Lounge 3 April by HT Media

www.livemint.com

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

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Vol. 4 No. 13

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

Preparing dim sum, which literally means ‘touch the heart’ in Cantonese, requires a lifetime to master.

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH BALAJI TELEFILMS’ EKTA KAPOOR >Page 18

IN TIGER’S LAIR

There’s no better theatre for golf’s enfant terrible to stage a comeback than at the Augusta Masters >Page 13

food

FETISH LUXURY CULT

RADHA CHADHA

A LESSON IN BRANDING INDIA

just stayed at The Pierre—Taj Hotels’ recently opened flagship in New York—and I have to admit the Indian tricolour fluttering at the entrance made my heart flutter too. It got me thinking about Indian luxury brands and the potential they have to become global brands of significance. There are a lot of things going for The Pierre—the Taj has spent $100 million (around Rs453 crore) to renovate this legendary property, the rooms are luxuriously done up and we had a breathtaking view of... >Page 4

THE GOOD LIFE

SHOBA NARAYAN

CONSERVATION, THE SIMPLE WAY

ere is how a tiger is killed in Ranthambore. First, the poachers lay leg traps on the tiger’s usual routes. They scatter small stones around the trap, knowing that the fastidious tiger will try to avoid these tiny stones. Its leg gets caught in a trap; when it moves, the second trap snaps shut. Now the tiger is in pain so it sits down. The poachers tie a spear to an 8ft-long stick and appear. When the tiger roars, they spear... >Page 4

Inside the secret kitchens of India, the best tea party in town, a Kalakhatta Mojito and the art of dim sum Plus: Saying bye to a restaurant >Pages 512

OUR DAILY BREAD

SAMAR HALARNKAR

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER

A detailed, but partisan—and often vengeful—portrait of murder and manipulation in the Bhutto family >Page 14

THE RESURRECTION OF FN SOUZA

India’s oldest art gallery refashions itself to present the largestever solo of Souza’s works in the country >Page 16

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

BREAK AN EGG, MAKE AN OMELETTE

PHOTO ESSAY: SOUL NOTE

HOME PAGE L3

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

SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

FIRST CUT

LOUNGE REVIEW | MICROMAX G4 GAMOLUTION

PRIYA RAMANI

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA

THE IMPORTANCE OF ‘WELL DONE ABBA’ MADHU KAPPARATH/MINT

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)

hyam Benegal is the Indian villager’s Last Action Hero. Nobody else in Hindi cinema cares about rural India (which officially makes up 72% of our country). And even if some members of Bollywood’s smart set do use the best cinematographers to capture the bleak, ravaged beauty of our villages, in the finished film they feature only as backdrops minus their real inhabitants. So I shrug when people say Benegal hasn’t made a great film since 1992’s Suraj ka Satvan Ghoda. I never worry about reviews or box office figures when it’s a Benegal film. Instead, I notice that in the week the director’s Well Done Abba—a satire on the government’s pro-poor schemes set in Muslim Andhra Pradesh—releases, the Supreme Court announces it is restoring a 4% jobs and RESPECT educational institutions quota for backward Muslims in the same state. Benegal’s always had his hand firmly on the aam aadmi’s pulse. He understands the politics of places and the way people prefer to communicate in these places. Abba is set in Andhra Pradesh, a state with which Benegal has close ties (he was born in Trimulgherry near Hyderabad). The film’s lead character Boman Irani communicates exclusively in Dakhni, that quirky, expressive Urdu dialect of the dusty Deccan. “Language is such an important aspect of human culture,” Benegal tells Sangeeta Dutta in her book Shyam Benegal, pointing out that he has also used Dakhni in Ankur, a dialect of Saurashtra in Manthan, Urdu in Junoon, Konkani in Bhumika and Bengali in Aarohan. Benegal has devoted a lifetime to recording rural upheaval—c’mon,

Lounge loves: Shyam Benegal. which other Hindi movie director has made a film about the National Dairy Development Board! It’s easy for him to illustrate how dramatically the rural landscape has changed in recent years. Even if you’re one of those whose eyes glaze over when new schemes are announced every year in the budget, you’ve surely heard of NREGA, the government’s successful, five-year-old flagship welfare programme that promises 100 days of employment annually to the poor? Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government is working hard to begin a national debate on issues such as poverty, hunger, education and unemployment. In its last budget, the government announced it would spend Rs1.8 trillion to improve the mostly rural aam aadmi’s quality of life. Benegal is even more important in this New India milieu where social spending has taken centre stage because he’s the only Bolly-

wood director who can translate the government’s schemes (and scams) into a multiplex film. And, like he revealed after all these years in 2008’s Welcome to Sajjanpur, he’s even got a sense of humour. Survival has always been a torturous ride for Benegal’s aam aadmi but the director has reinvented his characters along with himself for today’s multiplex audiences. Benegal’s new aam aadmi knows how to fight the system. Is Abba the second film in the director’s latest trilogy about the modern Indian village, I wondered as I watched Benegal spin a tale about the joys and sorrows of life below the poverty line. “These days everyone wants to be below the gareebi rekha,” a government official tells Irani, who takes the plunge to be eligible for a state-funded well. Benegal shot his film partly on location in Ibrahimpatnam, outside Hyderabad. In real life, Ibrahimpatnam is the kind of place where a 27-year-old engineering graduate hangs himself because Telangana isn’t happening fast enough. Benegal had reason enough to set his film in Andhra Pradesh. In real life, 120% of the state’s population lies below the poverty line. This essentially means that there is nobody above the poverty line, i.e., that there are more BPL cards than the state’s population. Benegal’s aware enough to know this about Andhra Pradesh. As they say on Twitter: Respect. Write to lounge@livemint.com www.livemint.com Priya Ramani blogs at blogs.livemint.com/firstcut

f the advertisements are to be believed, the G4 Gamolution mobile phone from Micromax made actor Akshay Kumar guffaw uncontrollably and decimate a hotel kitchen in his dogged determination to win a game. T he G4 m ade m e la u gh too, though this was more a disbelieving chuckle than buck-toothed cackle. That’s because the G4 is a funny sort of phone—a work of stellar engineering jugaad (improvisation) and shameless appropriation. Micromax is a Delhi-based company that has quietly, over the last three years, become the third most popular mobile phone manufacturer in the country after Nokia and Samsung. It is popular for its line of “dual-sim” phones (the G4 among them), which allow you to receive calls and messages from two sim cards in the same phone.

The good stuff Here’s the G4’s main draw. The phone comes with a free Bluetooth dongle that attaches to your PC. Also included is a DVD disc of games that you can install. Set both of these up, press a button on the phone, and it becomes a bona fide Nintendo Wii remote with which you can waggle, shake and jab your way through games of tennis, bowling and…strangely enough, badminton. Here, things get a little weird. The games themselves are complete, shameless knock-offs of their Nintendo Wii counterparts (right down to the art style, sound effects and menus), and are made by a Beijing-based company called JiaJia Media (www.jiajia.tv). Here, things get even weirder.

The games and controls are excellent. It might be apocryphal to say the phone, with its home-brewed Wii-like software, is better somehow than Nintendo’s console—but after extensive testing, it is easier, and more responsive as a controller, than the plain Wiimote. The G4 handles direction input precisely. Swing to the left, and your shots are placed likewise. If you have a second G4, you can also play two-player. Apart from this, the phone is a fairly solid device, with a host of nifty features—connect the phone to the computer, and it can use the camera as a webcam. The inbuilt FM radio function can schedule recordings of your favourite shows.

The notsogood India has a long history of secretly ripping off Nintendo—an entire generation in the 1990s grew up playing hacked versions of Super Mario Bros from “10,000 in 1” cartridges. But the G4’s shameless appropriation of the Wii is troubling. The game function also fails to connect properly sometimes—a problem accentuated by the poorly written manual (sample instruction: “Append the accouterment of your mobile”). Otherwise, the G4 suffers from a few surprisingly basic problems. The SMS input is hopelessly slow, the camera is poor, and the build quality of the phone is slightly suspect.

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES

Talk plastic At a price point of Rs5,999, you’re getting a decent phone, a Wii knock-off and a free Bluetooth adapter. It’s reason enough to be laughing like Akshay Kumar all the way from the store. Krish Raghav

L4 COLUMNS SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

RADHA CHADHA LUXURY CULT

Taj’s The Pierre: a lesson in branding India

become global brands of significance. There are a lot of things going for The Pierre—the Taj has spent $100 million (around Rs453 crore) to renovate this legendary property, the rooms are luxuriously done up and we had a breathtaking view of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline, the location on Fifth Avenue is excellent with the quiet expanse of the park on one side and all the glamour and glitz of New York’s fancy stores on the other—but it is Taj’s signature hospitality that did it for me. I felt at home. The name on the marquee might say The Pierre and the people providing the service were largely Americans, but the experience felt just like the Taj. There was the same warmth, the same endearing personal touches, the same friendly conversations and easy smiles, the same spirit of going the extra mile to delight. From the room service man who jumped to rearrange our bags and shoes so we could sit more comfortably at the breakfast table, to

the concierge who made a dinner booking (try the Rouge Tomate nearby—delicious, healthy, creative, good vegetarian selection) and had a glass of champagne served to us compliments of The Pierre. That was a first for me! Luxury brands are cultural products with strong national connections—Louis Vuitton and Hermès are essentially selling the French way of life—and carry with them the heritage, the artisanal traditions, the aesthetic codes of their land. Vuitton and Hermès have grown into such formidable global brands and their appeal is so universal today that we don’t stop to think of their origin. But India is newly emerging on the world stage, our culture is seen as exotic rather than mainstream, having a niche appeal rather than a universal one. The question then is how does a luxury brand—like the Taj—with strong Indian connotations translate for the global consumer? Aside from the tricolour at the entrance—and a couple of Indian

Thumb rules: Hospitality and warmth. dishes on the room service menu—the Taj isn’t wearing its Indianness on its sleeve in New York. It has chosen, at least for the moment, to restore and celebrate the heritage of The Pierre. This is entirely in line with what it does—it picks iconic properties and brings them back to life, and layers on the Taj’s brand values. Fortunately the brand values of The Pierre and the Taj seem to have a close fit. The Taj has a storied

history—a very important aspect of its brand—and The Pierre also has a colourful past going back to the 1930s and it too has been the stomping ground of the in-crowd. (Our room was on the 38th floor, the same floor where Yves Saint Laurent had an apartment—every time I stepped out of the elevator I took a deep breath and imagined what it would have been like to have him walk the same corridor.) Hospitality of the atithi-devo-bhava kind (very different from merely competent service) is a second crucial aspect of the Taj brand, and The Pierre delivers hands down on this front—no mean feat in the American context, where service of this sort is the exception rather than the rule. It is still too early to comment on how successful the hotel will be—I think with the right marketing it will fly, its service core is solid—but the important point is Taj is staying true to its brand and translating it to an international setting. Can others do the same? Admittedly, outside the hospitality sector, there aren’t any Indian luxury brands of Taj’s stature, but there are plenty of Indian luxury products—jewellery, textiles, carpets are prime candidates—that are crying to be branded and have the potential to play on global turf. “Heritage”, a major ingredient in a luxury brand, cannot be manufactured overnight, and that’s the one thing we have in

India in plenty. That’s our edge. There has been a wave of designer brands that have risen in recent years that are translating our traditions for the modern Indian consumer—and indeed some have made an international impression—and these are all steps in the right direction. But the question is how do we take our jewellery-making tradition—for example kundan and enamel work—and create brands of the stature of Cartier with a robust global sweep? How do we take our varied embroidery, weaving, printing traditions and create muscular brands like Hermès or Louis Vuitton? The good news is that while our traditions are priceless, every other skill can be bought off the shelf in today’s global marketplace. Vuitton, Hermès or Cartier may well choose to make a business out of Indian heritage, or it could be an Indian maison that takes the plunge. Either way, Indian traditions will thrive on a global stage. Radha Chadha is one of Asia’s leading marketing and consumer insight experts. She is the author of the best-selling book The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia’s Love Affair with Luxury. Write to her at luxurycult@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Radha’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/radhachadha

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

Be a conservationist, the simple Indian way

ADITYA SINGH/AFP

these tiny stones. Its leg gets caught in a trap; when it moves, the second trap snaps shut. Now the tiger is in pain so it sits down. The poachers tie a spear to an 8ft-long stick and appear. When the tiger roars, they spear its mouth so it begins to bleed. It roars again. More bleeding. When the tiger’s pain gets too much, when it tires from the roaring, they beat its forehead with a stick strengthened by pouring lead on it. They may use a small knife to blind the tiger so that they can spear it to death more easily. The tiger dies an agonizing death. For the poachers, too, it is a life-and-death game as this magnificent animal—the Panthera tigris—is a killing machine. If a trap gets loose, it is a quick death for the poachers, who are usually Moghiya tribals. The poachers will do anything not to spoil the skin of the tiger, which can fetch $20,000 (around Rs9 lakh) across the border. “In India, they export tiger bone and skin to the Chinese,” says Dharmendra Khandal, conservation biologist with Tiger Watch, an NGO. “The Chinese use the tiger’s penis and liver but that they get from the Russian market, which has figured out how to export the flesh of the tiger as well.” It is the Chinese Year of the Tiger but the big cat is in danger like never before. Khandal recounts the twisted tale of how they work with Moghiya tribe informants to save the tiger from extinction. Founded by the legendary Tiger Man of Ranthambore, Fateh Singh Rathore, Tiger Watch has recently started turning

the tables on the hunters by hunting them and getting them arrested. Indians are natural conservationists. The Hindu religion worships animals as God—Hanuman, the monkey God; Ganeshji, the elephant God; the lion-headed Narasimha; and so on. We have a natural reverence for trees and life-giving herbs. Our culture is not iconoclastic but encompassing. We see ourselves as part of nature, not above it. Still, the poaching and encroachment continues, in part because of the poverty of those who live at the rim of wildlife sanctuaries. “Conservation is not only about protecting animals. It is about managing humans and their behaviour,” says Ravi Chellam, country director, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)—India Program. I had called Chellam to help me solve a simple problem. I had read in that morning’s Deccan Herald about hundreds of Bende trees (Kydia calycina) at the Biligiriranga Swamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary (BRT Wildlife Sanctuary) that were going to be axed in preparation for the car festival of Lord Ranganatha on 27 April. The felled trees would be used to build a car for the deity, an annual tradition. It seemed like an eminently avoidable practice, especially since these fibrous trees are prime fodder for the elephants that roam BRT Sanctuary. Although felling these protected trees was illegal, the forest department officials had adopted an “enigmatic silence”, said the paper. To me, this was a no-brainer. For

Cornered: In this year of the tiger, there are very few of the magnificent beasts left. once, I wished I was Jairam Ramesh or at least one of his local officials who could issue an ultimatum that heads would roll if a single Bende tree was touched. This was not about tribal livelihoods or farmer safety against rampaging elephants. This was just tradition. All that needed to be done was to inculcate a different mindset in people. Rather than cutting fresh trees every year, they could build a permanent car for Lord Ranganatha using existing timber. I called Chellam mostly for ideas. Who could I write to about this? Could I petition the Union government? Did he know the forest officer in charge of BRT? Chellam was in Bannerghatta National Park watching elephants when I reached him. His first response was urging me to ascertain the facts: the number of trees that were going to be axed and so forth. He felt that many media reports on wildlife, ecology and conservation were poorly informed, inaccurate and tend to sensationalize issues. I swallowed all that and finally asked him what I should do. His response surprised me. “I see this as a huge opportunity for advocacy even at the cost of sacrificing a few trees,” he said. “Such cultural occasions when thousands of people gather can be used effectively to communicate to them the value of nature and ecology and the need for conservation by linking the use of wild

grown trees for making the temple car.” Conservation is written into the Indian Constitution. “It shall be the duty of every citizen of India to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers, and wildlife and to have compassion for living creatures,” it says. Starting in 1935 with the Jim Corbett National Park (then called Hailey National Park), India today has more than 600 protected areas, including parks, sanctuaries and Ramsar sites—wetlands of global significance, according to the WCS’ website. Its range of fauna is at an impressive 7.3% of the world relative to its area of 2.4%. But for reasons that are blindingly obvious to anyone who owns a dog, wildlife conservation has become distant from the very urban Indians who not only enjoy wildlife, but also have the power to do something about it. You own a dog; you become fond of all dogs, even stray ones. You become more compassionate towards these creatures. How can urban Indians become conservation advocates when—barring an annual trip to Corbett or Ranthambore—we are physically so distant from it? Conservation has to connect people to wildlife, not simply paint people as villains. Not my words. Chellam’s. So what of these car festival devotees, I persist? This is a small, solvable

problem, one that even I can handle, say I. “You know, we always go after the small guys—the tribals, the poachers, the farmers,” he replies. “If the army wants to set up an arms depot in the middle of a sanctuary, who is going to stop them? If a major industry wants to set up a factory of hundreds of acres of forest land, who is going to stop them? A port is being built at Dhamra in Orissa, which is a major nesting site for Olive Ridley sea turtles. Those are the more important wars worth fighting, not the one when a few trees are cut down for a temple car festival.” His words bring up something that is close to my heart and has been in the news recently. The Reddy brothers and their blighted mines that are shamelessly and ruthlessly encroaching into forests without heeding the mitigating factors that have been written into their contract. The Supreme Court is after them, thank God, but after reading a mining report by the activist organization Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) about how mining in the last decade has been destroying the forest cover, watershed and ecology, I hope that someone will have the courage to go after all the illegal mines and put an end to this pillage and destruction of our land, nature and ecology. Meanwhile, I am chasing the forest officer in charge of BRT Sanctuary to hug the trees before 27 April as it were. Olive Ridleys or a Tata seaport that gives hundreds of jobs? It is a vexing problem but like everything worth fighting for, wildlife isn’t easy. Shoba Narayan has never seen an Olive Ridley, which she thinks is part of the problem. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shobanarayan

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010

SPIRITED

sherbets Two bartenders spike traditional Indian coolers and serve them in cocktail glasses. Here’s what happens when Rooh Afza gets twisted into a martini and vodka drowns in ‘lassi’

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

·······················

Gulabo Manoj Janjid, assistant manager, China House Lounge, Mumbai Sweet and milky with bits of dry fruit in every mouthful, this cocktail could even be had as dessert. The fragrance of vanilla hits you as you bring the glass to your lips and the first taste is that of Rooh Afza. Even as you sip the drink and won der where the ‘thandai’ is, you feel the peppery tickle of the ‘thandai’ in your throat. Ingredients 60ml Absolut vanilla 45ml ‘thandai’ (prepared with milk) 10ml Rooh Afza Method Shake all the ingredients with ice and serve in a martini glass. Garnish with almonds, pistachio and shredded rose petals.

Coco Jumbo

Kalakhatta Mojito

Manoj Janjid This pink drink, served in a tall glass garnished with a flower, will remind you of beaches and shacks. The sweet and sour cherries perfectly complement the coconut. We were just glad that Janjid didn’t go with the predictable pineapplecoconut combo. The fresh fruit makes it delicious and the ginger adds a dash of spicy surprise. If you want to stay sober, stay away from it. Ingredients 60ml Bombay Sapphire gin 30ml cherry purée 15ml ginger lime cordial Coconut water to top up Method Shake the ingredients together with ice and serve in a Colin glass with an orchid flower garnish.

Vijay Prakash Kondapalli, general manager, Valhalla, Mumbai ‘Jaljeera’ and lemon paired together is a nobrainer. While a ‘jaljeera’ mojito would be predictable, Kondapalli gives the cocktail another Indian twist with the ‘kalakhatta’ (sweet and tangy) flavour. Sipping this slushy drink is like having a spiked ‘kalakhatta’ gola from a glass. Tastes delicious and saves you the aftereffects of frozen, bright red lips. Ingredients 10 mint leaves 60ml Bacardi 90ml black currant crush A dash of freshly squeezed lime juice A pinch of ‘jaljeera’ powder Crushed ice A dash of thick sugar syrup Method Muddle the sugar syrup, mint leaves and lemon juice. Pour the mix in a hurricane glass and top it up with ‘jaljeera’, Bacardi, black currant crush and crushed ice. Garnish with grapes and mint leaves.

La Lassi

Mandarin Cane

Manoj Janjid While common combinations of sweet ‘lassi’ are with mango and ‘kesar’ (saffron), Janjid matches the acidity of yogurt with the citrus flavour of orange and passion fruit instead. Lots of ice ensures that the ‘lassi’ isn’t too thick or rich, making it easy to sip. The result is a fresh, citrusy summer drink. The passion fruit is the ingredient that you will be able to taste, although it’s not instantly identifiable. Ingredients 60ml Smirnoff Orange 60ml sweet ‘lassi’ 15ml Monin passion fruit syrup Method Shake the ingredients together with ice and serve in any oldfashioned glass garnished with spiralled orange peel.

Vijay Prakash Kondapalli Since sugarcane juice is best had fresh, making this drink is a bit tricky. The orange juice adds zing to the sweet sugarcane juice, while the dark rum makes the flavours intense as the drink travels down your throat. Kondapalli added the Grenadine syrup to give it a “wicked look”. The goodlooking cocktail is just as cool to hold as it is tasty to drink. Ingredients 60ml dark rum 90ml sugarcane juice 60ml orange juice A few drops of Grenadine syrup Method Shake sugar cane and orange juice in a shaker. Pour it in a Burgundy wine glass and add the rum and Grenadine syrup. Garnish with an orange peel.

LISTEN TO THE LOUNGE PODCAST We speak to Mita Kapur, CEO, Siyahi, about organizing the upcoming Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in Delhi; curator Gitanjali Dang tells us how George Orwell inspired her art show, and our film critic Sanjukta Sharma reviews ‘The Great Indian Butterfly’. www.livemint.com/loungepodcast

PHOTOGRAPHS

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

L6 COVER

SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

OUR DAILY BREAD

SAMAR HALARNKAR

BREAK AN EGG,

make an omelette The key to an omelette is the stuffing. Try leftovers or pig’s hooves or simple coriander—anything works

f there is one thing the writer knows, really knows, and loves, it’s the omelette. I understand there are some people who actually read this column. I know there are others daring enough to try out what emerges from my random pottering in the kitchen. What can I say? These are brave people. Just this morning, I woke up bleary-eyed, grabbed the bag of chopped beans and hurled them with great confidence into my wok, airily throwing together a quick stir-fry with a Naga chilli, garlic, sesame seeds and soya sauce. Only, I had forgotten to blanch the beans. No matter, I thought, with the overconfidence born of praise, I could still pull this off by keeping the beans on the stove for perhaps 20 minutes instead of the normal 5. Thirty minutes later, the beans were still not done, the sesame seeds had collapsed and merged into a blackish paste with the soya, and my wife had an oh-god-how-can-I-eat-that-mess look stifled below her wan smile. Reluctantly, I admitted defeat and threw the beans into the garbage. So, you see. But let me tell you something I do not mess up—ever. Omelettes. Never, ever. An omelette was the first thing I actually ever cooked as a teen, and more than five years later, it

was still all I knew. When I left home and lived in a tiny one-room home in Bangalore as a crime reporter on Rs1,800 a month, all I cooked was omelettes. The onions and chillies shared shelf space (I had only three open, stone shelves) with underwear and banians (vests). It was a little irritating to pick onion peels from my clothes sometimes, but it was a small price to pay to have my own breakfast in my own little world. The omelettes were made on a single hotplate, which I kicked under the bed when it wasn’t in use. Every Sunday, my friends—all of whom lived in proper homes with proper kitchens producing proper meals—streamed in for omelettes and sausages off my floor. I suppose it was all very romantic for them: squeezing on to my bed, getting served tailor-made omelettes (without sausages, with chillies, no onions—whatever) and generally having a rip-roaring time. The defining aroma of my little room was eggs and onions. When I went to the US for two years, I cooked omelettes, of course. But by now I had learnt of the world beyond onions,

chillies and sausages. I discovered olives (and stuffed olives), anchovies, salami, tuna, spring onions, and even, umm, pig’s feet. Yes, I did stuff an omelette with pig’s hooves once, hoping somehow that it might bring back the taste of Gulbarga paaya (trotters in spicy broth) to Missouri, US. My Spanish friends taught me the Spanish omelette—which bakes inside an oven—but I soon substituted those boring potatoes with pepperoni. When I returned to India, I was much more than an omelette fixer. I had cooked biryanis, fish curries (I carried kokum with me), lots of roasts and grills and salads. Vegetables were still some years away, since I needed them only once I got married. For those who came in late, my wife is a vegetarian, something my friends don’t let me ever forget since I had sworn never to marry one. But omelettes remain closest to my heart, my original love, my USP. The key to an omelette is the stuffing. I love this part. Thin slices of Cheddar, or Gouda or even good old Amul. Strips of ham. Bits of sausage. Leftover

bits of chicken or meat. Keema. Spring onions. Chopped olives. Dhania (coriander) or mint leaves for a good desi omelette. Oregano. Rosemary. Thyme. Super-thin garlic flakes. Small bits of ginger. Or galangal. Try anything, really, anything.

The posh, anytime omelette This is an omelette that can be eaten any time, any meal, not just breakfast. Beat the eggs really well. Instead of a fork, use an egg-beater or mixie with a whipper blade, and use it well. The mixture becomes really smooth. When you pour it into a medium-hot pan, throw in your stuffings (including the standard onion/tomato/chilli garnishes) and cover it. Reduce heat to low, and the omelette will rise wonderfully. No need to shake and mess up the eggs with a spatula, as they do on the roadside or at five-star cooking stations. A simple fold, and you will have the fattest, smoothest omelette ever. Two eggs will seem like three. This is a column on easy, inventive cooking from a male perspective. Samar Halarnkar writes a blog, Our Daily Bread, at Htblogs.com. He is editor-at-large, Hindustan Times. Write to Samar at ourdailybread@livemint.com

Get cracking: An anytime meal, with limitless possibilities.

www.livemint.com Read Samar’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/ourdailybread

HUNGRY PLANET | OSCAR VALLÉS RODRÍGUEZ

tapas TALK

Why a fisherman never eats lobsters, deconstructing a tomato, and other secrets of Spanish food B Y V EENA V ENUGOPAL veena.v@livemint.com

···························· adrid-based chef Oscar Vallés Rodríguez has been cooking professionally since he was 18. He specializes in cooking simple Mediterranean food, made with the freshest ingredients. He is on a mission to teach the world the joys of uncomplicated food. His theory is that if you eat lobsters every day, you will get sick of them. A fisherman will never eat lobsters. And you will not tire of dishes that the fisherman eats at home. On his first visit to India, he tells Lounge what makes Spanish food and wine special. Edited excerpts:

What lies at the heart of Spanish cooking? The essence of Spanish food is that it is prepared very naturally. It’s simple food, but the

ingredients are fresh. I always tell people who want to be chefs that the first step to cooking is knowing the ingredients. Take a tomato—it has skin, which is a thick, hard layer; then pulp, which is very tender and sweet, and in the centre a seedy liquid which is very acidic. When you think about a tomato, you think about all this and only then can you understand what you can prepare with it. What is the Spanish technique? There are many. In Andalusia in southern Spain, they do a lot of frying. There is nothing like a fried fish in Andalusia—that’s one of the biggest pleasures you can ever have. In Catalonia you can have some incredible soups. And they are cooked over a long time. In northern Spain, they cook meat on stone. And in central Spain, food is cooked in very, very big ovens. In all Spanish regions we know about

all these techniques and in every plate you can introduce as many of these as you like. Now, there is a new technique that we use. We suck the air out of an ingredient and put it in a bag. This can be then cooked at 75 degrees (Celsius; the temperature at which the body begins to burn) for 30 or 40 hours. It becomes very, very tender. It’s excellent. What are the typical meals eaten in Spain every day? What characterizes us in Spain is that we are eating all day. But it’s a good, healthy diet. Most people have coffee and milk in the morning—with a sandwich and a piece of fruit. Another fruit mid-morning and something simple like yogurt or a small sandwich in the evening. Lunch and dinner will usually be fish or meat. And what is festive food? The three constituents of Spanish festivals are music, food and wine. The food is different in each region. In Barcelona, bread with tomato is a festive dish. It looks very simple,

Won’t the French be upset with you for saying that Spanish wines are the best? The French often make mistakes. And they are neighbours, we are used to fighting, but they are nice people. They don’t have the best cheese and they don’t have the best wines. And they are not the most important people in the world. The sun in Spain is much better than what the French have. And to get sweet grapes you need the sun. Therefore, Spanish wines are far superior to French wines.

Gazpacho Serves six Spanish tango: Gazpacho, a tomatobased cold soup; and (left) chef Rodríguez. but it is not just a piece of bread with a slice of tomato. It is important to have big bread—cut it into pieces of 2cm and toast it so that it becomes crispy. You then cut a ripe tomato and grate the pulp of the tomato on the bread. Add salt and olive oil. In Madrid, what is typical is very tender pork cooked in big ovens. What’s the best drink to go with this? The Spanish people have the best wines in the world but they are not big drinkers.

Ingredients 2kg ripe tomatoes 200g cucumber 100g red pepper 100g green pepper 3 large onions 2 cloves of garlic 2 tsp olive oil 1 litre water Salt to taste Method Cut the tomatoes in halves. Peel and remove the ends of the cucumber, cut in half and remove seeds. Cut the red and green peppers in half, deseed, wash and cut into quarters. Peel onion and garlic. Add water and salt and blend all the ingredients until you get a smooth soup. Add olive oil and refrigerate. Serve when chilled.

SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

TEST DRIVE

THE TOP

tea party IN TOWN With exotic teas, Gruyère pastries, puffs and cupcakes on the table, Uparwali Chai is a sophisticated foodie’s heaven

PHOTOGRAPHS

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

B Y S EEMA C HOWDHRY seema.c@livemint.com

·············································· ver heard of gujiya-shaped Chicken Curry Puffs? Or Melba toast with bharta (smoked aubergine with tomatoes, garlic and onions)? Last Sunday, Pamela Timms served all this and more at the fourth edition of Uparwali Chai (high tea) at the Sanskriti Kendra, New Delhi.

The party Uparwali Chai begins at 4pm. Colourful tablecloths with bright napkins, a menu printed on handmade paper, milk jugs covered with net pieces trimmed with colourful beads, rosebuds in multiple hues, and a smiling Timms greet the guests as they stroll in. The Chai starts with Timms serving pots of tea (pick from Earl Grey, Assam or Rose) or jugs of iced tea. The teapots/jugs are accompanied by Melba toast, bharta (and salmon pâté), served in steel katoris (bowls), an Indianized touch to a very English concept. Pairing Melba toast with bharta makes for a delicious starter and if topped with a spoonful of salmon pâté, which thankfully was not ultra-fine glop but a paste with body, adds a creamy texture to the combination. As you spend time getting to know your table partners, Timms lays out the remaining nine dishes on the menu and serves them on colourful cake platters and cupcake holders. The menu for the day includes Emmental, Gruyère and mozzarella pastries; tomato, mascarpone and basil tarts (the tomatoes—fresh, not sun-dried—and other toppings rest on a flaky, crispy base); cucumber sandwiches (white bread with mild mayo and thick cucumber slices without the peel); dropped scones with butter and home-made cape gooseberry jam (a real treat); florentines; chocolate cake with vanilla cheese cream icing; fresh strawberry cupcakes; and pistachio macaroons. Served in shot glasses, the cape gooseberry jam has a predominately sour taste with just a hint of sweetness. Its not-so-smooth texture is a welcome change from the jams one is used to. We asked for (and got) a second helping. Another area where Timms scores is the frosting for her cakes and cupcakes. The vanilla cream cheese icing on the chocolate cake is so well done that despite the rich chocolate flavour of the cake, the taste of vanilla comes through. The strawberry icing on the cupcakes, made from fresh strawberries, has a tart taste, and thankfully, it was not blurred by over-sweetening the frosting.

The popups In December, Timms, a food writer and a blogger who has been living in India for four and a half years, was asked by the owner of Gunpowder restaurant, New Delhi, to be guest chef for a day. Timms, who loves to bake, thought it would be fun to organize an English high tea complete with scones, cookies, chocolate cake, cucumber sandwiches and different types of tea. She was so enthused by the response to the first Uparwali Chai that she organized two more—one on the rooftop of her home and another at a friend’s place. “The concept of Uparwali Chai lends itself to a pop-up restaurant easily. Pop-ups are a popular phenomena in the US and Europe, where someone who is an enthusiastic cook organizes a restaurant evening at their house. They cook for 20-25 people and charge small amount from the guests for the food and service provided. I decided to try out that concept here for fun,” says Timms, who is now thinking of starting a small café in Delhi. Timms’ recipes have been collected from different sources. For instance, the recipe of Chicken Curry Puffs is not a “Timms original” but one she read in Susan Jung’s column in Post Magazine. It is her understanding and appreciation of Indian food that add a distinct touch to the menu. For instance, pairing bharta with Melba toast, using a gujiya mould for Chicken Curry Puffs or spicing up the filling with MDH’s curry powder are what Timms refers to as creating “British Indian food in the same mould as Chinese Indian food”. And she does not shy away from including these touches to Uparwali Chai as well. Currently, Timms charges Rs800 per adult and Rs400 for children. For the next Uparwali Chai, log on to www.eatanddust.wordpress.com

Garden party: (clockwise from top) Gujiyashaped Chicken Curry Puffs; fresh strawberry cupcakes; Pamela Timms serving guests at the Uparwali Chai at Sanskriti Kendra, New Delhi; tomato, mascarpone and basil tarts; and bharta (smoked aubergine) served in steel bowls.

L8 COVER

SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

REGIONAL CUISINE

RISE OF THE

other India If it’s homemade and authentic down to the tiniest detail, it must be available at your neighbourhood fivestar restaurant

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

B Y A MRITA R OY & P ARIZAAD K HAN ···························· or as long as she can remember, Sapna S. has been in love with food. When the Mangalore-based medical practitioner isn’t attending to patients, she is sifting through her mother-in-law’s diaries or roaming the Karnataka countryside in search of authentic recipes from her native Bunt cuisine. Settled in the region around Udupi and Mangalore, the Bunt community is particular even today about how it prepares its food. “They prefer to use grinding stones, whole spices, plenty of coconut milk, and plenty of vegetables in chicken and mutton preparations,” says Sapna. Proud of her culinary heritage, she was only too happy to help organize a festival dedicated to the cuisine at the Fire restaurant at The Park, New Delhi, late last year. “Chef Bakshish Dean, a friend of my brother-in-law, came up with the idea and they got in touch with me,” says Sapna. Tables are going local with a vengeance as upscale Indian cuisine restaurants, previously restricted to butter chicken-biryani staples, compete to serve authentic regional food from Kashmir, Kerala (Moplah), Karnataka (Bunt) and sundry other dusty stops in between. The Lalit, New Delhi, alone has organized 16 festivals of regional Indian cuisine over the last two years—from the standard-issue Punjabi, Mughlai and Awadhi to the less famous Rajasthani and Malayali to the virtually unknown, such as Himachali and Bundelkhandi. At the Flavours of India festival hosted by the hotel this February, Himachali food shared the limelight with Kashmiri and Punjabi cuisines. It was the rare occasion when the Himachali bhaturu (chapatti made of fermented dough) was not overshadowed by its deepfried Punjabi brethren. “Himachali cuisine is a confluence of three cooking traditions—Kashmiri, Dogri and Punjabi. But it’s simpler, the masalas don’t overwhelm. It’s healthier too—a lot of dahi (curd) is used,” says K.P. Singh, master chef, Indian cuisine, The Lalit. It scored in its similarity with Punjabi cuisine. “It is not radically different from the food that you get everywhere in Delhi. So even conservative eaters liked it,” Singh adds. One of the popular dishes was rajma ka madrah that looked like your regular kidney bean staple, except that the madrah was made with yogurt and cooked overnight. If familiarity was the key to the success of the Himachali

festival, an earlier one themed on Maharashtrian food played on the novelty factor. Komri chicken (a Kolhapuri dish favoured by the Marathi manoos) or baida paratha—classic comfort food made with leftover chapattis and eggs—may be standard fare in Maharashtrian homes, but in the Capital they added a dash of the unusual. Rather than dedicating a significant part of their daily itineraries to the hunt for ghar ka khana (home-made food), middle-class Indians are learning to savour local flavours while travelling. This is forcing restaurants to innovate. “Even about a decade ago, food at restaurants and food cooked at home were completely different. Chefs used to make one basic gravy with lots of onion, tomato, garam masala, cream, etc., and add it to every possible dish. Aloo gobi tasted the same as chicken masala. Now that won’t fool anyone,” says Shivanand Kain, Delhi-based senior executive chef, Jaypee Hotels. Chefs at Jaypee’s Paatra restaurants, which focus on “cuisine from Lahore to Amritsar”, are sent on research trips to the two Punjabs. A dish that appeared on the Paatra menu after one sojourn across the border is kunna gosht, which Kain learnt in Chiniot, near Lahore, in Pakistan. The authenticity of Paatra’s Amritsari chhole kulche is vouched for by Sucha Da Dhaba from the town that lends the dish its name. “This dhaba sells only chhole kulche. So we decided to get the owner over to train our staff,” says Kain. Chefs are scouring big cities and small towns for local ingredients, digging up half-forgotten recipes, cajoling wizened khansamas (chefs) to part with their secrets and even peeking into the kitchens of housewives to see what’s cooking—all with the happy result that food which was lacking in cool quotient till recently is finding itself on fivestar menus. Like the Bundelkhandi festival at The Lalit, New Delhi, in January last year. The cuisine from this semi-arid region makes up for lack of variety with its wholesome homeliness.

Pronob Barua, executive sous chef at The Lalit Temple View, Khajuraho, says north Indian ingredients such as cashew, cream or ghee play only bit roles in Bundelkhandi cuisine, which makes extensive use of pulses such as toor and various kinds of flours (lapshi, a dessert, is made with water chestnut flour). The influence of Rajasthani and Bengali cuisines is evident. Dishes such as lochai (puris similar to the Bengali luchi) or bafla (boiled and fried dumplings served with toor ki daal, like the famed Rajasthani dal baati churma) are testimony to lines blurring between culinary traditions. Food has also become a great leveller, resulting in Rajasthani nomad cuisine finding its way to a plush luxury hotel. In late 2008, the Grand Hyatt in Mumbai hosted a Khad food promotion, where the nomadic style of cooking was recreated. At Soma, Grand Hyatt’s Indian restaurant, a sandpit was heated with coal and pots of marinated chicken, mutton and quail were buried in the pit. This cooking method took 4-5 hours; chefs started cooking for dinner at 3pm. At Mumbai’s ITC Grand Central, festivals are a highlight of the hotel’s culinary calendar. A recent Bohri festival focused on the cuisine of this small Muslim community whose members are predominantly found in Mumbai and parts of Gujarat. The cuisine focuses on dry items such as “cutles” (the Bohri way of pronouncing cutlets), and dishes such as dal gosht (dal cooked with mutton to make a wholesome meal) and dabba gosht (mutton cooked in white sauce, macaroni and mild spices). The ITC Grand Central has a database of clients who are informed of their various festivals. “Our Bohri clients came in large groups. Not everything is made at home these days, so entire families came for the festival to sample their delicacies,” says executive chef Bhaskar Sankhari. The hotel also has another devoted group of followers—members of the south Indian community. Their hero at Grand Central is 80-year-old chef Rajan, a master chef who started his career 30 years ago

Lost flavours: (from top) At the ITC Grand Central, Mumbai, Kulsum Begum of the Salar Jung family cooks only recipes handed down by her ancestors; bangude masala fry served by food expert Sapna at the Bunt festival in Delhi; and chefs at Soma, Grand Hyatt, used clay pots and sand to replicate the cooking methods of the Thar.

SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

with the Chola Sheraton in Chennai. Regular guests often schedule their stay at the hotel depending on chef Rajan’s availability. He recently hosted the Amudu Padai festival, which in Tamil means spreading the nectar of the gods. It replicates the royal cuisine of the erstwhile states of Tamil Nadu. Kings used to have feasts for their courtiers or subjects and it was like prasad given by the king. “It was uncomplicated, simple food that focused on indigenous and seasonal ingredients,” says Sankhari. So a predominance of coconut, varieties of chilli, rice, ghe e an d j ag ger y w as us ed. Sankhari says residents from Matunga, a south Indian stronghold in Mumbai, flocked to the hotel for the festival. Kulbhushan Talwar, operations manager, Mosaic, Noida, says the key to Mosaic’s festivals is “homemade”—instead of trying to jazz up dishes whose hallmarks are simplicity or understatement, the chefs follow the original recipes. To ensure they get it right, Mosaic gets experts from outside. So if it was veteran Lucknavi chef Ghulam Rasool who designed the menu for its Awadhi festival in January, a Rajput lady who lives nearby was asked to help out for a festival on Rajasthani food. Her presence meant that the gatta curry, dal baati choorma, mutton bhootha or laal maans served at the festival tasted as they would in a Rajasthani home. The Rajasthani version of even a staple north Indian dish such as the kadhi-pakoda tastes very different from, say, Punjabi homes. “The Rajasthani kadhi is milder; the curd used is not as thick. With so much variety even for staple dishes, it’s necessary to have someone on board who has intimate knowledge of the food,” Mosaic’s executive chef Vipul Mathur says. Chef Naren Thimmaiah from Karavalli restaurant at the Gateway Hotel in Bangalore makes an

PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

True to original: (above) Maliyawala murg, a Bundelkhandi smoked chicken dish flavoured with mahua; and chefs Naruka (left) and Rehman ensured the authenticity of the Awadhi spread at Fire, The Park, Delhi.

effort to delve deeper into the cuisines of Kerala and Mangalore. “We have conducted three food festivals in the past year and I realize every time that people are now prepared to explore and don’t shy away from experimenting,” says Thimmaiah. The most recent 10-day food festival in February was of Syrian Christian food from central Kerala. “Through some regular customers we learnt of Suja Zachariah, a homemaker

whose friends love her cooking. So (we) invited her here to guide the food festival and she gladly agreed,” says Thimmaiah, adding that food served at the festival was not tweaked to suit palates but was presented exactly the way Zachariah would make it for her family. “On a regular day at the restaurant, we add some coconut milk to Kerala food and sometimes a little sugar to the Mangalorean food so as to not overwhelm din-

ers who are not used to spices,” he says. He points out that this was not the case at the festival, which was a huge hit mostly because of the tharaav roast (duck roast) and meen vevichathu, red fish curry in a watery spicy gravy. Thimmaiah has in the past year also organized a Mangalorean food festival and a Moplah (Kerala Muslim) festival for which he invited Umi Abdullah, who was introduced to him as a household authority on the cuisine. “Authentic” is Awadhi chef M. Rehman’s calling card too. The Lucknow-based Rehman has been researching the courtly cuisine for close to a decade and heads a team of khansamas who have been practising their craft for generations. At his insistence, Fire restaurant, where Rehman helped

organize an Awadhi food festival in February, installed a cast-iron tandoor brought from Lucknow for the breads and kebabs. “If you don’t have the right tools, you don’t get the right flavours,” he says. A philosophy Fire seems to endorse wholeheartedly. For its Naga-themed food festival some months ago, the restaurant sourced the hot Raja mirchi from Nagaland. Rehman’s point was underscored by the perfectly done parathas Fire served during its Oudhi Jahaan festival, which made an effort to focus on the less-known dishes of this regal cuisine. For instance, the sheermal, the famed sweet bread that is served in Delhi eateries such as Karim’s, is a Mughlai dish, says Rehman. “The Awadhi version isn’t sweet,” he adds. Also on offer was the gilafi kulcha which, according to Rehman, signifies the unique synthesis of a royal repast with the food the khansamas had. It’s made with two kinds of dough, a base of lean dough of curd and flour topped by a ghee-enriched dough, and was usually what the royal chefs dished up with leftovers from their master’s meal. Among Grand Central’s gems is Kulsum Begum, who belongs to the Salar Jung family—once very close to the seat of power in the princely state of Hyderabad. She only cooks from recipes handed down by her aristocratic ancestors, and this cuisine is not available anywhere else today, not even in Hyderabad. Kulsum Begum’s creations are different from Hyderabadi food—they have a touch of Andhra cuisine. There’s a large focus on seasonal produce and eating according to the seasons and weather. Kulsum Begum doesn’t remember eating vegetables or fruits out of season. “Dry fruits are hot so (they’re) eaten only in the winter, never in summer. We used to eat watermelon only in summer because it cooled your throat and chest.

Sitaphal (custard apple) was eaten only after Dussehra. Even if they appeared in the market before that, we were not allowed to eat them. Mangoes were eaten only after the first rain shower,” she reminisces. The dishes she creates today stay true to these old rules. In summer, a predominance of sour flavours and ingredients is used. Ambada (small sour leaves) and small raw mangoes were some of the seasonal ingredients she used for a recent festival which heralded the coming of summer. Another factor helping the cause of regional cuisines is the rising awareness about lifestyle diseases. The everyday food cooked in Indian homes has little in common with the ghee- and butter-laden elaborate concoctions listed in the “Indian” section of menus. So the young and the diet-conscious are trying out healthier options, giving simpler cuisines with subtle use of spices such as Bundelkhandi or Bunt an edge over their richer, more renowned cousins such as Punjabi, Mughlai or Awadhi. Mathur says chefs have been forced to adapt even these cuisines. “Mughlai and Awadhi dishes were traditionally cooked in animal fat. That’s unthinkable now. We don’t even use too much ghee these days. For our Shaam-eAwadhi festival this time, while making a kakori, chef Rasool, whom we got as a consultant from Lucknow, kept brushing away the fat. He used papaya instead to act as the binding agent.” As another concession to changing tastes, chef Rasool went easy on low-density lipoprotein (LDL)-rich ingredients such as cashews and substituted them with the healthier alternatives of almonds and curd. With inputs from Pavitra Jayaraman. amrita.r@livemint.com

L10 COVER

COVER L11

SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

ED JONES/AFP

Star attraction: Chef Pui Makwai; and his Tim Ho Wun restaurant in Hong Kong.

GASTRONOMY

THE HEART OF

dimsum B Y A MY M A ···························· ven after 35 years of practice, I still get burned every day,” chuckles Pui Mak-wai. The chef stretches out both palms to reveal the bright-red steam burns he suffered earlier that morning. He moves his hands with a surgeon-like dexterity, but he uses them for a different purpose: to make dim sum. These small bites have been part of China’s dining culture since the Warring States era (475-221 BC). In modern times, they are customarily consumed in tea houses with a cup of tea—the Cantonese term for eating dim sum is yum cha, literally “drinking tea”. But this Chinese brunch-time ritual, which often involves peering into steaming pushcarts in search of a favourite dumpling, now happens even in the far reaches of the world. Yet few are aware that making dim sum is a serious art that can take decades—some say a lifetime—to master. The tapas-size dishes are often dismissed as casual fare, minor-league items that pale beside the more elaborate Chinese dishes that come from the main kitchen. And dimsum chefs go largely unacknowledged. That is, until recently. Last October, chef Pui received a Michelin star—his first and the first ever awarded to a restaurant that serves only dim sum. His 28-seat Tim Ho Wun (Cantonese for “add good luck”) sits in a discreet alley in Kowloon’s Mongkok District and is ultra modest. Service is brisk and casual; tables are set with paper place mats and plastic tea cups. By all appearances, it seems chef Pui won solely on the merits of his dishes. It was a triumph for dim-sum chefs everywhere. Chef Pui, 46, and three other dim-sum masters hold court in their kitchens in Hong Kong, where the world’s best dim

sum is served. There’s Wong Kan-sing, 59, head dim-sum chef of the storied Lin Heung Teahouse, Hong Kong’s oldest dim-sum restaurant, in business since 1923; Ng Poon-lap, 68, dim-sum chef of the legendary Fook Lam Moon restaurant, the only eatery left in Hong Kong that makes dim sum to order; and Lau Chi-man, 55, dim-sum chef of Man Wah restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong hotel. They are acclaimed by food critics to be among the top in their field. These men are part of an esteemed generation of chefs—survivors of a cluster of trainees who entered the field in the 1970s and 1980s, as dimsum restaurants boomed amid rising prosperity in Hong Kong. Their stories illuminate the rarefied world of their craft, the lengthy process required to become a true master, and why their generation might be the last of its kind. “We do a hard job that we wouldn’t wish for any of our own children to inherit,” says chef Wong, the Lin Heung Teahouse dim-sum master. When he started 30 years ago, he worked 16-hour shifts for HK$10 a day (around Rs58 now). Even these days, starting chefs make at most HK$50 an hour, barely enough to live on. “The figures simply don’t work out any more. You can’t pay people enough to make them do what we do.” Indeed, in most dim-sum kitchens today, the chef is 40 or older, and the rest of the staff is starting to grey. The workforce has shrunk too: Dim-sum crews numbered in the 20s and 30s in the 1990s; today, they’re down to five or six. The fact is, fewer young cooks are choosing the dim-sum track: It requires living what chef Pui calls a “reverse life”—waking up at 3am and working until 5pm every day—and there are better, cushier options (in other non-dim-

The firstever Michelin star for a dimsum restaurant recognizes an art that takes a lifetime to master

sum kitchens, the morning shift starts at 8am; the night shift starts at noon). When chef Pui, whose father worked in a shipyard, started out 31 years ago at the age of 15, “getting two hot meals a day was reason enough to go work in the kitchen”, he says. Free housing was another. Back in the 1970s, many dimsum cooks were offered housing in dormitories owned by the larger tea houses. “It was an open floor, with cots lined up on both sides. Not much at all, but for a young kid, this was a chance to live in the heart of the city and move out of his parents’ house,” recalls Lin Heung Teahouse’s Wong. “The worst part about dorm life was the wake-up call. After the first two warnings, you get a bucket of cold water thrown over your head.” The tea house dorms closed in the 1990s. The manual labour involved in this kind of restaurant-scale cooking requires brute strength: cutting large slabs of meat, carrying heavy stacks of filled bamboo baskets and working with cast-iron woks that weigh 10kg. Few women sign up. With smaller crews, many restaurants today serve pre-packaged, frozen dim sum and a multitude of chefs now manage factories instead of kitchens. From a distance, the factorymade bites are indistinguishable from the handmade ones. But it’s there: “It’s hard to explain the difference,” says Chan Chun-hung. “You can’t taste the heart in it,” adds Chan, the head dim-sum instructor for the Chinese Cuisine Training Institute in Hong Kong. Heart, it seems, is what dim sum—which literally means “touch the heart” in Cantonese—is all about. Hong Kong food writer Walter Kei offers one of the myths surrounding its origins: A tale of a general during a war in northern China. With just a little bit of cake left

for rations, the general divided it into tiny bits to share with his men as a sign of appreciation. “It was this gesture—yat dim dum sum (“a little touch of my heart”)—that first gave dim sum its name,” says Kei. There are two kinds of dim sum, he says. Northernstyle—typically offered as small side dishes—consists mostly of large buns filled with sweet redbean fillings and items such as pot stickers and soup dumplings. Southern-style, the type that’s popular today, features more meat and vegetables. Earlier, incarnations of the dumplings were larger, starchier and cruder. But in recent decades, the bites have gotten smaller: “The coolies (the labourers who were once the key dim-sum market) needed something they could grab quickly,” says Kei. Today, the more filling dim sum, such as gai kou dai bao (chicken meatball over a large white bun), are dinosaurs on the menu. The tradition of making dim sum is not in danger of dying, says chef Ng, the dim-sum master at Fook Lam Moon: “There will always be people who want to eat it, so there will always be people willing to make it.” But the craftsmanship is slipping. “These days, five or six years with a culinary degree is enough to land a position as a head dim-sum chef in a restaurant,” says Chan, the instructor. By contrast, a dim-sum trainee of the 1970s could expect to spend more than 30 years climbing to the top (they started as young as 10). The first three years were a sort of initiation that weeded out the weak. Trainees slogged as lang zai, or busboys, washing stubborn stains from chefs’ aprons and cleaning as many as 2,500 bamboo steamers a day. Only after impressing the master chef with such sweaty toil could a busboy graduate to the next level—the prep station. PHOTOGRAPHS

CHRISTIE JOHNSTON/WSJ

It’s an art: (from left) Ng Poonlap prepares cheung fan, or riceflour rolls, at the legendary Fook Lam Moon restaurant; filling a har gao (shrimp dumpling); folding it; a har gao with 12 or more creases at the seam is deemed the work of a master.

A traditional dim-sum kitchen has six stations: Prep, cheung fan (a roll made of a thin sheet of rice-flour batter, steamed and then rolled up into long tubes, often filled with meats), steamers, deep-fryers, filling, and the last, the folding station, where the flour-dough skin of a dimsum dumpling is “folded” over the filling. Only when a trainee

shrimp,” he recalls. “Turn the water faucet on too low, and you haven’t gotten all the grit out; another slap.” The next station is where cheung fan, the thin, transparent rice-flour rolls, are made. The process is called lai, or pulling: A damp towel is placed over a hot metal surface, a thin layer of rice-flour batter is spread on top and when the translucent sheet turns opaque—a signal it is done, which happens within seconds—the burning-hot cloth must be ripped away from the riceflour sheet in a quick pulling motion. At the steaming station, where 20-30 different bamboo baskets cook at a time, a little mental acuity is required. “It (takes) 6-7 minutes SAMANTHA SIN/WSJ to cook each steamer depending on the size has fully mastered a station can and type of dim sum, and the he advance to the next. top steamers need to be rotated At the prep station of a dim- with the bottom to ensure even sum kitchen, where ingredients cooking,” says chef Ng. “Memare cleaned and cut, freshness is ory, memory, memory—you key. Leftovers are tossed out at must keep track.” Cooks at the the end of the day. Details mat- frying station, where blistering ter, says chef Ng. “Turn the water burns from the splattering oil faucet on too high, and you’d get a r e g u a r a n t e e d , h a v e l i t t l e slapped on the hand for rinsing room for error. “There’s no savaway the natural flavour of the ing an item that is overfried,”

says chef Ng. “One blink too late, and the golden-brown spring rolls are darker on one side than the other.” Finally, the filling and folding stations: Only the most promising cooks make it here; the two at these stations are considered second-in-command to the head chef. And both play an important role in the final product: “The way a dim sum is folded is the first impression it gives to the diner. But the filling inside the dim sum—that’s the lasting taste that keeps them coming back,” says Chan. At the filling station, cooks learn that the foreleg of the pig is used for xiao long bao (soupfilled “little dragon” dumplings) and upper leg for the siu mai (pork dumplings). They figure out how to measure different quantities of seasonings without a scale. And they learn to blend ingredients by folding in a circular motion so the filling doesn’t get overworked. There’s a careful choreography to the work at the folding station, or on ban (“on the board”). This is where the skins of wheat or rice flour are made and folded, and only the “on board” chef knows how to do it properly. Even the amount of water to add to the mixture is a matter requiring judgement; it varies based on the humidity and with every newly opened bag of flour (because the flour varies from bag to bag). Using two wooden rolling pins, one slightly thinner than the other, and a wooden paddle, the chefs form intricate shapes—flowers, rabbits, crescents. The Mandarin Oriental’s chef Lau can fashion a miniature masterpiece in 10-15 seconds. “The rest of the kitchen is just cooks, but the one folding

the dim sum, well, he is an artist,” he says. There is a price to pay for mistakes. A burst dumpling is considered the worst of all and the maker’s punishment is to eat every one. “For a newcomer, this could easily be 20 or 30 cha xiu baos (barbecue-pork buns) the size of your fist,” says Chan. “I remember sitting in the corner, eating all my blundered pieces until I vomited.” Today’s chefs learn to make the core dim-sum pieces, such as siu mai (pork dumplings), cheung fan (rice-flour rolls), cha xiu bao, gnau yok yuen (beef meatballs), chuen guen (spring rolls), pai guat (spare ribs), feng zao (braised chicken feet) and lo bat gou (turnip cakes). But one, in particular, is considered a true test of a chef’s skill and is often called the “final exam” of dim-sum cooking: har gao (shrimp dumplings). The telltale sign of a perfect har gao lies in the number of creases along the edge where the riceflour skin seals together: 12 or more is deemed the work of a master. The har gao skins are harder to work with than wheatflour skins because they are stickier and break easily. To prepare a skin for folding, dim-sum chefs use the flat part of the Chinese kitchen knife to smack it against the table and flatten it so that it is paper-thin. “There’s a four-word idiom, yi hok, nan jin, which translates to ‘easy to learn, hard to perfect,’ that summarizes dim-sum making,” says chef Lau. In recent years, the hazing has relaxed and the path to promotion has accelerated. Chefs now multitask on multiple stations and seldom gain the old degree of command over any of them. With the condensed training process, something else is lost

too. “There was the part of the training where you learned the actual techniques,” says chef Lau. “And there was another part where you earned the chef’s trust.” Without that, many chefs are unwilling to pass on their secrets, for fear a pupil will prove undeserving—botching the recipe, or even worse, sharing it with a competitor. Today’s dim-sum masters acquired their recipes through hard work and keep them safely guarded. Chef Wong of Lin Heung Teahouse can make at least 600 different dim-sum items from memory. Chef Lau’s speciality is his signature “96-layer puff pastry”, the recipe for which he has never shared. Real dim-sum connoisseurs are willing to wait for the good stuff. Chef Pui’s Tim Ho Wun restaurant has a perennial waiting list and on any given day, there’s a line outside Lin Heung Teahouse. The tea house, which generates an average of about $6,250 (around Rs2.8 lakh) daily from dim-sum sales alone, seats 200 diners, but chef Wong insists it can fit up to 700 because with dim sum, “if someone comes in, you scoot over”. Inside the restaurant, nestled between the clusters of greyhaired regulars, a group of photo-snapping tourists ask for English menus. They are reminders that times are different now, and for a moment, chef Wong seems wistful. But then he laughs. “There’s still a few more years of work left in these old hands yet,” he says, sliding over a bamboo steamer filled with dumplings. Amy Ma is a writer based in Hong Kong. Write to wsj@livemint.com

L12

SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

THE

last supper W

hen Madhu Menon, 34, started Shiok, a Far Eastern cuisine restaurant, and Moss, a lounge bar, in 2004, he quit his day job as a software engineer in an online media company for the love of food and cooking. Confident that the quality of his food would pull him through, he began with his father as his primary investor. Within a year, Shiok had collected a loyal clientele, mostly through word of mouth. But the recent slowdown hit the restaurant business hard as people trimmed “extras” from their household budgets. “In the past year, during the course of the recession and the terror attacks, there has been a huge slump. I looked for investors for three months, didn’t find any and decided to shut down,” says Menon, who ended operations at the end of the fiscal year on 31 March. Industry experts say many restaurateurs in the city are feeling the heat. “The past year has been a tough one for entrepreneurs in the industry. Several of them opened cafés and diners with stars in their eyes, but pulling through the recession requires very solid financial backing.” says Satish Kumar, COO, MCorp Hospitality Solu-

The story of Madhu Menon, a former software engineer who turned restaurateur with Shiok—and what we learn from it about entrepreneurship in lean times

tions Pvt. Ltd, a Bangalore-based restaurant consulting firm. Kumar’s consulting firm has received at least 10 requests in the past year from restaurant owners asking to be connected with interested buyers, and the numbers are only increasing. On the same day that Shiok shut down, another six-year-old restaurant in central Bangalore also closed operations. The owner spoke to Lounge on condition of anonymity: “We were doing fairly well when we started and even broke even in two years. But in the past year it has been terrible. It’s not that people stopped eating out during the slowdown, but they didn’t step into any place they suspected might be expensive,” he says, adding that starting a 60-seat mid-priced restaurant with the current real estate, commodity and labour prices costs at least Rs50 lakh. “Of which one must allot at least 40% for sustenance during the first couple of years because getting a steady stream of customers takes that much time, so you need money to pump in,” he says, stressing that although opening a restaurant might strike entrepreneurs as a romantic idea,

FIRST PERSON | MADHU MENON

There is no time to sit around moping and wallowing in selfpity. To quote Jesse Ventura from the movie Predator, “I ain’t got time to bleed!” 11am: The mobile phone is being abused. SMSs come in—“Will you be there at lunch? We plan to drop in”, “Madhu, I have still not got the mail with the equipment prices”, “Can I come around 2 to check out the furniture?” And I have to make several calls to ensure we’re ready for the big bash. The stores guy tells me he couldn’t get any new crabs today. The beef supplier hasn’t been able to deliver fresh supplies PHOTOGRAPHS

HEMANT MISHRA/MINT

hospitality is a brutal business. The restaurateur is currently negotiating a price with prospective buyers. Menon, on the other hand, couldn’t wait till he found a buyer. “I wish my pockets were deeper,” he says. “People come to me (and) ask me to give them a 30-minute crash course on how to start a restaurant. How can I tell them what I have learnt in six years? Besides, right now I’d only recommend that get into the business only if you really know what you are doing.” Manoj Kunisseri, CEO, MCorp, agrees. “It is really important for entrepreneurs to do solid market research before they begin. Most of them start restaurants because they like a particular cuisine. Also, in a city like Bangalore, location is key. You must be in a high footfall place, have parking, look pleasant...everything,” he says, adding that despite all that luck is an important factor in this fickle business. Menon chronicled the last day of Shiok for Lounge in a candid, heartfelt piece. Pavitra Jayaraman pavitra.j@livemint.com

BRAVEHEART’S BRAVE FACE

The restaurateur on the day he closed Shiok—from preparing for the last party and paying his staff to the time the music actually stopped wake up and the sun is shining bright. 9.30am? Ouch. That wasn’t supposed to happen. There’s so much to do today. Closing a restaurant isn’t a routine affair. Unlike other days, I need to make sure that not only do we have enough food to feed all the people expected today, but that we don’t have so much that it will be wasted the next day. Any other day, we would have just used the stock for the next day. There are also suppliers whose payments have to be taken care of, staff salaries, people who want to buy your equipment and furnishings. And then there’s this article to write. Feels like writing your own baby’s obituary—bloody hard. How am I going to juggle this all today? But first, I need to ensure that there will be enough people visiting today. This is their last chance to have our food, and if I’m going to go out, it sure as hell will be with a bang, not a whimper. So at around 10am, I start posting on Facebook and Twitter, asking people to join us for one last party. It’s a good deal—Rs499 for all the booze you can drink; I have liquor stock to clear. Soon, the Twitter responses start flooding in—people wishing me luck, assuring me that I will get through this, and expressing regret that they can’t make it.

PREMSHREE PILLAI

because of political issues. What luck! Now I need to call fellow restaurant owners, talk to other suppliers, do anything I can to make sure our specialities are available. 4pm: The afternoon is spent in customer service, as friends and old customers come in to see me and lunch at Shiok. I have to be diplomatic and try to spend some time with each of them—not an easy task when you have five tables to juggle. Once again, the same questions are asked and answered wi t ho ut ro lli ng m y e ye s. In between all this, I manage to sign cheques, sales tax forms, and do lots of other minor things. 5pm: I only just got home for a bit before the dinner shift. I have an article to finish, letters of recommendation to write, and (I have to) make a list of equipment and their selling prices. 7pm: I have just managed to finish part 1 of this piece, respond to a few emails, and take a short nap. Oh well, the other stuff will have to wait. My cocktail lounge is starting to get guests early. We have a live act tonight. And there’s the cocktail package. Oh, and the minor detail of us closing. Swansong: Menon (in the maroon shirt) surrounded by friends and patrons on the last day.

We’ll probably have enough guests to fill the place tonight. 9pm: I have lots of familiar faces. There’s the married couple who have been coming regularly for several years. They had their first date at Shiok. He proposed to her at my restaurant after a five-course meal that I had made just for them. I am so happy to see them, but I feel almost dead inside. I hope I’m not suppressing emotions that will come out in some weird way later. Some friends are telling me how they wish they had come more often, others gush about the food and ask me to set up a smaller place somewhere else. Hindsight is always 20-20, isn’t it? But I’m happy for the hugs. 10.30pm: Everyone is nice and happy now. The free-flowing alcohol and the talented singer make a heady combination. People are singing along, making song requests, dancing even. There’s no time to be sad. This is what I want to remember. This is the way I want to be remembered. All this is just peachy till 11.30 rolls in, and I have to enforce Bangalore’s Taliban-like 11.30 nightlife deadline and get people to leave before the cops come knocking on our door instead of fighting crime. The music is no longer playing; people are winding up and paying their bills for one last time. 12am: The party is over. And as everyone heads out, they hug me or shake my hand, and each one tells me how great it was while it lasted. It’s hard to hear it so much without it affecting you, and I feel my eyes cloud up as I stare vacantly into space for a couple of minutes. “Are you OK, Madhu?” I hear from someone. I resist the impulse to lash out with an angry “what do you think?” and just shake my head instead. I look around, think of the past six years, the people I’ve fed and the good times we’ve had. There is no point in regrets. Lights out for the final time. I’ll have to cling to the happy memories, and use the others as life’s learning experiences. It’s time to move on. Write to lounge@livemint.com

We tracked Menon’s Twitter feed this past fortnight—from the announcement of Shiok’s closing to its last big bash

madmanweb

Twitter bio: Chef/owner of fine dining southeast Asian restaurant called Shiok and cocktail lounge called Moss, in Bangalore, http://shiokfood.com and http://mosslounge.com Serious announcement: My restaurant, Shiok and Moss Lounge, will close on 31 March, 2010. FAQ here: http://bit.ly/cCFPjQ (Pls tell friends). 10:47 PM 18 March

No people, it’s not a damn April Fools joke. It’s not even April 1 for cryin’ out loud. 11:19 PM 18 March

I should clarify: Shiok is closing forever. We’re not moving anywhere else either. You have 10 days to try our food one last time. 7:33 PM 21 March

Touched by all the people dropping in at @shiokmoss for final meals there and saying hello. Thank you all so much. 8:19 PM 22 March

Restaurant is closing down in a week’s time. Want to be there every day to meet old customers and show support to my staff. 8:57 AM 25 March

You know what they say about paradigms... shift happens. 5:48 PM 27 March

Keeping a smiling face at work and hiding true emotions is getting harder every day as Dday approaches. 8:21 AM 28 March

What a day! Did 3x normal Mon biz thanks to oldtimers. Did a Gordon Ramsay in the kitchen. Ran out of beef but got saved by @chefmanjit 11:14 AM 29 March

I wonder how long my fakesmiling will hold up before I let the mask drop. Oh well, another 2 days... 9:59 PM 29 March

Feeling miserable. This is not going to be an easy day to get through. 8:20 PM 30 March

But I will make drunken beef, black pepper crab, and red curry till my hands fall off! 10:10 AM, 31 March

Going out with a bang! Party at Moss tonight with live music. Rs 499: unlimited domestic spirits & cocktails. Come over! (Pls RT) 11.00 AM, 31 March

Bugger, the Universe hates me. Have not been able to get fresh crabs today :( 12.00 PM, 31 March

This is the way the world ends: Not with a whimper but with a bang 2.00 AM, 31 March

The lights are out. The last ever portion of drunken beef has been sent. 6 years, 200000+ people fed. Stick a fork in her, she’s done 2.00 AM, 31 March

Updated twitter bio. Ha! 3.00 AM, 31 March

New Twitter bio: Unemployed dude. Formerly, Chef/owner of fine dining southeast Asian restaurant called Shiok and cocktail lounge called Moss, in Bangalore.

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010

L13

Travel DK BHASKAR

AUGUSTA

Masters league: The Augusta National Golf Club.

In Tiger’s lair There is no better theatre for golf’s enfant terrible to stage a comeback than at the Masters beginning Monday B Y D .K . B HASKAR ···························· ess than 800 sq. km across, the city of Augusta, Georgia, has one of the longest runways in the US, capable of accommodating even a Boeing 777, the world’s largest twinjet. Come April, though, and it is private jets that circle over the city, rudder to cockpit. Long before Tiger Woods confirmed his comeback to golf late in March, his loyalists were certain that the scandal-hit genius would play at Augusta. “Ever since his win here in 1997, Tiger has raised the stakes for the Masters. He will definitely play this year too,” Frank Christian, photographic historian of the Augusta National Golf Club (ANGC) and author of Augusta National & the Masters, told me way back in February. What made him so sure? Christian explained the myth behind Augusta: “It is the only tournament among the four in the championship circuit—the others being The Open in Britain, the US Open and the PGA, also in the US—which is held on the same course, it is never rotated. Also, it’s strictly an invitational tournament, where amateurs are also invited to participate.” The tennis equivalent would be

Wimbledon and, for football, the FA Cup final at Wembley. Yet, unlike other top sporting events, there is never a single banner or billboard advertising the Masters, either inside or outside the course. So exclusive are the grounds that for 51 weeks of the year, admission is restricted to those with a series badge, frequently handed down from one generation to the next with the same regard as heirloom jewellery or iconic art. With members including Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, among other luminaries—though ANGC still controversially avoids women—Masters week comes with its own networking cachet. No wonder, then, that despite the recession, practice-round tickets—available only in limited numbers on advance application—are precious commodities at $250 (around Rs11,200) for the first three days of the week. For the actual playing days (Thursday through Sunday), only club members, employees, community leaders and volunteers are eligible for entry badges: Though each badge, covering all four days, costs just $100, they resell for anywhere up to $15,000. Memorabilia sold during the week is said to be valued at more than $50 million—but be warned, the pimento cheese

GRAPHIC

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

spread recipe remains priceless. The first championship of the year is particularly well-timed with the onset of spring, just as the azaleas burst forth in all their colourful fury and the graceful dogwoods, crab apples and magnolias dotting the Alister MacKenzie-designed course bend down under the weight of their blooms. Golf purists say that even the highest definition television set can’t cap-

ture the splendour of the Augusta National. But for the players, the overwhelming beauty is secondary to the challenges that towering pines, broad fairways, dramatic elevation changes and extremely fast greens throw up. “It rewards the good shots and punishes the bad ones, and tests the best golfing action,” says Jeff Reuter, golf manager at the nearby Jones Creek Golf Club.

Nowhere more so than at the three holes in the back-nine strung together by the coils of Rae’s Creek, famously called the Amen Corner (the 11th, 12th and 13th holes), after the 1930s jazz number Shoutin’ in that Amen Corner. “This is where many champions are made and destroyed,” Jack Nicklaus, six-times Masters champion, once told my friend Christian in conversation. Be that as it may, the Masters certainly do define Augusta, often in curious ways. For much of the year, the golf course lurks inconspicuously behind the creepers on the barbed wire fence bordering Washington Road. Just ahead of the tournament, locals spruce up their homes and pack their bags. “My husband and I bought ourselves a vacation in Paris by renting our house for Masters week,” grins Mary Ann Grant, who lives a few blocks away from the golf course. In the gated community of

West Lake, a few kilometres away, a week’s rent for a four-bedroom house is upward of $20,000. Unimaginable back in 1736, when British colonizer James Oglethorpe founded the city as Georgia’s second town. Over the years, it grew into a bustling trade centre, dealing chiefly in cotton. Interestingly, the site of the present golf course was once a 365-acre indigo plantation: The blue dye was much in demand for denim. As inextricable to the city’s history is Augusta’s association with James Brown (1933-2006), who captured the region’s rhythm in his blues and soul music and feverish dancing. Away from the hallowed fairways, close to the Savannah river, his statue stands tall, looking Oglethorpe’s statue right in the eye. “It was here that he polished shoes and danced on the streets for change, and it was here (that) he rose to capture the world like no one before and after,” says Amy Christian, who toured with him for 13 years. Brown died four years ago, but his funk style of music—widely regarded to be a foundation for hip hop—sold millions of records and infused new energy into the African-American population that dominates this part of the US. In Augusta, his is the only name that rivals the Masters. Write to lounge@livemint.com CHILDFRIENDLY RATING

If your children are interested in golf, this is a mustdo.

L14

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010

Books SONGS OF BLOOD AND SWORD | FATIMA BHUTTO

CULT FICTION

In the name of the father

R. SUKUMAR

BACK TO THE BEGINNING

DANIEL ACKER/BLOOMBERG

A detailed, but partisan—and often vengeful—portrait of murder and manipulation in the Bhutto family

B Y C HANDRAHAS C HOUDHURY ···························· f all the stories available to human beings, none is as instantly fascinating as that of a powerful family riven down the middle, feuding in public view and throwing the entire world out of shape with its might. This storyline is central to our epics, and is often reprised by contemporary events, especially in feudal societies. In such cases, the testimony of any one participant inevitably turns the story into one of good versus evil—the stakes are too high for it to be anything else, but the thrill of receiving the inside story more than compensates for the lack of detachment in perspective. Just such a story—longawaited since the first metaphorical gunshots were fired in recent years—is served up by Songs of Blood and Sword, 28-year-old Fatima Bhutto’s angry and sometimes incoherent retelling of the macabre lives and internecine warrings of the first family of Pakistani politics, the Bhuttos of Sindh. Bhutto is best-known as the estranged niece of Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2008 shortly after her return to Pakistan after several years in exile. What she would like to be known as, however, is the daughter of the older of Benazir’s two brothers, Murtaza, who was himself estranged from his sister and was shot dead in an encounter with the police in 1996, while Benazir’s government was in power. Her book is, among other things, an attempt to claim for her late father the legacy of her grandfather Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the founder of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) now run by Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir’s controversial husband, who appears to be keeping the seat warm for Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Fatima’s cousin. In Fatima’s icy view, it is herself and her brother and her cousin, and not the children of Benazir, who are “the only Bhuttos remaining”. Clearly, the fighting is not over yet. Meanwhile, the story of the past goes something like this in Fatima’s often laboured telling. In the arid political landscape and frequent periods of military rule in the newly formed state of Pakistan, one figure stood out for his inherent nobility of mind, nationalistic fervour, commitment to democracy, and intelligence: Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, scion of one of feudal Pakistan’s most prominent families and head of its government from 1971 to 1977. This portrait itself requires many dodges around some of the more unsavoury actions of Zulfiqar, but in this Fatima has a precedent: Reconciliation, the book published posthumously in 2008 by her own aunt Benazir, who was just as keen to claim Zulfiqar’s legacy. Indeed, as Fatima herself says, many in her own circle of family and

RIZWAN TABASSUM/AFP

Whistleblower: In this book, Benazir isn’t just a suave Oxford graduate; and (left) the author.

friends have noted the resemblance between herself and her headstrong aunt, which makes her flaming hatred of Benazir all the more ironical and compelling. When Zulfiqar was unseated by a coup by General Zia-ulHaq in 1977 and later executed, his sons Murtaza and Shahnawaz fled Pakistan and set up an insurgent movement, AlZulfiqar, in Kabul, while Benazir, his eldest child, and Nusrat, his wife, were kept under house arrest by Zia but slowly managed to revive the party in the 1980s. Shahnawaz was mysteriously found dead in 1985—an event in which Fatima sees the hand of her aunt (throughout the book, no conspiracy theory is ever thought too outrageous to be discounted, and much of the testimony dredged up by Fatima’s research is clearly partisan). Murtaza, meanwhile, remained in exile—allegedly because Benazir felt threatened by him—even as his sister came to power as Pakistan’s youngest prime minister in 1988, following Zia’s death in a plane crash. Against his sister’s wishes, Murtaza returned to Pakistan in 1993, launching a splinter faction of the party and running for parliament himself and winning. His assassination in 1996—this is where Fatima’s evidence is strongest—was clearly a set-up, with Benazir

Songs of Blood and Sword: Penguin, 470 pages, Rs699. and Zardari the most likely ringleaders of the operation. For Fatima, Murtaza Bhutto was the real legatee of Zulfiqar’s ideas on Islam, democracy, socialism, foreign policy and governance, while his feted sister Benazir was actually a shrewish and corrupt manipulator who would do anything for power and wealth, and who turned the party into a personality cult. A long section of the book is devoted to Murtaza’s life and legacy, but the effect is often that of being forced through every photograph of a family album. Ingenious explanations are devised for every one of Murtaza’s controversial actions, such as this three-pronged analysis of the hijacking of a PIA plane by Al-Zulfiqar in 1981. Murtaza

knew nothing about it until it was done, claims Fatima; it was Zia’s government which staged the hijack as a propaganda move against Al-Zulfiqar; further, it was Benazir who got Murtaza into trouble by exulting and speaking intemperately about the hijack. One understands Fatima’s love and devotion for her father, and her courage in launching a no holds barred attack on Zardari and others in power in Pakistan today is certainly to be admired. But her narration is often so partisan, and her language so loaded, that it asks to be taken with more than a pinch of salt. Further, Fatima’s book never seriously challenges the basic assumption that has been the ruination of democratic politics in Pakistan: the idea that political parties are the fiefdoms of families. There is a lot of vengefulness in the book, but very little by way of a larger vision. The sense of her story is that a Bhutto deserved to be in charge of the PPP, only that it was the wrong Bhutto, and that her father was cheated of his due. Much of her contempt for Zardari appears to derive from the fact that he was a low-born, unlike the Bhuttos. She recounts, entirely unselfconsciously, the story that her grandfather Zulfiqar had disliked Zardari’s father Hakim even though Hakim was a PPP man, and that “he humiliated him and even had him thrashed on occasion”, as if this reveals something about Hakim’s inferiority and not about Zulfiqar’s feudal arrogance. A more realistic picture of the Bhutto family and all the other actors implicated in the story is formed by reading against the grain of this black-and-white reconstruction of the past, not with it. Chandrahas Choudhury is the author of Arzee the Dwarf. Write to lounge@livemint.com IN SIX WORDS Family intrigue, without insight on Pakistan

have always liked The Bible. Before some comic-loving-right-wing-type decides to take offence at this statement, I also like the Hindu myths. And Greek ones. The fact that I had actually read the King James version of the good book when I was still in school stood me in good stead through my quizzing years. You’d be surprised at the extent to which quiz-setters depend on The Bible. And so, I was thrilled to hear, late last year, that R. Crumb, one of my favourite comic-book writers, had produced his version of The Book of Genesis. A little digression may be in order here. Crumb must be a familiar name to regular readers of The New Yorker. He is also the author of classics such as American Splendor and The Quitter that have made their appearance previously in this column. Crumb has a wry sense of humour and a wonderful style of drawing, one that would have probably fit into MAD magazine at its pomp (and I mean this as a compliment). Now, back to the book. I say produced and not created or written because Crumb hasn’t written The Book of Genesis. Instead, what he offers is, as the jacket blurb helpfully tells us, a “literal” graphical “interpretation assembled primarily from the translations of Robert Alter and the King James version”. So, the story, the plot, even the text, isn’t Crumb’s. Everything else though is, including, most probably, the blurbs on the cover. One says, “All 50 Chapters”. Another says, “The First Book of The Bible Graphically Depicted! Nothing Left Out”. And the third says, “Adult supervision recommended for minors”. That’s probably because there is a lot of nudity, violence and sex in the book. Then, Crumb didn’t put these in. I enjoyed Crumb’s book—I must confess that this was one graphic novel I didn’t really read in a single sitting—for several reasons. His detailing—and this is as technical a comment on illustrations as you’re likely to find in Cult Fiction—is immaculate. And one can see that he has spent time and effort to interpret and understand Genesis. Although Crumb says in his introduction that he “approached” his five-year project as a “straight illustration job”, it is evident that The Book of Genesis is more than that. I may still pick American Splendor as Crumb’s best work, but if someone were to ask me to pick his most representative work, I’d choose The Book of Genesis. R. Sukumar is editor, Mint. Write to him at cultfiction@livemint.com

Divine inspiration: Crumb’s style could fit right into MAD magazine.

FREE VERSE | MANAS CHAKRAVARTY

Fever Fever makes you lose control. Your dreams break into little pieces Chasing one another madly beneath closed eyelids. Edges dissolve, images blur, Voices take a long time to penetrate the fog That wraps tightly around your head and presses upon your chest, Bringing down your defences. But in this too is a lazy pleasure. Let go, surrender, stop trying to make sense of it all. Lie back. Enjoy your fever. Manas Chakravarty is consulting editor, Mint. manas.c@livemint.com

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010

L15

Culture COURTESY SHEBA CHHACHHI,

ART

Aesthetics for mall rats Works of public art by Indian and foreign artists will vie for the attention of mallgoers B Y H IMANSHU B HAGAT himanshu.b@livemint.com

···························· hile they sip their lattes at the Select Citywalk mall over the coming week and soak in its First Worldish ambience, some Delhiites are bound to ponder over that ageold question—what is art? Such reflections are likely to be prompted by the works of public art that will be on display within the mall’s capacious, air-cooled confines—among other things, there will be a Passenger Propelled Rickshaw (PPR) on display, and those who visit the mall’s washrooms will hear a recording of housewives discussing home remedies for sundry ailments. Shoppers can also view some cut-

ting-edge video art—three short, arresting films made by Delhibased artists which, in the elliptical fashion that is the hallmark of contemporary art, allude to the crisis of man-made environmental degradation. As it happens, the source of these works lies right across the road from the shopping mall— the Khoj artists studio, situated in a dusty bylane of the Khirkee “urban village” (that is, a village that over time has been swallowed whole by the city). Since it was established in 1997, the Khoj International Artists’ Association has been promoting alternative and experimental art forms such as new media, performance art, sound installations and public art.

Their forthcoming show, titled In Context: Public.Art.Ecology, will showcase artworks that have emerged from a six-week residency programme for artists from India and overseas, along with some other existing works such as the videos, related to the theme of environment. Besides Select Citywalk mall, the works will also be on display at the Khoj studio and a couple of other locations in the city. “We saw these huge malls come up in front of our eyes,” says Pooja Sood, director of Khoj. “And we saw what it did to the groundwater levels here, to the traffic...” It would appear then that by installing artworks in the mall, Sood is taking the battle to the enemy. But she sounds more resigned than combative (“It’s there; you can’t wish it away”), and as excited as any shop owner to get a captive audience of affluent mall goers. “The new public spends its Saturdays and Sundays there,” she says. “It is possible to talk about social issues, about consumption, to them... Even if they get talking and some cross the road (over to the Khoj studio in Khirkee) and see how the other 90% lives, it will be a good thing.” One of the baits for mall-goers will be the PPR. When artists Sylvia Winkler and Stephan Köperl arrived in Delhi from Stuttgart, Germany, for the residency programme, their reaction on seeing

MUSIC MATTERS

SHUBHA MUDGAL

EPHEMERAL SOUNDS

hen you go through a book like Bombay Then Mumbai Now, with its lovingly researched and well-informed writing and beautifully curated images that offer a visual history of the city, its landmarks and the changing cityscape, you can’t help wondering what Bombay must have sounded like in yesteryear. What were the sounds you heard on the streets of Bombay decades ago and what do you hear now? Or, for that matter, what did other cities and towns and villages sound like decades ago? What kind of birds did you hear in the city earlier? And is it possible to hear birds even now in cities where never-ending streams of traffic rush past, whooshing away terribly? Did the street vendors sound any different then? And why don’t we hear street vendors any more? How will we tell our kids about the chanaa jor garam walas or the kulfi vendor who sang out kulfi malai keeeeeeeeeeeee in a wheezy tenor during my childhood in Allahabad? They seem to have vanished into the gaping maws of the earth as construction work to erect flyovers and malls leaves cities scarred and pockmarked before they are supposedly given makeovers. That’s exactly why NaaD Media and its website www.naadmedia.org/ naad-media-collective.html seem such a great idea. The website describes itself as a “media portal for natural audio archiving and dissemination”. A browse through the site seems to suggest that people can register with the NaaD Media community and upload and share the natural sounds they have recorded in different situations and contexts. The minimal but elegant design, and clean, easy-to-use interface is quite encouraging and made me click on the segment titled “Collection”, where you have audio samples with accompanying text descriptions. The first on the page is the sound of the dheki, “a leg-driven mechanical device used for making raw rice from paddy”. Another entry titled “Woods” features the crackling sound of bamboo branches rubbing against each other in the wind. The Blog section in the same segment features miscellaneous recordings uploaded by members of the NaaD Media collective. One member has uploaded a recording of a medicine seller urging people on a train to buy his home-made remedy for headaches.

Pitch in: NaaD records the sounds of vendors. Other entries are titled “pig smelling” and “snake breathing”, but don’t giggle, because this is probably one of the only places where you can hear a pig grunting and a snake hissing at the mere click of a mouse! With technology empowering users to record and share media, it has become relatively easy for all of us to turn into audio archivists. So bring out those mobile phones and record those sounds you hear around you and join the NaaD Media community or make your own audio archive. Record that crow that makes a nuisance of itself by cawing away just as you dozed off on a lazy Sunday afternoon—you might not hear him in another few years if cities continue to grow more and more polluted. Record the koyal while you can, even if the bird call is accompanied by the ear-shattering theme of the soap Bandiniiiiiiiii blaring away on your neighbour’s TV set. As for me, I’m going to put down part of a UP wedding song I learnt from my mother, who had been taught it by my father’s aunts during a family wedding that probably took place in Varanasi some 40 years ago! These songs too are becoming extinct. Check for the song on the Livemint site (www.livemint.com/sounds.htm), download it, learn it, sing it, share it, archive it or just leave it be if it doesn’t interest you. Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com

BASED ON UNDERWATER PHOTOGRAPHS BY

UMEED MISTRY

Slow motion: A still from the video work The Water Diviner by Sheba Chhachhi. a cycle rickshaw can be described as typically Western. The appreciation of a non-polluting mode of transport was dampened by the sight of a man straining to physically cart other people. Soon enough, they had a solution at hand—PPR is a marriage of the rickshaw and those pedal boats that are tailor-made for honeymooning couples. The jerry-rigged contraption has two sets of pedals for the passengers to propel it—the driver merely steers it. “We have come up with a non-hierarchical and collaborative solution,” says Winkler. Köperl admits that though “functional”, their effort at this point is still largely “symbolic”.

Symbolism and nostalgia also anchor Astha Chauhan’s sound installation, Gharelu Nuskhe and Muft ki Salah (Home Remedies and Free Advice). She has recorded many women in Khirkee village—young and old—talking about home remedies for ailments such as diabetes, piles and indigestion. The women also offer beauty tips—what to eat if you want to lose weight or if you want to get rid of spots on your face. She also recorded Mastan Baba, who comes from a family of snake charmers but decided to make a career switch, selling home remedies from his street-side stall. He too is offering advice on everything from contraception to bald-

ness to virility. “He is 75 and he recently married for the third time,” Chauhan adds. “He is about to become a father again.” Listening to a 15-minute edited sound collage of these voices— which will be played in the mall’s washrooms—reminds you of the rapidly fading world of kitchen gardens and grandma’s cures, and makes you wonder what makes this art. “Direct interventions by artists in public spaces is now seen as art,” says Sood. So what might appear to be straight NGO-variety activism (artist Navjot Altaf will highlight the importance of preserving and planting trees on roads) or innovation (Japanese artist Sohei Iwata is making and installing a waste-water purification system at the Khoj studio) or awareness building (American artist Chuck Varga will be fashioning and installing a weather station at Khoj)—is, in fact, art, feels Sood—for the simple reason that these works are being undertaken by artists. “Who are we to say it is not art?” she says. “We can’t be dismissive. We should question—what is art?” In Context: Public.Art.Ecology will be held from 8-16 April at S-17, Khoj Studio, Khirkee Extension, New Delhi. For details, log on to www.khojworkshop.org

L16 CULTURE SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Master strokes: (clockwise from far left) Uday and his mother Uma Jain look through the family’s Souza collection at the Dhoomimal storeroom; one of Souza’s 1985 chemical alterations on paper; and a characteristic Untitled 1964 head.

THE TRUTH ABOUT FAKES

ART

The resurrection of FN Souza India’s oldest art gallery refashions itself to present the largestever solo of Souza’s works in the country

THE BEST OF SOUZA The price of Souza’s works shot up dramatically after his death in 2002. In 2008, the spectacular ‘Birth’ (1955) set a world auction record for Indian Modern and contemporary art by selling for $2.5 million (around Rs11.3 crore) at a Christie’s auction. This run hasn’t stopped. At least 46 Souzas were on auction last month. The Saffronart spring auction on 1011 March had 11 Souzas, including the much feted ‘Decomposing Head’ (1956), estimated at Rs90 lakh1.12 crore, which ultimately sold for Rs1.57 crore. On 20 March, 11 of his works were part of Osian’s Masterpieces

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

···························· “I use aesthetics rather than bullets or knives as a form of protest against stuffed shirts and hypocrites.” FN Souza, 1961

oon after the death of Pablo Picasso, considered the artist of the century, Francis Newton Souza announced, “Now that Picasso is dead, I am the greatest.” This was perhaps a bit too arrogant even for Souza, the first Indian artist to dazzle Europe, the moving spirit behind the most significant development in the history of Indian Modern Art—the establishment of the Progressive Artists’ Group in the late 1940s’, that brought artists such as S.H. Raza and M.F. Husain together. Souza was an iconoclast. His Series. Nineteen were part of Christie’s auction on 23 March, followed a day later by five works at the Sotheby’s auction, both in New York. Yashodhara Dalmia, curator of ‘VolteFace’, picks five of Souza’s seminal works: 1. Death of the Pope, oil on canvas, 1962 (Jehangir Nicholson Collection). 2. St Sebastian, oil on board, 1961 (Ebrahim Alkazi Collection). 3. Crucifixion, oil on board, 1959 (Tate Modern, London). 4. Amazon, oil on board, 1957 (Dhoomimal Collection. Part of ‘VolteFace’). 5. Mammon, oil on canvas, 1961 (Jehangir Nicholson Collection). Anindita Ghose

distorted figures challenged convention, his essays provoked the intelligentsia. He led a wildly interesting life, punctuated by many women, marriages and divorces, split between the cities of Mumbai, London and New York. His art enhanced the eye’s image of the world by distorting it. Like Georges Rouault and Francis Bacon, he was an image maker. It is only befitting then that an exhibition of his works is prompting a massive makeover of India’s oldest art gallery—Dhoomimal. Uday Jain, the third-generation gallery director, says the gallery has, for the first time in its 74-yearold history, sought the expertise of an independent curator. Yashodhara Dalmia, a specialist in Modern Art, has sorted through the family’s enormous Souza collection to bring together 200 works that span the artist’s entire career, starting from his days at the Sir JJ School of Art in the 1940s. Since Dhoomimal’s premises cannot host such a large show, Volte-Face: Souza’s Iconoclastic Vision will open at the Lalit Kala Akademi in Delhi on 9 April. About 40% of Dalmia’s selection is pen and ink sketches and chemical alterations (priced at Rs2.5-6 lakh). The rest are watercolours and acrylics (Rs8-20 lakh) and large-sized oil on canvases, some as large as 6ft in height (Rs40 lakh-1.5 crore). The focus of the show is Souza’s iconic heads, which remained a staple of his works even while he moved across mediums and metaphors—from religious to sexual. The show focuses on heads with stabbing lines, eyes placed on foreheads, mouths fanged with multiple sets of teeth. As Dalmia explains, these grotesque heads were a powerful

constituent in Souza’s arsenal against the evil in society. Dhoomimal will organize discussions, documentary film screenings, poetry readings, a students’ art workshop and curated tours during the 10-day exhibition. It has roped in dedicated Souza collectors such as Ebrahim Alkazi and friends from the art community such as Krishen Khanna and Anjolie Ela Menon to engage visitors. This elaborate effort is a serious bid by the gallery to re-establish its reputation after the scandal that sent waves of panic across the art fraternity in January 2009. When S.H. Raza, then 86 years old, came from Paris to inaugurate a show of his works put together by his nephew for the gallery, he was shocked to find that barring a few of his drawings, all the others were fakes. Dhoomimal called off the exhibition immediately, but the Jains are still embroiled in a case against Raza’s nephew. The art world is unanimous in agreeing that Dhoomimal’s forthcoming show is in a different league altogether. The Jains are known as Souza’s most dedicated collectors and they consider him to be a family friend. All the works in the show have been bought directly from the artist. Some of the works in the exhibition ring such a personal note that they’re not for sale: A portrait of Uday’s parents—Uma and Ravi Jain—is one. A canvas that Souza dedicated to Uday because he had helped the artist pick the colours for it as a four-year-old is another. Uday believes that Souza was their “gallery artist”. “He stayed with us even when newer galleries cropped into the scene in the 1980s,” says Uday. Over the years, Dhoomimal has hosted several solos of Souza. One in 1966, one in 1976 that was attended by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and another in 1984. To commemorate his death, the gallery had also hosted a tribute exhibition in 2002. Still, the memory of the scandal involving Raza fakes—one of Souza’s contemporaries, no less— is hard to erase. The episode had sparked talk of getting in place a

mechanism to authenticate paintings. Ashok Vajpeyi, chairman of the Lalit Kala Akademi, had announced a national register to track all existing works by artists, living or dead. But more than a year later, there’s been little progress on that front. Some, such as Sunaina Anand, director, Art Alive Gallery, believe that VolteFace is bound to pique sceptics. “Things look different this time but it’s hard to say how the art fraternity will respond,” she says. When the recent economic slowdown brought down prices of Indian contemporary art, the Modern masters held through the slump. Their consistently high prices also meant that they were the most susceptible to spawning fakes. Souza copies have been quite a rage since the late 1990s. In the last decade of his life, the artist had become aware that imitations of his work were proliferating among reputed galleries in India. He had reacted by writing letters to dozens of people, and in turn, faced a lawsuit for libel in New York which left him on the verge of bankruptcy. The show’s curator, Dalmia, has been a Souza scholar for several years, and says she wouldn’t have curated the show unless each work had a stamp of authenticity. Souza, who died in 2002 at the age of 78, is the only Indian artist to have a room dedicated to his works at London’s Tate Modern. But during his lifetime, Souza’s exhibitions in India went half-sold or even worse. The disdain he faced from his own people embittered him, even as he achieved success in Europe. The main reason were the paintings themselves—Souza never produced showpiece canvases, which were still the ideal of the Indian art-buying public. After his 1976 Dhoomimal show, Souza was devastated when he learnt that only one of his canvases had sold. Now, three decades later, perhaps the genius will be resurrected in his homeland. Volte-Face: Souza’s Iconoclastic Vision will be on exhibit at Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, from 9-18 April.

An expert’s guide to distinguishing the original from a fake Fraudulent artworks have long riddled the art world. In his last days, even Salvador Dali was coerced into signing blanks, spawning a market for fakes after his death. We spoke to art expert Yamini Telkar, who is presently studying the Progressives, including both Souza and Raza, for a show set to open at the Delhi Art Gallery this August. Telkar tells us how to identify a real Souza: u Period: Comparing with

other works produced in the same period would help as Souza went through distinct phases and he was diligent about dating most of his works. The distinction is stylistic and can be loosely identified around the decade with an emphasis on any one genre—landscape, nudes or still life. u Signature: He signed as

“Francis Newton” uptil the 1950s, after which he signed off as “Souza”. u Handwriting: The strokes of

the ‘S’ and ‘Z’ in his signature are unmistakable and since he has signed most of his works, this is a valuable parameter. u Anatomy: Even when Souza

was drawing distorted figures, he never strayed from the basics of human anatomy. Representations of hands, especially, are a dead giveaway. So even the highly distorted hand of Jesus in ‘The Last Supper’ (1966) is anatomically correct. Fakes are rarely able to match this precision. u Lines and brushstrokes:

Across periods, a Souza is characterized by strong lines and brushstrokes. The lines are forceful and there’s a powerful application of colour. Though this is a relatively difficult factor to discern, this ties together all of his works.

CULTURE L17 SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

Q&A | SHAHID KAPOOR

‘I’d rather do a successful film than a good film’ But that’s only because the actor can then choose the films he can act in B Y U DITA J HUNJHUNWALA ···························· nterviewing Shahid Kapoor in his Mumbai apartment, dressed in track pants and a baseball cap worn backwards, you almost expect him to break into a dance routine mid-conversation, especially after he’s just finished a giant mug of black coffee. Instead, he speaks about his roles as the good guy in Vivah and Jab We Met and the kamina (rascal) Charlie in Kaminey that made audiences, critics and colleagues regard him in a new light. Edited excerpts from a conversation with the actor on his turning a new corner:

How has life changed since ‘Kaminey’? When you do successful films you get a strong commercial positioning, more confidence, people talk about you more and look at you differently. More important is being part of a successful film in which you do something new which presents you differently. For me, those films were Jab We Met and Kaminey, which shocked people who did not expect me to do anything close to Charlie. When you have debuted in a college romcom (Ishq Vishk), you are seen like that. It has always been an endeavour to break out of the box. I failed many times, but I got it right with these films. Are you getting the kinds of films you want to act in? It’s a constant struggle. Four-five films over a period of time will define you and your career. I feel fortunate to have had two-three

Regular Joe: In Paathshaala, Kapoor plays the role of a teacher in a middleclass boarding school. such films already. The constant attempt is to do good films—some you get right, some you get wrong. I am an actor—a spoke in a wheel. I am part of the process but the director is the captain of the ship. My priorities are very clear: I would rather do a successful film than a good film because I believe only when I am successful will I be in a position to choose the parts and films that I want to do. Aamir Khan and my father (Pankaj Kapur) have achieved this. I look up to them and hope to create a space that is respected and popular. From a ‘kamina’ to a ‘badmaash’ in ‘Badmaash Company’. Yes, Badmaash Company is the big one. I am happy with the way it has turned out. I love doing these edgy parts. Charlie was muscle, power, aggression, madness. This character uses his head. This guy is a con artist, quite unlike me. Your next release is

B Y B LESSY A UGUSTINE blessy.a@livemint.com

···························· bunch of 20-somethings leave their comfortable jobs to pursue their passion in life—music. After nearly a decade of intense struggle, they become the country’s first commercially viable independent music band. They tour the world, and find success. For a documentary, it almost sounds too “filmi”. But there’s more to music band Indian Ocean, argues director Jaideep Varma, than meets the eye. Leaving Home: The Life and Music of Indian Ocean, India’s first music documentary to release on the big screen, is Varma’s tribute to the four people—Asheem Chakravarty, Amit Kilam, Susmit Sen and Rahul Ram—who defined “contemporary Indian music”. Varma has dabbled in several professions—advertising, music criticism, fiction writing and film-making. His first brush with Indian Ocean’s music was in 2000 when he reviewed their album Kandisa for the Gentleman magazine. He became a fan of their music. “When I got to know them as people I was fascinated by the stories they had to tell,” he says. In 2006, Varma, along with an assistant and a cameraman,

started filming the band. He followed them for six weeks and shot everything they did and said. “They had been giving interviews for a while, so they had a practised manner in which they spoke in front the camera. I realized that if I had to get something interesting out of them I would have to wait for them to let their guard down,” he says. By the end of the shoot, he had 197 hours of footage. Not surprisingly, it is the late Chakravarty, the band’s vocalist and percussionist and also the most outspoken member, who pours his heart out. The film starts and ends with him, and derives many of its solemn and light-hearted moments from him. The film intersperses individual interviews and banter with live concert footage, and watching Chakravarty perform brilliant renditions of rarer songs Desert Rain and Boll Weevil is deeply moving. In one sequence, Chakravarty talks to the camera with his mother sitting next to him. He talks about the bitterness he felt when his family never came to see him perform (“not even once”), while guitarist Sen’s family came for every single show. In the background, his mother’s face contorts with guilt. For Varma, the film’s best

for competition. How do you feel about that? My journey started down there and I am somewhere in the middle on the path upwards. I am very happy and thankful to be where I am. Every morning I ask myself: Am I deserving of this; can I do more, work harder, keep improving? In the last three years I have given it my best. For four years before that sometimes I was interested, sometimes I wasn’t. But in the last few years I have started doing films I believe in. I am prepared to sit at home if I don’t find the right project. You are 29 now. Do you feel you are entering a new phase of your life? I am going to stay 25 in my head for the next 15 years and then I would have just turned 30! Paathshaala releases in theatres on 16 April and Badmaash Company on 7 May. Write to lounge@livemint.com

HARIKRISHNA KATRAGADDA/MINT

Tangled up in blue The story of India’s first commercially successful music band is now on the big screen

‘Paathshaala’, in which you play a schoolteacher. I play an English teacher in a middle-class boarding school. The film basically is about the struggle of understanding the commerce of education and balancing that with the requirements of the child. Students and parents will connect with the story...But it is not a Shahid Kapoor film—I am not the hero. I shot just seven days for the film. What else is on the 2010 calendar? Milenge Milenge should release this year. And I am in prep for my father’s film Mausam, which is a love story in which I play an air force officer. People think I play a depressed man because I am growing a beard. Are all people with beards depressed? This is the only film I am working on this year but I will start hearing scripts soon. You are in a niche of mainstream star actors, with perhaps only Ranbir Kapoor

Fusion: Indian Ocean were also the subject of a 2008 film Beware Dogs, directed by Spandan Banerjee. moment is the one showing the reunion of Chakravarty and Sen with a former band member, Indrajit Dutta. Dutta was the band’s bass guitarist till 1991. He gave up music to support his family and lost touch with

the band. Varma tracked him down and convinced him to be a part of the film. The scene shows Dutta playing Sen’s guitar and regretting giving up music. “He intended to play for 10 minutes but went

on for about 2 hours,” says Varma. The scene’s coda, where Dutta and Chakravarty sing a Bengali song with a refrain that translates as “why are you not near me?” is an evocative one. Dutta died in an accident in November and Chakravarty in December, of cardiac arrest. “I was lucky that I shot the film when Asheem was alive but it’s sad that he never got to see the final film. Asheem was the most enthusiastic about the film, on a level that suggested that he felt that it was important that his life’s work be captured. This was not the attitude of the other three,” says Varma. The film released in 10 theatres in seven cities on Friday but Varma remains sceptical of its success. “There is too much inertia in our times and we’re used to getting everything by a click so people may not make the effort to go see the film,” he says. He’s not sure they’ll recover costs. The film cost went up from Rs12 lakh to over Rs50 lakh due to various reasons such as delays in shooting schedules and shooting with high-definition cameras. Varma’s next project is, therefore, a more financially sound one. “I’m thinking of robbing a bank.” Leaving Home released in select theatres on Friday. For screening details, visit the official site at www.leavinghomethefilm.com

L18

www.livemint.com

SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 2010

Business Lounge EKTA KAPOOR

Movies can’t kill the TV star After her first critically acclaimed project, the media mogul is thinking radical scripts and virtual reality shows B Y S ANJUKTA S HARMA sanjukta.s@livemint.com

··························· ndheri Link Road, where Balaji Telefilms is located, is the cacophonous heart of this Mumbai suburb. It has malls and multiplexes, TV and film production companies, a variety of restaurants, even some quaint photo studios whose windows display portraits of vintage Hindi film stars. The lane in which the Balaji office stands also has the Fun Republic multiplex, Yash Raj F i lm s a n d Ba r ry John’s acting studio—and many gaping potholes and open drains. The day I visit the Balaji office to meet its joint managing director Ekta Kapoor—the popular face of Balaji Telefilms and Balaji Motion Pictures—the buzz is about the just-released Love, Sex aur Dhokha (LSD), a film that Balaji Motion Pictures produced and distributed. LSD was already being hailed as a “cult film”. Kapoor apologizes as soon as she arrives, half an hour after the appointed time. The trademark red smear of puja teeka on her forehead is missing. In harem pants, a black Tee and Osho chappals, the 34-yearold media magnate looks more LSD than the title she has ungrudgingly—and as I discover later, quite smugly—worn ever since the mid-1990s: the queen of television soap operas. “The overwhelming response to LSD is yet to sink in,” she says, before I ask what made her choose a film that so blatantly flouts all the rules of classical film-making. The idea was to create a small but radical brand for the banner she launched LSD with: ALT Entertainment. “Just as with TV, we broke the clutter by introducing something that nobody had seen before. I wanted to introduce ALT with a small film with a large concept. The production should scream, I thought.” Dibakar Banerjee, the director of the film, had her convinced the first time he narrated the story to her. “The dogeat-dog world that it dealt with; where the victim, as well as the victimizer are in it for something; it appealed to me a lot,” Kapoor says. Later, when she watched a rough cut, she was shell-shocked, almost hysterical: “I thought, my god, what did I get into? But I realized that for the first time a film challenged me to change my mindset.

Money wise: Kapoor feels producing reality shows for TV would not be a smart choice for her company.

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

The bloody attitude got me.” By the time I met her, LSD had done its first weekend at the box office and a new set of posters were plastered on the roads, screaming “SUPERHIT!”. Trade analysts were reporting that the film had already clocked Rs5 crore (it was made with a production budget of Rs2 crore). But Kapoor seems flabbergasted by what she says are exaggerated reports. “The way it is going, it’s 90% likely that we will break even in the next three days,” she says, with cautious confidence (the net box office collections of LSD, inclusive of its second weekend, are around Rs8.5-9 crore). ALT Entertainment’s next big project is Shor, a film to be directed by Raj and D.K. Nimodru, with her brother Tusshar Kapoor in the lead. Once Upon a Time in Mumbai, with Ajay Devgn and Kangana Ranaut, releases on 30 July, and later this year, Golmaal 3 goes on the floor. “You have to go radical sometimes. There are risks inherent in the most formulaic film too, but there has to be a balance to create a brand,” Kapoor says. Kapoor’s gaze is unflinching. She gestures with her hands only occasionally, and when she does, the astrological stones she wears flash across your eyes: a garnet, a yellow sapphire, a diamond-studded white stone. She says she owes her mental balance to astrology: “Some stones attract positivity,” she says. “I also believe in some rituals; my way to connect with God, it’s not just for material gains as people perceive.” It’s common knowledge that an additional “K” was added to the titles of some soaps on the advice of her astrologer. Kapoor has a knack for pop spirituality babble: “The biggest sin you can commit is if you hurt another human being”; “You have to trust your instinct”. She believes “that everything happens for a reason”. Her transition from being actor Jeetendra’s daughter to a television mogul in the late 1990s was propelled largely by calculated decisions. Balaji Telefilms, set up in 1994, had a shaky beginning. The first two serials, produced by the company for around Rs25 lakh, were rejected by every satellite channel; the first serial to be aired was Mano Ya Na Mano on Zee TV in 1995. The company hit the jackpot with Hum Paanch in the late 1990s. Thereafter, Kapoor and her writers hooked a genera-

tion of TV audiences—mostly women in the age group of 25-60—with family sagas that hinged on petty domestic conflicts. Towards the end of 2000, the company went public. In 2008, when Colors launched with Balika Vadhu, Balaji changed the milieu of its serials to the rural poor and the small-town middle class. Serials such as Bairi Piya (Colors), Pavitra Rishta (Zee), Pyaar Ka Bandhan (Sony) and Bandini (NDTV Imagine) have not topped the charts, but they are key drivers in the volatile TRP wars. The latest TAM ratings for these serials are 3.37, 4.75, 0.4, 1.67, respectively, all below the 5-6 average rating of Balika Vadhu in the past one year. In the most recent quarter (October-December), Balaji’s revenues declined 22.4% to Rs39.3 crore because it made less money from projects it commissioned or outsourced to other production houses. Tax provisions allowed the company to double its net profits, but investors didn’t take too kindly to the poor numbers, despite the increase in number of programming hours. According to Bloomberg estimates, Balaji’s stock has declined 16.17% since the beginning of this year, compared with an average 3.36% fall for the broadcasting and entertainment industry in general. Kapoor remains unabashedly proud that she changed the taste for television content in a newly globalized country (Kyunki Saas bhi Kabhi Bahu thi ran for about eight years and went off air in November 2008 owing to falling popularity). “The mother-in-law and daughter-in-law conflicts are crucial to TRPs whether we like it or not. In those days, the fight was in the kitchen, now it’s outside of the kitchen, about other issues which are important in a rural setting,” she says. The laurels crowd a shelf in her office—Telly Awards statutes she has received in the past decade. “What I am concerned with primarily is profitability. That’s why I have not got into reality TV. I have the infrastructure and the resources for making serials. Every leading entertainment channel has a successful TV serial made by us.” For reality shows, Kapoor is exploring the virtual world. “An online talent show maybe, which I am exploring very seriously at the moment,” she says. “I will also get into hyper-reality, something like what LSD is, on the Internet.” By the time we wrapped up the interview, the bells at the office temple had started ringing. I nudged myself out on to the road, where hundreds of mosquitoes were swarming above the open drains.

IN PARENTHESIS When she is not in office reading scripts or strategizing with her business team, Ekta Kapoor likes to go out with her friends. “My only hobby is to eat out.” She says her own culinary talents are minimal—“I can just about cook two or three dishes”—and she doesn’t really seek out cooks with special talents. Her favourite dining haunts are Mainland China in Andheri and Royal China in Bandra.