Lounge for 07 Jan 2012

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

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Saturday, January 7, 2012

Vol. 6 No. 1

LOUNGE THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE

How the integration of a confident, independent music scene and Bollywood is transforming film music >Pages 10­11

BUSINESS LOUNGE WITH MAHENDRA MOHAN GUPTA OF JAGRAN PRAKASHAN >Page 8

MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN

In the first of our series on Olympic medal prospects, we find out why Ronjan Sodhi is a hot contender for gold >Page 7

BEIJING BREW UP

A tourist trap, a businessman’s haven, a quiet cuppa—a modern Beijing teahouse has many avatars >Pages 12­13

WHAT ABOUT OUR FOOD SECURITY?

(from left) Vishal Dadlani, Monica Dogra and Nikhil D’Souza, three musicians who go back and forth between Bollywood and alternative music.

The Capital has India’s first dog­feeding sites. We meet the dog lovers at work >Page 18

THE GOOD LIFE

WATCHMAN

SHOBA NARAYAN

SIDIN VADUKUT

THE REVIVALIST BUSINESSMAN

MY WATCH WISH LIST FOR 2012

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lad in a khadi kurta-pyjama and Ferragamo flats, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, 37, is having lunch at the ITC Sonar, Kolkata. It is 4pm. We are at the coffee shop. He orders lal maas. I have already eaten. I order jhalmuri. “You can’t have muri (puffed rice) in a five-star hotel,” protests Mukherjee, who calls himself a “street food and puchka (panipuri) connoisseur”. He dismisses the famous man near the Park Hotel as selling “Marwadi puchka with snow peas and chana in it”. >Page 4

REPLY TO ALL

know what this sounds like. But this is not a list of watches I aspire to buy, or in any other way acquire, in 2012. That list would be much too long to print in just one or two editions of Lounge. But if there are any readers out there who do truly care for this watch columnist, I’d like one of those new Ocean collection diving watches from Harry Winston. No? Ok. In which case we will talk about the things I’d like to see the watch industry and some watch brands do in 2012. Not all the things on my wish list... >Page 4

AAKAR PATEL

DON’T MISS

in today’s edition of

THE TWIN STRAINS OF A SYMPHONY

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outh Indians are familiar with Raga Hamsadhwani, the call of the swan, through a song written by Muthuswamy Dikshitar, who died in 1835. Dikshitar composed a bhajan in it, which is one of Carnatic music’s standard songs. The lyric is Vatapi Ganapatim bhajeham (I bow to Ganesh from Vatapi/Badami). The raga was brought to Hindustani music by Aman Ali Khan, a singer of Mumbai’s Bhendi Bazaar gharana, who died in 1953. His lyric is “Laagi lagan... >Page 5

PHOTO ESSAY

BIRDING ON WHEELS

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

LOUNGE EDITOR

PRIYA RAMANI DEPUTY EDITORS

SEEMA CHOWDHRY SANJUKTA SHARMA MINT EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP TEAM

R. SUKUMAR (EDITOR)

NIRANJAN RAJADHYAKSHA (EXECUTIVE EDITOR)

ANIL PADMANABHAN TAMAL BANDYOPADHYAY NABEEL MOHIDEEN MANAS CHAKRAVARTY MONIKA HALAN SHUCHI BANSAL SIDIN VADUKUT JASBIR LADI SUNDEEP KHANNA ©2012 HT Media Ltd All Rights Reserved

SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

LOUNGE PREVIEW | YOKO ONO’S ‘OUR BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTERS’ CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES

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really interesting to folohn Lennon once low these exhibitions described her as “the with a much largerworld’s most famous scale project involving unknown artist: Everyan iconic conceptual body knows her name, artist like Yoko Ono. but nobody knows what We were able to get an she does.” introduction to her More known for her and, of course, seized marriage to Lennon, once the opportunity to music’s most hated invite her to Delhi,” woman, the experimental says Parul Vadehra, artist who took a fly for an director, VAG. The alter ego, an avant-garde works are for exhibition film-maker, a peace activonly, not for sale. ist: She’s Yoko Ono. And There will also be an she’s coming to India.

Activist artist: Ono with her famous installation Wish Tree. interactive musical Riding on the New Wave of the 1970s, the Japanese art- lenges women face today. The exhibi- performance, titled To India, with ist’s provocative practice has seldom tion will also recall seven or eight of Love, by Ono on 15 January. The event been understood. In the last decade, the artist’s legendary instruction- will be held at the Stein Auditorium in there has been a renewed interest in based works. My Mommy Is Beautiful, the India Habitat Centre (entry is her work. She was awarded the for instance, invites viewers to cover strictly by passes).

Vidya Shivadas, VAG’s in-house Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement the walls with messages and photofrom the Venice Biennale in 2009. In graphs of their mothers as a monu- curator, who has been working closely with Ono’s team for the exhibition’s 2001, Yes Yoko Ono, a retrospective of mental dedication to motherhood.

The exhibition flags off a three- ongoing installation, says the perforOno’s work, received the International Association of Art Critics USA Award month-long cultural programme mance is the highlight of the artist’s for Best Museum Show Originating in between Japan and India organized by visit, one that will contextualize the New York City, considered to be one The Japan Foundation, an indepen- artworks on exhibit. “Yoko Ono is a of the highest accolades in museology. dent body that facilitates cultural multidimensional artist and she has Indian audiences will get a taste of exchange. While VAG is the venue for performed wherever she has exhibited her art as the Vadehra Art Gallery the gallery exhibition, the foundation her work. Art, installations, music, (VAG) hosts Ono’s works for the first is co-hosting public art projects at interaction, it’s all a package really.”

A parallel exhibition titled The Seeds time in the country. Titled Our Beauti- venues such as the American Center, ful Daughters, it will include a gallery British Council and Devi Art Founda- will showcase some of Ono’s earlier exhibition, a performance by the artist tion. These include Ono’s public inter- works. Excerpts of her films, sound ventions such as the Wish Tree, where pieces, her collaborations with Lenand public art projects in Delhi.

Ono’s connection to the Fluxus participants are asked to write down non and other Fluxus artists, photomovement, a loose association of and tie their wishes to a tree’s graphs of performances and installaDada-inspired avant-garde artists that branches. A permanent installation of tions will present a composite picture developed in the early 1960s, is signifi- this exists in the Sculpture Garden of of Ono’s dynamic career. cant in the art world for inviting partic- The Museum of Modern Art in New Our Beautiful Daughters will be on ipation from the audience. Most of her York (since July 2010).

VAG was picked as the exhibition exhibit from 13 January-10 March at projects in India will depend wholly venue for its engagement with the best Vadehra Art Gallery, D-178, Okhla on such audience participation.

In keeping with her long-running of international artists over the last five Phase 1, New Delhi. The parallel interest in feminism and women’s years, during which period the gallery exhibition, The Seeds, will run at issues, Our Beautiful Daughters brings has broadened its programme to hold Vadehra Art Gallery, D-53, Defence into focus the issue of gender. Ono has exhibitions by international artists Colony, New Delhi. created a new installation that will put such as Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon the spotlight on some of the chal- and others. “We thought it would be Anindita Ghose

LOUNGE REVIEW | THE MIND CAFÉ, DELHI

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or many people, board games begin with Ludo and end with Monopoly. A visit to The Mind Café will change that perception. A standard café that serves pastas, pizzas and grills, and offers a huge range of board games—from the familiar to the offbeat and rare.

It is run by 33-year-old Umesh Hora, a former chartered accountant (CA) who took a franchise from the Singapore-based chain. There are at least 300 board games, all new, of which only around 20 are easily available in India.

The Mind Café is located in the heart of a residential area. Hora says college students and professionals below 25 are the most regular customers, but birthday parties are also becoming popular.

A long wall with shelves stocks the games. You will spot Scotland Yard, Pictionary and Jenga, but also European games such as The Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride and Dominion. Hora says, “On the day we opened, a group of college students walked in and asked if we had Dominion.” Their birthday parties have a host and a meal, and a selection of games. “Our game master divides them into teams. We run games for parents separately.”

The good stuff The Mind Café has a huge selection of games, all in excellent condition.

Game masters help you pick a game and teach you how to play it.

Hora says they will have 10 new games every month.

The not­so­good It has a large selection of food and non-alcoholic beverages which are standard café fare. The lasagna was good in taste and presentation, but the desserts were uninspired. There are only two game masters, so on a busy night, attention gets divided.

Talk plastic The café has various packages. Simply playing board games costs `99 per hour, for one person. Packages for food and games range from coffee and 2 hours of gaming for `199 to a steak meal with a beverage and 3 hours of gaming for `449.

For birthday parties, they charge `500 per person for food and 2 hours of play, plus `3,000 for a game master.

The Mind Café is at Cross Point, DLF City, Phase IV, Gurgaon.

Gopal Sathe PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

ON THE COVER: IMAGING: MANOJ MADHAVAN/MINT

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SHOBA NARAYAN THE GOOD LIFE

Sabyasachi, the revivalist businessman

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PHOTOGRAPHS

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RAJ K RAJ/HINDUSTAN TIMES

lad in a khadi kurta-pyjama and Ferragamo flats, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, 37, is having lunch at the ITC Sonar, Kolkata. It is 4pm. We are at the coffee shop. He orders lal maas. I have already eaten. I order jhalmuri.

“You can’t have muri (puffed rice) in a five-star hotel,” protests Mukherjee, who calls himself a “street food and puchka (panipuri) connoisseur”. He dismisses the famous man near the Park Hotel as selling “Marwadi puchka with snow peas and chana in it”. The best puchkas, he says, are in south Kolkata, near his parents’ home. But then, every Kolkatan I know says the best puchkas are near where they live.

Mukherjee is also a “biryani freak” and will only buy it at Rahmania or Nizam’s for their “sinfully greasy biryanis”. Fish, he says, has to be eaten at home. He tastes my jhalmuri and finds, to his surprise, that it is “fantastic”. I bite into gravel while chewing. Perhaps, the hotel buys the dish from the street and sells it to its patrons. We order two more portions.

Started with a `20,000 loan he took from his sister, Payal, in 2002, Sabyasachi, the label, has grown into a behemoth, employing over 600 craftspeople, 32 assistants, including one from Harvard, and revenue topping `52 crore in 2011. Part of the reason is Mukherjee’s talent, but a bigger reason is his shrewd business acumen that allows him to spin fantasies out of this City of Joy. “I am not India’s most talented or creative designer. But I am India’s most influential and powerful commercial designer,” he says matter-of-factly. There is context, of course. I asked him to rate himself.

The man doesn’t go around making such pronouncements. Yet his smugness is galling.

I stare at him from across the table.

With his long, wavy hair, Cheshire cat smile, and well-argued opinions, Mukherjee is hardly the angst-ridden, self-destructive designer along the lines of John Galliano or Alexander McQueen. Though perfectly courteous, he doesn’t pander or charm. He doesn’t seek to be liked and, frankly, is a bit too “sorted” for me. But after two days in his company, I end up with grudging

respect for his fashion sensibilities. I like his reverence for textiles, his love of artisanal craftsmanship, his pride in being Indian, and the fact that he knows his mind and isn’t afraid to speak it. He slams the Hermès sari, waxes eloquent about the Dabu mud-resist hand-block print techniques of Rajasthan, and bemoans the fact that Indians don’t embrace native handmade traditions with the fervour that they do foreign brands.

“In airports, sometimes I will see African women dressed in their traditional garb—turbans and robes. I know that they will be travelling first-class because they have that confidence,” he says.

“Why can’t we Indians take pride in our native clothes?”

When his sister got married, Mukherjee bought her saris from every region of India. His favourites are the weaves from Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Bengal, and the south. He has little use for socialites in their bandage dresses. “A Queenie Dhody will never influence fashion the way a Vidya Balan, Rani Mukerji or a Sonia Gandhi can,” he dismisses—somewhat self-servingly, given that these particular celebrities (the first two anyway) wear his saris.

His style icons are strong, self-confident people who don’t need his clothes to enhance their identity: Frida Kahlo, Mira Nair, Deepti Naval, Mallika Sarabhai, the dancer Shobana, Sonal Mansingh, Rekha, Gulzar, Gandhiji, Jawaharlal Nehru, and get this—Usha Uthup.

He describes Uthup attending one of his food festivals, wearing a Kanjeevaram sari and Adidas sneakers. “She had glued pieces from her old Kanjeevaram blouses on her sneakers. She could only wear sneakers these days, she said, and wanted them to match her saris. That, I thought, was true innovation,” says Mukherjee. “They looked like Manish Arora shoes but I don’t think she had heard of Manish. She is a true

WATCHMAN

SIDIN VADUKUT

MY WATCH WISH LIST FOR THE NEW YEAR

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know what this sounds like.

But this is not a list of watches I aspire to buy, or in any other way acquire, in 2012. That list would be much too long to print in just one or two editions of Lounge. But if there are any readers out there who do truly care for this watch columnist, I’d like one of those new Ocean collection diving watches from Harry Winston.

No? Ok. In which case we will talk about the things I’d like to see the watch industry and some watch brands do in 2012. Not all the things on my wish list have to do with specific watches per se. Some of them deal with broader issues. But I think seeing these things happen would please most watch enthusiasts. u In 2012, I hope HMT finds an acquirer who immediately

pumps in some fresh funds, hires some new people and relaunches it as something like the Fabindia of watches: easy to own, easy to buy and easy to understand. The brand, with a reinforced desi brand sensibility, can do wonders at home and abroad. But please don’t cover everything in gold and diamonds and target it at the “luxury segment”. That just won’t work. u This can also be the year that Titan impresses everyone with Favre-Leuba (FL). At €2 million (around `13.8 crore), the Swiss brand was snatched up for a steal. It may be unrealistic to expect new references and collections already in the new year. But at least one hopes for a glimpse of something new and exciting. Maybe a swanky booth at Baselworld in March and a curtain-raiser or two in India. FL already has some nice watches

in the catalogue. Now if only the Tatas can give it the Jaguar Land Rover treatment. If the brand does well in India, it will make everyone get past the lip service and actually take the Indian market seriously. u It seems unlikely with the policy paralysis that currently cripples the government, but it would be nice if someone listened to the Indian watch industry’s desperate pleas for a more lenient tax regime. Why drive buyers to Dubai, Singapore and London when they should be spending that money here at home? Also, better returns to retailers can finally see this segment of the retail sector get the quality of stores and shopping experience it deserves. u The billion-dollar evaluations may not be forthcoming, but surely there is potential for a proper Indian watch retail website that deals with highand mid-range watches. In much the same way that Sukhinder Singh runs The Whisky Exchange online store in London, there has to be room for an online watch store run not by venture capital fiends, but by people passionate about watches. Not only will such a site help educate new and old customers, it can also help with

Muses: (above) Sabyasachi with actors Rani Mukerji (left) and Vidya Balan; and a Sabyasachi lehenga ensemble with his signature border. original.” As for the socialites who throng his stores: “They are of no consequence to me. I don’t care if they buy my clothes. I don’t make it for them.”

You sound like a businessman, I accuse. He doesn’t budge. “I am first and foremost a businessman and only then a designer,” he says. Providing a livelihood for his artisans gives him satisfaction and keeps him up at night. When the right time comes, he says he will hire a designer to take over his role and do other things: Design hotels, public spaces; make movies; music; do art projects—all the things that his brutal schedule doesn’t allow him to do. “Sabya has been saying this for years,” says a fashion designer friend of mine.

Mostly, he works. He is at his workshop in Kolkata from 9am-10pm every day, except when he travels. He doesn’t like to socialize—he thinks compliments “mess up your mind”.

He relaxes by sleeping; likes to live in isolation, and ploughs all his money back into his business. He rents a one-bedroom apartment that has a large terrace and bathroom to indulge in the two things he likes to do: take long baths and gaze at the stars. “There is so much give and take in my business that I like to relax in isolation,” he says.

His family is intimately involved in the business. His beautiful sister,

that traditional bugaboo: price discovery. Given the sordid network of contacts, special discounts, and “I know someone who knows someone” that currently operates behind the scenes, a proper online watch retailer would be a breath of fresh air. This could be the year we get that site. u This should also be the year that brands focus on the watch buyers who stand on the threshold of mechanical movements. Currently most brands promote and talk about their top-end pieces. But what about the truly affordable range of automatics such as the Seiko 5s, or the entry-level models in the Titan Automatic range? 2012 can be the year brands take these pieces to customers and help fledgling collectors not just aspire, but also own automatics and begin to understand mechanicals. u Last year saw a handful of India-themed special editions by big brands

Payal, is the “bedrock”, says an assistant. His father, a chemical engineer, manages the finances, and his mother, an artist, has been asked to step aside and “take rest”.

Mukherjee confesses that he still keeps his splurges on shoes from his dad, and accountant. “I mean, dad knows that his son earns a lot of money but I don’t want him to think that we have changed as people. So I tell my sister that when we do some indulgent shopping, it’s nicer for him not to know. I don’t want him to think he has raised two monsters who have completely lost the plot.”

What about romance, I ask? Are you gay? “Yes,” he says in the tone that we say, “Duh,” this destiny’s child. He is not in a hurry to find a soulmate. That will happen, he says confidently.

We talk style. He likes Dries Van Noten, Stella McCartney, Marc Jacobs and Coco Chanel: all designers who’ve never pandered to fashion editors. He dismisses Sonam Kapoor as a model and clothes horse rather than a style icon, unlike, say, Zeenat Aman. “What today’s celebrities don’t realize is that you need to be consistent to be an icon. You cannot do sari one day, pants the next and a dress on the third. If you look at style icons, you’ll see that they all have a very consistent style—Audrey Hepburn in her Givenchys; Mrs Kennedy in her sheath dresses or even Madonna in her crucifix and underwear.”

I make a mental note to wear the same style of clothes consistently.

But what—sari or sheath dress?

That’s the question.

After two days in his company, I go from disdain to dislike to grudging respect to wanting to be liked. I want this man’s respect. Who is your ideal customer, I ask. “The woman who doesn’t need Sabyasachi the brand but understands Sabyasachi the product,” he replies.

“Secretly every designer in the world hankers for that kind of customer.”

These days, Shoba Narayan walks up to strangers everywhere and compliments them on their woven saris. Someday she will wear India’s weaves on a regular basis. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Shoba’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/shoba­narayan

like Hublot and Richard Mille.

Hopefully, we will see greater commitment to the Indian market this year than just yellow gold bezels and “his and her” boxes. What wouldn’t I do for an affordable world timer with half-hour time zones? u And finally, this will be the year I finally discover the holy grail: automatic diver, in-house

Time tested: (left) The luxury brand Favre­Leuba; and a Seiko5.

movement, leather strap, two-tone black and white 43mm dial with power reserve, rotating steel bezel, sapphire glass, see-through back, day date, super luminous, all for less than `30,000. Go on.

Laugh. Hope is eternal.

Write to Sidin at watchman@livemint.com

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AAKAR PATEL REPLY TO ALL

The twin strains of an Indian symphony

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MVKULKARNI23/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Mashhoor jin ke dam se hai duniya mein naam-e-Hind Hai Ram ke wajood pe Hindostan ko naaz Ahl-e-nazar samajhte hain us ko Imaam-e-Hind Ejaz is chiragh-e-hidayat ka hai Roshan tar az sahar hai zamane mein shaam-e-Hind, Talwaar ka dhani tha shujaat mein fard tha, Pakeezgi mein josh-e-Mohabbat mein fard tha

outh Indians are familiar with Raga Hamsadhwani, the call of the swan, through a song written by Muthuswamy Dikshitar, who died in 1835. Dikshitar composed a bhajan in it, which

is one of Carnatic music’s standard songs. The

lyric is Vatapi Ganapatim bhajeham (I bow to Ganesh from Vatapi/Badami).

The raga was brought to Hindustani music by Aman Ali Khan, a singer of Mumbai’s Bhendi Bazaar gharana, who died in 1953. His lyric is “Laagi lagan pati, sakhi sang (I feel joy with my lord and my friends)”.

Khan’s tune is the same as Dikshitar’s but the words are different.

All except for one. You see, Khan wants to salute Dikshitar and his song by adding the word “Ganpati” in exactly the same place as the bhajan.

He does this by phrasing the words “lagan pati” in such a way that it sounds like “Ganpati” is being sung.

I only found this out when I heard the Dikshitar version sung by M.S. Subbulakshmi. Every time I hear either song I think of Khan’s sentiment and the subtlety with which it was expressed. Such things always interest me.

The standard kirana gharana composition in Raga Shankara, in praise of Lord Shiva, is written by a Muslim. We know this because he put his name in the song: “Ad Mahadev, been bajayi payi Niyamat Khan Sadarang ke karam kar dikhayi (Show yourself, Shiva! Niyamat Khan plays his veena for you).”

Niyamat Khan “Sadarang”, who died in 1747, invented the modern form of Hindustani singing. He was a musician in the court of emperor Muhammad Shah. In school books where they write of Mughal decline, historians say Muhammad Shah (died 1748) was sneeringly called “Rangeela”—colourful—behind his back because he was fond of the good life.

This isn’t true. In fact Muhammad Shah loved the name and liked being called colourful. I know this because of a song Niyamat Khan composed in Raga Bhairav. The lyric is: “Baalamwa, mora sainyya sada rangeelay (Uff, my lover is always colourful/unfaithful).”

Alert readers will have picked out the device. In the same fashion as Aman Ali, Niyamat Khan fuses his

name, Sadarang, cleverly when he salutes his master with the words “sada rangeelay”.

Bhairav is also a name for Shiva, and it is his raudra (terrifying) form.

All of Hindustani’s male ragas are named for Shiva. In 1965, Pandit Jasraj composed a song in Bhairav. He felt the urge to do this on being told that no song in Bhairav could have its soft dha note on the opening beat, what is called the sam. He puzzled over this.

He later said: “I raised my hands skywards in an unconscious movement. I uttered ‘Allah’ unwittingly. Suddenly I felt as if all the missing pieces were falling in place.

Words began to come together of their own volition, and almost miraculously, the sam began to crystallize ever so solidly on the elusive komal dhaivat.”

The song he composed was “Mero Allah Meherbaan (My Allah is kind” (in case you’re wondering, the note is hit in the “baan” of meherbaan). In his composition Jasraj includes an eulogy to Ali, Hasan, Hussain and the Prophet Muhammad, again fusing Shiva with Islam.

Another thing that interests me is the nomenclature of our musicians.

Muslims are called Ustad and Hindus are called Pandit. Ustad is a Turkish word also used in Farsi, but strangely our Parsi singers are called not Ustad but Pandit. Perhaps this is because they’re closer to the Hindu culturally.

Perhaps they were just appropriated

by Hindus.

I know of two Parsi Hindustani singers, Pandit Firoz Dastur of Kirana and Pandit Jal Balaporia of Gwalior.

Dastur sang higher than any other singer in Hindustani music I can think of, and taught music at Bombay University. There was a third Parsi, a man who used neither Ustad nor Pandit and in fact did not even use his first name. This was V. Balsara, a very fine musician from Kolkata, who played Hindustani music on Western instruments, the piano and the violin, and also composed Hindustani symphonies. One of the first pieces of

LEARNING CURVE

GOURI DANGE

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT I am a parent and a “dorm mother” in a residential school. Some teachers and dorm staff have taken recourse, off and on, to pretty harsh forms of punishment, albeit after several warnings to the students concerned.

These range from slaps, mild caning, tearing of shoddy notebooks or projects, to verbal abuse in which the other children too may laugh at the person being punished.

Some parents have given tacit permission to use these forms of punishment for particularly delinquent behaviour. What is your opinion?

Why is it important not to inflict physically hurting, mentally cruel and socially humiliating punishment on children and youngsters? Many parents/teachers, driven up the wall by consistent misbehaviour, disobedience or

non-cooperation, find themselves using these forms of punishment. This is done in the hope of finally conveying the seriousness of the “crime” to the child and in modifying his/her behaviour to ensure it is never repeated.

It is both inhuman and illegal—today the legislation exists; children or their parents can easily take a school or an individual to court on incidences of slapping, name-calling, or isolation/confining a child or youngster. But there is another practical reason for eschewing physically and mentally severe threats and punishment/humiliation.

They simply do not work to improve behaviour. This is because the child then gets deeply caught up in the punishment and how he/she feels about it—anger, rage, sadness, fear, humiliation—and

My translation: The cup of truth sloshes over in India and All philosophies of the West submit to those of our land, Because of the soaring mind of the Indian seeker who Arcs his thoughts unrestrained through the sky This country has produced a thousand gods who Have made India famous through the world but The reality of Ram is the pride of our land and Those who can think know him as leader of India He is a miracle, this luminescent truth and brightens Our evening as the most incandescent of their dawns Ram was skilled in battle unmatched in valour He was purity itself and a lover like none other

Rhythm divine: Pt Jasraj composed Mero Allah Meherbaan in an inspired moment. music I heard as a child was his lovely composition in the morning raga, Bilawal. It is interesting to me because it is one of the very few ragas with an Islamic name. It is also the name—it means without equal—of Benazir Bhutto’s son and heir.

Pakistan’s national poet Muhammad Iqbal is known mainly for his stirring poetry of Muslim revival, and his lectures on Islam’s reconstruction. He isn’t taught in Indian schools, except for one song, Tarana-e-Hindi, which we know as Saare Jahan Se Achcha. But Iqbal was also like the composers we have seen,

spends absolutely no time dwelling on the nature of his/her original misbehaviour or misdemeanor. When we slap or cane children, isolate or incarcerate them, or humiliate them with our words, we effectively disconnect them from what they did, and instead, put them on a track where they can only think of what we did to them.

Their own bad behaviour pales in comparison with the adults’ choice of punishment, and there is a complete breakdown of communication.

Now we have on our hands a young person who is thinking of how to get back at you, and worse, is losing trust in the adult as a person who is there for his/her growth and development. Leave alone remorse, he/she begins to fantasize about ways to “beat the system” and do something damaging in return. The child is now disturbed, and there is little chance of him/her learning from the mistake or changing positively in any way.

While some adults may enjoy the power and control of being able to mete out such punishment and proclaim this is

and we should do more to own him.

He wrote poetry on Swami Ram Tirth of Gujranwala, and a stirring one on Guru Nanak.

And he wrote a poem called simply Ram. Its words are: Labrez hai sharaab-e-haqiqat se jaam-e-Hind Sab falsafey mein khitta-e-Maghrib ke raam-e-Hind Yeh Hindiyon ke fikr-e-falak ras ka hai asar Rafaat mein aasmaan se bhi ooncha hai baam-e-Hind Is des mein huey hain hazaron malak sarisht

the right way to deal with delinquent behaviour, most adults don’t enjoy it, but do opt for it at times.

However, we have to accept that it simply doesn’t work with the child, and makes other children fearful too. In a classroom situation, it also puts the child completely off a subject. Many adults talk about how they avoided a certain

Iqbal was third in the line of outstanding Muslim intellectuals of India, with Waliullah and Syed Ahmed before him and Maududi after. He was different from the other three in engaging with India’s mainstream.

This ownership of another’s religion, wanting to reach out and touch it, and handle it and reassure the other that you mean well. This is different from the constant, distant respect we observe in the West’s attitude to faith.

It is one of the great things about us, and it is what makes us Indian.

Aakar Patel is a director with Hill Road Media.

Send your feedback to replytoall@livemint.com www.livemint.com Read Aakar’s previous Lounge columns at www.livemint.com/aakar­patel

subject purely because of the harshness of the teacher. This is a great pity, and something we must work around.

No doubt we often quite rightly need to show disapproval, stop a child from doing wrong things, and get him/her to work with more enthusiasm on studies. But let us look for better solutions to our children’s behavioural

issues. Solutions that come from knowing what is effective as well as humane to children of this day and age, and not from how we were brought up 30 years ago!

Gouri Dange is the author of ABCs of Parenting.

Write to Gouri at learningcurve@livemint.com THINKSTOCK

Disconnect: Isolation, slapping or similar means of mental and physical humiliation only breed hurt and resentment.

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SOCIAL MEDIA

The new niche networker Instagram (12 million members as of November) Instagram, which launched in October 2010, has been a big success thanks to mobile phones. The problem with net­ works such as Flickr or Facebook pho­ tos used to be that after taking a pic­ ture, you had to go to your computer to make even the most basic fixes before you shared the image. Insta­ gram takes advantage of the iPhone to give users a tool which allows them to take photos, do some fun image editing, and then share it with all their Instagram followers, as well as on Facebook and Twit­ ter, and even email lists. The ease and convenience of Instagram gave it an immediate advantage over other networks. Like Twitter, it’s an open network—you don’t Instagram at re need to know someone to follow k: A pictu work: them, and they don’t need to of Flatiron y, follow you back. For many art­

by Farawa a user. ists, this is a great way to show their work to a large audience, and get immediate feedback.

Forget Google+, it’s time you looked for a Pinterest or SoundCloud account invite B Y G OPAL S ATHE gopal.s@livemint.com

···························· rasad Rao, 20, is a Delhi University student in the second year of his BA (Hons) programme. For his birthday in November, his father gifted him an iPhone 4. He used to be a regular Facebook user, logging in at least four or five times a day to keep up with his friends. The phone was best put to use by sharing pictures with his friends, on Facebook. But now, Rao mostly uses Instagram, a photosharing network for iPhone users.

He says: “Many of my friends also have iPhones and we’ve all got Instagram. Now, you can take pictures and then apply these really cool filters, so the pictures look really amazing. When one of my friends uploads a picture, it updates on my phone and I can see it right away.”

Facebook is expected to have a billion accounts in 2012, Twitter is estimated to be half that size, but it is unclear how many users are actually active. While the size of these networks means that they won’t disappear overnight, analysts say the growth of both is beginning to slow down.

New York-based social media analyst and independent media management consultant Jason Koetz says the reason a newcomer such as Instagram was able to add two million users in November (to reach 12 million users) is because it allows people to tell a story in a unique way. He says: “It allows

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people to tell stories visually, with simplicity and immediacy. It’s a mobile-first platform, unlike Facebook, and meets those expectations. It is an elegant solution that makes people feel like artists.”

Smaller, interest-focused networks, such as Pinterest, SoundCloud and Fab.com, are also gaining popularity. It’s not likely that any of these will replace the bigger networks, since they don’t offer the same scope as, say, Facebook, which in September announced that it had reached 800 million users. However, the new networks actually benefit from Facebook and Twitter, integrating their services into the existing networks.

Pradeep Chopra, CEO of Digital Vidya, a social media training company that works with firms to help them develop and implement their social strategies, explains: “A network like Facebook is enormously powerful because of the number of people connected to it. In comparison, a niche network such as Instagram can’t compare. But uploads to Instagram also share the feed on Facebook and Twitter, so you’re not just getting one set of connections, you’re getting three.

This rub-off effect adds a lot of value to networks such as Instagram or Pinterest.”

Yashraj Vakil, COO of online marketing agency Red Digital, says: “Reaching out to people on Facebook gets big numbers, but it’s cluttered. Facebook is everywhere, but new networks like Pinterest allow specialized messaging.”

The 2012 geek calendar It looks busy, and our watch list will help you plan

MOVIES The Amazing Spider­Man, 3 July Comic book nerds have a lot to be excited about because summer 2012 has Spider Man coming out with what promises to be an outstanding film. The ‘Spider­Man’ series is getting a reboot, so we can expect to see the original story again, but with some fresh twists. This film is also being shot in 3D, unlike some others such as ‘The Last Airbender’ or ‘Clash of the Titans’, so don’t worry about shoddy work.

B Y G OPAL S ATHE gopal.s@livemint.com

··························· here was a time when being a geek wasn’t the coolest thing, but looking at the events calendar for 2012, it’s evident there’s a lot happening that will appeal to fans. Movies, big events, exciting hardware and spectacular games fill the calendar. Here are our top picks:

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The Hobbit, 14 December A prequel to ‘The Lord of the Rings’ (‘LOTR’), the beloved children’s novel is getting the cinematic treatment from ‘LOTR’ director Peter Jackson, and the first teaser video is now available. If you haven’t been able to see it yet, breathe a sigh of relief and rest easy. The clip looks amaz­ ing, with the kind of detail ‘LOTR’ had.

The Dark Knight Rises, 20 July We’re six months from the third film in Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dark Knight’ series, but the expecta­ tions surrounding it are ridicu­ lously high. Set eight years after the second film, the movie brings together Catwoman and Bane.

Some fans aren’t satisfied with the casting of these two characters, but the first trailer released in December seems to have silenced the cynics, for now.

Fab.com (350,000 members as of June) Fab.com is a members­only net­ work for daily deals on fashion that began life as a gay network.

When the company changed direction in March, founder Jason Goldberg noted in his blog, “Gay rights progress over the past year had a positive impact on the gay community but a negative impact on the demand for our services.

“Design is a lifestyle, and it’s social,” he wrote. “People love sharing great designs!” Part of that is Fab’s Moodboard, a Pinter­ est­style image wall where mem­ bers can share pictures of designs they liked/created. And all this ties back to deals.

Pinterest (4.9 million members as of December) This category­based photo­sharing site allows users to share ideas easily and collaborate on projects through pictures. You “pin” photos in collages that anyone can comment on or re­pin to new collages to build ideabooks.

Launched quietly in March 2010, the site is so popular that there’s a waiting list to join.

The categorization and re­pin features make it easy to collate ideas into a digital scrapbook.

You could make, for example, a recipe book on your computer, and then access it on your phone in the kitchen, or put together design ideas to take when you go shopping for furni­ ture. Anyone can add to a pinboard, so collabo­ rating on a project is easy too.

SoundCloud (5 million members as of June) SoundCloud launched in October 2008, but remained small and vir­ tually unknown until 2011. Last year, the site announced that it had added four million users, reaching five million members.

SoundCloud, much like Instagram, has benefited from the growing ubiquity of smartphones—similar services had existed, but thanks to good timing, SoundCloud was there to take advantage of the huge number of mobile users who had in their hands a tool that could be used to record, edit and share audio. A key advantage SoundCloud offers over similar services is that users can embed clips on any website, making it easy to share audio. Users can comment not just on the clip as a whole, but even on specific parts of the audio—making it a useful tool for collaboration. Suppose you’re working on a song with friends in another part of the country—they can click on the exact moment in the song where they want to suggest a change, and leave a comment.

GAMES Diablo III, expected January­March Blizzard is called the Pixar of video game development, and with good reason.

The level of craftsmanship in their games is unmatched, and what little we’ve seen of ‘Diablo III’ so far is incredible. We can only hope that the game releases in the first quarter of 2012 as announced—Bliz­ zard has had many delays already.

Borderlands 2, 7 June ‘Borderlands’ was a sleeper hit that no one was expecting in 2009. The sequel, however, risks angering fans if they make too many changes, or not enough. Early pre­release videos and developer interviews have been very positive and it seems that the developers have been paying close attention to fan feedback.

EVENTS CES, 10­13 January The International Con­ sumer Electronics Show (CES) is the biggest showcase of gadgets.

Held every January in Las Vegas, it sets the tone for the rest of the year in all kinds of devices—LG’s already started showing a lot of televisions, while Nokia is keen to talk about Win­ dows phones and Microsoft is expected to give us a look at Windows 8 tablets.

E3, 5­7 June The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is the biggest event in gaming anywhere in the world. All the top games of the year are revealed for the first time at E3 in Las Vegas. Some of the big announcements that we’re expecting are the new Xbox game console, hands on with the Wii­U and maybe, just maybe, ‘Half­Life 3’.

The Last Guardian, date not known ‘The Last Guardian’ should have released in 2011 but got pushed owing to develop­ ment issues. It’s being made by the same team that created ‘Ico’ and ‘Shadow of the Colossus’, and ‘The Last Guardian’ seems to be living up to those impossible standards.

Despite the delays, hopes remain high for this game, which has been directed by Fumito Ueda, one of the greatest minds in the industry.

Kingdom of Amalur:Reckoning, 10 February Reckoning’ has a boring and generic title, but it’s being made by one of the most talented teams ever. The game is designed

by Ken Rolston, who was earlier lead designer with Bethseda for ‘The Elder Scrolls III’ and ‘The Elder Scrolls IV’. The art is by Todd McFarlane, the creator and artist for ‘Spawn’, and the story is penned by R.A. Salvatore, whose ‘Drizzt’ novels are essential read­ ing for all fantasy fans. ‘Reckon­ ing’ might be the only RPG with higher expectations attached to it than ‘Diablo III’.

Wii­U’s launch, expected June­December The Wii­U was announced last year and a final unit is expected for this year’s E3. The hardware is polarizing, expected to have slightly less raw power than the Xbox 360 and PS3, meaning it will be far behind other consoles in the next generation in terms of power. On the other hand, it’s got a unique controller that is a tablet computer when it’s not a gamepad, and it could be used in a num­ ber of unique ways, just as the DS was.

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Trigger­happy: Double­trap shooter Ronjan Sodhi at the Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range in Delhi.

PROFILE

Man with the golden gun Ronjan Sodhi has picked up the baton to make sure India’s shooting success at the Olympics continues

Every fortnight we will focus on an athlete or a discipline for an inside look at their efforts to secure an Olympic medal in London 2012.

LOUNGE SERIES B Y R UDRANEIL S ENGUPTA rudraneil.s@livemint.com

···························· lmost anyone in India interested in sports would remember the moment Rajyavardhan Rathore won a silver medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics. The wrap-around Oakley glasses, the fastidiously trimmed moustache, the targets exploding in plumes, and Rathore imperiously flicking the spent cartridges from the barrel.

India’s first individual silver at the Olympics was a turning point for shooting as a sport in the country.

But for Ronjan Sodhi, a silver at the 2012 Olympics won’t be enough.

The 32-year-old double-trap shooter has had such an astonishing two years on the circuit that anything less than the top prize runs the risk of being labelled a disappointment. “If he brings the silver, I will not be happy,” says Marcello Dradi, the Italian coach of Sodhi and the Indian shotgun shooting team, with a casual shrug

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of the shoulders. Sodhi does not have surprise on his side—a world record and gold at the International Shooting Sport Federation’s ISSF World Cup Lonato 2010, a gold at the 2010 World Cup Final, two silvers at the 2010 Commonwealth Games (individual and team), a gold at the 2010 Asian Games, a silver at the 2011 Beijing ISSF World Cup Shotgun, a bronze at the 2011 Maribor ISSF World Cup, a gold at the Al Ain 2011 World Cup, and the No. 1 ranking in the world (he is currently No. 2), has snatched that comfort away from him. “But really, there is no pressure on me whatsoever...”

Sodhi says, negotiating his car through messy traffic to get to the Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range in New Delhi.

Right now, though, he is under pressure. He is late for his afternoon training session, coach Dradi has already called him once from the range, telling him that he won’t watch Sodhi shoot if he is more than 15 minutes late. “No, no, no, coach,” Sodhi says over the phone, “Five minutes, just 5 minutes, and I’ll be there.”

At the range When he finally reaches the range, Dradi and he split hairs about how late he is, and then Sodhi quickly puts on his shooting jacket, assembles his gun, cracks open a couple of boxes of shells, stuffs them in his pockets and takes his station.

Sodhi’s face is inscrutable, but his eyes have a gleam as he calls for the targets: “PULL”. Two bright orange clay discs (called “birds” or “pigeons”) fly out of a trench in front of his station. Sodhi shoots twice in quick succession, and both targets splinter in the air. From the time he says “pull” (in a strange, otherworldly voice that is nothing like his normal timbre—it sounds like he is being choked), till the shooting of both targets, just 1 second has elapsed.

It’s a fast, aggressive, quick-reflex

and high adrenalin sport, and Sodhi acquires a swagger on the range that is otherwise absent from his benign and affable demeanour.

There is a graceful economy of movement as he loads and locks the gun, brings it up to his shoulder and leans forward to align his sight with the gun barrel. “PULL”—and again, the twin report, BOOM, BOOM—and the discs turn to dust.

“You have to be mentally strong, and do the same thing every time,” Sodhi says. “I don’t think about scores or results. You think only of your immediate goal. The margin between winning and losing is narrow—just one or two birds. So the idea is to just stay in there and never give up.” In international competitions, double-trap shooters have to shoot at 150 targets in the prelims, and 50 in the finals—in the 2010 ISSF World Cup, for example, Sodhi hit 50 out of 50 in the final, and 145 out of 150 in the preliminary round. “He is strong in his mind,” Dradi says. “You must have the right approach—not thinking just to hit the target, but also how to be calm about all the actions that bring you to pull the trigger. I am a perfectionist, and he is a perfectionist.”

But what happens to this mental conditioning when you start missing a few targets? “When you miss

At least my child recognizes me now. Earlier, I’d come home after a month or two and he’d ask my wife, ‘Who’s this man?’

get into the zone,” Sodhi says. “I do everything alone—I watch TV, listen to music, eat. I pamper myself by going for a nice walk, or a massage or to the spa, whatever makes me happy and relaxed.”

D R E A M C A T C H E R SThe shotgun star a target, you can’t just forget about it,” Sodhi says. “But you have to minimize the negative thoughts. I constantly talk to myself. Every so often, I go to a psychologist. Over the years I’ve developed certain techniques to keep my mind steady.” Dradi says it’s not easy to find negative aspects in Sodhi’s shooting technique, but part of his training focus will be on teaching Sodhi to control his aggression—“Sometimes he begins to be too fast, too much quickness in his action.” Sodhi agrees that’s his shooting style: “I go in with vengeance and I attack. If I don’t do well, I get damn upset with myself.

I want to fight with everyone, and Marcello’s had some tough times with me. Sometimes when I lose, I go hit the bar.”

The machismo of the shotgun shooter and his disarming frankness is a world apart from the shy reticence of rifle shooters like Abhinav Bindra. “Yes, the rifle and pistol guys stay away from us shotgun people,” Sodhi laughs. “We call them paper punchers” (rifle and pistol shooters shoot at paper targets). If Bindra is quiet and intense, Sodhi is the merry prankster. Some of his publishable infractions include pushing teammates into swimming pools, stealing and hiding their guns, repeatedly waking them up in the middle of the night, locking them in the loo…

But there is one ritual in shooting that Bindra and Sodhi share: They shut themselves up in the days leading up to and during a competition. “It’s very important to

Sodhi does not remember when he first picked up a gun because he was very young. His father, a farmer in Ferozepur in Punjab, was a keen shooter but could not take up the sport competitively because of the lack of infrastructure.

Instead, he would take Sodhi out to the family farm and the two would have fun shooting targets from a small clay-target machine. Sodhi then shifted to Delhi for his schooling, living in a hostel. Since Delhi had a shooting range, Sodhi’s father decided to enrol him there.

“I was in class X when my dad took me to Karni Singh—it was my first time on a range,” Sodhi says. “But I only decided to turn pro right after I got my MBA. That was a difficult choice to make because there was little money in the sport at that time, but my dad pushed me and supported me. I knew I had it in me, but I also knew that all my friends were getting jobs and earning. You don’t want to ask your parents for pocket money at that age.”

The gamble paid off, and in 2007, Sodhi won his first international medal, a bronze at the ISSF Santo Domingo World Cup. In 2008, he started hitting record scores, winning his first World Cup at Belgrade, and rapidly rose up the rankings. Sodhi was sure he would be on India’s shotgun team to the 2008 Olympics, but lost his place to Rathore. It was a demoralizing incident, but in retrospect, Sodhi believes the right thing happened.

“I knew six years ago that 2012 is going to be the Olympics I will be ready for,” Sodhi says. “In 2008 I was shooting well, but my mental frame was not of a person who can go and win at an Olympics. Today,

I have a lot of wins under my belt, I have the experience, and mentally, I’m much more ready.”

Sodhi’s talent was also spotted early by the Mittal Champions Trust, a private organisation that helps fund India’s Olympic hopefuls, when they signed him up in 2006. “I had not won a single medal when they picked me up,” he says. “In India, we are comfortable funding an athlete only when he starts winning. I understand that you become a champion and you get everything, but how do you get there with no funding?

That’s why it was so crucial that I had the Trust’s backing so early.”

Sodhi spends much of the year training at Dradi’s shooting range in Italy. “There’s just one range in Delhi, and if I want to shoot on a different range with different conditions and background, the nearest one is in Patiala,” Sodhi says.

“In Italy, where I train, there are eight-nine ranges within 50km.

Also, there are lots of competitions in Italy, so almost every weekend I get to compete.”

Sodhi also loves his pasta and is hopelessly hooked to Italian coffee. But there is a big trade-off. He gets little time to spend with wife Ruchika (whom he met in school in Delhi, and married in 2005) and their three-and-a-half-year-old son Suryaveer.

“At least my child recognizes me now,” he says. “But when he was a year old, I would come home after one or two months and he would ask my wife, ‘Who is this man?’ It’s difficult, but all sportspersons have to go through that.”

Sodhi believes India is good enough for at least three shooting medals at the 2012 Olympics.

“Everyone who is going now has won international medals. Of the nine who have already qualified, seven have won at international competitions and World Cups.”

Leading the pack, of course, is shotgun Sodhi.

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MAHENDRA MOHAN GUPTA

Completely on the record The CMD of Jagran Prakashan on the future of print media, why he could not handle TV news, and the importance of family values B Y S HUCHI B ANSAL shuchi.b@livemint.com

···························· ahendra Mohan Gupta, chairman and managing director (CMD) of the Jagran Prakashan group, is reticent on government affairs and the Lokpal Bill. His political correctness is ironical, given his status as a member of Parliament (MP) sent to the upper house by the Samajwadi Party. But the sprightly Kanpurbased septuagenarian, who heads a formidable newspaper company that prints India’s largest read Hindi daily, Dainik Jagran, offers a reason for restraint.

“I am a newspaper proprietor and my political viewpoint is not the view of the paper that is read by 16.4 million people. I make my point about the government and its performance on the floor of the House. You can quote me from what I say in the House,” he suggests.

Dressed in a kurta-pyjama with a Nehru jacket, Gupta, or MMG as he is known to colleagues, is sitting behind a large, neat desk in a small office in the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) building on New Delhi’s Rafi Marg. The INS building is a stone’s throw from Parliament and Gupta uses it for meetings when he’s in town for Parliament sessions. He takes his role as an MP seriously. “You can check my attendance. It will be 90%,” he says, smiling, as he makes a telephone call to order lemon tea and biscuits.

He may be tight-lipped on current affairs but Gupta is surprisingly open about the affairs of his media empire, which straddles print, radio and outdoor. Queries on events in the company, which is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, never go unanswered.

Like the one about what prompted the closure of the Delhi and Bangalore editions of Mid Day? “Losses,” he replies. “We could not have made money in Delhi for the next 10 years.” Mid Day, the Mumbai-based tabloid, was acquired by Jagran from Tariq Ansari of Mid-Day Multimedia in 2010. For any significant impact in the Capital, the paper required `100 crore, an investment the company didn’t think was justified.

The Mid Day brand turns in a `10 crore profit and the Delhi edition alone was losing `5 crore a year. It was decided to focus on growing circulation in Mumbai and Pune instead, he adds.

However, Jagran has pumped money into Inquilab, the Urdu paper that came as part of the deal with Mid-Day Multimedia, and launched 10 new editions in the past one year. The company is open to further organic and inorganic growth. When its discussions with a Punjabi paper were inconclusive, the company started Jagran in Punjabi as a greenfield project some months ago.

In July, private equity firm Blackstone Group invested `225 crore in Jagran Media Network Investment Pvt. Ltd, the holding company for Jagran Prakashan, for an estimated 12% stake. Gupta views the Blackstone investment as a “good reserve fund” that will be used to grow the print business.

The remaining 88% shares in Jagran Media Network are held by the giant Gupta family comprising six brothers and their children, many of whom are employed in the company. The joint family has

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stayed together thanks to Gupta’s wisdom in dealing with family as well as company issues after the death of his elder brother, “Narendra bhaisahab”, in 2002. Narendra Mohan Gupta was the former chairman of the group and a Bharatiya Janata Party MP with connections at the party’s top level. He was almost single-handedly responsible for policy reforms in print and permission for foreign investment in newspapers.

Gupta seems other-worldly in his belief that the next generation would have imbibed their family values. “Our children are much more professionally qualified and smarter than us. Hopefully, they will stick together.” He feels that a family that eats together stays together and ensures that members who live in Kanpur are back home at meal times.

Gupta joined his father’s company in 1954, although the paper began in Jhansi in 1942 to support the freedom struggle. It survived bans by the British regime and thrived after independence, moving to Kanpur in 1947. “Its move to Kanpur was unplanned.

From Jhansi we were initially moving our machines to Lucknow. We heard that The National Herald was launching a Hindi newspaper, Navjeevan, from Lucknow. We stopped the trucks in Kanpur and launched from the city,” says Gupta.

He is grateful to his father Puran Chandra Gupta, who had the vision to build a large bungalow complex in Kanpur with separate wings for each of his sons. “In most households, the fight begins with the kitchen. If separate kitchens are assigned, they are not even used and everybody flocks to the common kitchen. That is how we live in Kanpur,” he says. Even though some members of the family work in other cities, their places back home are secure. He ensures that members of the joint family congregate to celebrate festivals and other occasions at least twice a year. Three weeks ago, for instance, the clan collected at the Jim Corbett National Park to celebrate Gupta’s 50th wedding anniversary.

So far, the Jagran group has avoided the public family disputes that seem to have dogged other family-owned enterprises, such as Kasturi and Sons, publishers of The Hindu, and the Maheshwarisowned Amar Ujala. Gupta sees no case for conflict as decisions in the company are taken by a professional board. In any case, scope for family feuds was minimized by

bringing in foreign investment quite early and listing the company soon after. “If anybody wants to exit, he can offer the shares to the balance family or is free to sell them in the market,” he says.

Besides, Gupta ensures family members get to do assignments they like and are “qualified” to take up. He remains accessible to his senior staff on phone 24x7. “They don’t have to go through a secretary,” he adds.

One of his sisters-in-law is a features editor at the paper. Yet others are employed in the family’s nonmedia businesses including education (schools) and an export-oriented manufacturing unit. The sugar mill owned by the family was sold four years ago. “Sugar mill owners are arm-twisted by the state governments because of controls. It was difficult being in the newspaper business and owning a sugar mill,” confesses Gupta.

Although Jagran has been an early adopter of new technology and smart marketing, it is often accused of imitating Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd, the group promoting the market leader, The Times of India. “The reverse is true. They follow us. We were the first to launch multiple editions of Dainik Jagran. But such remarks do not disturb me. I am still a scholar and not ashamed of adopting something that may be good,” says Gupta.

The strides taken by the electronic and digital media in India have not shaken Gupta’s faith in print. Newspapers will survive in spite of the iPad, believes Gupta who is also the managing editor of Dainik Jagran. “TV news has made us relevant. People trust what they read in the morning,” he says, not masking his disappointment with news television.

Nearly eight years ago, the company launched Channel 7 in Hindi. Soon, it realized the channel was not only a money guzzler but fed on sensationalism for growth. It did not fit in with Jagran’s genre of muted journalism.

The channel found a buyer in Raghav Bahl, the promoter of the Network18 group, and was renamed IBN7. “A serious news channel is not economically viable,” says Gupta, adding that even MPs would behave themselves in the House if the proceedings were not telecast live.

As he politely excuses himself for another meeting, I have one last query, about the Audi Q7 parked inside the INS building complex. Is he into snazzy cars? “My son buys these for me. I have an Audi Q5 in Kanpur which I use for long drives.

I like driving on the highways. In the city (Kanpur), I am happy to drive in my i10,” says Gupta.

IN PARENTHESIS Mahendra Mohan Gupta likes to end his day with a game of cards; he says he deserves to de­stress after a hard day’s work. So the daily evening ‘addas’ at his plush Kanpur residence include a handful of close friends equally passionate about cards. The stakes are low, says a diffident Gupta, and the outstanding amounts are settled annually. The Jagran CMD plans his annual holidays with the same set of friends (wives included). Last year, they travelled to Leh and were mesmerized by the picture­postcard blue lake they had seen in the film ‘3 Idiots’. Not everybody could make it to the highest motorable road in the area. But Gupta did and sat down to enjoy a cup of coffee, soaking in the desert beauty at 18,000ft above sea level.

JAYACHANDRAN/MINT

Page­turner: A commerce graduate, Gupta joined his father’s company in 1954, when the newspaper used to sell 10,000 copies.

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Eat/Drink

LOUNGE SALADS

Shoots and leaves From a post­dinner digestive to stand­ alone meals and wraps, the humble greens have come a long way

B Y K ANU S OMANY ······················ alad, according to some historians, was originally eaten by the Romans and Egyptians at the end of their meal, when they passed around a bowl of torn lettuce leaves. It was eaten to aid digestion and induce sleep. In the last few decades, salad has become a full participant in meal-time activities, but it spent a long, hard time gaining that acceptance.

Today, it is important enough to be eaten at the beginning of the meal, or even as the main course.

Many cultures have a long history of the cultivation of greens for use in salads, since leafy greens are beneficial to health. But leaves were not eaten everywhere—the Greek salad was just diced cucumbers, tomatoes, some sliced onions, olives and feta cheese.

Tomatoes have an Aztec history but cucumbers actually originated in India. No composed salads seem to have been on a traditional Indian menu. Here, they were eaten just as is, with no dressing as such, as were radishes and carrots.

But things have come a long way.

Besides versions of kachumbers (salads) and raitas (yogurt-based accompaniments), there are more and more salads on our menus now. The innominate “salad patta” has metamorphosed into varieties of head and loose leaf lettuce, arugula, cress and other salad embel-

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lishments. Cherry tomatoes and thinskinned, bitter-free cucumbers are easily found at the local sabziwallah (vegetable vendor). Red and yellow peppers are not just exotic cookbook illustrations. There are plenty of ingredients available now, whether it is cold-pressed olive oil, red wine vinegar or balsamic reduction, or cheeses such as bocconcini or burrata, for those who look at lettuce with disdain.

Lettuce comes in many varieties. From fresh crunchy to smooth buttery, from apple green to ruby red, from large leaves to micro greens. Crisphead lettuces have sturdy leaves that stand up to thicker dressings and salad partners. They also withstand days of travel, so they are most common at greengrocers. But unfortunately, they are less flavourful and nutritious than their cousins.

Mix it up: Ancient Egyptians considered lettuce to be an aphrodisiac.

Butterheads have tender leaves with a buttery taste and lend themselves well to any salad. Loose leaf lettuces are the most nourishing, as they have maximum exposure to the sun. Romaines are key in any self-respecting Caesar salad.

Besides lettuce, other greens are used for salads to add another layer of flavour and texture. Radicchios and endives have an inherently bitter flavour and perfectly balance the sweetness of lettuces. Sorrels are tiny and tart, and although more famous for the cream of sorrel soup, are excellent as a salad green.

Peppery rocket, also known as arugula, can be cultivated or wild. Cultivated arugula has a fresh mild flavour. Wild arugula is a smaller, darker green, more deeply serrated,

Green revolution Make the most of winter’s bounty, try these easy­to­do salad recipes B Y A MRITA R OY amrita.r@livemint.com

···························· f you’re reeling from the excesses of the party season, you need to dig into the salad bowl. Sabyasachi Gorai, executive chef of the Delhi kitchens at the Olive Bar and Kitchen, Olive Beach and ai, shows how to combine greens for guiltfree mouthfuls.

I

Classical insalata caprese, reconstructed Serves 2 Ingredients For tomatoes new way 2-3 tomatoes, puréed (you need 35ml) 2.5g agar-agar 2g basil Salt to taste For the salad 50g bocconcini 8g rocket leaves 20g cherry tomato 1g sea salt 5ml extra virgin olive oil 1g black pepper, crushed 1g parsley

with a sharper flavour. Some weeds are also popular additions to salads and are foraged—for example, dandelion greens in France that spring up from volunteer seeds once the weather is right, just like our indigenous bathua in the plains and bichu booti in the hills.

Lettuce can make itself at home in more places than the salad bowl. With ingenious twists! The less adventurous can try it in sandwiches such as the BLT (bacon, lettuce, tomato) or the CLT (cheese, lettuce, tomato)—the perfect tiffin or snack to camouflage those greens for the tender feet that run at the site of leaves. Or try it on a focaccia with pesto, grilled peppers and zucchini.

It is also delicious if used barely cooked in light soups.

Try a cold cucumber and lettuce soup when the weather begins to warm up.

Try it in a wrap—roti with rajma and lettuce. Or as a fresh wrap for hot, spicy fillings. Try a romaine heart filled with guacamole. Let your imagination run wild.

In China and Japan, it is common to use crispy lettuce in a stir-fry. Or used as a cup, filled with finely diced, stir-fried veggies or scallops.

Lettuce can be used extensively in our daily menu, and we are only limited by our imagination.

Try it with a dip. Lettuce with hummus. Lettuce with raita.

Springboard from a palak ka raita (spinach yogurt), and serve crisp wedges with a mint and yogurt sauce. Or serve with paneer (cottage cheese) tikka.

Kanu Somany is a Delhi-based foodie, naturalist and organic farmer. She runs a mail order service for salad greens and can be contacted at kanu_somany@yahoo.com Write to lounge@livemint.com Makeover: A classical insalata caprese reconstructed.

3ml balsamic vinegar and red wine reduction

Salad greens are a storehouse of antioxidants and phyto­nutrients. Get familiar with the most nutritious of them B Y A MRITA R OY amrita.r@livemint.com

··················································· LETTUCE Indian cuisines have been strangely resistant to this green, unlike the hearty embrace accorded to other vegetables that came with the Europeans, such as cabbage, tomato and potato. This despite the fact that India is the fifth largest producer of lettuce worldwide (according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s report for the calendar year 2007). It is one of the most nutritious vegetables around. While all varieties of lettuce contain antioxidants and vitamin K, the darker varieties are richer in vitamins A and C. The milky white fluid secreted by lettuce stems is known as lettuce opium (Lactucarium) because of its sedative and analgesic properties.

Romaine The least popular of the lettuce family, romaine lettuce is the most nutritious.

With its broad sturdy leaves and a long thick rib, it has a crunchy texture. The dark green leaves have a slightly bitter note. It is also most resistant to heat, and is a rich source of folate—the form of folic acid as it naturally appears in the human body—besides vitamins A and C. WHFood.org, a site run by the George Matel­ jan Foundation for the World’s Healthiest Foods, lists it as one of the healthiest foods.

According to the site, a cup of romaine contains 1,456 IU (international units) of vitamin A, 13mg of vitamin C, 20mg calcium and 65mg potassium.

Loose leaf This variety has broad, curly leaves which may be red (lollo rosso), red­tipped (oak leaf) or green. The leaves are tender but with a crunchy rib. Its mild flavour makes it a popular choice in salads. According to the WHFoods.org site, a cup of loose leaf contains 1,064 IU of vitamin A, 10mg of vitamin C, 38mg calcium and 148mg potassium.

Butterhead lettuce This is a type of head lettuce, or lettuce that forms a “head” like that of cabbage. The dark, broad, tender leaves have a buttery texture and sweet taste. Like romaine, butterhead lettuce too is a good source of folate. According to WHFoods.org, a cup of butterhead (Bibb and Boston varieties) contains 534 IU of vitamin A, 4mg of vitamin C, 18mg calcium and 141mg potassium.

Crisphead lettuce (aka iceberg lettuce) It is also a type of head lettuce.

One of the most popular, its crisp texture and mild taste mean it pairs well with a large variety of more flavourful salad components. A source of vitamins A and C, calcium and potassium, it is, however, among the least nutritional. According to WHFoods.org, a cup of iceberg contains 182 IU of vitamin A, 2mg of vitamin C, 10mg calcium and 87mg potassium.

For the basil pesto 10g basil leaves 5g pine nuts 5g Parmesan, grated 2 cloves garlic 15ml olive oil Salt and pepper to taste Method To make tomatoes new way, blend two-three fresh tomatoes with basil and seasoning, and strain to get a smooth purée.

Heat the purée and add agaragar. Whisk well and let it cool.

When the mixture is at room temperature, shape it into balls to resemble tomatoes. Put the set jelly into a marinade of extra virgin olive oil and basil.

For the basil pesto, put all the ingredients in a blender. Add enough olive oil to cover it and blend to a grainy consistency.

To serve the reconstructed insalata caprese, take a chilled plate and arrange the bocconcini and the marinated tomato jelly in the middle. Place the rocket leaves around them. Arrange halves of fresh cherry tomatoes on the sides. Drizzle extra virgin olive oil and balsamic reduction on the plate and sprinkle sea salt.

Stick the parsley on to the tomato-shaped jelly. Lastly, sprinkle freshly milled black pepper, and serve chilled.

Know your lettuce

Rocket, pear, feta and macadamia nut Serves 2 Ingredients 50g crisphead 60g arugula (rocket) 15g roasted macadamia nuts 5 cubes feta cheese 5 kalamata olives L red pear 30g sun-dried tomato dressing 3ml lemon juice For the tomato dressing 15ml olive oil 30g sun-dried tomatoes, chopped 7g garlic, chopped 2g basil 5g honey 10ml red wine vinegar

2g crushed pepper 2g salt 1 bay leaf 5g dijon mustard Method In a bowl, whisk all the ingredients for the dressing until you get an emulsion. Once done, check for seasoning and chill. After 20 minutes, remove from the refrigerator and whisk again.

For the salad, chop and toss the crisphead and arugula with all the other ingredients. Add the dressing, toss and serve.

Arugula (aka rocket, roquette, rucola, rugola) After lettuce, this is probably the most popular salad green. This native of the Mediterranean region is extensively used in a wide variety of cuisines—from Morocco and Portugal to Lebanon and Turkey. During the Roman era, it enjoyed the status of an aphrodisiac. Its peppery taste makes it a must for many salads as a counterpoint to the sweetness or mildness of the other ingredients.

According to WHFoods.org, a cup of arugula contains 480 IU of vitamin A, 3mg of vitamin C, 32mg calcium and 74mg potassium.

www.livemint.com For more salad recipes, visit www.livemint.com/salads

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MUSIC

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ARIJIT DATTA

How the integration of a confident, independent music scene and Bollywood is transforming film music B Y S UPRIYA N AIR supriya.n@livemint.com

···························· t is a balmy November evening.

At NH7 Weekender in Pune, the dancing crowd screams up at Vishal Dadlani, lead singer of Pentagram, killing it on their Mumbai-dance-rock number Mental Zero from their last album Bloodywood. The barricades shudder; even the concert photographers are starting to whip their hair back and forth. Poker-faced security personnel stand, arms crossed and motionless, beneath the stage.

Across a bouncer’s massive chest, a cotton T-shirt stretches with the legend “Bollywood Sucks”.

It is a familiar refrain. So is the idea that Bollywood music sucks more than Bollywood itself. Classical musicians, folk artistes, counterculture practitioners—so many kinds of musicians despise the Hindi film industry that they could be their own Cole Porter song.

Hindi film music is fake. It’s made to please the lowest common denominator. It ruins every form of music it co-opts. It doesn’t allow any other kind of industry to grow.

The loudest growl, the most prolonged howl of rage against this unthinking colossus, used to come from the “scene”. Ten years ago, if you were on “the scene”, you were someone who played at Independence Rock. Today, you are part of a loose agglomeration of musicians—not quite an industry—who have slowly created a niche for themselves, in India’s new clubs and performance arenas, in the steadily increasing

I

number of music festivals around the country, and on a small number of stages around the world.

You might be on the acclaimed music show The Dewarists.

And often, these days, you might be playing on a Bollywood soundtrack.

In the last year or two, an artiste like Monica Dogra has balanced a lead performance in the film Dhobi Ghat with her work as part of experimental funk-rock duo Shaa’ir + Func. Singer-songwriter Nikhil D’Souza, with a voice that invites delirious comparisons to Jeff Buckley, has sung on soundtracks for Amit Trivedi. Ram Sampath, the former frontman of indie rock band Colourblind, composed the now-cult soundtrack of Delhi Belly. The Raghu Dixit Project recently made music for Y-Films’ Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge. Dadlani, the man protected by the “Bollywood Sucks” bouncer, also writes music for movies like Dostana and Bachna Ae Haseeno with Shekhar Ravjiani.

But he is definitely a scene man.

“Pentagram is who I am,” he told Rolling Stone India in an interview published last April. “Everything else is just what I do.”

What changed? When did the creativity-killing monolith of Hindi cinema and the freeminded, unabashedly weird kids who were only ever going to make music for themselves put down their gauntlets and shake hands?

That may be a question for the ages. Decades ago, it was the jazz men who floated out of the clubs into recording studios, to make up

the orchestras which defined the Hindi film sound in the 1950s and 1960s. Thirty years ago, even Pandits Shiv Kumar Sharma and Hariprasad Chaurasia did not resist. Maybe the juggernaut does get everyone eventually.

Or maybe things have changed.

Bollywood certainly has. Bolder production houses and younger directors want talented musicians for their indie sound, not in spite of it. During the internal migration from the independent scene to Bollywood, these artistes have retained their sound and sensibility: Someone like Dadlani has even managed to keep his two kinds of music distinct.

Over a decade ago, Sidd Coutto was the incandescent drummer at only the second rock concert to which this reporter had ever been.

Today, he makes solo albums from his iPad and can get audiences for his band, Tough on Tobacco, going from zero to 60 in the space of one song. He also created the background score for Raat Gayi Baat Gayi, appeared in the movie Soundtrack (which he says he signed because he got to smash a guitar into an amplifier), and sang, most recently, Right by Your Side on the hugely popular Ra.One soundtrack, composed by VishalShekhar. “Yeah, I went through that ‘Bollywood sucks’ phase,” he says. “I was young and I was wrong. You start out all angsty and rebellious, and all of that just gets knocked down by reality.”

He sounds pragmatic, but not apologetic. “When I got into making music full-time,” he says, “I knew I was going to have to do Bollywood some day. I do my indie stuff for no one but myself: I sit down and write songs every day.

But I take everything I do as an artiste seriously. When someone pays me for my talent today, I make sure my stamp is on it. I enjoy that process too.”

“Rock is huge in the country today,” he points out. “I mean not

just for indie listeners but for the mainstream. When they want you to write something that will be a hit for the 16-year-old to 30-year-old crowd, something ‘youth-y’ and real and cool, they want rock.”

D’Souza is halfway through recording his solo album at Yash Raj Studios. He is one of the voices on 2010’s Sham, from Aisha, as well as Main Jiyoonga on Break Ke Baad (a Vishal-Shekhar soundtrack, on which Dadlani and Dogra sang the FM staple Dooriyan Hai Zaroori), Khwab from Kucch Luv Jaisaa (2011), and a track on Players, released this Friday. Music directors first started to pay attention to him when they heard his voice on an Airtel ad.

Now, he juggles his indie career and his film jobs with seeming ease.

“The film song recording process was a different experience from what I was used to,” he remembers.

“You’re singing someone else’s composition and you’re trying to get the ‘feel’ right, (to) get used to a different style, lyrics” (D’Souza writes his own songs in English). “I never listened to much Bollywood music before. Now I have a lot more respect for it; there are some music directors who are really talented and who are constantly trying to push the envelope.”

“The truth is, there are directors now who are making different kinds of films, which need different kinds of music,” says Bobin James, executive editor of Rolling Stone India. “The music directors are younger, so they want to record with younger musicians. Look at the way producers like Excel Entertainment got Midival Punditz to make the background

score for Karthik Calling Karthik.”

Midival Punditz also worked with Karsh Kale on the music of Soundtrack, an album which, among other things, demonstrated the range of vocal talent on the indie scene: It contained everything from the rock-god voices of Anushka Manchanda and Suraj Jagan to the pop-qawwal Kailash Kher and young Assamese star Papon.

Perhaps even more unusual was the eclectic soundtrack of Shaitan (2011), which featured work by several different composers. Director Bejoy Nambiar even included a reworking of Mumbai death metal band Bhayanak Maut’s Habemus Papam (called Unleashed on the album), because he knew it fit well with the film’s soundscape. “We wanted a variety of sounds to suit the film,” Nambiar says. “The clarity about that started at script level.

Each composer had a different sensibility—it was great to work with the manic energy of Bhayanak Maut as well as with Ranjit Barot, who has the kind of experience I’m in awe of.” For a small film, he says, record company T-Series paid them “a decent amount”, and the royalties on downloads and ringtones made the album a resounding success. “(Actor-producer) Aamir Khan protects the entire team from commercial pressure,” Sampath says of his own experience of working for Delhi Belly. “He creates an environment where the best idea wins. I was one of the chief recipients of that luxury.” Sampath’s work has spanned several forms, from advertising to indie to non-film pop. His view of the compromise points to a gap which still exists.

“The scene has really matured today, and it’s a crying shame that we don’t have the infrastructure for non-film artistes.”

One of mainstream cinema’s big releases this season, Karan Johar’s upcoming production Ek Main aur Ekk Tu, has an Amit Trivedi soundtrack which features singers such as Manchanda, singer-songwriter Shefali Alvares and Ash King, the British Asian performer first heard in Bollywood in 2009’s Delhi-6, singing the lovely Dil Gira Dafatan.

Dadlani, who as part of VishalShekhar works firmly in Hindi cinema’s mainstream, says that in recent years, film-makers like Johar, with whom he is working on the forthcoming Student of the Year, have themselves been open to trying out new voices and sounds on their music.

“For what it’s worth, no one has ever told us what to do,” Dadlani says. “People in the industry are

supportive of anything that works.”

“For a long time they were two different worlds,” he says of the scene and the industry. “Even though people like R.D. Burman were always experimenting; someone like Bappi Lahiri brought in a lot of voices from popular music; you had Kalyanji-Anandji, Laxmikant-Pyarelal. But the big songs were sung by big singers. There’s less of an emphasis now on the name, and more recognition of what something fresh and new brings to your film. There is such outstanding talent, so much that is unique, on the indie circuit.”

Lalitha Suhasini, deputy editor of Time Out Mumbai, adds some balance to this notion. “It’s not going to be the same if you’re recording with someone like Annu Malik,” she says. But the experimenters aren’t all on the margins: As James points out, people like Ehsaan (Noorani, guitarist and a part of composer group ShankarEhsaan-Loy) may not spend too much time playing live these days, but they know how to work with other artistes like themselves.

“The last film album that moved more than two million units came out seven years ago,” says Ashish Patil, head of Y-Films, the youth division of Yash Raj Films. “That was Veer-Zaara. The parameters to measure success now are things like airplays, licensing, digital downloads to an extent.” Raghu Dixit’s soundtrack for this year’s Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge shot into the top five downloads on the Nokia Ovi store right alongside Bodyguard, Patil points out, and in four weeks of pre-release publicity, got about 6,000 spins on national music channels, turning a profit of `25-30 lakh.

“Music, is a form of branding too,” Patil says. “People quoting Dheaon Dheaon, or Har Saans Mein becoming a Most Shared song (on video sites)—that’s a way to sell tickets, if not CDs. That’s your ultimate goal.”

Put another way, the scene is now seeing the results of having put a foot in the door a decade ago.

Before Sampath and Trivedi, popular music in the 2000s was transformed by the East-West fusion, high standards of production and strong singing voices on the soundtracks of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and Vishal-Shekhar. In their turn, these composers followed in the footsteps of another rocker. Change came to two different film industries because of the former keyboardist of the Chennai collective Roots, A.R. Rahman. With thumping bass lines, coolly digital sounds RITESH UTTAMCHANDANI/HINDUSTAN TIMES

We did start the fire: (clockwise from left) Sidd Coutto, Ankur Tewari and Nikhil D’Souza; (top) Shaa’ir + Func; (right, above) Anushka Manchanda; and Vishal Dadlani and Imogen Heap on The Dewarists.

KUNAL KAKODKAR

Movietone: Smaller films like Shaitan (top) and Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge forged innovative sounds. that we have only been able to fully appreciate with the coming of the iPod, and unusual singing voices, Rahman and the directors with whom he worked didn’t just advance film music technologically. They fundamentally changed our expectations of what that music could be. Twenty years later, it seems appropriate that Rahman’s biggest project in 2011 was called Rockstar.

“If not for A.R., change would have come to Bollywood,” James says. “The world is connected today in a way that it never used to be: You can just log on to listen to a little Serbian band recording somewhere, and collaborate with people with such ease. That fluidity becomes a part of everything in the industry. Everything he brought—the samples, the sound—I think there might have been others who did it if Rahman hadn’t come along. It might have taken another 10 years.”

“I think the scene has changed too,” Suhasini says. “It’s not just the people who listen to alternative indie who’ve dropped the ‘Bollywood sucks’ attitude. A lot of the metalheads have too. They recognize that there are genuinely good film composers working now. Indie musicians who go to Bollywood get free rein, because people want them.”

While Dadlani is someone who can raise hell with Pentagram as well as go on tour with Ravjiani on transatlantic Bollywood galas like The Unforgettable Tour of North America, one thing artistes like D’Souza won’t do is “the Bollywood tour”. “If you’re trying to establish yourself as an independent musician, then you can’t,” he points out. “That makes you a ‘Bollywood musician’.”

Some aspects of live rock have chilled out, but the accusation that a musician is a “sell-out” still has the power to hurt. While mosh-pit aggression is half ironic, half genuinely angry, audiences might be recognizing that the lines

are blurring too. When Delhi band Menwhopause close their show with the hilarious, guitars-and-rap Katil Sardar, it could just as easily be a smart set piece out of a film like Delhi Belly.

“Pentagram has mellowed, Vishal’s mellowed, the crowd’s mellowed,” agrees Dharmesh Gandhi, a veteran Pentagram fan.

“But you know, there’ll always be one guy in the crowd who wants to stir things up.” Last year, he remembers, a drunk fan started chanting “Why don’t you play Sheila ki Jawani?”—Vishal-Shekhar’s big hit from Tees Maar Khan—during a Penta gig. Dadlani called him up, then kicked his butt—“literally”, Gandhi emphasizes—and sent him back down.

Then there are musicians like Ankur Tewari. The Roorkee-born musician, writer and film-maker came to Mumbai about eight years ago. In an editorial for CNNgo.com in 2010, Tewari wrote: “Ten years ago, (I) dreamt impossible dreams.

One was to compile a record of my songs…The nation was grooving to Gulshan Kumar’s Jhankar Beats and sequencer software had given birth to a whole generation of ‘convenient musicians’. Around that time I chose a path that would turn out to be the longer, more inconvenient route.”

Over 10 years, Tewari made his album Jannat, fronted The Ghalat Family band, and directed films like 2004’s Let’s Enjoy, for which he also composed and sang the hit Sabse Peeche Hum Khade. His composer credits include 2009’s offbeat Raat Gayi Baat Gayi, for which Coutto did music production.

“I don’t think about whether I’m writing for a film or a gig or a possible album,” Tewari says, of his “Hindi-Indie” music. “When I create a song, I can’t think about its audience. That is not my job.”

Tewari’s journey is reminiscent of what Lesle Lewis said to Lounge in a conversation about this year’s music show, Coke Stu-

dio@MTV, which brought artistes from a variety of scenes together to recreate their hit songs. “People keep asking what’s next, what’s after Indipop,” he said. “Here you go, here’s something after Indipop.”

Perhaps one of the reasons the conversation between Bollywood and the indie scene today is so refreshing is because few people remember 1990s’ Indipop fondly. “It wasn’t real,” said Vishwesh Krishnamoorthy, the lead singer of Scribe (an experimental metal band who cheekily describe themselves as ‘Bollywoodcore’) and one of the directors of The Dewarists, when speaking to Lounge last year.

“Everything about Indipop was produced and packaged. Now, for the first time, you have people who are really creating something on their own terms.”

In a situation like this, it can be hard to let the old grudges rule. “Indie musicians always feel that their music is sidelined for Bollywood,” D’Souza says.

“But the truth is 99% of our audience perceives Bollywood as ‘the’ source for music. That’s not going to change anytime soon.

Perhaps the best way for bands is to use the incredible reach of Bollywood to get their music to the masses.”

It’s pop. It’s rock. But it’s your own, say the musicians, whether you’re making it on the scene, in the scene, or in a recording studio where a new breed of composers is standing between you and the “10 people behind the glass who are paying for the film”, in D’Souza’s words.

Tewari’s instinctive approach is the fittest explanation for the Bollywoodcore vibe. “If it sounds good to your ear, it sounds good to your ear,” he says. “How are you going to deny it?”

SEE RELATED STORY Coming home to the music >Page 17

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MUSIC

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ARIJIT DATTA

How the integration of a confident, independent music scene and Bollywood is transforming film music B Y S UPRIYA N AIR supriya.n@livemint.com

···························· t is a balmy November evening.

At NH7 Weekender in Pune, the dancing crowd screams up at Vishal Dadlani, lead singer of Pentagram, killing it on their Mumbai-dance-rock number Mental Zero from their last album Bloodywood. The barricades shudder; even the concert photographers are starting to whip their hair back and forth. Poker-faced security personnel stand, arms crossed and motionless, beneath the stage.

Across a bouncer’s massive chest, a cotton T-shirt stretches with the legend “Bollywood Sucks”.

It is a familiar refrain. So is the idea that Bollywood music sucks more than Bollywood itself. Classical musicians, folk artistes, counterculture practitioners—so many kinds of musicians despise the Hindi film industry that they could be their own Cole Porter song.

Hindi film music is fake. It’s made to please the lowest common denominator. It ruins every form of music it co-opts. It doesn’t allow any other kind of industry to grow.

The loudest growl, the most prolonged howl of rage against this unthinking colossus, used to come from the “scene”. Ten years ago, if you were on “the scene”, you were someone who played at Independence Rock. Today, you are part of a loose agglomeration of musicians—not quite an industry—who have slowly created a niche for themselves, in India’s new clubs and performance arenas, in the steadily increasing

I

number of music festivals around the country, and on a small number of stages around the world.

You might be on the acclaimed music show The Dewarists.

And often, these days, you might be playing on a Bollywood soundtrack.

In the last year or two, an artiste like Monica Dogra has balanced a lead performance in the film Dhobi Ghat with her work as part of experimental funk-rock duo Shaa’ir + Func. Singer-songwriter Nikhil D’Souza, with a voice that invites delirious comparisons to Jeff Buckley, has sung on soundtracks for Amit Trivedi. Ram Sampath, the former frontman of indie rock band Colourblind, composed the now-cult soundtrack of Delhi Belly. The Raghu Dixit Project recently made music for Y-Films’ Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge. Dadlani, the man protected by the “Bollywood Sucks” bouncer, also writes music for movies like Dostana and Bachna Ae Haseeno with Shekhar Ravjiani.

But he is definitely a scene man.

“Pentagram is who I am,” he told Rolling Stone India in an interview published last April. “Everything else is just what I do.”

What changed? When did the creativity-killing monolith of Hindi cinema and the freeminded, unabashedly weird kids who were only ever going to make music for themselves put down their gauntlets and shake hands?

That may be a question for the ages. Decades ago, it was the jazz men who floated out of the clubs into recording studios, to make up

the orchestras which defined the Hindi film sound in the 1950s and 1960s. Thirty years ago, even Pandits Shiv Kumar Sharma and Hariprasad Chaurasia did not resist. Maybe the juggernaut does get everyone eventually.

Or maybe things have changed.

Bollywood certainly has. Bolder production houses and younger directors want talented musicians for their indie sound, not in spite of it. During the internal migration from the independent scene to Bollywood, these artistes have retained their sound and sensibility: Someone like Dadlani has even managed to keep his two kinds of music distinct.

Over a decade ago, Sidd Coutto was the incandescent drummer at only the second rock concert to which this reporter had ever been.

Today, he makes solo albums from his iPad and can get audiences for his band, Tough on Tobacco, going from zero to 60 in the space of one song. He also created the background score for Raat Gayi Baat Gayi, appeared in the movie Soundtrack (which he says he signed because he got to smash a guitar into an amplifier), and sang, most recently, Right by Your Side on the hugely popular Ra.One soundtrack, composed by VishalShekhar. “Yeah, I went through that ‘Bollywood sucks’ phase,” he says. “I was young and I was wrong. You start out all angsty and rebellious, and all of that just gets knocked down by reality.”

He sounds pragmatic, but not apologetic. “When I got into making music full-time,” he says, “I knew I was going to have to do Bollywood some day. I do my indie stuff for no one but myself: I sit down and write songs every day.

But I take everything I do as an artiste seriously. When someone pays me for my talent today, I make sure my stamp is on it. I enjoy that process too.”

“Rock is huge in the country today,” he points out. “I mean not

just for indie listeners but for the mainstream. When they want you to write something that will be a hit for the 16-year-old to 30-year-old crowd, something ‘youth-y’ and real and cool, they want rock.”

D’Souza is halfway through recording his solo album at Yash Raj Studios. He is one of the voices on 2010’s Sham, from Aisha, as well as Main Jiyoonga on Break Ke Baad (a Vishal-Shekhar soundtrack, on which Dadlani and Dogra sang the FM staple Dooriyan Hai Zaroori), Khwab from Kucch Luv Jaisaa (2011), and a track on Players, released this Friday. Music directors first started to pay attention to him when they heard his voice on an Airtel ad.

Now, he juggles his indie career and his film jobs with seeming ease.

“The film song recording process was a different experience from what I was used to,” he remembers.

“You’re singing someone else’s composition and you’re trying to get the ‘feel’ right, (to) get used to a different style, lyrics” (D’Souza writes his own songs in English). “I never listened to much Bollywood music before. Now I have a lot more respect for it; there are some music directors who are really talented and who are constantly trying to push the envelope.”

“The truth is, there are directors now who are making different kinds of films, which need different kinds of music,” says Bobin James, executive editor of Rolling Stone India. “The music directors are younger, so they want to record with younger musicians. Look at the way producers like Excel Entertainment got Midival Punditz to make the background

score for Karthik Calling Karthik.”

Midival Punditz also worked with Karsh Kale on the music of Soundtrack, an album which, among other things, demonstrated the range of vocal talent on the indie scene: It contained everything from the rock-god voices of Anushka Manchanda and Suraj Jagan to the pop-qawwal Kailash Kher and young Assamese star Papon.

Perhaps even more unusual was the eclectic soundtrack of Shaitan (2011), which featured work by several different composers. Director Bejoy Nambiar even included a reworking of Mumbai death metal band Bhayanak Maut’s Habemus Papam (called Unleashed on the album), because he knew it fit well with the film’s soundscape. “We wanted a variety of sounds to suit the film,” Nambiar says. “The clarity about that started at script level.

Each composer had a different sensibility—it was great to work with the manic energy of Bhayanak Maut as well as with Ranjit Barot, who has the kind of experience I’m in awe of.” For a small film, he says, record company T-Series paid them “a decent amount”, and the royalties on downloads and ringtones made the album a resounding success. “(Actor-producer) Aamir Khan protects the entire team from commercial pressure,” Sampath says of his own experience of working for Delhi Belly. “He creates an environment where the best idea wins. I was one of the chief recipients of that luxury.” Sampath’s work has spanned several forms, from advertising to indie to non-film pop. His view of the compromise points to a gap which still exists.

“The scene has really matured today, and it’s a crying shame that we don’t have the infrastructure for non-film artistes.”

One of mainstream cinema’s big releases this season, Karan Johar’s upcoming production Ek Main aur Ekk Tu, has an Amit Trivedi soundtrack which features singers such as Manchanda, singer-songwriter Shefali Alvares and Ash King, the British Asian performer first heard in Bollywood in 2009’s Delhi-6, singing the lovely Dil Gira Dafatan.

Dadlani, who as part of VishalShekhar works firmly in Hindi cinema’s mainstream, says that in recent years, film-makers like Johar, with whom he is working on the forthcoming Student of the Year, have themselves been open to trying out new voices and sounds on their music.

“For what it’s worth, no one has ever told us what to do,” Dadlani says. “People in the industry are

supportive of anything that works.”

“For a long time they were two different worlds,” he says of the scene and the industry. “Even though people like R.D. Burman were always experimenting; someone like Bappi Lahiri brought in a lot of voices from popular music; you had Kalyanji-Anandji, Laxmikant-Pyarelal. But the big songs were sung by big singers. There’s less of an emphasis now on the name, and more recognition of what something fresh and new brings to your film. There is such outstanding talent, so much that is unique, on the indie circuit.”

Lalitha Suhasini, deputy editor of Time Out Mumbai, adds some balance to this notion. “It’s not going to be the same if you’re recording with someone like Annu Malik,” she says. But the experimenters aren’t all on the margins: As James points out, people like Ehsaan (Noorani, guitarist and a part of composer group ShankarEhsaan-Loy) may not spend too much time playing live these days, but they know how to work with other artistes like themselves.

“The last film album that moved more than two million units came out seven years ago,” says Ashish Patil, head of Y-Films, the youth division of Yash Raj Films. “That was Veer-Zaara. The parameters to measure success now are things like airplays, licensing, digital downloads to an extent.” Raghu Dixit’s soundtrack for this year’s Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge shot into the top five downloads on the Nokia Ovi store right alongside Bodyguard, Patil points out, and in four weeks of pre-release publicity, got about 6,000 spins on national music channels, turning a profit of `25-30 lakh.

“Music, is a form of branding too,” Patil says. “People quoting Dheaon Dheaon, or Har Saans Mein becoming a Most Shared song (on video sites)—that’s a way to sell tickets, if not CDs. That’s your ultimate goal.”

Put another way, the scene is now seeing the results of having put a foot in the door a decade ago.

Before Sampath and Trivedi, popular music in the 2000s was transformed by the East-West fusion, high standards of production and strong singing voices on the soundtracks of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and Vishal-Shekhar. In their turn, these composers followed in the footsteps of another rocker. Change came to two different film industries because of the former keyboardist of the Chennai collective Roots, A.R. Rahman. With thumping bass lines, coolly digital sounds RITESH UTTAMCHANDANI/HINDUSTAN TIMES

We did start the fire: (clockwise from left) Sidd Coutto, Ankur Tewari and Nikhil D’Souza; (top) Shaa’ir + Func; (right, above) Anushka Manchanda; and Vishal Dadlani and Imogen Heap on The Dewarists.

KUNAL KAKODKAR

Movietone: Smaller films like Shaitan (top) and Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge forged innovative sounds. that we have only been able to fully appreciate with the coming of the iPod, and unusual singing voices, Rahman and the directors with whom he worked didn’t just advance film music technologically. They fundamentally changed our expectations of what that music could be. Twenty years later, it seems appropriate that Rahman’s biggest project in 2011 was called Rockstar.

“If not for A.R., change would have come to Bollywood,” James says. “The world is connected today in a way that it never used to be: You can just log on to listen to a little Serbian band recording somewhere, and collaborate with people with such ease. That fluidity becomes a part of everything in the industry. Everything he brought—the samples, the sound—I think there might have been others who did it if Rahman hadn’t come along. It might have taken another 10 years.”

“I think the scene has changed too,” Suhasini says. “It’s not just the people who listen to alternative indie who’ve dropped the ‘Bollywood sucks’ attitude. A lot of the metalheads have too. They recognize that there are genuinely good film composers working now. Indie musicians who go to Bollywood get free rein, because people want them.”

While Dadlani is someone who can raise hell with Pentagram as well as go on tour with Ravjiani on transatlantic Bollywood galas like The Unforgettable Tour of North America, one thing artistes like D’Souza won’t do is “the Bollywood tour”. “If you’re trying to establish yourself as an independent musician, then you can’t,” he points out. “That makes you a ‘Bollywood musician’.”

Some aspects of live rock have chilled out, but the accusation that a musician is a “sell-out” still has the power to hurt. While mosh-pit aggression is half ironic, half genuinely angry, audiences might be recognizing that the lines

are blurring too. When Delhi band Menwhopause close their show with the hilarious, guitars-and-rap Katil Sardar, it could just as easily be a smart set piece out of a film like Delhi Belly.

“Pentagram has mellowed, Vishal’s mellowed, the crowd’s mellowed,” agrees Dharmesh Gandhi, a veteran Pentagram fan.

“But you know, there’ll always be one guy in the crowd who wants to stir things up.” Last year, he remembers, a drunk fan started chanting “Why don’t you play Sheila ki Jawani?”—Vishal-Shekhar’s big hit from Tees Maar Khan—during a Penta gig. Dadlani called him up, then kicked his butt—“literally”, Gandhi emphasizes—and sent him back down.

Then there are musicians like Ankur Tewari. The Roorkee-born musician, writer and film-maker came to Mumbai about eight years ago. In an editorial for CNNgo.com in 2010, Tewari wrote: “Ten years ago, (I) dreamt impossible dreams.

One was to compile a record of my songs…The nation was grooving to Gulshan Kumar’s Jhankar Beats and sequencer software had given birth to a whole generation of ‘convenient musicians’. Around that time I chose a path that would turn out to be the longer, more inconvenient route.”

Over 10 years, Tewari made his album Jannat, fronted The Ghalat Family band, and directed films like 2004’s Let’s Enjoy, for which he also composed and sang the hit Sabse Peeche Hum Khade. His composer credits include 2009’s offbeat Raat Gayi Baat Gayi, for which Coutto did music production.

“I don’t think about whether I’m writing for a film or a gig or a possible album,” Tewari says, of his “Hindi-Indie” music. “When I create a song, I can’t think about its audience. That is not my job.”

Tewari’s journey is reminiscent of what Lesle Lewis said to Lounge in a conversation about this year’s music show, Coke Stu-

dio@MTV, which brought artistes from a variety of scenes together to recreate their hit songs. “People keep asking what’s next, what’s after Indipop,” he said. “Here you go, here’s something after Indipop.”

Perhaps one of the reasons the conversation between Bollywood and the indie scene today is so refreshing is because few people remember 1990s’ Indipop fondly. “It wasn’t real,” said Vishwesh Krishnamoorthy, the lead singer of Scribe (an experimental metal band who cheekily describe themselves as ‘Bollywoodcore’) and one of the directors of The Dewarists, when speaking to Lounge last year.

“Everything about Indipop was produced and packaged. Now, for the first time, you have people who are really creating something on their own terms.”

In a situation like this, it can be hard to let the old grudges rule. “Indie musicians always feel that their music is sidelined for Bollywood,” D’Souza says.

“But the truth is 99% of our audience perceives Bollywood as ‘the’ source for music. That’s not going to change anytime soon.

Perhaps the best way for bands is to use the incredible reach of Bollywood to get their music to the masses.”

It’s pop. It’s rock. But it’s your own, say the musicians, whether you’re making it on the scene, in the scene, or in a recording studio where a new breed of composers is standing between you and the “10 people behind the glass who are paying for the film”, in D’Souza’s words.

Tewari’s instinctive approach is the fittest explanation for the Bollywoodcore vibe. “If it sounds good to your ear, it sounds good to your ear,” he says. “How are you going to deny it?”

SEE RELATED STORY Coming home to the music >Page 17

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Travel

LOUNGE

CHINA

Beijing brew up

Reading the leaves: A waitress serves tea at the Lao She Teahouse in Bei­ jing; and (below) the ornate entrance to the teahouse.

CANCAN CHU/GETTY IMAGES

KAREN MA

TRIP PLANNER/BEIJING

A tourist trap, a businessman’s haven, a quiet cuppa—a modern Beijing teahouse has many avatars

Airport

For a Chinese visa, visit www.visaforchina.in.

Applicants from Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal can still apply at the Chinese consulate in Kolkata. Regular visas take four working days to process, but you can apply for an express service too.

From Delhi, there is an inexpensive direct flight to Beijing on Air China International. Air India and Cathay Pacific Airways also have one-stop services to the city. From Mumbai, Cathay Pacific has a one-stop service to Beijing. Current advance return fares to Beijing on full-service airlines are: Air China International Air India Cathay Pacific Airways

Delhi R32,568 R46,697 R41,805

Houhai Lake

National Museum of China Temple of Heaven

BEIJING

Mumbai R40,908

These are round-trip fares. They may change.

Dongcheng

CHINA

Beijing Shanghai Hong Kong

Eat

Stay

Do

Try the affordable yet atmospheric courtyard hotels tucked in the historical neighbourhoods of old Beijing. Some are built in the Yuan and Qing dynasty style, such as the Lu Song Yuan Hotel Beijing (double occupancy from $62, or around R3,100, a night, including breakfast; www.lusongyuanhotelbeijing.cn/) and the Bamboo Garden Hotel near the Houhai Lake area, famed to have been a Qing eunuch’s former residence (double occupancy from $90 a night; www.bamboogardenhotelbeijing.cn/).

When in Beijing, do try Peking Duck: The Beijing Dadong Roast Duck shop (Dongsi, 10th Alley, Dongcheng district; telephone: 8610-51690329) serves a banquet-style duck feast. Stop at Lao She Teahouse (Chongwen district; telephone: 8610-63036830/63021717) for tea and try the Tea House of Family Fu (inside Houhai Park, Xichangqu; telephone: 8610-66160725). Stay away from teahouses without a fixed-price menu.

In addition to the obvious (the Great Wall, Forbidden City, etc.), many ‘hutong’ neighbourhoods, such as Nanluoguxiang in Dongcheng district or the Houhai Lake area, offer peeks at relics, temples and residences of former kings and eunuchs. Among new attractions are Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium ($7 for adults, free for children and seniors) and the Water Cube ($4 for adults and $2 for children and seniors) at the Olympic Park. The Capital Museum, which has three separate museums, has no entry fee, but three-day advance booking is necessary via www.itourbeijing.com/beijing-tour/beijing-capital-museum.htm GRAPHIC

B Y K AREN M A ···························· hen people speak of China’s tea culture, they tend to point to the country’s southern cities in tea-producing provinces: Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Sichuan, Chongqing and Shanghai. Less well-known is the vibrant teahouse scene in the northern capital of Beijing, which is enjoying a revival boom. According to China.org.cn, an estimated 500-plus tea establishments grace the city long regarded as China’s cultural and intellectual centre, many dotting the bustling old Qianmen and Xuanwu districts, Ritan Park and the Houhai

W

Lake shopping streets.

Unlike the more casual style found in the south, where family and friends traditionally sip tea, play Mahjong and gossip at the open-air tea stalls, Beijing teahouses are all about refinement, ambience, fine tasting and exclusivity. Watch where you sit for a spot of tea though—some are morphing into expensive symbols of luxury that can set you back tens of thousands of rupees.

Then again, visiting a Beijing teahouse has rarely been about just tea, but a trip back in history and an expression of eloquence.

This includes sampling royal delicacies from China’s imperial past, enjoying operas and experiencing

crosstalk comedies in the style of lao (old) Beijing. Think of it as the difference between grabbing a roadside chai and going for English high tea in a posh London or Delhi hotel, all in the company of some lively performances.

There are two broad types of Beijing teahouses today: traditional teahouse theatres that offer colourful stage performances with food or snacks; and modern venues that provide tourists a quiet escape from the hubbub, and businessmen a place to negotiate deals. Lao She Teahouse, known for its Qing dynasty (1644-1911) decor, is a famous example of the first category.

From the moment you enter

the three-floor Lao She Teahouse, a short walk away from Tiananmen Square, you feel like you’re stepping back in time.

Waiters are dressed in Qing-style magua, a front-fastening jacket worn over a gown, their blue colour contrasting sharply with the omnipresent bright gold and red interior— both denote good fortune in China—extending from the palace lanterns and ceiling ornaments to the decorative walls and the ornate staircase leading you to the main tea hall on the third floor. In a few minutes, you almost feel like you’re a member of a Chinese imperial family of centuries past.

I arrive at the teahouse on a Friday afternoon, intentionally avoiding the teahouse’s evening show of Beijing opera, acrobatics and kung fu. While these are pop-

BY

AHMED RAZA KHAN/MINT

ular and hugely fun, I had heard that storytelling (pingshu) and crosstalk were more authentic traditional pastimes for Beijing teahouse patrons. Word has it that Qing imperial tea parties held inside the Forbidden City, and at the Temple of Confucius across town, featured lectures on Chinese classics and history.

While that sounds like a rather stiff party, over time classical lectures morphed into storytelling, understandably a more popular way of explaining history.

When he wasn’t drinking tea, the Qing Dynasty’s Qianlong emperor also enjoyed poetry, hosting tea dinners and banquets in which senior officials were called on to compose brilliant poems while sipping their brew.

After a while though, officials presumably got used to it. Legend

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SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 2012 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

TEA GUIDE

The history and basics of Chinese teas Legend has it that tea drinking started in China when tea leaves fell in the cup of an ancient emperor as he drank hot water. Tea cultivation was an imperial Chinese state secret until a British zoologist smuggled tea leaves to India and Sri Lanka in the 17th century.

Till the Ming dynasty, the Chinese drank most of their tea using ground and roasted tea cakes. Infusing tea leaves in a pot only became widespread during the Ming dynasty (1368­1644).

There are five major types of tea in China, namely green, black, oolong, white and scented. Crucial to tea’s taste is fermentation (or oxidization). Fermented tea is picked and aged, either by keeping it humid under closely monitored conditions or by introducing certain bacteria. In both cases, the leaves develop tannins, making them taste smoother, although the process also diminishes the potency of such beneficial compounds as antioxidants.

While “blacks” are typically fermented, “greens” are not, thereby preserving much of their natural flavour and bitter tang. In between the two are China’s flavourful and complex oolongs, classified as “blues”.

PHOTOGRAPHS

has it that Qianlong held tea banquets every year for 48 years. So it’s not surprising that Beijing’s tea culture has acquired a rather snobby, high-brow image.

The midday performance at the teahouse is already in full swing when I enter as two men in casual wear crosstalk in the Beijing dialect, known for its strong “r” endings. In an amusing, fastpaced skit, the two tease each other about their respective lives.

The act is soon followed by a Chinese string-instrument ensemble.

A Chinese waitress in red qipao, or cheongsam, shows me to one of the solid, antique-looking wooden tables. Most of the 250 seats are full at 3 in the afternoon. The most expensive tea is

360 yuan (around `3,010) per pot, but I order the 50 yuan longjing green tea (`390) and a sampler 20-yuan snack set. The tea comes in a rather humble water glass, the tea leaves floating on top, but I soon realize the visible leaves are meant for the eye. Other patrons are drinking tea in dainty cups with lids. Okay, I’m evidently in economy, and the fancier ware is a reflection of their higher-grade teas.

The snacks come on a yellow plate, the colour traditionally reserved for China’s imperial family, with such poetic names as “sugared ear-shaped twists”—a sweet, fried dough pastry, and “rolling donkey cakes”—a bean paste confectionery. My favourite

BY

KAREN MA

is saqima, or “candied fritter”, a traditional delicacy of Manchurian aristocrats made from flour noodles mixed with eggs that’s gently fried and blended with sugar syrup. It’s sweet and crisp without being greasy.

As I nibble, a waiter pours a customer’s tea from a metre-

long spouted kettle with amazing precision and grace, and not a drop spilled.

The maitre d’, Ouyang, tells me the teahouse has taken its name from the renowned novelist and playwright Lao She, whose famous play The Teahouse provides a vivid portrait of the social dimensions of the numerous old Beijing teahouses seen around the 1920s and 1930s. After the Communists took over in 1949, and particularly during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, teahouses were banned as “remnants of feudalism”.

Lao She Teahouse opened for business in 1988 on a wave of nostalgia. In the past 14 years, it’s hosted some 100 international leaders, including former prime minister Indira Gandhi and former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

Lao She Teahouse has several other restaurants and tea rooms on site, including a fancy tea-speciality restaurant and a courtyard teahouse, as well as a small museum of tea culture and folk history.

Seats at the evening variety shows are priced from 180-380 yuan per person, which includes tea, snacks and short shows by comedians, singers, magicians, acrobats and opera performers.

Modern-style teahouses meant as a quiet place for reading or intimate gatherings have also mushroomed in Beijing since the late 1980s. A prime example of

A quaint cuppa: (clockwise from top) A woman serves mint tea; varieties of tea (see ‘Tea Guide’); a Lao She tea set; and the elaborate stairwell of the Lao She Teahouse. this genre is the Teahouse of Family Fu on the south bank of Beijing’s idyllic Houhai Lake on which the Qing Dowager empress used to go boating from the Summer Palace. Owned by a former mechanics professor, the teahouse has a contemporary feel, with a brown and white interior and haphazard assortment of replica Ming dynasty furniture. A large table dominates the centre room, with three semi-private rooms nearby reserved for private meetings.

Teas here, presented on a large white fan, are priced at 45-380 yuan per person. Although Family Fu’s doesn’t have an extensive tea snack menu, it does offer homey old Beijing goodies such as jiangmitiao (fried dough fingers), shanza (haw candies) and almond cookies, priced at 10-25 yuan a plate. Despite the appeal of a leisurely stroll in the surrounding park, I end up lounging at Family Fu’s for a good 3 hours.

One of the best features is that the teacups are “bottomless”, and there is no time limit.

Whether you like the ambience of old Beijing, or prefer a more modern decor, Beijing’s teahouses are more sophisticated than their counterparts in other Chinese cities, and a mustvisit on your next trip to the Chinese capital.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

Greens: China’s most famous green tea is longjing (Dragon Well), grown around Hangzhou, which has seven sub­varieties and grades.

Blues: The most renowned oolong from China is tie guan yin (Iron Goddess), produced mainly in Fujian province. It’s gently roasted, giving it a hint of strength.

Blacks: Fermented pu’ers from Yunnan are the most famous examples of black teas. The long fermentation period can create different vintages and tastes from the same leaf.

Whites: They’re not actually white in colour but are made up of the youngest, most supple tea leaves. Baihao yinzhen (Silver Needle) tea from Fujian is a classic example. White teas are lauded for their robust antioxidant compounds and vitamins.

Scented teas: These are actually green teas blended with flowers, such as jasmine and chrysanthemum. Molihua, or green jasmine, is one classic example.

To keep the beneficial compounds intact, experts say you should ideally brew green teas in water heated up to 75 degrees Celsius. For fermented teas such as pu’er, however, the water must be boiling to get the best taste. Chinese teas are best consumed plain, without milk or sugar.

CHILD­FRIENDLY RATING

Children will enjoy the giant pandas at the Beijing Zoo, and the Museum of Chinese Science and Technology.

Entry is free, or at a concession, at many places.

SENIOR­FRIENDLY RATING

Many monuments are accessible to the wheel­chaired, thanks to the 2008 Olympics and Paralympics.

Visit www.access­travel.cn and www.tour­beijing.com/senior_travel LGBT­FRIENDLY RATING

In China, same­sex relationships are ignored. Open discussions on gay issues are banned but gay bars, clubs, spas and webcasts flourish. ‘Beijing Time Out’ runs a column titled ‘G&L’.

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SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 2012

Books

LOUNGE

IN FOCUS

Kiran Nagarkar’s wonder boys ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

The author’s long­awaited new novel follows the child­heroes of ‘Ravan and Eddie’ into adulthood

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

···························· n 1995, one of Marathi literature’s wunderkinds published his first novel in more than 20 years. Kiran Nagarkar’s Ravan and Eddie had had an adventurous gestation. It had begun in Nagarkar’s earliest drafts, in the 1970s, as a Marathi novel, morphed into a screenplay— never filmed—a few years after that, and finally seen the light of day as an English novel about two children born on different floors of the Central Works Department (CWD) chawl in Mazgaon, fated to hate each other even as their lives intertwined.

It may be in keeping with the history of this classic of Indian English writing that Ravan and Eddie’s sequel, The Extras, comes out a mere 17 years after the first.

In it, “the boys” have grown up, and are hurtling towards their respective doom in startlingly similar ways. Ravan Pawar is trying to keep control of the Cum September Jai Bharat Band, while Eddie Coutinho leads the Bandra Bombshells at Catholic weddings.

The Bombay of the 1960s is grinding away at their new adulthood, but also encouraging them to dream of movie-star glory.

It is a different book from its predecessor, but the adult Ravan and Eddie have been with Nagarkar for at least as long as the schoolboys of the first book. “My original screenplay was not about the children,” explains Nagarkar in a conversation which began at last month’s Goa Arts and Literary Festival in Panaji, and spilled over, in the week before The Extras’ release, to his home in south Mumbai. “They appeared in the opening sequence, and then, as we do so often in our movies, came the titles, after which you saw them as grown-ups.” The grown-ups never made it to Ravan and Eddie. “I don’t know if it was fatigue or not, but somewhere, someone as completely incapable of any kind of foresight as I, actually realized that if I was going to do them together, this would not be a 600-page book.”

Since 1995, life—and a couple of other novels—has repeatedly run interference with the telling of their tale. “I always maintain that writing is an act of masochism,” Nagarkar says. “I’ve never gotten over having been foolhardy enough to continue to write.”

Nagarkar is an artist of the deadpan, in conversation as in writing. His international critics have compared his wit to Cervantes and Italo Calvino. With two remarkable works coming out in the 1990s—Ravan and Eddie was followed, in 1997, by the Sahitya Akademi award-winning Cuckold—he was, for a time, categorized with contemporary Indian practitioners of the form who were also producing big novels in that time. But he shares even fewer similarities with Vikram Seth and Salman Rushdie than they do with each other. In retro-

I

The artist of deadpan: Kiran Nagarkar uses humour as a battleaxe. spect, it is far more accurate to locate Nagarkar’s deadpan in the milieu of the great bilingual poets of Mumbai, Arun Kolatkar and Dilip Chitre, and their wry, angry, tender world view.

His books are full of characters who are traitors to their identities, passionate lovers and bitter misanthropes. The residents of Ravan and Eddie’s neighbourhood are every bit as fragile as they are cruel. God’s Little Soldier (2006) is about a religious zealot whose instinct for extremism does not change even as he changes faiths; the central figures of Cuckold are the saintpoet Mirabai and her husband the crown prince of Chittor, who is tormented not only by his wife’s disengagement from his world, but by the fact that he is h i m s e l f d e v o t e d to the god Krishna, in whose favour ‘the Little Saint’ has spurned him.

All their worlds are brutal—indeed, nowhere is this clearer than in the CWD chawl—but Nagarkar’s humane imagination never allows them to be pathologized. Great tragedies unfold in narratives stuffed with jokes, asides and snark; Nagarkar’s novels contain plenty of grief, but are totally devoid of melancholia. In his friend and long-standing colleague Kolatkar’s poems, humour is the edge of the knife; in Nagarkar’s novels, it is a battleaxe.

Nagarkar wrote his first Marathi stories at Dilip Chitre’s prompting, for Abhiruchi, a magazine edited by Chitre’s father. It is an enduring surprise—“perhaps one of the happiest accidents of my life”—that he produced his first published works in his mother tongue. Born in

1942, he had been to English schools all his life, and studied English literature, briefly at St Xavier’s in Mumbai, and then at Fergusson College in Pune.

This was where the privilege of English became a problem.

“Once they realized I was from Xavier’s, and I spoke English, I was completely…” Nagarkar pauses, and begins to laugh. “I was way beyond isolated.

Nobody would talk to me. And it was such a good thing they did. I was forced to go to the library because there was no one to horse around with, which is what I specialize in. So I went to this august library, where you go to the basement and find books which (Gopal Ganesh) Agarkar and (Bal Gangadhar) Tilak had borrowed. Can you believe it?”

That is how Nagarkar first became a serious reader, and perhaps how he began to acquire a stake in his mother tongue.

Saat Sakkam Trechalis, his 1973 debut (translated in English as Seven Sixes Are Forty-Three), is considered a Marathi landmark, equalled only by his contemporary Bhalchandra Nemade’s Kos-

Nagarkar’s characters are traitors to their identities, passionate lovers and bitter misanthropes

ala (Cocoon). “An absolute stunner, supposed to have reinvented the language, etcetera,” Nagarkar says of the reviews. “But what was the point?”

In 1978, Nagarkar’s Marathi play, Bedtime Story, brought together four stories from the Mahabharat to explore ideas of personal responsibility. The political reaction to the play in postEmergency India was vicious.

Mauled by censors, who made 78 cuts, some of them page-length, in a 74-page play, its actors and producers were threatened with physical violence.

“How would any stupid courage have helped?” he remembers. It was never rehearsed, and Nagarkar, to employ his own word, “withdrew”. His next published work would be Ravan and Eddie. In a repetition of history which could come from one of Nagarkar’s own novels, it set Marathi-language criticism alight once again, this time among an intelligentsia who resented what they saw as his rejection of Marathi.

Will he write a play again?

“Given another 80 very healthy

years, I would very much like to go back to drama,” he says gravely.

Nonetheless, the orality of drama is evident in his novels, and Nagarkar invokes the oral tradition when he talks of his own writing (the epics, Western and Indian, are a great source of inspiration). His novels are certainly speech-inflected. Ravan and Eddie, Cuckold and God’s Little Soldier all talk themselves up to full speed, with characters chattering, mimicking and talking over each other constantly, like particularly gifted salesmen in busy markets. At their worst, the barrage of double adjectives and qualifying clauses can become wearying unless they are read aloud. At their best, they achieve a superb conversationality.

“I don’t read much here, but all my work is meant to be read out loud,” he says.

Nagarkar’s books never have blockbuster openings (“I’m used to my books dying the minute they’re born.”). But Saat Sakkam Trechalis, Ravan and Eddie and Cuckold have all had long and influential afterlives. God’s Little Soldier, on the other hand, met with critical indifference in India, although it has achieved acclaim in the US and Europe—two separate programmes, at Cornell University and in Zurich even set the Kabir of the novel to original music. The story of a young extremist who barrels through a series of epiphanies that take him from fundamentalist Islam to extreme versions of Christianity and Hinduism, perhaps the novel suffered, among other things, from its timing. Its first draft had been written in 2000—“840 pages,” Nagarkar says—but the book appeared in 2005, well after

the global conversation about religious fundamentalism had fractured under the weight of post-11 September 2001 politics.

Nagarkar’s central anxiety, in all these works, has been about human responsibility, and the role of individual action in large destinies. “The notion of responsibility I was talking about in Bedtime Story stayed with me,” he says. “My stance is that if anything happens anywhere in the world, you and I are responsible for it.

Iraq? Afghanistan? There’s no question of not being responsible.

We often say when we talk about the Nazis: How could the Germans have done it? It wasn’t the Germans. It was us.”

This butterfly-effect morality may, at first glance, seem too exhaustingly comprehensive to be useful. But Nagarkar’s work has always been about the push and pull of this idea with reality.

The Maharaj Kumar of Cuckold competes with a god, and the CWD chawl boys grow up in a world where human kindness is as precarious as the morning’s water supply. These characters are both symbols and witnesses of human frailty.

But Nagarkar’s anger at the world which they inhabit is a cleansing anger. He makes us laugh with them so that we enter into their tragedies. Like Ravan and Eddie, The Extras takes up the same nagging questions, transmuted now from the dangers of childhood to those of adulthood.

In a city where everyone is in someone else’s hair, who isn’t responsible for their neighbours?

The Extras, published by HarperCollins India, will be released on 14 January.

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THINKING, FAST AND SLOW | DANIEL KAHNEMAN

QUICK LIT | GAYATRI JAYARAMAN

The science of choice ANDREAS RENTZ/GETTY IMAGES

A Nobel laureate economist maps the subtleties of how we make decisions

B Y S AUGATO D UTTA ···························· alking to work this morning, I noticed several things about the way I made small decisions. Well before my short-sighted eyes were able to decipher the street sign that informed me that West 30th Street had arrived, I was getting ready to turn the corner. A particular pizza place with a sign for “Vamoose bus” above it had swum into view. Without really paying attention or even explicitly registering the shop itself, my mind had made the association between these cues and the fact that my destination was close, and instructed my feet to turn a certain way.

In the initially clunky-feeling, eventually surprisingly effective language of Thinking, Fast and Slow, a new book by psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, my “System 1” (the “automatic” mind, which relies on intuition, rules of thumb, impressions and context) was in charge of the decision about when to turn right, not my “System 2” (the “effortful” mind, which relies on calculation and “logic” rather than intuition).

System 1 is good at making inferences from cues and patterns, and is adept at quick decisions and conclusions, but it is also prone to a variety of systematic biases and errors, such as overconfidence. System 2 is slower and more deliberate. While there are certain things System 1 simply cannot do—including even straightforward multiplication problems—one thing is clear: We may like to believe that logic and calculation dominate our decisions, but for much of the time, we coast along by using our automatic minds.

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Mind reader: Daniel Kahneman.

As Kahneman and one of his collaborators showed in a fascinating series of experiments, using our “effortful mind” to think things through, draw reasoned inferences and come up with answers is physically demanding, causing our pupils to dilate, breathing to change, and blood glucose to be depleted. But engaging with a cognitively demanding task also depletes our ability to use the automatic part of our brain effectively. Perhaps one of the most famous demonstrations of this effect, which Kahneman recounts to great effect in the book, involves asking experimental subjects to

Thinking, Fast and Slow: Allen Lane, 499 pages, `499. count the number of passes made by one team on a basketball court.

As subjects focus intensely on this task, they are oblivious—effectively blind—to something as bizarre as what appears to be a large gorilla that crosses the court, thumping its chest for effect. Using our “System 2” effectively makes us blind to the oddest things in ways we would not believe if someone just told us about them.

Indeed, one of the joys of this book is that it is littered with examples of the experiments on which much of this path-breaking research—which contributed to the growth of the field of behav-

ioural economics and for which Kahneman was awarded the economics Nobel in 2002—is based.

The reader is often drawn into trying the little puzzles or tasks out for himself, and more often than not reassured that the seemingly irrelevant factors that caused him to falter have, in fact, been shown to have the same effect on many other people.

Most readers will find that their choices about which letter completes a word (say, SO_P) are strongly affected by whether they were “primed” to think of “washing” or “eating”. As the evidence piles up, the reader comes to appreciate not only the way the automatic mind works, but why it leads us to make errors such as systematic overconfidence in our own abilities. It makes us understand why we do some of what we do and curse ourselves for, such as miscalculate, procrastinate, and jump to the wrong conclusions with unfailing regularity.

The book’s principal disappointment is that it does less well at showing the reader the critical ways in which all these facets of human psychology play out in realworld decisions with major consequences, such as farmers’ choices about how much fertilizer to use and people’s about how much to save. But that is a minor quibble, and perhaps best left to another book. In the meantime, the immersion in the world of fascinating psychological experiments described and explained in this one will give the alert reader a far greater awareness of how his or her own mind works. This morning, for instance, I would not have noticed the way I decided when to turn to reach my office if it were not for Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Saugato Datta has been a researcher at the World Bank, an economics writer at The Economist, and is now vicepresident at ideas42, a behavioural-economics research and design lab based in New York.

THINKSTOCK

Empirical: Readers may be tempted to try out some of the experiments on which Kahneman’s research is based.

Q&A | SANDHYA MULCHANDANI

Write to lounge@livemint.com IN SIX WORDS A breakthrough in behavioural economics, simplified

Hyper­linked ‘mohalla’ tale A racy, often clichéd, debut novel about a fictional Mumbai locality and its vibrant milieu

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ultan, the vegetable vendor, sends Shimpi, a not very effective businessman and all-round handyman, to kidnap Khopdi, the dog of Miranda, a reformed politician-turned-undertaker.

Shimpi ends up in a coffin instead, giving the already hallucinating Miranda a near heart attack; he has to be driven to the hospital by his assailants. Housewife Seema finds her husband, Suresh Borkari, standing outside her Ladies Association office holding a banner that reads: “Equal rights for men of Bhavani Nagar”, meant to counter the protest she had led against her father, the politician Sitaram Sajjanpur.

Shankarpada, in Navneet Jagannathan’s Tamasha in Bandargaon, is a vibrant mohalla, a hotchpotch of lowerincome families, each with a story and a connection.

It begins with a host of clichés—the neighbourhood tea stall with the misspelt board, a gambling den, a house of booze, and a municipal demolition squad—but as it picks up pace, it takes on a life of its own, and acquires a unique sense of humour.

Structurally, Jagannathan’s debut novel is an essay in enjambement: Each chapter is a caper in itself, with its own protagonist and circumstance, and each unit comprises a complete neighbourhood escapade. As it ends, a character within links neatly with the escapade in the following chapter. This is a heavily cross-linked world of urban micro-activity.

It is a book to be thankful for because of two reasons. First, for giving a nameless and faceless multitude voice, issues and concerns. Jagannathan’s people have social lives, personal lives, financial lives and political lives. It carefully dissects a Mumbai (where the semi-fictional locality of Bandargaon is set) that has been stereotyped forever.

This is also a novel that could easily have careened, and often

A new translation of an 18th century erotic Telugu epic poem brings us a human Krishna anupam1.v@livemint.com

···························· he Radha-Krishna dalliance has captivated literary imagination for centuries, and spawned a sizeable corpus of ancient and modern Indian literature.

Radhika Santawanam, an erotic 18th century Telugu epic poem that relates a tale brimming with love, jealousy and wiles, traces a strong Radha, a very human Krishna, and turns it into an autobiography of the author herself. This is Muddupalani, a courtesan in the court of the Maratha king Pratapsimha, who ruled Thanjavur from 1730-63.

Idiosyncratic, amazingly self-aware, Muddupalani invokes and celebrates herself and her poetic forebears in her work.

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Sandhya Mulchandani’s recent translation of the poem marks the first time the epic has been translated into English in its entirety. We spoke with the writer and researcher about the book’s unique place in history and its turmoil-ridden life and times.

Edited excerpts: Tell us about the book’s history.

There are two really interesting things about the book. One, that a courtesan has written it.

Second, that a lot of people don’t know that south India was ruled

by Marathas, the descendants of Shivaji, for over 200 years. These courtesans weren’t just singing and dancing in the Marathas’ courts; they were accomplished in music, art and literature too.

They were recognized for this.

They didn’t even have to stay with just one man. Muddupalani

dangerously does, towards poverty porn. It is not a dummies’ guide or a book “shining a light on reality”. It simply narrates the lives within the mainstream context of urban life, without condescension (the name of the locality, “Bandargaon”, seems to have no logical root in the story, though, and without that context, it could be seen as mildly derogatory).

In the back cover, the book descriptor compares Tamasha... to R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi. Sure, it is an interesting slice of life in a fictional mohalla. But in any other sense, it is an unfair comparison to make.

Tamasha... cashes in on multiple clichés. In characterization, Bandargaon is a ball of increasingly tangled wool. Just as a character begins to develop, he is promptly beheaded in the larger interest of the story. It is a book in a tearing hurry, as opposed to the sedate clip-clop of Narayan’s prose.

The book wraps up better than it begins: The quiet chuckles become louder; it is a world that sucks you in. Jagannathan navigates the twists and turns of Shankarpada with the knowhow of a local autorickshawwallah racing through a gali (lane) at peak hour. Sure, he almost killed a few chickens, but he made it. gayatri.j@livemint.com

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

Furious desires B Y A NUPAM K ANT V ERMA

Tamasha in Bandargaon: Tranquebar, 324 pages, `295.

Two voices: Mulchandani was captivated by the intrepid Muddupalani. herself was prolific in Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu, apart from being an erudite scholar. She wrote the book in the middle of the 18th century.

Now, this book is brought out from obscurity by another courtesan, Nagarathnamma, in the early 20th century. She finds a version of the book, and appalled by the watered-down version she has in her hands, finds the palm-leaf manuscripts and commissions a new book.

What’s important here is that it took another courtesan, another bold woman, to revive the book.

Anyway, the book is then banned in 1911-12 for recommending corruption and being immoral.

Interestingly, it is the literate Madras society that takes it to court in England. The book remains contraband till 1947, when the ban is finally lifted by T. Prakasam (then chief minister of Madras Presidency).

What drew you to Muddupalani’s work?

The personality of the woman herself. Consider this—you’re a courtesan in a strange court, and you have to hold your own intellectually despite the odds.

The Appeasement of Radhika—Radhika Santawanam: Penguin Classics, 200 pages,`250.

Then, to be recognized for your erotic poetry, traditionally considered the domain of men.

This was one of the points raised against the book when it was banned. When a man writes it, it is sensual, but a woman writing the same thing is considered a whore. I think what Muddupalani was saying was that she is writing all this because she is a devadasi and she’s open about it, but why can the work not be judged on its literary merit?

How did you go about translating her?

Lots and lots of help. See, you

lose the rhythm of the original during translation. The colloquialisms that existed during Muddupalani’s time make no sense to modern audiences. I’ve had people from the Godavari district helping me understand the language. I had musicologists and experts helping me go behind the words. A considerable portion of the book describes elaborate rituals that celebrate the coming of age of the girl—a tradition- and culture-specific phenomenon. I had to be careful with all this.

What aspects of Krishna emerge from the book?

Krishna here is a doomed man torn between two women. One, an older, strong-willed Radha, and Ila, a young girl with guile.

The two women use their wiles to lure Krishna towards themselves, away from the other.

Interestingly, there’s no sense of the divine. Muddupalani doesn’t use the couple as a mere metaphor. Krishna here is a man.

There is absolutely no question of him being a god. Radha is a strong, sexually demanding woman, and there are moments where she kicks a penitent Krishna on the head.

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Culture

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Q&A | NIRET ALVA

‘Don’t fiddle with the basics’ The executive producer of ‘Survivor India’ on what went into making India’s largest reality show

INSIDE THE CAMP The low­down on the first few days of ‘Survivor India’

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

···························· t took the production house Miditech Pvt. Ltd a year and a half to develop and research, and then hire 400 people (100 from India) to shoot on remote islands in the Philippines, to get the Indian edition of Survivor going. The show wasn’t shot on a pre-designed set (even the games sites are temporary), and the contestants had to work for everything, from getting rations to making their own shelter and lighting a fire. The crew and contestants even braved a typhoon that hit the islands during the shooting schedule.

Niret Alva, the executive producer of the show and co-founder of Miditech, tells us why reality TV is here to stay and why Survivor India contestants are not going to morph into mini Dolly Bindras. Edited excerpts:

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Is reality TV taking over from ‘saas-bahu’ serials?

It is a storytelling form; much misuse of it has got it ill-repute. In the traditional sense, it meant lack of script. Of course, you have to edit it to tell a story, but over time people are not sure how authentic this format is. What we have done on Survivor India, and we have to thank Star Plus for having the guts to let us do it, is to not to compromise on the basic foundations of the show format, or the whole edifice would have fallen apart. The basic edifice is minimal rations; and to play a strategic game. If food is easily given to the contestants, then they would not have played the game in its true spirit.

PRIYANKA PARASHAR/MINT

At loggerheads: Contest­ ants of Survivor India; and (left) Niret Alva.

Why would any channel have interfered with the format?

In the sense that many people in India feel that what may have worked in other countries will not work here; that we have to change things in a particular way that represents our culture.

Don’t fiddle with the basics is what we believe in. The realness, rawness, roughness of the show will be evident. People will lose weight, grow beards, be tanned—the show is about the mind, the body and leveraging on relationships.

How did you choose the contestants for ‘Survivor India’?

We hoped that it would be fundamentally a game about strategy and not personal clashes.

There was a zameen-aasman ka farak (a vast difference) between

the number of people who auditioned and the number of people who finally signed up. We were very clear that we wanted mirror images in teams. So if we cast a particular character in the celeb tribe, then there is a person in the other tribe whose behaviour is the mirror image of the former’s.

Indian reality TV is at a point where the meanest, loudest and rudest contestant is considered the TRP generator. Who will that be in ‘Survivor India’?

When we did auditions across the country, it was strange: People would start abusing, shouting, get aggressive, believing that this is the way to get selected for the show. We said no-no, stop, this is not Bigg Boss. You will see that in Survivor India, aggressive behaviour will not become a pattern. There will be two-three days when some contestants will lose it because they think they are being targeted. But the madness is a result of insecurity rather than behavioural anomaly. Some of them will totally quieten down and you’ll wonder if this is the person who threw a tantrum.

Michael (a research scientist and contestant), for example, is shown crying in the promos. He is socially awkward and doesn’t

know a lot of the boundaries of interaction. Frankly, we could not predict what hunger and uncertainty would do to people.

How different are the games from the original series?

The games are a mix of many different seasons shown internationally. We chose what we thought would work for India.

Contestants need to know swimming, make puzzles, have a certain muscular endurance, and work in a team.

How will people get voted out?

Almost every episode will see an eviction.

What about wild-card entries?

There is no such concept as a wild-card entry, there is no second chance, no comeback. All I can say is that contestants coming back in or not will not be an arbitrary decision.

You have experience at shooting this format with ‘Sarkaar Ki Duniya’ (aired on Real TV)...

Why do you want to talk about that now?

But the format was similar...

No. Totally different concepts. It was about budgets. It was creating a community out of nothing. The only learning from that show for us was having the ability to shoot without being intrusive.

Survivor India started on Friday.

Henceforth, it will be telecast at 9pm on Saturdays and Sundays on Star Plus.

Poetry on canvas Ramesh layers paint, images and writings by women poet­saints in his latest solo show B Y A NINDITA G HOSE anindita.g@livemint.com

···························· . Ramesh’s exhibition of recent paintings, Why Cross the Boundary, starts with an invocation—a poem by Annamayya, the 15th century Telugu poet and composer whose poem also lends the exhibition its title. “Why cross the boundary when there is no village? It’s like living without a name, like words without love,” the poem begins. It ends with the same question: “Why cross the boundary?” Repetition is reiteration.

For 53-year-old Ramesh, who lives and works in Visakhapatnam—he teaches art at Andhra University—the exhibition was born from his years of studying Advaita. In Hindu philosophy, Advaita (literally, non-duality) is a system of thought that refers to the identity of the self (atman) and the whole (brahman).

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“Extensive reading of Advaitic philosophy has opened up for me perceptions of the unity—the oneness of being,” says Ramesh.

Over years of art practice, the solidity of the human figure and tight compositions have given way to the blurring of boundaries. If dualities are one and the same, then there are no boundaries. Annamayya explains this in the title poem: “What use is ecstasy without the agony of distance…Why have a lover you don’t need to hide?”

Ramesh, a postgraduate from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, has had solo shows at the Pundole Art Gallery in Mumbai and Apparao Galleries in Chennai. He borrows from the poetry of three Indian women saints for this exhibition, which will open at New Delhi’s Gallery Threshold later this month.

His cast includes Karaikal Amma (fifth century, Tamil Nadu), Akka Mahadevi (12th

Crossover: (right) Pining for an Absent Lover (6x8ft) is based on a poem by Akka Mahadevi; and artist V. Ramesh. century, Karnataka) and Lal Ded (14th century, Kashmir). Each lived in a different part of India in a different period, and wrote in different languages. “But despite these vast divisions,” says Ramesh, “all three shared a similar intoxication in their pursuit of the divine. They tested the boundaries between the self and the whole.”

All three defied the conven-

tions of their time. Karaikal Amma famously asked for a boon to be released from the burden of beauty. Mahadevi Akka and Lal Ded roamed the streets naked in their spiritual quest, and all three left behind rich bodies of writing.

Why Cross the Boundary has 11 large-scale paintings on exhibit—all around 8ft tall.

They’re heavily-layered frescoes.

fter viewing the first few days of ‘Survivor India‘—and seeing the way the contestants looked—you’re likely to believe that this is not a reality show where the 22 contestants divided in two teams have easy access to food and other basics.

Wrestler Sangram Singh tries out different stems or ‘datun’ to clean his teeth, and even convinces his teammates to use them the second day. All of them try in vain to light a fire by different means, including by the use of spectacle lenses. A good loo, and rightly so, is on the most­missed list. It is easy to see that there is not enough space in the self­erected shelters to accommodate all 11 contestants of a team—some of them spend nights on the beach with just leaves for a bed.

The celebrity team Catan fares well in the beginning, but in a couple of days the camaraderie begins to ebb. On the other hand, the Tayak, the non­celebrity team, is at loggerheads from Day 1. Not being able to light the fire is their biggest failure because it leads to there being no food in the camp, save green coconuts.

Obviously, none of them made use of the lessons dished out at the one­day camp at the Survivor training school. What is more surprising is that no one thinks about exploring the surrounding area to look for fruits or raw food other than coconuts and that no one has bothered to train in advance about acquiring the most basic camping skill—lighting a fire without matches.

The celebrity quotient is suspect. In which part of the world is hairstylist Sylvester Rodgers aka Sylvie, actor­cum­tarot reader Monisha Khatwani or wrestler Singh a celebrity?

And why has the Indian hockey player Raj Rani been relegated to the Strugglers: (top) Actor Shilpa non­celebrity team?

Agnihotri enjoys her first Differences between the young and meal; and Rohit (Timmy) old contestants creep in from Day 1 in Narang tries a datun. both teams, with the younger lot unwilling to be led by the more experienced members. It is this conflict that leads to the surprising elimination of the first contestant.

The format of the show is not explained clearly, and if you are not a ‘Survivor‘ fan, you’ll get into it only as the episodes unfold.

It is evident that actor Karan Patel, research scientist Michael, stylist Rishi Raj, party girl Preeti and model Gisele are the troublemakers. Actors Rajesh Khera and Priyanka Bassi are manipulators in the Catan team but the Tayak’s manipulators are yet to emerge. The group dynamics are made obvious from the word go—Michael and Gisele are best friends, restaurateur Rohit (Timmy) Narang and actor Shilpa Agnihorti become strategy buddies, Abhinav Shukla and Patel are chums who go fishing together and return empty­handed—a key to the success of any reality show, and the hook for audiences.

Contestants likely to hang in: stunt artiste Sanober Pardiwala, Bassi, Singh, Michael, Narang, Khera and Shukla.

Seema Chowdhry

There is, for instance, Pining for an Absent Lover, a painting based on a poem

by Akka Mahadevi, which is a palimpsest—a parchment or tablet used one or more times after the earlier writing has been erased— of textures and shapes. Amid its deep blue shades is an incandescent glow on one side of the canvas. “My lord as white as jasmine”—a refrain that runs t h r o u g h Mahadevi’s poetry—floats across the painting. The visual effect is one of whispers, murmurs, dreams and epiphanies.

Ramesh has worked on each of the paintings for a couple of years, revisiting them again and again, and they’re palimpsests in the truest sense.

While this intricate layering of paint, images and text does draw the viewer “to enter the canvas”, as Ramesh had hoped they would, the potency of the works

is reduced by the typography in some of the artworks—making them all too literal. Mahadevi’s sentiments, “My lord as white as jasmine”, would have resounded equally well—if not more evocatively—with the delicate jasmine flowers studded across the body of the canvas. But Ramesh etches the letters in as well.

“I intended the text to be supplementary, not ornamental, to the reading of the painting,” Ramesh explains over the phone.

In some instances, the typography is justified. For the painting titled Remembering Lalla Moj, based on a poem by Lal Ded, Ramesh uses the poet’s words to compose her portrait. He hadn’t come across a single portrait of Lal Ded. “I thought what better way to draw a saint-poet than with her own words,” he says.

Where do words and art meet?

Where does one cross the boundary of the other? That the exhibition runs parallel to the Jaipur Literature Festival (20-24 January) and the India Art Fair (New Delhi, 25-29 January) is no coincidence.

Why Cross the Boundary will run at Gallery Threshold, New Delhi, from 22 January-14 February. The paintings are priced at `15-35 lakh.

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PROFILE

Coming home to the music ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT

How the son of two Assamese music icons made his own way in Mumbai, in the ‘good parts of Bollywood’ B Y S UPRIYA N AIR

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Wanderer: Wanderer: Papon’s new album releases next week; and (below) the new album’s cover. cover.

Mahanta, is also a classical musician. “She was studying for her masters’ degree in classical music when she was pregnant with me,” Papon says. “I think the music started there.”

Folk and classical music resounded in the Mahanta house, and he studied both. “But my parents were also listeners of all kinds of good music,” he remembers. “I started picking up Mehdi Hassan ghazals when I was 5. People would ask my mother why I was into music that is so much about viraha (separation), about the blues. ‘What blues does he have at 5?’”

He remembers the music of Hassan, and Jagjit Singh, massively popular with his extended family (all musical) as the soundtrack of his childhood, and the voices of Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Farida Khanum. It wasn’t hard to fall into learning the tabla, the harmonium, and the khol (a terracotta twosided drum), in which he was tutored by his father. His now-familiar guitar was a later addition.

“You know how it is,” he grins.

“You realize you want to jam, impress the girls.”

Will and grace Savitha Sastry tells a new story about death and afterlife through Bharatanatyam B Y M AYANK A USTEN S OOFI mayank.s@livemint.com

···························· ike most artistes, Bharatanatyam dancer Savitha Sastry believes she is different. Speaking about her new production, Soul Cages, Sastry, 42, says: “Unlike most Bharatanatyam performances, mine will have no romance and no yearning for Krishna or any other god, and trust me, you won’t miss anything.” Soul Cages will have its inaugural show in Delhi on 28 January, and will also travel to Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata.

The classical dance of Tamil Nadu, Bharatanatyam, used to be presented by devdasis, the temple courtesans, who seamlessly entwined spirituality with the erotic. In the 19th century, when morality acquired new

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SHUBHA MUDGAL

ANECDOTES FROM THE GREEN ROOM

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supriya.n@livemint.com

···························· ut of the 18 months since he moved to Mumbai, Angaraag “Papon” Mahanta has spent maybe 90 days in his new city. Most of his time since his arrival has been spent working. 2011’s count has been: three movie soundtracks (Dum Maaro Dum, I Am Kalam and Soundtrack), two TV show sets (Coke Studio@MTV and The Dewarists), countless live gigs with his band Papon and The East India Company, a song on Indian Ocean guitarist Susmit Sen’s solo album, and the beginning of a year-long collaboration with Bickram Ghosh and Rachel Sermanni, called Troikala. He brings out his first Hindi album, called The Story So Far, next week.

There must be a holiday somewhere in his future, but Papon hasn’t seen it yet. His houses have been growing steadily smaller as his career has progressed: He has come to Mumbai from Delhi. “And I came to Delhi from Assam,” he smiles.

“You can imagine.”

We can imagine. Papon has steadily claimed our attention in the last year, not just with his sundrenched voice in Hindi movie hits such as Banao Banao and Jiyein Kyun, but also with his arresting Assamese folk-rock, which we’ve heard in performances like Bihu Naam (Pak Pak) on Coke Studio@MTV, and Khule Da Rabb, his collaboration with Rabbi Shergill on The Dewarists.

His warm stage presence has energy without being frenetic.

Watching him can feel like being at an exciting, but essentially laidback jam session.

He happens to be a second-generation fusionista, which explains some things about his music. His parents are Assamese musical stars. Khagen Mahanta, his father, popularized the Bihu folk form and is a great melder of folk and popular styles; his mother, Archana

MUSIC MATTERS

meanings, the fall in the status of these women led to the dance’s decline. Revived in the 1930s, Bharatanatyam shifted its venue from temples to concert halls; the merchant class devdasis left the stage for upperclass Brahmin women. “Love, sex and debauchery went out,” says Sastry. “Bharatanatyam was de-sexed.”

Sastry says that while debauchery could figure in her future shows, “for too long, Bharatnatyam has been used to tell only particular kinds of stories, which are about pining for Shiva, or accusing the beloved Krishna of hobnobbing with other women, or killing demons, and that whole thing of good winning over evil. You are not telling even those stories honestly by hav-

He moved to Delhi after school to be an architect, and music went from being his home to being a journey. It brought an epiphany with it. “The realization came that I could stand alone as a musician,” he says. “My parents are my influence and my inspiration, the source of everything I have become. But Delhi taught me that people who didn’t know my background would appreciate me for myself,” he says. “In Delhi, I began to think of music as a career.”

For a musician who now looks like he’s born to the stage, Papon’s career as a performer began much later than his career as a musician. Two years after his first album’s release, 2004’s Jonaaki Raati in Assamese, he held a live show in Guwahati because people began to clamour to hear the songs live. “I was really nervous,” he laughs. “I had only done school shows before.”

He jokes that he’s never completed anything in his life, but there has been an exceptional focus in Papon’s work since 2007, when he started Papon and The East India Company in Delhi, with his friends. Since then, he has worked often with the Midival Punditz, played concerts all over India and the world, and completed a cross-peninsular journey from Assam to the Arabian Sea. His big project, starting next week, is The Story So Far. “It’s been in the making for the last 10 years,” he says. It was ready five years ago, but contract issues prevented him from releasing it. Having dusted it off, eager to liberate it into the

ing to cloak them under a cover of spirituality.”

This is rebellious talk coming from a person raised in Chennai’s Mylapore, a conservative neighbourhood that Sastry calls “the citadel of the Tam-Bram (Tamil-Brahmin) world, where mornings begin with the wake-up call of Carnatic singer M.S. Subbulakshmi’s Suprabhatham, devotional songs dedicated to lord Venkateswara of Tirupati”.

Soul Cages opens with death, a taboo theme in Bharatanatyam, which, according to Sastry, characteristically ties the viewer to eternal auspiciousness. “We don’t know what lies on the other side of life. In my story, a sixyear-old girl dies, make a transition to the afterlife and still remembers her time on earth.”

A graduate with a master’s in neurosciences from the University of South Florida, US, Sastry claims her narration is designed for those who have no clue about Bharatanatyam. “Here,

light of day, he’s now thinking ahead. If he gets a chance, he’d like to stay in the city for a little while, and do some of the work he’s always meant to do in Bollywood. “I always knew I was going to be doing that some day,” he says. “I’ve grown with Bollywood, we all have. You can’t not. I wanted to be part of it—part of the good parts of Bollywood.”

Like his confrères the Midival Punditz, who asked him to sing on the Soundtrack album, he’s picked a worthwhile time to explore the industry. “You think so?” he says.

“I think so too! For a while we’d lost that RD (Burman)-Kishore (Kumar) space—I don’t mean we were making bad songs for the last 15-20 years, but maybe we didn’t know where we were going. Now there’s such a wide open space.

Every movie has a different sound now. It’s a great time.”

It’s been a tiring couple of years, but there are no holidays from music—not yet, at least, not even for someone who, as a child, never thought he was going to be a musician at all.

“Not never, that’s the wrong thing to say,” he corrects himself. “I took music for granted. People were always like, obviously he sings well, his parents are musicians. So I can say there was nothing surprising for me about music.”

The Story So Far releases on 10 January. Papon will play at the blueFROG, New Delhi, on 11 January, and at the blueFROG, Mumbai, on 12 January.

usicians must all have a fair share of anecdotes about their adventures, both on stage and off stage. Without doubt they would make for a delectable collection that could make the reader laugh and cry in turns. With that in mind, I submit for public consumption a couple of personally experienced green-room anecdotes. For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, a green room is the sort of waiting area in an auditorium or theatre where artistes usually bide their time before making their way on to the stage. There seems to be no immediately apparent reason for it being called a green room, but nevertheless, this is the space where a lot of pre-concert action takes place.

More often than not, in India, the green room is a bare, unornamented space, with a wall often lined with mirrors and dressing tables that show considerable wear and tear from wanton use. In some green rooms, chairs or stools are chained to the walls to prevent users from carrying them away as mementos. In one such green room in Kolkata, I found myself ushered in politely by the organizers. Settling down crosslegged on the floor to tune up with my accompanying artistes, I barely noticed when the organizers disappeared in search of the tea and coffee that was to be served to us. Soon, we had finished tuning, and started warming up for the concert, yet the explorers had not returned with the promised beverage.

Warm-up too was over in a bit and we proceeded to chat with each other as we waited, when the door burst open and a gentleman delivered himself at my feet, offering obeisance, as is often the custom. It is, of course, unnerving to find people hurling themselves at your feet, but this was no ordinary music lover. This was a guy with a foot fetish, and before I knew it, he had rummaged for and found my toes tucked under the folds of my sari, and was squeezing them like no reflexologist ever can.

Unnerved, I tried to pull away my poor toes, only to find them being pummelled and pulled more vigorously. Recovering from the shock, I had to do some plain-speaking to get the foot fiend out of the green room.

PRAFUL GANGURDE/HINDUSTAN TIMES

Act I: Artistes often use green rooms for pre­concert preparations.

Then there was the green room in Jodhpur, where the carpet on the floor was so badly stained and spotted with a yellowish substance that could have been archival dal served at all the weddings that had taken place in the Jodhpur district in the last decade, that we had to decide against sitting on it. Helpfully, the green room had no chairs (not even the ones that are chained to the wall) on which we could sit. Left with no option, we decided to stand, and lined up facing the wall with the mirrors. Placing our instruments on the stone slab that served as a dressing table, we tuned up and made a brave attempt to warm up for the concert. One look in the mirror, and the sight of our own faces staring back at us was enough to make our collective resolve to remain undeterred collapse as, giggling hysterically, we tucked away yet another anecdote for the big book of green-room stories.

Write to Shubha at musicmatters@livemint.com

Storyteller: Savitha Sastry.

the dance movements are tightly connected with lyrics. But in my performance, the story is what the audience will go back with, without even consciously realizing that it was conveyed to them through the medium of Bharatanatyam. The audience will not perceive this art form as an alien concept to their experiences and backgrounds.”

Is this Bharatanatyam for dummies? What about those who care deeply about its classical elements?

“At no point, am I dumbing it down. I’m not compromising on its technical aspects. I’m respectful to its precisions, fluidity and grace,” says Sastry, who has performed in more than a dozen countries, including the US, England, Ireland, Switzerland and Australia. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m convinced in Bharatanatyam. I’m not straying from the way it is delivered. I’ve spent many years trying to get technically competent. Now I’m trying to rise above

that accomplishment by using it as a means to tell a story, not as an end in itself.”

To escape from Chennai, where Sastry believes “Bharatanatyam is deeply entrenched in sanctimoniousness” and where she feared her work might be viewed unfavourably, Sastry moved to Delhi a year ago.

Soul Cages is a 54-minute solo recital, and will be performed to recorded music—an ensemble of violins, viola, tabla and percussion composed by Rajkumar Bharathi, great-grandson of poet Subramanya Bharathi.

Sastry’s theme may be new, but her act will not stray from Bharatanatyam’s characteristic angular movements of limbs, complete with triangles and diagonals. “Expect an evening of entertainment,” she says.

Soul Cages will open in Delhi on 28 January at Kamani Auditorium. It will play at Bangalore’s Chowdiah Memorial Hall on 11 February; the Gyan Manch auditorium in Kolkata on 18 February; and the National Centre for the Performing Arts’ Dance Theatre Godrej in Mumbai on 10 March.

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Feeding the soul: Dog lover and activist Sonya Ghosh feeding stray dogs at one of India’s first dog­feed­ ing sites in Vasant Kunj, Delhi.

DELHI’ DELHI’S BELLY | MAYANK AUSTEN SOOFI

What about our food security?

The Capital has India’s first dog­feeding sites.

We meet the dog lovers at work

N

osering, Sweety, Kaajal and Sudama are sitting close to a Mother Dairy booth in Vasant Kunj, New Delhi. It’s 3pm, and Sonya Ghosh is expected. An associate professor of English at the University of Delhi, Ghosh arrives daily in a Maruti van carrying six pails, two buckets and 20 plastic bowls.

Driving through sectors 3 and 4 of Vasant Kunj, she feeds 25 dogs, including the fat Bullah and the old Kaali.

Milk, rice, daliya, soybean, pumpkin and chicken waste— all cooked together—is the meal Ghosh serves stray dogs at India’s first designated dog-feeding sites, set up in 2009.

Today, the Capital has more than 100 feeding sites for stray canines. No other Indian city has such a facility.

According to a 2009 survey by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), there are 262,000 stray dogs.

“Some people praise me,” says Ghosh, filling up a bowl for the brown Marina who was abandoned by her owners.

“Some consider me a crackpot.

Others think I’m making money.

But it’s coming from my salary.”

The credit for setting up the dog-feeding sites goes to Ghosh and other activists. Harassed by some for taking care of stray animals, they had filed a petition in 2009 in the Delhi high court. Over the next two years, the court gave them more than they had expected. Not only did it order police protection for volunteers feeding the dogs, it also directed the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) to select dog-feeding sites in various neighbourhoods and decide on timings, along with the resident welfare associations (RWAs) and the local police. The court disposed of the case in December.

“We are forming committees of board members and volunteers to designate sites across Delhi,” says advocate

Life essentials: A jacket­wearing stray fights the cold in Delhi’s Madhu Vihar; and (below) dogs enjoying their afternoon meal in Vasant Kunj.

Anjali Sharma, an executive committee member of the AWBI. Every locality can have more than one spot. The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus has 15 sites; Vasant Kunj, 17; Golf Links, seven.

Explaining why this initiative is confined to Delhi, Sharma says: “Some RWAs in the city have become overbearing. It’s because of the wrong belief that giving food would make the dogs violent, RWAs don’t let residents feed the animals. Occasionally, things get nasty, even violent.”

This doesn’t mean that dogs cannot be fed if your neighbourhood has no feeding spots. Sharma, who lives in Noida, adjoining Delhi, feeds 17 stray dogs daily. This inspired other residents. With increased interaction, it became easier to catch dogs for sterilization and vaccination. In three years, the dog population in Sharma’s locality has come down from 70 to 40.

Until the early 1990s, a dog was either taken to the New Delhi Municipal Council’s veterinary hospital in Moti Bagh to be electrocuted, or teams from

the MCD would poison the stray, taking it away in a refuse bag.

The killings stopped after the Delhi high court ordered sterilization instead in 1992.

Today, after sterilization and immunization, the stray dogs are released at the same place from where they are picked up. This is more in the spirit of Article 51 A (g) of the Constitution, which makes it a fundamental duty for citizens to show compassion to all creatures.

Across the city, there are non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and individuals who are taking care of strays. “We pick the injured and sick from the streets and treat them,” says Rajender Singh Negi, shelter manager of the Pet Animal Welfare Society, Masoodpur, which has 80 dogs. Every day Negi gets two-three calls about old or diseased pets being abandoned by their owners on the streets. On Christmas, Ramesh, a security guard at an ATM in the posh Satya Niketan area, found a newborn puppy on the road. It had two legs. The puppy was sent to Negi’s shelter and was then adopted by Anjali

Gopalan of the Naz Foundation.

The puppy has been named Pari.

In 2010, a young couple, Tushar and Pooja Agarwal, drove from London to Delhi and raised `2 lakh for the animal welfare NGO Friendicoes Society for Eradication of Cruelty to Animals. On their blog Londondelhibyroad.com, they wrote, “We hope to...spread the message that cruelty to animals is not acceptable.”

Back in Vasant Kunj, Ghosh sees no dogs at a site at the corner of D-4 block, and blows the car horn. An obese dog appears immediately.

“That’s Brownie No. 2,” Ghosh says. “He has been fattened by shopkeepers.”

The shopkeepers in the area’s market have bonded well with dogs. The tailor, Vijay Kumar, gives Tiger biscuits to dogs. At Priya Drycleaner Walla, they get Parle-G biscuits. The boutique lady keeps milk for Bimbo, her favourite. The cooks at the Frontier Foods takeaway stall throw leftovers to dogs. Some customers order tandoori chicken specifically for them. At the Gulzar Chicken and Mutton shop, Jumbo prefers mutton trimmings.

But stray dogs are still feared.

In JNU campus, home to a large number of strays, the cases of dog bites grew so serious last year that a group of blind students took out a protest march in September.

The same year, 22 patients at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences were bitten within a single month by stray dogs loitering on the hospital premises.

Similarly, outsiders in upscale Nizamuddin East are scared to walk at night. The dogs growl at them. One morning in 2009, 18 dogs were found dead, poisoned deliberately, according to some residents.

“We still have about 100 dogs,” says Rohtas, a night guard in Nizamuddin East.

Pointing to a dog snuggled on a blanket, he adds: “They bark only at strangers. Food comes to them from four or five bungalows twice a day.”

In the same neighbourhood, every evening, Outlook magazine editor Vinod Mehta throws biscuits to stray dogs outside his apartment building. His own pet, which he found in a ditch in Gurgaon, is said to be partial to imported cheese.

Caring for animals is not only

a trait of the privileged. Ramesh, a labourer who sleeps on the Mathura Road pavement, lives with a street dog he calls Kaali.

Patting the black dog, he says, “I may go hungry, but I make sure that Kaali gets her roti every night.” In the morning, before leaving for work, Ramesh feeds her bread and milk.

Such caring brings out some of our contradictions. In a city that has thousands of malnourished people, we now have feeding sites for dogs. “Each species has a right to shelter, security and food,” says Ghosh.

The feeding sites need not be limited to Delhi. Sharma says, “Though the Delhi high court does not say that dog-feeding sites have to be set up in other cities too, its order has persuasive value over the rest of India.”

(To report sick or injured stray dogs in and around Delhi, call the Pet Animal Welfare Society at 26136435, or Friendicoes SECA at 24314787.) mayank.s@livemint.com

HELP STATIONS Initiatives in other cities that reclaim the dignity of stray dogs

Mumbai The Welfare of Stray Dogs (WSD) organization vaccinates and sterilizes stray dogs across the city, but treats injured strays only in the island city, from Cuffe Parade to Mahim. It arranges for the adoption of stray dogs, and holds awareness campaigns on dog­bite prevention and compassion for stray animals. To report sick or injured dogs, call 64222838.

Bangalore Founded by an Englishwoman in 1991, Compassion Unlimited Plus Action (Cupa) has a shelter for injured stray dogs at the Veterinary College Campus in Hebbal. To report sick or injured dogs, call 22947300.

Hyderabad The Blue Cross of Hyderabad sterilizes 600 stray dogs every month and vaccinates them against rabies. To report sick or injured dogs, call 32989858.

Ahmedabad The Asha Foundation treats injured strays at its shelter in Hathijan. Every month three vets sterilize dogs. To report sick or injured dogs, call 9824037521.

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