything in general.

It all begins when Bryson notices a mysterious door in the attic of his most recent home in Norfolk in England. He opens it to discover a table-top size terrace right on top of his house offering spectacular views of the surrounding countryside. But why would anyone build a terrace, of any size but especially of that size, on top of his house? Bryson’s mind begins to wander: “Now as I stood on the roof of my house, taking in this unexpected view, it struck me how...that that’s what history really is: masses of people doing ordinary things. Even Einstein will have spent large parts of his life thinking about his holidays or new hammock or how dainty was the ankle on the young lady alighting from the tram across the street....” Bryson decides that his restless mind must correct this

At Home—A Short History of Private Life: Doubleday/Random House, 482 pages, Rs950.

injustice: “So I thought it might be interesting, for the length of a book, to consider the ordinary things in life, to notice them for once and treat them as if they are important, too.”

And how lucky we are for it.

What Bryson proceeds to do is traverse through his home, one room or space at a time, and take us on a whirlwind historical tour of inventors, architects, discoveries and—most temptingly for Bryson—coincidences that determined the way those spaces are made and lived in. Why do we have salt and pepper shakers on our table? Why those two condiments and nothing else? Why do we say “make a bed” when really the bed is there in our bedroom all along? And speaking of the kitchen, did you know that it was not till 1845 that cookbooks had precise measures for cooking times and quantities? “Until almost the middle of the century instructions in cookery books were always wonderfully imprecise, calling merely for ‘some flour’ or ‘enough milk’. What changed all that was a revolutionary book by a shy and all accounts sweet-natured poet in Kent named Eliza Acton.”

In terms of tonality, that twoline passage encapsulates the entire book. Bryson enters a room, wonders why we do many things in that room the way we do them. And then lets his penchant for research and historical minutiae take over. Even though At Home never devolves, or rises into scholarly treatise, it packs a tremendous amount of information and data. So much so that in the hands of a writer with less skill, At

Home could have become boring.

Bryson too struggles sometimes to cope with his own excitement at having wheedled some nugget of trivia from an old book or manuscript. Hardly a page goes by when he is not finding someone or something “revolutionary” or “unfortunately forgotten by the sands of time”. If a reader tries to keep track of all the themes and digressions, At Home will wear one out quickly. Fans might recall experiencing this while reading Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, a book of limited scope, but somehow made to work purely through the author’s good writing.

At Home should be seen less as a book and more as a collection of juicy, informative essays on domestic history. Trivia buffs will find plenty to note down and then google (indeed I highly recommend having Google and Wikipedia within arm’s length while reading the book). Hardcore history buffs could use the chapters as respite from more tedious tasks.

Most of all, the book is meant for readers who, like the author, are endlessly curious. At the end of the book, you will struggle to cope with all the information and the enlightenment. But you will never look at your home, your kitchen, your flushing toilet or your salt and pepper shakers the same way again.

Aren’t you glad Bryson found that terrace, behind that door, in his attic, in his home, in Norfolk?

IN SIX WORDS An illuminating history of the mundane

A life beyond pure science A new book on scientist Homi Bhabha is part biography, part coffee­table gloss B Y J ACOB P . K OSHY jacob.k@livemint.com

···························· ndira Chowdhury and Ananya Dasgupta’s book, A Masterful Spirit: Homi J. Bhabha, is mediocre literature but an important work, given that journalistic life accounts of Indian scientists are rare. Bhabha, credited with setting up India’s atomic energy programme, as well as the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), ranks with S.S. Bhatnagar and Vikram Sarabhai as among the pioneers of India’s science endeavours.

Most biographies of Indian scientists are flowery essays usually penned by another scientist; this one too doesn’t read different.

The language is dry and it isn’t clear if the authors meant it to be a biography or a medium-sized coffee-table book.

While Vikram Sarabhai: A Life, an earlier book written by Amrita Shah, was a critical exposition of the space scientist, A Masterful Spirit deflects its literary failings

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with some excellent pictures— mostly of Bhabha’s little known skills as a first-rate artist—and well-chosen, insightful letters with some of the 20th century’s greatest intellectuals, from Paul Dirac to Homi Seervai, a childhood friend and one of India’s most influential jurists. Building almost entirely on archival material, the 258-page book is 95% photographs and letters with chapterwise introductions that cleave Bhabha’s facets as scientist, student, institution-builder, physicist, artist and connoisseur of Western classical music.

In many ways, Bhabha was similar to 20th century intellectuals such as Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein—wealthy, precocious, Cambridge-educated, with a distaste for business and commerce and in love with pure mathematics and physics.

For a while, Bhabha, influenced by the European art world, considered art as a career. Photographs of sketches and paintings in the book bear testimony to the

mastery over brush and easel.

Over time, he set about working on the fashionable physics problems of the 1930s and 1940s—cosmic rays and quantum electrodynamics—and continued working on them well into his days at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

There are several letters about his travels in Europe, the friends he made, and a slight interest in the political situation in India, which was just about getting ready for independence. There is, however, no insight on what prompted this gifted academic (he was nominated twice for the physics Nobel, some letters suggest) to give up the lab and plunge into the task of setting up research institutions.

That he was an excellent negotiator and networker is evident from his close friendship with Nehru and first-name-basis friendships with top scientists of the day, but there’s little information on how Bhabha used these skills to win over political leaders.

Notably, the book lists several short interviews with the first generation of India’s atomic energy scientists. From Anil Kakodkar to N.B. Prasad, several

A Masterful Spirit— Homi J Bhabha: Penguin, 258 pages, Rs1,299. recount their meetings with Bhabha and the awe he inspired in them. Again, most of these interviews are strung together verbatim and contain nothing but praise for Bhabha.

Except for his childhood, there are no other references to his personal life. Why, for instance, didn’t he marry? Was he an atheist, an autocrat? Was he a nitpicker who bordered on the obsessive-compulsive? (He’d drawn plans for the buildings, designed the gardens and chosen the TIFR’s art collection.)

A more critical account might have answered these questions.

erhaps the greatest crime novels of the 21st century will be written by Indians. “Great” is certainly an accurate description of the 900-page Sacred Games, a masterpiece of early 21st century literature.

Let’s take a closer look at how Vikram Chandra wrote his manifold narrative, so impeccably woven around two antagonists—a slightly corrupt police inspector and a don with a karmic bend—who, with elegant plot symmetry, mirror one another and are inextricably linked in a web of brutality, but also love.

Sacred Games is a labour of love, or perhaps hate; a reaction to the scraps that Chandra’s relatives in Bollywood have got into with the Mumbai underworld. They were targeted by extortionists and even shot at. As a writer, Chandra, an aficionado of crime fiction, takes pleasure in utilizing the genre’s tropes.

So it seemed logical to write a thriller instead of regular IWE (Indian writing in English) stuff. The novel’s complexity puts it in the league of Russian classics; you constantly need to refer to the detailed cast list and download from www.vikramchandra.com, PDF dictionaries to decode the gangster lingo.

At its broadest, the novel is a tale of Mumbai’s underground machinery, from small-time hustling to armed gang wars, of good men going to seed and the upward mobility of baddies; but it is also a nostalgic look at lost innocence, those bygone days of Rimzim soda pops and honourable crooks.

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Crafted: Chandra says authors need distance from their subjects.

In terms of reading value, Sacred Games is worth at least 10 regular novels; it’s crammed with stories within stories taking you through the history of Indian espionage, the subcontinental politics of post-Partition blues, how to write a Bollywood screenplay—each segment almost a novel in itself.

But I can assure you that the weeks you spend reading it are nothing compared with the years it took to build.

“Build” is the word. To keep track of the complex material over an eight-year research and writing period, Chandra adapted a highly specialized project management software.

“One of the things writers want when they’re constructing a narrative is an architectural overview of the whole thing—characters, times, places, and also how all this is shaped into chapters, sections, and so on. That is, you want to keep track of both story and discourse,” Chandra told me when I interviewed him recently. “People in the past have done this with index cards and scene breakdowns and squiggles on walls. But since I’m such a nerd, I, of course, wanted to do this with computers, and I was certain that somebody must have built (a) software that would do this.”

He was wrong. But he then met an Israeli thriller writer in Jerusalem, who told him about Microsoft Project. “It’s a planning tool to manage projects, including schedules, materials, people, locations; people in industries from construction to advertising use it. The interface isn’t friendly, and it’s absolutely not built for analysis of fiction, but it worked. And it did really help me a lot, especially for keeping track of chronology, which in Sacred Games is quite broken up by the narrative structure.”

Shuttling between India and the US worked to his advantage. “Writing makes some kind of going away necessary, I think. Even if you don’t go abroad, you finally have to isolate yourself in a room and remove yourself from the environment you’re writing about,” said Chandra. “I think this is why artists have always travelled—it doesn’t just broaden the mind, it distorts it in all kinds of interesting ways.”

Sacred Games has been translated into 15 languages and a Hollywood company is developing a movie, with a screenplay by celebrated English playwright Howard Brenton. So what is Chandra himself doing next—another thriller? “I’m working on a new book, but it’s quite different.

It certainly has people doing bad things to each other, but the form doesn’t engage in a conversation with crime novels, thrillers, detective stories,” he said. “This doesn’t mean that I might not come back to the form later. And I keep reading, for pleasure and instruction, within these genres.”

In conclusion one might say that Sacred Games is the most stunning literary experiment in a long time. If the Nobel Prize was awarded for genre fiction, Vikram Chandra would deserve it. At the least.

Zac O’Yeah is a Bangalore-based writer of Swedish fiction whose new book is Once Upon a Time in Scandinavistan.

Write to Zac at criminalmind@livemint.com

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Culture

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A reappearing number JORIS­JAN BOS

Wizard on stage: (clockwise from below) Srinivasa Ramanujan; Complicite’s play A Disappearing Number uses a lot of technology and has a team of around 25, including a cast of eight performers, that makes it an expensive production.

Math maverick Ramanujan’s legacy is undisputed, his significance current; that is precisely why he is again a talking point

B Y A RUN J ANARDHAN arun.j@livemint.com

···························· s it turned out, a mathematician and a theatre director were thinking about the same man. As it turned out, they both realized that collaboration was the need of the hour.

Just over a year ago, M.S. Raghunathan, Homi Bhabha chair professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), was mulling over ideas on how to to break the monotony of a mathematics conference with a dash of culture, related to the theme of the conference. Indeed, the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), which is being held for the first time in India this August in Hyderabad, was not among the easiest of gatherings that could be enlivened with artistic distractions. But, as it were, the right equation was round the corner.

Having heard of a play on mathematics, Raghunathan, also the chairman of ICM’s organization committee, made enquiries about bringing it to India, only to discover that not far from TIFR in Chembur, Mumbai, Sanjana Kapoor was trying to do the same.

Kapoor, director of the Prithvi Theatre in Juhu, had seen the UK production Complicite’s A Disappearing Number in 2007 and had tried twice, unsuccessfully, to get them to perform here. The production costs were huge, funds had collapsed in previous attempts, and ideas on how to stage it in India were drying up.

That’s when Raghunathan got in touch with Kapoor and told her of ICM’s intention; this led to a further collaboration with the British Council and principal sponsor Tata Photon.

The play relies on technology extensively, has a cast and crew of about 25 and, despite sponsors, its production will cost ICM a substantial portion of its total budget. So why were Kapoor and Raghunathan, from such diverse professions and interests, chasing the same expensive dream?

A Disappearing Number is based on the intriguing relationship between Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar and his English mentor G.H. Hardy, and takes its inspiration from the latter’s 1940 essay A Mathematician’s Apology—thereby presenting ICM with a unique combination of theatre and math that could only have been a coincidence.

Kapoor mentions that there is another play on Ramanujan in the US. At least two film-makers in India have announced plans to make movies on him. The reason behind this enduring fascination is the story of Ramanujan itself.

Murali K. Srinivasan, head of the mathematics department at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, echoes the opinion of his colleagues on Ramanujan’s life, saying a “glance at the ingredients will convince one

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that: thirst for knowledge, height of creativity, mystery and mysticism, life set in very different cultures, tragedy, ill health and untimely death… there’s nothing which really isn’t there.”

Robert Kanigel, in his 1991 biography Man who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan, quotes an Englishman in Trinity College, Cambridge, as saying that Ramanujan was a “mathematician so great that his name transcends jealousies, the one superlative great mathematician whom India has produced in the last thousand years”. Kanigel himself calls it the story of an “inscrutable intellect and a simple heart”.

Math and the man Born in Erode in 1887, brought up in Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu, Ramanujan was a mostly selftaught maverick who had mastered college-level mathematics by the time he was 13 years old and “could rattle off numerical values of pi to any number of decimal places”. He would finish exams in half the time and solve problems of schoolmates two years ahead of him at a glance.

His school headmaster would introduce him as a student who deserved higher than the maximum marks possible, according to Kanigel’s biography.

He reached the peak of his productivity when he worked with Hardy, who not only recognized the talent that shone through his rambling hand-written letters but also went to great lengths to bring

Ramanujan to England. The boy who grew up in a conservative, Brahminical world reached glittering Cambridge, shocking the “pristine proofs of Western mathematical tradition with mysterious powers of intuition from the East,” Kanigel adds.

Hardy, a cricket lover, prose stylist and distinguished mathematician, formed a mutually influential partnership with Ramanujan, which he called “the one romantic incident of my life”.

The story is, therefore, of the two men, not just one.

A Disappearing Number faced the same quandary that Kanigel did when writing his book—to tell the story without getting mired in the complexities of formulae and symbols that are intrinsic to mathematics and intertwined with Ramanujan’s life.

“It’s a human story,” says Kapoor, “but the base is actually the philosophical concepts of math the two men worked on.”

According to Judith Dimant, the producer of A Disappearing Number, it took Simon McBurney, who conceived and directed the play, more than 10 years after he read the manuscript to figure out how to stage it. “We (Complicite) did Measure for Measure in India in 2005 and that visit inspired Simon. We made A Disappearing Number in 2007 but were committed to seeing it being performed in India,” she says over the phone from UK. The play will be performed in Mumbai and in Hyderabad during the 10-day ICM in August.

ROBBIE JACK

Ramanujan’s legacy Dimant adds that Complicite’s need to come to India was obvious—it expects a different reaction in the land of Ramanujan’s birth because people are familiar with the man, even if the reception and reviews have been fantastic in both the UK and the US. A life cut short by illness—he died at 32—Ramanujan’s legacy is as complex as his work. Even in the late 1980s, around 60 years after his death, a rediscovered Ramanujan manuscript needed an expert in a narrow field of math to understand it, merely a PhD did not suffice, according to Kanigel, emphasizing that his significance has not diminished with time.

The pride of place he holds in India is evident—right from the posters that adorn the walls of Ramanujan Hall at IIT Bombay’s math department. Professors of the department, led by Srinivasan, give the example of the “mock theta functions”, which first appeared in Ramanujan’s last letter to Hardy (January 1920). Quoting from the Annals of Mathematics, 2010, they say “Ramanujan’s mock theta functions indeed possess many striking properties and they have been the subject of an astonishing number of important works”.

Gadadhar Misra, professor at

the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, adds: “His math had mysticism. People are still researching the notes he left behind. His understanding is highly respected and unparalleled in 100 years.”

Yet, his life and work present a paradox when compared with the idea behind ICM. While the Congress aims to bring over 3,000 of the best minds together to discuss research in mathematics, Ramanujan worked in isolation till he met Hardy, as IIT’s Jugal K. Verma points out. “Math is different from other experimental sciences, where large teams of people bring in different capabilities. Math solutions occur often in a single bid.”

Misra, also in the ICM organization committee, adds that in the modern context, “no one person can actually carry the burden of this kind of excellence, because the nature of research is (such that) we need to learn from each other.”

Mathematical research in India has not touched the highs in the modern era that it did historically.

Verma reasons that the best results come out of developed countries, so a society has to be prosperous and at peace for the arts to develop. “When people were looking at fundamental things like ‘zero’, India was the richest coun-

try in the world,” he says.

Misra adds: “Do we have three departments that compare with the world? I would say no. We have missed out in the modern era: Individual excellence has been of significance but (you) never hear of a team that has been successful.”

Raghunathan’s assessment is kinder. “While the numbers in India are small, the peaks are world-class. ICM’s coming to India is indicative of that.” To ensure quality and variety at the ICM, he adds, world champion Viswanathan Anand will be there too: He will play simultaneous chess against 40 delegates—not surprising since, in Hardy’s own words, “chess problems are hymn-tunes of mathematics”.

What future mathematical research and excellence has in India is a matter of conjecture. The four professors concur on certain points: There are more institutions than before but the lack of human resource could be a deterrent.

There is promise in numbers—IIT Bombay has over 50 PhD students in mathematics, more than ever before. Even if math is not as “glamorous” as some of the other sciences, increasing employment opportunities, besides academics, will generate interest. School education is such that Indian children do not “fear” math as they do in some other cultures, and is more advanced here than in several other countries.

By staging A Disappearing Number, ICM organizers hope to ensure Ramanujan remains in the social consciousness of his native country. As Hardy wrote in A Mathematician’s Apology: “Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. Immortality may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean.”

He may well have been talking of the man from Kumbakonam.

A Disappearing Number will play at the Jamshed Bhabha Theatre in Mumbai on 9-11 August; and at the ICM conference in Hyderabad starting 19 August.

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Q&A | ANIL KAPOOR

STALL ORDER

NANDINI RAMNATH

The itinerant producer

ON SELLING A ‘HINDIE’ ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

Ahead of his next home production’s release, Anil Kapoor spills on envy, his two daughters and Hollywood

B Y U DITA J HUNJHUNWALA ···························· he unbridled joy he showed on the Oscar and Golden Globe stage with team Slumdog Millionaire characterizes Anil Kapoor’s enthusiasm and sincerity. With around 100 acting credits, including the eight-Oscar winner in which he plays a game show host and the final season of hit American drama series 24, some say Kapoor is the most well-recognized Indian face around the world. Right now, his focus is on his home production Aisha, an adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Emma. Edited excerpts from an interview:

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Even though your father and brother are producers, you once said you never wanted to be a producer.

Yes, I never really wanted to be a producer, even though I was involved in all our productions.

Production is in my blood, but I always wanted to be an actor, not a star. It was just that the films I did became so successful that I became a star, but the intent was to perform and be an actor.

What made you decide to produce ‘Aisha’? Isn’t a film with a female protagonist a risk?

Everything about it was a risk—the title, female-oriented subject, and it was not like the actress has done 10-12 films or was the No. 1 star. Sonam had done only Saawariya and Delhi-6 when Aisha was planned. But you have to take these chances. That’s the way I have always been. Also there was a certain conviction in both my daughters, Sonam and Rhea.

I liked the script and felt it could be a good film. It’s fresh, new, modern and young. These roles suit Sonam. I felt instinctively that she has the presence and potential to carry it off. But when it was time to pitch Aisha to heroes, I told them to remove the name of the film from the script or no hero would agree to it. I was right—until the girls began to insist on Abhay Deol.

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f Peepli Live gains any traction at all among multiplex audiences, some credit is due to the gumption of its producer, Aamir Khan. The actor and film-maker’s innovative promotion campaign for the movie has gone some way in ensuring that Peepli Live is more than a box-office oddity. Peepli Live’s television promos mock the idea that an all-powerful star such as Khan can actually produce a low-budget satire on farmer suicides. Khan may be sending up his own image in the advertisements, but he is also reminding viewers that the movie was worth his investment.

More Hindi indie producers need to display Khan’s intrepidness. Offbeat films are generally deemed difficult to market and are treated with embarrassment—as though the producer wished that his Rs2 crore movie starred Akshay Kumar rather than Abhay Deol. Films such as Johnny Gaddaar, Manorama Six Feet Under and Sankat City could have fared better if they had been more smartly marketed. However, the situation has changed dramatically in recent months. Last year’s Dev.D made optimum use of its psychedelic imagery and pulsating soundtrack (its eye-catching posters featured a pair of giant lips, no doubt inspired by Luis Bunuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie). Udaan and Tere Bin Laden were extensively promoted before their release, and sailed home safely on the strength of overwhelmingly positive reviews. Movie critics are a much-abused lot, but they sometimes have their uses.

Movie marketing remains an arcane skill that yields unpredictable results. Posters and trailers aren’t enough to attract viewers any more. Kites and Raavan flopped, so what’s the guarantee that a no-name film will work? Audiences are undependable: They marvel at experimentation and praise boldness, but their encouragement doesn’t always translate into ticket sales. Film promotion is about hype rather than modesty, but what do you do when your movie has no marquee names or a winning soundtrack? The day isn’t far when film schools such as the Film and Television Institute of India and the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute of India will include film promotion in their curricula to ensure that their bright graduates churn out more than just film festival-friendly fare.

All in the family: Kapoor says Aisha is fresh and modern, and Sonam fits the bill.

As a producer, what guidance did you offer Rhea?

It’s her film completely. I don’t know if she has learnt some things from me, but production and managing come instinctively to her. Her only prior experience was assisting Ayan Mukherjee on Wake Up Sid for about two months. I was in Los Angeles when Aisha went into production, so I was available to the girls on phone and email. My American assistants were surprised that during the day I was shooting and at night I was on the phone. In their country, they sometimes don’t speak to their parents for months. I said this is what India is; we have to be available to them 24/7, no matter what.

You have produced ‘Gandhi, My Father’ and ‘Short Kut’. What else is on the anvil?

I had okayed Aisha and No Problem even before Slumdog Millionaire and 24. I am also acting in No Problem, which will release in December. For now,

my focus is on these two films. I have a lot of scripts to read. The next international project will not happen till 2011. Firstly, I don’t have the time right now and, secondly, because my agents are clear that I have to wait for something amazing to come along. I have such a big headstart that it has to be something spectacular.

Which recent role has challenged you?

My Wife’s Murder, in which I played a simple middle-class guy.

Otherwise, over the last two-three years, I have moved to a different level and on to a global stage. I got Slumdog because I was ready to take the challenge. Others who were offered the role wanted to be the hero—they wanted Dev Patel’s role. For me, it has always been the script, that’s the reason I have lasted 32 years. And then I did 24, which was another great experience.

How different was it working in Hollywood compared with working in Bollywood?

We work exactly the same way as international films. Cinema, acting is the same everywhere. I wasn’t in awe when I was shooting 24. I was respectful, but my approach was that I know as much, if not more, and I have more to offer—culturally, emotionally, spiritually, and in terms of experience. The difference is that here there is a tendency to pull you down.

Here, you encounter envy. Over there, once they start clapping, they don’t stop. In my entire career in Hindi films, I have not got the kind of reviews I got for Slumdog Millionaire and 24 even though I have done a thousand times better work here. But a few people here did say (that) when we look at you we see that hard work does pay.

And it pays in a big way.

Anti­heroes: A still from Aamir Khan Productions’ Peepli Live.

The irony is that more marketing and distribution avenues are available to film-makers than ever before. Facebook and Twitter have come to the rescue of both big and small movies, creating a fair amount of pre-release Internet buzz. Digital television channels such as Tata Sky and DishTV prolong the shelf life of a movie.

However, the numbers needed to take a film from non-starter to revenue-earner exceed the percentage of Indians on Facebook.

Not every “Hindie” film has a producer like Khan, whose personal commercial value can be put to good use when the occasion arises. Anurag Kashyap, who co-produced Udaan, did lend his weight to the film. But his questionable promotional tactics included showing Angoor, the semi-porn film that features in Udaan, to a bunch of teenagers and going public with a very private letter he wrote to his parents when he left home for Mumbai in 1993. Can Aamir Khan please clone himself?

Peepli Live will release in theatres on 13 August.

Aisha will release in theatres on 6 August and the final season of 24, featuring Anil Kapoor as Prince Hassan, will premiere on AXN on 23 August.

Nandini Ramnath is a film critic with Time Out Mumbai (www.timeoutmumbai.net).

Write to Nandini at stallorder@livemint.com

THE HINDU

RAAGTIME

SAMANTH S

MUSICIAN’S MUSICIAN

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t is uncommon, although not unheard of, to seek out Carnatic concerts solely for an accompanist rather than for the main performer. But it happens regularly with the violinist R.K. Sriram Kumar. Friends in Chennai, relaying to me news of performances they attend, specify that they went for Sriram anna.

Last December, I shadowed him as faithfully through the music season as he shadows his vocalists in concert. Partly, this is because Sriram Kumar also happens to accompany the best singers; but substantially, it is because he can, on his own, elevate every concert, turning passable into good and good into spectacular. As he begins increasingly to perform solo, and

to create erudite compositions, he is moving from being the most skilled violinist of his generation to being one of the most skilled musicians of any era.

More than with most instruments, the malleability of the violin’s sound allows it to reflect the personality, drawing the bow across its strings.

T.N. Krishnan’s violin, I’ve found, is pristine and intelligent, and especially in recent years, as the maestro entered his 80s, the puckish drama of his play has been mirrored by his alert, joyous eyes. In comparison, Sriram Kumar’s has fewer dramatic crests and troughs. Like Sriram Kumar himself, his music seems preternaturally calm, even genial, but that belies the reser-

Take a bow: Sriram Kumar. voirs of learning below the surface—learning that is only dimly within the grasp of many of us listening avidly.

His scholarship is testament to his lineage: Sriram Kumar is a product of the illustrious Rudrapatnam family, which has included among other notables

the singer R.K. Srikantan and the violin wizard R.K. Venkatarama Shastry.

Perhaps for this reason, Sriram Kumar is frequently called a musician’s musician.

“You never have to worry about whether he will or won’t know a particular song. He knows every song there is to know,” my aunt, the singer Sugandha Kalamegham, whom Sriram Kumar often accompanies, told me on one occasion.

On another, she explained how he shapes, subtly but firmly, a vocalist’s improvisatory singing of a raga. “I’ll sing a phrase,” she said, “and when he responds, he’ll end by indicating where the raga might naturally go next.”

These nuances will gratify only trained musicians, so it is proof of how well Sriram Kumar straddles the gap between academic expertise and popularity that many of his ardent devotees are amateurs like myself. In concert, he is the perfect foil to

many singers—to the pyrotechnics of T.M. Krishna, to the quiet elegance of Bombay Jayashri, or to the intellect of R. Vedavalli. He rarely thrusts his music into prominence ahead of the vocalist; entire songs go by without him even looking up from his studious posture, bent over his violin.

But reliably, there will be many Sriram Kumar moments that whisk your breath away. I recall one such, in a concert accompanying Sangeetha Sivakumar, when he played a snatch of Kapi, a raga upon which he confers heartrending beauty. I don’t remember now the precise notes he played, but I vividly remember the effect they had, as if a window had suddenly opened on to all sorts of new vistas of a hitherto familiar raga.

Then the window snapped shut, and Sriram Kumar played on as if nothing had happened.

Write to Samanth Subramanian at raagtime@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

BANGALORE BHATH | RAHUL JAYARAM

Verse case scenario

MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT

A haiku on the city’s traffic or a sonnet on its parks—Poets International keeps the ‘Bangalore poet’ alive

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ohammed Fakhruddin came to the world of words through a friendship that has dreamy adolescence written all over it.

Years later, at the traffic mayhem that is central Bangalore, we meet at a coffee shop, and he looks back on the decades. A glass door shuts out the noise and chaos. We slide into our seats and absorb the vista like viewers watching a horror film with the mute button on.

“So what happened?” I ask.

“I used to have a penfriend in America while in college,” the 65-year-old says. This was in the late 1960s. “I never met her.

Once she sent me her picture and I wrote a poem about it.” I want to nod my head (“Yeah, me too Saar”) in agreement. “I wrote her a poem just looking at the picture without ever having met her face-to-face,” he says.

“She asked me, ‘Are you a poet?’ I wrote back saying, ‘No. But when I think of you I become one,’” he laughs.

As the years went by, Fakhruddin worked in various forms of media, from print to film. A bulk of his life was spent as a journalist for local publications in Urdu and English, but his fondest, perhaps most enduring, achievement is the institution of Poets International—a poetry group and publication in Bangalore that he launched in 1983. “The British Library which used to be just here,” he says, “is where I apprenticed in words. Read every poetry book or anthology that I could lay my hands on…that was the charm of Bangalore then. But there was no forum for me to write in,” he mutters.

In 1983, he published the first edition of Poets International as a quarterly publication with 1,000 copies. Not many of them sold.

“I did not want ads,” he says. “It has always been subscriptionbased and was placed in many of Bangalore’s well-known book stores.” Circulation varied but the number of contributors inched up. In most cases, contributors found a platform for their wares of sentences, rhymes and images, and became the publication’s first subscribers. A monthly since 1995, it is now a booklet. It has drawn out versifiers from among businessmen, government clerks, journalists, bankers, teachers, scientists and others from Bangalore, India and beyond. The forms of verse deployed are not restricted.

Sonnets, triplets, sestets, free verse, haikus, quatrains, villanelles, nonsense verse, prose poems, across rhymes and metres are entertained.

By 1995, Fakhruddin had some other ideas too. “I wanted contributors to gain appreciation of the many classical verse forms through which they can express themselves. And I wanted to share what all I learnt,” he says.

He began poetry workshops and meetings which would take place on the second Saturday of each month in typical central Bangalore settings—coffee shops such as Koshy’s, or St Joseph’s

HEMANT MISHRA/MINT

College or the Press Club of India. At these events, participants would get an understanding of rhyme and metre, a haiku or sonnet. There has been a lull, says Fakhruddin, but the workshops and meetings will resume from August.

Associated with the group since 1994, Prakash F. Madhwani, 49, a businessman who came out with his verse collection in 2005 (with a foreword by Ruskin Bond), revivifies the experience of those workshops. “Doctor saheb (Fakhruddin) would make the learning experience participatory.

It was a lot of fun. He would explain to us what an ode was, how distinct it was with respect to other forms. And then he would compose one line. One person had to come up with the second, another with the third, and another with the fourth, and so on. So in the end we had a poem composed by four or more different people. The same type of instruction came in for other longer forms. We learnt about iambic pentameter, tetrameters and so on.”

This exposure to literature had such an impact on Madhwani that he decided to do his MA in English (correspondence) from

Bangalore University. He recently got his degree.

In 1995, Poets International organized a day-long poetry festival in Bangalore. The India Poetry Festival has been a regular event on the Bangalore calendar since, with around a hundred poets from all over the country gathering to read out poems and discuss them threadbare in August or September every year. In 1997, Fakhruddin even organized a haiku festival, with some 300 participants.

These gatherings were attended by people across age groups, and seminars on verse forms followed recitations and readings. The haiku festival had well-known Japanese haiku poet Kazuyoshi Ikeda helming it.

The workshops and fests were intense affairs, recalls Madhwani—and not always pleasant. “Not many people like to be criticized,” he recalls, “so some participants stopped coming.”

Does the current generation have any interest in words such as “versification”? I ask. “I’m not sure. Poetry isn’t even taught in the colleges and universities very seriously,” Fakhruddin says. “Till the late 1990s, I had quite a few

HEMANT MISHRA/MINT

Songs of a city: (clockwise from top) Koshy’s was one of the early meeting places of the poets; the chaotic traffic is a source of inspiration; and (from left) Fakhruddin, Madhwani and Tasneem at the Higginbotham’s book store. college and engineering students coming for the workshops.

“But after that, organizing it became difficult. People complain about the location, and the traffic, had to come from far-off places, etc. Also, I think many people, young and old, are interested in something for the money and fame in it.

With what we do, there is very little scope of that.”

Fakhruddin even approached senior Karnataka government officials for a permanent chair for poetry at Bangalore University—without much success.

But the interest in poetry continues. For all the poetry journal’s range of rhymed and non-rhymed poetry and nonsense verse across themes such as time, nature, money, worry, love, heartbreak, hate, harmony, God, inspiration, exasperation, old age and youth, a few writers do still

see Bangalore itself as a theme.

Tasneem, who has a master’s in computer applications and is a teacher by profession, is one of the younger contributors to the monthly. “I found the shift from my native Mysore to Bangalore itself as a jolt. I ended up even writing about Bangalore’s traffic,” she says. “I’m usually someone who writes a fair amount on nature. Bangalore city is a theme, yes, but it affects me because of my shift to a new, big place,” she says.

Madhwani talks of the many different voices that have been published. “We may not be writing directly about Bangalore as such, but one looks at the issues which affect one by living in the city. For instance, the Bombay poet would write about the beach, seashore, crowds and local trains. Here, we write about trees, forests and how they have been cut, and the traffic! These

are the issues which affect us.”

Fakhruddin underlines the importance of encouragement.

He recalls the good wishes of an old friend, a scientist at the Indian Institute of Science, who encouraged him to write. “That’s what I do, when any new contributor brings in a poem for publishing. They need confidence to be given, regardless of how good or bad their effort is,” he says.

Fakhruddin disregards some of the big names in the poetry world (read: Seamus Heaney) as too complex. “It’s about simple expression but condensed thought,” he insists.

He takes out his cellphone.

And as we prepare to leave, he reads out a haiku, scrolling down line by line, “Words have wings/They fly all over the world/ Touch hearts, create ecstasy.” rahul.j@livemint.com