Lounge for 04 Dec 2010 by HT Media

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

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Vol. 4 No. 47

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH CHRISTIAN DIOR’S SERGE BRUNSCHWIG >Page 6

TEE PARTY

Actor Imran Khan wears his interests on his sleeve—be it rock stars, comic characters or style icons >Page 7

SCIONS OF CHANGE IN THE NEW INDIA, SUCCESSION MEANS SYSTEMIC CHANGE. WE MET FIVE INHERITORS TO KNOW HOW THEY MEET THEIR UNIQUE CHALLENGES >PAGES 911 LUXURY CULT

GLOBALIZATION ON STEROIDS

he girl who sells me the lipstick is from Kyrgyzstan. Her associate is from Russia. The lipstick, YSL, from France. The store, Bloomingdales, from the US. The guy who directs me to the store is from Syria—a smart-talking Romeo who claims to have been to Goa and Mumbai in search of his “Jasmine”. The Noodle Factory, where I stop for a quick bite, has a medley of Malaysian, Thai, Chinese, Indonesian dishes on the menu. The server who takes my order is from the Philippines; the supervisor... >Page 4

OUR DAILY BREAD

SHOBA NARAYAN

THE BIGTICKET CHARITY GAME

ecently, someone asked why I wasn’t on Twitter. I am actually. I have an account although I don’t use it, mostly because Twitter intimidates me. It is too fast, too viral, and too abrupt. There is no preamble. People contradict and confront strangers with insouciance. Twitter negates all the civil foreplay that greases polite society and gets right into the act. Messages are short, cryptic, full of hashes, @ signs, retweets, and other obtuse conventions. Yes, yes, I know. I am a Luddite. >Page 4

It’s dangerous, costly, adrenalinfuelled fun. For moneyed entrepreneurs and ‘adventure capitalists’, kiteboarding is the new passion >Page 12

Pallavi Gopinath, 29, is business development officer, Deccan Cargo and Express Logistics.

THE GOOD LIFE

RADHA CHADHA

KITERUNNERS’ CLUB

SAMAR HALARNKAR

EAST LONDON REVOLUTIONARIES For 27 years, their incendiary songs have given voice to a community. We spoke with Asian Dub Foundation on the eve of their India tour >Page 16

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

REJECTION AND REVALIDATION

PHOTO ESSAY

OPEN AIR JAIL

HOME PAGE L3

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 (MANAGING EDITOR)

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

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WINNERS OF DIWALI WINWIN CONTEST Chetan Arora, New Delhi (Play Clan voucher); Anita Rana, New Delhi (Episode Bal Krishna); Richa Batra, Mumbai (Swarovski tea light); Zenobia Fatakia, Mumbai (Chenab Impex hamper); Mohan Agarwal, New Delhi (Good Earth gift); Rima Sarkar, New Delhi (HP photo printer); Leah Verghese, New Delhi (Bruijin chocolate voucher); Karthik Ramanan, Chennai (Skullcandy headset); Robin Mathew, Mumbai (Titan watch); Ramesh Gopalakrishnan, Mumbai (TTK stove); Sukriti Sharma, New Delhi (Zolijns clock); Dr Anant Vikram Pachisia, New Delhi (Magppie hamper); Anjali Iyer, Mumbai (Paul Mitchell hamper); Bhavna Saxena, Gurgaon (Kama Ayurveda hamper); Prasanna Ganesh, Chennai (William Penn fountain pen); Rushabh Mutha, Mumbai (WittyGift package); Rachna Jain, Mumbai (Address Home lamp); Arun Pillai K., Mumbai (Rosenthal paperweight); and Amit Kamra, Bangalore (Cinnamon candle stands). ON THE COVER: PHOTOGRAPHER: ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS: In Lounge, 27 November, R. Sukumar’s Cult Fiction on Page L4 (Contents) should have been listed as Page L43.

WATCH THE

LOUNGE SHOW A look at the gargantuan and experimental works of artist Anish Kapoor at Mumbai’s Mehboob Studio; the airborne feats of Project Bandaloop; and a review of

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RADHA CHADHA LUXURY CULT

Why Dubai is globalization on steroids

ANDREW PARSONS/BLOOMBERG

smart-talking Romeo who claims to have been to Goa and Mumbai in search of his “Jasmine”. The Noodle Factory, where I stop for a quick bite, has a medley of Malaysian, Thai, Chinese, Indonesian dishes on the menu. The server who takes my order is from the Philippines; the supervisor who comes to check on the food is from Myanmar. The salesgirl who helps me squeeze into the vacuum-tight blue dress is from Poland. The dress is from Alexander McQueen, the British designer who is sadly no more. The girl who packs me an assortment of stuffed dates—almond, pecan, candied orange peel—is from Africa. The dates are from Bateel, a to-die-for brand from Saudi Arabia. The store manager who rings up the bill is from Iran. I have never encountered such a diversity of people and produce in an afternoon as I do at the Dubai Mall, a sprawling shopping centre that has more stores than there are stories in the Arabian Nights. I catch my breath over a cappuccino at Cacao Sampaka—a chain from Spain—and take in the swirl of nationalities around me. On my left, Godiva and Patchi stare at each other—both chocolatiers, one Belgian,

the other Lebanese. On my right, a larger-than-life Julianne Moore (American) stares out of her Bulgari (Italian) glasses at Al Jaber Opticals (UAE). Next door, at Al Jaber Gallery, the portrait of the late Sheikh Zayed—the force behind Dubai’s transformation—stares benignly at the proceedings. I wonder if he knew the city he was creating would become a Noah’s Ark of men and women, brands and stores, with almost every country, race and religion on board. The Dubai Mall itself is a microcosm of globalization, a United Nations of retailers assembled under its roof. This boundary-less marketplace leads to unusual competitors. While Tiffany may be used to being in the same neighbourhood as Cartier, the department stores Bloomingdales and Galeries Lafayette—two major anchors of Dubai Mall—are unlikely mall mates. Indeed, it is the first time Bloomingdales has ventured outside the US, and only the second time that Galeries Lafayette has stepped out of France. They may have decades of experience back home competing with their own kin—the likes of Macy’s and Saks in the US, or Printemps and Bon

Globe shop: Dubai Mall, home to brands and shoppers from every nation. Marché in France—but it is the first time they are squaring off against each other. Throw in the British department store Debenhams, as also the Emirati one Paris Gallery (talk about mixed up names) and the competition could be as scorching as the desert sun outside. There is something about Dubai—perhaps the vision of a promised land—that brings out first-timers. Take Waitrose, the British supermarket chain that was content operating within the confines of the UK for a hundred years, and then opened its first international store at Dubai Mall. Or Armani, which opened its first hotel in Dubai at the heady Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building and then some. Or the hotel’s Indian restaurant Amal, another first, which is

Armani’s take on Indian cuisine—signature minimalist spacey design, food plated Western style, taste home-cooked as if they had gone minimalist on the spices too—but an extremely enjoyable evening, helped with a good wine list and attentive service. (In fact, the juxtaposition of so many cultures yields fabulous dividends on the food front—there is endless variety, price points, settings.) The people-of-the-world-unite theme continues as I check out apartments at the stunning Burj Khalifa. The lady who takes me there is from Germany. The driver is from the Swat valley in Pakistan. The landlord’s agent is from the UK—long blonde hair, sky-high heels (little upside down Burj Khalifas) and spirits to match. I gulp as I walk

into the majestic lobby, which is dominated by a spectacular art installation World Voices by the Spanish artist Jaume Plensa. 196 cymbals—like the ones you have on a drum set—are suspended in the atrium-like space on either side of the entrance. Sunlight streams in. Occasional drops of water magically fall on a cymbal every now and then, producing a gentle sound. Why 196? You guessed it—one for each country in the world. I had always thought of Dubai as a place that’s high on hardware but short on soul, but now I see it as a bold experiment, a synopsis of the human race. It certainly doesn’t have the soul and spirit of a New York—where you also run into people from all over the world—but the unifying glue there is the fact that they are Americans first and from wherever they came from second. Dubai on the other hand is a place of transience, a temporary oasis for global nomads. In a land where transience has been the way of life for centuries, perhaps this is entirely appropriate. 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 Radha at luxurycult@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Radha’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/radhachadha

SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

The absurd arithmetic of bigticket charity

ROBERT GALBRAITH/REUTERS

People contradict and confront strangers with insouciance. Twitter negates all the civil foreplay that greases polite society and gets right into the act. Messages are short, cryptic, full of hashes, @ signs, retweets, and other obtuse conventions. Yes, yes, I know. I am a Luddite. I hope all you Twitteratis won’t hate me for saying this, but Twitter, in this sense, is like a one-night stand. You don’t know who you are messing with; you don’t have a photograph to cross-check hunches; the whole thing is a shot in the dark. “Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.” If you are not careful, you get caught with your pants down—like Salman Khan and Shashi Tharoor. And, then, like all Twitter addicts, you go back for more. Facebook, on the other hand, is like going on a date and developing a relationship. You have “friends”, not “followers”. People post photographs— of their family, spouses, children, pets. Everything is in the public domain. Nothing is sacred or private. Surveys reveal that women outnumber men on Facebook. According to Inside Facebook, women over 55 are the fastest growing demographic on Facebook. Makes sense. If I were divorced and over 50, I’d be posting my photo on Facebook too. I’d be collecting “friends”, with the

hope of turning them into something more. Mark Zuckerberg ought to charge for matrimonial connections made on his site. Zuckerberg, the curly haired founder of Facebook, has been in the news lately for all the right and wrong reasons. He is taking on Google; he donated $100 million (around `453 crore) to the New Jersey school system in the aftermath of his unflattering movie portrayal, prompting people to wonder if Zuckerberg’s donation was for real or damage control. I happen to think that it was both real and damage control. The timing was perhaps damage control but the intent was real and he probably would have done it anyway. I think Zuckerberg, like this generation of billionaires, is going to donate large sums of money fairly early in life. With his first $100 million donation, Zuckerberg pre-empted the criticism that a young Bill Gates received about not doing enough philanthropy, till of course, Gates turned around and became the mother of all philanthropists. With his $2 billion donation towards education, and the elegant way that he has set it up, Azim Premji has become the father of all Indian philanthropists. It is irrevocable; it is magnanimous; it both silences the sceptics who say that Premji is doing this to comply with the government’s 25% rule and yet,

inadvertently perhaps, rises to Gates’ challenge that all wealthy people donate a significant percentage of their wealth to charity. My hunch is that Zuckerberg too, like Gates, will become an éminence grise in the world of philanthropy. He and his long-term girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, live very modestly: no fancy cars, homes or expensive hobbies. Zuckerberg is wealthy and has already started giving. How wealthy do you need to be before you begin donating large sums of money? And what constitutes a large donation? Ask a group of wealthy South Mumbai, Manhattan or Kensington types for a number beyond which they would donate their wealth to charity and the number coalesces around $20 million. “Once my net worth is $20 million, I can breathe a sigh and donate the rest to charity,” says one. This number is calculated by adding every earthly need you might have: business-class trips to India once a year for a family of four; vacations in exotic locales three times a year; ski trips; private school education costing about $25,000 a year per kid; help at home averaging about $600 a week per maid, gardener, chauffeur and other domestic staff; daily pleasures such as eating out at Michelin-starred restaurants, going to the opera; rainy day funds; college tuitions; health expenses which increase as you grow older; money socked away in case you get hit by a bus and are paralysed and therefore need nurses round the clock for 10 years or the rest of your life. You put together your pleasure scenarios, throw in some doomsday events, and tally the whole thing up. Then you calculate how much you’d need to bank in order to get a conservative return on investment that will equal your annual

Philanthropist: Zuckerberg announced a $100 million donation to public schools in Newark, New Jersey. expenses. That’s what your net worth ought to be, at least in the world according to a Garp, Gekko or Gupta. Come down a few notches and the number varies widely; and indeed, money, as numerous studies show, has no correlation to happiness. My journalism professor, Ray Cave, who was editorial director of Time magazine, told me that $7 million was good enough to be called wealthy. “You need enough money to send flowers as a thank you to the hostess after a great party,” he explained. I haven’t sent flowers but I have written thank-you emails to the hostess after a great party ever since. Once you decide you have enough money, then you have to decide whether to give and who to give to. Indians donate in large amounts but it is not systematic. We give to our temples and churches; and we help the help who help us. We make ad hoc donations during calamitous events: to the local blood bank in the aftermath

of the Mumbai floods and such. But organized philanthropy in India is still in the nascent stage. Many of us are waiting for that magic moment: when nest eggs are egged; when kids are settled; and when we have retired. I have come to realize one thing. That magic moment that we are all waiting for. It never comes. Like parenting, you just have to muddle along, doing the best you can, all along the way. Eureka will not happen. Instead, it is Carpe Diem. Seize the day. Next week, I’ll point out one crucial difference between Facebook and the real world. Shoba Narayan has a highly dysfunctional relationship with both Twitter and Facebook. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shobanarayan

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2010

Eat/Drink

LOUNGE

SAMAR HALARNKAR/MINT

OUR DAILY BREAD

SAMAR HALARNKAR

Rejection and revalidation Chagrined at a baby’s frank views, the author turns to an old favourite for comfort

o a man fattened by the endless and often overstated endorsements of friends, family and readers, the rejection of culinary skills by a 5.5kg baby cuts to the bone, cleaving through a flab of accumulated complacency. It seemed obvious. The man of the house runs the kitchen (the wife? she handles the family finances), so it was agreed that food for our new daughter would be my responsibility. Oh, I can just imagine the inventive baby food you’ll turn out, gushed the wife, as I swaggered around the house, waiting for the new entrant. Once six-month-old Alia entered our lives, I didn’t think catering to her baby tastes would be too difficult. At the orphanage, I meticulously jotted down her daily menu: chiefly full-cream milk, khichdi (stewed rice and lentils) with grated carrots, mashed banana, a concoction of sooji (semolina), yellow-of-egg and milk. In case you’re wondering, this isn’t going to be a column—now or ever—where I blather on endlessly about my daughter (can I quickly just say that her eyes are limpid, black pools) and make a fool of myself as I discover a world that the world already knows. Briefly, I made the khichdi with carrots, ground it to an off-white, red-speckled mash, proudly offered it to eager little Alia, who promptly spat it out, bawled and over two days steadfastly refused to eat it,

daddy’s little girl or not. I, who have never been fazed by 20 people dropping in for dinner, for the first time felt frustrated and harried. A man may be master of his kitchen, but it only takes a little girl’s bawling to make him feel like a hunted kitchen mouse. What was going on? Had I suddenly hit a lean patch? Had my friends and family lied all along? Fortunately, my other kitchen duties continued as usual, so I could quickly see if I still had my culinary mojo or had lost it in one fell swoop after the arrival of my daughter. Preoccupied as I was with baby food, I didn’t really have the inclination to spend too much time with dinner, so I did what I normally do when I have to multitask—I switched on the oven. Brooding from my defeat, my mind also turned to the comments of many readers who frequently bemoan the lack of vegetarian food in my repertoire (I do write about veggies, but they challenge my eloquence and so go unnoticed I suppose). What I have for you today is something that never fails: roasted veggies with or without a THINKSTOCK home-made sauce. Roasting releases flavours from

Sweet endings A Le Cordon Bleu master chef’s tips on how to give French desserts the perfect finish B Y R ACHANA N AKRA rachana.n@livemint.com

··························· t’s bright red, smooth and shiny. Chef Christian Faure, M.O.F (Master Craftsman of France), places a white dish with an apple carved out of sugar on our table as we meet at The Oberoi, Mumbai, where he is conducting master classes on French pastry techniques. Faure has been making pastry since he was 14 years old. “In France we need to finish with a sweet touch,” he says. “All the ingredients of desserts are the same. You have sugar, eggs, flour, milk, chocolate and coffee. It’s your knowledge and passion that makes the difference,” he says. His passion is quite evident. He tells us what a “catastrophe” it would be if you set a temperature above 90 degrees Celsius for crème brûlée. A crucial knowledge, he says, is knowing how to whisk egg whites. While making a chocolate mousse, adding a bit of sugar to the eggs does the trick. The sugar and the moisture help the molecules stick for a smooth mix. “There are no chef’s secrets today. This is the time of Internet and

dense vegetables that stir-fries and conventional stove-top cooking cannot. Onions become caramelized and fragrant, zucchini become sweet and succulent and eggplants actually bearable. The trick is to make sure the sizes of the chopped veggies are roughly the same. That’s just a rule of thumb. Obviously some will cook faster than others, with potatoes taking the longest time, so slice them finer. What I’ve presented below is simply one of endless versions of roasted veggies. You can mix and match spices, sauces and herbs. I always use whatever is at hand. The roasted vegetables were a big hit with the wife and parents over the same two days that my daughter scoffed at my efforts. If you can’t get approval from one generation, there’s always another.

Facebook and all the information can be found,” says Faure, who is also director of operations for Le Cordon Bleu, Ottawa. Faure believes in using seasonal ingredients. Since it’s strawberry season in Mumbai, his tip is to place the strawberries in the sun for 10 minutes. The warmth helps bring out the flavour of the fruit. When it’s time to finish the dessert in progress, he points to the plate: he calls it Apple of Love. “You meet a pretty girl, she’s prefect and you take her out to a restaurant. You need to discover how she’s inside. And I don’t mean sex. Now break into the dessert,” he says. The brittle layer of sugar cracks open to reveal a layer of ivory cream, golden apple compote with a core of soft moist cake. The flavours are sweet, comforting and complex. A lot like love?

Chocolate mousse Serves 8 Ingredients 125g dark (55%) chocolate 50g unsalted butter 150ml whipped cream 2 egg yolks 3 egg whites 45g castor sugar Method Break the chocolate into small pieces and melt in a water bath, add the unsalted butter; stir until smooth. Set aside to cool. Whisk the cream in a large bowl until stiff

Ovenroasted vegetables Serves 4 Ingredients 1 yellow zucchini, cut into half lengthwise and chopped into 6-8 pieces 1 green zucchini, likewise 2 onions, quartered 2 red peppers, deseeded and chopped roughly into large chunks 2 yellow pepper, likewise 2-3 carrots, roughly chopped 2 potatoes, peeled and cut into wedges For the flavouring 2 sprigs of rosemary 6-7 garlic pods, with skin 2 inch-long pieces of cinnamon 6-7 red chillies, whole A few pieces of ginger (optional) Fresh, ground pepper Sea salt Alchemy: For roasted vegetables, throw in whatever you have in your fridge.

PRIYAM DHAR

Voila: Faure transforms simple ingredients into an exotic dessert. peaks cling to the whisk. Beat the egg yolks and blend into the cream. Refrigerate. Put the egg whites into a bowl and whisk until frothy. To start with, add 15g of sugar a little at a time, whisking until the egg whites are smooth and shiny. Gradually add the remaining sugar, whisking until stiff peaks form. Whisk one-third of the egg whites into the cream-and-egg-yolk mixture to lighten it. Using a spatula, carefully fold in the remainder in two separate batches. Quickly whisk in the melted chocolate mixture, making sure it is thoroughly incorporated. Refrigerate the chocolate mousse for at least 3 hours, or until firm before serving. Chef’s tip: To get a lighter mousse, remove the eggs from the refrigerator well before starting the recipe.

Aromatic: Roasting releases flavours in vegetables that a stirfry can’t. For the dressing 2-3 tbsp olive oil 2-3 tbsp soy sauce 3-4 tsp balsamic vinegar (or any wine vinegar) Juice of K large lemon (or 1 lime) 1-2 tsp honey Method Lightly coat a large, oven-proof dish with olive oil. Place the cinnamon at the bottom. Roughly pile up the chopped vegetables. Tuck the spices into the spaces between them. Dress the vegetables with the olive oil, soy sauce, balsamic, lemon juice and honey. Sprinkle with freshly ground pepper and sea salt. Place vegetables in oven preheated to 200 degrees Celsius. Roast for an hour. After first half hour, remove and turn over the veggies at 15-minute intervals, using juices at bottom to baste. Step up the oven to 250 degrees Celsius, as the vegetables start to blacken, turn over more frequently until done. Your dish should be done in 80 minutes, but this can vary. Sprinkle with freshly ground pepper and serve hot with bread. The vegetables are fine just like this. Should you think they’re too bland, you can add this sauce:

Oniongarlic tomato sauce Ingredients 1 onion, thinly sliced 6-7 pods of crushed garlic 6-7 tomatoes, chopped Roast and pound, 2 large cardamoms, 2 dried red chillies, 2 cloves Fresh pepper powder Method In a tbsp of olive oil, sauté garlic till light brown. Add onion and sauté till translucent. Add the freshly roasted spice powder and sauté for a minute. Add tomatoes and blend until reduced to a rough sauce. Remove from flame, pulverize in a food processor into a smooth sauce. Add salt and freshly ground pepper. Add 3 tbsp of this sauce to the roasted vegetables, 15 minutes before removing them from the oven. This is a column on easy, inventive cooking from a male perspective. Samar Halarnkar writes a blog, Our Daily Bread, at Htblogs.com. He is editor-at-large, Hindustan Times. Write to Samar at ourdailybread@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Samar’s previous columns at www.livemint.com/ourdailybread

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2010

Business Lounge

LOUNGE

SERGE BRUNSCHWIG

Couture diplomatic mission The Christian Dior COO swears by ‘worldization’—and for now, it means bringing ‘a slice of Paris’ to Mumbai

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

····························· n the world of fashion, haute couture is a markedly double-edged concept. Supposed to represent everything that is eternal and exclusive about Parisian glamour, it must, at the same time, run a ceaseless race to be the first to define new standards in fashion. That delicate balance cannot be fully explained by what is seen on the runways of the Carrousel du Louvre. Sometimes, the serious business of fashion must be conducted in sombre—if perfectly cut—jackets and accessories not designed to draw attention. Serge Brunschwig, chief operating officer of Christian Dior Couture, is one of those men who means serious business. The Dior watch on his wrist doesn’t so much as glint—not even discreetly. His haircut is regulation. Brunschwig, who joined Dior in 2009, would be perfectly at home in any suitably elegant boardroom of the world. Imagining him against the backdrop of, say, the gorgeous hothouse designs of Dior’s Fall 2010 collection, is like imagining Jose Mourinho—another one for smart jackets—posing before whatever diamond-pierced, proteinpumped, multi-billion-dollar team he’s currently running. There ends Brunschwig’s resemblance to volatile football managers, though. The universal air of the boardroom is what remains. It’s a little bit of what Brunschwig calls “world-ization”. “In French, we say mondialisation? In which everything comes together.” That’s one way of looking at globalization. Brunschwig, 50, is a globetrotter. His über-French upbringing and education at Paris’ École Polytechnique and École Normale Supérieure des Télécommunications have taken him across the world, initially as a business consultant, and then as an executive with some of the world’s biggest fashion brands, including Louis Vuitton Malle-

Orientation: Brunschwig has been busy in Asia, strengthening supply chains in Singapore, establishing an address in South Korea and renewing Dior’s India connection.

tier, Celine and Sephora. He is something of an Asia hand; his last foreign assignment was a five-year stint in Hong Kong as president for Louis Vuitton AsiaPacific. “I have not been to India in four or five years. When we opened the Dior store at The Oberoi in Delhi a few years ago, we had decided it was high time to come here and speak directly to the people and to Indian culture. But now I have come to this new Christian Dior boutique in Mumbai, which we just opened (in mid-October).” He smiles brightly. “We have done tremendously well.” Store space in the old shopping arcade of Mumbai’s The Taj Mahal Palace does not open up for just anyone. India’s most “world-ized” hotel is the cultural equivalent of a diplomatic-immunity zone. But in the country’s newest Dior boutique, that is not enough. You must not feel internationalist when you enter. You must be in a little slice of Paris. “Clearly, we speak our own language, since nobody will understand us if we speak anything else. But it is this fantastic thought, that if we invent something strong anywhere in the world, then through magazines, TV and the Internet, a lot of people will see it and become interested. That is a benefit for us.” French fashion has a long history of international influence, especially with regards to India. “In the 17th century, probably Louis XIV was among the most interested, buying things from the Venetian merchants who brought cotonnade (cotton fabric) and other things to Europe.” This period was, he points out, a direct influence on “Mr Dior”—the eponymous Christian—himself. “If you look at Dior’s history, almost every great designer, from Mr Dior to Mr Marc Bohan (Dior’s director in the 1960s), to Mr Ferré (Gianfranco, Bohan’s successor) to John Galliano (Ferré’s successor and Dior’s current in-house genius), has had their India Year.” Fashion is coming to India for more reasons than aesthetic inspiration these days. One slice of Paris in Mumbai may be precious, but it is tiny compared with what’s on offer further East,. “You know, the difference today between you and China is that China is maybe 10 years before you, and those 10 years have been used in building places in which to shop. It’s an extraordinary development; the country itself, and its consumption of luxury.” Brunschwig has been busy in the neighbourhood too, he tells me, when I ask for a bigger picture. There are networks to renovate in Singapore, where posh Orchard Street and the Marina

Bay Sands both offer Dior addresses. “There is a big market in South Korea also, but so far it has been developed only in department stores, not ideal for us to bring the full flavour.” So? “So we bought a piece of land in Seoul. It will take a bit of time, but it will be a way to establish the real universe of Dior in South Korea.” Couture diplomacy is clearly expensive business. Brunschwig laughs. “The ambition is key. We have to be able to communicate the value of our products, our history. The dream that comes with it. Sure, land in South Korea is not cheap, but it gives us the ability to communicate in the European way.” The European way goes like this: In 1947, Christian Dior’s flowing skirts, soft shoulders and cinched waists became Europe’s “New Look” after the makeshift minimalism of the War years. To Brunschwig, fashion is still buoyed by the same ideas in the midst of another makeshift decade for the West. “People have been tightening their belts. Some, not all,” he says, when I ask him about the scene back home. “There have been a couple of seasons where you could see the fashions were being toned down, there was a bit less celebration. But then suddenly, boom, it comes back.” Even for a business that has outwardly been more circuses than bread, he says Dior has had unprecedented growth this year. “You know, human nature, you can’t do that for a long time. It’s like there’s a plateau, a small decline, but boom, the excitement returns.” The consultant in him draws line graphs with his hands to emphasize his point. “There’s a natural, logical growth of our consumption of luxury goods and you cannot stop it.” The prêt line he inspects as he walks around his newest Dior boutique is in line with the European ideal: Here is exquisite winterwear in greys and beiges, delicately constructed off-white tunics, bags in a muted plum shade that is a far cry from traditional Indian notions about what purple should be. It doesn’t stop Brunschwig from making a splash with the India connection later that night, at the Dior soirée held in his honour. Mumbai’s inviteonly crowd wanders through the ballroom, smiling familiarly at the archival couture that has accompanied Brunschwig from 30 Avenue Montaigne, where the House of Dior has resided since its beginnings in 1947. “A year special to India also,” Brunschwig remarks. The pièce de résistance is a woven Banarasi sari created by Dior back in those days for a princess of Belgium. “A nice coincidence.”

IN PARENTHESIS

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

Brunschwig waxes eloquent about brand ambassadors Charlize Theron and Marion Cotillard, among others, “all beautiful women who have also been fans of Dior”. His brow wrinkles briefly when I mention Lady Gaga, who has been seen wearing rings that spell out DIOR in her music videos. What about an Indian icon to join the ranks some day and seal that IndoFrench connection? He smiles politely and says, “Let’s work on it.”

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2010

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LOUNGE RITAM BANERJEE/MINT; LOCATION: NOVOTEL HOTEL/MUMBAI

OUT OF THE CLOSET | IMRAN KHAN

Tee party The actor wears his interests on his sleeve— rock stars, comic characters and style icons BY U D I T A J H U N J H U N W A L A ···························· graphic T-shirt with blue jeans and canvas lace-ups is Imran Khan’s trademark look. Comfortable and casual in a checked shirt and cotton trousers when we meet him, Khan tells us that his style is a reflection of his personality and passions. But when it comes to films, the actor is open to new experiences, even of the fashion kind. The styling of his character in his latest release, Kunal Kohli’s Break ke Baad, has brought in some changes to his personal style. Shorts and slippers have now found place in the 27-year-old’s wardrobe. Khan spoke to Lounge about his fascination for cartoons, his style icons and what his fiancée has banned him from wearing. Edited excerpts:

How has your sense of style evolved over the years? My sense of style has not evolved. The way I dress has evolved and is ever evolving. But my style is not about following what is in fashion. I differentiate between style and fashion. Fashion changes. You have people in France telling you what is fashionable. Style, to me, is an expression of your personality through the way you dress. It is very much about showing what and who I am, what my interests are and what I like. Which is why I end up wearing so many comic-book T-shirts—because I love comic books. I also wear a lot of T-shirts of bands like Led Zeppelin and the Beatles because these are bands I love. And some things stay for a long time. I still wear my ties a lot. I have a fairly decent-sized tie collection. Who are your style icons? James Dean, Bruce Springsteen and Steve McQueen. Do you have any fashion obsessions? Ties and Converse All Stars

canvas shoes are my obsessions. I have Converse shoes in a variety of colours and patterns and various other variations. I must have upwards of 20 pairs of Converse sneakers. And I have in the ballpark of 30-40 ties. Where do you usually shop? I tend not to go into the big shops that stock brands. For instance, in Bandra, where I live, you have a lot of these small shops that have stuff from all over the world. They have one-off, interesting and quirky pieces that no one else will have and that you are not going to find anywhere else. Similarly, any time I am abroad, I do not go into a shop that is a brand. So I would not walk into a Gap, but I would walk into one of those individually owned shops where someone has bought stuff that they find interesting. I usually look at the window dressing and if I think something looks cool, I believe I am likely to find something in there that I like. Also my stylist buys a lot of the stuff I wear. The shoes and shirt I am wearing here just turned up at my house. My stylist turns up with 10-12 pairs of clothes and I liked these. What do you like to wear on formal occasions? Suits, and with suits I am very classic. I like looking at the way people used to carry suits back in the day. The Beatles really inspired me YOGEN SHAH

Casual notice: (clockwise from above) Ties and Converse All Stars canvas shoes are his obsessions; Khan loves shopping at small stores rather than big shops that stock brands; and the actor posed for Lounge before his latest release, Break ke Baad.

with their slim, sharp suits. Otherwise you look at the way a lot of old heroes like Steve McQueen and Paul Newman wore their suits, or the way Brad Pitt and George Clooney bring a touch of old-school charm to their contemporary suits. I look at old photos of my granddad. He used to wear suits to work, to set. I am very much into that old-world charm. I get my suits tailored. I

have seen Tom Ford’s stuff and really liked it. Does your personal style influence your look in films? My styling in films is influenced by my personal style. In Break ke Baad, my character, Abhay, lives in shorts and slippers. Prior to signing the film I did not own a single pair of slippers or shorts. I have not owned shorts since I was a kid. As part of the process of getting into the character of Abhay I started dressing in that way in day to day life. So even when I was not shooting I was wearing shorts and slippers. It gave me a feel and got me into that mind space. I do that. When I am doing a film, I live in that

Check out, check in Snuggle up to winter’s signature look with a touch of plaid in your wardrobe

t Burberry: Rectangular dial watch for women with a checkpatterned leather and fabric strap, at Burberry boutiques in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi; and The Collective, Palladium, Lower Parel, Mumbai, `22,495.

q s.Oliver: Woven tartan scarf, at Inorbit mall, Malad, Mumbai; and DLF Emporio mall, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, `999.

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

u Salvatore Ferragamo: Cottoncheckered duffel bag, at The Galleria, Trident, Mumbai, `80,000.

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p Diesel: Leather and wool shoes, at Diesel stores in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi, `6,745.

guy’s mind space. I listen to different music and the way I dress also changes. So films influence me quite a bit. Now I have embraced that part of Abhay’s character. It has settled into me. Celebrities are pulled up for repeating clothes. What do you do with outfits you have worn before? That is such a ridiculous thing. What are you supposed to do with your clothes? I still wear those clothes again. I just plan. I have a good memory and remember what I wore where. So I remember that when I went for this premiere, event or appearance I had worn this

u Timberland: Checkered rolltop shoes for men, at South City Mall, Prince Anwar Shah Road, Kolkata; and Ambience mall, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, `7,900.

thing. So I know I should not wear it to that kind of event and should wear it for something else. Do you have any skeletons in your closet? Yes. I still have some of the old band T-shirts that I am not proud of, like Metallica, etc. Avantika (Malik, his fiancée) does not allow me to wear them but they are still there. They are in the pile of stuff I cannot get rid off. Won’t you need to clear the skeletons to make space for Malik? I am building a very large walk-in wardrobe for both of us. Write to lounge@livemint.com

t Paul & Shark: Blue and grey plaid wool cap, at DLF Emporio mall, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, `7,990.

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LOUNGE It’s electric: The crowd at the Sunburn festival in 2009; and (below) artwork on the cover of HUB.

GADGET REVIEW | MOTOROLA FLIPOUT

Roto moto Motorola’s new phone takes a giant leap for design, but only a small step for usability B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com

··························· utside of everything Micromax does, it’s not often you look at a phone and go “Hmm. This is interesting.” Remember Nokia’s all-too-brief “outrageous” era? It was a time of glorious bohemianism—we had the lipstick-shaped 7280, the camcorder-inspired N90 and the curious 3250, whose keypad could be flipped to reveal music controls. Now, it seems like we’ve settled into a few comfortable design categories (again, Micromax is exempt from all this)—the touch tablet, the classic candybar, the svelte slider and the...um, “qonvenient” Qwerty. The Flipout ignores all this. It’s a category all its own—the funny flipper. It’s a neat little square-shaped phone that flips out (hence the name) to reveal a five-row Qwerty keyboard. The screen is attached to the keyboard via a single hinge, making it ultra-compact. Nokia has a similar model in the 7705, but it’s not available in India. The Flipout runs Google’s Android operating system, and has a 3.1 megapixel camera at the back. All very impressive on paper. The form factor is nice. Our worries that the single hinge would make the phone seem fragile were unfounded—it flips nice and solid, and the keyboard is excellent. Android, inspite of its quirks, works just fine and Motorola’s custom layer on top of it is unintrusive and thoughtful. The usual Android advantages apply—a large app store, easy access to your email and Google contacts, a fully functional browser and a wide range of media and playback capabilities. The phone apparently comes with a proprietary “CrystalTalk” technology that filters out background noise

BOOKS

For the record A new compendium on Indian electronica is the first written document on an increasingly popular subculture

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

···························· n 1997, Randolph Correia, the guitarist for rock band Pentagram, bought a device called “groovebox”. The Roland MC-303 he found in a “little store in Mumbai” was a simple sequencer attached to a library of programmable sounds—the basic building blocks for creating live electronic music. This initial dabbling led Pentagram to irrecoverably go down the electronic path—adding a synth edge to their alternative rock sound that now defines one of India’s biggest indie bands. These and other stories form the meat of HUB, a new book put together by Music Gets Me High (MGMH), a Delhi-based artist management and booking agency, the Goethe-Institut in Delhi and Samrat Bharadwaj (aka AudioPervert) of electronica group Teddy Boy Kill. “Electronic music is rearing its head now as a legitimate urban subculture,” says Bharadwaj. “There’s healthy cross-traffic between Indian and international artists, but no official record or compendium of what’s been accomplished so far.” The book, which consists of links, resources, artist profiles and a

series of essays that “critically examine” the impact of electronic music in India over the last decade, is more anthology than singular work. “We’re exploring a number of things...from the slow rise of electronic music techniques in Bollywood production to early problems that dance concerts faced with the law enforcement,” says Bharadwaj. His essay in HUB looks at some of the earliest practitioners of the art in India. Other pieces include a look at the impact of Goa trance, a specific genre of dance music that originated in underground parties in the late 1980s. “We’ve put together contributors who could give us their first-hand experience of how electronic music has evolved,” says Ritnika Nayan, owner of MGMH.

Winter is peak season for electronic music in the country. The 2010 edition of the Global Groove Festival concluded in the last week of November. The world’s “No. 1 DJ” Armin van Buuren performed a short India tour last month, and Goa hosts the annual Sunburn festival later this month. Part of HUB’s purpose is to highlight the increasing eclecticism within the scene, instead of viewing it as a homogenous whole. “The influences, the sounds—they’re all varied,” says Bharadwaj. The book is currently available as a limitededition hardback, but talks with publishers are under way and HUB could soon be available in book stores around the country. For details, or to order a copy of HUB, write to hub@mgmh.net

Hinged: The Flipout has a squareshaped display. during a call. We didn’t notice any dramatic improvements in call quality, but it was good overall. The bundled headset is also excellent, and the phone has a surprisingly cool voice-activated dialer. There are, however, some bizarre omissions in the operating system. For some reason, the Flipout doesn’t come with Android’s fantastic Gallery app, replacing it with a generic alternative. There also appears to be no way to turn off data services (the option is missing from its usual place in the menu) without downloading a third-party app. Battery life is poor as a result—you’re lucky if you get through a full day with more than 20% left. During many calls, we heard loud beeps as we were speaking. We initially thought the phone disapproved of our crude speech patterns, but it turned out our cheeks were activating the numeric keypad on the touch screen. Strange. The Flipout costs `15,990, putting it at the higher end of the entry-level smartphone crowd. It’s not the best phone you can buy in this category, but it’s definitely the most interesting.

GAMING REVIEW | GOD OF WAR: GHOST OF SPARTA

This is Sparta The new ‘God of War’ title for Play Station Portable is all rippling muscle and no soul B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com

···························· t started with two possibilities. Ghost of Sparta, the latest bloodshed-laden game in the God of War series, was either a clever little self-aware parody of the excesses of the action-adventure genre or a cliché-ridden title that embodied the worst excesses of the said genre. Throughout our 8-hour playthrough, we kept looking for signs of the former. As the game neatly ticked off every possible gaming stereotype—misty, slowmotion flashback sequences, a lava level, a large temple in ruins,

puzzles involving crates and levers, a snow level—this hope faded irrecoverably. This led us to the one possible conclusion: Ghost of Sparta is supremely confident in how predictable it is. The formula is now set in carbonite. Belligerent white bodybuilder-cum-god Kratos is angered by others in the Greek god pantheon, and he takes revenge by violently bludgeoning everything that moves. A sweeping cinematic score is layered over beautiful, epic vistas and a pleasingly precise control system lets you unleash choreographed mayhem. God of War has always been a thinly disguised male power fantasy, and Ghost of Sparta does little to suggest any new-found maturity or evolution. There are some rumblings of a story involving siblings or some such, but it’s little more than window dressing to allow Kratos to trod across pretty temples, cities and caves, putting his twin

Bloodletting: As usual, Kratos bludgeons his way through the world in Ghost of Sparta. blades into everything that dares cross his path. If you’ve played any of the God of War games, you’ve played them all. If you liked them all, you’ll still like Ghost of Sparta. It’s the second God of War title by developers Ready at Dawn Studios, and the second for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) after last year’s Chains of

Olympus. The strengths remain the same—well-defined controls, beautiful graphics and some satisfying setpiece fights with large monsters. Ghost of Sparta features some fittingly memorable ones in the city of Sparta and the realm of Thanatos, the god of death. The game manages to squeeze some astonishing beauty out of the

ageing PSP—rain billows down convincingly, blood arcs across the screen in sharp red, lava glows with high-definition realism. The graphics are on a par with anything you’ll play on the PlayStation 2, and the game runs silky smooth. At the same time, the flaws stay troubling. There’s still no attempt, after five games, to

imbue the series’ hyper violence with meaning. For all we know about him, Kratos is hardly a character with depth, and the game’s obsession with gorier ways of finishing enemies seems to overpower everything else. Ghost of Sparta is full of gratuitous massacres and needless death, a combination the game seems unwilling to clamber out of. The first God of War game for the PlayStation 2 was a masterclass in precise action-adventure design. Everything from the fun setpieces to the smooth controls felt right. By game No. 5, however, the series has devolved into mere fan service. The puzzles are laughably ludicrous, the combat has stagnated and the plots have moved from camp to silly. What Kratos and the series need, ironically, is something we see plenty of in Ghost of Sparta—an infusion of fresh blood. God of War: Ghost of Sparta is available for the PlayStation Portable for `1,699. It can also be bought online through the PlayStation Store on your PSP.

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Cover

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GENERATION GAP

SCIONS OF CHANGE AS THE INDIAN ECONOMY CHANGES, SO DO ITS BUSINESSES AND THEIR INHERITORS. IN THIS NEW INDIA, SUCCESSION MEANS SYSTEMIC CHANGE. WE MET FIVE INHERITORS TO KNOW HOW THEY MEET THEIR UNIQUE CHALLENGES

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

·········································· rofessor K. Ramachandran, Thomas Schmidheiny Chair Professor of family business and wealth management at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, recently conducted a study on how the stock market responds to succession announcements from Indian family businesses. He found that the announcement of a new generation taking over pushed up stock value. “The reaction could be based on hope, rather than knowledge. Or it could be because the old guard in the firm has plateaued. Or the youngster is already a known quantity, and his or her specialized knowledge or experience builds confidence,” says Ramachandran. A confirmation to this study comes from the positive reaction of the stock market to the 2009 announcement of Roshni Nadar joining HCL, and Ashni Biyani joining the Future Group in 2007. Family successors traditionally attain positions that would be unthinkable for anyone else of their age—and, arguably, anyone else in a different age. But the old suspicion with which the rich heir or heiress was viewed has gone today—in its place is a growing confidence that a generation under 35 is automatically more clued in, and more meritocratic than its predecessor. “There’s a desire to professionalize businesses among younger generations that is definitely marked,” says Paresh Kumar Vaish, managing director of consulting firm Alvarez and Marsal India. “Young successors are inducting new management and bringing in more qualified, younger people to their teams.” To Anil Sainani, a family business governance consultant whose experience includes succession

planning for the GMR Group and the Dalmias of Dalmia Cement, the respect for competence has trumped stubborn Indian traditions of inheritance related to age and gender. Families, Sainani says, are “much more open to discuss women’s votes in decision-making.” The emergence of women in businesses is typified by the rapid and high-profile successes of women such as Nandini Piramal, executive director of Piramal Healthcare, and Devita Saraf, executive director of Zenith Computers. Biyani has been in the news for bringing change to the Future Group’s internal affairs and its retail business with rapid success. Similarly, first-generation heir Pallavi Gopinath has taken Deccan 360 and father G.R. Gopinath’s vision into fresh territory by challenging the existing transportation and logistics monopoly in the aviation industry. The new inheritors with whom Sainani works typify their age—all place great emphasis on communication and they want to move fast. These qualities interact unpredictably with the markedly Indian respect for experience. “There has to be a concrete plan in place to ensure that elders’ input comes in only when it is required or wanted by younger people. Anything else could be seen as interference, and rejecting that can create tensions,” says Sainani. Succession comes with inherent emotional contradictions. How does the family brand balance the idea of change with that of continuity? Who in a family business that may often have several inheritors, gets to “own” the brand? The family governance plans of the Emami group, owned by two friends who have divided the company among their heirs in a way that ensures one heir of each chairman will always work with another, may seem utopian in this regard, but the

partnership has been uniquely successful so far. For the Godrej family or the Burmans of Dabur Industries, the tradition is even older. “Everyone is looking at the Godrej family, whose legacy plan has been in effect for the last few years, and takes into account the cumulative effect of several generations of families owning the business,” says Sainani. “Aditya Burman is a Dabur heir, but doing something different in a biotech company of his own.” Inheritance and its dramas are integral to India’s public life. In politics and popular culture, the debate about its effect on the country’s future is contentious, even as third- and fourth-generation politicians and artistes take up family seats in independent India. The managing directors and CEOs who are under 35 today have much left to prove: rarely have they been publicly involved in company failures or made—or been allowed to make—mistakes in planning for the future. The emphasis, Vaish points out, has been on developing their abilities. “Families are starting to build in work experience for new generations before they hand over the business to inheritors,” he says. “Anant Goenka (son of RPG Group chairman Harsh Goenka), for example, is a deputy managing director at Ceat, where he can learn from managing director Paresh Choudhary. Nandini Piramal went to work at training locations around the world, before she came back home.” They have also left the irresponsible partying, the unwisely-voiced opinions and the disastrous attention-grabbing to their counterparts in Bollywood and government. The next few years, when elders transition out of the company and the new generation is left to keep their corporations growing and well-managed, will present ample tests of their abilities. N CHANDRA/MINT

PIROJSHA GODREJ, 30 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GODREJ PROPERTIES

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

················································································ lobal research suggests that family businesses typically break down within a couple of generations—families, after all, are slower to adapt to change than the businesses they build. Perhaps, no exception tests that rule more than the Godrej story. “Trust, quality, accountability.” Pirojsha Godrej, executive director of Godrej Properties Ltd, ticks off traditional values that, he says, Indian consumers associate with Godrej. It may sound mystical, but to him, they are responsibilities attached to the family name. With degrees from Wharton and Columbia, Pirojsha has worked up from being a management trainee in the company in 2004 to becoming part of Godrej’s new generation of leaders, taking over gradually from his father Adi Godrej, chairman, Godrej group. As the company pushes into new directions—one of which is Pirojsha’s own real estate division—the challenges of balancing old and new come with one advantage; Godrej has over a century’s worth of examples to guide him. “I’ve been fortunate to work in a business where family members in earlier generations were forward looking and actively sought out new ideas, so I don’t think there are major generational issues,” he says. “In certain cases, people who are used to doing things a certain way are challenged by new and different ideas. This is a fairly normal occurrence at all companies,” he adds. The nature of corporate priorities has changed over time—philanthropy and environmental justice, for instance, have become public aspects of a company’s identity. This has been especially crucial to the Godrej group, Pirojsha says. “One of the areas I am trying to lead is ensuring that Godrej Properties is at the forefront of sustainable development. All our projects going forward will be LEED-certified (LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a green building rating system).” Some projects have higher goals. “Our large township project in Ahmedabad was selected as one of only 16 projects from around the world to partner the Clinton Foundation in the goal of creating a climate-positive development.” So how does change come to Godrej? “The challenge and the opportunity going forward will be to take a few of these high-quality, medium-sized businesses that we have been so successful at creating, and try to make them among the most successful individual businesses in India. In the next 10 years, in addition to my role at Godrej Properties, I’d like to play a larger leadership role supporting the growth of the group as a whole.”

Crossover: Godrej hopes to scale Godrej Properties up even as he contributes to the group as a whole.

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT

In flight: Aviation has gone from being an option to a passion for Gopinath.

Breaking ground: Biyani’s approach to innovation is anthropological, not just economic.

PALLAVI GOPINATH, 29 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT OFFICER, DECCAN CARGO AND EXPRESS LOGISTICS

THE IDEALIST B Y P .R . S ANJAI pr.sanjai@livemint.com

···································· s a child, Pallavi Gopinath wanted to be an air hostess. It was much before her father G.R. Gopinath started India’s first low-fare carrier, Air Deccan. As she grew up, Pallavi’s ambition kept changing—from stewarding to other pursuits, including hotel management. By the time she was a teenager, Pallavi was flirting with the idea of becoming a writer and chased a master’s degree in arts. “Aviation was never on my radar until I met my father’s business associate at Airbus SAS, Kiran Rao. I was then (2006) doing an internship with BBC on media,” says the 29-year-old, who is now the business development officer at Deccan Cargo and Express Logistics Pvt. Ltd that runs cargo planes under the brand Deccan 360. Deccan Cargo is an express (small parcel) transportation and logistics company with dedicated cargo planes. Gopinath began to promote it after Kingfisher Airlines acquired Air Deccan in 2007. Rao initially asked Pallavi to work with the communications department of Airbus. She did, for six months, and then moved to marketing. After her project internship at the customer support department of Airbus, she applied at ATR (Avions de Transport Regionale, an aeroplane design and management firm), and alongside pursued an aerospace MBA from Toulouse in France. It was then, in July 2008, after two and a half years in France, that Pallavi got a call from her father. He told her to join his start-up, saying she could “learn in the profession”. On her father’s insistence, Pallavi started to work with ground logistics, warehouses and trucking before moving to aviation so that she could “learn and experience the frustration and exhilara-

tion of doing business in India—in small towns and SMEs (small and medium enterprises).” What is the biggest challenge before Deccan Cargo? She has one word for it—scale. “Setting up something on a large scale from Day 1 was a huge challenge,” she says. She is now helping Deccan Cargo open retail outlets across the country to get “the scale”. Deccan Cargo has plans for kiosks in at least 350 outlets of Reliance Retail Ltd, the retailing arm of Reliance Industries, along with building a multi-modal logistics hub in Nagpur. “I want to make Deccan Cargo a household name—it should be available everywhere at affordable prices. Customers should have the choice,” she says. Like her father, Pallavi speaks of big ideas and extravagant projects. She talks softly, often pausing to collect her thoughts. It’s not the voice of a practised businesswoman but that of an emerging one, searching, yet confident and sincere. Is dad grooming Pallavi? “Not at all,” says the daughter. “He doesn’t interfere nor do I report to him. I report to the chief operating officer and head of sales,” Pallavi says. Gopinath says his daughter sometimes complains about the “pervasive corruption, the apathetic bureaucracy, the infrastructure woes and poverty, and filth of our cities. And how beautiful European cities are. But she realizes that it is as much her job to clean up the mess.” “The answer,” adds Gopinath, “is not to escape to France or take refuge in cynicism or resentment. The way forward, despite insurmountable odds, is continued enthusiasm and inextinguishable optimism.” Gopinath remembers Pallavi once telling him, “‘Papa, we are not in a traffic jam. We are the traffic jam.’ I knew then that she had figured it out.”

ADITYA BURMAN, 30 MANAGING DIRECTOR, ONCQUEST LABORATORIES

HARSH VARDHAN AGARWAL, 34 DIRECTOR, EMAMI GROUP OF COMPANIES

THE TRADITIONALIST

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

···································· ditya Burman graduated from the University of Kansas in 2004 with a degree in chemistry and a minor in biochemistry. “A few business classes wouldn’t have gone amiss,” he says, deadpan. But Burman isn’t doing too badly. For the managing director of OncQuest Laboratories, a cancer diagnostics firm, science degrees come in handy now and then. As for the business experience, he’s not a greenhorn. His last job was at Dabur Industries, which he owned. Not exactly, of course. The Burmans took a collective decision some years ago that the family’s executive involvement in the company would come to an end. Today, they stay on as Dabur’s promoter family, but with a completely professionalized executive team. “I handled sales and marketing for Dabur Pharma in Latin America,” Burman explains. It was an invaluable experience when he came to OncQuest, a company set up by his scientist father Anand Burman, unconnected to Dabur. In his managerial role, rolling his sleeves up in the laboratory wasn’t exactly an option for Burman. “There was a period when I wasn’t using my educational skill sets at all, but it helps to address so many gaps in the system as you go forward. It isn’t just about understanding the workings of scientific quality and integrity as they apply to what we’re doing: It’s about a conversation that is just about starting up in the whole industry.”

Burman emphasizes the newness of the market, which then raises the question: Is there room for an old tradition, carried forward from the family’s century-old business? “Sure,” he says. “We’re different animals, so there are some things that go forward that aren’t the driving force—financial decisions, for example. What matters are people. Dabur is a people-oriented group, which relates to how the company maintains faith in professionals to carry forward a vision.” Inheritance is tricky, he says, in spite of how fast things are changing and scaling up in India. “A key question to ask, alongside questions of how to link past and future is: What is happening to the people dealing with change right now?” he says. “It’s up to us—I’m much older than the rest of the generation of this family—to study what happens and to convince people of genuine change.” But the focus is on the future, on how to make OncQuest “a professionally run company that encapsulates the family ethos. I’d like us to imbibe all the plus points of the family tradition, and avoid all the minus experiences”, he says. The family brand, in Burman’s case, is one whose preservation depends on how older ideas can adapt to the needs of this “different animal”. “We’re involved in public life in small ways, compared to Dabur,” he says. “OncQuest cannot penetrate everywhere, as Dabur does. We do work in specific areas, addressing needs in hospitals, for example, in a few cancer-related charities, and in education.” In a country where even educated

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··········································· o Harsh Vardhan Agarwal, company director at the Kolkata-based Emami group, the line between family and business must, sometimes, run thin. Emami (best known for its eponymous range of cosmetics, as well as medicine cabinet staples such as pain balm Zandu) began small, with a pact between two childhood friends and an initial investment of `20,000. Today, Radhe Shyam Goenka and Radhe Shyam Agarwal are joint chairmen of their fast-expanding concern, and Emami has business interests in a range of products. The Goenka and Agarwal scions—three each—all currently in their 30s, are directors with the firm. Harsh Agarwal, at 34, is the youngest of the Emami heirs, and works closely on the divisions he heads with sister Priti Sureka, and Mohan Goenka. It sounds too much like an old-fashioned fairy tale to be true. “We’ve known each other forever, played together as children,” he says, laughing. “I joined this firm when I was 19. All of us worked our way up together. That’s why it works.” Agarwal handles Emami Ltd, the consumer goods arm of the group, as well as Emami retail and media. “We have always been a cost-conscious company,” he says. “We will continue that. We value commitment and transparency even against potential losses. And we don’t seek attention, because our performance should speak for us.” The main challenge for a firm with roots as traditional as Emami has not been to seek change, he says. “The challenge for any new generation is to understand what works in the traditional functions, and continue in that vein. There’s no sense of right and wrong between

Startup man: Burman’s role involves more business than biochemistry—for now. women in urban areas are unaware or apathetic about cancer risks, he says, “spreading awareness is a huge priority for us right now.” “I’d like to come in at the gaps surrounding healthcare, where solutions don’t mean getting in and throwing up some hospitals. Whether it’s awareness,

counselling, patient handling, that’s where I’d like to come in, over the long term. It’s one thing to lay the foundations, but you also need to build a house on top of it.” That is precisely what Burman, foundation firmly in place, is in the process of building.

old and new.” He acknowledges that change takes work. The succession plan at Emami has included solutions like appointing an independent board of directors to advise the family, as well as internal management initiatives that help to identi f y c o m m o n goals. But more importantly, they have avoided the pitfalls of internal conflict that have often marked the legacies of Indian business families. “With so many family members, clarity is important,” Agarwal says. “It helps that we are a well-diversified group, so areas of overlap are uncommon.” With new projects in coal and power, Agarwal’s quiet emphasis on how well the company has done may seem a trifle understated. Change will keep coming, he says, but nothing outlasts one’s roots. “In the years to come, people are going to be our biggest asset,” he says. “We will be more dependent on their efforts than ever before. Over the long term, my emphasis is on keeping them motivated, charged and committed—just as they are now.” Family guy: Being lowkey is Agarwal’s preferred management style.

ASHNI BIYANI, 25 DIRECTOR, FUTURE IDEAS

THE TRANSITIONIST B Y S APNA A GARWAL sapna.a@livemint.com

··········································· ressed in an English pink cotton shirt, cream trousers and flat footwear, the petite Ashni Biyani looks unpretentious—except for the large rock on her finger and solitaire earrings that tend to give away the director of Future Ideas, a part of the Future Group. The juxtaposing of her simplicity alongside her comfort in wealth is as seamless as the transition she has made from being her father’s daughter and a woman to playing a larger role within the group. Her father, Kishore Biyani, chairman of India’s largest retail chain Future Group, with a market capitalization of around `10,000 crore, has led the retail revolution in India in the last decade or so. Within three years of joining the group officially as a manager, the younger Biyani—who studied design from Parsons The New School For Design, New York, and did a summer programme from Stanford University—has come into her own as the director of the innovation cell of Future Ideas. Like her father, who was one of the early champions of creating a uniquely Indian retail model, Ashni is taking the philosophy to the next level—community retail. “We believe that India must have its own idiom. It cannot be lifted from China or any other country. Our habits are different, we practise various rituals differently and so on,” says Ashni, whose drive for regionalization is being reflected in store layouts, merchandise, products, advertising and marketing. The strategy is to align with the intrinsic shopping habits of Indians—60-70% of shopping for apparel, consumer durables and home furnishing happens during festivals. At least 40-50% takes place during the peak festival season, between September and November.

The group has announced the unveiling of the next-generation Big Bazaar in 2011 and she is identifying the next set of differentiating features for the food and groceries value retail brand. Earlier this year, she launched Ethnically, a new retailing format for Indian ethnic wear and craft. Most recently, she launched Holii, a bags and accessories brand co-created by Hidesign and the Future Group. The shift from Big Bazaar to Holii to other concepts, “is seamless”, says Ashni. That is the whole idea of Future Group as well. “It is designed to be seamless. It is not designed to construct the mind in formats. The group looks at consumers eventually like it is one consumer.” Her father is “clear” of the family’s role and involvement in the business. “We will mentor, ideate, be relationship managers and not run the day-to-day business,” he says. Kishore Biyani also maintains that as a woman, Ashni has the ability to delve deeper into issues. Ashni’s growing-up years coincided with the inception and growth of the retail business. Post marriage, in November 2009 to Viraj Didwania, nephew of Anil Agarwal of the Vedanta group, Ashni is also looking to learn from her husband’s business about efficiencies and practices evolved. “For me, work and life are not distinct. You don’t know when you simply flow from one role into the other,” says Ashni, who refers to her team as “the gang” and her best friends or “buds” are all from the workplace. Her only lament is that in the last year, she has not managed to get 15-20 days at a stretch to visit her favourite city, New York. But Ashni, who is known to have taken “hardly any days off” her busy work schedule even during the wedding and maintains a 12-hour day, quickly shrugs and says, “It really is not that bad”.

L10 COVER

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

ANIRUDDHA CHOWDHURY/MINT

In flight: Aviation has gone from being an option to a passion for Gopinath.

Breaking ground: Biyani’s approach to innovation is anthropological, not just economic.

PALLAVI GOPINATH, 29 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT OFFICER, DECCAN CARGO AND EXPRESS LOGISTICS

THE IDEALIST B Y P .R . S ANJAI pr.sanjai@livemint.com

ADITYA BURMAN, 30 MANAGING DIRECTOR, ONCQUEST LABORATORIES

HARSH VARDHAN AGARWAL, 34 DIRECTOR, EMAMI GROUP OF COMPANIES

THE TRADITIONALIST

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

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

ASHNI BIYANI, 25 DIRECTOR, FUTURE IDEAS

THE TRANSITIONIST B Y S APNA A GARWAL sapna.a@livemint.com

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Travel

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TREND

The kiterunners’ club It’s dangerous, costly, adrenalinfuelled fun. For moneyed entrepreneurs and ‘adventure capitalists’, kiteboarding is the new passion

B Y A .J . B AIME ···························· n the occasion of Sir Richard Branson’s 60th birthday this past summer, the billionaire entrepreneur could have thrown the party of a lifetime, sailed the seas in his yacht Necker Belle or even toasted some Billecart-Salmon Champagne aboard the new VSS Enterprise reusable spaceship built by his company Virgin Galactic. Instead, Branson chose to try to break a speed record by “kiteboarding” across the frigid waters of the English Channel with his children. The relatively new sport involves fastening your feet to a wake or surfboard, harnessing your body to a giant kite and letting the wind slingshot you like a skipping stone across the sea at speeds—for those skilled enough—upwards of 40 mph with jumps that can reach 50ft skyward. To its enthusiasts, it beats waiting for the stock market to soar. And there’s a more predictable payoff. “We were screaming along, having a great time,” says Branson, “when we encountered force-four gales. The ‘kiters’ could manage fine, but the boats that were keeping an eye on everybody had to turn around. We decided to go back in.” He paused. “We’ll finish that off later in the year.” The pioneering Englishman began kiteboarding eight years ago, and he’s not alone in his passion for “kiting”—the new extreme sport du jour for entrepreneurs and the all-around super-wealthy (not to mention the upcoming aspirants). Among its devotees are Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Second Life founder Philip Rosedale and an A-list of Silicon Valley

Water rush: Richard Branson celebrated his last birthday kiteboarding in the English Channel.

players and industrial Manhattan think-tankers. “From the first day I saw someone doing it, to me it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen,” says Ari Horowitz, chief executive of the Access Network Co., a New York–based online publishing venture. Mother Nature notwithstanding, he says, “You’re harnessing an extraordinary amount of power, and you’re in total control.” Extreme kiteboarder Alexander von Furstenberg, son of the fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg and chief investment officer of a private investment firm, says, “When you’re in 25 knots of wind and in 15ft waves, nothing can compare. It’s like car racing. Only there’s no fumes, no noise. You’re one with nature, and pushing yourself to the max.” While daredevils and fools alike have experimented with boat-less, wind-powered sport for centuries, this new incarnation originated out of Hawaii and France in the mid-1990s. The idea: By inflating a large kite, which is attached by hightest lines to a control bar, and attaching oneself to it with a harness, a rider can power himself at speed across water, over waves, up into the air, even off snowy mountains on skis, using the kite itself as a steering mechanism and throttle. “The kite harnesses the wind to create a gigantic amplification of

any bodily movement,” says Bill Tai, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who has become an international spokesman for kiteboarding. “A flick of the wrist can change the ride from a 20 mph streak across water to a 20ft jump through the air.” By the turn of the century, kiteboarding had caught on among the legends of extreme sport such as Laird Hamilton. Only in recent years has it catapulted into the select mainstream. In terms of newcomers, it’s seen double-digit growth in past years despite its high expense and the economic downturn, according to Aaron Sales, editor of Kiteboarding magazine. Currently, there are roughly 40,000 kiteboarders in the US and 250,000 worldwide, Sales says. “Ten years ago, I would see two or three people off Third Avenue,” says Tai, referring to the California beach popular among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs because of its location in San Mateo. “Now, there’ll be about 100 kiteboarders on any windy weekend day in the summer.” Early on, the equipment was rudimentary, making the sport quite dangerous. After an accident in a competition killed a woman in Germany in 2002, equipment manufacturers began to develop safety mechanisms. Now, kiteboarders can make the sport as extreme as they like, or not extreme at all. PAUL KANE/GETTY IMAGES

“I expect to be doing it well into my 80s,” says Branson. Kiteboarders go through arduous safety checklists before “launching”, similar to those used by deep-sea scuba divers. Still, experienced riders all have their lists of “kite-mares”. Branson recalls being dragged across a reef once, but that pales in comparison with his scariest moment at sea. “I was out kiting, and this big shark decided to follow us,” he says. “I turned carefully, making sure I didn’t sink into the water. The shark came back following for another 200 yards. I turned again and it turned with me, and followed.” After four turns, Branson realized the haunting hulk was no shark at all. “It was the shadow from my kite that was following me.” Not all are so fortunate. Earlier this year, a kiteboarder was attacked by a school of sharks and killed a quarter mile off Stuart, Florida. That incident aside, there have been no official reports of shark-related kiteboarding fatalities. Tai has a taste for the more extreme, and has been hospitalized three times from kiteboarding injuries. Once he was pulled out by a tide beneath, of all places, the Golden Gate Bridge. “During an ebb-tide shift, the water’s moving a mile every 12-15 minutes,” he explains. “You get in trouble, and in 15 minutes you’re a mile away off the shore. Out there, there’s great white sharks and massive container ships.” He had to be rescued by the coast guard. “Still,” he says, “the fun outweighs the danger.” Why does kiteboarding lure the rich and powerful? It’s almost too obvious to ask. For starters, it provides a taste of risk, high stakes and flux (it’s familiar turf). And few can afford it. Start-up equipment will run about $2,500 (around `1.14 lakh), and then there are lessons, more equipment… suddenly kiting-hobbyists are up to far larger figures. “You’ve got to chase the wind,” says Horowitz. The West Village–based CEO has a wind metre

atop the roof of his Napeague Dunes summer house. The gales are fine off the Long Island coast, but he says, “Wherever it’s blowing that time of year, that’s where you want to be. If it’s blowing… I’m going.” That translates to travel to exotic locales. Brazil, Australia and Maui are all hot spots for kiters, the slang for kiteboarders. “It’s for the type of person who is attracted to industries that are fundamentally built around rapid change,” says Tai. “And for people with a penchant for risk, willing to change the rules. It’s for people of extreme self-confidence.” As kiteboarding’s popularity grows, its biggest events continue to garner spotlight and bigger commercial endorsers. Branson’s Virgin and surfwear company Billabong host an annual Woodstock for kiteboarders in the British Virgin Islands (next year, the BVI Kite Jam will run from 27 February to 5 March). Tai has joined with professional kiteboarder Susi Mai to co-host the Mai Tai kite camp in Maui each summer, an inviteonly beach bash that serves as a networking forum for titans of new technology. And Horowitz, capitalizing on the new upscale trend, is launching a guide and blog Kiteenthusiast.com next year. Meanwhile, Branson, Tai, world champion kiteboarder Kristin Boese and others are campaigning to make the sport an official Olympic event at the 2016 games to be held in Rio de Janeiro. As for getting started, lessons are now available at countless resort towns around the world, such as Cabarete in the Dominican Republic. “It’s trial and error,” says Horowitz, emphasizing, “A lot of error. But once you suck it up and get out there, it’s just…sick.” A.J. Baime is the author of Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Write to wsj@livemint.com

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GWALIOR

Strings and arrows In Tansen’s hometown, which is hosting a music festival, impossible is nothing B Y M ADULIKA L IDDLE ···························· t is a humid day inside Gwalior Fort. Monsoon clouds loom grey over the horizon and throw into vivid relief the turquoise, green and yellow tiles of the Man Mandir Palace. Our guide has recounted to us the history of this, the second largest of India’s forts (Chittorgarh, with a circumference of 14km—4km more than Gwalior Fort—is the largest). We’ve been told about the Kachhwahas, who founded it. About Raja Man Singh, who built the Man Mandir Palace in the early 16th century. About Jahangir and Shahjahan, who ruled from Agra but visited Gwalior on hunting trips, and always stayed at the now bat-infested hunting lodges within the fort. And we’ve heard about the British who, in 1857, shelled part of the Man Mandir Palace and then carried out restoration, and constructed a number of buildings, including what is today The Scindia School. We’re heading towards the magnificently carved Saas Bahu temples when our guide says, “I will show you one last monument here, then we will go.” The building he leads us into is a many-pillared stone structure, flat-roofed and unornamented, diagonally opposite the flamboyant Man

Mandir Palace. It has 82 pillars, we are told, and in the days of Jahangir, 52 princes were imprisoned here at the orders of the Mughal emperor. But the Sikh Guru Hargobind Singh interceded on behalf of the princes, and the Mughal emperor finally acceded to the guru’s request to release the princes. “But Jahangir set a condition,” our guide says. “Only as many of the princes as could touch the guru’s garments at one time could go with him.” So the guru, determined to save all the princes, wore a voluminous kurta with 52 kalis or panels in it. And all the princes, clutching the guru’s kurta, followed him to freedom. Anything can happen in Gwalior. It can be something as bizarre as the miniature tabletop train, laden with decanters, cigars and cigarettes, that used to run on a special track on a banquet table in the Scindias’ Jai Vilas Palace. It can be a matter of faith as profound as the belief that praying to the south-facing idol at the Vikram Mahal Temple in Gwalior Fort will avert death itself. As we walk past the the fort, our guide tells us how Gwalior was born, when a thirsty (and leprous) king asked a sage for water—and found his leprosy cured when he touched the water. The king founded a city, Gwalior, named

TRIP PLANNER/GWALIOR To Agra

To the airport

GWALIOR Gwalior Fort

To Bhopal

Railway station

Fly to Gwalior on Air India from New Delhi (R2,604). Though connected to other cities by Air India, the largest number of flights is through the Capital, so even if you’re arriving from another metro (or even another city in Madhya Pradesh), you may find yourself having to come through New Delhi. Alternatively, take the Bhopal Shatabdi from New Delhi (one-way fares in AC chair car: R470) or the Punjab Mail from Mumbai (AC II one-way fares: R1,409). By road, Gwalior is 8 hours’ drive from Delhi and 17 hours from Mumbai.

Gwalior

Stay

MADHYA PRADESH

Eat

The Usha Kiran Palace hotel in Jayendraganj (www.tajhotels.com; doubles from R3,800) is generally acknowledged to be Gwalior’s best hotel. Once a Scindia residence, it is a heritage hotel with lovely gardens, quaint old Scindia memorabilia and an air of laidback leisure. The Madhya Pradesh State Tourism Development Corporation’s (MPTDC’s) INDIA Tansen Residency (www.mptourism.com; doubles from R1,700) and the Gwalior Regency (doubles from R2,200; call 0751-2340670) are among the other options available. Gwalior isn’t the place to go if you’re looking for a mind-blowing culinary experience. Local delicacies are restricted to the sesame seed sweet known as ‘gajak’, and the popular puffed rice dish, ‘poha’, which is sold at roadside stalls throughout the city. Restaurants tend to concentrate on north Indian food, of the usual ‘dal-paneer-naan’ variety, though there are eateries, such as the much-loved Indian Coffee House, that serve dishes such as ‘dosas’ and biryanis as well. Other popular restaurants in the city include Kwality (north Indian, basic Continental and Chinese) Chotiwala, Volga and the Silver Saloon, the latter at the Usha Kiran Palace hotel; it serves a few Maharashtrian and Nepali dishes besides the usual array of Indian and Continental fare. The massive Gwalior Fort is the must-see. Among its primary sights are the beautiful blue-and-green tiled Man Mandir Palace, hunting lodges that were used by Jahangir and Shahjahan, and the gorgeously carved Saas Bahu temples, plus the unusual Teli ka Mandir, which has a ‘gopuram’ or spire shape like those of the temples in southern India. Other major attractions in Gwalior include the tombs of Ghaus Mohammad and Tansen, and the Jai Vilas Palace Museum, with its part-awesome, part-bizarre collection of Scindia memorabilia. Below the fort, visit the Gujari Mahal, once the palace of the legendary Queen Mrignayani and now an archaeological museum; and, further into town, the Jama Masjid, built by the emperor Aurangzeb. The annual Tansen Music Festival is the highlight in Gwalior’s calendar of events. The festival is on till 6 December, with three days and nights of music at the tomb of Tansen. If you’re fond of music—especially Hindustani classical—don’t miss this event. GRAPHIC

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

after the sage, Gwalab; and built Suraj Kund, a tank to contain the miracle-working water. On our way to the Saas Bahu temples and the Teli ka Mandir—the latter strongly reminiscent of the vividly carved temples at Khajuraho—we stop by at the lotus-overlaid Suraj Kund. The water is green and scummy, and looks as if it might cause some virulent diseases rather than take them away. More endearing is the story we’ve been told earlier that morning, at the tomb of Tansen. The 16th century singer and musician Tansen is Gwalior’s most beloved son. His tomb, a small square pavilion with a large chaadar of green silk spread over his grave and dotted with flowers, stands beside the ostentatious tomb of his foster father, the sufi saint Ghaus Mohammad. An old caretaker wearing a white kurta-pyjama, skull cap in place, ushers us into the dimness of Ghaus Mohammad’s tomb. He hands me a scarf, sodden with incense, to cover my head, and tells us all about how Ghaus Mohammad’s prayers enabled Tansen’s mother to conceive long after she had given up hope. Near us, with his forehead touching the ground, is a young man, his lips moving in fervent prayer. Above him, the screen surrounding the cenotaph of the saint is knotted over with coloured threads, strips of polythene, bits of the sacred redand-yellow thread known as mauli. Here and there too are letters, pencilled and inked, begging for the saint’s intercession. Outside, beyond the gorgeously carved screens surrounding Ghaus Mohammad’s tomb, is Tansen’s tomb—and another miracle. Here, beside Tansen’s tomb, is supposed

to be a tamarind tree under which the legend is said to have practised. Thousands of visitors believe that a leaf plucked from the tree, when chewed, will make the singer’s voice as sweet as that of Tansen’s. But we can see no tamarind tree anywhere near Tansen’s tomb. Roses, yes. Bushes of jasmine, yes, studded with fragrant white flowers; but no tamarind. The caretaker shakes his head sorrowfully when we ask him where it is. “It fell down two years ago,” he explains. Then, his face lighting up, he takes us around to the side overlooking Ghaus Mohammad’s tomb. Surrounded by a sturdy iron railing is a sapling, its feathery green leaves unmistakably that of the tamarind. “Sometime after the old tree collapsed, this one came up,” the caretaker says. “Go on,” he adds, “have a leaf.” And, given permission, we each snip off one tiny fragment from a compound leaf. It’s too small to even allow us to really taste it, but that doesn’t matter. Perhaps there will be a miracle in store for us too. As we walk back to Ghaus Mohammad’s tomb, the caretaker remarks, “That old tree never had any fruit. That was the strange thing about it. I’ve been here more than 30 years, and I never saw a single pod on it.” But this is Gwalior. I’m not surprised. Write to lounge@livemint.com CHILDFRIENDLY RATING

Generally, Gwalior’s attractions are suited to older children, 10 years and above, capable of appreciating the history of the city.

Majestic: The Man Mandir Palace is the second largest fort in India.

DETOURS

SALIL TRIPATHI

SHADOW OF THE GUN

reached the Andean highlands late one night, the plane wobbling vigorously as it found its way amid the peaks on the strip near Rio Negro. Nobody at the immigration could speak English, so I did not have to explain to too many people what I was doing in this secluded place in the middle of the night. An SUV waited; soon, I was on the road. Nobody had warned me that the airport was in the middle of nowhere, and that the journey to the city would be a long one. The driver seemed to be in a hurry to take me to the hotel, as furious rain lashed the windscreen; raindrops falling hard on the roof of the SUV, as though we were being pelted by little stones. The driver tried talking to me, asking me if I had a favourite radio station, but with my non-existent Spanish, we settled for silence. It was a dark night with blustery wind. He played opera on his radio and began humming along with the soprano, their voices merging at the perfect pitch, giving a quaintly stereophonic feel to the dark night. Miles of a lonely road lay

ahead of us, and it seemed a pity there was nothing for me to see outside. I could sense rows upon rows of trees, and the sharp bends we took, the depth we descended to, and the heights we ascended again made me realize that we were on a mountainous road, without lights, the only signpost being the occasional illuminated road signs. At some point, the SUV took a sharp turn, and there, to my left, I could see outlines of the hills and the road ahead, lit up in the glow of the lights of the city lying beneath. The spiral was stomach-churning, at the end of which, in the valley, lay thousands of lights, like scattered, twinkling fireflies—the city of Medellín. Or, the town that wants to forget its notorious son, Pablo Escobar. A small-time thug who wanted to crash into a political party, he earned his reputation as being one of the most feared names in the world leaving behind a trail of blood. In News of a Kidnapping, Gabriel García Márquez’s quietly understated narrative of the Medellín of more than a quarter century

MADULIKA LIDDLE

ago, he describes the anxiety of Luis Guillermo Perez Montoya, a Kodak executive, whose mother was abducted by Escobar after negotiations to stop the extradition of the “Extraditables”—Colombian drug lords the Americans wanted to prosecute—had broken down between Escobar’s gang and the Colombian government. Perez Montoya’s uncle was involved with the negotiations: Since Escobar couldn’t get him, they took his sister, Perez Montoya’s mother. Perez Montoya flew to Medellín looking for his mother, and García Márquez writes: “At the airport he took a cab but had no address to give the driver, and told him

simply to take him to the city. Reality came out to meet him when he saw the body of a girl about 15 years old lying by the side of the road, wearing an expensive party dress and very heavy make-up. There was a bullet hole and a trickle of dried blood on her forehead. Luis Guillermo, who could not believe his eyes, pointed at the corpse. “There’s a dead girl over there.” “Yes,” said the driver without looking. “One of the dolls who party with don Pablo’s friends.” That was Medellín till 1993, when the law finally circled around Escobar, the noose tightening. At the Museo de Antioquia in downtown Medellín, there is an entire wing devoted to

the art of Fernando Botero, Colombia’s most famous figurative artist and sculptor who was born here, but who now makes his home in Italy. Botero has chronicled the Colombian century through art—and odd humour, just as García Márquez has done it with words—and vivid imagination. Two of Botero’s paintings dealing with Medellín’s bloody past are at the museum. One shows a neighbourhood destroyed by a car bomb, with homes toppled and bodies mangled. The other, more dramatic painting has the familiar image of Escobar, where you see him larger than life, on the rooftops of the barrios of Medellín, with a gun in his hand JDUQUETR

pointing skywards, as rows of bullets head towards him, some missing him, some penetrating his body, his eyes closed. It doesn’t look as though he has fired a shot. Blood doesn’t gush forth from his body, it trickles from a couple of wounds; and there are several bullet marks on his torso. The buttons of his white jacket are undone. He is barefoot. The image is frozen; he looks as though he is about to fall, as he did, ending the siege in December 1993. Medellín has moved on from that past. The next morning I went with friends by cable car to the top of the hills that surround the city, looking at the teeming city beneath, now looking utterly normal. Later that evening, I walked in the central square near the museum with a friend, as she took pictures of Botero’s giant sculptures gracing the square. Colombians sold food, toys, ice cream, and newspapers; the breeze was mild. But our hosts insisted that a guard would accompany us to the car, parked 30 yards away—just in case. Even decades later, some old habits die hard. Write to Salil at detours@livemint.com www.livemint.com

Bird’seye view: Presentday Medellín has no signs of its violent past.

Read Salil’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/detours

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Books

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EXCERPT

Mayhem in Moazzamabad

HINDUSTAN TIMES

Omair Ahmad’s ‘Jimmy the Terrorist’ looks at Muslim politics in eastern UP between the 1970s and 1990s

ll those years ago, when he was still looking for his first job, Rafiq Ansari never cared more about anything than what was being discussed at Shabbir Manzil. Since joining college in 1965, his greatest ambition had been to have tea there, to sit among the notables of Rasoolpur mohalla and speak of poetry and cricket, perhaps make a learned comment, but casually, on some bit of politics that had recently made its way into the newspapers. In a way it was not his fault. He was the youngest amongst his brothers, and his parents, wanting to give him a leg-up in society, had sent him to St Jude’s. Although this wasn’t as prestigious as being sent to Lucknow or Delhi, or the swank boarding schools set up in the hill stations by the British, an education at St Jude’s meant something in Moazzamabad. It was at St Jude’s that Rafiq had learned that success was a small thing, social standing was the greater goal, and in Rasoolpur only one house determined where you stood in the ranks of society: Shabbir Manzil. Rafiq pursued this ambition with single-minded devotion, climbing above his station, marrying beyond his means, turning away from opportunities that would take him far from Moazzamabad and lose him the chance to make the one remark that would draw praise from all around him, and would be savoured by the caretakers of culture for a generation or more. It was no easy thing to achieve. There were many guardians on the path to such eminence, great egos to be propitiated, small men to be praised, and always the need to make it all seem that he wasn’t trying too hard. Nothing would doom his chances so completely as to be known as an upstart aspiring to social recognition. Turning down a job with the Indian Railways, Rafiq idled, a pursuit that only the sons of the rich could afford. He called it studying: he had done not just his MA, but a BEd as well, telling

his parents all the while that there was a great career in education—weren’t the vice chancellors of Indian universities all great men? To be a professor was to be on the pathway to power. And his father, who had only studied up to the tenth grade, who already had a son who was an engineer and a second who was a lawyer, and who knew, all the while, what Rafiq was made of, didn’t protest too much. But after his BEd, Rafiq had to live up to his boasts, and found that he could not. And then, six months of increasingly elaborate excuses, when even his mother mentioned something about working to feed himself, he had the good fortune to be almost run over by Ahmed Saeed Shabbir’s jeep. ‘Arre Rafiq!’ Ahmed Saeed exclaimed in the plum tones befitting the eldest son of the most prominent family in the mohalla, the only one who was a member of the Lions Club and who had dinner at the District Magistrate’s house, whose hands had so little need of work that they were softer than the calfskin shoes that he ordered from a shop in Kanpur whose name nobody in Moazzamabad knew. ‘Arre Rafiq! Kaise behke behke chal rahe ho? You haven’t fallen in love now, have you, my boy?’ The horn had startled Rafiq but he didn’t care. In all his years

Jimmy the Terrorist: Hamish Hamilton, 184 pages, `350.

Canvas: The small town in which Ahmad’s book is set is inspired by the milieu and geography of a town such as Meerut in Uttar Pradesh. Ahmed Saeed had never addressed him, never in such a tone, almost as if he was talking to an equal. And Rafiq wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass. Though what should he say, and how? Only the rich fell in love, even Rafiq knew that, only the rich and the desperately poor could afford to. The closest that Rafiq was likely to come to romance was copying Rajesh Khanna’s hairstyle. Thinking furiously, but determined not to show it, Rafiq ignored the glare that Rustam, Ahmed Saeed’s bulldog of a driver, threw his way. It was that glance that cleared his brain and, assuming a jaunty tone that went well with his superstar haircut, he replied, ‘One can also rise in love, Ahmed Saeed sahib, not just fall in it—unless brought down to earth by the honking of a car horn.’ Ahmed Saeed guffawed at the well-turned phrase, and Rafiq, who had been worried that he might be going a little too far with the implied criticism,

relaxed and laughed along. ‘Jump in, Majnu,’ Ahmed Saeed said, ‘let me drop you off at your house. We can’t let lovers be run over by careless drivers now, can we?’ As Rafiq moved to jump into the rear of the jeep, Ahmed Saeed said, ‘Not back there, old man, there’s enough space in the front.’ Things changed that evening for Rafiq. What an honour it was to be riding with Ahmed Saeed, in the front seat at that, shoulder to shoulder with the most important man in the mohalla. He could hear the buzz of gossip subside and rise as they passed by tea shop after tea shop, and knew that everybody was watching them. One of Rafiq’s friends had the temerity to wave, and Rafiq’s face crinkled in distaste. He only partially raised a hand to acknowledge the greeting. ‘Who was that?’ Ahmed Saeed wanted to know. ‘Oh, Ahmed Saeed sahib,’ Rafiq said, laughing dismissively, ‘you know how it is these days, every-

body thinks they are your equals. That young man is in his third year of engineering and thinks that makes him fit to have conversations with this nacheez who was mad enough to keep at it till he’d done an MA, and a BEd too.’ ‘Really?’ Ahmed Saeed sounded a little bewildered. He hadn’t realized that somebody of Rafiq’s class could actually claim to be educated. ‘First class,’ Rafiq said, and then clarified, ‘although they didn’t give it to me in my BEd for a two-mark difference.’ ‘They must have realized that you are Muslim,’ Ahmed Saeed said grumpily. It seemed implausible. The examination papers went to the central examination board, and there were no names on the papers, only identification numbers. But Rafiq nodded along. Everybody knew that Ahmed Saeed had managed to pass the fiendishly difficult civil service exam three times, only to be denied at the interview stage. Three times he had faced a board

of examiners armed with the air of a man accustomed to power and privilege, with the knowledge that all that was best in India could be his, and three times he had been denied by the stony faced men. It had been years since those slights, but Ahmed Saeed still brooded on them, assigning many reasons for his failure to break into the privileged club of Indian bureaucracy. Ahmed Saeed had lapsed into silence, but just before they reached Rafiq’s house, he seemed to come out of his sudden despondency. ‘Come to my house tomorrow. If you’re free, that is.’ Rafiq had a job interview the next day, but this was an invitation to Shabbir Manzil. ‘The British are gone,’ he said, waving a hand, ‘we’re all free men now.’ Ahmed Saeed laughed. ‘Good man,’ he said and squeezed Rafiq’s thigh, a gesture that could only mean that they were now friends.

seemed the lights could be turned off any time”. It is a curious concern in a climate where governments and builders mostly work hand-in-glove, and Gurgaon, many believe, is an excellent example of how the two have joined hands to bring about civic ruin. So the “lights” will never go out for the builders in India; it can only go out for the consumers, given the lack of any regulation in real estate. Kalita also falls into the journalistic trap of exaggeration or glib conclusion. She begins to explore what could have been an arresting theme by itself—the reverse migration of Indians from the US—but falls into the trap quickly. Bangalore alone, she writes, could see about 30,000 Indian Americans and their ilk return by 2030. “Their boomerang migration,” she writes, “exists alongside two seemingly opposite trends: a rapidly westernising India and an ethnically diversifying US..” Which India is “Westernizing”, barring enclaves in south Delhi and Mumbai? And what does Westerniza-

tion precisely mean in a country where the majority of the young and well-to-do are devoutly religious and intensely traditional? The book also needed a factchecker. Kalita talks about the proposed special economic zone (SEZ) in Singur, home to the aborted Nano car factory in West Bengal. Singur was never planned as a SEZ. She mentions Gurgaon as a municipality in the 1990s; it became a municipality only in 2008. Kalita writes with reasonable verve and displays flashes of wry humour—a bouquet of roses welcoming her at work is addressed to “Mr Kalita”, Delhi’s “obsession with pure-bred dogs” amuses her and she is gently admonished by her office peon for using her boss’ mug. But in the end, this is a dishevelled and frail offering which takes on too much than it can handle.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

MY TWO INDIAS | S MITRA KALITA

India in a churn Exaggerations, glib conclusions and factual errors mark this otherwise energetic memoir

B Y S OUTIK B ISWAS ···························· n Indian American journalist moves to India with her husband and daughter from the US to help launch a newspaper in Delhi. S. Mitra Kalita is looking to explore subjects consuming her new home—“greed, celebrity, education, aspiration, vocation, security and the place of India and Indians in a globalised world”. Part of her move is also propelled by a desire to reconnect with her larger family in Assam. What emerges at the end of her two-year stay is part memoir, part travelogue, part impressions of a city—and a country—in the throes of change. The problem is it fails to be either. Life in Delhi is an unremarkable expatriate story of house hunting, interviews with nosy landlords, $1,250- (around `56,625) a-month apartments

with empty faucets, black market gas cylinders and booster pumps to tap water. There is partying at farmhouses and dancing at nightclubs. In Assam, there are meetings with relatives and a moving account of the death of a family elder. At work, Kalita discovers that Indians revere hierarchy (what do you expect in a country which remains feudal at its heart?) and the difficulties of being boss and friend. She gives journalism lessons to her reporters telling them to approach “every story as a blank slate”. Kalita’s two Indias are mostly Delhi—and bits of Assam. Their exploration also takes a familiar route through English-speaking call centre workers, and Indians making clothes for the West in Gurgaon. Kalita worries about steep school dropout rates, unemployable college graduates, phony management institutes and lack of informed debate on higher education. All are valid concerns, but there is no deeper exploration of the

My Two Indias: HarperCollins Business, 209 pages, `399. challenges and how they are being fought with mixed results. There are bits about how big and messy government strangles business and encourages corruption with naïve presumptions. One time Kalita talks about how one of India’s leading builders is trying to sell more apartments in Gurgaon but “without government protection, it

Soutik Biswas is the India editor of BBC online. Write to lounge@livemint.com

BOOKS L15

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DECISION POINTS | GEORGE W BUSH

CRIMINAL MIND

A sanitized president

ZAC O’YEAH

COLD WAR, PART TWO

ERIC DRAPER/WHITE HOUSE/BLOOMBERG

A clean, smearfree memoir by the former president in which ‘God’ and his parents get top billing

Decision Points: Random House, 497 pages, `999. B Y N AYANTARA K ILACHAND ···························· s any American school child will tell you, George W. Bush was the 43rd president of the US, a one time alcoholic-turned-teetotaller who found God and his calling by running for the presidency of the world’s most powerful nation. Under his tenure, the world witnessed two wars—one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan—and saw a global transformation in security policies and immigration norms. A world before and after Bush was never to be the same again, and as Bush himself writes in the end, a touch smugly, he’s happy he won’t be around when history delivers the verdict on his presidency. In giving us the story of his life in Decision Points, Bush is acutely aware that the reader is likely to be less intrigued by a straightforward chronology than a peek into what prompted him to do much of what he did. For that reason, he has cleverly sectioned the chapters around “decision points” allowing him to lay bare his rationale for Afghanistan, stem cell research, Katrina, and Iraq, while skipping over the nuclear pact with India, Dick Cheney’s contentious con-

Methodical: There are no potshots, namecalling or jibes at opponents. nection to oil money, and his unsound environmental policies. Unfortunately, Bush, doing what he sometimes rarely did in person, sticks to the script. His arguments, not always sound or convincing, are methodical and plodding. The overall effect is of a wayward college student trying to convince a sceptical admissions board of his worthiness. Bush in person, live and unscripted, was given to such wonderful buffoonery that there was rarely a dull moment during his presidency (tellingly he struggled in high school English). Here, filtered through the heavy hand of a cautious editor, his prose sinks, weighed down by mundane details which, even though presidential in scope, fail to enchant. There are no potshots, namecalling or wicked jibes at opponents. This is the kind of clean, smear-free campaigning that would have had Karl Rove in a tizzy (described incidentally as a lovable mad scientist—“intellec-

tual, funny, and overflowing with energy and ideas”). In Bush’s memoirs, it’s quickly apparent that God, and his parents, get top billing, followed by his family, his cabinet and a host of international leaders that he considers “good friends” and seem largely picked by who supported the Iraq war. Little wonder than former UK prime minister Tony Blair is his best friend, followed by former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, Germany’s Angela Merkel, and the Saudi Arabian royal family (any mention of oil is conveniently missing). Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, France’s Jacques Chirac, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the UN are not. When Bush gets snippy, the punches are tempered. The UN is described as cumbersome and irrelevant, The New York Times in general terms of amazement (because they would place journalistic scoops over national security), Al Gore as

stiff and aloof. Even after Schroder’s justice minister compares him to Hitler, Bush is restrained in reaction. “Once the trust was violated, it was hard to have a constructive relationship again,” he says a bit woefully. The worst moment of his presidency is when he is accused of not caring about the plight of black people during the Hurricane Katrina disaster response. His proudest, little surprise, is the capture of Saddam Hussein. Amazingly then, Bush spends little time describing Saddam’s capture, his euphoria or what followed during his hanging. He is similarly reticent about providing a convincing explanation about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD). “In retrospect, of course, we all should have pushed harder on the intelligence and revisited our assumptions,” he writes, almost as if this were revelatory. China and Pakistan, both contentious relationships, are glossed over, described as merely “complex” and then brushed under the rug. The most revealing chapter is strangely also his least trumpeted achievement in America—at a time when the US was struggling with financial burden, Bush announced a $15 billion (around `68,400 crore) aid package for fighting AIDS in subSaharan Africa. By the end, a Bush hater will find much to reinforce their cause, but perhaps also soften their barbs. For all his fumbling disasters, Bush did manage to strengthen security and bring good to many parts of the world. The ubiquitous names that became synonymous with his tenure—Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, jihad—were around much before Bush brought them to the forefront, and for that he cannot be blamed. It’s likely then that only die-hard Bush fans or those morbidly curious about his time in office, will pick up this hefty tome. Others who’ve received it as a gift will be happy to know that it doubles as a nifty doorstop.

Women try to change fortunes in a boring office; and the horrors of a Karachi slum Workplace blues Novels set in the urban Indian workplace can sometimes make the literary instruction to “write what you know” seem overly optimistic. The minutiae of client meetings, project management and inter-office politics probably have great novelistic potential, but books such as By the Water Cooler are no confirmation of that. Parul Sharma’s book is an anomaly among the rash of “MBA novels” currently flooding the book stores, because it’s about women, not men, being bored at work. Mini and Tanya have hotfooted it out of their advertising agency jobs to land up at a fashion enterprise where “corporate stardom is only a few Powerpoint slides away”. It is not; perhaps because there is no such thing as

corporate stardom. Nonetheless, Mini keeps going, avoiding showdowns with unpleasant superiors, getting out of scrapes and finding romance, with some help from her quirkier colleagues. Sharma’s forte is the zinger; her dialogue carries the story forward with comic verve, although her style can sound clunky sometimes (who uses “the latter” in direct speech?). She can write characters who are likeable even when

By the Water Cooler: By Parul Sharma, Westland Press, 261 pages, `250.

Pakistani author Bina Shah’s third novel, Slum Child, set in Karachi, follows the uncertain fortunes of a bright nine-year-old girl. Laila’s is a small world in a big city, but doomed to unpredictability because she is poor, and she comes from the Punjabi Christian community of Issa Colony, far away from the gracious tranquillity of the neighbourhood where Laila’s mother works as a housemaid. After her family is torn apart over the death of her elder sister, she runs away and works in one of the big homes as a servant, which is accompanied by fresh tribulations. Laila’s story will seem relevant to most readers on the subcontinent, where the juxtaposition of poverty and wealth, as well as an awareness of that inequality, is intensely familiar. National differ-

ZAC O’YEAH

Write to lounge@livemint.com Cold reality: Berlin’s Stasi prison is a grim reminder of the Cold War. IN SIX WORDS Predictably, a restrained and unrevealing Bush

they’re bored, which saves them from being fatally boring. Still, the light-heartedness may collapse if readers ask “why?” at crucial points. Why is this an important story? Why is Mini special? Why is her boss so unreasonable? Why is there so much photocopying? But ours not to reason why, and By the Water Cooler will be an engaging read for those who can cope with that in art as well as life.

Homeless in Karachi

he Cold War is hot again, judging by the recent European hit films such as the Academy Award-winning The Lives of Others (2006), about the German Democratic Republic (GDR) government wire-tapping and spying on its own people, or The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) on the 1970s urban guerrillas who were supported by the East German secret police, Stasi, in an attempt to destabilize West Germany. The latter film is, incidentally, based on a best-selling non-fiction book by Stefan Aust. Up until 1989, the Cold War spawned an avalanche of fictional secret agents, ranging from Ian Fleming’s flamboyant 007 to the darkly naturalistic Smiley, created by John le Carré, which kept the entertainment industry cashing in. But when the Berlin Wall fell, le Carré adapted quickly, setting his new thrillers in Panama, Kenya and East Congo, while many other once big spy novelists just went off the radar without a blip. In Europe, everybody was happy to be rid of the Iron Curtain. When I went to Berlin in early 1990, hawkers were selling pieces of the rapidly disappearing wall to tourists. But on a recent visit to the city that epitomized the Cold War, I was surprised to find Checkpoint Charlie rebuilt as a tourist attraction, manned by actors in East German uniforms doling out fake GDR visa stamps. This kind of nostalgia has its own name, “Ostalgie”, from the German word for East, der Ost. The remaining pieces of wall, as can be found in Mauerpark (“Wall Park”), are now a treasured heritage. In Potsdamer Platz you find camera-toting Japanese tourists heading into the alley Erna-Berger-Straße to snap one of the last standing GDR watchtowers, a seriously depressed-looking concrete chunk. Shops such as Mondos Arts on Schreinerstraße peddle GDR kitsch, old Pilsner bottles, Lenin busts and Trabant toy cars, while old East Berlin restaurants, such as Schusterjunge of Danziger Straße, attract tourists with their robust fare of schnitzels, goulashes and sauerkraut. The Stasi headquarters (or the ministry of state security of the GDR), from where the dreaded secret police kept, in truly Orwellian style, an eye on “dissidents”, has been turned into an archive and museum. This anonymous block of buildings was ransacked by angry mobs in January 1990, after which the organization shut down. Up to that date the Stasi employed 91,015 staff and a network of 200,000 unofficial “spies” informing on neighbours, colleagues, and spouses—it is said that five million East Germans, or one-third of the population, were under surveillance. About 2% of the population appears to have been engaged in various forms of espionage. Today visitors get to see sinister propaganda material and espionage equipment such as concealed cameras and tape recorders in handbags, coat buttons, ties and thermos flasks; it is like walking into an old James Bond movie. If you happen to have had any connection with East Germany, you can request to see your file. It is quite likely that there is one. The interesting museum café is drably furnished in period Eastern bloc furniture.

Nayantara Kilachand is the founder of Mumbaiboss.com.

QUICK LIT | SUPRIYA NAIR

Living in a box

Slum Child: By Bina Shah, Tranquebar Press, 288 pages, `295. ences may play out at higher political and economic levels. Life for the urban poor, whether in Mumbai or Karachi, has graver commonalities. Shah stakes this broad canvas on Laila’s close, first-person narrative, and succeeds for the most part in bringing her milieu, and her characters, to vivid life. Her compassionate authorial voice is free of the Jamesian iciness with which, by contrast, her compatriot Daniyal Mueenuddin writes of rural labourers. Her narrative may not achieve the startling clarity of his stories, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. supriya.n@livemint.com

A short bus ride away, the Stasi prison reveals the coldest realities of the Cold War. Dissidents were incarcerated without trial. The tour through dungeons and torture chambers is guided by a former inmate, who tells us visitors that he spent two stints in jail for innocent activities such as taking photographs of buildings (as part of architectural studies) and participating in a radio talk show in West Berlin. The prison conditions were horrendous—lack of food, sleep, hygiene and heating led to many deaths—and it became clear to me that the opening up of these secret facilities to tourists isn’t just about “Ostalgia”, but a therapy for Europeans who for so long lived in Cold War paranoia. Seeing the prison was a rather cathartic experience even for me. Mind you, this isn’t only a German phenomenon. In England, Cold War bunkers have also been turned into tourist spots. And guess what? John le Carré is at it again. About to turn 80, the master of espionage fiction is turning his 1974 novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy into a big-budget movie. The plot in which the elderly spy George Smiley becomes the central character, as he is called back to duty to hunt down a communist mole who has infiltrated the very core of the British intelligence service, is one of the real Cold War classics. It is particularly interesting because it is based on a genuine case, the Philby affair, which supposedly affected le Carré’s own career within MI6—and which may have been the reason for him becoming a full-time novelist rather than remaining a part-time diplomat, part-time spy in Germany (where he was posted at the British embassy). So in a way, we have Philby to thank for Smiley. The novel’s popularity also stems, partly, from the popular 1970s BBC TV series in which Sir Alec Guinness played the part of the unglamorous and humane Smiley. Interestingly, before this, Smiley had already appeared as a character in several other le Carré stories, with a very minor part in The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1963) that was geographically centred on the Berlin Wall. Among the Smiley adventures that followed, The Secret Pilgrim (1990) is a kind of post-Berlin Wall memoir of the ageing spy. Gary Oldman has been signed on for the Smiley role in the upcoming movie, starring the charismatic Simon McBurney who, if you recall, toured stages here in India with Measure for Measure in 2005. The film is directed by Swede prodigy Tomas Alfredson who, with his realistic vampire movie Let the Right One In (2008), created a new paradigm in horror cinema. Expect to get thrilled in about a year’s time, and the Cold War will turn even hotter. Zac O’Yeah is a Bangalore-based crime fiction writer. Write to Zac at criminalmind@livemint.com

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2010

Culture

LOUNGE ANNECHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP

MUSIC

East London revolutionaries For 27 years, their incendiary songs have voiced a community. We spoke with Asian Dub Foundation ahead of their India tour B Y K RISH R AGHAV krish.r@livemint.com

···························· know I’m going to get asked about this a lot in India, so let me explain the context to this song,” says guitarist Steve Chandra Savale of the Asian Dub Foundation (ADF). He is talking about Naxalite, a single the British punk/reggae/electronica collective released in 1996 as an “ode” to the Maoist movement in India. With the escalating conflict, the song sounds remarkably prescient today. (Like springing tigers we encircle the cities/Our home is the undergrowth/Because I am a Naxalite warrior.) “It’s not a rallying cry for the movement or a ringing endorsement,” Savale explains over the phone from London, a week before their first-ever India tour. “This was a song aimed purely at a British audience.” The group, he says, was “revolted” at the embarrassing stereotype of Indian people in Britain. “You asked any average person what they knew about India and

you’d hear ‘Gandhi. Curry. Peace and love.’ We were so offended.” Savale and his songwriting compatriots, bassist Aniruddha Das (aka Dr Das), DJ John Pandit (aka Pandit G), programmer Sanjay Tailor (Sun-J) and 16-year-old rapper Deeder Zaman (Master D), started “investigating tendencies in Indian history” that challenged this dominant image of passive resistance. “It was a process of discovery, really. It was fascinating for us to learn about this aspect of recent India, and we had access to just one book in a university library—which turned out to be some kind of Leftist pamphlet.” ADF formed out of a series of workshops on electronic music in east London, conducted in 1993 by Das and Pandit. Savale, known for his unique style of playing the electric guitar, was recruited a year later. (An article on the band’s website offers the following tip for aspiring players: “Don’t play chords or notes—play a feeling. Don’t play Cm7; play a volcano erupting. Don’t play some tired old Blues Riff; play the sound of the

The act: (top) The band in concert; and the ADF lineup. Stock Market collapsing.”) ADF’s music was an angry, verbose reaction to growing antiAsian sentiment and violence, and their struggle to maintain east London’s “egalitarianism”. “We’re a product of that environment,” Savale says. In 1998, the band released Free Satpal Ram, a song that drew attention to the case of Satpal Ram, a British Indian convicted of murder and allegedly

beaten by the authorities on account of his race. Ram was finally released in 2002. The band have been at the forefront of underground Asian music in the UK, their songs continually challenging reductionist assumptions of what constitutes Asian culture or attempts to pigeonhole issues into convenient categories. “We keep saying—the world is extremely complicated, you

Q&A | SUBODH GUPTA

The artist on his new show and why his art will always be inspired by the middle class himanshu.b@livemint.com

···························· nternationally acclaimed artist Subodh Gupta’s new solo show is called Oil on Canvas, but it will feature only new sculptures. The title, he explains, comes from one of the works on display. Besides stainless steel, his preferred medium, Gupta has used bronze, brass, marble and wood to make what he calls “minimalist” and “conceptual” works. The show, he promises, is a departure for him. Edited excerpts from an interview:

What determines your choice of medium for sculptures? Steel is a part of my life; it is my

central to his work. “The format of protest is changing. It’s a tradition that grew out of the 1970s and 1980s, I’m not sure it’s wholly effective to today’s context. The space given to it has morphed and changed. And with it, so do you.” For many of ADF’s fans, their first introduction to the band’s music came from an unlikely source—video games. Popular ADF songs Fortress Europe and Flyover have been licensed for use by big-budget racing games such as Need for Speed: Underground. It may seem strange that an intensely political band would allow its music to be licensed for use in a racing game, but Savale says it captures the changing space of protest and protest music. “I don’t want any control on how people interpret our music,” he says. “I don’t care if the navel-gazing far left hears us. What matters to me is that millions of 16 year olds who play racing games know by heart the lyrics to one of the most pro-liberal, pro-immigration songs in recent history. I think that’s brilliant. Full power to it.” Asian Dub Foundation headline the Bacardi NH7 Weekender festival in Pune on 12 December and play in Goa, Delhi and Chennai on 15, 16 and 18 December, respectively.

COURTESY NATURE MORTE

Steely resistance B Y H IMANSHU B HAGAT

always have new grounds for the far right to take root in, and new cultural issues that emerge out of new patterns of politics,” Savale says. “You have to keep up—it’s in the nature of globalization.” ADF has seen many changes in its 16 years (both founder members Dr Das and Master D have moved out to concentrate on teaching or community activism), but has settled to a six-man line-up since the 2008 album Punkara. Their new album, A New London Eye, is due early 2011. “I’m very, very happy with it. We’ve grown as musicians and we understand each other much better,” Savale says. “When your line-up is constantly changing, it’s like you’re always making that first album.” In 2009, Savale hosted a six-part series for Al Jazeera called Music of Resistance, profiling musicians from around the world who spoke against injustice in their communities. “The show demonstrated that what we do has comparable parallels to other places in the world, and that music has this incredible capacity to organize a disadvantaged community.” Savale says working in multiple media (he also conceptualized an opera in 2006 on the life of Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi) is

signature. But I am fascinated by other mediums too (such as) marble. It’s like watercolour—every artist finds it beautiful and dreams of drawing in it, even if he can’t really draw. And now every middle-class Indian home has marble. That attracted me too. No matter what I do, I have to connect with the people. Why have you been partial to stainless steel? I like working in it. I love utensils and I still have a long way to go. It is a discovery each time I do something with it. Over the years you have continued to use your signature motif of pots and pans, even if the subject does not have

an Indian context. It doesn’t matter what the subject is. It is not necessary for it to be Indian. But utensils are always related to food and food is related to human life. If you have food on plate, you have life. And if you don’t, you don’t have life. Now even the poor have stainless steel utensils but it is not necessary that they have food. How important is it for you to retain your Indian roots in your art? I live in this country and I have to react to my own life and environment. Artists react to their own culture and their own lives. By speaking the language of art, you can make anything. And it will fit anywhere. The subject doesn’t have to be American or Indian. When the (American artist) Jasper Johns drew the American flag no one asked him why. American pop art had Coca-Cola, ice cream and Marilyn Monroe—all very American symbols. Can you compare the response your work gets by Indian and

Departures: Gupta (above) says he is fascinated by marble as a medium; and an untitled bronze sculpture from the show. international viewers? Indian viewer will no doubt understand my work much more easily, although ironically, it was international viewers who first gave me recognition. What about showing in Indian galleries versus showing in foreign galleries?

Every gallery has a different audience. But there is a big difference between India and the West—in London at the Hauser and Wirth gallery there were 200 visitors everyday. Here you’ll get maybe 10 people coming for a show after the opening day. When it comes to numbers,

there is no comparison—art lovers here are much fewer than in the West. Does that bother you? Our job is to make more interesting art so that more people will come. (We should give) whoever loves art, something to see. Should art have a social message? Not necessarily. But 99% of good art has something strong to say. It speaks its own language, but it is not necessarily social—it could be something absurd too. The beauty of art is that you are not able to pinpoint things. It is not an essay that can be read word by word. People come and make their own meaning. Oil on Canvas will be on display at Gallery Nature Morte, A1, Neeti Bagh, New Delhi. For details, log on to www.naturemorte.com

CULTURE L17

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

FILM

MUSIC MATTERS

Chittagong burning

SHUBHA MUDGAL

A HOARDER OF TUNES

Ashutosh Gowariker brings Surjya Sen alive on the silver screen. Why does the revolutionary’s appeal endure?

B Y U DITA J HUNJHUNWALA ···························· ighty years after the Chittagong Uprising, an almost forgotten chapter in the Indian freedom struggle comes to the big screen in Ashutosh Gowariker’s Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey (KHJJS). An adaptation of Manini Chatterjee’s book Do and Die, Gowariker’s film stars Abhishek Bachchan as Surjya Sen, or Masterda, who led a group of 64 revolutionaries in the Chittagong Armoury raid on 18 April 1930. Known for his earlier period films Lagaan and Jodhaa Akbar, Gowariker admits that he didn’t know much about the Chittagong Uprising until he read Chatterjee’s award-winning book. “I stumbled upon the book while browsing in a book store. I was attracted to the title Do and Die as opposed to ‘do or die’,” says Gowariker. “Though I recalled reading about the Chittagong Uprising in school, I discovered Surjya Sen and the impact of the Armoury raids of 1930 only when I read the book. I felt that if I don’t know anything about it, and if it fits into the mould of converting it into a film, then why not make it into a movie and share it with everyone?” He proceeded to acquire the adaptation rights and approached Chatterjee for her consent and involvement. On her part, having seen Gowariker’s Lagaan, Swades and Jodhaa Akbar, Chatterjee says she was “confident that he would not trivialize or sensationalize anything and do justice to the spirit of the book even though cinema is a different medium and has its own logic and compulsions.” While some might say that films cannot do justice to the effort and depth in a book, Chatterjee admits that though Do and Die first came out 11 years ago, it had a limited reach. “A mainstream Hindi film will take the story to a much wider audience. It has also renewed interest in the book and a new edition has come out, a Hindi transla-

Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey released in theatres on Friday.

ost people are collectors of sorts, but few understand and practice the fine art and discipline of collecting seriously. My own collection of music is fairly large and varied but horribly lacking in terms of organization and cataloguing. Which is why I reserve the greatest admiration and respect for music collectors, who have not just collected obsessively but also disciplined themselves into cataloguing and organizing their treasured collections methodically. They have been able to bring the much needed method into their madness. What’s more, they haven’t just collected and hoarded, but provide access to their collections, albeit on their own terms. I’d like to introduce readers to yet another remarkable collector tucked away in a quiet little corner in the town of Nadiad, Gujarat. Rohitbhai Desai, a snowy haired, bespectacled but sharp-eyed gentleman, has been a collector for over four decades now, and could easily be sitting on one of the largest stashes and well-organized collections of music in the country. Last week, I had the privilege of meeting him at his home and enjoy a taste of his enormous music collection. My husband Aneesh and I reached Rohitbhai’s home in the afternoon, and left reluctantly several hours later, hauling ourselves away from the wonderful music that he played for us in response to our barrage of requests. It seems Rohitbhai started out by being an avid collector of film music, but under the influence of his mentors Sharadbhai Mehta and R.C. Mehta, he turned his attention towards Hindustani classical music instead. Much of the music Spooled: Old formats can be a treasure trove. he has collected is on varied and some outdated formats, including 78 RPM, spool and cassette. This meant that he had to go through the back-breaking, painstaking and sometimes frustrating process of digitization. A lesser mortal could well have baulked at this prospect, or then hastily applied for a grant to acquire funds for the job. Not so Rohitbhai, who applied himself to the task, devising his own methods to get the best possible audio quality during digitization. His meticulous temperament is evident everywhere, in the neat, simple but spotlessly clean room we sit in, the desktop computer protected by a dust cover, the rows of indexed files and notebooks, properly labelled cartons and containers. That’s how he is able to find what you request swiftly and without any wild scrambling around to look for a track you know you have but fail to locate when you want it. Unlike some other collectors who collect and acquire music with manic intensity but end up hardly ever listening to the music, Rohitbhai displays an easily evident familiarity with the music. Mention a bandish in a particular raga and he will reel off the lyrics and even give you an explanation with a gleam in his eyes if the words merit an “explicit content” marking by iTunes. Truly, it was a memorable afternoon for us, with great music, the company of a master collector, and Mrs Desai’s batata poha and home-made ice cream as bonus. It would be plain avarice to ask for more!

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Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com

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Masterclass: Bachchan as the legendary leader of the Chittagong Armoury raid; and (left) Gowariker.

tion is out too and a Malayalam one will be out soon,” she says. Coincidentally, film-maker Shonali Bose and her husband Bedabrata Pain have also made a film on the same subject, called Chittagong starring Manoj Bajpayee. Gowariker believes there is space for both the films as they will be “very different in their respective approaches. I know she made a lovely film called Amu, so I know her sensibility is different,” he adds. The writer-director-producer says that the age of the participants in the daring raid should strike a chord with today’s India. “I find these revolution very youthful—55 teens from the age of 13 and above also participated,” he says. He found it fascinating that young people were willing to give their lives for the freedom movement. “Their slogan was ‘do and die’ and the element of ‘to do’ is very contempo-

rary. Today, youth can come together and make a change.” Chatterjee also feels the episode has a relevance that transcends time. “I think it is important to know our own history, and knowledge of the past informs our future in subtle ways,” she says. “As for contemporary relevance, I think at a time when India is all gung-ho about becoming an emerging power and the world’s largest democracy, it is important to realize the sacrifices of forgotten heroes and martyrs who gave their lives for the freedom we now enjoy and take so much for granted.” While Do and Die forms the basis of KHJJS, in order to translate the text for screen, Gowariker engaged a team of technicians who provided their own research and vision. “Manini’s research was vast. Everything you wanted to know about the revolution— what time, where and which officer was representing at that

SEBASTIAN BOLESCH

Tied up and veiled Postmodern Japan meets post2001 Afghanistan in a dancedrama B Y R AHUL J AYARAM rahul.j@livemint.com

···························· n the dance-drama Burka Bondage, the stage reflects the minefield that the heart can be. Soon after the curtain goes up, there is a crowd of people on stage and then there is bombardment (with the aid of special effects). This is German choreographer and theatre person Helena Waldmann’s allusion to the infamous 2001 destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Moments later, only two individuals are left on stage—one from Afghanistan and the other from faraway Japan. In the course of the wordless next hour, the duo communicates with each another through dance and movement. A relationship is forged through the

poetry of their bodies. Motion and stillness alternate, standing for speech and silence. “My aim is to show how two people from distant cultures can communicate,” says Waldmann over the phone from Berlin. “People say the world is made of different cultures and people. I don’t think so. I think if you scratch beneath the surface...people are more similar than they are different.” So Waldmann picks what she feels are clichés about the two cultures. While teaching and conducting theatre workshops in Afghanistan, she was fed up of the view of a country beleaguered by the Taliban. Its representative symbol in her show takes the form of one performer wearing a burqa. Over the years, Waldmann has spent time with theatre professionals in Japan as well. In this highly industrialized society, “with insane levels of alcoholism and suicide”, she found a young generation with schizoid attitudes about its past and present. A critical factor in Japanese culture, Waldamnn explains, is

time—has been accounted for,” he says. “The other aspects of research in a period film are related to art, costumes, light design and cinematography, for which I have a very reliable team that I work with. Nitin Desai, Neeta Lulla and Kiran Deohans read the book and then went on to do their own research.” The bigger challenge was recreating the era in terms of behavioural patterns based on the manners and morals of that society. For this, Gowariker relied on imagination, visits to Kolkata and Shantiniketan and reference books. This is Gowariker’s first period thriller and his first biopic. “This film is based on real-life characters and an incident that is just 80 years old. Jodhaa Akbar was 450 years ago and there weren’t any photographic references, only paintings, the Akbarnama and grandiose texts to draw from. We still have a connection with the 1930s, so with KHJJS the sense of responsibility to keep intact the spirit of the revolution was much more. So now you can know about the Chittagong Uprising of 1930 in two ways: from Do and Die and from the film,” he says.

Crosscurrents: Burka Bondage expresses the struggle for freedom. the unremitting fear of an individual losing face. The bombing of the Buddha statues in Afghanistan also dismayed the largely Buddhist Japan. The Bamiyan devastation, in her understanding, rattled the already scarred island nation. “Young Japanese people don’t seem confident about their future. A Japanese theatre person told me he has stopped doing drama as the realities of Japan are too harsh to confront,” Waldmann says. Waldmann returned to Kabul in 2008 to work with young

actresses who called themselves “Generation Rain”. They thought they were stuck in the mud of history, tied to fundamentalism, though the Taliban were not ruling at the moment. The same year, Waldmann was invited to present workshops in Osaka and Tokyo. Here she heard for the first time the term “Generation Lost”, describing young disillusioned Japanese who don’t think they have a future. So, Waldmann found similarities in the “two sick societies”. As she probed these emotions, the

dance-drama Burka Bondage evolved. If the burqa serves as a marker for Afghani women, bondage seemed like an apt metaphor for the Japanese to Waldmann. “Bondage implies the passion and pain of the two female dancers struggling for freedom,” she says. “One from the restraints of Japanese bondage and the other from the burqa. Bondage here also has intense erotic features. The play alludes to traditional forms of Japanese lovemaking and courtship, rope-torture techniques, martial arts and Zen Buddhism.” For the greater part of the show, one person will wear a burqa and the other will be bound by ropes. “Dance is the form that I chose because it is the language of the body. The human body has a universal mother tongue... it can also powerfully express the withdrawal of a person from society,” Waldmann says, adding that the show is not for the faint-hearted—its visceral aesthetic licence might not appeal to everyone. “My show is brutal. It may even be tough for the audience,” she warns. Presented by the Goethe-Institut, Burka Bondage will be shown at the Ranga Shankara in Bangalore on 12 December.

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CHENNAI KOOTHU | NIRANJANA RAMESH

Subaltern men in suits Gated communities in Chennai are pushing traditional salesmen to the city’s periphery, towards the less affluent populace

n many ways, 39-year-old Mohammed Ibrahim belongs to the traditional school of Chennai’s door-to-door salesmen. It’s a business he’s been in for 13 years. Every day at 7am, he gets on his TVS moped, and prepares for a day of enthusiastic sales pitches. But he sells neither dubious encyclopaedias nor strange new gadgetry to middle-class homes. He belongs to a new breed of subaltern salespeople—part entrepreneur, part agent of social change—peddling electrical and household goods to people living on the outskirts of Chennai, unable to afford housing within the city or displaced by development projects. “There is no point,” he says, “in trying to sell at bungalow homes in posh areas.” Ibrahim sources goods from Mint Street, which houses Chennai’s wholesale aluminium, steel and plastics goods market. Real estate is scarce even here, on what is said to be the world’s second longest street; pots and pans fill every possible interstice in the shops, hanging out of store windows and dangling from ceilings. Electric appliances (called “box items”) take pride of place in shops. Ibrahim is a regular visitor here in the evenings, buying gas stoves, fans and electric cookers that he sells at Kannagi Nagar, a government resettlement colony located beyond the glass-panelled buildings of

Chennai’s IT corridor. The colony’s streets are devoid of commercial establishments save for Ibrahim’s moped, on which he carries his wares and make sales pitches to homemakers. “They, in turn, need to make pitches to their husbands, who may or may not understand the need for these gadgets in their homes.” he says. Salespeople such as Ibrahim also offer these households a valuable convenience: they can pay in instalments, which usually convinces them to make the deal. “Often, they pay `10-20 per week, spread over four-eight weeks even to buy pots and pans,” Ibrahim says. Venkatesan, a cobbler at Kannagi Nagar, shows a pink slip, the “instalment” log for the new kitchen stove that he bought. “My ration card has not been processed for this new address yet, so I buy commercial LPG cylinders, hence, the need for a stove,” he says. He has paid `400 of his purchase price of `1,000, and has to pay `100 a week for six more weeks. “The products themselves come at a rate 50% cheaper than your regular brands, and they are not sold with bills or warranty,” says Deva Rajan, who runs a store in Mint Street. “But we do offer service and repair through the salesmen.” At MC Road in Washermanpet, with its rows upon rows of bargain textile stores, a different group of salespeople is at work. A

far cry from the male-dominated world of door-to-door-sales, here you find women armed with shopping bags bulging with sarees and nightgowns. These clothes are also sold mainly in Kannagi Nagar, says S. Kutti, a towering saleswoman whose heavy shopping bag could give weight trainers a run for their dumbells. “Unlike the upwardly mobile middle class, women here (Kannagi Nagar) have little time or freedom to go shopping for their own clothes. They have to travel long distances for their jobs, and tend to their families at other times,” she says. They are thankful for these markets at their doorsteps. The spread of such markets to the urban peripheries seems to mirror the ripple structure that the city’s economic grouping seems to be taking. It is almost as though the city has been pushing its less-affluent populace and small-scale businessmen to the suburbs, while making room for shopping malls and gated housing complexes at its heart. The ear-to-ear grin of the door-to-door salesman is not as wide as it used to be. Wikipedia has replaced the need for the 10-volume Childcraft set. Their show-and-tell routines are no longer important, the halls no longer a temporary shopfront for sarees and sundry items. The change is evident in Chennai. “This city has traditionally had fewer apartment

complexes with far lesser number of storeys compared to other metros. In that sense, it was a salesman-friendly city,” says A. Srivathsan, an urban planner and a member of the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA). “It was also perceived that the people here needed some persuasion when it came to buying things, given their conservative approach to consumeristic spending.” That’s all in the past now. “The city has sprouted so many apartments and gated communities now, and the population spread is not at all predictable,” Srivathsan says. “It would be quite impossible for any seller to target his potential customers in this urban chaos.” “It is not so much telemarketing or bombarding of multiple brands and products on consumers. It’s the proliferation of the apartment culture with its paranoia of outsiders that is sucking the life out of this profession,” says Karthick, who runs Lal & Sons, a household utensils and appliances store at Pallavaram, a middle-income suburb in Chennai. He employs four-five salesmen, who make `18,000-20,000 per month between them. “There are strict rules regarding entry of vendors of any kind—hawkers, peddlers, salesmen—into our apartments,” confirms Vijay Kumar, secretary of the Indira Nagar Welfare PHOTOGRAPHS

K GANESH/MINT

Association, which encompasses 400 homes in an upscale locality. I decided to check about salesmen who come calling with the security guard in my own apartment complex and he appeared surprised at my query. “I wouldn’t let salesmen in, ma’am. If you need a particular product, let me know, and I’ll send only the concerned salesmen up to your apartment, at the timings specified by you.” S. Saroja, an activist with the Consumer and Civic Action Group, Chennai, says, “It is this degree of control that makes door delivery services different from door-to-door marketing. There is no paradox there. It is like the difference between a Do Not Call and a Do Call registry.” There is also the perception that anything sold at the doorstep is cheaper in quality. “Only a product that won’t sell itself needs to be taken to the consumer’s doorstep,” says Usha Kannan, a Tupperware salesperson. “Tupperware is sold only through ‘marketing parties’ held at home by women,” she says proudly. “Those who attempt to sell it door-to-door only bring down its brand value.” However, Eureka Forbes, the flag bearer of door-to-door sales claims that its business model is still going strong, with the caveat that its salesmen focus on demonstrations rather than sales. Though it has started making its products available in retail outlets, its 400-odd salesmen in Chennai target the city’s floating population, suspicious of the quality of its drinking water. “Oh yeah, Eureka Forbes still hasn’t given up,” says K. Venkataramanan, a resident of Thiruvanmiyur, a suburb housing migrants employed in the city’s IT companies. The company gets in touch with secretaries of resident welfare associations directly and seeks their partnership in setting up “apartmental stores”—temporary camps within apartments—to sell its products. At other times, it simply gets references from them to enter the complex. niranjana@livemint.com

A new pitch: (clockwise from above) Temporary clothes stalls along Chennai’s Mint Street; Eureka Forbes salesmen set off for the day; Mint Street at night; and S. Kutti ready to leave for the Kannagi Nagar resettlement colony after a round of shopping.

DHARSHANA R/MINT