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Saturday, June 2, 2012

Vol. 6 No. 22

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

GOT THAT COOL IDEA? THEN DUMP THE JOB

Our Our annual annual cool cool ideas ideas issue issue returns returns in in its its sixth sixth instalment instalment with with new new ventures ventures that that will will make make you you want want to to finally finally put put your your own own plans plans into into play play >Pages >Pages 716 716

CHAOS AND CALM: LONG ISLAND TO PHILADELPHIA >Page 6

THE ART OF LOSING THE GOOD STUFF

Today we live a parasitical life, off borrowed learning from the West, with nothing to offer of our own >Page 4

VOICE OF THE WOUNDED Saida Begum’s voice maintains a fair distance from perfection, yet speaks to the listener with strength >Page 6

AT DYNASTY’S END

The last Mughal, Bahadur Shah Zafar, more poet than ruler, would have been happy with his final resting place >Page 18

Zeba Zeba Zaidi Zaidi with with Game Game On On India India clients clients at at the the Thyagaraj Thyagaraj Sports Sports Complex Complex in in New New Delhi. Delhi.

THE IMPARTIAL SPECTATOR

N. RAJADHYAKSHA

THE CULTURE OF INNOVATION

THE GOOD LIFE

LUXURY CULT

SHOBA NARAYAN

RADHA CHADHA

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

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (EXECUTIVE EDITOR)

SATURDAY, JUNE 2, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

PHOTOGRAPHS

LOUNGE LOVES | DIVAN’S BUNGALOW, AHMEDABAD

PARAS SHAH/MINT

Legacy: Divan’s Bungalow has been in the Kadri family for over 150 years; and (below) the Siraj Khana suite.

A slice of history A renovated bungalow, once the home of the divan of Radhanpur, is now a hotel

idden in Ahmedabad’s Walled City area lies the Kadri family owned Divan’s Bungalow, which opened as an eight-room hotel on 25 May. The Neemrana group took over the management of the property in January and has added it to its “non-hotel” hotel brand. Neemrana’s reputation for zeroing in on hot properties of heritage value is well known and the choice of Divan’s Bungalow seems obvious—it’s one of the few well-managed heritage buildings left in the city. The Kadri family has owned Divan’s Bungalow for over 150 years. The name comes from Saiyed Bavamiyan Kadri, who once held the position of divan of Radhanpur. He shifted to Ahmedabad after retirement and built this house. I.M. Kadri, who heads the Kadri Foundation that owns the bungalow, has been involved with Neemrana officials in converting the bungalow into a hotel. He is a wellknown architect who has to his credit many commercial and non-commercial projects, including Filmcity in Mumbai and Taj Palace Hotel in Delhi.

The narrow street adjoining the bungalow is named after I.M. Kadri’s father M.B. Kadri, who was the city’s first deputy mayor. The surprise element heightens as one transports from the densely populated, noisy neighbourhood in Raikhad near Gaekwad Haveli to the colonial-style bungalow with a unique blend of Muslim and Gujarati architecture. The pillars have Gujarati and Islamic patterns. The property is an interesting example of the lifestyle of a Muslim household where a courtyard with a fountain leads to a long and linear Divan Khana. This, in turn, leads to a garden court where the women would assemble, not far from the kitchen. The haveli was in such good shape that it required little renovation. The conversion of the building into a hotel was easy too because the spaces that were once used for family gatherings are easily accessible and well-defined. Hence allocating space for a reception, restaurants or kitchens (there are separate ones for vegetarian and non-vegetarian cooking) was seamless. The “rooms”, each with a bedroom, drawing room and passage, are named after family members, so there’s a Tariq Khana, Zia Khana and Iftikhar Khana. All eight have different colour themes and each has a separate entry. The two tower rooms with European-style tiled roofs on either

ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: PRADEEP GAUR/MINT CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS: The 26 May letter, “The migration factor”, published in some centres was from Moinak B.

NOTE TO READERS The Media Marketing Initiative on Page 5 is the equivalent of a paidfor advertisement, and no Mint journalists were involved in creating it. Readers would do well to treat it as an advertisement.

side have two grand Gujaratistyle wooden jharokhas or balconies which lean out on external brackets. The tower rooms have been merged into one called the Siraj Khana, which is decorated in traditional style with a divan’s takhat (seat) and munim peti (writing desk) placed on the floor. This is the largest and most expensive suite. The “non-hotel” hotel aims to cater to foreign tourists looking to rewind to the traditional style of living in the city. The House of MG owned by the Mangaldas family, industrialists, is located a few kilometres away and is the only

other heritage hotel in Ahmedabad that can offer competition to Divan’s. Each of the eight rooms at Divan’s has a special coded jewel case for visitors to keep their valuables. The well-designed room openings have been given special treatment, like the use of different-colour glass in three rooms. As

part of the renovation, replicas of Mughal paintings are now perched on the walls. One can spot garden birds such as the Purple Sunbird, Red-vented Bulbul and the house sparrow (difficult to find in the western part of Ahmedabad) on the property. The courtyard inside, or the aangan, is designed in such a way

that it never faces the sun directly. This has been utilized for a small restaurant. There is a separate space for dining. There isn’t much space at Divan’s for a large restaurant, however. Fixed menus cost `450 for lunch and `550 for dinner. The restaurant and the dining space at Divan’s is open only to in-house guests. Outsiders must book in advance to sign up for a meal at Divan’s. The room tariffs range from `4,000-6,000 per night, and include breakfast. Divan’s Bungalow, MB Kadri Marg, near Gaekwad Haveli, Ahmedabad. For bookings, visit www.neemranahotels.com Maulik Pathak

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SATURDAY, JUNE 2, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

AAKAR PATEL REPLY TO ALL

The art of losing the good stuff

e exported Theravada from the south and civilized Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. Cold and austere (observe how calm Lankans and Thai are), godless and

illuminating, for me, Theravada is real Buddhism. We had no use for it and exported it till all stock ran out. From the north, we exported Mahayana, civilizing Japan, China, Tibet and Bhutan with magic about bodhisattvas. How they converted our mumbo-jumbo into cultural gold is a mystery. It is true, however, that the Japanese didn’t absorb the poisonous Indian message of maya. They look at the world empirically, and their Buddhist sites and rituals are different from ours. These nations accept their debt to us and it is remarkable how liked Indians are in many of these places. Anyway, we had no use for Mahayana either and it is gone from here. From the West we imported Islam. I suspect a profit was not made on the transactions. What export do we have to offer the world today? Looking at what I pay for visas, I’m convinced India’s main export is the illegal immigrant. But one cannot say what is obvious without hurting Indians, so I won’t. Having booted out Buddhism, we settled instead for our colourful, effective and easy-to-follow Puranic faith. My understanding of its essence is as follows: Hindu: “God, gimme!” God: “First gimme!” Exactly 175 years ago next Thursday, an Englishman told us of the existence of the Indian king who began all of this civilizing. A king who was short, ugly and with a little paunch, according to writer Charles Allen, but whose title was “lovely-to-behold”. A man in whose kitchen two peacocks (every day) and a deer (most days) were slaughtered for curry, according to his own regretful admission. A man whose

monuments Hiuen Tsang, the Buddhist monk from China, recorded 900 years after his death. An Indian credited in the Lankan texts with sending Tathagata’s message to them. A king whose name is mentioned once and dismissed in the Vishnu Puran. A man whose name means “without sorrow”, but whose most famous act was one from sorrow, after he butchered the Oriyas at Kalinga. A man Indians knew nothing about till James Prinsep unveiled him on 7 June 1837, at the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta. That evening, Prinsep announced that he had deciphered the Brahmi

script, in which mysterious and uniform inscriptions were found all over India, but not understood. One can imagine the excitement in him, and in his audience, as Prinsep read out the single most commonly found line on rock edicts that were planted in triumph from Afghanistan to Bengal—on pillars in territory governed by Alexander the Great’s Greeks, where the European submitted for the first and only time to the Indian. That night, after 23 centuries, from the time of classical Athens, our greatest ruler called out to us again: “Devanampiya Piyadasi raja evam aha (King Priyadarshi, whom the gods love, says this).” I stared at the line a long time when I first happened across it, and was not surprised when tears welled up and blurred it. Jawaharlal Nehru must have been as moved, for Ashok’s wheel is on our flag, and his superb lion capital (when did we lose that talent for sculpture?) is the symbol of our republic.

Nehru was moved further, for he named his only daughter Priyadarshini, after Ashok. What a gift Prinsep gave us. Functionally literate, but really only numerate, our learned Brahmins ignored the writing for 2,000 years. They were unable to find meaning in, unwilling even to observe, this spindly script. Prinsep, who was not a linguist, unlocked it quite easily by locating its vowels. The Indus Valley script will remain an enigma because the white man is gone and the Hindu is neither interested in nor capable of decoding his past. The foreigner must do this work for him. Rudyard Kipling knew this and rubs it in with pride and glee in Kim, when the Lahore Museum’s English director educates the stupefied lama about the treasures of his faith. Nothing has changed since then. Today, Scot William Dalrymple will instruct us about our last emperor. Frenchman Christophe Jaffrelot writes the history of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s rise. German von KARTHIKEYAN PANDIAN/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

DEBASHIS PRADHAN/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Stietencron teaches us how to identify which king built what temple. Finn Asko Parpola reveals to us that the Harappan script is actually proto-Dravidian. I could go on but there’s no point. Why are we such a pathetic and helpless race today? We were not in Ashok’s time. The determination and single-mindedness of the men who, for a thousand years, bore into the hard rock halfway up a mountain at Ajanta are not identifiable as Indian. The slow trajectory of Buddha’s appropriation into the Puranic faith is stamped in stone there. First, the stupas in the oldest caves, then, the anthropomorphic statues we’re familiar with and then, when you drive down the road to Ellora, the total absorption into the fold of avatars. Game over. But even then, the resilience, the quality, was there. Generations of baniyas—Hindu, Jain and Buddhist—funded the massive sculpting project at Ellora. Today, Indians at Ellora only litter and scratch. These places are noisy, vulgar picnic spots, not monuments that terrify us into looking at ourselves. It’s even worse across the border. A decade or so ago, writer Avirook Sen and I were driving from Multan to Islamabad when we stopped at Harappa to see the Indus Valley Civilization’s mighty site. It was heart-stoppingly beautiful and utterly deserted. The man at the counter punched out two tickets for foreigners and had them at the ready even before we reached him (Pakistan shares our brilliant policy of penalizing tourists who brave a visit to our nations). How did he know we weren’t Pakistanis? “Pakistanis don’t come here,” he said. Somewhere near the middle of the two-and-a-half-dozen caves at Ajanta is one that is fully excavated but not finished. It has no sculpture, its walls and pillars are rough, ready for workmen to shape them. Shorn of the finished look of the others, the visitor will immediately register how much work went into the project. When I saw it, I understood that it was deliberately left half finished. It is an act of insolence, of justifiable arrogance. This, it says to us, is what we are capable of. What about you? It is terrifying, because today we cannot even keep our neighbourhoods clean. When one points out that we make no contribution to science, the answer is that India gave the world zero. I don’t disagree with that statement. Having vomited out all this, it occurs to me that there is another way of looking at it. If we view this less emotionally, and in a purely Darwinian sense, I am absolutely wrong. The truth is that the Indian subcontinent cannot be seen as a failure. There are 1.6 billion of us here, sending down our genes more rapidly than any other race in history. We may live a parasitical life, off borrowed learning from the West and with nothing to offer of our own. But we are by numbers the most successful people in history. So what if our days of civilizing the world are behind us. Aakar Patel is a writer and columnist. Send your feedback to replytoall@livemint.com www.livemint.com

Past glory: (top) The Buddha statue at the Ajanta caves in Aurangabad, Maharashtra; and the Shanti Stupa at Dhauli Giri in Orissa where it is believed that Ashok, full of remorse after the Kalinga War in 261 BC, renounced violence and turned to Buddhism.

Read Aakar’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/aakarpatel

MINT MEDIA MARKETING INITIATIVE Where is Iberia? Is it Spain or Portugal? It's both! The name conjures up images of a fascinating land rich in history, awash in sunlight and alive with colourful festivals. Spain and Portugal share the Iberian Peninsula and together offer some of the most exciting and interesting vacation options.

Best of both worlds

lanning a trip will get you the best of both worlds. Here are the following places/ events you can check out in Portugal and Spain to explore the rich Iberian culture:

SPAIN

BAM (Barcelona Acció Musical), Barcelona: BAM means "Musical Action Barcelona" and promotes some of the best independent artists. The event witnesses some of the top notch artists from various genres like folk, electronica, rock, and pop performing. It is held at the end of September in different stages located all around Barcelona. El Hierro, Canary Island: This is the smallest island of the Canaries and also the least populated. El Hierro is the perfect spot for those wishing to get away from the crowds and experience nature to its fullest. Its clean beaches and mountain scenery offer a relaxing tourist vacation. Plaza de la Maestranza, Seville: This magnificent bullring is considered to be one of the finest in Spain and is one of the oldest and most important in the world. This sport remains phenomenally popular, especially in Seville, and the 'Catedral del Toreo' is the perfect place to experience electric atmosphere of a corrida (bullfight). Corral de la Morería, Madrid: A world-acclaimed flamenco bar. Since 1956, it has been offering the very best in flamenco, courtesy of its own crew of dancers, guitarists & singers and acclaimed guest artists. Their fine cuisine is currently mentioned in the prestigious Michelin Guide. A whole host of celebrities have

visited this flamenco bar throughout its 55 years of existence, from Rita Hayworth to John F. Kennedy to artists like Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí.

PORTUGAL Ponta da Piedade, Algarve: With a magnificent view of the Atlantic and the shapes of cliffs carved by the sea and time, Ponte da Piedade is an idyllic setting of cut out rocks that sharply contrast with the greenish blue waters below. Serra do Caldeirão, Algarve: It is the largest mountain range in Algarve. The area is surrounded by cork oak trees, painting the countryside a deep, vibrant green. Further on, there are two areas of

exceptional beauty: the Fonte da Benémola and the Fonte Ferro. Like an oasis of nature, the Fonte da Benémola is a protected area with plant and animal life not commonly seen in the Algarve. The Fonte Ferro, on the other hand, is noted for its collection of regional plant species, such as the arbutus berry trees, brooms, heather, rock roses, French lavender, eucalyptus, pines and oleanders; and of animals, such as wild rabbits, partridges, thrushes and blackbirds. The Serra do Caldeirão is also made up of schist rock a smooth, impermeable and dry rock in warm shades of red. Here, the only sign of man is the lone shepherd with his flock of sheep and goats.

Padrão dos Descobrimentos, Azores: This beautiful structure has been designed in the shape of a caravel. It was conceived in 1939 by Portuguese architect José Ângelo Cottinelli Telmo, and sculptor Leopoldo de Almeida, as a temporary beacon during the Portuguese World Fair opening in June 1940. It also has a multimedia itinerary through the history of Lisbon, as well as hosts temporary exhibitions and concerts. Jeronimos Monastery, Lisbon: The Jeronimos Monastery is the most impressive symbol of Portugal's power and wealth during the Age of Discovery. King Manuel I built it in 1502 on the site of a hermitage founded by Prince Henry the Navigator, where Vasco da Gama and his crew spent their last night in Portugal in prayer before leaving for India.

L6 COLUMNS

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SATURDAY, JUNE 2, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

OUR DAILY BREAD

SAMAR HALARNKAR

Chaos, calm: Long Island to Philadelphia What does it take to instantly expand family? A warm welcome and a table full of surprises

y loud, excitable two-year-old toddler chases a furry, equally excitable little dog called Charlie Bear, who in turn tears around the backyard trying to excite his substantially larger neighbours, a Labrador and a pit bull. All is chaos, and all is calm. It is 17 degrees Celsius at 4pm, and the sun is lightly warm on your skin. A breeze blows in from the Atlantic seaboard. The coal-fired cooker on the lawn steams fish in banana leaf, chicken marinated in a tangy pepper sauce and fist-sized portobello mushrooms. Baked macaroni and cheese and a green, soupy stew of vegetables, not unlike the Sindhi sai bhaji, arrive at the table, full of the familiar yet laden with surprise. A sharp, euphoria-inducing rum punch switches your contented smile to a foolish grin. And you think your kid sister is in good hands if “Trish” (Patricia) and Nigel George—your hosts and creators of this repast—are her best friends in a land far away from home. In that instant, you realize bonds can be forged as much in an afternoon as in a lifetime. In that instant, you know how important it is to have a warm heart and a table full of surprises. In that instant, strangers become family. Trish and Nigel are strangers, in that I have never met them. I know of them and their lives from my kid sister Aditi, a single, working professional in exciting but tough New York. After my teaching stint in Berkeley, California, ended earlier this month, the wife, daughter and I flew across the US to spend 15 days with Aditi. If there was anyone we had to meet, it was Trish and Nigel. Trish, an effervescent Long Island native who first showed up in the comments section of this column nearly two years ago, works for Lufthansa airline.

Nigel, of long loping stride and slow Caribbean drawl, is a male nurse and immigrant from Trinidad. Like me, Nigel does much of the cooking. His Trinidadian heritage is evident as the spread reveals itself. And so the afternoon rolls on, a lazy, hazy time of fun and family. We discuss our common topic (Aditi) and then meander into everything from the herbs in their garden to their cosy, mixed neighbourhood to life in Trinidad to the conservative attitudes Trish and Nigel still negotiate as a mixed-race couple in modern-day US. They drive us to the beach, past old bungalows with broad verandas. We walk by the sea, dodge fishing lines, step over wormand fish-head bait, watch mainly Latino and African-American families relax and laugh. When it is time to head back, we do so with a car full of leftovers, a couple of recipes (see recipes) we have wheedled out of Nigel and an enduring feeling that our family just grew larger. The next week, we get that feeling again when we are back on the road again, this time south-west to Philadelphia, one of the US’ oldest cities. The people we visit are not exactly strangers, in that Simran Sidhu—bright,

beautiful and possessed of one of the heartiest laughs I know—is one of the people closest to my wife. Simran’s husband, Ravi Acharya, an evangelist for Indian warmth, is what she calls mayor of south Philly, lording it over their brick homes and cobblestone neighbourhood; he takes their children to the park and calls everyone in for a drink (an equal-opportunity drinker, Simran says). They live in Philadelphia, we in Bangalore, and this is the first time we will share a roof. Their smiling children, Iman and Vir, the friendliest I have met, take charge of my daughter as soon as we step out of the car, and, as I write this, we are embarked on a voyage of familial discovery. It quickly emerges that Ravi and I both hate desserts, except, tiramisu. We are immersed in love, laughter and food, all of it created by Simran. The first meal is anchored by barbecued ribs and a spread of vegetables (I only remember a superb beans-and-tofu stir-fry) in honour of my vegetarian wife. Dinner unfolds in their backyard. Finely grilled kebabs of lamb and beef. Simran’s version of babaganoush, a rich blend of eggplant and tahini. Fresh

grilled pita bread. A fetavegetables pasta salad. The table is littered with the detritus of a great feast. As the children tear around, bedtime deadlines fade into irrelevance, and we find out more about each other, becoming louder as levels of beer and bourbon fall. For the first time in the US, I light up a cigar because no one minds. My wife—whose favourite cousin Raj, his wife Daniella and their three children are driving 800 miles (around 1,287km) to join the party— grandly offers my services for dosa and chutney for tomorrow’s breakfast. “Dosa and mimosa!” exclaims Simran.

peeled and chopped 2-3 tsp salt 2 tsp prepared mustard or dry mustard

Serves 4-5 Ingredients 29.5ml fresh lemon and/ or lime juice 59ml simple syrup* 88.5ml rum (we used white) 118ml mixer** A dash of Angostura Bitters K tsp nutmeg Method Mix together and serve over ice. Add club soda—or not. (*Simple syrup = 2 cups sugar with 1 cup water; I use a mix of white and brown sugar. **Club soda, fruit juice, anything you might want to mix).

Trinistyle Pepper Sauce Ingredients 12 bell peppers (red, yellow, green) 4-5 cloves garlic K cup vinegar or lime juice or half and half K cup green papaya,

Method Combine all the ingredients in an electric blender. Purée for a minute until well blended. Use this to marinate chicken, meat, pork or vegetables. I grilled Kkg chicken with 6-7 tbsp of the sauce. Really, you can cook anything you like in any fashion—grill, bake or pan-fry. Leave out green papaya and mustard if you like, but I say keep them.

Simran’s babaganoush Serves 8-10 (as a dip) Ingredients 1 large eggplant 3 large cloves garlic Juice of two large lemons or limes K can or 1 cup of garbanzo beans or cooked chickpea (chole) 3 tbsp tahini paste (available in stores with imported food) N cup parsley or coriander 1 small red onion, roughly chopped Salt and pepper to taste 3-4 leaves of basil, julienned Method Char the eggplant whole on a stove or cut into 1-inch square pieces, sprinkle with salt, drizzle with olive oil and grill in the oven at 425 degrees Fahrenheit (around 218 degrees Celsius) for 25 minutes. Put the eggplant in a blender with tahini, garlic, lemon juice and chickpeas. Pulse into paste. Add parsley, basil, onion. Pulse for 2-3 seconds at a time until properly mixed in. Add salt and pepper. Serve with pita bread or chips. This is a column on easy, inventive cooking from a male perspective. Samar Halarnkar is consulting editor, Mint and Hindustan Times. Write to Samar at ourdailybread@livemint.com

ADITI MEHTA

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East meets West: Dosas with mimosas helped cement old ties and new in Philadelphia.

SHUBHA MUDGAL

VOICE OF THE WOUNDED nherent in the power of music is its intrinsic ability to communicate as few other mediums can. You could be a complete stranger to a musician, and yet their music will touch and move those depths of your being that you have so carefully hidden for years. It will often bring down a virtual dam of reserve and composure that has taken a lifetime to put in place. Saida Begum’s voice can do just that to me. I do not know who she is, what language she speaks, or even who she learnt her lessons in music from. Yet when she sings Dum Dhola on the album Rabba Mereya: Sufi Music of Punjab, I have to struggle to retain my composure. Hers isn’t the conventionally pure, clear, pretty voice that cloaks its listeners with peace

Trinistyle Rum Punch

Serves 4-5

MUSIC MATTERS

I suspect she is only half joking. All is chaos, and all is calm.

and piety. On the contrary, this is a voice full of painful shards and torn edges, hissing, spitting and smouldering away. It traverses difficult leaps and jumps with the ease that is so typical of singers from Punjab, but falters slightly at times when resting on notes. So it maintains a fair distance from perfection and yet, it is able to speak to the listener with tremendous strength and power. It seems strange to be writing about a piece of music that many a reader might not have heard. With this in mind, I requested De Kulture Music, producers and publishers of the album Rabba Mereya, to share the track in question for readers of Lounge. They responded generously with the following link: http://soundcloud.com/

Pure notes: Saida Begum.

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

de-kulture-music/dum-dhola I invite readers to savour the sense of anguish and longing that Saida Begum manages to convey rather effortlessly with Dum Dhola. In some ways it is not an unusual example of a love song, with commonly used metaphors and images for love, longing and separation—a lover wilting away, singed by the fiery pangs of viraha or separation, the radiance of the beloved’s countenance rendering the sun and the stars pale in comparison, and reminders that promises of togetherness must be fulfilled. Nothing that is unique or different from countless other love songs of India. Even Dum Dhola, the attractive main motif of the song, has been used repeatedly in Sufi verses to signify the chanting of the beloved with each breath that the devotee takes, constant and unbroken till the breath ceases in death. What makes it different then? I’d have to say it is Saida Begum’s expressive and

unbridled voice that transforms the song from being any other song into one that you definitely want to hear again and again, even with its imperfections. Do I want to hear more from Saida Begum? Of course, I do. I’m yearning for more. But not if her voice comes packaged for television evangelists and saviours of folk music, who strut around claiming to have “found” or “discovered” forgotten voices of India. Neither do I want the so-called New-Age crusaders of Cola-backed, liquor-laced, surrogate advertising campaigns packaged as music initiatives to touch her voice with their shallow ideas of contemporaneity. Give me the real Saida Begum any day, with a voice that is for and of the wounded. Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shubha’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/musicmatters

COOL IDEAS L7

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NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA THE IMPARTIAL SPECTATOR

The culture of innovation SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES

he day Steve Jobs died provided a moment of delicious irony. The protesters who had called for an angry occupation of Wall Street took a break from their fury against the billionaire crowd to tweet from expensive iPhones about their sense of loss at the passing of a man who was worth some $7 billion (`38,710 crore now). Those billions did not seem to diminish Jobs’ popularity among the earnest people rallying against the rich. Jobs often argued that innovation would require a blend of technology and the liberal arts, and education systems should encourage such pollination rather than focus on narrow specialization. He took calligraphy classes at university, and said they gave him the insight required to design the beautiful typography that is now part of most personal computers. Perhaps less well known is Norio Ohga, one of the inventors of the CD and the man who succeeded the legendary Akio Morita as chairman of Sony in 1994. Ohga read music at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and was hired by Sony after he sent a letter to its top management pointing out various defects in their tape recorders. His blend of musical skills and technological understanding also led to his backing of the Sony PlayStation console. The likes of Jobs and Ohga may be considered rarities, but there is a lot that entrepreneurs can learn from painters, poets, film-makers and musicians. T.S. Eliot was only 29 when he wrote his greatest poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, while Robert Frost wrote one of his most anthologized poems, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, when he was 48. Orson Welles made Citizen Kane when he was 26, while Alfred Hitchcock made Vertigo when he was 59. Pablo Picasso

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Blending concepts: Apple’s Steve Jobs (left) and WalMart’s Sam Walton had different approaches to new ideas.

painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, his first major Cubist work, when he was 26, while Paul Cezanne painted his Château Noir when he was 64. Wolfgang Mozart composed The Marriage of Figaro at the age of 30, while Ludwig van Beethoven composed Symphony No. 9 at the age of 54. They were all great creative minds, but some did their best work at a young age while the others did so at a much later stage in their lives. The University of Chicago economist David Galenson has spent several years studying these two patterns of human creativity. He divides artists into two groups: the Young Geniuses who do their best work early in their careers and the Old Masters who improve with age. He also calls

them the conceptual innovators and experimental innovators. There are important differences between these two groups—their approach, their style of work, their quest. “Experimental innovators seek to record their perceptions. They work tentatively, by trial and error. The impression of their goals rarely allows them to feel they have succeeded, as they often have trouble finishing individual works, and generally spend their careers pursuing a single objective. They build their skills gradually, and their innovations appear incrementally in a body of work. In contrast, conceptual innovators use their art to express ideas or emotions. Their goals are precise, so they plan their works, and execute them systematically. Their innovations are conspicuous,

transgressive, and often irreverent,” Galenson explained in a paper. Galenson has used statistical methods to calculate the peak period in the life cycle of a creative person. For example, he trawled through anthologies to see whether a poem was written at the beginning of a career or the end. He checked the catalogues of the retrospectives of famous painters in art galleries. He has tracked auction prices. He polled film critics to understand the aesthetic value of various films. He then classified his subjects into Old Masters and Young Geniuses. Economists have become more aware of the role of human creativity in our economic lives. Poor countries can grow quickly by using more resources such as land, labour and capital. But there comes a time when countries have to become more dependent on innovation. And innovation needs entrepreneurs who are ready to jump into the unknown and a culture that supports them in this mad quest. “In view of the enormous importance of innovation, we might naturally assume that economists

would devote a great deal of attention to understanding the methods these extraordinary individuals use to produce their discoveries: how artists create masterpieces, how medical scientists develop vaccines and treatments for diseases, how scholars devise new methods of inquiry and analysis, how engineers and entrepreneurs create new technologies and products,” Galenson wrote in a paper published in 2010. Galenson has studied the great cultural innovators. But companies can be separated into two similar categories as well—those which overturn the world and those which make it more efficient. Apple is like Picasso while Dell is like Cézanne, as journalist Malcolm Gladwell has proposed. We could add some more possibilities. Silicon Valley is like Mozart while Bangalore is like Beethoven. The US is like Eliot while Japan is like Frost. Then there are the crossovers, or companies that became innovative. Samsung is a case in point. It was a lumbering giant that metamorphosed into a cool consumer technology company after it almost went bankrupt during the Asian economic crisis of 1997. Jobs was quintessentially the conceptual innovator. Sam Walton of Wal-Mart could be thought to be an experimental innovator. Both were tremendous businessmen who changed the world for the better. But is there any doubt that it is the former—and his type—that wins more public sympathy? Niranjan Rajadhyaksha is executive editor, Mint. Write to Niranjan at impartialspectator@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Niranjan’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/impartialspectator

L8 COOL IDEAS

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THINKSTOCK

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

The real lasting power of two W

here do cool ideas come from? Every year, the online salon Edge.org poses one question and gets a bunch of smart people to answer it. The 2011 question was: What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit? The answers, compiled as a book with the laughably ambitious title, This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking, has 165 contributions from eminent thinkers on subjects too disparate to be memorable: anthropophilia, cognitive humility, haecceity, and other such abstruse concepts. Some themes emerge out of this morass of ideas. One that informs this column is called dualism. Although the word immediately connotes spirituality and philosophy, dualism in this context has little to do with Dvaita or Descartes. Instead, it has its genesis in quantum theory and wave-particle duality. Just as matter is both wave-like and particle-like, why can’t the same idea represent two opposing truths, ask the essayists? Ergo dualism: the notion that one underlying truth can be expressed by two opposite realities. I know. It’s a bit mind-bending, but don’t give up on me. As you will see, dualism comes naturally to us. Indians are adept at holding two contradictory thoughts in their heads every single day. We are a surging economy, yet our streets are filled with beggars. We have the

fourth highest number of global dollar-billionaires, yet we fall deep down in the world poverty index. Even commonplace sights on our streets are rife with duality or two realities. Cows stand or sit beside road dividers yet they don’t get run over; the traffic weaves around them. The vendors who sell us fruits, vegetables and coconut water are both crafty and honest; in their own way. Extended families are both a pain and a pleasure, depending on the mood and the moment. Our food is both sweet and sour. Our cities are traffic nightmares and yet, there is little incidence of road rage in most Indian cities. In this age of specialization, dualism presents a powerful alternative. To hold two contradictory ideas in your head implies a certain comfort with ambiguity, the grey zone. Children have this ability to hold not just two contradictory thoughts, but multiple such thoughts in their heads at the same time. We call it imagination. Dualism represents a stark contrast to the dichotomy that percolates our cultural conversation these days. Embracing the physicist’s meaning of duality, says writer Amanda Gefter, “could serve as a potent antidote to our typically Boolean, two-valued, zero-sum thinking—where statements are either true or false, answers are yes or no, and if I’m right, then you are wrong. With duality, there’s a third option. Perhaps my argument is

The recipe: Adopting a new idea is like executing a back flip—trying is the most important aspect.

right and yours is wrong; perhaps your argument is right and mine is wrong; or, just maybe, our opposing arguments are dual to one another.” Dualism is not just about quantum theory or world-changing ideas. It works in smaller contexts too. The next time you have an argument with your spouse or partner, maybe you can take the high road by preaching dualism. She may be convinced she is right; and you know you are right. Guess what? You both may be right. That’s dualism. Wrap your head around that concept. As India grows from a service economy to an entrepreneurial one, I would like to submit that we capitalize on our natural inclination towards dualism and turn it into a potent wellspring for innovative ideas. Jugaad (improvisation) capitalism is well-known. It used to be lauded; it is now viewed pejoratively. Jugaad marries creativity with a tinkering, engineering mindset. As India grows in confidence, dualism can help us jump from this engineering, make-things-better mindset to the realms of true innovation. What else can constitute a recipe for innovation? A smidgen of fear won’t hurt. Consider back flips. I attempted this in my building’s pool. After watching all the children do this routinely, to the point where they looked like somersaulting jellyfish, I decided to give it a try. It’s harder than you think, particularly if you learn it as an adult. I swim well. But it is one thing to plunge forward into the deep end or dive face first. It is quite another to fall backwards. So I stand at the deep end and listen to a little child yell at me to put my head back and down into the water. I can’t do it. Fear of falling; fear of drowning overcomes all my rational thoughts that I cannot

RADHA CHADHA LUXURY CULT

The work ethic paradox B

y a strange coincidence I found myself dealing with handymen in two cities in the same week doing the same task—putting up a bunch of paintings in my apartment in Gurgaon and then in Dubai. The Gurgaon experience was reminiscent of Uncle Podger—crooked pictures (left nail hammered in slightly higher than the right), extra holes drilled in wrong places (hurried measurements gone awry), dust and the odd nail strewn on the ground. The Dubai experience was the anti-Podger—no question of a crooked picture as each one was inspected with a spirit level, the dust from drilling caught in a plastic bag taped under, the wall touched up with matching paint instantly. Even an engineering supervisor from the building showed up to make sure we weren’t drilling into an electrical conduit or something. I was amazed—not because the Dubai team was so courteous, careful, well-trained and utterly professional—but because they were all from India! It got me wondering: If Indian handymen in Dubai can do such a high-quality job, why can’t they deliver the same quality in India? What is the magic potion here that transforms our deeply entrenched chalta hai (anything goes) attitude

THINKSTOCK

into one of dedicated professionalism? What if it was possible to bottle this magic potion and make it available in India? It would make such a welcome difference to the hassles of our everyday lives! And it would be an absolute boon for luxury brands in the home segment. Consider this: The kitchen may be Poggenpohl, the lighting Artemide, the wooden flooring Junckers, the bathroom fittings Grohe, but finally all those fancy brands are at the mercy of desi electricians, plumbers and fitters. I believe there are three key ingredients to this magic potion. The ‘planning’ gene is spliced on In India, the planning gene is in short supply in general, and in the case of electricians, plumbers, carpenters and assorted handymen, the planning gene is simply not there. So you have the electrician showing up to install a lamp, and then piping up at the last minute and saying he doesn’t have the right bit for the drill. Worse still, he might come without a drill. Mission Professional nuances: Indian workmen aborted, everyone’s time wasted. abroad work differently than here. In Dubai, the planning is imposed on the poor Indian into making them “professionals”. I technician, and whether he likes it was delighted to see the or not, he has to comply. The difference—they are the same guys handymen, for example, came from you deal with in India, but kitted a local maintenance company, and out with the tools, skills and clearly a lot of training had gone mindset to do an excellent job.

drown in a swimming pool. I throw my head back, attempt a yogic chakrasana pose under water, and flip out. I come out gasping. Why do I persist? I hate this exercise. It is the foolish belief that out of this smidgen of fear will arise an expanse of possibility of what I can do. It is why people run marathons after age 60; or climb Mount Everest without oxygen tanks. Where do cool ideas come from? Some, like Flipkart, are adapted from ideas that work. Some, like the boys on Chowpatty beach who will spread a mat on the sand and get your chaat order from the crowded stalls nearby, come from spotting a need and addressing it. Some, like the Nano, come from an engineering mindset of tinkering and improving. But true Einsteinian, Jobs-like innovation comes from

none of these places. It comes from your solar plexus; from your gut; from your soul. It comes from that frisson of fear and excitement as you stand at the crossroads of an unknown place and realize that every notion you held as dear and true could be overturned in your head through a radical idea that came out of nowhere. That’s when you hug yourself with joy and nervousness. That’s when you call the private equity guys.

Penny-wise-pound-foolish attitude is nixed The Indian need to save money is so overpowering that it blinds us to the big picture and the fact that the money-saving activity may well be a money-losing one. For example, a beautifully made table will arrive with assorted dents and scratches because it hasn’t been packed well enough for transportation—the vendor has saved on packaging but now has to spend on repairing it, or swallow the cost of taking it back. Not investing in the tools of the trade is a typical folly, and the cost of repeated trips to the market to buy little bits and bobs is not counted. When I think of tools I always think of Victor, a handyman we hired often in Hong Kong, where we lived for a few years. Victor loved tools, especially the latest gizmos on the market. Every time he came, we would spend a few minutes on the Internet, and he would show me some ultra-cool tool that he was saving up to buy. Needless to say, his workmanship was superb. Sadly, the relationship between excellent tools and excellent work is lost on our save-at-any-cost mindset.

live up to it. Driving in Dubai is a good example—neat and orderly, a stark contrast to the chaos of India. Again, many of the drivers are from India, which makes you wonder what makes an unruly, lane-cutting, light-jumping driver transform into a diligent follower of traffic rules. I ask the question to Mutthu, who is the driver of the car I have hired today—he should know, he has been here for 20 years, working for the same car rental company. He points to the straight lanes of traffic ahead—it is the norm and he is adhering to it. There are traffic radars that will know if he crosses the speed limit, and his company will deduct the fine from his salary. He certainly doesn’t want that to happen as he is here for just one reason: to save money for his family back home. Clear standards, clear monitoring, clear implementation of rules—that’s what keeps us Indian drivers on the straight and narrow here. Can the magic potion be brought to India? We’d have to change our culture of jugaad (improvisation) and ho jayegaji (it’ll get done) into one of planning and careful execution. I am hoping it will happen someday soon—in the meantime tedha hai, par mera hai (it’s crooked, but it’s mine).

The bar is set higher Through years of conditioning, we have collectively accepted that shoddy workmanship is the norm in India. It is now endemic, a deep-rooted part of our culture. The environment—our public setting of uneven roads, mangled traffic, horrible sanitation, unkempt buildings—only serves to reinforce the point. In Dubai, that quality bar is set higher, and our Indian technician has no choice but to meet those standards. There is training, there is supervision, there is a system of carrots and sticks that makes him

Shoba Narayan plans to call the private equity guys when she figures out a way to do back flips without gasping. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shobanarayan

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

COOL IDEAS L9

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GOT THAT COOL IDEA? THEN DUMP THE JOB Every cool idea has a beginning—and begets a new one. In spite of challenges (the World Bank rates India 132 out of 183 economies for ease of doing business), we continue to go indie through the Indian ideal of improvi sation. Case in point: the people creating veg etable farms in frenetic Mumbai—on its rooftops. We’re also finding new niches: take the sports portal organizing big leaguestyle games for you and your colleagues. “Today we have more young student entre preneurs and women cofounders,” says K.

2007

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Ambuja Former Gujaratabout his new passion talks candidly >Page 10

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>Page 17

Cool jobs may find in these be difficult to recessionary times, but there’s no shorta of cool entrep reneurs >Pages ge 613

THE AGEOLD DEBATE

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Vol. 3 No. 38

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We follow up last year’s list of cool jobs with some more. These will convince you why a great job is not always about a fat salary package or going off the beaten path >Page 9

26, 2009

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>Page 12

latex Arun Kumar’s sell toys for toddlers widely in Europe.

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Should age dictate your style? Two fashionable women outlooks on dressing with different reveal how they dealt with growing up >Page 8

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CHA IN MATCHA’S

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Kashmiri food, citronella candles Parsi chalk—organ and with tips from ize your Diwali do hostesses >Pagethese six seasoned 5

DEN Unesco is yet to get back on India’s nomination of Nokrek a biosphere reserve. National Park as No though, to delay a visit reason for you, >Page 18

PRIVATE EYE of India’s most

one all at an Anupam Poddar, collectors, bares reclusive art Berlin >Page 20 exhibition in

SOBH

A’S FOR ROHI AT GRANDM S POSSE THE SUMMER ISPONTING’ ? Come this summer? TEST TEAM SUPER plans. you going o where are haven’t made THE MOST M ALL THE GREA s, as tell me you packing up on, don’t people are in the mid-1990dawn it seems, s in Cannes, d the Delhi summer Every day, HERO OF THE er, I’ve been ome cans announce I escaped out for vacation Multiple suitcases heading clinking milk PURSUITS HVI SANG

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Srikrishna, executive director, National Entrepreneurship Network. “There is a la cuna in angel funding, particularly in the `1560 lakh bracket. But entrepreneurs build great companies, not venture capitalists.” What does it take to keep them going? In our sixth annual cool ideas issue, these clever ventures will make you want to leave your company—and put your own idea into play.

For today’s

Ebrahim Alkazi talks photo archive and theabout his famed preservation >Page importance of 21

(from left, standing) Sunalini Menon (sitting) Amit Sharma, and Sunil Doshi; Vinod Kumar Bisht and Sreejith KG.

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muscles, or Goa. and and and flexed its I can rememb a small boy, I Koh Samui on the TV ver since . As , villas rented, and the heat s Switched by Superman could lay my gelo in Tuscany, visas procured airline schedule to America. I fascinated n for an hour live, a glistening MichelanBulls, in are packed, the comics d. In between home cranky and live-actio bought all he was, his Chicago rates negotiate to see the you return be simple. US, I saw there Michael Jordan and and longed perfect moment and kids’ activities, holidays used to a trip to the hands on off a Nikes. , was that I was 14, on also the featured . Summer being packed NBA play-offs collide. They were version. When n TV show which up, it meant teams exhausted art costume. the I was growing >Page 6 sport and a creased Outstanding the Superma fair When ged guy in n stuff, when ents. ation of winning. . It sounds like a to the grandpar paunchy middle-ainterest in the live-actio . Then, as personificball, the challenge 5 I lost continued After that, posse. >Page want the for the comics between people who of Ponting’s n love my but descriptio was divided now, the world >Page 5 and Marvel. loved DC

WORK &

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CAN A TEST STEER YOU TO A CAREER ?

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of this week > A review to next week oting that my 19-year-old > Look ahead daughter seemed frustrated about > Market Watch column changing college career choices after > Capital Account

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SHOBA NARAYAN KEEP YOUR WATER PURE AND SIMPLE MUSIC, THE FOOD OF LIFE, PLAY ON...

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Ayesha Grewal at her store in Delhi’s Shanti Niketan market.

>Pages 614

PUBLIC EYE

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SUNIL KHILNANI

STALL ORDER

SHOBA NARAYAN

NANDINI RAMNATH

DANGERS WITHOUT BORDERS

BANGALORE’S GOT MASS TO CLASS A TICKET TO RIDE AND BACK

akistan has long rocked itself in a cradle of victimhood, attributing its torments to ploys and conspiracies hatched elsewhere. And so it was perhaps inevitable, after the devastating floods in July, that some in Pakistan blamed the floods on clandestine US and Indian manipulation of monsoon clouds and river flows. It was just as inevitable that we Indians—also habituated to playing the victim, especially in regard to Pakistan—played up our hurt at being blamed for having a role in our neighbour’s national catastrophe. >Pages 45

tarting this week, the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) is running its newly procured Mercedes-Benz luxury buses to the Bangalore airport and back, offering competition to the fire-engine red, poetically named Vayu Vajra Volvo buses that already ply the airport route. Some of the new buses will even have wireless connectivity. Have you ridden the airport bus in Bangalore lately? I did this for the first time last week, I am embarrassed to say. >Page 5

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KEN D

BAPROLA’S BABYFACE

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>Page

THE MYTHOLOGIST

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This issue year’s instal you wishas 11 imagiment of our h you nat could ive venturannual coo work l PUBLI for thees that maideas C EY SUNIL m >Pages y make KH E 714

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IMPERF ECT

IONS

OUT LOU

SUB DRIFTCONTINENT AL

Does about Sarmila Bose’ uncov Bangladesh s controversia er new ’s l book old biases truths war of ? >Page , or simplliberation y revers 15 e

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elf with week as I prac strug , after tical gled man of Cam dysfunctiothe entr y ench to reac bridg aina N intriguin e h w a l gly caugi s t e m place e po ire their This hyste involvedt h e r m I found insan where few ht in an r a r i l y a rical o myself e, nd almo youn r e c o youn Twit gripp —to the and grea alluring ter mom g victi n t e m p g play st-there ed by t, this spac guar ora ms of and hen spac e between ers reac Sienna s, wron abdu r y d r a m an by antee, a I h. e of ged spac ction a a very Mille early lived in good r in starrcelebrities , indig . I t so single insp e so smal prom ise the 1990 mile the road s, I spen US duri but ing roles (Hugh nant monuncommo ired mom l it can s by no ng be t ent, )... >Page Grant th amid nly hard yet bridg bridged low— by rent ed , trave lling a lot of time the loses . car 4 Grey rolli thou a matc the plun I’m think on ing or— sand it’s Sing whe ing this it is Midwng alon houn d k of h s of n mon shut apor she reall g the bus. I last tles ester ey e, her y liked flat face shouldn’t as Saina than I had n skies the feelwas prai and tells. like ever coun rie, und of .. >Page . It’s June expe trysi er big , to was the 5 de rienc gastr shin ed. Wha more open onom (a depr ing sea. ic essed, A big Mac samenes t I did not s depr essin or fajita in from sea g town grey Gary ... >Pag e6

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‘Gorur Garir Headlight’ has been running to packed since 1972 >Page houses in Kolkata 16

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YO IDEUA’VE GO T , GIV E MNEOW THE A JO B

ILNAN MED I SPICE GIRL GOLIAIA’S DAVID Sarita Choudhury, known for her roles TH M AN in ‘Kama Sutra’ and ‘Mississippi OMEN D retur Masala’, on her debut in an Indian ned film >Page 17 to Cam years T bridg away mys , and e last

an Anjaana Anjaani hold its ground in the post-Dabangg world? Will audiences who have hooted their hearts out at Dabangg’s unabashed gimmickry care for a privileged and beautiful couple who set out on a road trip across a pothole-free and flood-unaffected foreign country? Among all the things being said in praise of Dabangg, the assertion that it has gladdened the hearts of the so-called “chavanni class” is the most interesting. According to the theory... >Page 17

Champion wrestler Sushil Kumar talks about his journey from Haryana’s mud pits to the Olympic medal and international stardom >Page 18

Devdutt Pattanaik makes the Mahabharat thrillerlike—another successful attempt at articulating big mythological ideas >Page 16

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THE GOOD

LIFE SHOBA NARA

MAYAWATI’S YAN DAILY BREAD SAMA R HALARNKA JAHAN CONN SHAH EVERY WOM R AN ECTION WAN TS THIS MAN THAI HIGH: THE KONKAN WAY

e love the Taj Maha l but hate Mayawati’s monument. ow’s this for The Taj sent Bengali Tagore a cool teardrop on into rapture tailor on demand? business idea: a the cheek (“a I’d bite; I’d e all love Thai of time”). Gandhi, less pay above buy; I’d Gujarati sentimenta food, market prices. season spicy, saucy—cl don’t we? Tangy, whatNew The festive it was: Delhi,a monumentl, saw it immediately for anotherhas just started and I am ose enough discovering accepted by to cruelty. He of the peasantsMumbai, area in which to be thought utter masala-lo ving Bang taxed to I am a complete yet exotic enough alore, pay failure. From Indians, villagers who forKolka to be a special its marble, and this moment lost their land ta, Chennthe through to Christmas, on, all the way restauran ts has washed meal. A flood of Thai to its was Mumtaz ai, Ahme up in our Mahal’s achievemegardens. What indabad an Indian woman’sthe most important man surprisingly few people cities, but She produced nt? She bred. try the cuisine 14 children, This might life is not her Hyderabad sizzling, lover; be because including Aurangzeb at home. in 19 years red-hot not, her some of marriage. Chandboyfriend , bed tea >Page 4 igarh, Punewho brings her difficult to find: fish sauce, of the ingredients are and other goodies; galangal (Thai lemon grass, sugar daddy not herSatur shallots, to ginger), daddy or who showers name a day, July and spices are her with... >Page freely available few. Some roots 16, 4 grocer 2011 and provision at neighbourh ood Vol. 5 stores.... >Page No. 29 18

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Three new graphic genre into realms novels push the philosophy >Page of journalism and 14

Sam Goldman, the founderCE O D.light Design,of believes solarpower lamps can transform the lives of the poor.

2011

THE GOOD LIFE

othing symbolizes the gullibility of the modern consumer majors a few times, f all the creative types more than the what any good helicopter I did that I have been bottled drinking water parent would do: associated with, boom. Don’t get I bought me wrong. her a career-testing I find that modern and counselling session. I can see at least dancers have a genius one good argument Vendors for bottled of career tests, which for discovering music forms that water: safety. In Third assess one’s interests escape even the World countries, abilities and link them and the water in musicians. Dancers, ranging with potential occupations, the taps is usually from Martha unfit to drink. And rising demand from see restaurants Ailey to Merce Cunningham, Graham to Alvin teenagers, young adults often can’t be bothered and their water parents, representatives to invest in open were amazingly purification systems. to new sounds, rhythms say. Some people This is as true of parts who take of Europe. them are wondering and harmonies. It isn’t just the foreigners. whether a specialized So, if you are travelling high Even young Christopher school or college major or eating at a who restaurant that seems to be is a good fit. >Page teaches children insufficiently careful 4 hip hop in Bangalore WSJ about the cleanliness introduced me to of its water... >Page new music last week. 5 I sat in on a class and loved the music. >Page 6 New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Pune Saturday, September 18, 2010 Vol. 4 No. 37

2010

PHOTOSYNTHES IS

HISTORY IN HIS SIGHTS

LIFE THE GOOD A NARAYAN

RY GAMETTHEO BRIJNATH

THE ART THE PAT OF EL SHO T

Notq DSLR uiteartists totin , and g claim often to phototravellers ignore graph are stakin d, ic art >Page g 18

PHOTO ESSAY

AMID THE CLOUDS

Rajni George

FRESH & LOCAL’S FLYOVER FARM www.freshandlocal.org

Gardeners hit the roof This imaginative bunch is busy turning Mumbai’s urban crawl into a farming sprawl, with an ambitious project to reinvent a terrace on Mohammed Ali Road as a 500 sq. ft farm

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Past life Before 25-year-old Adrienne Thadani left the US in 2009, she had a T-shirt company in Washington, DC, and worked as a painter, “making things for people in their homes”. “Incredibly random,” she says, smiling. When she visited Mumbai to document stories about her Indian grandparents, she found herself full of ideas about things she wanted to do here and decided to move. In late 2010, she began Fresh & Local, a start-up creating small projects, including rooftop kitchen gardens and food gardens for NGOs like Sneha (Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action) and SPROUTS (Society for Promotion of Research, Outdoors, Urbanity, Training and Social Welfare).

Eureka moment Just over a year ago, Thadani met Naheed Carrimjee, board member of NGO Under The Mango Tree, and began discussing her ideas to “farm the city” with her. Then came the idea for a project of unusual scale. Carrimjee owns Mohamedi Manzil, a five-storey, mixed-use building on south Mumbai’s Mohammed Ali Road, whose terrace overlooks the arterial JJ flyover which connects Byculla to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. Bursting with people and commerce, its surroundings are densely populated and there is little green space within walking distance. “The terrace is an amazing space and we had all these ideas,” Thadani says. “We didn’t know how it was all going to come together.” In stepped 32-year-old Nicola Antaki, a London-based architect, illustrator and photographer who had recently come to Mumbai to conduct research for a PhD on how architecture influences children’s learning. Antaki’s strengths as an illustrator articulated Thadani

and Carrimjee’s vision on paper, transforming a mosaic-tiled open rooftop into a farm, yoga centre and eventually a grocery, with a community dining area.

Green thumbs: (from left) Nicola Antaki, Adrienne Thadani and Mohan Jha on Mohamedi Manzil’s terrace.

Genesis Once they realized their plans could work, the Fresh & Local team, which includes Thadani, Antaki, Mumbai-based musician Liam Rees and Carrimjee, sat down to work on the implementation. They decided to look for funding via Kickstarter, an online platform that allows projects to seek “crowdfunding”, departing here from most Indian start-ups. “Our team is fairly international,” Thadani explains, “and instead of appealing to a few wealthy individuals or doing this on a smaller scale, we could tap into all our networks this way, get people from both India and abroad to fund us.” Putting the project online also put them in touch with other communities of urban farmers around the world, keen to exchange information and track each other’s progress. Over the last two months, Thadani and Antaki, with input from Carrimjee and a small group of friends, began planting their flyover farmland. The team planted okra, cucumber, tomatoes, spinach and herbs like basil and lemon grass in pots and soil beds. “We’ve given the first lot away to people in the building, the security guards, and the vegetable vendors downstairs,” Thadani says. Help came from an unusual source: The building’s watchman, Mohan Jha, had some experience of farming in his native village, and began to come up and look after the plants, advising Thadani on which soils would work best. Residents also participate in farming by, for example, providing kitchen waste for compost. “It’s a space for everyone in the building,” Thadani says. “We’ve calculated the yields so that each of the 50 families in the building will get enough for a vegetable dish every day (free of cost), for about six-eight months.”

STARTING CAPITAL $6,510 (around `3.58 lakh) HOW THEY RAISED THE MONEY www. kickstarter.com GETTING THE FIRST CUSTOMERS Mohamedi Manzil’s residents and local vegetable vendors BIGGEST DIFFICULTY SO FAR Planning the funding—the how of it

Any surplus will be sold to vegetable vendors and the proceeds farmed back into the project. But Thadani says Flyover Farm’s real goal is to “show what’s possible for a sustainable community”, which will allow Fresh & Local to expand its projects to include rooftop farms and gardens for profit.

Reality check “Organizing stuff and getting our information together took time,” says Antaki. “Just creating our website was a good test of how we were going to pull it all together.” It was trial by experiment. “The landlord (Carrimjee) owns the building, but this isn’t her private garden,” says Thadani. “Fresh & Local is a start-up and doesn’t have the money to pay for the farm, and the residents of the building are choosing to participate in it if they want to, so we didn’t want them to be responsible for paying for it. We knew we had this budget, but was it high, was it reasonable?

We didn’t know how people would react to it.” Results indicate they have reacted well—Flyover Farm’s Kickstarter page charged past its goal of $5,500 (around `3.02 lakh), raising $6,510 by the first week of May, within just six weeks. After various deductions, the group will get about $5,000. Farming has stopped temporarily, while the terrace undergoes construction through the monsoon, to accommodate the next phase of farming from September.

Plan B Flyover Farm is Fresh & Local’s biggest project yet, but it remains experimental; it’s too soon to think of Plan B. “I’d say this is our proof of concept,” Thadani says.

Secret sauce “Adrienne!” exclaims Antaki. “None of this would have happened without her.” Thadani laughs. “I was going to say, ‘Everyone else.’”

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SKILLKINDLE www.skillkindle.com

EPOCH ELDER CARE www.epocheldercare.com PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Extracurricular business A service which connects people with a fun skill—like mixology—to people who want to learn it B Y K OMAL S HARMA komal.sharma@livemint.com

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Past life

At home with ‘nani’: Eldercare specialists with Epoch customer S.M. Khanduri and Epoch founder Kabir Chadha (foreground).

Grandmom’s helper

Eldercare specialists macromanage and supplement senior citizens’ needs in the NCR—from Facebook requirements to ‘nanidadi’ makeover parties B Y R AJNI G EORGE rajni.g@livemint.com

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Past life The founder and CEO of Epoch Elder Care, Kabir Chadha, 26, grew up in Delhi, studied economics at Stanford University, California, worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Co., New York—and then wanted to do something different, like many of his colleagues. “It was easier for me to do the job,” he says. “But I decided to quit and start my own business from home.”

Eureka moment “My nani (maternal grandmother) was my inspiration,” says Chadha. When he moved back to India in April 2011, he decided to live with her in Gurgaon. “Having an 83-year-old flatmate helped me realize the many needs of an elderly person and how ill-equipped we are to deal with them here,” he remembers. “Older people, I observed, were sometimes bored and lonely, and I thought they needed proper companionship.” For, he explains, small, high-end flats in places like Gurgaon, which accommodate not more than four-five people, mean nuclear families now often prevail. “I could see that it was now natural for older people to be living on their own,” he says. “Their children were either living in the same city but not nearby, in another Indian city, or abroad.” Time had become scarce for these working children, now with families of their own; not always on hand for a simple task such as showing their elderly relative how to operate a new DVD player. Epoch was born out of an attempt to meet a gap Chadha perceived: between a need for a fuller appreciation of older people’s requirements and a lifestyle where there is not always enough time to provide personalized care. “There is a feeling that

retirement communities do not usually provide a caring atmosphere for the Indian elderly; there’s a stigma attached to living in a retirement home,” Chadha explains. “It is perceived that your children cannot take care of you, if you are in one.” Medical care workers, he adds, are often trained and treated as little more than maids, and cannot always provide more sophisticated care. This is where Epoch comes in: “We are friends, surrogate grandchildren.”

Genesis When Chadha returned to the US for a few months in June 2011, he attended elder-care conferences, spoke to doctors and his target demographic, and followed up with an elder-care conference in Hong Kong before applying his knowledge locally. He launched a pilot last October, then began operations in January. Business was generated through word of mouth, and Epoch now has 20 clients, a management team of three and six elder-care specialists (ECS), each handling three-four customers. Services range from 3 hours per week to 3 hours daily, and charges can range from $200 (around `11,200) per month for three visits to $400 for six visits per week, over a three-month term. This includes a one-time consultation, one organized social event, two outings (including doctor visits) a month, help with fall-proofing, medication management, purchase of elder-care products, placement of full-time nurses and maids, doctor and specialist referrals, and the scheduling of social interactions. On each visit, the ECS spends a few hours with the elderly person to meet their personal needs. Customized packages are also available. Employees are recruited through online job sites, interviewed by elder-care specialists and a psychologist on Epoch’s expert

STARTING CAPITAL Roughly $15,000 (around `8.4 lakh) HOW HE RAISED THE MONEY Selffinanced GETTING THE FIRST CUSTOMER An elderly woman suffering from depression—she was a friend of Chadha’s grandmother. They worked to take her out of the house, go on walks, revive her desire to paint and discuss current events BIGGEST DIFFICULTY SO FAR Balancing what the elderly need versus what their children want for them—it is often not the same thing

panel and vetted by a session with an elderly person. “For every ECS we hire, we review 50 candidates,” says Chadha. “Our employees have studied pharmacy, hospital management and social work, most with field or personal experience, and one with an elder-care focus.” Clients are usually 50-year-olds worried about the well-being of their parents, in their 70s and 80s—the customers. An ECS calls his/her customer almost daily and prepares a report every time s/he makes a site visit, relayed on email to many an anxious non-resident Indian (NRI)—or just on the other side of Delhi. Sometimes, a client lives with the elderly parents but needs help. The spectrum of services offered is broad. ECS Neha Sinha helps a customer maintain a food blog. “We organize events like fashion shows and makeover parties —some participants had never been to a beauty parlour before. And we teach them how to use Facebook so they can spy on their grandkids!” says Chadha. The craziest thing they’ve had to do? Manage to get a lonely client in a no-pets-allowed retirement home a pet fish.

While studying mathematics at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, SkillKindle founder and CEO Tanuj Choudhry, 29, spent a lot of time outside the classroom: student union, music, theatre societies and informal discussion groups. “I learnt early on that college was not just about what you studied, but also what you did,” he says. After graduating in 2004, he joined the McKinsey Knowledge Centre, and for the next six years, worked on projects in Singapore, Indonesia, Canada, the UK and South Africa. In 2010, he quit his job to pursue an MBA from the Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires (Insead), Paris. “During my time at Insead, I was looking at business ideas, and the one closest to my heart was: How do you bring technology and skills development together?”

Eureka moment “I don’t think I have one. It was a build-up. However, when I hired my first employee, Veer, in August 2011, there was no looking back. It’s also the time I tore up Plan B—an offer letter that I had from McKinsey,” says Choudhry.

Genesis Delhi-based Choudhry began by collecting information on customer behaviour. “Before the website was launched (in November), we

HOW HE RAISED THE MONEY Selffinanced

BIGGEST DIFFICULTY SO FAR People wait till the last day before confirming and that leads to classes being postponed Minar—which I feel was a great start, comprehensive, fun and value for money.” The significant role of the eightmember SkillKindle team, which has its office in Greater Kailash, is to find the right trainer. “We check credentials; a degree and, most importantly, work experience,” its founder stresses. His four full-time staff and three freelancers (two in design, one in branding) will be joined by three more this month. The company’s 175 classes now

Bring it on A ‘sportal’ promotes organized gameplaying culture among Delhi’s professionals, taking them from the office to the grounds B Y R UDRANEIL S ENGUPTA rudraneil.s@livemint.com

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Past life

Secret sauce

Eureka moment

“We approach care management through the idea of companionship,” says Chadha. “We manage needs from a base, and we are whistle-blowers.”

One weekend, Adeeb joined in a game of football with the neighbourhood children. “He came back excited, and flushed with happiness,” Zaidi recalls. But when

Plan B

STARTING CAPITAL `12 lakh

ORGANIZING THE FIRST WORKSHOP Mixologist Nischal Gurung’s vodka and white rum cocktails class on 19 November was attended by eight people

GAME ON INDIA www.gameonindia.net

Chadha doesn’t foresee a return to finance. “I project around 200 clients by next year, perhaps expanding to Mumbai and other cities.”

Often people would meet Epoch specialists, Chadha says, and decide they were already spending on medical care and other expenses; what did they need an ECS for? “Or they would say, right now nana (maternal grandfather) is too sick, come back in a few months.”

Kindling a fire: Tanuj Choudhry at an acting workshop that SkillKindle organized in Delhi.

include simple hobby-related skills (pottery, or how to make cheesecakes), elaborate or niche talents (from Indian classical music to B-boying, a kind of street breakdance), and traditional work-related skills like public speaking. The workshops are held at different venues across the city. SkillKindle says it receives approximately 2,000 requests every week now compared to 250 requests per week till mid-January. Last month, the business was seed-

funded by Gurgaon-based i3 Consulting, a company founded by former McKinsey employees that extends professional and financial support to other firms. “It provides us with enough working capital for the next six months at least,” says Choudhry, who hopes to break even eight months from now.

Reality check “Our experts need to be good trainers,” says Choudhry. More-

over, unlike corporate training, where all the 15 participants are geared towards the same aim, let’s say sales, a SkillKindle class is a mixed bag. “There’ll be one graphic designer, one poet, one marketing guy; it’s tough for the trainer to understand everyone’s motivations.” Coordinating attendance is also difficult and Choudhry is considering restructuring prices on the pattern of airfare models; the earlier you register, the more you save.

Plan B “I love McKinsey, and some day I’d like to return, but not yet. Typically, they pay for business school if you promise to return. But I didn’t take it because I didn’t want a backup plan.”

Secret sauce “Business schools teach this persistently: No matter what, give the customer what he wants. How you give it to them is where we come in.”

PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

Zeba Zaidi, 37, head of sales for the Nordic regions, Switzerland, Germany and France for Corporate Executive Board, a big multinational company, was based out of London for 10 years before moving to Dubai for three years and finally shifting to India last year. Husband Adnan Adeeb, 39, works for iGATE, an international company that provides business and technology solutions. When the couple and their two young children moved to New Delhi, they were frustrated by the lack of quality leisure activities. “All we could do was go to the movies, eat out, or go to a mall,” says Zaidi.

Reality check

started off with surveys and focus groups,” he remembers. “We needed to find out more than just the skills people want to learn; we also wanted to know what you look for in terms of convenience, cost, credibility of the teacher, how safe the venue is—a big deal in Delhi and Gurgaon for women.” The next step was to reach out to people who wanted to learn a skill. “I didn’t want to do mass mailers; I hate spam,” he says. He chose to focus on his clientele using smart data collection. For a photography workshop, for example, he looks at the previous month’s sales figures for DSLR cameras from Canon, Nikon and Sony. Of the 45,000-odd people it might throw up, hypothetically speaking, some might be looking for training. So, he then looks to partner with a Nikon or Canon to get the customer database, and then he sends a co-branded newsletter to these customers. SkillKindle supplements the newsletters with in-depth monitoring of online activity. “If I send you an emailer and you’ve clicked on the photography link and spent 3 minutes on it, I know you may be fairly interested,” explains Choudhry. One of SkillKindle’s earliest workshops was one in November by photographer André Jeanpierre Fanthom. “It was a Facebook event, we didn’t even have our website up yet,” recalls Choudhry. “Eighteen people attended a 6-hour workshop for `1,500—preluded by a photo walk at the Qutub

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

he again tried to find people to play with, he found it too time-consuming to organize the game. “Other friends had the same complaint—where do we play and who with?” says Zaidi. Zaidi, who quit her job, and Adeeb began putting together a business plan for a company that would make access to sports simple, fun and exciting for working professionals pressed for time. But while they were thrilled with what they had come up with, they needed validation from a third party. Zaidi discussed their proposal over lunch with professor Sujit Sanyal, who had taught her at the Times School of Marketing (now known as the Times School of Marketing and Management), Delhi, where she had received a diploma in management. Sanyal told her, “Jump in with both feet.” Zaidi then revealed that the idea was hers. “Give me two days and I’ll make you a presentation on why you should hire me,” he told her. A couple of months later, Sanyal was on board part-time as the company’s

communications manager. It was launched in February.

Genesis Game On India organizes everything: Indian Premier League (IPL)-style kits with different uniforms for different teams, refreshments, high-quality equipment, accredited referees (from the Delhi Football League, for example) and umpires (approved by the Delhi & District Cricket Association), as well as international standard venues such as Thyagaraj stadium (for football and badminton). A professional even inspects the grounds to ensure they are suitable. Working professionals register with their company name on the website at no cost, and the sportal then forms tournament teams. By February, Game On India had a beta site up and running, offering three games—badminton, cricket and football—in tournaments played over a month, on Saturdays and Sundays. The football event, held at Ambedkar Stadium in March, was priced at

Players’ club: Zeba Zaidi of portal Game On India organizes sports events.

STARTING CAPITAL `60 lakh HOW THEY RAISED THE MONEY Selffinanced GETTING THE FIRST CUSTOMERS A twoday event in partnership with the Indian Cancer Society at Select Citywalk mall got the first players to sign up BIGGEST DIFFICULTY SO FAR Keeping pace with the demand `1,200 per person, and the Twenty20 cricket tournament, also in March, at `4,000. The couple relied on contacts and word-of-mouth press, and were overwhelmed by the response. “Players were so excited by what we were doing that one of them offered to create a logo for us for free; others offered to write and compose a jingle for us,” Zaidi says. “That’s when we knew we were on to something. This reciprocity proved that we were filling a gaping need in the city.” Soon, they were flooded with requests for more tournaments, and what was meant to be a test

run turned into a full-fledged operation, with nearly 600 people registered and five tournaments organized thus far. Game On India now runs out of a small attic office on Delhi’s South Avenue next to Teen Murti, part of the couple’s home, and has six employees. It aims to introduce a pay-per-game schedule and upgrade to a sports social networking platform by August: Each registered player will have his or her own interactive home page, where you can add pictures, comments and videos. Currently, the sportal is playing two tournaments: football and cricket. “We will launch tennis, volleyball, hockey and athletics,” says Zaidi. “We are sports agnostics: any kind of outdoor or indoor physical sport there is a demand for.”

Reality check Booking government-run sports venues in Delhi has not been easy. “They only allow weekly bookings,” Zaidi says. “You can’t book consecutive Saturdays at one go, so it was a big challenge to keep playing at the same venues.”

Plan B After the great response to their experimental launch, there was no need for one, says the couple.

Secret sauce “Playing sports is not just fun, it gives you a sense of achievement,” Zaidi says. “That’s why we make sure everything is top quality. We wanted to give the regular person a taste of what it’s like to play in a professional environment. How many of us have actually played on the international standard football pitch at Ambedkar Stadium?”

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SKILLKINDLE www.skillkindle.com

EPOCH ELDER CARE www.epocheldercare.com PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Extracurricular business A service which connects people with a fun skill—like mixology—to people who want to learn it B Y K OMAL S HARMA komal.sharma@livemint.com

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Past life

At home with ‘nani’: Eldercare specialists with Epoch customer S.M. Khanduri and Epoch founder Kabir Chadha (foreground).

Grandmom’s helper

Eldercare specialists macromanage and supplement senior citizens’ needs in the NCR—from Facebook requirements to ‘nanidadi’ makeover parties B Y R AJNI G EORGE rajni.g@livemint.com

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Genesis Delhi-based Choudhry began by collecting information on customer behaviour. “Before the website was launched (in November), we

HOW HE RAISED THE MONEY Selffinanced

Bring it on A ‘sportal’ promotes organized gameplaying culture among Delhi’s professionals, taking them from the office to the grounds B Y R UDRANEIL S ENGUPTA rudraneil.s@livemint.com

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Past life

Secret sauce

Eureka moment

“We approach care management through the idea of companionship,” says Chadha. “We manage needs from a base, and we are whistle-blowers.”

One weekend, Adeeb joined in a game of football with the neighbourhood children. “He came back excited, and flushed with happiness,” Zaidi recalls. But when

Plan B

STARTING CAPITAL `12 lakh

ORGANIZING THE FIRST WORKSHOP Mixologist Nischal Gurung’s vodka and white rum cocktails class on 19 November was attended by eight people

GAME ON INDIA www.gameonindia.net

Chadha doesn’t foresee a return to finance. “I project around 200 clients by next year, perhaps expanding to Mumbai and other cities.”

Kindling a fire: Tanuj Choudhry at an acting workshop that SkillKindle organized in Delhi.

Reality check “Our experts need to be good trainers,” says Choudhry. More-

Secret sauce “Business schools teach this persistently: No matter what, give the customer what he wants. How you give it to them is where we come in.”

PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

Reality check

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

communications manager. It was launched in February.

Players’ club: Zeba Zaidi of portal Game On India organizes sports events.

Plan B After the great response to their experimental launch, there was no need for one, says the couple.

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NUTRAGENE www.nutragene.com

Know your DNA A genetic testing tool screens Indians for disease risk and medication sensitivity BY S H R E Y A R A Y

Eureka moment

shreya.r@livemint.com

As early as class XI, Anusha believed in the “transformative potential” of biotechnology. “If used effectively, biotech can help us treat disease and increase yield for different crops, among other things,” he says. While at Focus, he had overseen the sale of a genetic testing company and got to view the science and finance aspects of its operations more closely. “From mid-2010, I looked at other companies doing similar work in India, and realized they are literally lifted from American tests that are based on European or East Asian populations,” he says. In November 2010, he decided to work on a test that would be based solely on the Indian population. The reason this was important was the way that the same genetic mutations could have different impacts in Caucasians and Indians. “For instance, while a particular

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Past life After a bachelor’s degree in biotechnology from the State University of New York (Suny), Buffalo, US, Anubhav Anusha, 25, did a research assistantship at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, where he studied immunology and specialized in tumour biology. A master’s degree in biotechnology with a specialization in finance from Georgetown University in 2009 was followed by a few short-term jobs with investment banks Focus and Rodman & Renshaw. Having gotten a feel for both Wall Street and the lab, Anusha realized he wanted to be in a place that would allow him to connect research in biotechnology with consumers.

STARTING CAPITAL About `50 lakh HOW HE RAISED THE MONEY Personal savings; and his annual bonus from Rodman & Renshaw GETTING THE FIRST CUSTOMER A corporate client that bought tests for 20 of its employees BIGGEST DIFFICULTY SO FAR Raising capital

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Indiaspecific: Anubhav Anusha of NutraGene.

mutation could translate into intermediate risk of diseases for Caucasians, it could mean high risk for Indians,” says Anusha. So NutraGene offers five different types of tests for your DNA, and medication sensitivity. While the Complete Health Scan looks at 600 genetic mutations spanning all areas, there are also specific ones such as CardioMetabolic Health Scan; Medication Sensitivities; Weight and Fitness; and Cancer Risk Test. These are for people who want to check their DNA in relation to a specific disease, and will cover only a specific set of mutations (the Cancer Risk, for instance, will look at 200 mutations). These are cheaper than the Complete Health Scan which costs `10,000.

Genesis It works like this: Once you buy a test, NutraGene sends you a small package which you use to collect a sample (you collect a cheek swab yourself). You then send the sample back to the NutraGene laboratory (your sample can be collected from anywhere across India). NutraGene’s geneticists extract the DNA from it, screen it and generate the results which you can access privately on NutraGene’s website. This is followed up by complimentary genetic counselling and health and wellness consultation by the experts on their panel. The test focuses on getting information on many India-specific issues. For instance, type 2 diabetes, one of the biggest killers in India, is said to be linked to a particular set of genes and mutations. “The TCF7L2 gene and its variants appear to be associated with the highest risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and also can predict the likelihood that a person will convert from a state of pre-diabetes (borderline blood sugar levels) to full-blown type 2 diabetes,” explains Anusha. Knowing one’s genes and how they can affect your health will alert the individual to alter one’s lifestyle in time. A service of such large scope had

to offer a product which was also affordable. “India is a price-sensitive market,” says Anusha. Some of the costs he had to incur include: lab technicians and geneticists, who analyse the data; a full-time lab; a large sales and marketing force; a service to collect the sample from people; and a team of designers for the website, brochure and marketing material. “That’s where,” he says with a wide grin, “my baniya thinking comes in.” While he’s not ready to reveal many of the little secrets of his trade (“the competition could use all this information”), he does say that one big cost-saver was the fact that most of the “staff” at the company works project-wise, and not full-time. There are no operation costs, only costs every time a test is sold. Scientists are paid per test sold. Sales and marketing people are also hired on a freelance basis. For the nationwide collection service, NutraGene has tied up with “regional” partners. In March 2011, NutraGene was launched by going to big hospitals, distributing free samples and introducing doctors and clinicians to the test. Till date, 200 tests have been sold.

Reality check “I expected the Indian market not to be ready for such a product but I was surprised when doctors at Medanta, Apollo and Max (in Delhi) showed interest in it. The Fortis Centre of Excellence in Diabetes, Obesity, Metabolic Diseases and Endocrinology (C-DOC) has tied up with us, and doctors want to use the test,” he says.

Plan B Anusha wants to develop other products around DNA testing; he is already developing an oncology test.

Secret sauce NutraGene is cost-effective and makes unique health awareness tools based specifically on the Indian population, he says.

NATHAN G/MINT

KUPPATHOTTI www.kuppathotti.com

The recycling bin A website replaces Chennai’s neighbourhood ‘kabadiwallah’ B Y P AVITRA J AYARAMAN pavitra.j@livemint.com

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Past life Founder Joseph Jegan, 30, has a master’s degree in computer applications (MCA) and worked with a multinational information technology firm before he quit to start this venture. His wife and the company’s managing director, 28-year-old Sujatha, is also an MCA graduate and used to work as an IT professional.

Eureka moment Jegan researched several ideas before starting Kuppathotti.com, an online portal where people in Chennai can register and sign up to have their recyclable trash—such as metal, plastic and paper—collected, weighed and paid for by the company. The idea was to start a venture that would also give back to society. Jegan, in the habit of collecting all the plastic and polythene in his house, found he couldn’t get scrap dealers for the junk. He discovered not many of them catered to the more affluent parts of Chennai, as business wasn’t so brisk there. “Most people find it embarrassing to carry milk covers, plastics and paper around, and hunt for some-

one who will buy it,” he explains, adding that the inconvenience and the small amounts of money you get by selling trash make organizing its collection a low priority in highincome households. “I went online to check what the best way was,” he recounts. It was then that he discovered Waste Management Inc, based in Houston, US. The company, a provider of integrated environmental solutions, managed waste from collection to disposal, and was a Fortune 500 company. This was Jegan’s inspiration.

Genesis When Jegan conceived the idea of localizing basic waste management online in early 2011, he conducted a survey among 30 friends and acquaintances. “The response was 100% positive,” he says. In November, he began by distributing pamphlets in a few central and upmarket localities like Ashok Nagar, Kalaignar Karunanidhi Nagar and Vadapalani, and got 100 customers to register online as well as via his customer-care call lines. He followed through and did a trial round of collections. “The feedback was all positive. Everybody wanted us to be in touch with them regularly,” he says. So

STARTING CAPITAL `15 lakh HOW THEY RAISED THE MONEY Personal savings GETTING THE FIRST CUSTOMERS The first 100 registrations came from residential areas where the pamphlets were distributed BIGGEST DIFFICULTY SO FAR Getting a reliable workforce. The nature of the job is not attractive to youngsters

Scrap it: Joseph Jegan (right), who wanted Kuppathotti.com to be a socially conscious business venture, watches one of his collection agents in Chennai. they set up shop, naming the company Kuppathotti (which means “trash bin” in Tamil). The entrepreneur began with two mini-tempos as pick-up vehicles, and by January, the website was up. The site has more than 7,700 registered customers (customers can also call and sign up). This is how it works: Log in, list the type of scrap you want to sell and request a pick-up. The collection team goes to different parts of the city every 45 days, with appointed pick-up dates. “The section of the city that we are targeting is familiar with the Internet and comfortable with an online face,” says Jegan. Collection boys arrive at a customer’s house with an electronic weighing machine and generate a bill. The customer is paid, the trash collected and taken to the segregation centre, and then sold to recyclers. Kuppathotti employs a team of 13, including collection boys, two people to man the call centre and people to segregate the waste. It’s growing steadily, though it’s not yet making a profit, with monthly turn-

over ranging from `1.5-2 lakh. Jegan wants to strengthen the company’s core operations before looking for investors and extending operations to other parts of the city.

Reality check “Most educated people are aware of the need to recycle but either can’t find ways to recycle or don’t take sufficient steps to do so,” explains Jegan. He adds that collecting plastic, which is light, is not considered profitable by local trash buyers; Kuppathotti.com too makes its money off newspaper and metal collection. Though the profits from selling plastic are not substantial, they believe its collection is key to saving the environment.

Plan B Going by the feedback, Jegan is confident he won’t need one.

Secret sauce Everybody wants to get rid of the trash in their house in a profitable way that won’t embarrass or inconvenience them.

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440HZ www.440hz.co.in

Onestop music shop Over 40 brands of musical instruments, a wellequipped repair shop and a jam pad B Y S HREYA R AY shreya.r@livemint.com

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Past life Pratyush Pundir, 26, worked for four years at musical instrument store OnStage, Delhi, starting 2007, where he was director of sales. Somewhere down the line, he started wanting to set up something similar of his own with girlfriend Unnati Narang, 22, who is now completing her master’s in commerce from the Delhi School of Economics. In April 2010, things seemed to come together when they met Neha Chowdhry, 29, who knew the business of music well as she was a writer with Time Out Delhi at the time. This completed their entrepreneurial holy trinity of sales, finance and marketing.

Eureka moment In 2010, Pundir and Narang had toyed with the idea of a music store called The Music Alley. Neha, with husband Akshay Chowdhry, one of the lead guitarists/vocalists of the Delhi-based band Barefaced Liar, had been planning something similar. “The idea of doing it together, better and bigger was a major motivational factor in realizing our goal,” says Neha. “Seeing how well we fit into our individual roles and how seamless our interactions were, while we were putting our business plan together, made this feel right.”

Genesis By May 2010, the idea developed into the framework of 440Hz, a “one-stop shop where a musician could get his entire fix”, says Neha. This included: a high-quality jam pad, with state-of-the-art sound system, soundproofing and a repair space, as well as a well-stocked, friendly and modern retail space. In August 2011, the group finally announced itself with a bang in the form of a Facebook contest for solo guitarists. “The premise of 440Hz is to put musicians first,” explains Neha. So unlike several others that house only either high-end foreign brands, or low-end local ones, this has the spectrum—international ones such as Fender, ESP, Dean, Schecter, Ibanez, as well as some beginner acoustic guitars from Indian brands which are manufactured in China, such as Pluto and GC Guitars. The store stocks close to 40 brands of guitars (acoustic, electric, bass), amplifiers, drums and recording equipment. “It’s not an organized industry,” says Pundir. “But our store (at Lajpat Nagar in Delhi) offers personalized sales advice and a certain level of expertise.” The store offers a space for musicians to get together and share ideas. “We’re not selling refrigerators,” he adds.

Reality check A lot of ideas were thrown in before the 440Hz framework in its current form was set up. “We considered

STARTING CAPITAL `70,000 HOW THEY RAISED THE MONEY Selffunded GETTING THE FIRST CUSTOMER Mumbai’s Dhruv Ghanekar (cofounder of Smoke Music Productions, blueFROG and also a musician) BIGGEST DIFFICULTY SO FAR Overcoming perceptions of what a ‘music store’ in Delhi was supposed to be opening a studio, a little music café, and other possible permutations. Even once we had settled on what we wanted 440Hz to be, there were changes, decisions and compromises that came with looking for a space and setting it up in a way that all three of us liked,” says Neha. Now, 440Hz is a huge hall (1,800 sq. ft) divided into three sections. The central store space, with a drum set which has pride of place; a quirky, guitar-shaped seating area against a wall, which serves as the back-rest, and rows of glitzy guitars hanging on another wall. The jam pad (which costs `300 for the first hour, and `250 for every subsequent hour), an especially well-equipped and graffiti-filled enclosure, takes up one corner. The repair workshop takes up another corner of the store space. Already, the jam pad has had rock bands, jazz and blues bands and metal bands, jam into the wee hours of the night. Ali Zafar and his group, Half Step Down, Souled Out, Revival Stage, Jester, and, of course, Barefaced Liar have travelled through. If things go at this rate, the group hopes to break even by October 2013.

Plan B “There was no Plan B when we came together,” says Neha.

Secret sauce “Our desire is to put musicians first and to use the store as a tool for fostering a greater sense of community among them,” says Pundir. “It dictates everything we do: from the customer experience to the quality of gear we stock, and even the way the store is laid out.” PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

In harmony: Neha Chowdhry and Pratyush Pundir at the 440Hz store in Delhi.

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PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

PRESIDENTIAL WHEELS www.presidentialwheels.com

Living la vida limo The Capital’s first premium ‘limousine’ hire service takes businessmen and partygoers around in customized style B Y R AJNI G EORGE rajni.g@livemint.com

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Past life Sahdev Goil, 25, studied at Doon School, Dehradun, and Amity University, New Delhi, going on to work as deputy manager of sales at Audi for two years and sales manager at Mercedes for around nine months.

Eureka moment “I was in the UK two years ago when I saw a limo passing by. I messaged my dad and said: This is what I want to do,” says Goil. Initially, he was stymied by the problem of Indian roads. “I didn’t know if a stretch car was legal or not. When I checked, I realized Indian roads wouldn’t allow proper stretch limos; there was no provision for them as far as the regulatory authorities were concerned.” He then adapted his idea—“I found the next best option: modified wagons.”

Genesis Goil prepared a project report with the objective of finding out if people were willing to pay and hire cars such as these in India. Sending questionnaires to companies he knew, he wrote to everyone from old school friends to their fathers to get a thorough sense of what his market was like. His survey indicated that the National Capital Region (NCR) was ready. “Disposable income was up, and

people were interested,” Goil says. Next, Goil combined his savings with some borrowed capital from his father, a brass hardware manufacturer, and with the addition of a bank loan, got to work. He bought three cars—two Tata vans and a Toyota Innova—which were customized by two different professional services. Goil’s larger limos rework the chassis of the Tata vans, which are used in the commercial market but, he says, do not appeal visually on their own. “We made the limos look good inside and out,” he says. “We redid the shockers, so your ride is smoother.” They also improved the lighting, and used the single-frame glass that is common to limos worldwide to make them look longer. “They’re one-and-a-half times the size of an SUV, 19Kft long,” he says. Presidential Wheels has three limos on hire: The less impressive two-seater Innova is used for airport drop-offs, sightseeing and out of Delhi trips; the “Corporate One” takes groups of up to five businessmen on the move around for meetings; and the party mobile Funk Wagon can accommodate up to eight for a night out. The Innova rents at `4,000 for 8 hours and 80km (previously `5,000) and the two larger cars can be hired for `7,500 per 6 hours and 70km (previously `9,000). “Through discounted rates I hope to establish my presence in the market,” Goil explains. His

STARTING CAPITAL `60 lakh (roughly `20 lakh per car) HOW HE RAISED THE MONEY Savings, borrowed money from his father, and loans GETTING THE FIRST CUSTOMER The CEO of Voda fone ordered one of the limos in January 2011 to take him from his house in south Delhi to a party in his honour at The Leela Kem pinski, Gurgaon BIGGEST DIFFICULTY SO FAR A group of clients damaged one of the cars and refused to pay

Pimping your ride: Founder Sahdev Goil kicks back in one of his limos in Delhi. affluent clients, totalling around 140 now, haven’t complained about the rates, though. Each car comes with a privacy partition, a 22-inch LED TV with live broadcast, a DVD/MP3 player, surround sound system, bar-cum-fridge (no alcohol), intercom and charging points for phone and laptop. The ride includes a trained personal security officer, or PSO (optional for the Innova), which is a valuable bonus for young girls who sometimes rent his Funk Wagon for a safe night out, says Goil. His staff includes two drivers, two PSOs and an accountant, as well as about six college students who do freelance advertising for the company. Distinguished clients include British barrister Cherie Blair,

singer Adnan Sami and music band Bombay Vikings.

Reality check The young businessman would like a bigger range of cars. Also, it was difficult to deal with damages, so he is now careful about who the cars go to, requesting IDs and address proof as well as a signed agreement that makes the clients take responsibility for damages incurred. Most of all, advertising is a hurdle; he can’t spend much on publicity because of budget constraints.

Plan B “I’m sticking to Plan A.”

Secret sauce Being the only service of its kind in the NCR.

GAURAV MALIK

Cycle of light: The POWERcycle with a set of lights attached to charge on top of it.

NURU ENERGY www.nuruenergy.com

Pedal power Using a pedalpowered generator to power special LED lights to solve lighting shortages in rural areas B Y G OPAL S ATHE gopal.s@livemint.com

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Past life Nuru Energy is the brainchild of Sameer Hajee, its global CEO and co-founder, who developed a pedal-powered LED lighting system to reduce dependence on fuels like kerosene for lighting in rural areas with limited access to electricity. Hajee came up with the POWERcycle, a pedal-powered generator, and the NURUlight, a rechargeable LED light, and started selling the devices in Rwanda, Africa, in 2009. Nuru Energy now sells POWERcycles and lights all over Africa. Last year, Hajee’s college friend Deepak Punwani, who earlier worked for Goodyear as marketing head, Asia-Pacific, was looking for a project in the social sector and decided to start an offshoot of Nuru Energy in India. While in Rajasthan to do the groundwork for what would become Nuru Energy-India (NE-I), Punwani, 36, met Gaurav Malik, 24, a research student from Simon Fraser University, Canada, who was researching microfinance in rural India. Malik and Punwani decided to work together, pooling their sav-

ings, along with Hajee and his two partners, to create NE-I. The new company was set up in Mumbai in February 2011, and while it uses the same technology and name as a starting point, it is a parallel organization that has been trying new products and distribution networks in rural India.

Eureka moment There was no single eureka moment. The team would peg away at the issue of limited or nonexistent electricity in rural areas. Using kerosene lamps is both unsafe and bad for the environment but remains—along with firewood—one of the most common ways to light rural areas. “We looked at the materials being used in the POWERcycle and with Sameer as a partner in Nuru Energy-India, we worked to ensure that the product we were bringing was cheap to manufacture, while being durable and effective,” says Punwani. Malik says their biggest strength is the time and effort they put into working with villagers on design to develop products and solutions from the ground up. The POWERcycle’s technology remained unchanged, but in the months that followed, NE-I went

STARTING CAPITAL `10 lakh HOW THEY RAISED THE MONEY Savings GETTING THE FIRST CUSTOMERS A demonstration of the device in a village in Rajasthan had people signing up BIGGEST DIFFICULTY SO FAR Finding the first distribution partner

on to launch newer versions that matched the feedback it received from the villages where it was selling, such as a first-of-its-kind prepaid energy credit top-up system on the POWERcycle, as well as a POWERcycle that can charge mobile phones.

Genesis Since 2011, the company has been working to turn pedalling profitable by selling NURUlight and POWERcycle generators to rural customers. The concept is simple: The community buys the generator, individuals buy the special rechargeable LED lights. Sharing the generator, they recharge the light for a day; half an hour of pedalling per light can power it for over 24 hours. Most households buy an average of two lights. Punwani says: “The cost of each individual light was `325, and the POWERcycle was `9,500; we had to balance affordability with value for product. The idea is to sell it as a community resource that can be shared between around 60 houses; on average, a family does not need

the cycle for more than an hour a week.” Expenditure ends as soon as people complete the payment on the POWERcycle. After that, they don’t have to spend more money, only cycle for half an hour a week. The company focused on regions such as Orissa and parts of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh, where electricity is scarce. “On average, people are spending around `50-75 on kerosene monthly just for lighting,” says Punwani. “We calculated that in less than half a year, people will have started making savings using the cycle.” Soon, they received grants, such as one from the Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Partnership (Reeep), a Vienna-based non-profit organization that initiates partnerships and funds projects that advance renewable energy, and capital from the Bank of America. In India, Nuru Energy is currently operating in 40 villages and hopes to expand to over 200 villages and communities by year-end.

Reality check The distribution phase is the most challenging aspect, says Punwani. It’s been difficult to find distributors who are both trustworthy and innovative, willing to do more than just deliver goods.

Plan B No Plan B; the focus is on developing NE-I.

Secret sauce NE-I spends quality time in the villages to assess them. “We learned early on that people in villages are not looking for the cheapest solutions, they are looking for real value, even more so than the people in cities,” he explains.

COOL IDEAS L15

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VIGILANTE www.vcreate.in

Our cool idea is your cool idea A boutique communications firm problemsolves for your young business ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

B Y S UPRIYA N AIR supriya.n@livemint.com

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Past life Ryan Abraham, 39, co-founder of Vigilante and its moving spirit, spent 18 years in advertising. Creative director Dhwani Ganjawala, 24, was tempted away from the Chicago Portfolio School, Chicago, US, where she was studying advertising, to come home and become a Vigilante. Chairman and co-founder Mathew D’Souza, 40, and a third co-founder, Nikhil Contractor, 44, run ad agency Ment Element Multimedia Pvt. Ltd, which is currently the holding company of Vigilante. Ment Element was founded in 2009.

Eureka moment “When you take a project to, for example, an ad agency, the solutions to your problems always come only from advertising,” Abraham explains. He thought a far better idea would be the sort of place that could offer someone expertise in all kinds of strategy. “Whether you want, for example, advertising, or PR (public relations), project management or a digital strategy, we would do whatever you need for your idea to fulfil its potential.” After years of letting the idea simmer, he stepped up last year and approached childhood friend D’Souza. “Ryan is always the guy with the solutions,” says D’Souza. “No matter what problem you take to him, he’s always had a structure and a working method ready to tackle it for you. When he finally came to me in March, last summer, we were more than happy to begin.”

Genesis Abraham’s company is currently made up of people who’ve stepped sideways from their jobs in fields like his, or PR, digital media, design and so on, to be part of a team in which “we have no cabins, no barriers, no walls—everyone talks to one another”. “We really took off with a project for Magic Bus,” says Abraham. The not-for-profit company uses football to structure a variety of programmes for underprivileged children. While it had a relatively high profile in the UK, where its founder is from, it wanted to be better known in Mumbai, where it is based. Early this year, Abraham and his team unveiled a campaign called Kick For Change to solicit participation. “We mapped Mumbai from Virar to Colaba, then took it online for a digital game in which every time someone ‘kicked’ a virtual ball, we moved it up 2m and they donated `300. We took football freestylers to malls and got someone to come in and make football cupcakes—we even used the church message board at St Andrews, Bandra, to say, ‘Jesus saves—so can you,’” Abraham remembers. Media attention and corporate interest in Magic Bus projects followed accordingly: newspaper articles, radio spots, and tie-ups with sponsors like Aegon Religare. Vigilante works, essentially, as the cool idea for people with cool ideas. More than a year into operations, the firm has now worked with cafés, magazines, comic book publishers and construction companies. Close-lipped about future projects, they say they are now on track to push through new ideas for a cycle rally, an ionizer wristband, a soon-to-be-launched party store and a zero-fuel, all-green Commute Vehicle, to name a few.

Reality check Vigilante functions without a

STARTING CAPITAL Undisclosed HOW THEY RAISED THE MONEY Undisclosed GETTING THE FIRST CUSTOMER Undisclosed BIGGEST DIFFICULTY SO FAR Getting people on the same page as their ideas stringent hierarchy: The team has “idea CEOs” for projects, which means that whoever leads with an idea gets to lead the team. But for a start-up, that means a lot of explaining, both internally to new employees, and externally. “You have old clients who’ll come to you and say, ‘We knew you when you were in advertising, but what’s this about?’ And new ones who’ll come to you with a total blank slate,” says Abraham.

Ideas first: The Vigilante team, headed by Ryan Abraham (centre, in blue shirt). “Also, when you tell a new client that you do everything, the common idea is that a firm does ‘everything’ because it’s greedy. When actually, we hope we’re all doing it because an idea has potential and we’re here to realize it across streams. People are our toughest challenge.”

Plan B “I lived my Plan B for 18 years,” Abraham smiles. “It

was time for Plan A.” “I never had a Plan A in the first place,” says Ganjawala.

Secret sauce “We cut the middleman out of a lot of areas,” Abraham explains. “A lot of people start with a certain vision

and find themselves bogged down with the day-to-day challenges of running a company. For them, to find a firm that brings everything about communications or marketing together reminds them of their own spark, and a lot of them are biting.”

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N OU

ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

SMALL BROWN BOX www.smallbrownbox.com

Open up to fun Themebased learning activities for you and your three to sevenyearolds—at your doorstep B Y A NINDITA G HOSE anindita.g@livemint.com

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Past life The 23-year-old founder of Small Brown Box (SBB), Payal Bhojnagarwala, worked her way through two start-ups before founding her own: one in the education sector, connecting fresh graduates with employers, and the other in e-commerce, selling men’s shirts. Payal earned a degree in mathematical methods in social sciences and economics from Northwestern University, Illinois, US, and has a general management certificate from Stanford University. She interned with financial services firms Merrill Lynch in Mumbai and Chicago, US, and McKinsey & Co. in Gurgaon. Puja, 27, her sister and business partner, has an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering and economics, also from Northwestern, and acts as SBB adviser. She worked at the management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Mumbai for two years before she quit in 2010 to join non-profit organization Teach for India as a manager.

Eureka moment During one long Mumbai taxi commute, the sisters got talking about how incredibly imaginative children are while they are young, and how this is gradually “taught” out of them. “We created SBB to get children to think for themselves by

encouraging creativity and curiosity via open-ended learning, as they engage with the one who knows and loves them most—their parents,” explains Payal.

Genesis With a loan from their family, the sisters began to set up shop earlier this year. They followed a three-step process. First, a long list of age-appropriate activities was created with parents around themes such as “outer space” or “underwater”. Second, these were shortlisted with professionals and educators in the fields of art, science, education and child development. Lastly, the activities were tested with a focus group to ensure they were enjoyable. “We aim for activities to be child-led, with grown-up assistance, and not the other way round,” she says. The sisters aim to send out their first proper batch of boxes in July—they’re prepared to cater to around 500 registered subscribers for their first batch, and will increase the capacity every month. They’re an all-India service—they have around 50 subscribers now, including subscribers from three cities apart from Mumbai. Their website will be fully functional by June-end. For `1,000 every month, one fun-filled activity box containing art and craft material (including basics such as scissors and cello tape) and activity sheets, will be delivered home—and it’s planned around a surprise theme. The “outer space”

STARTING CAPITAL `10 lakh HOW THEY RAISED THE MONEY Family funding GETTING THE FIRST CUSTOMER SBB began with the Times Kidz World, 28 April1 May, at the World Trade Centre, Mumbai, where it betatested sample boxes. People wanted to subscribe on the spot BIGGEST DIFFICULTY SO FAR Finding the right people to be part of the SBB family—and convincing parents to sign up for an annual subscription

Futuristic nursery: Sisters Payal (left) and Puja Bhojnagarwala with a sample ‘outer space’themed box in Mumbai. box, for instance, will contain a pair of flip-flops and pieces of sponge to simulate walking on the moon; aluminium foil and coloured paper to create a jet pack; and craft materials such as paper, cardboard and paint to build a toy rocket. Also included: instruction sheets to create the activities and probing questions to teach children about concepts such as gravity and space travel.

Reality check Finding a good Web developer has been a challenge. Also, they had to change their model. “Parents were asking us for a trial,” says Payal, who decided to offer one-, threeand six-month packages as well.

Plan B “If SBB fails, we will think of an

TALENTUBE www.talentube.com

Your talent on the tube

project mentor who brought the three partners together.

Eureka moment The idea for Talentube emerged during a 2004 Skype conversation between Nair and Sreekumar. Their initial idea was to have a talent version of YouTube (in the same way as LinkedIn is a professional version of Facebook). At the time, Nair couldn’t take time off from his other commitments, and let it lie.

An online platform that organizes talent recruitment B Y S HREYA R AY shreya.r@livemint.com

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Past life Vinod G. Nair, 47, took over as CEO and managing director at Clea PR agency when he was 26; he later bought it. He has since managed events and directed telefilms (including Inspector Khatri for Zee TV) and ad films. His two full-time partners are old

friend Rakesh Sreekumar, 42, a digital marketing and start-up expert based in San Francisco, US, and Ravindra Nagpurkar, 34, an engineer with an MBA from Duke University, US. Before he met them, Nagpurkar had wanted to set up a similar enterprise. Start-up expert Beerud Sheth, 45, CEO and founder of online creative portal Elance and CEO and co-founder of online creative portal SmsGupShup, is the HEMANT MISHRA/MINT

Multitask: Vinod Nair hopes to unearth hidden talent through his portal.

Genesis On 4 April, Talentube was finally launched. It promises to act as a platform to which you can send in samples of your work—music, dance, acting, writing, editing, camerawork, etc.—that get posted on the website (entries serve as registration-cum-auditions) and YouTube. So, in essence, independent producers outside of Talentube also get a chance to see talent. In January 2010, when funding finally came through, the first stage of operations took off in the form of a nine-month market research study across 24 cities in the country. Talentube tied up with research syndicates to understand the kind of need there was for such a project, and how best it could be undertaken. The applicants have to register for a fee of `1,000 and then send in their work sample, which is screened by a panel of experts. Also, once registered, you can participate in auditions for a commercial film to be produced by Talentube: The judges include film-makers such as Mahesh Manjrekar, Sangeeth Sivan and Sudhir Mishra. The first lot of auditions for a film to

be directed by Manjrekar will start by 15 June and they will continue for three-six months, depending on the response they get. Participants will vie for 70 opportunities in the world of film, including acting, music and dancing. For winners, Talentube will also serve as a talent agency, giving advice through experts and helping youngsters monetize their potential.

Reality check Although the initial idea was to tap “fresh” talent, in the course of their research they discovered that there was plenty of undiscovered, yet not-so-fresh talent which also deserved opportunities. “There is incredible talent that has been struggling for years to get a break, and now we have opened up the scope of the portal to those, in addition to fresh talent,” explains Nair, adding that this is just one of the insights they have gained on what will be a minimum three-year learning curve (“and this is being optimistic”).

Plan B “Plan B is a secret, but I can share Plan C,” says Nair. “Back to finishing my books and screenplay!”

Secret sauce Unlike existing talent shows that typically determine only one winner, each Talentube project offers many opportunities for aspiring talent. Also, it has committed funding of $12 million (around `66 crore). “This makes us the largest ever angel-funded start-up in India,” claims Nair.

alternative, like opening a centre out of which our activities can operate so that parents can understand the concept better.”

Secret sauce The young entrepreneur asks me to draw a house, tree, mountains, when we meet. As I’m finishing, she fishes out a line drawing that looks similar. “Everyone—child or adult—draws it like this,” she says. “It’s because we’re over-taught.” SBB aims to be a learning tool to change this. Also, Payal thinks SBB will promote the parent-child bond. “We believe parenting should be a fun job,” she says. The small brown box is a throwback to the simple joys of a brown paper-wrapped gift—“from us to the parents to the children.”

STARTING CAPITAL $12 million (around `66 crore) HOW THEY RAISED THE MONEY Two consortiums of investors, 18 in all, represented by Neeraj Goenka, cofounder, Robert Graham, a luxury lifestyle brand, and serial investor Amit Dalmia, raised the money GETTING THE FIRST CUSTOMER Since its launch in April, Talentube has received 1,200 registra tions. There is no ‘customer’ as there’s no buying involved; the list of people who have signed up is confidential until they are shortlisted BIGGEST DIFFICULTY SO FAR Keeping the faith, when the world around you says give it up

www.livemint.com

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Books

LOUNGE GRANTA 119: BRITAIN | EDITED BY JOHN FREEMAN

Balancing on one foot DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES

An anthology of writing about Britain marks a season of both celebration and pessimism B Y S UPRIYA N AIR supriya.n@livemint.com

···························· he honour of single-volume anthologies dedicated to explaining a nation’s realities is usually something that happens to other countries, especially in Englishlanguage publishing. It seems faintly worrying to think that Granta might pull the old trick of substituting literature for reportage on its own country: Is Britain really that far gone? The flap copy of Granta’s latest issue begins with the lately popular catchphrase “Broken Britain?” The question mark inclines it less towards stalwart English tabloid The Sun, one of the earliest and most frequent users of this buzzword (usually in conjunction with stories about teenage parents, violent crime, and related lamentations) and closer to The Guardian, the liberal Londonbased newspaper which ran a series of public interest investigations under the heading “Is Britain Broken?” in 2010. Earlier this year, British speculative fiction writer China Miéville published an instant classic, London’s Overthrow (www.londonsoverthrow.org), a despairing and lovelorn disquisition on his home city. Its title comes from Jonathan Martin’s 1829 pen-and-ink drawing, London’s Overthrow. Under this apocalyptic artwork, Martin writes, “The lion is an emblem too/that England stands upon one foot.” Granta 119, made of the publication’s well-judged mix of fiction, photography and creative non-fiction, doesn’t quite have the emotional impact of Miéville’s singular political vision. But it doesn’t reduce the complexity of its subject, either. Britain is poised between the aftershocks of last year’s economy-related riots, ongoing protests, the conflagration of a newspaper scandal, and forthcoming celebrations: The London Olympics will be held in July, soon after the Queen’s diamond jubi-

Granta 119—Britain: Granta Publications, 287 pages, `699. lee commemorations. The flap copy calls this volume a “celebration” of the humanity which arises in “the sometimes brutal context of historical and contemporary Britain”, and the Paul Smith cover—Granta’s best in a long time—is an irresistible photograph of a broken teacup, carefully glued back together. I emphasize this because, even if we read the literature without recognizing its context, we ought to speculate on the editorial intent behind this book. Does it mean anything, for example, that a disproportionate number of stories in Granta 119 are about boyhood and young male adulthood? Is this a shot at reversing the pathological hatred with which British tabloids often report on teenagers, whether they happen to be rioters, parents or immigrants? Does it so happen that, when asked to contribute to an anthology of writing about Britain, this constellation of star writers found themselves

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Dissent: Protesters staging a rally outside the Occupy London protest camp on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, in January. turning, more often than not, to memories and speculations about a time of uncertainty and bravado? This is interesting. In global shorthand, nations in danger of breaking are always the ageing ones, and if Granta 119 were a reader’s only insight into Britain, she would conclude that whatever else that sceptred isle may be, it is young, and rather anxiously so. The collection opens with Stevenage, a dry, mellow memoir by Gary Younge, of growing up as a working-class black child in a town which was at once welcoming and alienating, but is now descending—thanks in large part to a Thatcherist rollback of the state’s social responsibilities—into chaos. There is something eerie, almost tangibly raw in the realism of other stories, like Cynan Jones’ The Dig, about a boy badger-hunting with his father, and Mark Haddon’s The Gun, about three young men fooling around with said

implement. Adam Foulds writes about boys and pharmaceuticals in Dreams of a Leisure Society, Ross Raisin about football and sexuality in the melancholy When You Grow Into Yourself, and Rachel Seiffert’s Hands Across the Water recreates a Glaswegian kitchen-sink drama through the point of view of a, yes, boy. All of these are accomplished, absorbing, sure of what they want to say. None, however, are likely to be the best remembered pieces of this collection. For many readers, that distinction is likely to go to Robert McFarlane’s gorgeous travel essay Silt, about walking the Broomway, an ancient and perilous footpath that stretches out from the Essex coastline into the sea. My own favourite fiction here is Granta debutant Sam Byers’ Some Other Katherine, a little stiletto of a story about female sadness, and a moderately terrifying comment, if you’d like to interpret it as such, on the brokenness of

FIRST WORDS: IN 1988 MY MOTHER TOOK THE BUS TO STEVENAGE TOWN CENTRE TO DO THE WEEKLY SHOP, CAME HOME AND DIED IN HER SLEEP.

— FROM ‘STEVENAGE’ BY GARY YOUNGE

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contemporary social relations. The book remains, on the whole, political rather than about politics. As exceptions, two of its most ambitious pieces are—perhaps unsurprisingly—reflections on British colonialism. Andrea Stuart writes about migrating to Britain from the Caribbean in Sugar in the Blood, a complicated story of mingling histories and genealogies, and the drifting sense of identity that comes from knowing that somewhere else will always be home. Even better is the excerpt from Mario Vargas Llosa’s 2010 novel The Dream of the Celt, whose English translation by the diamond-bright Edith Grossman will be released this month. The Granta excerpt allows us to expect good things from this fictionalization of the life of diplomat and Irish nationalist Roger Casement. As we wait with Casement for his prosecution in the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising, we enter the slipstream of imperial history itself: “…a sprawling fabrication, rational and coherent, about what had been in raw, harsh reality a chaotic and arbitrary jumble of plans, accidents, intrigues, fortuitous events, coincidences, multiple interests that had provoked changes, upheavals, advances

and retreats, always unexpected and surprising with respect to what was anticipated or experienced by the protagonists (…).” It would be remiss to review this book without praising its choice of poems by Simon Armitage and Don Paterson, among others, and I wish there had been more poetry and drama, two forms in which British output remains exciting and unpredictable. The visual art—a collection of images from British photographers that loosely touches on the theme of “home”—is arresting and much sharper social commentary than any of the textual work, but remains underserved by Granta’s compact format. As compensation, John Burnside’s short discourse on the subject is a brief burst of humanist optimism, which is also the closest thing Granta 119 has to a description of the collection’s intent: “To recognize the new values that emerge from the makeshift,” he writes, “is to discover the earliest traces of a new direction, the first tentative steps in a spontaneous remaking of ourselves, the hazy outline of a democratizing order that imagination finds in the unlikeliest places.” That is to say: No overthrow in sight for now.

TELL ME A STORY | RUPA BAJWA

Funny girls The humour of the author’s second novel makes it a resounding success B Y P ARVATI S HARMA ···························· hey say a good book review, much like a good tutorial, should harp less on whether the reviewer liked the particular work under consideration and more on what the book is, what it’s trying to say and how it fits in a larger scheme of things. In fact, this injunction best fits callow English literature undergraduates in the mood to show off or reviewers who’ve been rendered entirely indifferent to the novel they’ve just plodded through. As anyone who has ever found themselves in the throes of

a fanatic monologue in such circumstances knows, when you hate a book, you hate it, and when you love a book, you buy extra copies and watch over the shoulders of your nearest while prodding them to read. So let me declare, without due protocol, that I liked Rupa Bajwa’s second novel Tell Me a Story. If I wasn’t writing this review, I’d probably be re-reading the book. Here’s why: It’s funny. Not that Bajwa’s plot offers much to laugh about. In heavier hands, Tell Me a Story would be positively gloomy, concerning as it does the soul-destroying humiliations and endless lack (of cash and opportunity, leisure and joy) that characterize the lives of India’s lowest middle class. Rani, our heroine, lives with her family in Amritsar: her ageing, eccentric father Dheeraj, her endlessly frustrated, factory-working

brother Mahesh, his increasingly bitter wife Neelam and their cheerful (but not oblivious) son Bittu. Rani works at Eve Beauty Parlour and she has a flair for storytelling, but in neither capacity does it seem like she’ll be able to rescue a family teetering on the brink of poverty. And yet, few of these pages don’t evoke a smile; several provoke laughter. So, for example, when the family comes home one night to find their house ankle-deep in sewage water, their possessions ruined, two months’ worth of flour destroyed, as Neelam approaches the low shelf on which her tissuewrapped wedding sari was kept, we read: “The paper had disintegrated, the sari… that had cost so much then, the design of which Neelam had chosen after three days’ deliberation, till her mother had threatened to kill herself unless she made a quick decision, now lay in ruins.” Or look what happens when the widowed Asha threatens to crumble under the weight of running her beauty parlour: “‘O yes,’ she

said. ‘You girls are the only ones who have emotions and hearts, I am just supposed to be this machine who has to keep you happy, the customers happy, the bills paid and the parlour running.’…. After this outburst, Asha dissolved into tears and Navpreet briskly produced (a) consoling cup of tea.” Through every twist in Rani’s mostly desolate fate, Bajwa employs the wry bathos of this humour—the interpolation of maternal melodrama in a scene of heartbreaking tragedy, tea wobbling uncertainly at a moment of pin-drop-silence despair—to outstanding effect, keeping the narrative from plunging into sentimentality and keeping the story acutely honest, at least in this regard: Things happen (girls are aborted, doctors are unavailable, hope slips by) and there is little anyone can do about it. If the novel falters, it is in its second part (more accurately, its last quarter), when Rani travels to Delhi to work as a maid for Sadhna, a writer suffering from a

Tell Me a Story: Picador India/Pan Macmillan, 204 pages, `499. bad case of blockage-cum-disenchantment. Having published a first novel to some acclaim, Sadhna has been embraced by Delhi’s literati, and she’s not happy. “In India,” she discovers, “where only a handful of people could speak and write in English, a bunch of people with a facility for the language had appropriated lit-

erature, ruthlessly running the business along with their Western counterparts. The bearded and the bindi-ed of Delhi had set themselves up as the intelligentsia, satisfied in their incestuous circle…. Everyone was on the make, with an eye on the main chance”. Unfortunately, in these last pages Bajwa’s humour falls between two stools. Neither can it ascend the sharp peaks of satire, nor does it summon the kind of empathy that rounds her characters into such living wholes. In fact, it rather descends into cliché. The rich spend more money than the poor, yes, and arty circles in Delhi—or anywhere, I imagine—can be stifling, petty and vain. But so what? Neither money nor ego are any shelter from pain, nor do they preclude either the experience or the reproduction of “real” emotion. Tell Me a Story—ironically but also, despite its flawed conclusion, brilliantly—is testament to this fact. Write to lounge@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, JUNE 2, 2012

Travel

LOUNGE

DETOURS

SALIL TRIPATHI

At dynasty’s end

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Bahadur Shah Zafar, more poet than ruler, would have been happy with his final resting place

King no more: (above) Bahadur Shah Zafar awaits his trial before being banished to Burma (now Myanmar); and the last Mughal emperor at his court.

n this city of lakes and shiny golden pagodas, finding the final resting place of a Muslim king from another land was not going to be easy. The city was Yangon, once known as Rangoon, and the emperor whose memorial I was looking for was Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal, who spent his final years as a prisoner of the British here. In my history class at school, his name would appear as a footnote, an afterthought after the line of illustrious predecessors who had spread their empire from Afghanistan to Bengal. By the time Bahadur Shah came to power, he was tired and old, with a dwindling treasury, no army, and his writ did not run much beyond Red Fort. Yet, in the two decades he ruled, Delhi experienced what William Dalrymple, author of The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, once called “the last great flickering of the Mughal lamp before it is extinguished”. When I asked my hotel concierge where I might find Bahadur Shah’s tomb, he looked at me as if I was in the wrong country. Bahadur Shah’s remains certainly were in the wrong country. Taxi drivers

could take me to the Shwedagon Pagoda, point out the stately home of “the lady” who was until recently the country’s most famous prisoner, Aung San Suu Kyi, and knew the way around Scott’s Market and Strand. But Sha-Za-Fa, as many Burmese knew him? Not easy. Finally an Indian resident in Yangon suggested I go to Ziwaka

Road. There, I saw written in an arc in golden letters: “Dargah of Bahadur Shah Zafar, Emperor of India (1837-1857).” In a corner of a desolate room, four young men, wearing caps, sat across each other, continuously reciting prayers. The walls had fading portraits of Bahadur Shah and his wife Zeenat Mahal. The guard pointed to the stairs,

which led me to the actual burial place. There was an elderly couple there, swaying gently while seated, their eyes shut, their open palms pointing skywards in a sign of submission. The woman had placed a handkerchief on her head. A green sheet with a yellow border covered the tomb. A few flowers lay scattered on the sheet. The man rose after his prayers were over and asked me: “India?” I nodded. He smiled, opened his lunch box, and gave me a piece of home-made banana cake. There was no pomp, no glory. But it was peaceful. Many Mughal kings had died unhappy—Babur pined for his Central Asian landscape; Akbar’s dream city, Fatehpur Sikri, had to be abandoned; Aurangzeb overthrew Shah Jahan, who sat grieving, looking at the Taj Mahal he had built for his beloved Mumtaz. Bahadur Shah lay buried among people who didn’t know him. He was born when the East

India Company had coastal presence in India; by the time he died, the Company ruled vast parts of India, and his empire had shrunk. But his name resonated and so when the sepoys of the East India Company mutinied in 1857, they came to Delhi, and asked Bahadur Shah to take over their leadership. The king who couldn’t control his wives, concubines or sons, who had accepted with dignity British insults, now accepted with humility the symbolic honour the rebels accorded him. But the Company troops regrouped, counter-attacked, and won. They stripped him of his power, killed his adult sons, tried him, and exiled him to Yangon. The British, who ruled Burma (now Myanmar) too, denied him access to pen, ink or paper, which was particularly cruel, as he was a mystical poet, a contemporary of Mirza Ghalib. When he died in 1862, his last rites were performed quickly, to prevent another revolt. The British officials who had supervised his burial had noted triumphantly: “A bamboo fence surrounds the grave, and by the time the fence is worn out, the grass will again have properly covered the spot, and no vestige

FOOT NOTES | COOL TRAVEL

will remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Mughals rests.” Dalrymple noted that even the turf on the grave was replaced carefully so that within a month or two no mark remained to indicate the precise burial spot. The local Muslim community remembered him as a saint and built a shrine where they thought he was buried. You can’t bury history. In 1991, workers repairing a drain behind a shrine found the original brick-lined grave. Over the years, support from private trusts and the Indian government has maintained the shrine. Dalrymple told me: “At the dargah he is portrayed as a king and a Sufi saint, and that’s perfectly appropriate; he’d be pleased.” There is an old Gujarati poem about the fall of mighty empires. I couldn’t recall it exactly, so I got in touch with Ramesh Joshi, who taught me literature at school. He remembered it immediately. Behram Malbari’s poem reads: Chakravarti Maharaj chaliya kaal-chakrani ferie Sagaan ditha men Shah Alam na, bhikh mangta sherie (Great kings must walk to the beat of the time The descendants of Shah Alam were seen begging on the streets) Shah Alam was Bahadur Shah’s ancestor; he wanted to be buried near them, but that did not happen. Outside the shrine, across the road, there is a lake surrounded by trees. Young lovers sat beneath its shade. Lotuses bloomed, creating a calming sight. The emperor had lost his throne; the poet had gained tranquillity. Write to Salil at detours@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Salil’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/detours

COURTESY JUMPSTART INDIA

Be a different tourist Three new travel ideas try to provide alternative ways of seeing the world B Y A NUPAM K ANT V ERMA anupam1.v@livemint.com

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Jumpstart India “We’re not into luxury. On our trips, we would choose a tent over a room and prefer to live in a forest instead of a hotel,” says Ryan Thomas, the 23-year-old co-founder of Jumpstart India. The venture stresses on alternative travel spaces. Thomas and Jumpstart’s cofounders, Dhiren Talpade and Akul Tripathi, came to their travel philosophy during their many treks as students of Wilson College, Mumbai. After Thomas passed out of college, he got together with the other two and decided to “turn our own style of trekking into our way of living”. The weekend trips they began have become a regular feature of Jumpstart. So has The Great Gig in the Sky, a weekend trip—one each month—with a musician to different places around 250-300km from Mumbai. They try to match the music to the mood of the place they visit. So a jaunt with Swanand Kirkire took place in a cave while Airport’s folksy music found its match in a

fort. They prefer not to take more than 30 people for a trip to maintain the intimacy of the experience. Food is provided for and they encourage locals in the villages they visit to cook food for the visitors, thereby helping villagers benefit monetarily in their own small way. The trips are organized across three categories—adventure, trekking and leisure. Charges vary according to the place but a fixed `2,600 is charged for The Great Gig in the Sky. They have organized around a hundred weekend trips and eight Great Gigs in the Sky already. Thomas says: “It is too early for us to know where we would be five years from now. What we do know is that we’ll be doing this and nothing else.”

Sound Travels It was while curating a musical evening for foreign guests in Jaipur in January 2011 that the idea of melding music, travel and tourism first came to London-based Georgie Pope. A musician herself, Pope, 27, had been working with the Rajasthan International Folk Festival

(RIFF), and had developed a knowledge and love of the state’s repertoire of folk music. First, she promoted the idea of a musical trip around Rajasthan involving musicologists, historians and musicians, using flyers at music festivals in the UK. In October 2011, she organized a trip across Rajasthan for two Italian citizens and three UK nationals. The 17-day affair began with an introduction to Sufi music at the Nizamuddin dargah in Delhi, wove through Jaipur, Ajmer Sharif and Pushkar, and culminated with the RIFF 2011 in Jodhpur. “I didn’t really need much start-up capital to get going,” she says. “All the research was there, so I just got on with it. Consultancy work for other festivals and occasional performances on my harp helped to pay the bills in this initial phase.” Pope has organized four trips to Rajasthan since and considers three big trips every year just about enough. She strives to give her guests “a musical-eyed view of the country where historical monuments and shopping are secondary to music”.

Although her trips have been restricted to Rajasthan thus far, Pope is researching the folk music traditions of Assam, Bengal and Kerala for future jaunts.

FarInto A social forum that lets users generate content by recommending travel destinations, creating bucket lists and sharing videos and photographs of their trips: Farinto.com is the online headquarters of the alternate traveller who is looking for something different. Despair with the disorganized state of the Indian travel sector led Dilshad Master, 45, to quit her job in the media sector and plunge headlong into this travel

venture, co-founding Farinto.com in January 2011 with IIT graduates Sachin Bansal and Soumyadeep Paul. Think of it as a network of avid travellers pooling their experiences into a reservoir whose content can be tapped at the click of a button. It allows you to ask questions, respond to others’ queries and access a list of recognized travel operators who can then help you plan your trip: all via your Facebook login, making your activity visible and thus avoiding the trap of the anonymous portal, which cannot always be trusted. “If you want to travel somewhere, you have to spend hours

Musical tour: Swanand Kirkire (with a red cap) with travellers on a Jumpstart trip. googling to find information about it,” she says. “This is the hole we want to plug.” Presently, FarInto gets a commission from money travel operators listed on their website make. Two or three years down the line, Master intends to charge travel operators a fee for a FarInto listing. She wants to turn Farinto.com into the largest repository of travel resources in emerging economies such as Brazil and India.